zen.org Communal Weblog

Today’s adventure: make dinner.

Sounds easy. Wasn’t. Cause as I sit in my comfy couch this afternoon, I see happy Vera walking by. She pops in, says, “I’m going to the doctor to see if I need stitches.” She *sliced* her thumb on a ham tin. I mean sliced (dude, if you’re squeamish, please don’t look. I warned you). Like, I’m never using a key to open any of those silly kinds of cans ever. She didn’t believe that she needed company, but I convinced her otherwise. Thank god, too, cause we were there for like 2 hours waiting. Then they finally saw her, had her put her finger under the taps, and then *glued* it shut. GLUED. /shakes head. I had that in the back room….we coulda avoided the 2 hour wait!

So after she let me to go Tesco to get the few things I needed for dinner. Basically leeks, since it’s chicken and sweet leek pie. Now, this is a Jamie Oliver recipe, and it’s one we’ve done before (tho no comments written in the book, so that should worry me…), but it takes forever. First you have to skin and debone the chicken legs (thank you for teaching me technique, Alton Brown), then cut up the leeks, carrots and prep the thyme. (Does anyone else get thyme all over the place when they strip the leaves? I got some in my hair.) Then cook for 15 minutes, add wine (we used apple juice instead, as I had no vino), water and soymilk, and boom. Stir, and bubble for 45 minutes. Then put in pie dish and then top with puff pastry.

Sounds easy. Can take a while. Was it good? Ummmmmmmmm….yeah. Filling. Hopefully the puff pastry will last til lunch tomorrow. We’re having a massive leftover lunch, since almost every plastic container (and that’s saying a lot) is being used right now.

P decided that he wanted to make something from the leftover puff pastry. So we did. All together now…awwwwwwwwwww.

[tags]altonbrown, cooking, jamieoliver, vera, p[/tags]

Flippin’ Classic. Curse words, so it’s nsfw, depending on where you are.

PATRIOTIC POSTERS@WHITEHOUSE.ORG

According to the latest EFF: DeepLinks, it’s time to claim your money/replacement/downloads from SonyBMG for the lovely XCP/MediaMax debacle. This is mainly for US people, since I don’t think they’re replacing for non-US CDs (hello…DRI?).

Regardless, spread the word. Sony needs to know they screwed up, and that consumers feel really upset about this.

[tags] eff, sonybmg, xcp, mediamax[/tags]

Irishblogawards are in the top tags on Flickr right now. Does it help it’s a sleepy Sunday? Sure…but Rymus’ photos are sooooo good. All of them are, actually. ‘Cept the ones from my cameraphone. Can’t wait til O’Shea’s are up.

That was a hell of a night. Twenty cleaned up completely, that’s for sure. But he missed out, since he didn’t show, cause his emissary shall be keeping the iPod Nano that Twenny was given for winning Best Blog.

Rick O’Shea did well as the MC, and Damien is to be fully commended for getting the things up and running. I’m guessing that about 150 people showed up.

The greatest part was seeing all these people whose blogs I read in one room. Raftery, RedMum (have fun with that router!), Sarah Carey, Bernard, Justin Mason (looking oh-so-California), Antoin, Piaras (getting crap for that post), and so so so many more. One of the best things was that one group who sponsored one of the awards later WON one!

Rick and I have determined we were separated at birth. And a very kind soul poured me into a cab home, thankfully. I blame the Cosmopolitan. My dear hubby is now patting my brow and getting me to drink lots of water.

I’m going to upload any photos from the cameraphone to Flickr, tagged with irishblogawards. Enjoy!

[tags] irishblogawards, irishblogs, ireland, awards, irish blog awards [/tags]

Just read this in a newsletter that I get. I can’t be the only one who sees this, can I?

Parents Against Junk Food (our effort to improve school lunches around
the country) is being launched April 1. The Web site address will be
www.parentsagainstjunkfood.org . The site will offer a variety of ways
for you to get involved (including contacting your representatives in
Congress), and we will be asking you to send us letters, photos, and
information on the lunches in your local schools. Please help!

Down in the test kitchen, the editors of our sister publication,
Cook’s Country, just came up with a great recipe for oven-fried onion
rings using ground potato chips for a coating and the heat of the oven
(no frying required) to do the cooking. Click here for the recipe.

[tags]cooking, cooksillustrated, junkfood, lunch, irishblogs[/tags]

There is a great talk that is going to happen in Belfast on 16 March, with [tag]Richard Stallman[/tag] and [tag]Bruce Perens[/tag]. This is one of those events that true geeks can’t miss :-). And it’s FREE (as in beer, as well as in speech, that’s even kewler). Sponsored by Google.

[tags] freesoftware, belfast, irishblogs, irishblog, google, seminar[/tags]

Just got this from IrelandOffline:

The Pat Kenny show today on Radio 1 had a representative of eircom
on-air taking questions about broadband from Pat’s listeners. The show
appeared to be snowed under with callers and emailers but Pat Kenny
had eircom commit to investigating all their issues and to get back to
Pat with answers.

We suggest that you email the problems you had getting broadband to
todaypk@rte.ie (please send a copy to info@irelandOffline.org too) and
Pat’s team will compile them into a file and send them to eircom.
Please include some contact details. In a months time we suggest you
come back to us and Pat Kenny and let us know whether anything has
been done to fix your problems getting broadband.

We’d also like to thank everyone that’s sent in a submission to the
Minister in regards to broadband availability. The closing date for
submissions is tomorrow and if you have not sent in something yet,
then we suggest you do, even if it is just a few short lines. The
Minister and the Government need to understand that there is a large
proportion of the population that are in need of broadband and cannot
get it instead of them doing their best to blame lack of interest as
the reason for the digital divide.

[tags]irelandoffline rte broadband ireland[/tags]

There were some lovely nice people in Dublin city center today, who decided to riot. Love that, since we didn’t remember about it til we were there. We showed up *after* the majority of the hell, but while waiting to pick up a computer part in Maplin’s, either a small bomb or a firework went off down the road from the store.

Regardless, Flickr already has photos of the incident today.

The Irish blogosphere is slowly growing, and it’s a close knit bunch. First, there’s the Irish Blog Awards coming up. And then Damien suggested that people take a peek at some of the Irish photoblogs that are out there. I did so (cause Damien’s, well, Damien), and found this from Rymus that I love. Gimme some flowing water and some green stuff in it, and I will sit and look at it for *hours*. Then I saw that Caitriona has a bunch of pics from the Dun Laoghaire Sunday Market down the road from us. Gave me warm fuzzies.

[tags]damien, irish blog awards, irish blogs, potb, photoblog, rymus, caitriona, dun laoghaire, photos[/tags]