Pinapple casserole

Never done a casserole before and I have a pineapple to use, so here goes.

Preheat oven to 200C

500g diced Cow meat
1/2 cup plain flour
Coriander
Keens Mustard, the name is so cool
Cajun
Ginger

All mixed together.

Then layer in a casserole dish in the following order:
Meat
1 large onion thinly sliced
1 tins worth Pineapple slices
1 tin of tomato (soup/diced/puree)
Generous amount of Worcestershire sauce
two layers of thinly sliced potato

Bung into the oven with the lid on for 50min.
Remove lid and let cook for another 25 min. The top potato should be crispy.

All in all that is a peculiar mix of flavors.

Graphically Significant

Whilst the correlation coefficient R2 is a terrific tool for quickly interpreting a calibration dataset, there are limitations. Sometimes you need a human to have a look. I was trying to explain this to somebody at work didn’t have a lot of success. Afterwards I found out about Anscombe’s Quartet. These are four graphs that show why statisticians exist. I changed the datasets a little so that the line of best fit would be near on perfect.

The first graph shows a fairly normal calibration dataset with too few samples. I’d be quite pleased if my first 10 samples showed this graph, the only issue would be to reduce the variation and collect more extreme samples. With this it seems the accuracy is ±1 unit.

The second graph would show perfect correlation if I was looking for a polynomial (y = -0.507x2 + 5.56x – 9.00 to be precise).

The third graph indicated to me that the data point at x6.5, y9.74 must be in error, possibly there was a typo in entering the data. All the other data points here give a perfect correlation to the formula y=0.6908x + 1.0056.

The fourth graph on the other hand is terrible; there really is no discernible line of best fit. Possibly there are only two samples and one of them has been repeated ten times.

Don’t try it with your English teacher, but for everybody else a picture is worth a thousand words.

Irish Coffee

For instant coffee:
    Place into mug the appropriate amount of coffee.
    Add sugar to taste.
    Add enough mild to cover the coffee, microwave for 30sec if you wish.
    Boiler water in kettle
    Add water to mug.
With a peculator or similar apparatus, follow their instructions for a long black.
Otherwise:
    Place an amount of water into a small saucepan proportional to the number of mugs you are making.
    Set the temperature high.
    Place the proportional amount of coffee into the pot, preferably ground coffee.
    When reaching a rolling boil remove from heat. If you have the time when simmering set to low heat.
    Decant coffee through a sieve/colander into your mug. With some practice the sieve is not required.
Then
Add a nip / finger of whisky to your mug. Irishness is not a prerequisite.
Add a sniff of nutmeg
Add a scoop of ice-cream, full fat.
Add on top of that a half teaspoon of cinnamon, ground.

Be wary of whiskers when drinking, they will collect ice-cream.
Also do not inhale sharply lest you remove all the cinnamon from the ice-cream.
Teaspoons are not required as the coffee will be self stirring. The ice-cream is less dense so it will float but as it melts it will, being colder, flow to the bottom of your mug. This displaces the hot coffee and sets up a convection current as the hot fluid tries to float past the ice cream.
With a boiling point of 78C the alcohol will not evaporate particularly quickly as I wouldn’t drink coffee if it was above 60C, so this can be considered an alcoholic beverage. Much better than a JägerBomb, that being another coffee alcohol drink made from a nip of Jägermeister in a can of Mother.

Bachelor Spag Bog

Been making this for years and only just realized that I have no set recipe. I defiantly at least need some photos as it is one of my staple meals for tea.
Start off with an onion. Top and tail it then dice it up.
Toss into saucepan with no oil on medium heat.
Cloves of garlic cut into disks with the back of the knife so they get a bit crushed, thrown onto onions. Add to taste 2-7.

 When the onion starts to brown, add your mince.
Preferably beef, ~125g for 2 people. More mince means leftovers.
Burn the mince a little for flavor if you like.
Add in a jar of pre made pretend to be pasta sauce. (Real sauce takes ~4hours to make and is wasted on a dish like this)
Stir
Add vegetable matter in the following order: Chunky frozen; Frozen or Chunky; Small and not frozen.
The volume of vegetable matter should slightly exceed the volume of mince.

