Read it in the voice of Harley Morenstein AKA Sauce-boss! Back to the matter in hand, mediocre hot sauce. I'm not a connoisseur, apparently I have no idea how to spell the word connoisseur! Anyway I am not one, I am but a fan of spicy liquids. Where does this perverse tendency burst forth from? I hear you whisper. Perhaps from my lineage...as previously mentioned I am descended from a race of volcano dwelling tree folks. Ah we would feast upon the magma or lava, there is a difference despite the words being used interchangeably, regularly, in day to day speech. And I know what you're thinking how do tree folk survive in the extreme heat of their chosen volcano habitat? Well we would clad ourselves in confidence thus allowing us to do pretty much anything. I'm obviously being ridiculous as confidence does not give you the ability to do anything, competence does.
It's liquid rock!
Yeah so back to the spicy not so great sauce. I was having a casual shop in Sainsburys for my weekly supplies. My diet consists of mainly fruit and veg with a little bread/pasta/rice for good measure. There was a time when I viewed carbohydrates as the bane of my existence. I don't remember the last time I had sugar, urgh I've become one of those guys! I spot a hot sauce for sale in the reduced produce bit, £1.50 or thereabouts. I am a fan and owing to my phaseleresque tendency to try things I've never tried before, I convince myself to pop it in my trolley. I say convince I basically saw it and immediately put it in my trolley. This tendency was mentioned before, here. Shop done and I'm home time to workout and onwards to lunch! Now I decide to douse my salad in the new hot sauce. It's terrible, it's like ketchup without a kick. I despair before remembering I have an ingredient that adds heat without adding flavour...1,000,000 scoville concentrated pepper extract!
See the neck of the bottle?
Now that blackness is pretty much the colour that the extract is. Well I suppose it's more of a deep, dark red. I add a drop or two and shake the bottle with vigour. I am clad in confidence, based on the previous underwhelming experience of the sauce. It was misplaced I end up having to wash it off several pieces as my mouth, lips, eyes etc. can take nay more!
That's the little label that came with the bottle you can purchase it here if you'd really like. Looks like it was a originally a restaurant that sells a signature sauce.
I should explain the choice of video at the beginning. I love this song! It's upbeat but has an underlying melancholic quality.
I had heard this on MTV many, many years ago and forgotten the name of the song. During a chance MSN conversation with a lovely young lady named Georgia, sweet Georgia, I asked for a song suggestion. She insisted I listen to Hi Tack - Say Say Say. I ignored her suggestion and wandered off into the aether of the internet. Days, perhaps weeks, passed and I asked for another song suggestion. She suggested the same song. This time I found it and was pleasantly surprised! Managed to backtrack and find the original from Georgia's suggestion. Some background on Georgia: Crazy mad swimming skills...that's all I know about Georgia! Just looked her up and she's an ecologist at some kind of environmental concern. Environmental it's the worst kind of mental. Not really the worst kind of mental just a joke I repeat every time I hear, see or smell any word ending in mental. For example fundamental, experimental, instrumental. Oh and I've just remembered that Linda McCartney is in it as well! I had no idea who she was and now I know much more.
I was summoned to a meeting this past weekend. Now I've been involved in any number of projects that never really got off the ground. But this one actually looks like it might. There was a lot of talk of what we'd need. I was extremely out of my depth. I rarely write something with a focus. I let my mind loose and this blog with it's soul destroying word count is the result. But having a crack at fiction has been fun thus far. I get carried away very easily. So I've written a few thousand words already but it was fun! And I suppose that's the point. I write because it's fun :-D Oh and I may have to cease my unceasing effusion of cool stuff I saw online. The meeting descended into a round of subtledildo. Search #subtledildo to see what all the fuss is about.
Incidentally I was reminded of a tale from my final year at university. I may return one day, actually I've been back every year since for one reason or other. Anyway a lovely red haired lady, we first met in the Somerset countryside. I had just skinned my knee prior to a four day process that involved a lot of kneeling. I have the best luck...in the world! She had posted a picture of her alarm clock in her work handbag. Reminds
me of the time I popped off to purchase a pillow in between lectures.
My brother had specifically requested a memory foam pillow for his 16th,
peculiarity clearly runs in the family. I arrive at the last lecture of
the day with a big bag full of pillow. Oddly enough I was notorious for
dozing off in the odd lecture and now I'd arrived prepared with my new
fancy pillow! Click here to reminisce about my redheadedness
Here's a vid of a blacksmith making Thor's hammer!
