Nothing to be cheerful about at smile…

My debit card expired today. Has my bank – smile – sent me a replacement? No. I’ve been chasing them up for a week, trying to get some information, to no avail. Finally, I got a message – my new card had been blocked because they didn’t like the look of my credit rating. To [...]

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Some thoughts on storing flour, and a new recipe…

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve bought a batch of stoneground, organic flours from Shipton Mill, and I did so before realising that storage would be a problem, as I would have far more flour than I’d usually have. Storing flour for any length of time means finding somewhere cool and free from [...]

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Send granny to judo classes…

The following is from an article in Pulse magazine. You may have to sign up to read it. “Elderly patients have been advised by researchers to reduce the risk of broken bones through falls by taking up judo. Scientists at Vrije University in Amsterdam claim osteoporosis sufferers could be trained to turn falls into rolls, [...]

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Another HSBC phishing scam…

If you get an email like this, ignore it – it is NOT legit, OK? For a start, I don’t have an HSBC account. And banks don’t work this way anyway – ever. This was viewed in Mailwasher Pro, by the way, a worthwhile investment if, like me, you get a lot of spam – [...]

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Raw milk – how good for you is it really?

I came across this, today (here). The healthy alternative to pasteurized milk is raw milk, which is an outstanding source of nutrients including beneficial bacteria such as lactobacillus acidophilus, vitamins and enzymes, and it is, in my estimation, one of the finest sources of calcium available. Yeah, right… Let me say, upfront, that

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The great fish rip-off, and other food musings…

In the Guardian there’s an article claiming that the prime fish on our plates – cod, haddock, hake, etc – is quite possibly not what it purports to be, being, in reality, lower-quality fish. I’m not surprised. On several occasions, over the past year, I’ve bought

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Creating a bread recipe…

For anyone interested in creating their own bread recipes, rather than just following someone else’s, this is how I work up a new recipe. The first step – beyond thinking about if for a while – is to put together a recipe that should get you reasonably close to what you want to achieve. Some [...]

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The end of the world is nigh – maybe…

New Age fruitcakes and bandwagon-jumpers have been panicking about, or attempting to profit from, fears centred on 21 December 2012, a date for which they believe, or would like you to believe, the Mayans forecast the end of the world – or some other undefined but almost equally cataclysmic event. The reasoning

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The Internet can write?

I came across this nugget of cobblers in the Guardian this morning, vis-à-vis the egregious Snakes on a Plane movie:- “…the internet (sic) had actively rewritten parts of it to make it even more stupid,” Really? The

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Britons come home…

According to the Guardian, today, the government’s plans for getting the 200,000 people “stranded” by the ban on flights home include:- • Deploying the Royal Navy, cruise ships and commercial shipping to transport passengers to the UK if the crisis worsens. • Using Spain, which

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