 

When there are no frozen bits of vegetable, add pasta.
Stringy pasta is ill advised.
Shells and tubes restrict/accelerate the thermal flow of the saucepan making it more likely to burn on the bottom. They also contain hot sauce when you byte them.
Spirals and bowties are the ones I prefer.
By volume I add around the same amount of pasta as there are vegetables. Or fill up the saucepan.
Place the lid and reduce the heat.
As the pasta expands it fills the saucepan and becomes harder to stir. But if you don’t stir it it burns on the bottom and is hard to clean.

Serve when the pasta is done al-dente. Remove from heat. The pasta will continue cooking for a while due to residual heat.
Served with Perriperri/Tobasco sauce and topped with frozen grated cheese.

At the end you should have only used a cutting board one sharp knife one stirring implement and one saucepan.
I usually eat this in a bowl with a fork. When I have had my fill I’d place the rest in portion sized containers and place them into the freezer.

Salmon Pasta

Boil a handful of pasta, preferably spirals in a small pot.
When done el dente, tip out all the water. They will cook some more while mixing.
Return to the stove and turn the heat to minimum
Add 2 spoonful’s each of olive, capers, sundried tomatoes. Or whatever seems best.
Also add in a drained tin of salmon. Then stir through
When mixed turn of the heat and add some Parmesan cheese, stirring again.
My saucepan is small enough that I can eat this meal directly out of it.

Leaving the heat on whilst stirring, helps dry off the preservatives from the fish and veggies. This is supposed to be a dry dish, not a sloppy one. The good thing about it is that it is easy to make enough for only one person and all the ingredients can be left in the cupboard until opened, but then need to be refrigerated after use. If I haven’t finished off the olives and things in a week or so then everything goes into spag bog.

Languages

A language changes the way that you think. I really enjoyed the book “Sophie’s World” because it was translated to English and is about philosophy. Some cultures have concepts that are really hard to translate into English, purely because there are no words to describe any of it. So for a long time I have thought wouldn’t it be cool to speak a foreign language. But in my early years of schooling I kept changing languages, French, then German then Indonesian. All Indonesian did was make my English spelling go from bad to worse. And so by the time I finished school, all I can really do is count to ten and say Hi.



Arabic sounds musical and looks very arty when written, but there doesn’t seem to be many interesting things in Arabic culture. Like most of the countries that speak it have been at war for centuries and I don’t think I’d have much reason to speak to those people. Maybe the Turks would be interesting. I like the stories of Lawrence of Arabia, Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor.

Russian I like because I got romantic ideas of the country from reading “War and Peace” when I was in primary school. Also before that we had a game called Troika, that was a series of puzzle games. None of it was in English and that made it more fun than it otherwise would have been.

Spanish, I could be like Zorro, or Don Quixote. One day I plan to do that pilgrimage where you walk across Spain but I don’t know when. I also still like fencing. So there may be opportunities to use this language in the future and it be useful. Maybe I could go and see Carlos in Columbia, the bloke I boarded with at Uni.

Japanese has only recently become interesting. Mainly because of anime but also because of my old SNES games. Part of the allure of them is the foreign language and the alternate fantasy settings, their spirituality is nothing like ours. Subtitled is definitely better than dubbed and I’ve picked up the odd word through repetition. This is probably a language I can use with computer games. Plus Brother Jo is quite good at it, so I have at least one person to practice talking to. And using a skill like this is the only way to keep it. I have learnt quite a few programming languages not that I have never used once I learnt them. It seem like a bit of a waste of effort now.



These are the ones that I have been more interested in. German and French are a bit too familiar for my liking. Particularly German I seem to be able to guess what topic people are talking about from a paragraph or two. There are enough words that sound the same. Also these languages use the same Cyrillic alphabet and my Indonesian experience tells me that my spelling and grammar will get worse from reading it.