Starting with a classic, can't go wrong right? Wrong, that is rather difficult to understand but I'll assume you're all rather clever. Why wrong, mostly because this song has become associated with the ever popular spinning member gif. If you are unfamiliar with the rotating meat I am referring to then I urge you NOT to google it. Sooner or later it'll likely enter your life and you will be forever scarred/giggly/curious.
So after a month of furious dieting, I get pretty furious when I am calorie restricted, I have lost around 6.5kg. That's just over a stone or 14 pounds. Which puts me back at the weight I was this time last year and the same weight I was in 2007! Do you get my circular reference yet?
Just as the fat is rendering off my physique I get an offer I can rarely refuse, all you can eat buffet! This was offered to me by my fellow crafstman Swapnal. One of a few socially accepted situations for eating more than what is considered civilised/ necessary/ humanly possible. Naturally I headed online to my all you can eat go to guy, Furious Pete. He's a competitive eater who holds the world record for eating a 12 inch pizza in the fastest time, anyone care to guess? 43 seconds. Yep and what makes it more impressive is that you have to use a knife and fork, only eat one slice at a time and whatever is on your fork has to go in your mouth. Oh and he's super ripped.
His advice is to get value for money. Aim to eat three times the cost of the buffet e.g. £20 buffet = £60 worth of food consumed. Eat meat is pretty much the order of the day and high end seafood. Now this sits well with me as I'm planning on only eating protein. But the buffet plan runs out of steam and I'm sat with all this buffet wisdom and nothing to do with it. Like the majority of facts rattling around in my sponge-like brain.
I did have the joy of sitting in several carparks for several hours, this past week. Well that's to do with my current occupation, still steeped in secrecy so I'll leave y'all to draw your own conclusions. Whilst sat in one of the car parks I noticed a lady wearing a cardigan, clutching a fistful of it around the collar bone area. Not so strange as bag straps rest around that area and are notorious for slipping off shoulders. The strange bit is that she was speaking to her hand. As she approached I observed that she was in fact speaking to a puppy that was wrapped in her cardigan around the collar bone area! I also saw a lady who was part of the housekeeping team at Lincoln County, I think here name was Moira. She once told me about how she likes to add whey protein to hot chocolate. I've tried that and it just goes all lumpy and terrible.
I also had the chance to sample Morrison's fresh ground coffee, it's truly terrible. Weak and lukewarm. Maybe I just like overly strong coffee. Then again I once had an espresso that's right not expresso but espresso. A truth that was revealed to me by a co worker by the name of Chris. Back to that one time I tried and espresso, it was terrible. But terribly strong not terrible full stop. The acquaintance I was frequenting the establishment with commented that their dad drinks espresso and asked me why I'd gotten espresso? My answer was because I'd never had one before. I did the same with root beer once whilst attempting my one and only eating challenge to date. It's like fizzy deep heat, not my cup of tea. I guess I owe my tendency to try things I never have from Senor Phaseler Yeah so don't bother with Morrison's coffee is what I'm saying.
And now onto the controversy with Frank's Redhot sauce. I knew from previous...observation? I'd read the bottle. I knew it was high in salt and sugar. Strange I know that a hot sauce would be high in sugar! But it is made from peppers and so it makes sense that there's a fair bit of sugar in the concentrated sauce. Somehow or other I end up looking up the product on Amazon. They sell it in bigger bottles and they also have the option to purchase a 3.78 litre bottle. Scale often defeats me so imagine your classic 2.272 litre bottle of milk or 4 pinter in old money. This bottle of hot sauce is 66% bigger! I know statistics make everything way more exciting (!)
1000 words?
Not sure if you can see the label, click pic to enlarge. Says there zero sugar! Now this does not tally with my previous observation. So after a few days of not reading the bottle I've got kicking about the house I read it, lo and behold there's loads of sugar present, at least according to the label. Now I'd been off the hot sauce because of all the salt and sugar. But this confusion left me wanting some spiciness in my life. So I decide to get it out of my system and douse my salad in red hot. Made it a whole lot more interesting. Now I know you all trust me to the ends of the earth but seeing is believing, right? Wrong! Anyone seen swordfish? The film not the animal.
Click to make enormous!
You know this is my desk for sure. For one my centuries old phone is in the background, still works btw. Likely mentioned that the calender runs out, as in when you try and scroll past the 31st of December 2014 it won't let you. It's Y2K all over again! Albeit on a very local level. You may have spotted the scuffed coaster, JD coasters boi! I get JD freebies on account of being awesome. Passport holder, keyrings, calenders, ice cube bags, spice rub, basting brush, signage, cocktail mixer and so on! There is also the egg on top of the reflective ting to the left of the picture. The reflective thins is a another freebie I got from 3M the egg is hewn from onyx. My broskis theory is that if you can get it hatch then you'll get an actual onix.
