Advent Adjuncts and Minimalist Meals

It's one of the world's great culinary ironies that spices harvested in the hottest countries find their starring role during Winter months on the opposite side of the world. Indeed, it wouldn't feel like Christmas in England without the products of Sri-Lankan and Madagascan Summers.

I have a slightly dichotomic view of cinnamon, nutmeg and their spicy, Wintery bedfellows - I suppose I quite like the novelty value afforded in small doses but probably wouldn't want them in my food all year round.

As an example, this time last year I cooked a festive beef stew (essentially 'mulled beef'), which was interesting and very seasonal, but I haven't been tempted to make it since.

And at this time of year a hot steaming glass of mulled wine full of cloves and fruit is just the ticket, but by January I suspect I shall probably not want any more. (Indeed a couple of Januarys ago I concocted mulled white wine as an alternative).

The German Invasion

Well, baste my roasting fowl, Christmas - yes, Christmas! - is just two weeks - yes, two weeks! - away.

What the festive fuck?!?

I suppose that means I'd better start thinking about presents and merrymaking and food and drink'n'shit.

Now, for reasons outlined earlier in the year, I'm not particularly looking forward to the Yuletide season. It's going to be a bit strange and different and not especially welcome. 'Twould be nice to put Christmas off until June or something, like they do in Australia.

But, nevertheless, it doth cometh apace, and so I'd better put on my best brave face.

Feeding Tube

Maybe one of the reasons I've been so slack at this blogposting lark lately is that I have an imperial tonne of interests besides food and drink.

Folk music, for example. And philosophy. And cartography and comedy and travel and psephology and poker and football and building my own computers.

Oh, and railway systems. Particularly the London Underground. When I was 13 I visited every station in one day in an attempt to get into the Guinness Book of Records, don't you know.

Planning my route took a fair bit of poring over the iconic diagrammatic map, and since my childhood it's been one of my single favourite visual things.

As colleagues of mine well know, sometimes in meetings I doodle incessantly. And quite often I'm doodling railway maps, with ticks for stations and circles for interchanges. I don't even know I'm doing it half the time!

There have been a raft of 'alternative' tube maps over the last few years, some interesting, some stupid, and some that would make Harry Beck turn in his grave. At a perfect 45 degree angle.

But back on the subject of food, I'm rather tickled by this recent effort from the Cheese and Biscuits blog - a tube map that purportedly shows the best places to eat in London. Well, in Zones 1 and 2 anyway.

Battle of the blands

In the 1936 German parlimentary 'election', the National Socialist German Workers Party polled 98.8%.

A similarly skewfucked democracy was evident across the internet this week as over 98% of the views on the US Presidential election were pro-Obama (or anti-Romney). That's quite a staggering statistic and the deep, institutionalised conformity saddens me a little.

Admittedly this is based on my own Facebook friends and Twitter feeds, but you'd think that there might be a little more balance, wouldn't you? Especially given that I'm not instinctively sympathetic to the Democratic Party.

The actual result was - as I predicted - a routine Obama win with only a couple of States changing colour but some of the shit people were coming out with was quite baffling.

'If you don't vote for Obama you shouldn't be allowed to vote!11one1'

'Don't let that dangerous nutter get his finger on the nuclear button!11republicanseatbabies11'...

'Well done America, you made the right decision!11fourmoreyears1'... 

And so on.

Spoonsfest hit for six!

I was expecting to spend this evening travelling around London pubs, often walking in and then coming straight out again in a state of increasing exasperation.

Instead I've been able to stay in and relax while listening to coverage of Coventry's victory over Crawley Town, and I'll probably tune in to the US Election Coverage in a minute (prediction: as I've been saying for many months now, an uneventful Obama win with the GOP only gaining one or two states they didn't win in 2008).

The reason I've been able to take things easy is mainly thanks to Tim Martin and his pubs not being frustrating for once.

I criticised Mr. Wetherspoon the other day for the quality of his burgers - quite rightly, because they are substandard shite - but probably the best thing about our glorious nation's favourite pub chain is the bi-annual 'beer festivals'.

For a couple of weeks every Spring and Autumn, beer tickers of the UK play 'Spoons Bingo' and try to get through the 50 different beers available, some of which are always very elusive, and some of which appear all the time, all over the place. Believe me, you grow to despise some of these beers...

But this year, something very special happened, for last night, I scooped the last six beers I required in a single evening!

Second chance saloons

I like to think of myself as a fair and reasonable man, and not the sort of person to deny folks a second chance. Sometimes even a third chance.

Hell, sometimes I'm so soft I give fourth, fifth and sixth chances to shit that I ought to have emotionally written off years ago.

I'm probably the only person who still harbours hope that Sir Jimmy might actually be innocent and it's all been a terrible mistake.

And I might even go and see the new Bond film, even though the last one, Quantity of Suckedcocks, or whatever it was called, was a tragic waste of celluloid and there hasn't been a proper James Bond since Roger Moore.

'Go on Ben, give it another go', my persistent inner voice will say, 'everyone deserves a second chance, right?'

And so, in that spirit of generosity I decided to try eating a Wetherspoons burger the other day.

I hadn't had one for ages because they're so fucking awful and I'm terribly fussy about my burgers, but it had been over two years since I described them (in the very first BV post, in fact) as 'tasteless, gristly and lipid-lumped', so maybe things had improved.

10 things you may not have known about Switzerland and York

I know, I know. I’ve not done a whole lot of blogging lately. Been out and about you see. Riding panthers, slaying  dragonflies, tormenting chickens, that sort of thing.

Actually that’s all a shower of vicious lies, apart from that last one, but last week we were in fact in York, watching the mighty Sky Blues winning 4-0, and the week before we took a little trip to Switzerland (no, not to the Dignitas clinic – things aren’t that bad!)

I’d never been to either Switzerland or York before and there was plenty to do and see and eat and drink. But given that I’m lacking the time and inclination to carefully sculpt vast blogs about either of these places, I’ll just shower you with a dixtet of factoids: