Word of the day: Buttress

buttress [buht-tres]
-noun

1. A long lock or curl of hair on the bottom.
2. Any sort of arse hair.

Two McSnaffle Facts

There are two aspects of my character that have remained constant over the period of study (which is to say that they seem quite true today, and I half-remember them having being true at an undetermined point in the previousness).

These facts are as listed here:

1. I always eat too much at barbecues.

2. My hayfever is always worse after rain.

I suspect that the first is due to a combination of greed, and choice. I half-remember reading about a study that found that people tend to eat more when there is a wider choice of food available. Even a meal consisting of different coloured pasta resulted in the study participants eating more than they did when the same meal was presented with uniformly mono-chromatic pasta.

Barbecues, in my experience, tend to have a wide variety of tasty foodstuffs on offer.

Whatever the underlying cause, the current significance of these truths is that I attended a barbecue yesterday evening, and there was some light precipitation in the same time frame.

So this morning I have a rather sore tummy and a very drippy nose.

Larva in my dining chairs

The fixing holes in my wooden dining chairs are exactly the right size for an unidentified insect to hide its larva, swaddled in green leaves.

In all, six holes across three chairs have tell-tale little green leaves peeking out of them, and when I introduce the end of a sharp stick, each hole reveals a chrysalis or larva, orange-brown, gooey in death.

The chairs are in the conservatory, which is regularly exposed to the outside, for reasons of thermal ventilation.

More mysterious is why one chair was spared from the infestation/colonisation.

Bake with Compassion Week 7 - 13 June 2010

http://ciwf.org.uk/help_us/fundraising/bake_with_compassion/default.aspx

After all, why not?

Frijolemole

"A creamy chickpea & cannellini bean dip with coriander, chilli & cumin"

It's a spicy bean dip. With apologies to everyone in my office, but it's delicious.

Flapjack with coffee. And grit.

Grit can be a good thing.

Grittiness in particular can be a very good thing, particularly if the roads are icy. It's also good if it's related to a movie.

On the flip side, grittiness can be bad if it's found in food, like a flapjack or salad.

And in this case, on this particular occasion, it's in my flapjack.

Other than that, the flapjack would be very nice; nicely sticky and oaty.

Hot chocolate

...made with chocolate and double cream, and nothing else. Except maybe a spoonful of sugar, because this chocolate is brutally bitter.

The way nature intended.