Lately, there's been an advertising campaign telling women to kick their men out of bed. It's known nas the lenor complex - the duvet and sheets smell so good, that you find excuses to get the bed alone. Strange knickers in the glove box, claiming that the postmans at the door or even accidently kicking the door closed when they go out for the milk.

This time, I've won the the war of the duvet. The bed is mine and only the cats with the smelly bums are there to contend. For Girlpants has gone away to places exotic. Another jolly. Only this time, he gets to shiver his skinny arse in Guernsey...

There is a God :o)

An island in the channel. With half a tanker visable offshore. And wind chill. The hotel does sound wonderful, and he gets to teach in the local Christian Centre. He didn't sound impressed but personally, I think it sounds wonderful. I think that he making a big deal of it and his complaining, but it's only because how he's feeling. Despite the meal, university expenses and the big queen size bed, he still misses me.

I may really really miss him.

But I don't miss the cold feet.

And I love the fact I have all of the duvet...

 So this evening I decided to cook a meal for Girlpants. Japanese chicken with peppers, teriyaki salmon, dim sum & Sim special fried rice, number 35.

Only it didn't work out that way.

The chicken itself was tasty as the recipe had been followed through to the letter. The dim sum was a Sainsbury's special and the salmon was steamed to perfection. However, the Sim special rice, number 35 was fubared beyond recognition.

How on earth do you mange to puree rice? I would have never believed it possible, but hey ho - there was a pile of big white chilli mush with prawns and peas. Baby food with big giant taste the difference prawns. Food made with the raw ingredients with my own two incy wincy hands. Big big disaster.

I haven't had a disaster like this since I first tried to fry steak. I say fry. I mean defrost. I say steak. I mean the cheap type of Dale pack steaks that were ready frozen and I had bought in the mistaken belief that I could impress my now ex-wanker bastard boyfriend from hell with a full on steak chips and peas scenario. You see, the problem I have with ready made food is that I can't cook it. Girlpants loves this fact as it means that the roast beef in the house moo's when it comes out of the oven. But it means that any ready made meal that comes out of the kitchen is either smoking, black or if applied, has the ability to kill off any taste buds.

On that night however, I learnt that Dalepack steaks look nothing like the real thing. I learnt that they are shaped in an odd kidney like fashion from regurgitated leftovers from the mince in the aisles. And that they explode into a sodden brown pool when you attempt to defrost them in a microwave. All over the long dress that I stuffed my bumps and bulges into, whilst unwillingly parting with my beloved jeans for the evening. And then came the one sentance that any women would be legally allowed to beat a man into a pulverised mash...

EWBBFH - Never mind luv - I'll send you out for chips.

Deflated? Punched more like. I had taken my measly student allowance and bought what I had believed in my "never really cooked before" life was a fantastic meal. Only to have it explode into shrapnel. All over me. And today, that feeling came back as number 35 slobbered from spoon onto plate.

And yet Girlpants ate every slimy spoonful. Despite his absurd hatred of rice pudding.

Now that's love.

Last night, my mother actually went out into the public domain whilst wearing a leopard skin print top.

If only it looked that good...

NB - Despite what others might think, I am personifying my mother as cuddly, not as a dog!

It was taken off the web today - Anthony Worrall Thompson once upon a time, a long long time ago wrote a recipe that could occasionally be made for a children's party. He never said feed the entire Snickers Pie to your 2yr old, but it has now been taken off the BBC recipe website for being 1250 calories a slice - thats the equivalent of 22 teaspoons of fat and 11 teaspoons of sugar. it only took them more than two years to work this one out - maybe if they had a slice, it would help the hamster turn the wheel a little more quickly...

If this was a pie made with double sided razer blades that was advised to be partaken in once every fortnight, I wouldn't have a problem. But it's a pie. For special occasions. Eaten once every two years, it surely can not do much harm to you unless you were diabetic. Or on a strict macrobiotic diet. Personally, if I was on Atkins eat all you can eat, then I would eat this pie once every three days. But in the wish to retain my svelte figure, I shall eat a piece in my mind.

But in the interest of choice, the recipe in it's entirety is here.

Ingredients
1 packet puff pastry
140g/5oz mascarpone
110g/4oz soft cheese
50g/2oz caster sugar
3 eggs
5 Snickers bars, chopped roughly

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400/Gas 6.
2. Roll pastry to 3-4mm thick and use to line a 20cm/8in fluted tart tin.
3. Beat the mascarpone, soft cheese and sugar together in a large bowl, until smooth.
4. Beat in eggs, one at a time.
5. Add the Snickers bars and fold in.
6. Pour into a lined tart tin, and spread to the edges.
7. Place in the oven for 10 minutes, then lower to 180C/350/Gas 4 for a further 25 minutes until golden and set.

Allow to cool before serving

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Meanwhile, for the most part, I shall spend most of this afternoon trying to irrigate the fat clogging up my arteries.

Maybe Mister Muscle can help...

My bleeding eyes.. and Girlpants bleeding ears!

We've just spent the last hour watching a programme that others have been talking about for the past couple of days. First aired on the fourth channel of ye olde box, Extraordinary Breastfeeding was a factual and sympathetic examination into four different women who were breastfeeding their children.

