Cooking Catastrophe - Lamenting over Lamingtons

Cooking is not one of my strong points. I can just about manage to chop a tomato for a cheese and tomato sandwhich but even that took three years of food tech. However, considering I'm (hopefully) off to uni in a year and a bit, now is a good time to learn. (That and I need to prove to my mum I will be self sustainable. She keeps suggesting universities for me. 'Over 100 miles away, Mum? Don't you think that's a little close?') So I started with one of my favourite Australian desserts: A lamington.

Just for those of you not in the know, a lamington is like a square of sponge soaked in chocolate and rolled in dessicated coconut. If you've never tried one before GO AND DO SO NOW. With cream :) It looks like this:

(Here's the batch I made [and ate] earlier. Don't they look delicious?)

Today's cooking session was very constructive (if you believe the whole 'learn from your mistakes' thing). Here is a convenient list of lessons learnt:

- Just because you eat a lot of lamingtons does not mean you can make them.
- Even if it only has four steps (cut, roll in chocolate, roll in coconut, eat), it can still be deceptively tricky

 Step 1 - The cutting-If something has to go in the freezer for an hour before you can use it, it's a good idea to put it in an hour before you actually want to start. Not five minutes before.
- Maths really has every day uses. The optimal method of cutting things into eigths (half, half, half). And for find the best surface are to volume ratio (cut it into quarters one way then half down another plane) Could not find a good use for any complex numbers though.

This is roughly the point where I realised 'Oh [grawlix] I forgot to actually prepare my ingredients!!' So:
 Step 0 - Preparing your ingredients

- This is a good thing to do in the hour whilst the cake is chilling. As opposed to playing games.
- Metric really is the way to go. That said, if the ingredients are only listed in imperial, you're going to just have to make do with it.

- Even when you do follow the ingredients list correctly, it isn't the correct value. It's a bit like this in chemistry too, although the problem is more to do with incomplete transfer of substance than it being eaten on its way to the other container. It also doesn't take into account the fact that when sieving cocoa powder, 1/3 goes to the surroundings rather than in the bowl.
- On the topic of sieves, it is a good idea to notice that you need to sieve the sugar before you put it in the bowl.

- One final note on sieves. Tea strainers are not the best alternative to a small sieve.
- Sticking your hand under a stream of water from the kettle is not the best method of seeing if the kettle is still warm (I realised this one before I did fortunately...)

Step 2: Chocolate Dipping and Coconut Rolling  (Yes, I multitasked here!)
- It helps if your nice smooth coating liquid doesn't have huge chunks of sugar/unmelted butter in it.

- Adding more water does not really help this much

- The aim is to coat the sponge with a bit of chocolate. Not to fish it from drowing in a murky puddle of chocolate. Admittedly, this is rather fun.
- If you use the same forks to rescue the sponge and to roll it about in the coconut, expect cross contamination of chocolate/coconut.

- Huge gaps of sponge can be filled by delicately pasting some of the above chocolate contaminated coconut on to it.

- This does not mean it has to be a work of art with you admiring it from all angles and adding a splodge more here and there.

- When you have only a tiny bit of wallpaper-like chocolate paste in the bowl and five more sponge squares to coat, experimentally adding handfuls and pinches of random ingredients does not help.

- Adding more water does not help you gain more mixture. It just makes the chocolate run off the sponge.

Finally, two more important points:

- Cleaning up is really hard (asides from the bowl-licking). Coconut grains get everywhere and the puffs of cocoa and icing sugar settle everywhere like sand from a desert storm. The best solution I found was to subtly push it into the gaps between the benches.

- If you are making the cake for a set purpose, it is a good idea not to eat it all before it has achieved it's purpose. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done...

So there you have it. Expert advice on how not to make Lamingtons :D

Blogger is slacking...

Spelling is an important thing. It helps give a good impression. Even for those who don't mind people getting their (there/they're) apostrophes in a muddle, you would expect some level of spelling. Especially when spelling things you use a lot. Like 'and' or 'the'. Or your name.
For some reason, blogger's spellchecker highlights 'blogger' as an incorrect word. No, Blogger, I did not meant to put logger, flogger, blocker or boggier. You'd think they would know...

When you've just gotta sing!

