Baked Haddock
I needed a new recipe for some haddock and a friend messaged me this one.
My version used the following ingredients.
- Two haddock filets. These were line caught from Waitrose.
- The juice of two limes.
- One chopped medium-sized onion.
- Four quartered tomatoes.
- Some fresh parsley from my herb garden.
The method couldn’t have been simpler.
- Place the fish in a shallow dish.
- Combine the lime juice, onion, tomatoes and parsley and pour over the fish.
- Bake in the bottom of the top oven in the AGA for 20 minutes.
The dish looked like this before I cooked it.
Baked Haddock Before Cooking
After cooking, the tomatoes had created a sauce.
Baked Haddock After Cooking
It worked and the fish was very tender. I did get a bit too much sauce and next time I cook it, I think I’ll used a second onion and also add a crushed clove of garlic.
But it was very quick and simple. And no saucepan to wash up.
Lucky Arsenal
Is there any other way to describe their win in Liege? Or should it be Luik, which is what Liege is called in half of Belgium.
The second goal was offside and the third should have been disallowed as Song was standing offside in front of the goalkeeper.
Who cares?
It’s only a game.
Looking for Lights
I don’t know whether this post will get any results, but I have a problem in finding the right lights for my kitchen/living room. I know what I want, but I can only get them in small sizes. And I want a large one to replace a chandelier.
Conical Wire-Wrap Shade
This was the original ones that my late wife bought, when we moved into this house about sixteen years ago, they came from John Lewis.
Note the bulb which is one a Philips Tornado. They start immediately and are rated as the equivalent of a 115 watt conventional bulb. They are better, but still only a stop gap until we get proper LED light bulbs, that look like a conventional bulb, emit light like a conventional bulb, last virtually forever and run cold on about a tenth or less of the electricity.
Three weeks ago, I bought this pumpkin shaped shade from Homebase.
Pumpkin-Shaped Wire-Wrap Shade
This one is a lot smaller, but although made many years after the original, it has the same design, company and/or machines written all over it.
Then I found this one in B & Q.
Globe-Shaped Wire-Wrap Shade
Again it was identical in similar in detail design and certainly method of manufacture.
I’ve put two on the gallery in the kitchen to replace a wall light.
Lights on the Gallery
What I now need is a large fitting, say about 80 cm. in diameter, made to a similar design for the centre of the room. Perhaps though a globe shape would be best, or at least one with a narrow aperture, so the bulb is semi hidden. I’ve seen one in hotel. Or I might have!
Any ideas?
Is There Racist Opposition To President Obama?
I’ve always respected Jimmy Carter. He drew a lot of short straws as President, but I think since leaving office he has shown himself to be a proper statesman. Often this is the test of a good politician, as when they are removed from the ties and responsibilities of office, they show their true colours and dreams. Sometimes they lose all respect and rightly so.
So when Jimmy Carter says that opposition to President Obama is racially based, we should all listen.
Well Done Eddie!
Eddie Izzard has now completed his feat of running forty-three marathons in fifty one days for Comic Relief.
In finishing he proved what many thought was an impossible task: that a 47-year-old cross-dresser with no sporting inclination could complete an endeavour usually reserved for a small band of endurance athletes and masochists.
So well done, Eddie!
I have given a small amount to Comic Relief and I hope that others will do so. This link does it and it’s very painless.
I have a confession to make though about Eddie. Much as I like him as a person and find him very funny, when he appears in interviews on the radio and television. But my late wife and I went to see him at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge and walked out at halfway. It could have been that I am going a little deaf or the bad acoustics of the theatre, but we just didn’t get it!
But, it’s still well done to Eddie!
I also have a rather tenuous connection to Eddie.
I have said in previous posts like Letterpress Rules OK, that my father was a printer. One of his employees was a lovely Scot called Frank Black. He actually taught me to drive in the Triumph Herald Estate that the company used for deliveries. But his main job was actually to cut paper on the modern Grieg guillotine. Hence the reason my father always referred to him as “Mac the Knife”.
In a previous job, Frank had run a company in partnership with an Izzard called Angel Electric. I think that they used to provide all sorts of pumps, heaters and other accessories for tropical fish tanks. Hence the name!
The Izzard family were fairly well-known in North London and another was a television producer who used to do a very respected program called Travellers Tales. In one, they were in Iran and they needed to get access to some caves where people had lived many centuries ago. It was thought that no-one had been there since the Middle Ages. So they called up Joe Brown, who at that time was one of the best rock-climbers in the world. (Checking his Wikipedia entry says that Joe is still with us and will be 79 in ten days time!)
Joe just walked up the wall and they were in!
It was fascinating television.
Whenever I read of Eddie and his achievements, I just think of the connections and remember Frank Black, who was a really good bloke.
Electronic Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement
I’m getting a lot of this lately. What happens is that articles on this blog, get copied and put into other peoples’ web sites without attribution or a link. Wikipedia explains the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement as.
Plagiarism is not copyright infringement. While both terms may apply to a particular act, they are different transgressions. Copyright infringement is a violation of the rights of a copyright holder, when material protected by copyright is used without consent. On the other hand, plagiarism is concerned with the unearned increment to the plagiarizing author’s reputation that is achieved through false claims of authorship.
But whatever it is I don’t like it and some of my readers have been moved to comment on my post on Cornflour. Why that one was copied, I haven’t a clue?
So how can we stop it, mitigate the effect of the copying or even benefit from it?
In the first place, if your post is good English, (or French, Spanish, Mandarin or anything else for that matter), with lots of recognisable phrases, you will be a bit more likely find them. I suspect that if I type “Electronic Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement” into Google in a few weeks, I’ll find a few copies of this article.
I have started putting a link into each post that links to the rest of my blog. The reason is that they generally don’t remove the links, so if any reader finds it interesting, they might link back to the rest of your site.
But whatever you do, don’t complain to the perpetrators. They’ll only wind you up and do it more often.
As I said in one of my comments, there are much more important things in life, than trying to stop this minor irritation.
Just Like Old Times
Years ago, when I was writing Artemis, I was always to be found at the computer from about five in the morning or even earlier. My late wife would be snug in bed.
But then when I wake up I get up. And guess what, it’s now just before five and after waking up from a strange dream, I am now at the computer.
Am as I as productive as I was in the 1970s?
Probably not, but I still have the stamina to program for twelve hours a day. On the other hand, there are a lot more algorithms in my mind now, so I don’t have to spend time finding them!
The Anonymous Widower 