eep! – a blog

sniff, originally uploaded by rob78.

I developed hayfever sometime in my early 20′s although I can’t remember exactly when. Regardless of this, it’s always been pretty acute and I feel as if I have tried pretty much all the meds that are out there, including the prescription ones.

Anyway, last year, partly out of desperation and partly out of curiousity, I purchased the little device shown above.

The idea is that you shove the two prongs (probes?) up your nose for three minutes, three times a day and it shines a bright red light up there, which somehow inhibits the productions of histamines, which cause all the soreness and sneezing. Needless to say, I was sceptical (sound the snake-oil alert!), but for the sake of £15 (on offer from £30) it was the same cost as two and a bit prescriptions, or a few weeks of off-the-shelf pills.

And the insane thing? It only bloody works. I noticed results within the first day of using it, and within a less than a week, had consigned all my pills and eye drops to the medicine cupboard. I have no intention of using anything else this year.

Your mileage may vary, but for £15 I have never looked back! (And for anyone suffering, you have my every sympathy – hayfever sucks)

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. – Watch original web videos.

Awesome! via b3ta

Green and yellow risotto, originally uploaded by rob78.

A quick recipe my Mum told me years ago. I have no idea where she got it from.

Cheap & easy risotto

Serves 2

Ingredients
3 small red onions, chopped
275g of rice (I just used basmati)
150g ham ends, cubed (I also had a bit off the end of a chorizo sausage too, it all works well)
1 heaped teaspoon tumeric
1 green pepper, cut into strips (the colour isn’t critical, but green looks best)

Method
1. Heat a little oil in a large saucepan, also fill a kettle and get it on the boil.
2. Add the onions (to the saucepan, not the kettle), and after they are hot, add the tumeric and stir well.
3. When the onions are soft, stir in the rice so it takes up the colour from the tumeric.
4. Carefully add the hot/boiling water and leave to simmer, topping up with more water if necessary.
5. When the rice is nearly cooked, add the ham and stir in.
6. Add a small amount of oil into a hot frying pan and quickly fry the pepper so it is still crispy.
7. Remove the risotto from the heat, strain and serve, adding the peppers on the top.

Served with
A pint of lemon squash and the sight of my freeview box retuning. I think it might have benefitted from a spot of sweet chili sauce after it was served, but I didn’t have any, so actually splashed a little bit of ketchup on the top – please don’t hate me.

Verdict
Tasty. I’ve been making and eating this for years and you can pretty much make it with anything that comes to hand so long as you’ve got rice, tumeric and onions (Ok, maybe not fish fingers). Sunblush tomatoes go nicely on the top.

Caaaaaaaaaaake!, originally uploaded by rob78.

I’ve had 100+ views on the blog today – if anyone could enlighten me as to who they are, or why they have visited, then I’d love to know…

(the picture above is irrelevant, but for what it’s worth, the banana and walnut cake was lovely)

Omar sent me a link for a video ages ago and I completely forgot about it until now. Sadly I can’t embed it so you’ll have to click the link below to view it. It’s 13 minutes long, which for an internet video is pretty long, but stick with it, it’s great.

Forever’s Not So Long

Pizza, originally uploaded by rob78.

Following the success of my previous recipe on here, I thought I’d have another go.

Meateor Pizza

Serves 1-2

Ingredients
1 Domino’s ‘Meateor’ Pizza (I opted for a large, but other sizes will also work)
1 Garlic and herb dip
1 Can of Stella 4%

Method
1. Go to your local Domino’s, order and pay for a Meateor pizza, tell them you want it ready for 30 minutes time.
2. Go next door to the supermarket and pick up any other items you need. (I went to Sainsbury’s, but any will be ok)
3. Put shopping in the boot of the car.
4. Return to Domino’s and collect pizza.
5. Return home, open lager and eat pizza.

Served with
A can of Stella 4% (as noted above), whilst watching a repeat of Top Gear on Dave. It was the one when the Ascari A10 beat the Power Lap record and they entered the bio-fuel 3-series in the 24 hour race.

Verdict
Ideal for a Friday night when you were intending to get out of work at 5pm, but were there ’til 7pm and still didn’t really achieve anything despite your best efforts.

Chef’s Pro-Tip #1
Don’t buy too much at the supermarket as it is quite tricky to balance a large pizza and a lot of shopping if you want to make it from the car to your home in one trip.

Chef’s Pro-Tip #2
Any uneaten pizza can be stored overnight in the fridge and makes an unusual and tasty breakfast. Why not try it!

So any of you who are my friends on facebook will have seen that I went off on a bit of a rant recently about people (almost continuously) ‘becoming fans’ of often completely inane things. If you aren’t my friend on facebook, you aren’t really missing much, except me generally complaining that ‘it isn’t as good as twitter’. Here is a sample of my ire:

I’m on about shite like “Geoff became a fan of mobile phone chargers”. Seriously; they are useful, but being a fan would suggest waving a flag or buying a t-shirt or something. And I’m not planning on buying a t-shirt that says “Phone chargers – fuck yeah!”

So after a spot of delving through facebook’s new and less useful privacy and newsfeed controls, I discovered that I was stuck with all the ‘becoming a fan’ stories except for individually hiding the worst culprits from my homescreen. Thank goodness however for Google Chrome and it’s multitude of extensions chock full of scripty goodness. I have now installed the Better Facebook Fixer extension and now from within facebook I can turn off the types of news I don’t want to see in my feed. I’m sure Greasemonkey will do something similar for you Firefox types as well.

Thing is, that considering that facebook is meant to be about social networking, the amount of news, with the fan-page activity muted is so much lower. Lower to the extent that I get the impression that the actual social utility of facebook has been reduced, in favour of people clicking on banal crud. Hmm…

For more thoughts on this, why not become a fan of eep.me.uk…

Austrian Hash, originally uploaded by rob78.

I made dinner and photographed it. It was tasty so I thought I’d share.

Austrian Hash
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 large onion, chopped (the chunkier the better)
500g cooked, cold, chopped potatoes (I opted for a wedge format, but you don’t have to)
400g bacon lardons or chopped ham (I used normal bacon as it was what I had)
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1 teaspoon hot paprika (I used normal paprika with a pinch of chilli powder)
Handful of parsley, roughly chopped (I don’t like parsley, so chopped up a bunch of spring onions instead)

Method
1. Fry the onions and bacon in a large pan with vegetable oil until slightly browned, remove from pan and set aside.
2. Add more oil if necessary and fry potatoes for approximately 10-15 mins until golden brown.
3. Add the caraway seeds, hot paprika, salt+pepper and stir in for another minute.
4. Re-add the bacon and onions, stir well for a couple of minutes and serve.

Served with
A cheeky glass of Merlot from the bottle I opened at the weekend and fittingly, the Austrians generally owning the long-hill ski jump in the Winter Olympics. Followed by an out-of-date-but-otherwise-fine microwave chocolate pudding.

Verdict
Very nice. The spices gave it a nice interesting bite without being overly hot, everything went together very well. Ideal for a hassle free dinner, although I would go so far to say, an awesome weekend breakfast. The recipe I worked from suggested that one of the variations involved plonking a fried egg on the top when you served it. I don’t even like fried eggs but I was sorely tempted none the less. Only used a frying pan and one pot to boil the potatoes too – bonus.

And before you all cry [citation needed] the recipe was stolen from Mum and Dad’s newspaper a while ago, who in turn nicked it from the BBC food magazine. So there.

Found in google reader – I like it :)

Minimal.