Prawns with Mango and Rice Noodles

... recipe courtesy of Rick Stein's Far Eastern Oddessey

Fry an onion, a little chilli and a couple of crushed garlic cloves. Cook for 5 mins.
Add raw prawns, salt and pepper, the juice of two limes and a teaspoon of cornflour in a little water, and one whole fresh mango, cut into cubes. Cook for about 5 minutes or until the prawns are cooked, and serve with freshly cooked rice noodles.

Simple and delicious!

Pasta with Chicken and Chorizo

Not dissimilar to the recipe for pasta with a spicy prawn sauce, but subtly different. Really yummy!

2 onions (finely chopped)

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 tsp chilli, crushed

8 tomatoes, skinned and in 8s

2 tbsp tomato puree

1 chicken breast, in strips

150 g chorizo, cubed

2 tsp lemon juice

fresh basil

salt and pepper

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Fry the onions, garlic and chilli. Add the tomatoes and tomato puree and cook a few minutes. Add the chicken and chorizo and cook until the chicken is fully cooked through. Add the lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, and season. Tear the basil into small pieces and add just before serving on freshly cooked pasta.

Enjoy!

Pasta with Spicy Prawns

Mmmm... spicy...

2 onions

3 cloves garlic

5 tomatoes

100 g fresh peeled king prawns

1/2 tsp chilli (of the very lazy variety)

2 tbsp tomato puree

3 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

1.5 tsp balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

Finely chop the onions and fry with with the crushed garlic. Skin the tomatoes, and chope into 8s. Add these with all the other ingredients except the prawns. Cook until reduced down.

Add pasta to pan of boiling water, and at the same time add the prawns to the sauce. Serve as soon as the pasta is done.

Beef stew and dumplings

Yum!

500g casserole beef

3 small onions, chopped into 8s

3 garlic cloves, chopped

300 ml passata

75 ml red wine

200 ml beef stock

good squirt of tomato ketchup (~ 2-3 tbsp)

worcester sauce (1tbsp)

olive oil

1 small celeriac, peeled and diced

1 small leek, chopped

3 celery sticks, chopped

12 button mushrooms

12 cherry tomatoes

2 bay leaves

6 juniper berries

chilli flakes (to taste)

salt and pepper

Fry the onion, garlic and beef in the olive oil until the beef is browned and the onions soft and translucent. Add the passata, ketchup, worcester sauce, wine, stock, celeriac, leek, celery, bay leaves, juniper berries, chilli flakes, salt and pepper. Cook on a medium hob for about 30 minutes, then add the mushrooms and tomatoes. Cook in moderate oven for a further 90 mins or so, covered for the first 45, then uncovered for the last 45 mins to allow the sauce to slightly thicken.

Dumplings:

50 g self-raising flour

25 g vegetable suet

1 tsp horseradish sauce

sufficient water to make into thick doughy paste; mould into small balls (makes 4)

Add the dumplings about 20 mins prior to the end of the cooking time of the stew.

Oops!

Note to self: Should you ever wish to point out the depreciation in examination standards in recent years, the poor show made by modern students with their modern, flashy GCSEs (not a patch on the traditional, solid, O-levels of years gone by), then please note the following:

You really, really don't help your argument by, oh yes, making multiple mistakes in your answer sheet.

Should you be interested:

A titration can be used to find the concentration of a solution. In a titration, 22.0 cm³ of hydrochloric acid is required to neutralise 25.0 cm³ of calcium hydroxide solution. The concentration of the hydrochloric acid is 0.001 mol/dm³.
The equation for the reaction is: Ca(OH)₂ + 2HCl → CaCl₂ + 2H₂O
(Relative atomic masses: H = 1; O = 16; Ca = 40)

How many moles of hydrochloric acid are present in 22.0 cm³ of the acid solution? (Answer to 2 sig. fig.)
Given and correct answer: 2.2E-5 mol/dm³
With how many moles of calcium hydroxide will 22.0 cm³ of this acid solution react? (Answer to 2 sig. fig.)
Given and correct answer: 1.1E-5 mols
What is the concentration of the calcium hydroxide solution? (Answer in mol/dm³ to 2 sig. fig.)
Given and correct answer: 4.4E-4 mol/dm³
What is the concentration of the calcium hydroxide solution? (Answer in g/dm³ to 2 sig. fig.)
Given answer: 0.33 g/dm³
Correct answer: 0.033 g/dm³


Nitrogen can be obtained by heating solid ammonium dichromate(VI), (NH₄)2Cr₂O₇. Chromium (III) oxide (Cr₂O₃) and steam are the only other products of this reaction.
(i) Construct the equation, including state symbols, for the action of heat on ammonium dichromate(VI).
Given answer: 2(NH₄)₂Cr₂O₇(s) --> 2Cr₂O₃(s) + H₂O(g) + N₂(g)
Correct answer: (NH₄)₂Cr₂O₇(s) --> Cr₂O₃(s) + 4H₂O(g) + N₂(g)
Their version doesn't even balance! We lose 2 N atoms, 14 H atoms, and 7 O atoms!!


One of the hydrocarbons in petrol is octane. This equation shows the combustion of octane: 2C₈H₁₈ + 25O₂ → 16CO₂ + 18H₂O
What mass of carbon dioxide is produced for every tonne of octane burned in this reaction? (Relative atomic masses: H = 1; C = 12; O = 16) (Answer in tonnes to 2 sig. fig.)
Given answer: 3.1 tonnes
Correct answer: 3.4 tonnes

Basically, unimpressive. I got bored after Question B4, so there might be errors in the answers after that point too. I'll update this if I get that far.

