ADs building hadron colliders out of used yoghurt pots

[NannyGythaOgg]

... whilst waiting to see if the kids are or are not going to school next week and walking with imaginary cows.

previous thread

I'm catching up with this thread and nodding along to all your wise and perceptive words.

Music: I went to a carol service on Sunday and they had singers and instruments - live music! It was wonderful. I sat there transfixed. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed live music and how much I've taken it for granted in pre-Covid days.

@NannyGythaOgg, "What I don't understand is the constant requirement some people have for them to define 'elderly', or 'how far is too far', when those things are guidance." Can some people not make a sensible decision for themselves and their circumstances? I saw that someone had actually posted that the population were not to blame for rising cases; it was the government failing to keep us safe. Perhaps it's time for someone to stand in front of the camera and say 'Take responsibility for yourselves and keep away from each other for a bit where cases are rising, so that people who have to engage with the public have a bit of leeway.'

And the schools: I'm sure they were begging for more testing. When it was on offer it was all 'they'd better not expect teachers to do the tests', now it's horror that volunteers are being sought to do the tests. What do they want? And the tone of some of the posts: all about how hard/impossible each measure is going to be, the pupils won't co-operate; I'm longing for someone to say 'let's give the kids a chance to rise to occasion and see if together we can make this work'.

@Jourdain11, I sympathise with your DC. When I'm stressed I find it very hard to eat, food seems to go round and round in my mouth and I can't face it. At least I'm an adult and I know I have to take something. I've found the one thing that I can always get down, which breaks the cycle: Heinz Cream of Tomato soup. I was talking to a neighbour who has a the same problem and her 'thing' is tinned orange segments. So there might be a bit of experimenting ahead of you both, but wet and slippery and not too strong a flavour seems the thing for two of us. Ice cream, maybe? I hope you sort something out.

YY to Heinz tomato soup as a pick-me-up. I think it's the combination of it being very smooth and being just the right mix of sweet and tangy, flavour-wise.

@Jourdain11, do you have a dog? A friend's DD has loads of issues with food and she's found that letting the dog try it first helps. If the dog refuses to eat it, throws up or immediately goes outside for a toilet break, she concedes that her DD may have a point and tries something else. Would single-serve foods in packets help to allay her fears too?

Heinz Tomato Soup is amazing comfort food.

Just as well there's one school get-up left. Nocturnal child is very chatty tonight. He's been left downstairs to sleep with the fish and fairy lights. Don't know why I'm saying nocturnal child in the singular... they're both pretty nocturnal.

I'm going to try and brave Waterstones tomorrow. At least it's directly off the street.

BREAKING

twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1339310484269494273?s=20

Thread
See new Tweets
Conversation
James Mills and 39 others follow
John Stevens
@johnestevens
EXC: Tory MP Tobias Ellwood attended a Christmas dinner with 27 guests at a private members club in Mayfair on Tuesday

oh dear

twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1339115524412891136?s=20

John Brereton
@JohnABrereton
·
6m
HYPOCRITE Tobias Ellwood claims families meeting at Christmas is wrong and dangerous. Yet on Tuesday night he attended a Christmas party of 27 at a London club.

Oh golly gosh, what a shocker, you could knock me down with a feath... Nope. Can't sustain my faux surprise all the way to the end of the sentence.

Tory MP is Hypocrite - is all a bit Dog Bites Man really, isn't it?

Yeah but i thought id share anyway.

Tobias Elwood and the rest of the hypocrites go out because hardly anyone not vulnerable (other than perhaps MN CV board!) really believes there's much danger to themselves, the Govt just don't want it further exposed what a mess the NHS is in, both historically and though lack of action this summer.

If you can believe the various statisticians on Twitter, using age- and population-adjusted figures, we haven't had a year this bad for deaths since ... 2009.

I was just reading that @mercybooth
Apparently he doesn't think he was breaking the rules as it was a business meeting.

Strange that. All our meetings if in person are a max of 5 to a conference room to enable social distancing. Anything over that is virtual.