Cropped and zoomed for your viewing pleasure.
You can see my centuries old phone! Yeah so what's the deal Franks!?!? Why the sugar in your super market stuff? But not in the mahoosive bottles available on amazon!!?!! I think it's a fifo stock management thing but I did briefly go all conspiracy theory an think it was a ploy to keep the UK hooked in a diet that was way too high in sugar. Well now you know...
My dear old dad has exited the country en route to the land of my ancestors, Magrathea. If you get that reference then there is a very special place in my heart for you :-D I am of course descended from people who lived in the vicinity of the Indus valley. Before departing I was asked what I considered success. I gave a generally woolly answer, not a fan of answering such big questions. Something along the lines of it's different for different people. Cash = success, perhaps. I think I landed on leaving the world better than you found it.
Ooh and my old, old dog. Long time readers will be familiar with the living legend that is Tim the Labrador. He featured in my first few blog posts and I recently asked my brother how old he was. Tim lives with me but I am terrible at remembering how old anyone is. He's thirteen, fourteen on the 18th of March next year. Now for some reason or other I thought he was only eleven. Thirteen is ruddy old for a labrador! According to a calculator that makes him 86. In another two years and four months he'd be 100!
He's being have, get it? You can read the older stuff about my awesomely old dog here and here.
Around this time for the past few years I get a bit of a louder shout from life, universe and everything.
2012 my little brother went to uni
2013 I became ruptured two discs and became pretty much paralysed from the waist down
2014 more people moving away, death and cancer.
The death was in a friends family, tragically young. The cancer has nothing to do with anyone I know. Well there is a lovely young lady who is kicking hodgkins lymphoma's ass right now. I know her in so much as I spoke to her whilst representing my house, Johnson, in the the interhouse netball tournie. I sprained my ankle for the millionth time during that tournie. She writes a blog! The cancer that surprised me this time was Furious Pete's. The fella I mentioned earlier. Turns out he had a cancerous testicle, he had it removed and it appears that it hadn't spread so the outlook is promising. His message subsequently was to seek out help if you need it. Don't wait. So this is me repeating that sound advice. Tell someone, call someone, do something.
He says it much better than I do.
So as not to end of such a sombre note here is a fantastic disneyfied cake to fulfil your cake gif needs.
I am ever so sober but I've ingested an inordinate amount of caffeine so tired as I am I can't quite drift off. Tonight is a bit of a blur but here are my cliff notes, for those of you who weren't quite as sober.
It started with a standard stop off at Tescos where I purchased far too much proteinous food. We then progressed to Swapnal's. Subsequent to unloading my shtuff out of the car I proceeded to hand him something wrapped in bubble wrap.
Hot nuts
Does what it says on the tin. There's actually a little message on the tin as to why they've named these nuts so. I then hand him something else wrapped in bubble wrap. This was something I'd thought about at great length. Swapnal likes hot, spicy things and he's rather partial to alcomahol. Of course I came up with chilli vodka! After extensive research, utilising the methodology of G.O.O.G.L.E I found that most recipes recommended infusing your vodka for several weeks. I had 1 week...so I had to get a little creative to ensure a sufficient kick was present.
I finely chopped several chillies and added them to a bottle of vodka. I then proceeded to intermittently agitate and heat the bottle to ensure the speed of infusion. Unconvinced that this would do the trick I invested in a bottle of this:
Of course I had no idea how much of this to add so I poured a couple of drams out and added a couple of drops. Thinking to myself "How hot can it be?" I swirl the concoction, so as to evenly distribute the angry looking dark red liquid. I then swiftly draw it in to my mouth and swill it about. It is at that moment that I experience the hottest thing I have ever tasted. Not only was the burn epic it lasted for about 15 minutes and I could feel it all the way down to my stomach. So I add a single drop to a litre and take the extract along incase it's not enough.
Waiting around for the rest of the party to arrive we ended up playing poker. James wins, he appears to be making a habit of that. This won't do at all. Mark has disappeared home under the guise of grabbing a shower and change of clothes. But we all knew he was waiting so he could arrive with Mandaz. Oh and Tammy!
Mark left work at around 17:00 and he arrived at around 19:40. Not gonna analyse it, just pointing out something of a temporal anomaly. Upon arrival he starts tucking in to the pizza that Swapnal had kindly purchased for the party. Which somewhat confused the assembled masses as we had been informed by text that he had just frequented the chippie down the road. I don't think I'll ever understand Mark Taylor, an enigma wrapped in a pouch.
Vicky arrives and briefly says hello I inquire about where she works. I remember her vaguely mentioning the Co-op so I inquire and she explains using Sainsburys as a reference point. I once went to look at a Mazda Takuya down there the salesman knew the owner of the accountancy practice I'd just finished some work experience at.
