We had some doughnuts left over from yesterday so we made a milkshake using them.
Serves 2 (this makes roughly 2 pints):

• 2 Krispy Kreme plain glazed doughnuts
• 1½ pints of milk (approx)
• a couple of heaped tablespoons of vanilla ice cream.

Put the milk and doughnuts in a blender and liquidize thoroughly. Add the ice cream and liquidize a bit more.

I checked the site map on the website and noticed that they had quite a few more outlets than when I last checked. They are now available in Manchester. And according to the map, they have a couple of outlets in the Atlantic ocean, south of Ghana.

Somebody at Morrisons needs to be sent on a vegetable identification course.

The 'Avocado' looks more like Fennel to me.

We have the occasional Gin and Tonic at home - usually using a decent brand of gin. Our bottle of Gordon's ran out so we had a glass using the Lidl own brand gin left over from the sloe gin.

We last drank Lidl gin a few years ago, back when I was still living in Aberystwyth. Lidl sell two types of gin and we found the cheaper had more flavour. I don't know what they've changed but we found the gin to be very bland and tasteless. It looks like we'll have to stick to the good stuff from now on.

I thought I'd have a go at making Sloe Gin this year. I went for a walk in the countryside near Coventry, to a place where I suspected there might be sloes. The first trees I found were quite poor with only a few sloes on each, and they were difficult to reach. I walked further and found a few trees which were much better.

I sorted and washed the sloes when I got home. I managed to pick 2½ pounds of them, although some were larger and will actually be wild plums.

I bottled our rhubarb wine tonight. It was a fairly simple recipe:

• 1.5kg Rhubarb
• 1.25kg Sugar
• 1 small tin of grape concentrate
• bakers yeast

I managed to get just over 5 bottles. I'll give it a few weeks to begin to mature before tasting.

On a related note, I've ordered an electric juicer. This should make future wines easier to make. It's blackberry season at the moment and hopefully I'll have time to go and pick some soon. A friend with a grapevine has promised to give us a load of grapes, so the juicer will definitely come in handy there.

For the last couple of days, my backpack has made a regular 'thunk' type rattling noise whenever I've walked anywhere. I couldn't work out what it was, and it was starting to get slightly annoying.

I found the cause when I noticed the small plastic tub of digestive biscuits which I'd put in my bag on monday, with the intention of having them during my coffee break. They had turned into a collection of irregularly shaped digestive fragments.

It's not been a good week for forgetting about food.

Since monday, there has been a strange 'fart' like smell in the car. We couldn't work out where it was coming from so we sprayed the upholstery with Febreeze to try to remove the smell.

We were at the supermarket this evening and I picked up one of the reusable carrier bags from the car boot. In the bottom of the bag I noticed a pack of mozzarella cheese which had burst open, spilling the cheesy brine all over the inside of the bag.

Mystery solved.

The cheese must have been sitting in the car for over a week. The heat over the weekend will have caused the pack to expand and burst. I rinsed out the bags when we got home, so hopefully that will get rid of the smell.

I like the way Wing Wah have expanded the dessert selection to include a wider range of gateaux and cakes. I like the way they decorated the mini swiss rolls with a blob of cream and a chocolate wafer. I also like the way they put a blob of cream and a raspberry on the jam tart. I don't like the way they decided to add a sprig of parsley to it.

Seen in a shop at a motorway service station on the M1:

The Wetherspoons pub chain is trying to break the world record for the most people at a wine tasting. They are having simultaneous wine tastings at all of their pubs throughout the country.

We went along for our free tasting (a tiny 50ml glass) and stayed to eat. The actual wine tasting was a bit disorganised. It was a while before we managed to get our tasters. For a world record attempt, it was very low key, almost to the point of being half-arsed. The free samples were only their ordinary house wines, rather than any of the 'festival' wines.

They don't seem to handle the wine festivals as well as the beer festivals.They don't promote them as well and the staff don't always seem aware of what's on offer.

We went back to Aqua for a meal tonight. We were there as part of a conference organised at the University.

Everything seemed to go smoothly. When you are a group of over 50 people in a small restaurant, you appreciate that the service can sometimes be a bit slow, especially when they're still open as normal.

The food was excellent. When we arrived, there were bowls of olives on the tables. The first course arrived and consisted of plates of falafel and pizza. Subsequent courses had pasta, pizza and a bit plate of spiced chicken.

After the meal, most of us went down the road to the Whitefriars pub for a pint. A lot of the people with us were from other universities and they liked the old medieval building, and the range of beers on offer.

The last few times we've made pizza, the yeast has taken a long time to activate and the dough hasn't risen much. This time I thought I'd leave the yeast for a bit longer.

The overflowing yeast froth reminded me of the 'Instant Pudding' from the Woody Allen film 'Sleeper', where it expands so much it fills the kitchen.

We were staying in Croydon and were looking for somewhere to eat but Wetherspoons and Lloyd's were both busy and we couldn't find a table in either. We ended up eating in Yates's Bar. The music wasn't too loud when we got there but it got louder and louder while we were there. By the time we had finished eating, the music was painfully loud and we couldn't wait to leave.

We went to Wetherspoon's for a quiet drink afterwards. We managed to find a table where we could talk without having to raise our voices.

Comparison of Yates's and Wetherspoons:

I really don't know why bars insist on playing music at painfully loud volumes. I can't see how it can attract people in without also annoying them. You've only got to look at how busy Wetherspoons was compared to Yates's. If you ran a bar which was regularly half empty when a nearby bar was almost full, it would be in your best interest to find out why. You'd have to be some kind of moron to not realise the loud music is driving a lot of people away.

Update 14/04/08 I've since read that the Yates's in Coventry has closed. It was always blaring out loud crappy music - that probably drove away most potential customers.

What's that funny smell in the kitchen?
Smells like something's burning...
Oh crap, I forgot about the bread in the oven!

I had put some part baked baguettes in the oven for tomorrows lunch. I smelt them just in time. They were brown but not burnt. We often put bread in the oven then 'forget' about it, especially if we're watching something on TV and we only remember after the programme has finished.

One of my Guinness t-shirts is wrong this year. Since St Patrick's Day was moved by 2 days the one I wear on March 17th has the wrong date on it.

This year, for one year only, it's on the March 15th instead of the 17th, so it doesn't clash with the start of Holy Week leading up to Easter. I've got my cans of Guinness in the fridge ready to open tonight.