The June vegetable garden

The British summer is well on the way… (sort of), with mid-summer’s day in a few days time. The garden has been doing rather well. Aside from the few mishaps with the cursed carrots, most of the vegetables are coming along nicely.

I have fat, although rather short, sweetcorn.

Tofu

This is how you make tofu… beat the soya milk like crazy until it is in full boil. Then continue beating for 5 minutes while the soya milk is simmering.

Then, add the coagulant… and quickly pour the mixture into a mould for cooling.

Once firm, put the mould into a bowl of very cold water to extract the tofu. You now have a square (or rectangle) of very soft tofu… best enjoyed with “hum choi” (salted vegetable), seafood and rice noodles…

First of the summer fruits 2009

It has been chucking buckets the last few days, much to the glee of the denizens in my garden. During my inspection today, I found strawberries…

Lawyers

I have been working on a very intricate piece of dispute work on behalf of a respondent. I spent six months working on the repondent’s report. It was filed in December 2008. Last week, the claimant’s very adversarial response came back to us. This is, of course, standard practise.

I have been very amused by the claimant’s criticisms on my original report. Firstly, he was very aggressive. Reading his report makes me feel like I am in a very long flogging session. *whip whip whip whip whip*

Secondly, all his “facts” were sweeping statements like “A did that because B was historically always right”.

Thirdly, he kept contradicting himself!

Well, it is now my turn to pick his response into bits. I broke his report down, line by line. I countered all his assertions with very clear evidence… and then showed it to the Partner-dude for review.

Partner-dude was amazed with my work and gave me a very positive feedback. I was really pleased with myself, until he said “You should be a lawyer”.

Ewww.

I may count beans, but I sure don’t suck blood.

Crop circle

This mysterious jellyfish crop circle appeared in Oxfordshire. It’s so pretty! I wish someone would make one on my lawn.

[Image borrowed from BBC, as I don't have my own flying machine for aerial photography]

 

The Knights who say Ni!

The Knights who say Ni! are a band of knights from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, feared for the manner in which they utter the word “Ni!” They are the keepers of the sacred words: Ni, Peng, and Neee-Wom.

Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni!

Can you tell I’m bored?

How English is Denty?

It was Denty day a few days ago and we both took last Thursday and Friday off work to muck about the garden and generally not do very much. In the pyjamas he barely got out of  throughout the long weekend, Denty started playing Empire: Total War.

This game is basically a computerised-glossified strategy game akin to the traditional board game of Risk. During the first phase of his game, Denty played as the commander (me thinks) of the British colonial armies, thrashing the cheese-eating surrender monkeys French in the conquest of the Americas. Denty took to beating the French like a duck to water.

After the successful colonisation of North America, Denty was made to switch roles to play the Confederacy. He had to oust the British (and the rest of the state-uniting malarky)… Denty somehow did not do that quite as well.

How English is that?