(Rosie) This is the query ? whilst the glottal stop is ʔ Should you really desire to use it, then use the decimal & # 6 6 0 ; without the spaces between characters. Do not ignore the semicolon.
(Duj) Thanks for that - you hear it quite a lot in this country as you probably know. The thing is, will people merely regard it as a typo. In these august surroundings, probably not.
I need prayers and good vibes, etc. On Friday, I was terminated from my job and I need to be able to find a new one. I hated the job, but I need the money.
[Kagome S] Sorry about the job. That's a bummer. Does it mean you're free to move wherever you need to be for the next job? American scones sound a bit over-sweet and over-rich. British scones are just an 8:1 ratio of flour (+ raising agent) to butter, perhaps some sugar, and milk to bind the dough. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingers, add a dot of sugar, add milk to bind, pat out dough to 1.5cm thick (do not roll it), cut into rounds (I use a gin/hi-ball glass), bake at 200C for 12 minutes. I can have emergency scones on the table in less than half an hour, and I've been experimenting with baking them in the AirFryer too. Done. Hot, light, fluffy and not too sweet (so you can pile them with jam).
One can't really complain that American scones have too much sugar if one eats the alternative "piled" with what amounts to fruit polymerized with sugar. I have a sweet tooth but I cannot tolerate the sweetness of the average jam, marmalade or compote with or without a scone substrate. My teeth ache just looking at the jars.
So, did you festoon the sails of the mill with fairy lights for Xmas?
[pen] No. I own my house where I live and it needs to be repaired from Hurricane Laura as is . . . and with my disabilities, it's best to have an online job because that way employers can't complain about having to use my transport chair or my service dogs.
[KS] Sorry to hear about the job. Hopefully something comes your way soon. [Stevie] I agree. My preference is a sharp jam like raspberry or rhubarb. We spent Christmas Day with friends who have a plum tree. As they don't eat them, I came away with about 8kg of fruit. First batch of plum jam is now in the jars.
I can't do heat either. Just been out for lunchtime dogwalk; 4C and strong winds is a bit brutal but if you keep moving it's OK. I was so bundled up as to be unrecognisable walking into the wind but had to take off me hat walking back with the wind behind me What gets me is the freaking gloom here. It was midday and gloomier than a gloomy thing. Awful.
It is sunny here, but still a tad chilly. I also have toothache, and an expensive looking sheet of dental treatment. Pliers and DIY wooden teeth might be an alternative.
(Chalky, pen) As part of my weather-nut activities I have just discovered that in Jakutsk, Siberia, the current temperature is -50°C. Minus fifty. Not a breath of wind but a thin fog. Wrap up well.
(Chalky) Parts of it, yes. Jakutsk is a large and quite agreeable city. All the buildings are on stilts about six feet high so the heat from them doesn't melt the permafrost. In the brief peaky summer it's warmer than London and very sunny.
[Chalky] In Bedfordshire: hence "Snowy Beds". And it only lasted a few minutes. The bulk of the snow is probably held up at customs along with all the lorry drivers' sandwiches, so it won't go hungry.
Currently in the wilds of Zeeland at the mill. 2C and windy. Cannot move for thick layers of clothing and ski socks, yet fingers frozen. Waiting for snow (due in about 20 minutes). The neighbours have a big shed/workshop with a wood burner in it and have invited us for chicken soup for lunch. I made 2 dozen mince pies last night to contribute and warm up in the stove’s oven. It’s not all bad.
(Raak) I don't have any figures but I would guess the answer is none. Every winter it goes down to at least -45° so the cold is part of the environment and everybody knows it, even pissed teenagers at a guess. Sudden blizzards and storminess are pretty well unknown. There is actually very little weather in winter except a persistent thin fog, largely produced, it seems, by the city itself (people breathing, car exhausts, hot cups of tea etc).
[pen] I often did that before I was terminated from my job. We still had to keep hours and I would have to finish up dealing with customers. I HATED customer service. What good does having an MA do if nobody cares that you have it?
[KS] You care. And it shows something about your intelligence and diligence that you have it. All of that feeds into what you do and how you do it and none of the experience is wasted. I have one in technical writing but nobody cares about that when they ask me to write a series of tweets about a conference. In fact, that isn't even the real me - the real me happens at evenings and weekends when I cook and do experimental baking and get outside.
[KS] What pen said.Hidden textWell, except for the bit about having a degree in technical writing. I don't have one of those. [pen] Do you have to get outside because of the experimental baking?
[CdM] The only time my cooking upset the household was when I made chutney. The smell of boiling vinegar permeated the entire house and I was forbidden from making it again. The windy miller is Dutch and I think they're all allergic to vinegar (except that they're very keen on using it as a cleaning agent and a weedkiller - maybe that's why they think it shouldn't be in food or even on chips/fries *shudders*).