There is also ancient Greek and Hebrew. If I decide to be a Lutheran pastor a part of the training includes reading transcriptions of the original translations, Dad and Brother Levi can already do this. But there would not be many day-to-day uses for either of these languages.

Oh and there is chemistry, that qualifies as a language too, although I’m getting a bit rusty in it of late.

Why am I still interested in learning a new language? I like learning; I still think it’s romantic. It will also be useful in the eighth continent, the internet, when playing computer games. I believe everybody in the world should be able to play games together, League of legends is a good example of this, or at least it was. I remember trying to talk to people in Spanish.

I also have a fondness for fantasy, LOTR, TOME, ADOM, SLASH’EM, those sort of acronyms. It’s nice to hear where a culture was developed and how they base their outlook on life. Some cultures fundamentally believe in Original Sin, they need to work hard to learn to be good. Some believe they are destined to be god, if only they work hard enough. Some that there is nothing after death but the decaying flesh and so we should enjoy it while it lasts. For some people their ancestors are sacred, for some it is sportsmen, some have holy ground and others holy relics. Note that your philosophic outlook on life is fundamentally tied to your parent’s religious beliefs. The way that you express yourself and communicate is colored by the means that you use to communicate.



So when will I get the motivation required to fluently speak another language? Can I find someone somewhere to practice enough to be fluent?

What was PNG like?

Well, surprisingly similar to home actually. Since the main reason for the trip was to see my baby sister we didn’t really do much touristy stuff. It was king of more a bum around my sister’s house than an overseas trip.
After a while if figured out what made everything seem familiar. It’s the power points. They are the same as home. Then from this things like the Urn and TV were exactly as you should see in Perth. They also had similar TV stations and I was in the same time zone. Locals still have competitions with their neighbors as to who has the best lawn in their front yard. There were lots of things that felt familiar.
It was sort of a cross between Cambodia and Murray Bridge. I only got out and about much in Madang. So the Villages may feel different. Strangely enough the whole country seemed more civilized that the aboriginal communities that I have been to in Australia. Eg. I felt underdressed when we went to church.
When we were in Gaubin we stayed mostly in the hospital complex. But on our trip up the mountain we did see some nice wooden housed that made it feel more like another country. Also the fences were interesting. Mostly they were a series of saplings stuck in the ground. Nothing bigger than a mouse would be able to get through them. I don’t know what happens when the trees get big.
I don’t really feel like giving a blow-by-blow detailed diary entry on the trip. So some of the other highlights were:
PtMorseby Flight getting delayed a day. Chatting to an English couple, both called Alex, who helped organize a stopover in Lanbada Hotel. Pretty swish.
Getting heatstroke in Madang from walking between all the marketplaces.
Spending an entire day on a copra boat to get to Karkar island.
Sleeping on a couch, listening to German primary school classes most mornings.
Snorkeling most afternoons (apparently the weather was terrible).
Walk up a volcano, 5 hours to get there, 1 hour sleep at the top while the guides tried to start a fire, 3 hours to get back down.
2 big, bring a plate, feasts for tea. This after Nicole put us onto her starvation diet.
Each night, going to bed later and later because, we were getting better at playing 500.
Actually learning how to play 500, along with Kristina and Nicol, Levi was the teacher.
Skipping with the school kids, haven’t been skipping for years.
New food, always a highlight, although I didn’t take many photos. Also cold hotdogs with mayonnaise instead of cheese are terrible.
Being a German missionary for a week.
Hospital tour. Seemed like they can do nearly everything there and they see patients quicker and have more spare beds than any of the hospitals at home.
My flippers were nicked on the last day in Gaubin.
The last day in Madang I got a rash allover my back or bed bugs or something, was all scabby for a week after. These were the low-lights, but still noteworthy.
People
People make the place after all.

There done all written up, this took me about an hour to write. But I tell a similar story in only ten minutes somatically. Now all I need to do is add some photos and bung it on the blog. I may proofread it, maybe not.
Turns out I'm not motivated to put any pictures up after all.