The Lazy Cook

Sausage, pasta and tomato based sauce - what's not to like?  I do this in the slow cooker.  Fry your sausages and cook the pasta until al dente.  I like to use pasta tubes - I think rigatoni is the correct name.  Let the sausages cool and then slice them into rounds.  Put them and the pasta into the slow cooker.  Add some crushed garlic, some chopped onions and peppers and then a jar of your favourite pasta sauce - I think I've mentioned before I particularly like arrabbiata or puttanesca.  Start it off in the morning and you'll have a delicious meal ready for tea-time.

Which box shall we tick?

Every few years I seem to have to come back to the subject of diabetes.  I, as I have mentioned before, am a type-2 diabetic, and now it seems that I, and all the other type-2s are being blamed for potentially "bankrupting" the NHS.  This warning has come from Diabetes UK, the leading charity in the field.  So do I feel guilty? Well, no, not really.  I find the whole business somewhat Kafkaesque.  It wasn't as if I went to the doctor complaining of not feeling well, and he diagnosed the condition. What happened is that, quite out of the blue, I was called in to see the doctor who told me that, on the basis of a blood test I had taken some years previously, he suspected that I had the condition, and it all snowballed from that.  At no time have I felt anything other than fine.  I was talking to an old family friend, who is a long-retired GP and who told me that in his opinion, this was all part of a modern trend whereby the medical profession feel the need to stick labels on things.  He said that back in his day, he would have probably told me that my blood-sugar was a bit high and that I should steer clear of very sugary foods, but that he wouldn't have thought it necessary to put me on medication, and certainly would not have used the word diabetic.  So is this "huge rise" (Diabetes UK's phrase) in diabetes cases any more than a matter of semantics?

Flash, bang, wallop - what a picture!

I'm a private sort of person, so up to a point I can empathise with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge who are getting irritated with photographers stalking them looking for candid photographs of their children - specifically Prince George at the moment. But, through no particular fault of their own, they have to accept that they, and their children, are celebrities, and therefore fodder for that part of the media who deal with that sort of thing.  Annoying, yes, but it goes with the job. They claim that their main concern is protecting their children - but from what?  The whole point of these "candid" shots is that the quarry should be unaware of the fact that they are being photographed, so where's the harm to George, at least while he's still a little child? Like I say, I can understand their irritation, but it's part of being members of the Royal Family, and that isn't going to change, so they need to come to terms with it.

Words, words, words...

Ever come across the phrase "low dudgeon", or "moderate dudgeon"?  No, of course not - dudgeon always has to be high.  It's an example of what is sometimes called a "stormy petrel" expression, where you get two words which always appear together - like stormy petrel.  It's like you can only shrug your shoulders, the only thing you can do with aspersions is cast them, only arms can be akimbo, and so on.  A closely associated concept is what are known as "fossil words" - archaic words which now only exist in set phrases, like "amok" which is now only found in "run amok", or "dint" as in "by dint of".  Funny language, isn't it?

Hic!

A woman in Yorkshire is being prosecuted for moving her car from one part of her front garden to another while over the drink-drive limit.  She did this so that the bin-men could get to her wheelie bin, but this is immaterial - the crucial point is that the whole manoeuver took place on private land, where, to the best of my knowledge, the rules of the road do not apply.  To add to the confusion, the prosecuting authority say that she is not being accused of drink-driving, but of "attempting to drive while drunk".  What the...!

You want chips with that?

Is there anything you can't deep-fry?  A chip-shop in Lancashire has put chipshakes on the menu. And yes, they are battered and deep-fried milkshakes.  The milkshake is frozen first and the frying means that in the finished article the inside has turned back to milkshake consistency.  Eat your heart out, deep-fried Mars bar!

Blessed are the poor in spirit...

Big hoo-haa about a forthcoming Songs of Praise programme coming from the church the migrants have set up in Calais.  Obviously this is a hot potato and can (and will) be seen by many as left-wing pro-migrant propaganda.  But take a step back - this is an overtly Christian programme - pretty well all that is left these days of what used to be the "God hour" on TV between 6 and 7 on a Sunday evening.  Now regular readers of this blog will know I have little time for organised religion, but there are plenty who have, and surely reaching out to these people (who, whatever you think about them, are struggling) is exactly what Christians should be doing?  This isn't propaganda - whether you agree with it or not, this is Christianity in action.

Take a pound of flour...

Well my prayers were ignored (see 10/10/14).  The Great British Bake Off is back - and on a Wednesday.  Help!!!

You fill up with pasta before running a marathon, so...

I'm getting a bit confused by this "drugs in athletics" business.  It all seems to hinge on blood-doping, which I think it can be argued is not doping at all.  If I understand it correctly, it involves blood being taken from a competitor a couple of months before a competition, and then re-injected a few days before said competition.  The competitor's body will have made up for the blood taken in the interim, so the re-injection will increase the number of red blood cells, which enables the competitor to take in more oxygen and thus keep going longer.  So, performance enhancing, which is why it's considered unacceptable, but it's the competitor's own blood - it's not altered or added to in any way, so how is this different from eating a specific diet, or even following a specific exercise regime with the goal of boosting your energy levels? I seem to remember it was Vladimir Kuts (or his medical team) who first developed the technique in the 50s, so it's hardly new.  If the blood is enhanced or treated in any way, then that's a different matter, but simply giving an athlete some of his/her own blood back?  Not sure!

Horses for courses?

What do we make of the demise of Kids Company?  It's clear that Camila Batmanghelidjh, its founder is a charismatic character, and I have no reason to doubt that she sincerely wanted to do the best she could for disadvantaged kids, and I equally have no doubt that she now feels devastated that those children now find themselves cast adrift.  She is on record as blaming "rumour-mongering civil servants and ill-spirited ministers" for the collapse and even sees herself as the victim of a smear campaign by the government and the media.  The lady doth protest too much, methinks?  Doubtless all will be revealed in due course, but at first blush there is a feeling that the organisation was run as a one-man (or rather, woman) band, and instead of using her undoubted talents simply to fund-raise and be the charity's public face, Ms Batmanghelidjh interfered in areas outside her expertise, and in particular the financial side of things - which is basically where it all went pear-shaped.  And the moral is - stick to what you know, and appoint other experts to deal with what you don't.