Chris Worfolk's Blog

According to the cover, Linda McCartney provides meals that are both “simple and inspiring”. My friend Alan lent me a number of cookbooks and this was my favourite one (which he then very kindly gifted to me!).

It should be noted that Linda does not seem to have been a fan of spicy food. I’m not either, I usually get my Nando’s medium, but I’m developing a taste for a little bit of kick. Even at that level, I found myself regularly scribbling “leave the chilli seeds in” or “use two chillies, not one” next to recipes.

Good points

It does keep things simple. Most do not take too long to make or involve complicated steps. So far, they have all been tasty.

The photos that there are are very large.

There is also an excellent section at the back breaking down how to make a selection of sauces and dressings.

Bad points

It feels a bit dated. Most of the recipes call for chilli powder or dried chillis. I could be entirely wrong about this, but my guess is that these days that would all call for fresh chillies (Hugh certainly would).

Just less than half the dishes have photos.

Finally a lot of the recipes rely on a meat substitute. Many of the recipes are existing meat dishes with vegetarian mince instead. This is unfortunate because vegetarian meat usually tastes terrible.

I wanted a good book on cooking with vegetables over Christmas and I eventually settled on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “Veg Every Day!” book. It has quickly become my favourite cookbook.

Good points

I got it in hardback format which helps keeps the book open and protects it. There is a photo of pretty much every single recipe – a recipe on one page and a full almost-A4 size colour photo on the other. That is probably the best feature of the book.

It is also really good food. All of the dishes are interesting and tasty. None of if uses meat substitutes; there is a real focus on cooking with interesting vegetables rather than making dishes with meat alternatives.

It was only £12 for the hardback.

Bad points

Just one really, though it is a big one. Everything takes ages to make. Ages! If you are a vaguely competent chef, you can probably work a lot quicker than me, and might be able to do most of the recipes within an hour. Me, not so much. I normally budget an hour and a half, maybe even longer, to make each one.

It was only last Wednesday when I sat in a Toastmasters meeting and listened to a speech about Spock. Little did we know that less than 48 hours later his illness would take a turn for the worse.

It only seems fitting to remember him the way I am sure he would want to be remembered…

Utilitarianism is a book by John Stuart Mill defending the topic. I found it rather wandering with little structure. This made it somewhat difficult to follow. Indeed, I am not sure I came away from the book with any deeper understanding than I went in with.

I did not help that I had the audiobook which is narrated by Fleet Cooper. He speaks with an American accent and calls the author “John Stuart Mills”, which made it hard to imagine it being the impassioned arguments of Mill himself.

Making Money is the second Discworld novel to feature Moist von Lipwig. Published in 2007, it is getting dangerously close to the present – only four to go after this one :S. The storyline follows Moist as he takes control of the city mint, albeit against his will.

Moist is a cool character. I did not enjoy this one as much as Going Postal but it was still a very enjoyable read.

Recently I was looking for a pedal board and settled on the Pedaltrain Jr. If you are not familiar with a pedal board, it is exactly what it sounds like – a board that you put effects pedals on so that you can wire them in to your power supply and transport them around easier when you’re going to jam sessions, gigs, etc.

I went for the Pedaltrain Jr because everyone seems to be recommending. However, I have found the build quality rather poor.

It comes with two holes to connect the power cables through. However, the wholes are slightly too far apart. In the photo above, you can see that you can barely get the power cables through.

Of course you can argue that it is not their fault because my power supply is made by Voodoo Labs which is a separate company. However, the runners are another matter.

You get two braces that you screw into the side of your power supply and then you screw those braces into the frame. However, they do not fit properly. This is Pedltrain’s own braces screwing into Pedaltrain’s own frame, there does not seem to be any reason why these would not fit without having to bang them into place.

Finally, after only a few days, the velcro has begun pealing off the top of the board.

Just your average dinner of roast pork, Yorkshires, ratatouille, refried beans, new potatoes, mashed potatoes, three types of vegetables, Asian inspired coleslaw, seafood platter, cheese and tomato tart, salad and five different types of bread.

The real achievement was that we managed to eat almost all of it. Or at least will have by the time this is published…

A Tiffany Aching book that I actually enjoyed reading? Surely the world has turned upside down. I mean they were all okay, but this one I would upgrade to a full on “good”.

Maybe it just took a little time for Pratchett to build the universe (even though it is technically the Discworld universe). Discworld novels are like a sitcom, a lot of it is funny because you know the characters and situations. Starting again without many of the existing characters probably takes time to build up once again.

Plus it did have Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg in it.

This short book contains the first few chapters of Auguste Comte’s work, translated by Frederick Ferre. It gives a very brief and compact introduction to the ideas but nevertheless remains rather hard going.

Comte believes that all sciences can be broken down into individual classifications. Each can then be split into the theoretical and the practical, the latter of which can be disgraced. You can then use them as building blocks. What I mean by this is that you start with physics. If you want to study astronomy, you can, but only after you have learned physics. Similarly, if you want to study chemistry, you must first study physics and astronomy.

He also talks about “social physics”, now known as sociology. He puts this at the top of the pile, thus making it the most difficult science to study because you need to have a grounding in almost everything else in order to effectively study it.