Sunrise over Romania or thereabouts.
Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Slovenia.
After sleeping off the trip (it’s gruelling, wake up at home, board a plane around 1400, change planes in Addis around midnight, land in Vienna at 0600, get on a bus to get to Prague around lunchtime. And I’m not as young as I used to be, so I hurt, so sleeping on the plane is not easy) we’re off to see sights. And buy stuff.
Whole chicken comes in units of one. Affordable, and really nice roasted à la beer can. Feeds a family.
Problem comes when your family have all buggered off* and there’s just the two of you and the cats who in this case actually don’t eat chicken***.
And then the weather in Fish Hoek turned all cold and foggy and conducive to soup.
So… in a small pot (because there are only two of you, remember) boil about a litre of light stock if you have it (I didn’t****, this was a last-moment decision) or water + chicken stock powder. Add a double handful of whatever pasta is available (tagliatelle or shells would probably be best, I had penne), when it’s getting toothy add your leftover chicken (in this case a breast and a half) in bits. Mix 1/3 to 1/2 of a packet of mushroom soup powder with water to form a paste, stir that in, call it supper.
You can zhuzh it up with parsley or chives or spring onions or Worcestershire sauce if you feel the need.
(I found the inspiration here).
* Technical term**
** Someone said reading Pratchett as a kid completely ruined footnotes for them, because they assumed that footnotes had to be humorous.
*** Hills FTW.
**** I mean, of course I had. In the freezer. Frozen solid.
Assuming you have too much red curry and tamarind paste, this recipe is good.
I used drumsticks and thighs (2 ea), deboned towards the end of the cook.
Three tablespoons red curry paste is a bit excessive, as is a tablespoon of fish sauce (too salty). Add less, adjust up later if you feel the need.
This started off as Harissa beef and crispy potatoes* in a way reminiscent of Theseus’s ship.
Mince, potatoes, onions, check. But then I realised I also had carrots and butternut and then, minutes before the stores close, I realised I had no harissa paste.
So I scratched around the far back end of the ‘fridge, found some gochujang, harissa, tamarind, red curry paste, green curry paste, tahini… no harissa.
So I Made A Plan.
Black pot, some oil, start heating it up.
Add one large potato cubed, one large red onion sliced into 8, one large carrot diced, about as much cubed butternut as potato, salt, pepper, maybe some herbs. Fry that for maybe 20 minutes.
Crank the oven to 180 grill only, stick the black pot in there when it’s warm enough.
Meanwhile heat some more oil in a pan, fry 300-ish grams of mince, add 2 teaspoons gochujang and 1 teaspoon hoisin, add a tin of tomatoes, rinse the tin with water. Simmer that until it looks good, by now the veggies should be great.
Cover the veg with the mince, grill for another five minutes, allow to rest for maybe 15, add feta if you’re that way inclined, serve.
Now I have to find something to do with the tamarind, curry pastes, tahini…
* Which I make often (with baby potatoes normally — and it works well with game mince)
So the other day, we were driving to Hout Bay in Tanya’s Golf and the engine quit. This was downhill, with the car in gear, but the rev counter dropped to zero and the display moaned about oil pressure. Strange, and maybe not related to:
And then on the last day of 2024 the engine died again. Uphill this time, so no coasting.
Chaos ensued.
Pushed the car to the side of the road, managed to get it started. About a kilometer further, same thing. Waited a bit, it started again. By now I had a flashing glowplug light and an “Engine Workshop” message on the display.
Managed to get home though. (It was a warm day and it quit in stop-start traffic, so maybe temperature related).
Figured it would be a good idea to read the ECU error code. I have an ELM327 which used to work but no longer does, another ELM327 from Communica which plain sucks (only works with a specific App, for a limited time, then you need to buy the App) and a scanner from Temu which never worked (not a big surprise).
So I cut the plug off the Temu scanner and built a K-line interface* (Golf 4 TDi, 2004 — it has CAN, but the OBD interface is still K-line). Used VCDS Lite to read the codes. Works well, faster than the bluetooth solution, recommended.
P3105 “Valve for Intake Manifold Flap” — yea, no surprise there, I removed the EGR years ago.
P0322 “Engine Speed Sensor (G28) — Hmmm yea that sounds feasible.
Then I had to figure out how to remove the damn thing. Turns out you need a 9mm 12-point socket, my six-pointer obviously does not cut it.
Bought a socket, returned the incorrect part Goldwagen had supplied me, got the correct part, fitted it and all seems well again.
It’s only done 540 000km, dunno why these sensors fail so quickly… :-)
Figured I should maybe fix the P3105 code while I’m at it.
* R4 is not needed.
Martha is a 1976 short short Science Fiction story by Fred Saberhagen. Short short stories are special, as Asimov says in the introduction to his 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories:
Finally, in the short short story, everything is eliminated but the point.
Martha is an AI, being asked a question:
“Yes, sir,” said the pleasant feminine voice in my ear, made up, I knew, of
individually recorded words electronically strung together. “What can I do
for you?” Inspiration came. “You ask me a question,” I suggested.The pleasant voice repeated: “What can I do for you?” “I want you to ask me
a question,” I repeated.“You are the first human being to ask me for a question. Now this is the
question I ask of you: What do you, as one human being, want from me?”I was momentarily stumped. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “The same as
everyone else, I guess.”
[…]
Next day the director called to tell me that Martha was rebuilding herself. The
day after that I went back to look. People were crowding up to the guardrail,
around new panels which held rows of buttons. Each button when pushed
produced noises, or colored lights, or impressive discharges of static
electricity, among the complex new devices which had been added atop the
machine. Through the telephone receivers a sexy voice answered every
question with clearly spoken scraps of nonsense, studded with long technical
words.
1976. Saberhagen called it.
A couple of weeks a year, red bell peppers are plentyful and not ridiculously expensive.
This is a recipe for those weeks.
I made it with 700 grams of red peppers, about 400 grams red onions, and 1.5kg fresh tomatoes. I also snuck in two habanero chillies. For the rest, just follow the recipe. If you’re using fresh tomatoes, remove the skins with boiling water.
Blend and keep in the fridge or freeze.
Abdullah Ibrahim a.k.a. Dollar Brand turns 90 today. And he’s still playing (if you’re in Germany, and you already have tickets, because sold out).
We shoot Big Bore Handgun Silhouettes at 50, 100, 150 and 200m, with open sights, and interesting guns1.
The bank on the left are standard Big Bore targets. I can’t hit those for shit2.
The ones on the right (look carefully) are Big Bore Unlimited targets. Apparently I can hit those quite well3.
Same day, same gun, hit more of the small ones than the big ones.
Yea, I don’t know how that happened either5.
1 In this case, a Thompson Contender in 300 Whisp-R, which is a damn nice round, and a damn nice gun, I got the barrel from Mike Bellm himself.
2 I only hit 24/40, while the winning score was 39/40. BUT! In my defense, this is the first time I was shooting after having cataract surgery to my left eye4 and my old sight settings were way off.
3 Got 32/40, which is a decent if not excellent score.
4 For my sins I am cross-dominant.
5 On the small bore side, I only shot a 28, which should have placed me maybe third or so. But the other people shot worse than I did. Sucks to be them.
