Gingerbread Tardis

Tardis
"Hello, I'm the Doctor."

In light of some difficult family circumstances, I decided to take a night and do something silly. I had a friend over, one with whom I am in the habit of watching Doctor Who. While the result wasn’t quite as good as some other gingerbread Tardises on the internet, I am very happy to present photographs from last night’s project.

Usually, when I make something creative with gingerbread, I use a lot of red food colouring. You know, for the blood.

This time, however, the carnage was only an afterthought. I didn’t mean for there to be such a high death toll. Honest! And further, I think that the massacre was relatively tasteful for me.

The only cookie cutters I own
The only cookie cutters I own

The real reason why there was so many dead people is not because of the (very adorable) gingerbread Daleks. It’s mostly because I only own cookie cutters that have pieces missing from them. (Thanks for the present, Steph!)

You’ll note that even the gingerbread man who I assume is supposed to be the Doctor (the one who is halfway inside the Tardis) is missing his hand. My interpretation of this is that this is a scene from the few seconds during which the Doctor had his hand cut off by the Sycorax before it regenerated. This makes sense, because that happened during the “Christmas Invasion Special,” and it’s a gingerbread Tardis, so it should be on a Christmas theme, after all.

Tardis and bodies
"Exterminate!"

A bacon-related death

I used to have the phone number for my little sister’s landlord programmed into my phone. I forget why, exactly, but one day, a couple years ago, I accidentally sent the following text to the landlord’s number rather than my little sister’s:

“I am about to die a bacon-related death.”

My little sister’s landlord replied, “I don’t know who you are, but whoever you are, stop eating bacon!”

Fried foods

Cheesy bacon log
Cheesy bacon log

I make it no secret that I love greasy, fried foods.

In fact, as a sort of going-away present, when I left London last year, some of my old friends made me a bacon weave roll with chese for breakfast one morning and delivered it to my house. And yes, it was just as good as it sounds.

This morning, I fried up a couple of eggs in butter and I wondered: Why is it that fried eggs are less healthy than boiled eggs? Is it just the added oils from the butter, or is there something that the frying process does to the egg itself?

I mean, there can’t be any nutrients that are lost when it’s fried. Where would they go? It’s not like boiling vegetables, where half the nutritional value leaches into the water, which is poured off. If any nutrients are lost, it must be that they get de-natured or something through the process of frying.

If anyone can tell me what it is that makes boiling eggs so much healthier than frying them, I will award them 3 points. Is it that something actually happens to the egg that makes it less healthy, or is it that so much oil is added that it takes away from the healthiness of the egg?

Weird to find this in the pages of one of your books

Eat a hamburger. Do it now.
Eat a hamburger. Do it now.

Pickles was looking through some of the books that we don’t plan to keep, either because we have multiple copies, or because we don’t like the book enough to keep it around forever, and she found this. It’s a post-card sized advertisement for the beef that McDonald’s uses in its hamburgers. She was using it as a bookmark at some point in the past.

This is just weird.

If you can give me a good translation of the Chinese phrase at the bottom of the advertisement, you will be awarded 4 points.

Chilli

Making chilli in our new kitchen
Making chilli in our new kitchen

When we moved, the cooler opened itself up in the back of the truck. We had packed in there all the unused food that we had in London and planned to bring to Montréal. So when we arrived, opened the back door of the truck and saw a single jar of freezer jam fall out and smash on the street, we were initially very concerned about rest of the contents of the cooler – where had they gone? Were they oozing into our mattress?

Fortunately, the spill was very local, but all the meats that we had packed were thawed. That sounds like bad news, but what it meant is that Pickles has been busy for the past day or so cooking up lots and lots of chilli. This is good news indeed.

Our new kitchen is a bit smaller than the old one, but as you can see in the photo, we can fit our chest freezer inside it, which we couldn’t do in our old place. Also, we have a brand-new stove here, and a reasonably new and clean refrigerator. There is a little pantry just to the side of our kitchen, where we can keep food that doesn’t need to be refrigerated, before we eat it, and so the fact that it’s a little smaller doesn’t mean that we’ll be too cramped in it or anything.