Since today is Shrove Tuesday (AKA Pancake Day!) I decided to experiment. The proportions I used were 1 large egg (which came to about 50g), an equal amount of plain flour and double the amount of milk. That gives me “one to one to two of E, F, M”. That is just as easy to remember although I did also add in a small amount of baking powder and a pinch of salt. I used about 1tsp of baking powder, which is 5g or 10% of the amount of flour; the salt was a nominal amount and not measured: “1B:5E:5F:10M”.

The result was a reasonably thin pancake that had a bit of body thanks to the action of the baking powder without become too thick to roll up. To be truly scientific I ought to experiment with all sorts of permutations but I am happy enough with the result (and don’t want to see my waistline expand too much) so I shall stick with that for now.

I have been using Feedly for two or three months now and am generally very impressed with it. It took a little while to learn the interface but it generally works well. I particularly like the way you can select different types of display for different types of information; I see pictures from my Flickr contacts as a wall of thumbnails but news from the Oxford Mail (who are not very generous with the amount of information they put in their feed) uses a more prosaic list of headines and summary sentences.

What is not to like? I do find that the site is broken from time to time and also that bits of the interface sometimes change without warning. However, given that I can always fall back on Google Reader and the list of what is waiting for me to read is synchronised between the two. It is like having the choice between a cheap newspaper and a glossy magazine which magically have the same content. If you use Google Reader it is definitely worth taking a look at Feedly.

I did have a go wearing them for a bout  but most of my evening was spent helping the young people in and out of them, acting as referee and hauling up the combatants again and again and again. The suits were pretty heavy and must have weighed more than some of the youth who gave them a go! So much for my plans for a restful weekend! Fun, though!

Road Rash

Unfortunately, today’s inspiration came in the form of a slick road surface at a junction, my cycle home from an early meeting at work and a sudden, unwanted closeness to the tarmac! I regularly cycle that corner and normally glide round it; I don’t think I was going any faster than normal today but the back wheel suddenly lost its grip. Fortunately there was no car on my tail and the only damage seems to be a few grazes.

Having done my cathartic self-portrait session to document the event (and give time to ensure that there don’t seem to be any more serious injuries), I think I will go down to check my bike and, assuming my initial assessment that it is fine is correct, go ahead with my planned ride down to Wallingford to pick up a pair of shoes (Jane is out with the car today). They say it is good to get back on a horse if you have fallen off although, trust me, I will be taking it very carefully.

Appetite by Nigel Slater

I made an interesting pâté earlier this week, using up the giblets that came with the duck we roasted at the weekend and vaguely following a Nigel Slater recipe. Precision wasn’t an option as I didn’t have the chicken livers, cream or brandy suggested by his recipe but I figured that duck offal, crème fraîche and whisky were reasonable substitutions.

What did surprise me though was the resulting taste. Rich, sweet and more than a hint of chocolate. How bizarre! It was not quite what I expected but was still perfectly satisfying. I must try and get the recommended ingredients and proportions and see if this is anything like the result of Mr Slater’s main recipe but I was still very pleased with it; there is a reason I keep his Appetite book on my shelves and regularly refer to it as one of my main sources of culinary inspiration.

Daffodils by the Path

What an amazing clump of daffodils. Despite coming out far too early and then enduring some very harsh, cold weather, they are still going. I think is a bunch of survivors!

I can remember hearing a talk several years ago by Josh Schachter, who set it up in the first place. This was in the days before it was bought by Yahoo! and I recall that the issue of private bookmarks came up. To the best of my recollection, Josh and his team heard the request and went so far as to introduce the option but they deliberately did not make it the default mode because one of the greatest values of the site was the ability to discover interesting things by looking at what else people had discovered around tags you might have used yourself.

I can appreciate that user interfaces change over time but it is a useful reminder, every time I come up with a bright idea for one of my sites, that while people can be attracted by novelty, they also value continuity and not having to constantly relearn the rules of how things work.

The nature of experiments, of course, is that you try new things and not all of them work quite as well as you hoped. I incorporated several twists tonight. Incorporating more readings into the worship set seemed to go down well but my attempts to folkify the songs by playing them in DADGAD tuning and taking liberties with the melodies felt like hard work despite a fair amount of practise. I suppose unfamiliar songs are even harder to follow when you can’t be sure what twists they are going to take. Next time, I might go for an open tuning again but perhaps pick my music from songs with easy and well known tunes.

It may not all have been perfect but at least I have the freedom to fail and, thus, the opportunity to succeed (as well as the ever present opportunity that, even in my failings, there might be the right combination of things to bless some of those present).