28th March 2024 - gef's 5 Questions for March
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gef has kindly asked 5 questions and so I attempt to answer them.
1. What is your favourite soup? Whether you make it from scratch or
not. Feel free to explain the process.
Hmmm favourite soups are fairly hard. I suppose dahls count as soups
really. I do love a good dahl. However, my go to sort of watery meal
is an aloo matar curry. It is fairly simple but has lots of
opportunity for variations.
Make a paste out of 2 medium sized onions, 1 inch/2.54cm of ginger, 3
or 4 cloves of garlic and 2 medium tomatoes. I tend to use ginger and
garlic pastes from a jar as well as tomato puree. This tends to be a
tablespoon or 2 of tomato puree. I use up finger chillis in the paste
too. I tend to leave it at 1 unless when clearing the sinuses.
Heat a pot with some oil or ghee in. Add half a teaspoon of cumin
seeds. When you smell them, add the onion/ginger/tomato paste from
earlier. Heat for a bit while minding the splutter.
Add in a tablespoon of almond or cashew powder if desired. You can use
cream or malai too. This adds thickness if desired. I often omit this.
When the oil releases from the sides, add a generous pinch of
asafoetida, 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of red chilli powder (Kashmiri
recommended for depth of flavour) and 1/4 teaspoon of tumeric.
Add in your vegetables. This should have peas (matar) and potatoes
(aloo) however, I use alsorts. I often avoid the potato but add
carrots, runner beans, green beans and cauliflower. Add 350ml of water
and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes. I forgot to mention adding red
lentils if you want a thicker consistancy although then we are heading
out of soup territory. You are pretty much done now with a tasty meal.
I often use the pressure cooker instead as a 1 pot affair. Timings are
pretty much 10 minutes at high pressure.
Asafoetida is an amazing spice which smells but tastes great. It adds
depth to the dish and is used to replicate the onion and garlic
aspects of flavour in a dish for those who do not eat them for various
reasons. I found that and finger chillis changed the flavours of my
Indian style cooking to be more recognisable.
2. The collapse is near! You only have weeks to download everything
you need to survive without internet, what would you download first
and why?
SDF gopher phlogs galore, a variety of amateur radio bits and idealy
some games such as drug lord or arcade games. SDF's hoarde of phlogs
contains a lot of people's musings and useful information. It will
help connect with others even if I end up alone. The amateur radio
bits are to help make contact and to provide some technical challenges
to wonder about. Experiments with antennas are always fun to think
about even if they are essentially magic. The games need to be quick
to download and essentially not end. Anything where you have to beat a
score works well. Also if the games are not too drawn out, you can
distract yourself for short periods rather than being sucked in.
3. What is a dream that your remember most in your life, could be a
nightmare or a beautiful dream.
I tend to forget dreams. They are words rather than images and I find
myself almost acting in them. There have been a couple which seem to
repeat as settings. One is where I went to 6th form and the other is
generic outside in woods and sort of near the sea. Dreams are an odd
thing for sure.
4. As the rain replaces the snow here, what are you most excited about
spring?
Spring means lighter mornings! I love waking up in the light rather
than the dark. It makes me so much happier. I have used wake up light
alarms which help but are no match for the sun. Alongside this, I love
the start of Scouting outside season. Camps, helping with crate
stacking and generally being able to do things rather than faffing
inside.
5. The surface web is getting over-taken by AI and marketing, yet
there are very nice hidden gems online. What is the most interesting
website that you go back to?
I tend to use RSS for what I want to read online. However, I have
recently been surprised by the local journalism from a site called the
Birmingham Dispatch. I forget the address but it is a Substack hosted
affair. Idealy it would not be but local news is so poor in the UK
thanks to 2 companies taking over all local newspapers that I need to
support them. They produce 6 newsletters a week which have a mix of
short paragraphs about local goings on and then a longer 500 word
story. The Saturday newsletter tends to be a much longer affair and
has a more investigative focus. So far, there has been investigations
into Birmingham council's financial woes, social housing inadequacies,
sewage issues in Bournville, deaths in mental health institutions and
so much more. Not once has there been a story about a glut of snow in
Aberdeen or some one in Liverpool getting a parking fine in a
Liverpool car park as typically seen in Birmingham Live. I happily
subscribe in the hopes this gets bigger and better. 404Media are
another interesting group of journalists who are trying to use a
subscriber route to be independent and make a living doing what they
want to do in life. They seem to cover lots of interesting stories.
worth checking out even if you have to provide an email address and
log in to read stories. This is a method of preventing web scrapers
from stealing their content. Fair play even if it is annoying. Part of
the surface web being taken over by utter nonsense.
Of course, if you want sumo news then Tachiai is a great website for
that. I use it to keep up to date with sumo news and results. The team
do a great job.
Thanks gef for the questions and providing your own interesting
responses.