Though a slightly amusing thought...

...is that apparently the big house cost £1.4M. The smaller one would have been, at a guess, about £400K. So we're up to £1.8M. Building costs must be in the region of, say, £150K per unit. 6 units is £900K. I might be a bit high here but probably not massively so - call it £800K. Architect's fees, solicitor's fees, etc etc must amount to £20K - probably a lot more.

So, fairly conservatively, we're probably looking at about £2.5M plus. For 6 semi-detached houses.

Now, the largish detached house was £400K, and must be worth more than a smaller semi-detached property is going to be. Even assuming the resulting houses were worth £400K, somehow, on six properties you'd still LOSE £100K.
But it gets better. The properties were bought at the absolute peak of the market. Especially the large one, which was purchased in January. Prices have already fallen about 7.5% since then, and are predicted to continue to fall for the next 18 months or so. Most forecasters seem to think something in the region of 20% down on the peak price - some as much as 30%. Let's work with 20%.

With a 20% fall in house prices, the houses that would be worth £400K will in fact only be worth £320K each. Which works out at just £1.92M. They won't be able to get them on the market that quickly as they're not build yet, and they won't want to hang onto them as it's a commercial developer.

That's a massive loss of £580,000.00.

Let that be a lesson to you, barbarians. Leave nice properties where they are and learn from Persimmon, everyone's favourite mass-house-building company. Who have laid off 1100 workers because they can't make enough profit from house building any more.

Thoughts - most developers aim for, I guess, about 20% profit on a development. About that? Even if my estimates for building costs were double what it actually costs, and I can't see that they are, they would still be paying out £1.4M + £400K + £400K = £2.2M. Call it £2M. With a 20% profit they would have to sell for £400 each. That's after losing 20% over the next year or so. Which correlates to the equivalent of charging £480 per unit back in January. Which is a LOT - you might have got it, but I'd be surprised.

Why?

Feeling the need to blog more generally today. It's been a weird one today, both really quite good and really spectacularly bad

On the plus side, I got to work on time (ish) and the equipment has worked more than I expected it to. The experiments may or may not have worked, but that's always the way of it until you get to work up the data when you've finished. The flow meters I use to control the rate at which gas enters my cell have been causing me problems - they have an recurring fault but they're not like it all the time. So we're keeping a log to see if we can correlate when they go wrong with anything in particular we're doing. But, apart from throwing a hissy fit this morning, they've basically worked today. We're going out for dinner tonight also with the guys who play in the 10am music group at Ebbe's, so that should be a good time of getting to know each other better. We're taking some tortilla chips made out of lasagne, also some chicken drumsticks, if I can find free-range in the Co-op or Somerfield (M&S is an option, but it's sooo expensive...), and some vegetable stick things - carrots, peppers maybe, cucumber? Crudites, that's the word

And then it all goes pear-shaped. I'm not good at change. I'm really not good at change. I like things to stay the way they are, or to improve. I don't cope well when things change for the worse.

And that's what's happening just next door. We realised they were doing some work on the house (a fairly hideous 2 story thing) but it was still a shock to find it just gone when I got home from work. A bit weird, and it threw me a bit, but hey, it was pretty awful, so no loss, you could say

What is a loss is the fact that the beautiful Edwardian house (almost a mansion - well, not quite, but big and nice none the less) is ALSO going apparently. Even though when they sent the planning application form, I complained, as did many of the other residents in the road. So they resubmitted the application, showing just an extension, which was fine. But, unknown to me, they also appealed the first decision, but decided not to tell me. Other people found out, so I must have got missed, but still, I didn't have a chance to object

So this lovely old building is going to be torn down to make way for four semi-detached modern boxes, each with a tiny strip of land associated. And the Victorian boat-house is going too. For no good reason, except that it's in the garden and hey, people might not want it. I'm gutted, absolutely gutted. I don't know if it'll even be there when I get home - it might already be gone. If not, I put money on it vanishing by the end of the week

I don't hate progress, I really don't, and some development is fine. The ugly house going to make way for two smaller ones? OK, maybe a bit short sighted and not exactly pretty, but OK. But why should our council side with a developer over the wishes, clearly expressed, of the local community? It makes no sense to me

And to make matters worse, we've just signed on moving to a new property just down the road. I think, if I had known, I'd have pushed for moving to Jericho instead - we had the choice, and it was 51:49, not exactly a certainty either way. Too late now of course, so I have to live next to a building site, cycle past it every day, and generally be reminded of why Oxford is just getting more and more rubbish with every new building they put up. Nice one.

Other Ramblings from the pen of the Terminally Confused...

... can be found at major-jim.livejournal.com

Mostly memes, fan fiction (Patrick O'Brian and Discworld so far, but watch this space) and general silliness.

Food, Food, Glorious Food...

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

OK, it's maybe not up there with the Archbishop converting to Islam (which he hasn't done, by the way, although you'd think he had, the fuss some people are making over his recent comments, however misguided they may be - haven't read them so can't say), but it's still a bit disconcering.

Are you ready?

Deep breath...

Delia says 'eat tinned.'

Yep, that's it.

Actually, it's pretty accurate. If The Times are to be believed, anyway, and surely Murdoch wouldn't lie to us? Would he?

Well, probably not on this one. It'd be too easy to check.

So, Ms. Smith wants us to eat tinned mince. Why? It's foul and made out of bits of meat that the cow didn't even know that it had and it's TINNED for goodness sake. Surely that's enough. I mean, it's not hard.

So, we have a perculiar situation, where the government want everyone to learn to cook, but the chefs want people to eat a Tesco Economy McTinned Meal. With oven chips.