What is it with women and not turning on the extractor hood when preparing to generate large volumes of offensive and/or corrosive gas under the guise of home economics? Mrs Stevie did some pork chops in the air fryer last night and by dint of adding some sort of powdered seasoning with onion to the meat she tear gassed the house. She was quite put out when I rushed into the kitchen, eyes streaming, mucus membranes all-but corroded away, and turned on the extractor hood.
[Stevie] Nope - not in that house. We'd only just moved on from having only a gas hob sitting atop the tiny refrigerator to having a cooker with an oven underneath it. Until recently, many Dutch kitchens were not designed for cooking in. Perhaps Mrs Stevie has her own way of making you pay for having your dinner prepared for you.
[penelope, Chalky] Her choice to cook Hidden textI am amused by the assumption that in our marriage the woman has the traditional role given the amount of feminist sentiment espoused here over the years. Why does the entire house have to reek? I don't use spray paint in the kitchen ffs.
[Chalky] Well, given the choice, would you really rather the dilute acetic acid vapour were caught by the extractor hood filter or by your lungs? There's a reason your senses are offended by the stink. That is nature's way of telling you WARNING WILL ROBINSON!
(Stevie) Your senses would not be in the least offended by the smell of cyanide (nice almond-like pong) but get too much and you'd quite quickly be seriously dead.
[nfras] There'd be room to boil a pan of potatoes, carrots and onions and mash them together for stamppot, and to fry a pan of fat bacon. Or open a bag of pre-washed salad leaves. Loads of families keep a deep-fat fryer in the shed and use it there when they want to cook something 'fancy'. I think that's the entire Dutch cuisine of the 20th century summed up. There was much more variety in the days of the VOC apparently.
(pen) When I lived on the W Germany/Netherlands border we had Dutch TV - I can't remember their cuisine featuring on either regular shopping trips to Roermond or on TV celebrity chef-style zoals Fanny Cradock :^) (Stevie) For clarification - my other half is the guilty party when it comes to cooker extraction methodology or lack of. He's a chap.
(qua Rosie) I've smelt HCN several times, never in large quantities obviously, and it always has that nice bitter-almond smell. Apparently about 25% of the population are unable to smell it at all.
[Softers] Hope you don't, as the memorial for your birthday is already taken by the eponymous president, so you'd die in obscurity. He also had a biscuit named after him, maybe that would be an acceptable alternative?
I thought Lincoln biscuits were named after the city. Also Nice biscuits. Or maybe I'm just dough-minded. I've taken up baking again - in the past fortnight I've made a massive batch of Belgian buns (not Belgian at all, apparently) and chocolate chip cookies. This week, it'll be lemon cookies and an apple-topped yogurt cake. (Most of this stuff gets shared with neighbours and millers at the windmill on Saturdays when we have shed coffee).
[KagShuk] This is why I have stocks of butter in the freezer for when I get the urge to put the oven on and create something. It's now a exactly a year since I have seen any of my family IRL, and I've come to realise it's therapeutic to create something delicious from time to time [every week]. I'd never made US-style soft cookies before. Sooo easy. Impossible to get wrong. Soooo easy to eat too. [Boolb] A friend (a profesh cook) put the recipe on Instagram. She made it sound easy - let's see.
(the real Stevie, probably) I've never smelt it as garlic, always almonds. A bottle of potassium cyanide has got this smell due to hydrolysis. It's true that some smells can change with concentration. H2S is bad eggs when dilute but The Full Monty is odourless and dangerously toxic.
[penelope] Weaponry for sure, and not just chemical! Haven't you heard of dwarven battle-bread? I think it highly likely that the late Sir Terry got the idea when he cut his lip open on a bit of stale baguette or something.
This week's outing: got my tyres and windscreen wipers changed this morning. Left my thermal cup where I was working on my laptop in the waiting area. *rse. I'm not fit to be allowed out any more.
I'm definitely not fit to be allowed out. The thermal cup was at home but I have absolutely no recollection of bringing it in from the car nor of putting it in the sink. In other news, the Netherlands' non-essential shops are now allowed to open for shopping-by-appointment. I have booked a 10-minute slot at the hardware and household goods shop in the village for Friday at 17:15. I need new baking pans, a mop and bucket, and a dog brush. This is going to be like Supermarket Sweep.
Hairdressers open. My favourite hairdresser now does it from home in Rotterdam but her husband is a Covid denier so I'm not going to go back there yet. I don't know where he's been. And the nearest village hairdresser made a hack of it when I went there in November so I'm not going back there (although it's had plenty of time to grow out). I might have to try the next town over - the historic one with a marina and a few posh shops. They're probably only any good at the windswept-been-out-sailing-all-day look though, and I can manage that all by myself.