Category Archives: Life

If you believed they put a man on the moon …

Posted on by

Through some superhuman effort I managed not to cut my throat whilst shaving, though it wasn’t easy. The Today Programme was talking to one of those tedious idiots who continue to believe the moon landings didn’t. It didn’t help that the guy sounded a little like Tony Benn, though I am coming to respect Mr B in my old age. Considerably more than this fool, anyway. “I don’t see the evidence,” he bleated over and again.

I suppose we should consider his point of view. So, apart from the fact that: hundreds of thousands of people were complicit in the hoax; the moon shots were tracked by countless disinterested independent parties (plus the Soviets, who were extremely interested and would have screamed at the slightest hint of a doubt); the instruments left behind by the astronauts are still there and working; the NASA probe now orbiting the moon has sent back shots of the landing sites that show the abandoned descent stages and the footprints left by the astronauts … apart from all that, what evidence is there? And while we’re at it, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Anyway, today’s the day, 40 years ago, when it all happened. I wish I could say I remember it – I was all of four years old – but I don’t. My mother’s main memory is of trying to pay attention to the news while her oblivious inlaws fussed over a road map, trying to work out the best route from Hereford back to New Malden. I don’t even remember that.

I do remember the last Apollo landing, Apollo 17, though I didn’t know it was that at the time: Gene Cernan (I think) singing “I was walking on the moon one day / in the merry merry month of … December”, and the discovery of orange soil. I even remember telling my teacher at school about the orange soil, so it must have struck some kind of chord. And I remember having a cutaway diagram book all about Skylab, and I remember the Apollo-Soyuz linkup that was essentially meant to use up the last of the Saturn Vs … but I don’t remember the first landing.

But to any nutjobs who still insist there was nothing to remember, I say only this.

Occasional recipes: Flying Jacob

Posted on by

Flying who?

I know, I know. Sometimes I wonder whether Swedish cuisine is in fact a very clever, straight-faced joke on the rest of the world. Do our Volvo-driving, Abba-crooning cousins really tuck in regularly to pickled herring with creme fraiche, boiled potatoes and lingonberry sauce? Or do they just wait until one of them brings home a Brit who wants to marry her and really, really wants to impress his prospective inlaws?

Anyway, Flying Jacob/Flygande Jakob is a dish that includes those traditional Swedish food items bananas, chili, peanuts and rice. Oh, and chicken and bacon. We got the recipe from Swedish Mike, an exiled Swede who lives in Abingdon and blogs strange recipes at www.freestylecookery.com. I won’t steal a fellow blogger’s thunder, so here I’ll just list the ingredients with our variations. To serve four:

  • 4 portions cooked white rice
  • 6 – 8 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
  • 4 skin- and boneless chicken breasts, cut into bitesized pieces
  • 3 ripe bananas, sliced
  • 125 ml chili sauce (or spicy ketchup) [we used chili & garlic sauce from Tesco: strong but worth it]
  • 350 ml single cream [cream was left off the shopping list to an administrative error: we made up the fluid difference with a 50/50 mix of milk and natural yoghurt. In my opinion this worked perfectly: I wouldn’t want it to be richer/creamier than it was.]
  • Peanuts [regular salted]

As to how to cook all this, see how Swedish Mike does it, and do likewise. You won’t go far wrong. The overall effect is very Thai or Indonesian: the different flavours – yes, even the bananas – work together astonishingly well.