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The Singaporean government shows no compassion.

This morning, another drug mule was hanged. It is very well known how the Singaporean, Malaysian and Thai authorities treat drug traffickers, yet still it continues. I always wonder why they take such huge risks; why they can’t find another route that does not take them through these countries with barbaric death penalties*. Never having been in the darkest depths, I will never understand their reasons. I can, however, understand fully why the Singaporean government fails to show any clemency regardless of the circumstances. It’s a paternalistic government. They believe they are right in this. They regulate the number of births with propaganda, incentives and deterrents. They tell you how much to save for retirement, how many qualifications you can have, hell, they even make sure kids know how to brush their teeth in primary school. These are just some of the little things that they like to control. And they sure as hell like to control everything that comes in from the outside. Of course, Singapore has a drug problem just like everywhere else. It’s an age-old problem, starting with opium in the colonial days, and moving on to today’s soft and hard drugs. And like the good parents that they are, they want to keep their charges off drugs. So they introduce harsh laws that they hope will deter people from bringing in or using drugs. Maybe their reasoning is that these folk will die from drug abuse anyway, so why not use the death penalty to put the fear of god into them and stop them before they start. Maybe. Whatever the reasoning, the fact is that the Singaporean government is always right. They have never publicly admitted to being wrong (maybe except for the agreement to merge with Malaysia all those years ago), and they’re not going to start now. Doesn’t matter if the drugs are merely in transit. The fact that they are transiting through Singapore is enough to give her a bad reputation. And as anyone who knows anything about Asians knows, face is everything. And no-one likes to “lose” face even less than the fucking Singaporean government. No compassion to be found there.

*I’m not advocating drug trafficking, nor am I in favour of the death penalty under any circumstance. I just don’t understand.

product placements piss me off

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Can’t stand product placement. Pisses me off. And tonight, my already not so good opinion of Coldplay took a nosedive. On the latest CSI:NY (Jamalot), one of the detectives pulls out his mobile as it begins to ring, explaining to his colleague that it’s Coldplay’s “Talk”. One minute later, in the all-too-frequent adbreaks over here, what do we get but an ad for Coldplay’s “Talk” ringtone.

Fecking sell-outs.

Nerd alert: also on tonight’s CSI:NY, possibly the first TV broadcast of laser microdissection, where you use a laser to blast around a small area of sliced tissue (goes down to the single-cell level) and ping the microscopic piece of tissue into an awaiting tube.

where the dust bunnies breed

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I’ve been a bit busy of late, which means this wee blog has been neglected. While I talk a lot of rot here, quite a lot of that rot still needs lots of background reading and fact checking. And when you’re spending a lot of your evenings fact-checking for work, somehow, doing some research (i.e. using google) for the blog just does not appeal. So for the moment, I’m talking rot elsewhere:

  • my as yet un-named food blog (Update: Gave up on the food blog, lazy me will just continue talking rot here);
  • and my bitch about LA page.

chickpeas in pitta bread

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Another photo-less post. Ach well. I couldn’t be bothered to get all the gear together to shoot a mere chickpea sandwich. (Gear consisting of 1. a small camera, and 2. the light switch.)

So, again, take my word for it: [image]ugly and poorly lit[/image].

Rinsed out some dried chickpeas on Sunday night and left them to soak overnight in the fridge. Boiled said soaked chickpeas for an hour on Monday night after getting home 2 hours after dinnertime (P’s fault this time, not mine… yay! oh, at work late. not yay. boo…). Drained off all the liquid before I realised that I normally save two ladles-worth in a bowl. Duh. Put that down to tiredness (or brainlessness). To save us from having to wash too many pans, used the same pan to saute some onions and a smidgen of garlic. Added some curry powder (again, lazy. otherwise would have heated some coriander and cumin seeds, and blitzed them with some ground turmeric and grated ginger) and dry fried for a couple of minutes until the whole place smelled nice. (Who needs Glade when you have curry?) Added some tomato paste (again, lazy. should have added some chopped plum tomatoes or something. Really. It makes a huge difference to taste and texture. But. Lazy.) and chickpeas. Should have added the reserved chickpea cooking liquid at this point, but brainless git here forgot to save some. So added some plain ol water instead. I tell you, it makes a difference. Simmered for another 30 minutes.

