60 Degrees North - Code and stuff

Warning, this post contains mention of the works of Neil Gaiman. There’s an interesting article over on OpenCulture, “Love the Art, Hate the Artist“. It was written before Sandman became just the 2 seasons instead of the 5+ it could’ve been, before Good Omens 3 was cut to a 90 minute special, before Dead Boy Detectives wasn’t renewed for season 2, and before Anansi Boys and The Graveyard Book…

Love a good challenge, me. Eldest’s birthday earlier this year. “Can you make a Mojito sorbet?” Hmm… Let me see… Well, of course I can. That turned out well. Not going to post the recipe here, let’s see how your Google-Fu skills work out! It was simple, it was elegant, and it was damn gorgeous. Didn’t last long. And it led to the almost inevitable question “could you make a Mojito…

Alrighty then, let’s do this thing. The mirror glaze. Much attempted on the Great British Bake Off, much failed, or much left with something roughly the consistency of a car tyre wrapped around your cake, resisting the knife and quite possibly an attack from automatic weapons or artillery fire. Pause there for a moment, rewind. Why the heck would I be doing something so awful to one of my…

And so it begins

Another year, another fresh set of days ahead to fill with, well, what? More baking, obviously. Cheesecakes are a given, but I’m going to branch sideways into a few more varieties. I think I’ve mastered the New Yorker, but there’s the baseless Basque cheesecake, there’s going to be jellies to top them, mirror glazes (if I can avoid what appears to be the inevitable rubberyness that accompanies…

There are years where you get gluts of fruit and veg from both the garden and the allotment. 2 years ago we had to share our damson harvest with our neighbours – picking from the tree filled 2 large buckets! Last year we offered to share the harvest again – we would keep 1 damson, they could have the other. The tree was not kind to us, so we hacked it back and this year looks to be a good one. I…

Penalties is no way to decide a match like that

Full disclosure, I care very little for football. In fact, one of the earliest posts on this blog details the tricks you can employ in TweetDeck to remove all mention of the game from your feed in times of national obsession. What do you know, they still work! However, as The IT Crowd demonstrated, there are times when it is important to be able to hold your own in a conversation over a subject…

Brown Bread Ice Cream Cheesecake

Most of my best baking has been done following a conversation with my wife. I got in to baking New York Cheesecakes following a request from her to bake one for her birthday. Last night we were talking about family favourite recipes and, as it seems no cookery blog is complete without a long introduction to the recipe, here goes. My late father-in-law loved brown bread ice cream. Such a gorgeous…

There are a lot of advantages to making the base pastes for Thai curries yourself. Firstly, you know what goes in them, secondly they’re going to be as fresh as can possibly be, thirdly you get to adjust the ingredients to make them your own. I’ve done this for years, cutting the chilli content down when my kids were younger, now starting to bring it back up to a full-heat version as they’re all…

I am the very model of a trainee pedagogical…

I found this in my notes today…

With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan, who’s Major-General’s Song I have done better justice to using their lyrics, and grateful thanks to Nikki Benjamin and everyone on the Deepings SCITT.

To the tune of “The Major-General’s Song” from G&S Pirates of Penzance… Sort of… If you squint…

I am the very model of a trainee pedagogical I’ve knowledge…

Liege waffles - Nigel, our new doughy overlord

I don’t usually name doughs. Obviously, a sourdough starter has to have a name (Herman, in this house) but others? Nah, not necessary. But my daughter called this one Nigel and Nigel he will forever be.

Nigel is a rich dough. Probably the richest I’ve ever worked with (though, all credit, it was my wife who did the majority of the work). He’s the dough you need to make Liege waffles, the…

Beginning of the End

Teaching consists of looking at current events, saying that this is not a normal year and that next year will be better, and repeating until you retire.

Spotted on Facebook. If I find it again, I’ll credit the post (and get the words right)

Well, another half-term starts in England and many of us are thinking “Well, I did not expect 2020 to go this way”. To be fair, if you didthink 2020 was…

Well. You begin to understand why “May you live in interesting times” is a curse! We’re living right now through something that will be taught in school history classes in years or decades to come, assuming the human race survives and the Martians don’t seize the opportunity they’ve been waiting for. Perhaps this virus is the Martians testing out a weapon they know they’re immune to. Perhaps I’ve…

All I learned at school was how to bend, not break, the rules

Being an irregular column in the life of an ICT teacher.

So. New term, new school, new kids, new colleagues. Just under a month in post and I had my first complaint.  Well, second.  The first was about the tone of my emails. “Could I not send emails like that to the IT helpdesk?”

You know the conversations. A member of SLT pops into your classroom for “a little chat”. Anyone who’s been involved…

It has been a while since I posted here, so have a couple of quick and simple bread recipes that I used at the school wellbeing day…

Yeah. Wellbeing day. A whole day off-timetable, no kids, spend the time getting to know your fellow teachers and partaking of some fun activities. First up, laughter yoga. Keep an open mind, the email said, giving nothing away. Now, don’t know about you but I’m…

Pierogi / Pyrohy / Piroshki or hand pies to that effect

Back at the Warwick Folk Festival again – fantastic music (Man the Lifeboats, Trials of Cato, Banter, Glory Strokes) and amazingly good food. As per my blog post from last year, some of the stand-out food of the weekend came from The Old Granary Pierogi. Just the most wonderful yeasted-pastry pies/pasty things you can imagine. Wonderful fillings, tasty to the end. So this year, getting home, I…

Baked Chocolate Cheesecake, New York Style

Every once in a while you come across a recipe that’s perfect. Just bloody perfect. Well, it is when you hit the Mk IV, anyway. And my New York cheesecake was just that. Or so I thought. Sure, I’ve added a few ingredients, dropped some crystallized ginger into the biscuit base, added half a jar of marmalade in the main cheesecake mix. And yet, I figured it was pretty much spot on.

And…

Movie Review – Mortal Engines

Late to the party as usual, finally caught Mortal Engines yesterday. I was not disappointed. Well, I was, but more on that later.

Be warned, there be spoilers ahead.

Peter Jackson has a track record of making the same visual constructions I have. That is to say, the look of something as brought to the big screen by him is just how I imagined it should look. I remember clearly the first…