Now you can pick up anything!

I picked up some disposable chopsticks in Las Vegas; the instructions brought a smile to my face.

Rice and Rice

I missed Radio 4’s Food Programme on Sunday, so I just listened to it via the BBC website. It is pretty cool that you can do that.
Also on the BBC website: for a trial period you can download the latest edition of In Our Time in mp3 format – so I can listen to it while I am out jogging (yeah, right). This week’s programme was about Zoroastrianism – I’m still not sure whether it was the first ethical monotheisitic creed – but it may well have been the first to espouse the golden rule.

But I digress – I am supposed to be writing about rice. I learned from The Food Programme that 2004 is the International Year of Rice. Halfway through November and I find this out – a lot of time to make up.
Almost 3000 million people share the culture, traditions, and untapped potentials of rice – the same number of people that live on less than one euro per day; I wonder how many belong to both groups…
There is some really interesting information on the International Year of Rice website and some fun stuff too, like the art gallery with contributions from children around the world.
As someone somewhere once said, "Rice is good when you’re hungry and want 2000 of something."

But I digress – I am supposed to be writing about Rice. Condoleezza Rice has just been appointed as US Secretary of State. From what I can see she is a yes woman and as hawkish as the other people in Bush’s inner circle – as opposed to the retiring Powell, who seemed to be the only vaguely reasonable person around. In 2003, Rice was asked for suggestions on how the US should treat European opponents of the Iraq invasion; her answer: "Punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia."
And on the Israel/Palestine issue, Rice’s views seem to be closer to Bush’s than Powell’s were – she is committed to a two-state solution and will hopefully have the vision to help bring this about during the next four years.

Bowley / Anzac biscuits

Ingredients
1 cup oats
1 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup plain flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons boiling water

Method
Preheat oven to 180C (not exact – just quite hot)
Mix oats, flour, sugar and coconut together.
Melt syrup and butter together, in a saucepan over a low heat.
Mix bicarb with boiling water and stir into melted butter and syrup.
Add to dry ingredients.
Place some small balls (a big marble or a small walnut) on a greased tray – leave space for spreading.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden.
Cool on a wire rack.

(Many thanks to Geraint’s mum, via the Bowley family, for the recipe.)

mango, peach and strawberry smoothie

What better way to spend the summer than experimenting with your Antony Worrall Thompson blender?
This is my favourite smoothie of the year so far.

Ingredients
One large, really, really ripe mango
One large peach
A fistful of strawberries
A few cubes of ice

Method
Slice the mango over the blender (so as not to lose the juices, which drip like blood from a wound) and stir. Slice the peach, add and stir. Chuck in the strawberries and ice and liquidize the lot.
Pour and drink in large gulps. Yummy.

Cheese

G. K. Chesterton once wrote “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

May I introduce the great Canadian James McIntyre, who I discovered in that delightful anthology The World’s Worst Poetry? Included is his epic poem entitled Ode On the Mammoth Cheese (weight over seven thousand pounds), including such verses as:

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as the leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.

James McIntyre has apparently inspired the Online Dairy Ode Competition: The contest is exclusively for dairy odes, which are poems written about cheese, milk, yogourt, cows, goats, cheesemaking, dairy farming, or anything else to do with dairying and dairy products.

What would GK Chesterton make of it all?