New Year's Resolution - cooking only scratchbuilt stuff

I haven't had a microwave for a couple of years now. Our last one broke and I made a point of not getting a new one. I wasn't sure what the point was exactly, but I really enjoy not having one now.

One thing I really missed was microwave popcorn, so a couple of months ago, someone showed me to make popcorn from scratch for the first time since kindergarten. I'm now really obsessed with it and eat it all the time (3+ times per week), to the point where I can make it consistently, quickly and easily.

The point of all this is that the other day I ate microwave popcorn again for the first time in months. Without meaning to be snobbish, it's very, very bad in comparison to pot+fire+oil+heat+butter popcorn. It's on the same level of difference as a microwave burger (e.g. Rustlers) to any kind of real burger. So I tried to give the unwanted microwave popcorn to Dog, but he turned his nose up at it, at which point I realised that (a) that's the first microwaved thing he's ever been given and (b) that it must be really, really, bad.

There is also the point that microwave popcorn is 3-4 times more expensive than real popcorn, even after you factor in the butter costs.

I've also recently been inspired by Tristan's homemade drinks and syrups, which I've been trying out, and seeing that often, the only difference between store bought and home made is a load of industrial processing and flavouring.

So my resolution is:
For cooking food at home, I will only use scratch-built ingredients. This applies to anything used in the quantity of more than a few dashes.

For example, I will only use scratch-built ketchup and mayo, but I am not going to ferment my own soy sauce or balsamic vinegar. It does not apply to drinks, and I also exempt bread, as I love crusty white bread and refuse to entertain the thought of frequently running out of it.

If I eat out or take out, it's anything goes.

This shouldn't be too hard, since I usually cook very simple stuff, and don't even cook very often, perhaps 3-5 times a week. It also gives me an excuse to make more stuff, which over winter, tends to be spent more in the house and kitchen rather than shed or park.

Things I commonly use/eat in my kitchen that now need to be scratchbuilt or scrapped:
Frosties, Paté, Coleslaw, Jam, Walls Vienetta (joke), fish fingers (F*#K!!).

So there we go. I'll keep updating on new things that I make from scratch, stuff that turns out very tough, or more things that I exempt myself from.

I also have other resolutions like cut my hair, stop spooning the dog, get some proper adult clothes, and stop being a wastrel, but those are all boring.

Proximity London appear to have the same xmas viral as glue London's from last year

proximity-london-glue-xmas, originally uploaded by dead insect \ /. (I didn't write this btw, but I do think it's funny).

We love childish stuff like this in the industry - "He copied me!", " No, I didn't see yours, I swear".

Anyway I used to work at glue, so someone sent me Proximity's recent Xmas viral to look at, and as it's exactly the same as glue's one from last year.


photo from Rob's blog

Did they think of it themselves? Don't know, not fussed. It's just a Christmas card anyhow.

However, I logged on to give them some good-natured stick, but they have someone censoring it live, and also a script which auto-changes the word "glue" for "Prittstick". They also appear to have blocked glue's IP address, and now mine after a few jibes.

That's a bit lame. If you show up with a year-old idea, you should expect to take some good-natured stick. Also, as an agency that does digital stuff, they should probably know better about censoring people on the Internet - it never works, and invariably drives people to publish even more. They could have dealt with it in a number of humourous, in-the-spirit-of-things-ways, but instead acted just like old media, putting one of the their staff on live censorship duty and blocking IP's.

on the rise of fancy dress amongst ordinary man

Any of you on Facebook? Have you noticed that it seems that with each month, more and more of the pictures of you and and your friends seem to be in fancy dress? Does every major party have to be fancy dress these days? It seems so, and there are more and more fancy dress clubnights springing up and gathering momentum too.



I suggest 2 reasons for this.

The first is that simply people are getting more and more bored with going out. This is just how we are, we get bored of everything very quickly. Bored of drinking in the local, bored of clubs and DJs, bored of nice meals at gastropubs, bored of nice cocktails in a nice bar, bored of big gigs, bored of secret intimate gigs and so on. Not to say these things are on the decline, but as a bunch we continually are striving for anything different to distract us into having fun again.

The second is the rise in how easy it is to take and share digital photos. Camera phones, cheap cameras, and Facebook/MySpace/Bebo. When I first started going out as a teenager, there were very few photos of it, and you would see them maybe once, and then no-one could be bothered to get them re-copied. Now, you can't even go out without there being a 30 pictures of the night out easily sorted, tagged, and available to view on a social network that everyone checks at least once a day.

The negative result of this is that instead of nights out being just a thing to enjoy in the moment, they sometimes become goal-orientated towards getting pictures of the night. If you're in any party or club, you will see some people spending as much time posing and taking pictures as doing anything else.

This is clearly crazy - have you ever been to a breathtaking tourist spot, e.g. Angel Falls, and seen a hustle of Japenese tourists simply come in, pose, take about a million pics and then move off, without taking any of the beauty in? It's the same insanity.

Previously, it would be your memories of the night out that would be all you have to judge it by.

But now, you now have lots of accessible pictures. Since the pictures are permenantly there, and easily shared and discussed - we can, and do, look at them over and over and smile - then the quality of a night out becomes associated with how good the pictures are from it, to a point where the the pictures become a more visceral measure of quality than our own memories of it.

This is why more and more nights are becoming fancy dress, or require some other extraordinary feature that will good in pictures. Simply because the history books are being written in online conversation more than in traditional conversation, and the nights which will acquire the most notorioty are those that look best in digital, as opposed to mental, images.