I am then victim of some social jujitsu, getting someone to talk about themselves. The question is flipped and I'm asked what do I do? Well I do lot's of things but it can't really be considered a role. Consulting Swapnal he tries to explain what I've been doing lately, reconfiguring data. But that's not what I was doing 4 months ago. And what I was doing four months ago isn't what I was doing from December 2012 - May 2013. All for the same umbrella of companies. It's only confusing when I try to explain it to someone else. Vicky brings out the awesomeness that is face cake! It's a cake, already awesome, with the birthday boys face on it!
It is now that Eleanor and Mr. Manchester arrive. First name Josh last name Manchester, or at least that's what Eleanor would have you believe. Sound enough lad even if we didn't really get a chance to chat. Now we load up some shots of the chillified vodka. The general opinion is that it's horrible. Myself and my fellow craftsman thought it had a nice burn to it. Ooh and Ellegator gives me a birthday card! It has a tash on it! In my infinite wisdom I left it round Swapnal's house :-/
I'm flying high after that shot and Swapnal cracks open a bottle of Cobra King. I'm making my way to the bin deposit the remains of recently devoured chicken thigh and am frozen in my tracks by the possibility of a cork to the face. Swapnal being the gentleman that he is grants me safe passage before unleashing the cork.
After a little more chatter beer pong inevitably rears it's head. The form has been slightly modified to include my devastating chilli concoction. The girls in a fit of surreptitious sensibleness had hidden it away! But Swapnal engaged his craftometer to full craftiness and extracted it from whence it was hidden.
Expression on display: hmmm with a hint of trepidation?
There is a dry run to demonstrate how this whole thing is to go down and then the games begin! First blood to the girls and Swapnal manfully downs some beer. Mark gets the ball in and Amandas has to down a beer but she gets her own back immediately and Mark takes his time with his beer. You can't rush Mark, he likes to savour...everything! There are a flurry of misses but then Swapnal lands the ball in one of the shmaller cups! They contain the pain of vodka that has been infused with chilli extract, fresh chilli, cinnamon and mace. Vicky downs it like a champ. It is now that the formations of cups begin to change. They morph into a big back line with the one remaining small cup on at the front for the girls. Mr. Manchester gets one in and Eleanor has to down one, followed by Vicky. The lads have a slim lead. Then this happens:
It's all level, three big cups and one small cup left to go. The formation changes again and Mark is not a fan. He is berated for moaning so he busts out his impression of Tammy, it's not received well. As chance would have it we end up with the last two cups being the tiny ones that contain the pain. After many rounds of fruitless ponging an executive decision is taken, to transfer the contents of the smaller cups into a bigger one. Thus hopefully bringing this epic battle to a conclusion sooner rather than later. The girls win and celebrate in adequately exuberant fashion.
A little talking here n there is punctuated with a pork pie. These particular pies contain pickle thus offsetting the richness of the awesome porky filling. I lie I actualy consumed two pies! Mark makes his inevitable way towards Swapnal's laptop to fiddle with the playlist. This has lead to some rather epic playlist beef in the past. But this time he has Amanda with him for back up. They look so happy crouched over fiddling with the playlist that no one wants to risk unsettling this microcosm. For some reason or other Amanda says why. But not a why as you or I would utter it. It was said in a manner that only Mark does, she's taken on one of his key characteristics. This confirms our belief that being around Mark will eventually turn you into him.
David makes a remark about his IQ. This brings Eleanor in swinging for the fences as intelligence, like everything, is relative. I think we're on the same page but I twist and turn to keep the discourse going. We live in a literate society so if you can do that well then you are considered "intelligent". But back in the day when hunting was the way to stay alive the fastest and strongest were the most "intelligent". The scale changes based on the situation. But it boils down to problem solving. At least that's my simple spin on it :-D
Eleanor grows weary and demands another game. Arrogance is simple and random. David assumes his customary tossing duties. He's a champion doncha know! Some baseless accusations of cheating lead to me taking on the mantle of tosser. It leads to a lot of drinking. I remember I came with a secondary mission but my camera lacks the required battery power to fulfill it :-(
There is talk of going in to town. I'm still on the mend so I say my goodbyes and prep myself to depart. During the dying moments of this gathering Amanda falls backwards onto the couch! Outstanding :-D I drive home and crack all my joints, down a protein shake and get to bed. The next day Swap posts this lovely pic:
Face cake, hot nuts, hot vodka, desktop drummage and many a card
The night is documented here in photo form scroll through as you read!, access may be an issue if you are not within my friendship trigrams on facebook.