There is Veronika who is still breastfeeding her 7ry old, while her eldest has asked if she can be breastfed from "milky-yoo" and "milky-yuu" as a present for her tenth birthday. When her younger child was born, her then 65yr old mother helped with the breastfeeding duties until Veronika was used to tandem feeding, whilst hubby felt left out and joined in to be more involved. There is Dolores and her husband who are about to adopt a little girl from China, whom she then tries to breastfeed whilst nursing her 5yr old son. There was also Kirsty works for an breastfeeding organisation - she taught her 2yr daughter to call her breasts "bitty" and is an ardent supporter of a womans right to nurse in public by organising protests for a womens right to breastfeed in public by organising a "nurse in" at the local shopping centre after feeding her child at the checkout counter in Tesco's. And finally, there's 38yr old Sophie, who was tandem-feeding her two-year-old twins on demand whilst her marriage is effectively on hold, her husband misses spending time with her and with her two older children, feel to a certain extent left out of her life.

As a 30yr old married women with no children, I have no problem with women breastfeeding in public. Sisters and friends have nursed their children in front of me with no embarrassment, and no-one in my family feels discomfort from seeing mothers nurse their children. But I did feel discomfort watching as a woman tried to nurse a child that wasn't born from her womb who clearly wasn't interested in mummy milk, despite repeated efforts to try and make her nurse. Girlpants clearly winced when the grandmother admitted breastfeeding her grandchildren and admittedly, we were both disturbed by seeing a 7yr old stretch out on the sofa to be breastfeed, only to then place two apples down her shirt, look at herself in the mirror and announce that she was going to breastfeed herself when her own breasts had grown. And I did have a problem watching a woman nurse her child whilst wheeling a trolley around Tesco's, whilst checking off her shopping list in the fresh meat aisle.

Observers also gave their opinions at the nurse-in - one man said breastfeeding encourages "paedo-fiddlers", he's mistaken. Paedo-fiddlers don't exist and paedophiles are not at all interested in boobs. I can understand a womens wish to nurse their child when and where they can, as breast milk is a good source or nutrients, enzymes and to a point, antibodies against diseases. But as House said, there is a point to when "yummy mummy milk" can only do so much, which is why a child needs more supplements and inoculations. WHO recommends breastfeeding up and beyond 2yrs of age, but they are concerned with the bigger world picture where most countries can not get the supplements and nutrients to their child, and in some cases, can't even get enough food. The West is different with it's wealth - maybe this is why the West views breastfeeding the way it does. And whilst I don't think that a woman should be forced to stop feeding their child, but there has to be a point when the child grows up.

And 7 took the biscuit.

Now please excuse me whilst I go hug my boobs.

A few years ago, there were queues of cars panic buying petrol as truckers and protester's barricaded the petrol depots, protesting at the amount of 70% tax that we pay on our fuel here in ye olde UK. The plain fact is that we pay the highest prices in Europe for petrol, whilst the fuel from our supplies in the North Sea are piped elsewhere.

This political argument has been going on for years with the truckers and business people. Let's face it - we know that it's a fossil fuel that isn't going to replenish overnight. For all the solar panels or wind turbines, cars still need black gold.

So I was quite pleasantly surprised this afternoon when Girlpants sent me a link for a new group. Pipeline are a new group that knows just how much profit is made by the corporations. They offer a deal with an unknown supplier who offers 5p-10p off a litre for all members. Membership is free but they need over 100,000 members for the discount to work and once they have the numbers, then all members will benefit from the discount by using the preferred supplier.

So go on people - save yourself some mullah and register

Either I received my last Christmas card of the year this morning, or my first. I decided that I would plump for the latter, just to take the Christmas card pressure off a good friend whom I've only met once.

Herr Bradburn was at the wedding of two of my close Germanic friends. Unlike our usual repertoire of drunken debauchery and getting naked in a hot tub, this time, all of us ex-Japan gaijin were on our best behaviour. No Kraftwerk karaoke, falling arse over tits or swigging back mizu-wari, which used to be the case in Iwate-Ken - when you're in a country as different to your own, you tend to congrgate in groups that you would have never joined when at home. In Japan, it was anybody who looked remotely western. You used to spend weeks trying to talk broken English to students whilst failing miserably with Japanese. Mainly because they have four (that's right - count it. FOUR!) alphabets that you have to try to remember. I spent a lot of my drinking hours in Japanese bars off the o-dori trying to find gai-jin and eventually bumped into the Germans. Since leaving Japan, we're not in contact as much. The occassional email or card, gossip or phone call. So when we do try and get together, we do. Boris & Erika's wedding was one such occassion. And I was the "only" British bod there. And I had only been learning German for the three months before the wedding.

Ah!

So imagine my glee when I found my own personal gaijin in the form of Ed. Mister Ed had been living in Germnay for some years and was the beau of "el maiden del heilo" who wondered off within the first five seconds of the meal ending. So as good Brits, we propped up bar and drank to our hearts content until the wee hours of the morning. We chatted, ranted, gossiped and matched each other drink for drink to the point that I missed the throwing of the bouquet. Although we only met the once, young master Ed and I have kept in touch - sadly again, this is now sporadic, but to solace himself in my emotional absence, mister Ed took to learning the flute, drinking wine, joining a Irish group, changing job, dating beautiful skinny women and basically getting on with life. Amazingly enough, for only meeting the once, we have kept in touch, laughing / talking about any old crap that would pop into our heads, whilst running up our phone bills into the early hundreds.

So thank you young master Bradburn for the card. Will stalk you later ;o)