Year: 2011
August 23, 2011

Chorizo Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

I had a pork tenderloin in my fridge that needed to be used. I also had a couple of chorizo sausages and a pack of streaky bacon. So I simply cut along the length of the tenderloin, inserted the chorizo, then closed the tenderloin and wrapped it in streaky, before throwing it on the Traeger with some other stuff that needed using up.

Preparation time: less than 10 mins. Smoking time: 3 hours.

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August 19, 2011

A nice surprise

Over the past few months, I’ve beem having good fun with my BBQ. Naturally, the more I use it, the more I learn, but for some of the dishes – pulled pork and brisket – you can’t really cook a small piece of meat. As a result, I throw caution to the wind, and cook far more than I can eat. Some of the excess gets frozen for the future, but I’ve also been passing out plastic boxes of meaty goodness to the neighbours.

I’ve got family visiting tomorrow, so I have been smoking a brisket, while trying to tidy the garden. I was taking a break with a cuppa, when there was a knock on my back door. It was a neighbour who had just been shopping. She gave me a carrier bag, with a pork shoulder joint and a beef rib joint, as a thank you for the BBQ (and computer advice) I have been handing out recently.

Read the Post <span class='p-name'>A nice surprise</span>
August 9, 2011

Car buying: New vs Used

My trusty old Renault Scenic is playing up a bit. It has been absolutely fine until recently, but in the last couple of days, it hasn’t been quite right. It made a trip to Cambridge today fine, but on the way back, it developed a judder when accelerating.

I have a feeling it is a timing issue, and hopefully won’t cost much to fix. However, this is the latest of a number of small incidents, and I am beginning to be concerned that I can no longer trust it. I’m also concerned that I am beginning to spend more on the annual maintenance and repair of the thing than the car is actually worth.

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August 7, 2011

An Old Friend Writes…

August 7, 2011

Thermapen Bargain

The Thermapen is a wonderful gadget. A food thermometer that is easy to use, accurate to within 0.4 degrees C in the range -49 to 200, and 1 degree above that (all thermometers come with an individual certificate of calibration). More importantly, their latest probe – the Superfast – is the fastest food probe I know – measuring the temperature in 3-4 seconds. No more standing around watching the reading rise, and rise, and rise….

Anyway, the UK manufacturer is selling a limited number of refurbished (but otherwise fine) Superfast Thermapens at half price (28.80, instead of 56 quid), on eBay, so I thought I would give people a heads up:

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July 19, 2011

The World House by Guy Adams

I’ve been flicking through the Science Fiction in Amazon’s Kindle Summer Sale. With many books reduced to 99p, it had to be worth a look.

Fortunately, even at that price, I had the sense to read samples first, and a lot of stuff got rejected before the end of the first chapter.

Read the Post <span class='p-name'>The World House by Guy Adams</span>
July 11, 2011

BBQ Disaster

Saturday was the usual monthly gathering of local boardgamers, and I was cooking BBQ for a dozen people, not including myself. I was going to put chicken, burger and bangers all on slow smoke for a couple of hours, so we could break when we wanted. I turned the grill on, and 20 minutes later went back to put the meat on.

Cold. After trying the obvious, I took the cover off the business end, and we could see that although power was getting to the fan, the auger wasn’t going round. The only thing I could think of was that in the recent awful weather, my pellets had got damp, and seized the auger. The only question was had it just seized, or had I burned out the motor too.

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July 8, 2011

Quick off the mark

In the wake of the announcement today that the News of the World is to close this weekend, and amid rumours that once the dust dies down, the Murdoch empire will launch the Sun on Sunday as a replacement; it now emerges that an unknown non-trading company called Mediaspring registered thesunonsunday.co.uk on July 5, 3 days before the announcement of the New of the World’s demise. The domain was registered with UK registrar 123-reg.co.uk, part of Webfusion.

Either someone got extremely lucky with an opportunist cybersquat, or they did so with a little inside information. Or else, Mediaspring is fronting the registration for News International.

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July 7, 2011

Barbduino – more design decisions

I haven’t done that much on my Barbduino BBQ Controller project for about a month. No good reason, other than simply doing other stuff.

After hesitating over how the device is going to connect to the outside world, I decided to abandon the idea of a WiFi shield, and bought a standard Ethernet Shield instead. The reasons for this were various.

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July 5, 2011

It’s in the bag

For some time, now, we have been admonished not to use disposable plastic carrier bags. The supermarkets’ response to this has been to come out with a range of inexpensive multiple use bags (some of which are really nice – I like the classic Tesco hemp-like bag, myself), while discouraging customers from using the disposable bags. Tesco does this by offering additional loyalty points for bag re-use; M&S does it by charging a ridiculous amount for the disposable alternative; Morrisons does it by making the bags so small and thin, they are virtually useless.

So riddle me this. While all of this is going on, why am I received more and more cheap plastic bags through my letterbox, with requests for clothes donations from everybody from the Sally Army to Save the Children? In the last week, I have received 9 sack sized plastic bags, and this is not exceptional. That is far more plastic than I would have ever have used in carrier bags before I started carrying a “for-life” shopping bag.

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July 2, 2011

Sad Old Bastards With Guitars

June 30, 2011

Not again…

Some of you may remember that I had a bout of cellulitus in my leg in April, following a minor injury while in the States. It took three weeks worth of anti-biotics to get rid of it, which knocked me for six at the time. But it did seem to go, and after another week or so, the swollen legs went back to normal again.

Two months later: late Tuesday night, I was watching TV, when I felt a burning sensation in my leg. I rolled up my trousers to look at it, and a piece of skin the size of a 10p piece came away with it – it was just like a blister that had popped, but I had noticed no such blister, or any prior feeling of something amiss. Yesterday morning, it was looking inflamed, and I finally got to see a GP today. The cellulitus is back, and I am back on anti-biotics.

Read the Post <span class='p-name'>Not again…</span>