that canadian girl

Usually, when Andrew browses YouTube and comes across food, it’s the kind of recipe that makes you gag – like the Bacon Explosion.

A few weeks ago, however, he came across a real gem – a recipe for homemade chicken wings.

First, a bit of background on why we both got so excited over chicken wings. Back in Ottawa, there is a place called The Honest Lawyer. Back when I lived in Ottawa, they had an “All you can eat” wings night on Mondays, and we occasionally found ourselves there. Even Andrew had the opportunity to try them on his visits to Canada. Problem is, they’re the kind of wings that ruin it for you. No other wings have ever cut it for us since. (Note: It’s quite possible that my memory has romanticised them and that they weren’t THAT great) In the UK, wings aren’t a very big thing, you can get them in frozen portions or in the American-style restaurants but generally they’re rubbish.

So finding that recipe was hugely exciting for us – we would be able to make them at home! So we popped down to the supermarket, bought chicken wings (which needed to be cut as per the video – wing, drumstick and tip – it takes a while but you’ll get to grips with the best way to cut the pieces apart without leaving bone shards fairly quickly)

The video outlines the bulk of the recipe, which we followed (even though it seems to be an awfully long time to cook such small bits of chicken, it’s necessary to make them nice and crispy.)

What we did differently is the coating sauce. We made two variations:

• Dijon mustard, honey and chilli flakes
• Maple syrup and Reggae Reggae sauce

As both are full of sugars, watch very closely when they’re in the oven. After all your efforts, you don’t want to see them burn to a crisp! I have to say my favourite one was the Reggae Reggae sauce version.

Total junky treat, but once in a blue moon, it’s so yummy… If you make your own, let me know how they turn out!

I won’t be blowing you away with this observation, but the world has gone bonkers. Completely, utterly bonkers. Beyond political correctness, I think the world’s cojones have well and truly decided to retract all the way inside the body, and given up altogether.

What makes me say that? Three stories in the past week have shown me how remarkably PC-minded we can be.

First, this morning, YouTube announced on its blog that mature content and profanity will be more heavily moderated. In order words, a quick cuss word can cause your video to disappear into oblivion. Now, as Robert Llewellyn points out this morning in his Llewtube video, I’ll be happy to see less mature content crop up randomly when I’m looking for videos of kittens. But profanity? Who sets the blacklist of what swear words are inappropriate? If religious America gets its word in, we’ll have to say “Oh sh…ugar!” as we do in front of 3 year olds? To the best of my knowledge, 3 year olds shouldn’t be left to their own devices when navigating the web.

Second story. Last week, Channel 4 decided to take the entire 4mations site down, after it got cold feet following what’s now been dubbed as “Sachsgate” – otherwise known as Brand & Ross behaving like idiots on air. (For the non-UK folks, two radio hosts made a few immature and somewhat inappropriate “I screwed your granddaughter!” calls to a guest, Andrew Sachs. He’s best known for his role as Manuel in Fawlty Towers back in the 70’s. The story snowballed from two complaints when the show was aired to nearly half a million complaints in the week that followed.)

For a project that intended to push the boundaries of creativity, I’m amazed that a pixelated gimp mask and some cartoon boobies were grounds for taking the entire site down. Clearly, a moment of panic because of some slightly bizarre content. And you know what, that’s one of the great things about the weird and wonderful world of the Internet. There’s weird material being added all the time that forces us to re-evaluate where we stand.

Finally, in the real physical world, the Terrorism Act is becoming a real pain in the proverbial. A 15 year old schoolboy was arrested near Wimbledon for taking photos of the stadium on his mobile phone. He said he was working on his GCSE project, and shoo’ed away from the site. This kind of situation was repeated time and time again.

Before anyone jumps at my throat, I by no means condone humour in bad taste or lewd content on the web. But you wouldn’t chuck out an entire bushel of apples for a single bruised one, right? So why stop everyone else from having fun because of a few bad apples?

My issue here is with the knee-jerk reaction we seem to have towards everything these days. Rather than to get a screwdriver to fix the one slightly loose screw, we just get the sledgehammer out and annihilate the whole lot!

I’m not suggesting sticking your fingers in your ears going “La la la I can’t hear you!” when you face a problem, but the reaction should be proportional to the problem. So put the sledgehammer away, will you?

People are often surprised when I tell them that English isn’t my first language and that I wasn’t comfortably speaking it all the way into my early teens. I also clearly remember hearing music in English when I was very young and not understanding any of it.

So while I think this girl is mad for going to a Music Idol show in Bulgaria and choosing an English song, I can completely hear what she’s hearing in the song. Hilarious video!

Sorry if I’ve started posting loads again! I’ve got internet access again, have returned to something resembling routine and have dealt with the bulk of organising the new house, so I’ve got time to write.

