Naive Zebra Welcome Guest | Login or Register

TSL you should have some new ideas of where I’m going nowadays.

Check your inbox.

Any help with a Great Talkover for the intro will be great. Cheers.

Very tiring couple of days, finished nights and then it’s been full on up until 0600 hrs. this am.

We’ve been sneaky and surprised Zebra Mum with a visit from our Dutch Family in honour of her 65th party.

All a bit cloak and dagger, but it seemed to go okay.

Sorry if the blog is sparse with photos and entries but I’ve been working on another job of mine that needed a serious overhaul.

Been getting used to new software and as a result created a new look smarter alumni website , which is on the off but needs tweaking and teasing yet to adds some more content.

Hope you’re all well.

Hello to Mr Saddleback, thanks for popping by.

At the time of writing I might just have managed to get this job application docket completed, it’s been written & read, re –written and re-read, signed in the all the right places, all the I’s dotted and t’s crossed.

It’s just got to be taken from here to there by hand.

One would never think that it was completed well within the time frame several days ago.

And this is only to get through the paper sift.

There may well be a board/interview panel of some sort to come after this.

I don’t know how many others have applied for the role.

Jb’s back and doing his stuff after singing with Whitney for Mandela

Well what a complete waste of a day I’ve had.
I had to go into ‘ The Office’ to try and blag some essential equipment I need for a 1-day training course tomorrow.

Mine seems to have ‘vanished’ somewhere or other.

So I had to go into the place of hell, to see if I could blag some spares.

Spent the day in music with a new widget that works on the Mac that provides all the lyrics and artwork for my I Tunes library, adds another dimension to listening to the music.

Matron is back from her travels.

Welcome home.

Chakra is trying to get ‘ on the up;

Kurt M has cut off his mullet and is on the way up with his new family members.

HKH has become HugeInMumbai.

Glad you’re all well.

Everyone is prepping themselves for Old Boys already.

Good to see.

Well gradually getting there on this Mac stuff, finally have an office on here of some sort, which finds me just dropping a brief note on here for you readers of blogs.

Finally finished my application for a new job, thanks to some sterling help from Spike & Windy.
Much appreciated.
Along with this project I have decided to overhaul the old DYRMS85 Class website and bring it up to date, so those readers who have photos and stuff hidden away in drawers, please feel free to mail me stuff, no matter how bad the haircuts.
Watch this space for a slicker less cluttered site.
Minimalism but clean and informative.
New member of the kite stables lost it’s cherry today, a Lime Green Pansh Spirit race kite, 5m, which plugs the gap nicely between the 2.5 Rage & 6.5m Pepper.
Initial teething problems of sorting put brake lines etc was followed by no wind or very little wind.
Hey ho us kiters are never happy.
All tomato crop has now been collected and processed away, so until next year, no growing progress photos.
Tweaked all my blueberry bushes into some nice shapes and hopefully it will encourage them to grow evenly.
Added three more raspberry bushes to my five first provided to me for nothing by my lovely web hostess and her hubby, I never realised they provide off shoots that pop up everywhere.
Delivered two trees, that I secretly loathed and eight strawberry plants to another to Mr & Mrs Dukie [yes both of them went there], her father was a teacher there. So they were very happy, it added to the other plants they had off me in the earlier part of the year. I was very jealous of their jalapeno’s which had done amazingly well outside of all places, whereas mine only provided some little seed capsules for sowing next year.
Home made cider doing well, the ASDA Cider is far dryer than the Lidl Variety, but both tasting scrumpy like..

Because the garden is running down ish , I will have to think of another job to entertain myself so I started this project.

Equipment:

1 One Gallon Demijohn (sterilised)
1 Bung with an air lock
4 One litre plastic bottles that can cope with pressurised liquid!

Ingredients:

One Gallon of apple juice (I’m using 5 one litre cartons)
Ale yeast (or other yeast, wine yeast may make the cider very dry, bread yeast could be tried)

Method

This is what I intend to do, feel free to add suggestions or try something else!:

1) Sterilise the demijohn. Add 4 litres of apple juice to start and half a teaspoon of yeast. This should give enough room for the initial fermentation. Add a bung with and air lock and leave somewhere warm.

2) After initial rapid fermentation, top up with more apple juice and leave with the bung and air lock to almost work its way out.

3) Bottle and leave somewhere warm to finish fermenting and then leave to settle for a couple of weeks.

4) Then drink!

Notes: Dead rats optional!

Also on the menu today

6 lbs Tomatoes
3 lbs Sugar
2 pints vinegar
1 lb sultanas [ I used mixed fruit with cranberries etc ]
1/2 lb garlic
2 oz ground ginger
1 oz red chilli
1 oz salt

MY variation changed the dried fruit fro whatever dried fruits and trail mixes i had in the cupboard and I used half a pound of lazy garlic and ginger paste from my local Nepalese shop. I could not be bothered with all chopping and peeling an wasting stuff.

And I used up some of my Scotch Bonnet Peppers instead of bland shop chilli.

Instructions .

1. Chop Toms

2. Mince garlic , chilli & dried fruit in blender until into a paste.

3. Boil Vinegar & Sugar.

4. Add ingredients and cook until reduced to a deep brown ketchup colour , bottle.

Ginally I made a fiery hot sauce only for the brave

Pirate Pepper Sauce.

6 oz Chilli [ 6 oz Scotch Bonnet chilli would be off the scale , so I used just 6 ]
6 oz Onion
4 oz Apple
2 tsp Mustard
150 ml vinegar

Instructions

1. Chop and mince onion and chilli together.

2. Sweat the mix off in a little oil , i used a blend of hemp and olive.

2. Add the chopped peeled and cored apple.

3. Add mustard & vinegar.

4. Reduce until nice paste , then smooth with blender and bottle.

Having no car and eating no petrol , growing my own stuff and trading my produce has meant I saved a bit of money so it’s nice when you update all your bank accounts and notice that you have a healthy bank balance.

I have been meaning to get a new base station at home my old computer has lasted some ten years and although it works okay, it’s tired and s such has been retired for a while.

So yesterday I was able to treat myself to a new base station desktop computer a new IMac.

I have always admired mac stuff , but never been brave or had the finance to purchase one , so yesterday as a result of my non excessive lifestyle I was able jut to walk into the store and say ” I’ll have one of those , No I won;t be needing any credit thank you ‘

Up and running in under 27 minutes awesome.

It’s going to be a while until I have mastered all the ways around the system, but I’m sure that HKH and the other readers who use Mac’s will be happy that I’ve finally made the transition.