Mangelwurzel II

It's obviously the time of year for me to be thinking about the humble Mangelzurzel again.

A much maligned vegetable the Mangelwurzel. A thing often the brunt of cruel jokes.... but one can apparently make beer with it !!

For a ten-gallon cask, boil in fourteen gallons of water sixty pounds of mangel-wurzel, which has been well washed and sliced across, putting some kind of weight on the roots to keep them under water.

Having boiled an hour and a half, they may be taken out, well broken, and all the liquor pressed from the roots; put it, and that in which they were boiled, on again to boil, with four ounces of hops; let them boil about an hour and a half, then cool the liquor, as quickly as possible, to 70° Fahrenheit.

Strain it through a thick cloth laid over a sieve or drainer; put it into the vat with about six ounces of good yeast, stir it well, cover it, and let it stand twenty-four hours;.

If the yeast has then well risen, skim it off, and barrel the beer, keeping back the thick sediment. While the fermentation goes on in the cask, it may be filled up the beer left over, or any other kind at hand; when the fermentation ceases, which may be in two or three days, the cask must be bunged up, and in a few days more, the beer may be used from the cask, or bottled.

These small proportions are here given to suit the convenience of the humblest labourer; but the beer will be better made in larger quantities; and its strength may be increased by adding a greater proportion of mangel-wurzel. By this receipt, good keeping table-beer will be obtained.

 

CHEERS

remember when..

 remember those animations that we all thought were the bees knees 10 or 15 years ago ? I found a website that still has most of them !!

We've come a LONG way since then :~)))))

corn syrup

A friend mentioned that his wife was allergic to Corn syrup. I'd never really heard about it, so Wikipedia came to my aid : It's a food syrup, which is made from the starch of maize and contains varying amounts of maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften texture, add volume, prevent crystallization of sugar, and enhance flavor

I can see that you coud easily be allergic to it... when you read how it's commercially produced :~(((

No wonder tha t alot of American food tastes so sweet and ghastly to us Europeans!

It seems to cause all sorts of nasty things like obesity, anaphylactic shock , brain allergies, diarrhea, bloating and nausea.

This made me wonder is Europe is also using the stuff itout our knowledge... Wikipedia says:

Wide-scale replacement of sugar with HFCS has not occurred in the EU.

the Zero House

The zero house is an inovative design which is eco friendly and totally self supporting:

• generates its own electrical power
• collects its own water
• processes its own waste products 

No mains connections are needed so you can plonk it down anywhere "~))

Live in it, use it as a holiday home out in the wilds. It can be an office or accomodation for scientists, construction workers out in desolate places...

W O W !

facing up to death....

the times we live in ONE - TWO - THREE

 

they've named a flower after me !

A miniature cyclamineus narcissus 

An exquisite cyclamineus hybrid narcissus with milk-white petals.

The trumpet opens lemon coloured but quickly fades to a lovely creamy-white.

One of the best. Good in grass.

The Dutch description says it's beautiful and shy ! NOT ME AT ALL !

nostalgia

When I was about 13, I was in love with the Tonibell driver that came around every evening...  I didn't have enough pocket money to buy an ice cream every day so
I used to sit at my bedroom window and drool :~))
Tonibell started life in 1937 in Burnt Oak were an Italian and his Scottish wife had  a shop. the first mobile version of selling ice cream was a tricycle fitted with a cool box. The vans were originally blue, but in 1969 they changed to the memorable pink colour.

Remember 99's ??

I thought that they were invented by Tonibell but apparently Cadbury got in first!

The Flake chocolate bar itself was first developed in 1920. An employee of Cadbury's noted that when the excess from the moulds used to create other chocolate bars was drained off, it fell off in a stream and created folded chocolate with flaking properties.

atavisms......

Atavism is the reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence, usually caused by the chance recombination of genes.

In humans, these evolutionary throwbacks may include vestigial tails, large canine teeth, extensive hair growth on body, supernumerary nipples and face and extra - or webbed - fingers and toes.

The best-known vestigial organ in humans is the appendix. The original function of the appendix, which can still be observed in many herbivorous mammals, is "as a fermenting vessel ... containing bacteria that help the animal break down cellulose into usable sugars."

As we have a more varied diet nowadays, we don't need the appendix. In fact it can be a real nuisance !

Another vestige of our past is goosebumps, which we get when we're cold or feel threatened but are basically useless. But in mammals that actually have fur, raising that fur would be useful to insulate from the cold or to appear larger when threatened – exactly the same two situations.