Because I know you all miss my posts while I have no Internet access at home due to the house move, I’ll provide you with comic relief in the form of some of YouTube’s cream of the crop.

Everyone loves Star Wars. Everyone loves kids. Everyone loves YouTube. (sort of.)

Just a short video of the snow today. Lovely big snowflakes falling softly while we’re comfortably sitting indoors.

Recently, I’ve been falling in love with inanimate objects. I self-diagnosed I had a problem when I found myself talking to said objects while home alone. Either it’s cabin-fever from having spent the past few days in the house or I’m just losing my marbles. (Generous reward if marbles are returned)

First gadget I’m in love with is my new Senseo coffee machine. I bought it from Amazon about a month ago, and literally picked the cheapest single-serve coffee machine I could find.

In the past, my dilemma with making coffee at home was that, with Andrew not being a coffee drinker, it was difficult to find the right coffee maker. Normal filter coffee machines made too many cups at once, Bodum coffee makers were out of the question because of the amount of grinds at the bottom of my cup (some people disagree on this one, and it’s possible I’ve been doing it wrong all along, but I just don’t like the one-person Bodum), and we live in a small town with no Starbucks or coffee shop within any reasonable distance (thank god, or I’d be very broke).

So I thought for £45 (doh, it’s even cheaper now, it’s down to £35!), it wasn’t a great loss if it turned out to be rubbish. I only tend to have one cup of coffee a day, and only in the morning, so after settling myself down for a day working from home, I made my first cup. And I have to say, it makes great coffee, and takes no time at all.

Before seeing the pods, I was somewhat concerned of the waste I’d be causing, but it turns out that the pods are nothing more than a paper filter, wrapped around pre-ground coffee. While snooping around SingleServeCoffee, I heard about the Ecopad, which was presented as both a more environmentally-friendly solution and a way to use ANY coffee type you liked instead of the few that are offered in pod form. Promptly ordered two Ecopads, but have yet to use them, as I’m still using up the pre-made pods I ordered on CafeCo (Great site, but they forgot to include the little coffee bean stressball in my order!)

I haven’t tried very many coffee machines, but based on my experience, not only is this coffee very drinkable (and strong!), it’s also easy to make and the machine is easy to clean – Just press both cup size buttons at the same time and let it run a water cycle through. So highly recommended for the casual coffee drinkers who might like to cut down on the share of their salary they donate daily to Starbucks.

The second gadget I’m in lurve with these days is Asimo. I think I even had a dream where I was running in a field of flowers holding hands with my best friend Asimo… Ok maybe I should’ve kept that to myself. That’s ok, AWESOM-O-lovers will understand me.

This one stretches beyond just Asimo, though. I’ve been talking to Keira, my little Nabaztag/tag bunny, and she’s been responding. She even sang me “Au pays de Candy” last weekend, and my family knows how much this means to me (put that video online and I’ll have to kill you!).

Mmmmkay, I’ve probably spent more time with non-sentient, robotic little beings this week than I have with real people, and it’s sending me loopy. So of course, I’ll communicate this via my blog, while listening to music via the Airport Express, then Twitter some work colleagues who are at SxSW and check the latest YouTube videos I’m subscribed to…

Right, I think I need to get away from technology, go live in the woods, do some camping and hunt for my own food for a while.

Once upon a time, water cooler chat was a company-wide thing. Anyone could gather in the kitchen during their coffee break and talk about last night’s TV show. Gags and allusions to TV twists caused team-wide laughter or nods, and no one would really feel left out, since most would have watched the same thing.

Nowadays, it’s a whole different story. The market is so incredibly segmented. For some years now, there are hundreds of channels, catering to niche interests. On top of this, Sky Plus and other video recorders are growing in popularity, adding to the mix by enabling us to watch whenever we fancy it. “If you tell me what happened in last night’s Lost episode, I’m going to have to kill you!”

To cause further fragmentation, YouTube and Google Video’s user- generated content is beginning to rival commercially and professionally produced content in terms of appeal, watchability (let’s pretend that’s a word, mmkay?) and entertainment value. With broadband infiltrating British homes at the rate of 70,000 a week, downloading videos, movies or TV shows is becoming easier than ever.

In recent months, the only shows I can think of that have had wide enough appeal to reach across these itty bitty fragments have been Lost and Top Gear, really. (As an aside, if my license fee goes to financing the largest non-commercial rocket launch attempt in European history, I’m all for it!)

Otherwise, an unexpectedly popular topic of conversation is still the Nintendo Wii, which seems to have racked up fans from all ages and interest groups and endures as the best source of evening entertainment.

Personally, I’d be quite happy to see the couch-potato era come to an end to be replaced by interactive media and entertainment. Maybe the next water cooler chat will have to do with our tennis score next time.

[Via Seth Godin]