life without an interesting blog title

easy smoothie recipies.

flupmakintosh — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 12:57:02 +0000

I am a smoothy novice and I am not ashamed to admit that. In fact I am not adventurous with flavour at all. I only bought my blender to blend up compost scraps and paper and generally non edible things. unfortunately, the blender has broken down my defences and tempted me to try smoothies. The magazines may have us believe that you need at least seven different types of fresh fruit and ice and superberrys and moondust to make a smoothie. Do not believe the magazines. I bet you probably have the ingredients to my TWO smoothies in your house already. If you don’t, tesco express seems to be colonizing every inch of the earth at the moment. Go and find one. My first smoothie only has two “ingredients” and tastes amazing. I am in the process of freezing it into ice lollys and ice cubes as a cooling snack (and to stop It going icky). It is called a cupboard smoothie (because I said so) and I imagine kids might like it n a bowl with a dollop of ice cream. Despite this having no sugar (apart from fruit sugar from fruit) it is surprisingly sweet. Even I could manage it.

INGREDIENTS:

One tin of fruit cocktail IN JUICE (not syrup, unless you want to be unhealthy)

One tin of peach slices IN JUICE

That’s it.

Realy.

METHOD:

1: open the two cans

2: pour the contents of the two cans into a blender, including juice and fruit

3: blend untill smooth

4: optional: pour into ice lolly molds and freeze before serving.

My second smoothie recipe came from increased confidence, and decreased leftover fruit cocktail. I will call it cupboard smoothie two, revenge of the fruitbowl. This contains some actual fresh fruit and has a creamy flavour. I drink it mixed half and half with lemonade sometimes.

INGREDIENTS:

2 ripe or slightly over ripe bananas

1 small eating apple

1 tin of pears in juice

Milk

METHOD:

1: peel the two bananas and slice them into the blender

2: core and slice the apple. Put it in the blender

3: open the tin of pears, empty contents into the blender

4: put the lid on the blender, blend untill smooth

5: add milk to reach desired consistency and blend again

I don’t know if you have guessed yet, but smoothies are ridiculously easy. When I get round to it I want to blend just a lot of bananas and some tinned custard and freeze it, stirring every hour or so to make a kind of ice cream. If it works I will post a recipe :) happy blendering.

Sausage rolls, saviours of the hungry

flupmakintosh — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:15:26 +0000

Savoury, pastry based items. The saviour of the hungry and skint. Of course, the sausage roll has to be considered the flagship of the savoury snack food world, even if you don’t like them yourself you can’t deny the enduring popularity of the simple yet filling snack. It’s always there in the background, just waiting to be called upon to fill that gap in your tummy. That’s the genius of savoury pastry things. They are not always advertised to you but they have managed to weather the storm of burgers and pizzas and various other fast food simply upon merit. The sausage roll is the banana of the fast food world. In fact, it is one better. As well as being “healthy” (compared to other fast food) and cheap (most of the time) it’s tasty on the inside AND the outside. That, in my opinion, is where the banana falls down. If someone invented a banana where the skin was as tasty as the fruit then they may become even more popular. But, that will have to wait for another day. This is an article about pastry! Over the years I am pretty sure at least 90% of the population has experienced what people from the north-east know as a “Gregg’s dummy”. Or at least seen it. Everybody knows that a good mother will make a child eat something savoury before that sugary cake or biscuit, and what better to fill that gap than the humble sausage roll? A tasty savoury incorporating meat and pastry in a long thin(ish) thing easy for little hands to hold on the move. The sausage roll is also a warming, readily available, yet nutritionally sound (in my mind) meal for on the go. The Ideal food for students, office workers, builders, anyone at all! But it doesn’t stop there. Because of the Moorish and tasty nature of this pork wrapped in pastry thingy, some genius took it to a party! Now we enjoy miniature sausage rolls along with our prawn volovants and canapés. And vegetarians need not miss out either! Someone decided to make them a vegetarian version with vegetarian meat. I am quite partial to a Linda McCartney sausage roll my self So let’s hear it for the true king of the savoury snack world; the sausage roll. Warming you up on a grey day since some bloke wrapped meat in pastry! Join me another time, possibly in the future, for a discussion about the other savoury pastry products I know about. Like pies and stuff. Yeah….

football

flupmakintosh — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 10:33:42 +0000

Football, “the beautiful game”. My opinions are pretty one sided on football, so this is mainly just a rant. But then what is a blog for if not for ranting? From a small age I was a Manchester united fan, I even visited old Trafford, but my heart wasn’t really in it. I must have only watched two or three games on the television. But that is the genius of football. Football is such a part of society that if a boy (or tomboy) doesn’t like football….. Well. I don’t want to repeat some of the endings I have hearted for that sentence. The real reason I had become a Manchester united fan was because dad was, and my friends were, and living in Warrington you had to know weather you supported Manchester united or Liverpool. So what geography dictated (Warrington is in the middle of Manchester and Liverpool) I played out in primary school. I was the perfect example of conformity and social identity theory. As I grew older and more able to make my own opinions on things, I had a good hard look at football and decided it was all a load of rubbish. This was a breakthrough that enabled me to look upon football and supporters from the outside and see how truly ridiculous it is. Which brings me on to my opinions now…

On the one hand, there is an element of skill to playing football, and an awful lot of co-ordination is needed. Football has a way of giving people an easy group to belong to. It gives people something to do, I suppose.

