ianbee: this is instead of getting a dog

Biscuit Festival

This looks excellent. 'Create a biscuit!' 'Design a biscuit tin!' 'Biscuit workshops!' I love being British.

Blackberry picking and LEGO pizza

Had a massive, monster blackberry picking session yesterday, down by the canal. And the day before too, near a quarry. I have five boxes in the freezer and am anticipating a winter of crumble followed by a spring of cake and a summer of smoothies. That's how it worked out this year anyway!

I washed each one under the tap and found spiders, little worms and many flies. All gone now. I also found two thorns in my thumb today, both were removed with a sterile needle.

 

 

 

 

Other news - did you know that they make LEGO pizza? I have so so much to tell you. I can't believe this made it to the top of the list. It's just because my brain goes fuzzy after work.

While we're talking about food, the second series of The Great British Bake Off has started. Last year it was my telly highlight. It's sublime viewing - funny, sad, educational and nutritious. Next week it's biscuits. I am totally excited to the point of distraction. I have to go now ...

 

The Great British Bake Off

The best telly programme of 2010 is getting a second series! And you could apply! Just think, you would get to use one of those ovens with the sliding door. In a tent! And have Mel and Sue nicking your ingredients. And learn all about biscuits, and how they made Britain great.

Do you love home baking and fancy putting your skills to the test? BBC Two is looking for amateur bakers across the country to take part in The Great British Bake Off series two. If you’re interested and would like to find out more, email baking@loveproductions.co.uk or call 020 7067 4879.

To apply you must be over 16 on 1 April 2011. As an ‘amateur baker’ your main source of income cannot come from commercial baking in a professional environment and you cannot have ever worked full-time as a baker or chef. You cannot have acquired any formal NVQ or other professional catering qualifications in the past 10 years.

 

The Big British Bake-Off

I'm a bit behind - so don't spoil the ending for me if you know who wins, but this has been my favourite telly programme of the year. Yes even better than Sherlock or a five-hour Chilean mine rescue marathon. Basically it's a competiton to find Britain's best amateur baker. There's no hint of celebrity or ego. No shouting or confesions. No diary room or sabotage. It's television for people who like cake and for people who like people who care about cake. Each week the contestants are housed in a marquee in some touristy spot and are let loose in a camping version of a Kath Kidson styled kitchen where they to work through a different set of baking challenges; cakes, scones, biscuits, puddings and pastry all feature. There was even an episode devoted to bread.

It manages to be genuinely tense - will the pudding come out of the bowl? Will the pastry have a soggy bottom? Will he notice he forgot the eggs? It also suceeds in being warm, sweet, funny and informative. Did you know that orignally puddings were made with meat? Or that the ideal Cornish pasty has between seventeen and twenty-one crimples?

The biscuit episode has to be one of my all-time favourite hours of telly. I learned about the history of the digestive biscuit (the undisputed king of biscuits) and was introduced to the world's most expensive biscuit. This was rescued from near the South Pole where it was found in a tent alongside Captain Scott's body. How could anyone possibly conceive a programme that was a more perfect marriage of my twin passions; Antarctica and biscuits? If only they could have found a way to include rugby union or a helicopter or snowboarding, that would be telly utopia.

Recipe wanted

I want to know how to make this. It's a date and chocolate biscuit/slice thing (biscotti?). It's got a squishy date and chocolate crumb filling, with a soft biscuit outer (not pastry) and a meringue-like crunchy bit on top (i'm not so bothered about that, sounds too fiddly). It's not clear from the photo, but the biscuit wraps right round the filling, then the roll is sliced into inch-wide slices. You get the odd big bite of date. It's amazing.

Any ideas? Help me. Please!

Biscuit heaven

I saw Kenny in Edinburgh today (Scottish chum, now in Cornwall). In return for me showing him where the Peugeot garage was in Sighthill, he agreed to drive me to the nearby biscuit factory. I have long had a suspicion that where there is a biscuit factory, there is bound to be somewhere to buy cheap biscuits and this was my chance to find out.

The bloke at the garage was wiping his oily hands on his boiler suit when I jumped in with the question: "Is there a biscuit shop at the biscuit factory?" "Oh aye," he replied, his face lighting up, "for a fiver you can get a bin liner full of toffee-pops that were made with too much toffee on them." Wow. I knew it.

It turned out to be just a portacabin in the staff car park, but for £1.20 you can get a football sized bag of broken or crooked rejected biccies. I brought three bags, and the lady put them in a bin liner so I could manage them on the bus. Raisin cookies, shortbread and toffee-pops with too much toffee - although how they can be classed as "reject" baffles me. You could add "luxury" to the packaging and sell them at Waitrose for twice the price.

Now I've got them home, I admit they are taking up a bit of space. I have run out of tins and I'm worried that the mice will have a field-day if I leave them in the bags. I might have to suspend them from high up like you do with food in bear-country. And I feel a bit sick too.

Biscuits

A common recurring theme of this blog, and indeed my life, is ... biscuits. I like a nice biscuit. (Not a Nice biscuit though - they're a bit boring. I'd rather have a Chocolate Digestive.)

