Monthly Archives: March 2010

Red Shirt Alert

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Oh Hi again,

So much for a monthly astronomy post… These jodcasters do it better anyway.
Instead here is a geek post! How lovely for you!

So a short while ago Kim, Schicken and I commenced watching Star Trek: The Original Series from the start.  Awesome in and of itself I know, but to increase the entertainment factor I started keeping track of the number of deaths suffered by each uniform colour, i.e. command Gold (Yellow), security/engineering Red and Science Blue. I then proceeded to tweet the episode by episode score with the hash-tag #TOSscore.

The danger of wearing a red-shirt is well documented on these here intertubes, but is it really true? Here is the end of season one break down (with a few of my favourite tweets from the #TOSscore tag).

Series One Breakdown:

  • Safest Colour: Blue – 3 deaths over 28 episodes
  • Longest Safe Run: Blue – 0 deaths over 25 episodes
  • Most Dangerous Colour: Red – 6 deaths over 28 episodes
  • Most Dangerous Run: Yellow – 3 deaths over 3 episodes
  • Highest death rate (single episode per colour): Yellow & Red – 2
  • Most Deadly episode: “Where no Man has gone before” – 3 (2 Red, 1 Blue)

Who wants a graph?!?:

This is the episode by episode plot of the TOSscore.

TOSscoreS1 Red Shirt Alert

As you can see, some episode were rather more dangerous than others! (Also there are 29 episodes in season one. The Menagerie parts I and II were counted together, ie after this all episode number out by 1).

Favourite Tweets:

  • Episode 22: “Space Seed”
    #TOSscore red-shirts 5, blue-shirts 3, yellow-shirts 5 + KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN (Remember when he ruled 1/4 of Earth from 1992 to 1996?)
  • Episode 14: “Balance of Terror”
    #TOSscore red-shirts 4, blue-shirts 3, yellow-shirts 2 + Wait isn’t that Spock’s Dad? (“Theres an awful lot of Plaster on that Romulan Ships” @TJx00)
  • Episode 9: “Dagger of the Mind”
    #TOSscore red-shirts 4, blue-shirts 3, yellow-shirts 1 +What am I, a Dr or a moon shuttle conductor?(=! Boon Scuttling Dr. @finestimaginary)
  • Episode 7: “What are little girls made of?”
    #TOSscore red-shirts 4, blue-shirts 3, yellow-shirts 1 + Kirk and a highly suspicious rock (see @finestimaginary’s latest tweet!)

captain james t kirk cock rock Red Shirt Alert

Concluding remarks:
So far so bad for the reds, however things aren’t great if you are a yellow! Thank <insert deity of you choice> that I work in Science. It’s my recollection that the red-shirt danger increases in season two, plus we’ve yet to meet Mr. “Nuclear Wessels” himself Chekov meaning things can only get more entertaining. So until the end of season 2, keep your eye on #TOSscore and your red-shirt in the wardrobe.

Recipe! Popcorn Shrimp

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Need something quick, easy and super super tastey? You should try popcorn shrimp (or prawns, in this case), definitely. I know in the UK that shrimp is pricey, but for this recipe we made use of Sainsbury’s basics frozen prawns. They’re pretty tiddley but work really well for this recipe, and I don’t know about you but I’d prefer to use pricier shrimp in recipes that aren’t deep-fried! This was one of the simplest recipes we used during our Cajun Cook-off, and the one that most impressed the parent’s, too!

popcorn shrimp Recipe! Popcorn Shrimp

Unfortunately due to my ravenous family there’s only one photo of the popcorn shrimp (and it’s a blurry one that Adam took ;), oo check out my vivienne westwood haiti t-shirt, neat hey!), but you get the idea.

Ingredients

300g frozen prawns (we used sainsbury’s basics)
For the coating:
200g corn flour
1/2tbsp salt
1/2tbsp ground pepper
1tsp cayenne pepper
1tsp garlic powder
3 tbsp yellow mustard (we used a weak English mustard)
Oil for deep frying, or use a deep fat fryer

Method

1. Defrost the Prawns either over night, or by immersing in a bowl of water until softened.
2. Coat the prawns with the mustard, this helps the coating stick and also gives them a bit more of a kick.
3. Mix all your dry ingredients together in a large food bag, give it a good shake to blend them all up.
4. Add the mustard coated prawns to the bag and shake until they’re all good and coated.
5. Depending on the size of the prawns, either remove each one from the bag and shake off the excess coating mix OR an easier way is to just empty the whole thing into a sift and shake to remove the excess coating mix.
6. Deep fry in batches until they turn golden brown (a couple of minutes).
7. Enjoy!

You can serve these with a nice garlic mayo dip, yomyom!

Headphones

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paul frank skull candy headphones Headphones

A new pair of headphones arrived today… I don’t even know what my current total is, but it’s growing. I’ve had skull candy ear-buds before, just the basic ink’d ones, and I’ve got some of the skull candy low-riders too. The in-ear ink’d buds are by FAR the most comfortable in-ear headphones I’ve ever owned, and you get a set of different sized ear buds incase you have super tiny ear holes. Last year I bought some JVC gummy ones in Hong Kong and they just hurt my ears after about 30 minutes of wear, so I decided it was time to get some more skull candy ones. Adam was looking for some, too, so I figured I’d just get some at the same time.. and look! they’ve brought out a range of super adorable Paul Frank ones, so I went for the pink and red Julius version. They run a little higher in price than the regular ol’ skull candy ink’d versions, but I couldn’t resist. The cord is covered with a woven fabric, too. Ohhh, so prettttty!

Inspiration: Feathers

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Feathers are neat. I’m working on some new ideas, and I’ve been bookmarking images, I thought it’d be nicer just to share them here :)

feathers 1 Inspiration: Feathers

feathers 2 Inspiration: Feathers

feathers 3 Inspiration: Feathers

feathers 4 Inspiration: Feathers

feathers 5 Inspiration: Feathers

feathers 6 Inspiration: Feathers

sorceress Inspiration: Feathers

feathers 7 Inspiration: Feathers

feathers 8 Inspiration: Feathers

feathers 10 Inspiration: Feathers

feathers 9 Inspiration: Feathers

Images from across the internet via tumblrs

Recipe: Baking Powder Biscuits

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Last weekend was our Cajun/Creole/Deep-South cook-off. We were in the kitchen from 9am until 5pm when our family arrived to consume our creations. The menu ran like this:

So while I work through the glut of photos I took during the day I thought I ‘d write up one of the easier recipes, the baking powder biscuits!

baking powder biscuits 4022 Recipe: Baking Powder Biscuits

If you clicked on the link in the list above and read the wiki article you’ll see that they’re very similar to the English savoury scone (I pronounce it sk-own, by the way!). The main difference that I can see is that instead of using self raising flour as in the scone you use all-purpose (plain) flour and baking powder instead. This isn’t really a big difference, and I guess they’d work well using self raising too. The recipe is simple, and quite relaxing to make. Infact, I was just trying to get the recipe right and I wasn’t entirely happy with the one I made last week, so I whipped some more up just to get the quantities better. These turned out perfect :)

baking powder biscuits 3914 Recipe: Baking Powder Biscuits

You’ll need:
300g plain flour
3tsp baking powder
60g butter/lard (go for the butter if it grosses you out! but lard is also an option, I used a mix of both because I ran out of butter and had some lard in the fridge from seasoning our new wok)
Pinch of salt
190ml milk

Preheat the oven to 200ºC
The method is SIMPLE, super super simple. Put all your dry ingredients into a bowl (don’t even bother sifting, it’s not worth the effort), mix them through. Add the butter/lard to the mix in small chunks, get your hands in there and rub the butter into the dry ingredients (you know, like you would if you’re making a crumble). Now, you don’t want it to be the consistency of a crumble, not super fine bread crumbs or whatever, but you want to get the bigger bits of butter worked in good. Then simply add your milk, little at a time, mixing as you go until you have a soft dough ball. Don’t worry if you’ve not used all your milk, or even if you think you need a little more, it’s all good.

baking powder biscuits 3918 Recipe: Baking Powder Biscuits

Turn your dough out onto a floured surface and roll it to about 1.5-2cm thick. Cut out circles using a cutter, I used the ones with the fancy edges, the generic scone-cutting-devices. If you haven’t got them, get some, they’re cheap in any supermarket’s cookware section. Size doesn’t really matter with this (that’s what she said… HOHO!), go for whatever you think best… these rise upwards, not outwards, too (that’s wh.. no, not twice in the same sentence.. sorry).

baking powder biscuits 3921 Recipe: Baking Powder Biscuits

Place them on an ungreased baking sheet, or if you have a none stick baking liner thing use that, those are amazing. Put them in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown, you may need to check the centres just to make sure they’re cooked through, if they’re not just turn off the oven and leave them to cook through with the residual heat. This usually stops them burning on top.

baking powder biscuits 4022 Recipe: Baking Powder Biscuits

Enjoy! they’re tastey with cheese, jam, honey, or just on their own.

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