And finally, tonight, crisped up some frozen pitta bread and served it with warmed through spicy chickpeas. Not as good as previous versions of my spicy chickpeas. Think I’m losing my touch. Keep blaming the poky and not very well laid out kitchen, but suspect it’s because I’ve lost the will to live cook. Can one get S.A.D. in LA even though the weather is a million times better than in Scotland right now? Or am I carrying some residual SADness from many Northern winters? All the same, the chickpeas were not the same, and that made me quite sad.

chicken in lemon and milk

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No photos today. It’s strange how on some days we’re just trigger-happy, and on others the camera doesn’t even come out of its case. So you’ll just have to take my word for how good today’s chicken in milk was. Originally a Jamie recipe, modified (i.e. made easy for lazy people) by us.

Brown your chicken in a deep pan. Drain off the excess fat. Cut a lemon in two give it a wee squeeze before throwing in the whole thing anyway. Pour in about a (British) pint of milk (that’s just over 586ml in metric, but I usually just pour until I remember to stop, so I’ve never any idea just how much I’ve used). Throw in several cloves of garlic (we always start with three, but end up adding five or more. Needless to say, our breath honks after.) Stick in the oven at 190C for around 45 min. (There are rules of thumbs for gauging how long to cook a chicken by weight. If I’m being particular, I check them out and follow them. Otherwise, I guess. This was no spring chicken, but no gargantuan either, so 45 minutes seemed sufficient.) In the meantime, faff around and forget to prepare anything to go with the chicken. Remember at around the 45 minute mark, and grab some angel hair pasta from the store cupboard. Take the chicken out while the pasta is cooking. Let it rest. It’s a bit exhausted from being in the heat, you know. Don’t bin the curdled milk in the pan: reduce it! (um, technical term for boiling some of it away until it’s a bit thicker) Shred some of the tender breast into the pasta or noodles, pour over the reduced curdled milky jus, tuck the napkin in and attack with a fork. If being posh, don’t bother with all that and serve carved pieces of chicken with some mashed tatties and roasted veggies (yeah right, like we ever plan in advance and have everything in). Bitch about how significant other never takes photos of your cooking even though you’ve been slaving away over a hot TV watching Stargate. Blog about how crap you are at documenting your cooking.

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chickpeas in pitta bread

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Another photo-less post. Ach well. I couldn’t be bothered to get all the gear together to shoot a mere chickpea sandwich. (Gear consisting of 1. a small camera, and 2. the light switch.)

So, again, take my word for it: [image]ugly and poorly lit[/image].

Rinsed out some dried chickpeas on Sunday night and left them to soak overnight in the fridge. Boiled said soaked chickpeas for an hour on Monday night after getting home 2 hours after dinnertime (P’s fault this time, not mine… yay! oh, at work late. not yay. boo…). Drained off all the liquid before I realised that I normally save two ladles-worth in a bowl. Duh. Put that down to tiredness (or brainlessness). To save us from having to wash too many pans, used the same pan to saute some onions and a smidgen of garlic. Added some curry powder (again, lazy. otherwise would have heated some coriander and cumin seeds, and blitzed them with some ground turmeric and grated ginger) and dry fried for a couple of minutes until the whole place smelled nice. (Who needs Glade when you have curry?) Added some tomato paste (again, lazy. should have added some chopped plum tomatoes or something. Really. It makes a huge difference to taste and texture. But. Lazy.) and chickpeas. Should have added the reserved chickpea cooking liquid at this point, but brainless git here forgot to save some. So added some plain ol water instead. I tell you, it makes a difference. Simmered for another 30 minutes.

And finally, tonight, crisped up some frozen pitta bread and served it with warmed through spicy chickpeas. Not as good as previous versions of my spicy chickpeas. Think I’m losing my touch. Keep blaming the poky and not very well laid out kitchen, but suspect it’s because I’ve lost the will to live cook. Can one get S.A.D. in LA even though the weather is a million times better than in Scotland right now? Or am I carrying some residual SADness from many Northern winters? All the same, the chickpeas were not the same, and that made me quite sad.