Category: life in general

Studying Mammals Result

Just logged into the OU website to find my result for the Studying Mammals course – 82 percent. There would be a percent sign but punctuation is quite a challenge on a Morroccan keyboard. Anyway, Im very pleased.

Bodies

Yesterday I went with a friend to the Beurs van Berlage (the old Dutch stock exchange) in Amsterdam to see The Bodies Exhibition.

The exhibition gave a fascinating tour of the human body, with preserved specimens dissected to particularly illustrate features such as the muscles and the central nervous system. It sounds perhaps a little squeamish, but in fact wasn’t at all.

Fridge Cake

Melt 250g of butter and a 200g bar of dark chocolate. Whilst this is melting, break up a 400g packet of digestive biscuits until you have a mixture of fine crumbs and some larger chunks (I usually put them in a plastic bag and beat them with a rolling pin).

Once the chocolate mixture is melted, mix the two together and then press the mixture into a baking tray. Leave in the fridge overnight, and then it’s ready to cut up and eat.

Serving suggestion: it’s lethal with whipped cream.
Possible variations: I quite fancy trying it with a bit of mint flavour.
Healthier version: may be some of the butter could be substituted with milk?

Note that the ingredient proportions are pretty approximate as I tend to just go by packet size, which differs between England and Holland… I have seen various different recipes, some of which require you to add brown sugar or syrup. So if you don’t like this variant, experiment!

SK185 – Molecules, Medicines and Drugs

Great excitement when I got home on Friday night (or should that be Saturday morning) after a relaxing few drinks at our monthly choir social, and found a parcel waiting for me.

Despite the lateness of the hour, I had to rip open the box of materials for my new Open University course, amongst them a molecular modelling kit.

This little beastie is an aspirin molecule – black balls represent carbon, red ones are oxygen, and the white ones, hydrogen.

In the Post….

… well, nearly.

My End of Course Assignment for the Open University course I signed up for last summer – Studying Mammals – is all packaged up and ready to go! The course was based on the BBC television series, The Life of Mammals, and covered many aspects of mammalian biology.

Both the television series and its accompanying book are available through Amazon (DVD, Book), and I’d highly recommend either of them.

Despite the fact that making time to study has been hard the last few months, and indeed most of my work for the course has been done in the last three weeks, my innate thirst for knowledge (or lack of common sense…) has not been overcome, and I’ve signed up for another course Molecules, Medicines and Drugs: A Chemical Story which begins in February.

Time for something a little different

As ever, my decision to go to the hairdresser today was made on the spur of the moment, mostly triggered, I suspect, by the fact that I should have been busy finishing off an Open University assignment, tidying my appartment, and generally occupying my time with worthy tasks, before I go out to Fiona’s birthday party this evening. Instead, I find myself with short hair for the first time in over 10 years!

Team Cultural Event

Well, perhaps “cultural” is a bit of an exaggeration for what was essentially a team get-together at the house of a colleague, to which each of us brought a culinary offering, in most cases something that is traditional from our land of origin.

My contribution was a steak and kidney pie, whose construction was fraught with difficulties. Lacking a normal sized oven, I took it round to my colleague’s the night before to cook, and then brought it into work on Thursday, but without the puff pastry for the lid which I was planning to add at the last moment. Unfortunately, because of the storms that hit on Thursday afternoon, I couldn’t get back home to collect as the trams to Delft weren’t running, so I had to compromise with some filo pastry that I found at a nearby evening shop.

Starters
Avocado with prawns (South Africa)
Potato pancakes (Belarus)
Raw Herring (Netherlands)

Main Courses
Pilaf (Kazakhstan)
Spruitjes (Netherlands)
Steak and Kidney Pie (UK)
Vegetable Curry (UK)

We had a very enjoyable evening, and finished up with a walk on the beach at Scheveningen.

Westvleteren

Since joining the choir last year, I’ve also been receiving education in the area of Belgian beer from my friends Darby, Fiona, Chris and Alex. Now only Fiona and I are left in Holland, but my education is continuing!

Ever since my first trip to a specialist beer cafe with them, I’ve heard stories of the almost mythical Westvleteren beer, brewed by the monks at the abbey of Sint Sixtus in Westvleteren, Belgium. The monks only brew enough beer each year to support the abbey, and despite the beer’s popularity, have no intention of increasing production, making the beer very hard to find.

Last night, we managed to get our hands on some at Locus Publicus, our usual Delft haunt. They have a limited supply, and are rationing it – we sampled all 3 varieties, and pretty much cleaned out the evening’s supply single-handedly. Even Ivo, an avowed Duvel drinker, had to sample it…