Stifado
Stifado is a Greek dish consisting of stewed meat (usually rabbit or beef) and onions. It's been around a quuarter of a century since I last had any, so I've no idea how close my first attempt to make it was. The terrible photograph I took doesn't make it look too bad, but I was so hungry that I wasn't going to mess around taking more than one:
Until now my culinary repertoire was limited to green bean casserole and pasta with green beans and pesto. However, I've recently invested in a slow cooker.
The Americans call this a Crock Pot (tm). The idea is that you bung a load of raw ingredients into this magic pot, forget about it for several hours (until you're hungry), by which time they have transformed themselves into an edible meal. Or rather about three meals due to the quantities involved, which means that you don't waste any ingredients like you would if you were cooking for one.
It's early days yet, but most of the meals I've done have been edible. And at £15, it's cheaper than another wife.
Solar System
Thanks mainly to the specific configuration of various celestial bodies, we've had two long weekends of public holidays in a row. Easter fell very late this year, meaning that we've had Good Friday and Easter Monday off last weekend, followed by May Day this coming Monday. Today was a public holiday due to some kind of royal celebration. I'm not sure exactly what this was since, no doubt due to an oversight, I wasn't invited.
It turned out okay, though. There was nothing on TV (even the Greeks were watching the royal celebration curtesy of the European Broadcasting Union), which gave me a perfect opportunity to play with my new computer.
Silence
My computer had started becoming unreliable, so I went shopping yesterday for a replacement. The first thing I did after unpacking it was to install Fedora Linux on it, and it's great. Compared to the old one, it's got three times more memory and a whizzy graphics card. The main advantage, though, is the noise it makes.
The old machine had a very large and very loud fan. Since I never turned it off, there was a constant and slightly annoying whirring in the lounge. By comparison, you don't know that the new computer is on, it's so quiet. Now the dominant sounds are the fridge and the gentle bubbling of the slow cooker.
Which reminds me. I must go and check on my dinner.