Interestingly @MercyBooth I just started a thread in the coronazone about it. The responses so far are pretty much 🤷‍♀️

So let me get this straight. If I post over there to say I will stay home and only go to the supermarket for a week or so (not that I can but I've seen this asked over there) in order to visit my ILs at Christmas safely. I'm responsible for the deaths of 25 grannies, 10 cev people and half a dozen teachers because I haven't stayed at home completely and could have got anything at the supermarket and should be thoroughly ashamed of myself. But this is OK? I don't get it?

To be honest I'm quite shocked it's Tobias Ellwood, he comes across as one of the more reasonable MPs. I suppose they are all up to something unfortunately

Please tell me he'll get a £10,000 like the two students caught hosting a party around here.

Not that £10, 000 is the same financial burden to an MP as it is to a student.

Like a lot of people, I was impressed with Ellwood trying to save PC Palmer's life. Sadly doesn't stop him being a hypocrite in other ways I suppose - unless he was one of the rebels, in which case as far as I'm concerned he can do what he can get away with!

I've just googled and it looks as though he opposed the measures, although I'm not sure which way he voted in the end

@PinkSparklyPussyCat

I've just googled and it looks as though he opposed the measures, although I'm not sure which way he voted in the end

Hes been quite vocal lately about how easing restrictions at Christmas is a disaster and shouldn't happen.....

Tobias Elwood - what an arsehole

"Can some people not make a sensible decision for themselves and their circumstances?"
On Channel 4 News the other night Kirstie Allsop argued for exactly this. And Esther Rantzen was very clear that the public couldn't be trusted and needed to be told what to do. It summed up how split things are.

There's a propoganderist (I feel it really is propaganda) piece on the BBC News site this morning about a family who have cancelled their Christmas plans. The piece is incredibly patronising & has a tone of "for the greater good about it". There's enough information out there, I don't think we need non-stories like this to help us decide what to do.

As for tomato soup, I've made a cake with a tin of it as a main ingredient. You add cinamon. It tastes nice, not tomatoey at all.

There have been a few of those 'we're denying ourselves to save grannies, look at us' pieces in most of the press the last couple of days. The Graun was doing 'what scientists are doing for Christmas' and surprise surprise, they're all 'having a quiet one with immediate family'.

Just wait until next week, when we start getting the 'Christmas on a Covid Ward' articles. 'Twas the cough before Christmas...

Orchid I've made cake with courgettes before, and a chocolate one with grated beetroot. And one using mayonnaise instead of butter or oil.

I never knew you could make a tomato soup one though, that sounds intriguing.

I keep meaning to have a go with parsnips. I had a lovely slice of spiced parsnip cake at a Swedish cafe in Edinburgh a year or two back and I've been planning to recreate it.

@NastyBlouse
I've had courgette cake & it was very much like carrot cake. Have always intended to do a beetroot one but never got round to it. I imagine that's where the grater attachment of a food processor comes in handy, rather than slavishly hand-grating until your fingers turn pink.

The tomato soup one is in The Baking Bible by Annie Bell if anyone's interested (as we all have loads of spare time anyway at Christmas, haha!!) Maybe this could become the new banana bread for 2021 & stocks of tinned tomato soup will disappear from supermarket shelves (let's hope not).

Orchid
Yes I have to be so careful with beetroot, we have white Corian worktops. (Bloody flat developers, putting things in which look marvellous in brochures but are completely impractical.)

It works well though, you get that nice dense squidginess that chocolate cake needs without having to put in a Volvo estate's worth of butter and melted chocolate.

Someone brought courgette cake into DH's work once and he said it was revolting (and he isn't a picky eater). May have been a poor chef rather than a general fault with courgette cake though!

I made vegan cupcakes with vegan mayo once. They were ok at the moment of eating but had a very strange aftertaste.

Ooh, sounds delicious! If I hadn't bought a truckload of lemons already to make a lemon & thyme cake with.... To be honest I lost my baking mojo a few years ago & haven't really got it back. I can imagine the lemons still untouched in January. Although I do have a lot of gin & tonic so they won't go to waste.

@rosettesforjill
I tried vegan chocolate cake once. It had been made with olive oil & left a definite after-taste. I can't stand olives. It should not be combined with chocolate, or chocolate-substitute.

My sister is vegan and I generally make pies or biscuits if baking for her as they don't suffer too much without butter/eggs.

These brownies are pretty good though: www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/vegan-brownies