My home is rarely without a packet of biccys, and I work in a hospital ward which is more obsessed with biscuits than is healthy (one day I shall describe in detail their near-religious devotion to the 'tea-trolley' ritual) so imagine my excitement when I discovered there was a book called 'Nice cup of tea and a sit down' which set out to explore, amongst other things, our national obsession with biscuits! Well, if you were imagining you were probably wrong becuase I found the book a bit dull and repetative. It plods through a short description and review of all the major biscuit groups (digestive, malted milk, rich tea, etc) and the varients and sub-classifications. Yawn. You can still buy it if you want, but you could also save your money and spend it on actual real biscuits.

But ... the man behind the book has a website, predictably called nicecupofteaandasitdown.com! Now, that's worth a look, I urge you to check it out. Recent articles have included a special report on Caffa Cakes*, a review of a 'biscuit city' built in Selfriges, and detailed analysis of the results of the massive 'favourite biscuit poll' with the shocking observation that '92% of Digestive eaters would rather eat something else'.

If you only have time to look at one page, check out the mini polls results page and read in wonder as hundreds of people find time to express their opinion on the 'best way to eat a bourbon' and the acceptable shortened form of 'Biscuit' (49.70% = biccy).

*this paragraph in the Jaffa Cake FAQ serves to illustrate why Britain will always rule the world ...

The VAT man wanted it to be a biscuit. That way it would fall by virtue of its chocolate coat into a category of products liable to VAT at the standard rate, i.e. luxury biscuits. ... In 1991 the matter went to a tribunal (number 6344 in case you were wondering) in which the VAT man argued that the Jaffa wasn’t a cake and so should not be exempt from VAT (VATA 1983 Sch 5 Group 1 excepted item 2), trotting out all the old arguments. McVities countered with all of the other old arguments plus a specially prepared 12 inch Jaffa Cake, which focused the tribunal’s attention on the sponge base. The tribunal concluded that, while the product also had characteristics of biscuits or confectionery which was not cake, it had sufficient characteristics of cakes to be a cake for the purposes of zero-rating. (The tribunal also determined that the product was not a biscuit.)

Thanks for popping in

Colin Walker, ex housemate, turned up randomly to visit earlier this week. More random when you consider that he lives in Cape Town! He used to be Scottish, but you wouldn't know it now - he says funny things like 'lekker' and 'rad'.

Colin and i have a history of great holidays. The last one was two years ago when we met up in Kenya with our friends Rob and Brendon. We struggled across country from Nairobi to the coast in a Toyota Landcruiser. Most epic 4WD trips are to bring aid or enlightenment, we had a similar lofty goal. We planned on bringing four barrels of sea water back to the capital for a salt water aquarium. We saved those fishies.

PS The sharp eyed amongst you will notice that he is holding in his hand a chocolate malted milk - one of the world's great biscuits. (The whole cow-biscuit genre is great, not just that particular biscuit, although I'm sure he enjoyed it.)

thump thump thump thump thump ...

"So what do you actually do at work Ian?" is a not uncommonly asked question. After all, I'm a children's nurse so i just hand out teddies and therapeutic cuddles. Right? Okay, so I have, on occasion, given a therapeutic cuddle, and handing out teddies is not unheard of. But I'm going to give a snapshot of the past few days from a working-environment angle which, while not looking for sympathy, might get the "Ian has too many days off" crew off my back!

I've been looking after a very sick child for the past few shifts. This child is on a life-support machine. This particular life-support machine breathes for the patient by focusing a flow of air into his lungs which is generated by a loudspeaker vibrating at 8 times a second. To nurse the patient is like doing maintenance on a motorcycle while the engine is running (although without the hand-caught-in-machinery risk). After a couple of hours you just cannot hear anyone talk, you just see their mouths moving.

The patient was also receiving a special 'magic' gas called nitric oxide which helps him absorb oxygen. Every time I had to change the cylinders it was very difficult not to allow a small release of this gas, which gave me a headache. He was also prescribed toxic drugs, which I had to wear protective clothing to handle.  Then we had the temperature of the room pretty chilly because the patient had a 40 degree fever.

I was working with all this in an isolation cubicle because the patient had a very weak immune system. I escaped for two short breaks and one sneaky toilet trip. No-one came to visit me for chats because it was too noisy, it was too cold, and everyone at work (apart from me) is pregnant and the magic gas is supposedly harmful to unborn babies. Every now and again a trolley with tea and tubs of M&S mini-bites* would be left outside and I would have a few seconds to help myself before it was whisked off to the next cubicle.

This was also all going on at night. The thing about night shifts that's hard to cope with is the 4am to 5am slot where everything goes a bit fuzzy and you can't quite remember what you were meant to be doing (am I really a nurse?) and you have to ... think ... through ... everything ... very ... carefully ...

And there's the emotional angle of supporting a family for whom the world has crashed around them.

After 13 hours of this I go to go home to my bed. Only to be woken up at 10am each day by the postman who wants letting into the whole stairwell, despite the fact that all he has for me is an invitation to join amnesty international (I am already a member). And when I wake up, that 8Hz thumping is still in my ears ... thump thump thump thump thump ...

So that's what I do a work. It could be worse. We don't have bird flu yet. I think then they may cut down my breaks.

Cheerful posting will resume shortly  :o)

*despite recent media reports, the NHS does not run on staff altruism, government handouts or patient goodwill. It is fuelled pure and simply by tubs of M&S mini-bites, particularly the extremely chocolatey ones.