On the other hand, ugly amounts of money are paid to arrogant men to shepherd a ball round a field for 90 minutes. After that everyone cares about everything they do at any hour of the day and they keep getting caught doing naughty things with people they shouldn’t be doing them with. Many peoples life revolves around a game and they think about nothing much else. Football also makes really dull conversation unless you are into it. Football generally appeals to people who think they are right, which causes lots of pointless arguments and football also comes hand in hand with a drinking culture, which leads to fights. People spend a lot of money just to have the latest football gear to be up to date and fashionable and every penny possible is squeezed out of the brand of a club. None of these things have ever been proved to be true but I will say them anyway, it’s my blog. I could go on, but I am running out of time.

My final word on this issue is that instead of football, everyone should follow professional chess.

part of a story?

flupmakintosh — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:11:33 +0000

I sat down at a computer in college the other day at lunchtime and, in an attempt to alleviate the boredom one will almost inevitably encounter if you chose to avoid most social forms of contact with other human beings, decided to start work on a short story. I didn’t get very far into this before the end of lunch and I didn’t have any plot at all. but If anyone chooses to read this small extract that I will be copying and pasting below, I would be glad of a little feedback. or it might just end up sitting in the corner of the Internets gathering dust. anyway, please enjoy? (sorry if I am a bit heavy on description)

Nevis woke up. His heart was fast and he had broken into a cold, clammy sweat. The damp sheet clung to his back as he drunk in several breaths of warm night air. On went the bedside lamp and it glared in his sleepy eyes. He sat up and leant against the wall. The dream had woken him, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was.

He knew he wouldn’t get back to sleep now so he went down the corridor to the communal bathroom for a shower. His pale skin was almost translucent and the little blue tributaries of blood flowed beneath it. The tiles were cold on his bear feet and the boiler took a couple of minutes to warm up so he sat on the edge of the bath looking at nothing in particular, and that was when he noticed it. Right there, on top of the old medicine cabinet was a tiny figure. He walked closer and saw that it was a little china gnome, its red hat caked in dust like the rest of the top of the medicine cabinet. It was about two inches tall and vividly coloured and Nevis was wondering why he had never noticed it before, it having evidently been there for some time. Just then he noticed the steam from the shower and stepped in to the stream of water, wondering about the gnome.

He dried himself with one of the big, fluffy white towels Mrs. Butternut provided for her lodgers and got dressed. Just as he was leaving the bathroom, he turned back and picked up the gnome figure. Blowing the dust off its hat and slipping it into the deep pocket of his jeans. Surely no-one would even notice if it disappeared for an hour or two while he googled it, especially at half past two in the morning. As he walked down the corridor and up the stairs he ran his fingers through his limp, soft hair and thought about the gnome pressing reassuringly against his thigh through his trouser pocket.

two horse race?

flupmakintosh — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:42:30 +0000

politicians are weird, really creepy things that shuffle away in the dark, doing things to “represent our views” that we can’t really find out about unless they want us to know. But once in a while, someone who is supposed to be in charge is told to say “lets have an election”. and then we have to spend months listening to them tell us why we should vote for them and not the other party. and of course a vote for the lib dems would be wasted because this is clearly “a two horse race”

but recently, this two horse race Idea fell down, because someone suggested a television debate. Someone, Somewhere decided that a discussion, in public, with PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION wouldn’t be a bad Idea. At first, the leaders said no and sort of shuffled around a bit, and the pressure mounted as more people said it would be a good idea. eventually, they said yes, and now we know what they were so scared of.

you see, with an equal amount of time for everyone and no shouting down or talking over people. with regulation and rules and a shouty man, Nick Cleg showed Gordon and dave up a bit.

where as Dave and Gordon set about trying to win votes and make each other look bad with a stream of promises and anecdotes and bad jokes (Gordon, I’m looking at you), Nick Cleg used reason, explained HOW he would do things, and actually asked that they could put their ideas together to SOLVE problems. I’m not saying I particularly agree with his policies because I don’t know what they are, but I like the way his head works.

so realy, this was the first impression moment for Nick Cleg, and I think he cracked it, judging by what I’ve seen and heard. The opinion poles look good for him, as do the people they interviewed on ITV after the debate.

In the last couple of days, the other parties (labour and conservative, incase you’ve forgotten by now) are getting a bit worried. they’ve started to take the lib dems as proper opposition and they’ve changed their election stratageys. David Cameron has even made a speech warning of the danger of voting lib dem, because, as the daily mail can tell you, VOTING LIB DEM CAUSES CANCER!

not so much of a two horse race any more is it. I wonder how the bbc’s swingometer will cope?

VOLCANO!

flupmakintosh — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:47:17 +0000

somewhere in Iceland (the country, not the shop) a volcano with an unpronouncable name is spewing out ash and gasses. this is not an overly remarkable thing. Iceland has many volcanoes with unpronounceable names, and these often erupt. if they didn’t, they would just be hills.

This ash is being blown around by the wind, and has been for several days. this means we can’t fly our planes because the ash breaks the engines. this is not in the least bit illogical either. I know that wind exists because you can fly kites and the clouds don’t stay still. and I know the ash can break the engines because I googled it. it gets in to the engines, melts, and the blobs break things. and with no engines a plane doesnt really have any way of staying in the sky, so it doesn’t.

the remarkable fact about this story is the way humans have reacted.

I am talking about the inability of the human race to accept that sometimes things happen that are no ones fault. for example, BA (the people with the planes, apparently) are trying to get money off the EU because they weren’t allowed to fly their planes, because they would probably fall out of the sky. this would cause a lot of damage.

Quite why the EU are expected to pay, or anyone else for that matter, is beyond me. Did they make the volcano erupt? did they tell the ash cloud what to do? NO, they did not. and I understand you have lost quite a lot of money, Mr. BA, but it simply isn’t their fault. In fact, it’s no one’s fault. It is a NATURAL disaster. I.e. NOT CAUSED BY MANKIND!

kghauyhgoerufj? (no offence Iceland)

never a frown….

flupmakintosh — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:23:12 +0000

the new labour campaign poster

She blinded me with science!

flupmakintosh — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:20:35 +0000

ok, ok, so I was wrong, I am enjoying science at collage. In fact I would say I was more than enjoying it, I’m relishing every second of it . chemistry is my FAVOURITE! I find the difficult bits easy, which makes me happy because I am not confused. Not only that but I also know people in collage and have made a few associates. don’t I sound like the mafia

today we learnt about NMR spectroscopy (oooooooh), and how to read a newspaper (oh…), what does that have to do with science I hear you ask? well actually I can’t hear you and you might not be asking but I’ll tell you anyway, if you learn to distinguish fact from opinion in newspaper reports (special ones about science) you’ll be a lot more clued up about the issue than if you take everything as absolutely true. this way you are less likely to be bias. and you won’t look stupid.

Another thing we did in this lesson was to come to a conclusion about the differences between tabloid newspapers and broadsheets, my most probably ill informed judgment about the audiences for these types of news media are as follows:

Tabloid:

The people who read tabloids are often the sort of people who follow celebrity culture and base there opinions on scare stories without looking into the detail (and sometimes leave it on the dashboard of there van)

Broadsheet:

The people who read broadsheets are the sort of people who sit down for at least an hour to read the paper and they want to know as much detail as possible to base there opinions on (sometimes people who go to dinner parties and care about wine)

this is not to say there isn’t exceptions, for instance, some people may read broadsheets to appear intelligent or to research homework. on the other hand, some people may read tabloids from time to time to “keep in touch” or just to goggle at the disgusting pictures of scantily clad ladies (can you tell I don’t approve yet? ) . If you are absolutely sure I have got this terribly wrong in some way then feel free to leave a comment and I will amend my opinions forthwith.

I suppose I should probably write something about NMR spectroscopy (nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy) but I’m afraid my brain can’t quite put it into words yet . It was still fun to learn about! I just need to find all my brain cells that are scatered round the desk from when my brain exploded! bye-bye!

P.S. i don’t read newspapers much, I just read private eye, it’s funny and you get the gist of the political issues.

a picture of a tree from an old notebook

flupmakintosh — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:47:03 +0000

a picture of a tree I drew

look at this picture of a tree I found in an old notebook, I think it’s quite good.

drawing

flupmakintosh — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:09:29 +0000

So, finished school, not started college yet. slightly worried. I know I am good at science so I picked it at national diploma, but know I’m having second thoughts. I think I might have done better than I thought I would on the English exams (can’t tell properly until the results day) and I really enjoy creative writing, but If I do a national diploma in applied science and forensics I may never be able to study English properly. I would quite like to be a writer, I have lots of Ideas in my head. since I have finished school I have spent about a week just watching HIGNFY and reading books by will self (my favourite author at the moment). That reminds me, I need to look on Amazon for Liver.

Yesterday I went to Manchester to see Bill Bailey preform at the palace theater. It was really good, not just the comedy bit but the whole day. Went on the train (I sat in the parcel rack),I like trains, after that we walked to the palace theater and nearly ended up getting a drink at the Corner house (Yes, THE Corner house) but it was to full of people in tuxes so we drank boiling hot latte in the stalls bar in the palace theater itself. You get the picture, all together it was a brilliant day.I never usually go out at all, so this was a nice change.

today mum got her friends to help and we prepared a two hundred piece epic fruit salad for tomorrow, It’s something to do with mum’s work. I am helping (supposing as a runner for milk, biscuits ect.). all I know is there will be people in Birchwood and I will be their as well.

I have been doodling while on the Internet and have drawn a serviceable sketch of will self in one Minuit in permanent pen.

Will Self sketched very fast

he has no mouth though.