Posted Sep 27, 2008 in England, Events, Family.
I sometimes buy British goods from various providers in the United States (and some in the UK), and I have already started to receive notification emails from a few of them that say they are ready to take orders for Christmas goodies. I almost always get things like mince pies and Christmas pudding (although the latter is now available from some stores in the US), but what I really like is Christmas cake.
The perfect Christmas cake is quite hard to come by. There are many different kinds, but my favorite type must have the following qualities:
- Rich and fruity
- Dark and moist
- Thickly-covered in marzipan
- Fully-iced with sharply-peaked, tooth-destroying Royal icing
Shop-bought Christmas cakes are usually poor. The cake is usually pretty good (especially the expensive, luxury items) but they always suffer from stingy marzipan and soft icing. The finest examples of the species are made months in advance, lovingly cared-for with regular injections of alcohol during the two or three months before Christmas, when they are given their marzipan and icing shrouds and decorated.
For many people, Christmas is all about Jesus. For me, it is all about food - and Christmas cake is my gold, frankincense and myrrh all rolled into one.
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Posted Aug 25, 2008 in Blogging, Personal, si-blog.
Please forgive me while I take a break from blogging over the summer. Don't expect to see much until the beginning of October, when I'll have lots of news for you.
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Posted May 19, 2008 in Personal.
It's been a while since I've blogged. Life has been... well... complicated over the last few months, so I chose to retreat from some of my usual online activities and take a breather. Fury at a few groups of people has put me in the mood to blog, so I bring you a list of people I simply cannot stand. They are presented in no particular order, and I would welcome comments:
- Distributors of spam, and any other unsolicited electronic or paper junk mail.
- Racists.
- People who operate internet sockpuppets.
- Black-hat hacker scum who try to fuck around with my website, my computer and my identity.
- The voters who gave George W. Bush a second term.
- Ditto, first term.
- Media industry executives who are obsessed with restricting the rights of paying customers.
- Excessively-religious people, particularly those who insist they are somehow “better” than people who are not religious.
I have to stop now, because I have just realized that I could go on in this vein forever.
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Posted Feb 29, 2008 in Events, Family, Personal.
I've been living in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania since 2001. It really is a beautiful, village-like town about 15 minutes from Philadelphia. Since 2004, my wife and I have been putting in a tremendous effort to update and upgrade our home with new plumbing, new electrics, a new kitchen and family room, a new sun room, an enormous wraparound deck and a fancy new front porch. With new siding and extensive landscaping our house looks as superb on the outside as it does on the inside.
But now it is time for us to move on, and we are looking for a smaller house much closer to where my wife works. We are very sad about having to leave our home, especially now that it is in such good condition, but we are also a little excited about picking out a new place and making it our own.
Swarthmore is a great place to live because it is part of an excellent school district, it is close to the I-95 corridor that runs down the East Coast, and it is only a short train journey to Philadelphia. Shopping is good, and the neighborhood is quiet and safe for children. Our needs are different now that the children have grown up, so it is time for another family with young kids to enjoy our home as much as we have.
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Posted Feb 03, 2008 in Sport.
Wait... What? The New York Giants won Super Bowl XLII 17 points to 14, against the mighty New England Patriots. That's almost as bad as the Dallas Cowboys winning it. How the hell did that happen?
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