You know those moments. You're just innoncently minding your own business and then an odd word or two drift across from another conversation. 'What you need is a revolution.' And without even thinking, your brain fits in the most appropiate sentence it can think of: 'You say you want a revolution, well you know...' and before you can jam those synapses, the singing reflex pasts through to your mouth and you're singing Beatles at full volume. (Please say that this isn't just me?! That would ruin all the times I've tried to reassure myself of normality...)

Silence does not do well around me. I am always either talking or singing. This is very bad for anyone who comes into contact with me often as side effects of this are insanity and deafness. Insanity from my constant ramblings (as demonstrated in these very posts) and deafness from my very loud, very out of tune singing. This is even worse for those who (illogically) dislike my taste in music! Even the songs I can't hear the lyrics to, like I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys, don't escape my voice. I mumble odd syllables that could possibly fit the lyrics and could possibly be actual words or imitate musical instruments (my guitar noise is pretty good) and then redouble my singing efforts on the chorus. At that point, basically all animals within 100m suffer severe hearing damage.

In my defense, I do not think it is my fault. I cannot control myself when catchy music comes on. It is a devious plot by the music companies - to create songs that force everyone to sing along (as well as their nefarious mind control plot involving torturing people with music that can't be fully remembered or forgotton). Seriously, when I hear Valerie by The Zutons, it is near impossible to restrain myself from bursting out into song, which makes for some really awkward situations. To add insult to injury, once you start singing, short of losing your voice or listening to an instrumental song, it is really hard to quit!
So yeah, thanks a lot, music industry :P What other cunning plans have they got?!

When seemingly simple things aren't (i.e. Maths)

I spend a lot of my life doing maths. A lot. Out of five subjects I learn at school now, two of them are maths and two more are science (which, yay, involves more maths). As you might expect from this, I learn quite a bit of new maths most days, but every so often we go back to something nice and simple.
...At least, so we initally think.

I can't quite remember what age I learnt my times tables, but most people know relatively early on that 1 x 2 is 2. So when our maths teacher wrote ' 2 x 1 = 2' on the board one lesson, the whole class was reassured, if slightly confused. Yay! We are doing something we know! Yeah. Guess again. Instead we learnt about identities (Which is anything that can multiply a number to give that number: X x identity = X) and the identity matrix. So now, the number 1 had a fancy property that I had known but never called it. Ah, the ignorant bliss of primary school maths where we don't need fancy names or matrices!

Long division is another one of those things. We all sit through it in primary school but once you hit the middle of secondary school it gets lost amongst the calculators. It was quite nice today to have a lesson where we spent 10 minutes just doing a long division. With remainders as well. Not messy decimals. (Concerningly though, about a quarter of the class said they hadn't done it before/couldn't remember/used another method. And we are supposedly the bright ones...). It was very comforting until we stuck algebra in there. Long division is a little more complex when there are unknown numbers and powers of unknown numbers floating about!

And even though matrixes are not too bad, and long division with algebra is actually kinda fun, I still long for the days of simple maths :( But progress nevertheless! Any other interesting 'And you thought you knew it...' things lurking out there?

Is there anyone out there?

No, before you think this is a desperate plea for blog readers (though I'm not necessarily above that), this post is actually all about SPACE!! And whether or not there are aliens in the remainder of the universe.

Another quick warning. I am a huge space fan. I still want to be an astronaut and am actually seriously considering what I need to do to become one (So far on my list: Learn Russian, Get a pilot's license and learn more about American/Japanese/Russian cultures [helps to know the people you are going to be stuck in a small place where there is not the option of going out for a walk]). So, there may well be a few space posts at various points. But back to the current topic.

Well, for a start, it helps to know exactly what we mean by an 'alien'. For example, extraterrestrial is something outside the Earth (Literal Latin translation - Latin is so not a dead language!) and there is currently life above the boundaries of the Earth's atmosphere! And it's confirmed! ...Only catch is, it's life we put up there ourselves, namely the ISS. But they are living in space (The longest single space journey is 437 days, which is quite a bit really). There are plans to land people on Mars, some of which include forming a permanent colony there and sending people on a one way trip there. Would any children born there be counted as aliens? Extra questions on that matter include the obvious 'Is it really possible?' and 'What country of citizenship would they be listed as?’ And if we colonise Mars, would they evolve due to the different conditions and as a slightly different species, be classified as aliens? Not really many ways of finding that one out, short of sending someone up there.

Even if we are classifying aliens as life that originated completely apart from planet Earth, is it really impossible that another planet like ours can exist? The conditions are unique, but only as far as we have explored. The universe is a pretty big place; there are probably lots of places we haven't found yet. But if we assume planets are like DNA and fingerprints (ignore twins), what's to say life can't exist outside of what we consider 'normal' conditions? The Antarctica, which is not permanently inhabited, not even by scientists, still has life. Creatures called 'extremophiles' can exist in lots of conditions like no oxygen, weird pHs, odd temperatures and pressures. Surely there is a planet that can accommodate that life as well?

As for why aliens haven't gotten in touch yet, that doesn't mean they automatically don't exist. Maybe they just haven't checked their phone or don't want to be friendly with such a small planet like ours. But in all seriousness, maybe they haven't been able to respond yet or even to notice we are sending a message. The first radio broadcast on Earth wasn't even until the early 20th century, and the first space message was the Arecibo message in 1974 (according to Wikipedia at least...). If we, the supposedly 'intelligent' species have just figured it out, maybe the aliens are still working it out. Our messaging systems could be completely incompatible like trying to open a Microsoft Word document on Paint. Besides, it would take years for any message to reach them, unless they were conveniently situated right near our planet which seems unlikely.

If you are at this point, congrats for having the patience to read all that. What do you think about life on other planets? If you are actually an alien yourself, then please feel free to leave your name and address and we'll get right back to you... give or take a few years.

The future of snow transport!

Today, parts of the U.K. got snow! Which is all well and good if you like snow. However, I was out some place and getting home was interesting. After much encouraging mutterings to the steering wheel of the car (and the odd grawlix or two), we made it back. The car has withstood much before but it still wasn't impressed at being forced up a hill with no traction (because, yes, my car has feelings).

Surely there is some better alternative? Fortunately, seeing how we were going at about 5 miles an hour at the fast parts, I had a lot of time to consider this. Husky dogs are all well in the winter but here in the U.K., where snow comes maybe 1 week a year (having been predicted for two months), the poor dogs wouldn't have much of a job to do. Tanks could probably get through snow pretty easily (those things are surprisingly fast for a sophisticated lump of metal on wheels!) but storing it would be a little difficult. Not to mention the road tax on it would be horrendous, possibly made up for by the fact that you could park wherever you wanted. Suddenly an idea hit me.

Hovercrafts.
They can go over solid land! They can go over liquid water! So what would stop them going over frozen water? That cushion of air keeps it gliding over the surface whether it is snow or tarmac. Also, hovercrafts rely on its motion coming from a propeller blowing it forwards rather than wheels pushing into the ground. And, these bits are a complete guess because I can't seem to find the information I need (thanks Google -.-) but because the wheels aren't touching the ground and causing friction, it might be more fuel efficent (bearing in mind the fact that it is not as streamlined probably and you have to keep the skirt of air inflated). That and also, if two hovercrafts collide, they might just bounce off one another! Think of that quickly - would it not be kind of fun to see them bounce off in a non-serious accident?
Final point to support my answer: Hovercrafts are awesome. I don't care how effective they are in the snow, I just really want to drive one :P (Any one out there whose driven a hovercraft? [Anyone out there at all?!])

Hello There!

'Grawlix - A string of typographical symbols, especially "@#$%&!", used (especially in comic strips) to represent an obscenity or swearword.' <-- Wiktionary definition of grawlix.

I thought I would start off by introducing my favourite word. It really needs an introduction because very few people seem to know it. But you, reader, are now in the know. Try and say it out loud now. It even sounds slightly rough like what it means. Isn't fun to say?! (That could just be me...) It can be a little clumsy (you try and fit the word grawlix in a conversation) but I personally love it nonetheless.

And after that pretentious word related start, hello there! (I'm hoping someone is there at least...) This is my new blog (I'm a complete beginner, if you didn't already gather that from the rambling). I like to talk a lot, go off on a lot of tangents (hence all the brackets) and learn lots of useless things like grawlix. And like the poor, underapreciated grawlix, I'm going to try and spread the knowledge! Even if it is only to the one person reading this blog...

So, to summarise a 200 word post into two words: Hello Internet! :D