Cherry tomatoes and stringy pasta are my favourite quick dinner standby. While cooking up whatever dried pasta you have in, heat up a small amount of olive oil in a pan, add the toms, brown them, allowing some of them to burst, and mix in the pasta. Enjoy this highly unhealthy meal with a glass of vino.
I love chrysanthemum tea, but I don’t like the kind that comes in sachets. My main gripe with them is that they’re usually too sugary. So when I saw bags of flowers in a Chinese herb shop in Monterey Park, I just could not resist. To make this cup of tea, I packed the inner glass sleeve of my new fancy tea mug with dried flowers and topped it up with boiling water. If you have a sweet tooth, I’d recommend a small amount of honey (preferably one that doesn’t have too intense a flavour).
A lor mai bao from NBC Seafood in Monterey Park, LA, a speciality of the restaurant. Lor mai (eight-treasure glutinous rice) is usually wrapped in leaves and steamed. This version has it wrapped in dumpling skin, which changes the eating experience from attempts at picking up lumps of sticky rice and rushing it to the mouth before it falls apart, to being piggish and stuffing the whole thing into an open gob.
From Nature (news): Researchers call for more bird flu drugs.
While I’m not 100% convinced the threat of a mosaic/mutant virus will emerge this time, there is one thing that is bugging me about the situation arising in Europe.
In response, countries are stocking up on Tamiflu, the main anti-viral medicine recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Turkey has asked Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG to provide 500,000 boxes of medicine. Romania is reportedly also trying to get hold of thousands of doses. Governments are stockpiling the drug for use if the H5N1 virus mutates to a form able to transfer between humans.
My worry? That we will have a North/South (or is it East/West?) divide, where the rich countries in Western Europe stockpile anti-viral drugs, thus depriving the Eastern European countries which border Asia. We musn’t forget that these places form our first line of defence; targeting the disease there will prevent further spreading westwards. Says naïve wee me.
See Nature’s bird flu blog for more info.
Technorati tag: bird flu.
OMG! I want!
From BBC news: Longer parking to help city shops.
Ha! I see falling revenues have pushed the Council to review their draconian parking limits in Edinburgh’s city centre. We don’t normally drive to the shops, seeing as we live but a 20 minute walk away from the West End. But even when we do want to drive in, we don’t use the council’s lots because it would end up costing us 40 quid in fines cos there’s no way you can navigate the crazy pavements of Princes/George St and get all your shopping done in 50 minutes.
On the other hand, I thought the limitations on parking was to discourage people from driving into the city centre. Edinburgh’s roads are by no way as crazy as LA’s, but there are fewer lanes, which tend to get clogged up by legal and illegal parking.
Kinda sad, but predictable, that the council obviously puts profits over principles.
A rare chance to cook and eat in one evening. A nice thick buffalo steak, briefly fried on each side, served on a bed of udon (thick Japanese noodles) and steamed veggies.
Bought some figs. Realised I don’t particularly like figs raw. So I baked them in some honey. Decided it needed something extra, so sat them on some creme fraiche. Looks kinda disgusting, but tastes pretty good. Would have been better on plain ol’ cream or with a dollop of ice cream.
akatsuki ra-ra-ra 