Another example can be a tiny, almost imperceptible point on the outer rim of the ear known as Darwin's tubercle. Only 10% of the population has it. Darwin's tubercle demonstrates our common ancestry with other primates, which have significantly more prominent pointed ears, possibly to help funnel sound into the auditory canal. Example: human ear with the point, a macaque's ear and an example illustration from Darwin's The Descent of Man

give it a spin

I heard an interview on the radio this morning about 'virtual spinning".

Spinning is cycling indoors on a static bike with a load of other people and a trainer at the front of the class. But you have to have a high tolerance for exercise bikes and being cooped up inside with a bunch of other sweaty people for this to be a satisfying alternative to the real thing (Especially in Holland! )

Virtual spinning is the same as above but with the addition of a real bike ride projected onto a screen at the front of the room/ A guy or gal is photo shopped in the film and gives instructions about the ride. There seem to be lots of bike rides filmed in the French Alps................ Here's a (Dutch) example and a somewhat gentler one in Hawaii

There are even video walk DVD's !!

If you don't want to go to the gym for your virtual bike ride, you can stay at home in your own front room with a home trainer + DVD ... or via video streaming from a club !!

...............Spinning world record

Eggsactly...

Here is a collection of the incredible paintings of Vladimir Kush.

magnetic......

PLEASE don't drinck Coke !!!

watch this video to see what Coke does to an egg

The most commonly distributed version of Diet Coke (and majority of beverages using artificial sweeteners) relies on aspartame, which has been suggested to pose a health concern.

A new human study shows that aspartame use is linked to increased risk of leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), and multiple myeloma in men.

stunning art.....

Isn't this great ? All the wrong colours, but totally amazing :~))

These and loads more stunning art at XXXXXXX

word of the week....

One of my better educated friends mentioned the word "compersion" with regard to me being happy about my retirement etc. When looking it up I was surprised to find it has polygamous connotations !!

Compersion is an empathetic state of happiness and joy experienced when another individual experiences happiness and joy. It is sometimes identified with parents pride in their children's accomplishments, ones own excitement for friends and others successes and commonly used to describe enjoying multiple romantic or erotic partners coexistently and/or elapsing over time. It is an opposite of jealousy.

The adjective frubbly and the noun frubbles are sometimes used, in the poly community in the United Kingdom and the United States, to describe the feeling of compersion. These terms are more suited to cheerful, light-hearted conversation, and they are more grammatically versatile, for example: "I'm feeling all frubbly" and "Their relationship fills me with frubbles"
It's also a restaurant>>>>>>>

It seems to be very popular in the States and the UK !

And as often happens this saying popped up on a website I was reading : 

Jealous: Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.     Ambrose Bierce

S U V's

You thought a Hummer was a big SUV ??

Well think again !

This is a Knight XV - it is fully armour plated and only costs $295,000

This one below is reported to be planned for production. It is a sort of modernized, self-powered Pullman with enclosed sleeping quarters for up to eight passengers and the ability to carry up to thirteen seated passengers (one of whom must be an infant under the age of 11 months) 

The name of the vehicle will be the Marsupial

But the original SUV must be this one :~)

more retro sweets.....

Yesterdays Gobstoppers reminded me of all my favourite sweets when I was a kid with just sixpence a week (old money !) pocket money.............


There was Dolly Mixture                  Flying Saucers full of fizzy sherbet     Proper Jelly Babies
tiny sweets you could make last      the outside tasted like "host"           (dusted with icing sugar)
a long time by eating them 1 by 1                                                         not like today's 'jelly' ones
                                                

Pear Drops with that strange artificial tang     A great combination chocolate+lime     Liquorice Comfits

 and my favourite out of  Liquorice Allsorts - Jelly Button Sprogs 

All these and loads more old favorites are available HERE

gobstoppers

A friend mentions something about marbles and it suddenly made me think of gobstoppers

For the non-British among us the word 'gob' is of Irish origin. In Irish (Gaeilge) gob, meaning beak transferred as slang in English as mouth.

• "shut your gob!" ("shut your mouth!")
• "Oi, you, shut your gob!
• She's got such a gob on her - she′s always gossipping about someone or other.

So therefore a gobstopper is something large to keep your mouth stopped up.

They come in all sizes.....:

This on is the size of a baseball. It takes a guy 24 days to lick his way through it, during the course of which the Gobstopper takes on appearances resembling an array of outer space bodies—the moon, rings of Saturn, the Death Star.



Instructions on How to Eat a Gobstopper

They have even inspired artists like Sarah Mevissen's glass "gobstopper" 

Or you can make an ode to them in quilt

colloquial/slang: cakehole, face, mush, trap

and for any Dutch readers : smoel , muil