A couple of days ago I had a go at making Heston's cheese sauce. The big difference between his recipe and a traditional one is that you don't start with a roux. The sauce base was white wine and chicken stock, instead of milk. The wine was reduced then the stock was added and heated. The cheese was finely grated then mixed with cornflour before being stirred into the wine/stock mixture.

The end result was a very smooth sauce but the stock flavour was a bit too strong. I will experiment further but next time I might use milk and wine or milk and stock.

My next new recipe was a sourdough bread. This was based on the recipe from the Fabulous Baker Brothers TV series. I made the starter last week using spelt flour, and fed it each day with a bit more flour and water.

I made the dough yesterday and left it to 'prove' overnight before baking it this morning on the pizza stone at gas mark 8. For a first attempt I am reasonably happy with the results. Since the starter was fairly young, the 'sourdough' flavour was quite light but it was a good loaf. I have just realised that this is probably the first loaf of bread I have made completely on my own.

Next time I might make the dough a bit stiffer since I think this one was a bit wet and sticky. The bread had a big hollow bit in the middle, like a giant pitta bread, so we sliced it in half horizontally and made a fried egg sandwich for our breakfast.

We were watching the latest episode of How to cook like Heston on Channel 4 and he was demonstrating his method of making a cheese sauce and then using that to make a macaroni cheese. I was in the middle of cooking a chicken, sweet potato and butternut squash curry but I thought "I'd rather be eating that instead".

We both really enjoy roast chicken so when Heston Blumenthal's latest TV series (How to Cook like Heston) covered chicken in last week's episode, we had to see it. He presented a novel way of cooking a chicken which began with an overnight soak in brine, in a similar manner to cooking a ham. The actual cooking was done at a very low temperature (gas mark ¼) instead of the usual gas mark 6.

We didn't plan our chicken roasting in advance and hadn't done the brining, so today I just did my normal roast chicken recipe. The only real similarity with Heston's is that we both remove the string which trusses the chicken so the heat can get to the legs and side of the breast better. I filled the cavity with a few cloves of garlic and a sprig each of thyme and rosemary to give a bit of extra flavour to the meat. I rubbed vegetable oil on the skin and sprinkled some stock granules all over.

We have a roasting tray with a rack inside and a lid, so I put about half a centimetre of water in the bottom of the tray, sat the chicken on the rack, put the lid on top and put the chicken in the middle of the oven at gas mark 6 for an hour. The water will create plenty of steam which will keep the meat moist while it cooks.

After the hour was over, I removed the lid and let the chicken carry on cooking for just under an hour to let the skin go crispy. The end result was a well-cooked tender chicken with thin crispy (and tasty) skin. The juices which collected in the bottom of the tray, along with the herbs and garlic, will be used later on when I make a chicken stock.

The chicken legs and wings (along with some of the crispy skin) are going to be blitzed with some mayonnaise and a sprinkle of salt to make a sandwich spread for tomorrow's lunch.

I was watching the third episode of the BBC series The Code and the presenter, Marcus du Sautoy, was watching the movement of a flock of starlings. All of a sudden the birds formed the shape of a number 6. The event went completely unnoticed by the presenter but from the screen grab below it looks like he had his eyes closed at the time.

The event occurred at 12m23s into the programme.

I'm in Chicago for a week, attending a conference. We got here on tuesday but our luggage didn't arrive until last night thanks to our 1st plane being late and the airline not having enough time to transfer the luggage over to the 2nd plane. Unfortunately my laptop charger was in the luggage so I had to restrict computer use because I didn't want the battery to run down and leave me unable to do any work.

I'll upload some photos eventually but I'll just waffle on slightly at random for a few minutes first.

There seem to be a lot of 'news' style programmes on in the mornings and I found myself watching a lot of 'Good Morning America' on ABC but I had to give up because they were spending so much time talking about the upcoming Royal Wedding. I'm sure I've seen more about it here than back home.

I really can't watch Fox News. It seems to be aimed at 10 year olds, or at least aimed at people who like inane comments and slightly stupid sounding presenters.

Why did CNN give Pierce Morgan the Larry King job? Surely they could have found someone better, or at least less annoying.

About half the adverts seem to be for pharmaceuticals of various types. A lot of these have a spoken warning at the end which seem to imply that one of the side effects might be death. I know they have to be careful and try to cover all eventualities but that would put me off wanting to take some. Also I mocked an advert for a product aimed at people who couldn't produce enough tears and so needed something to lubricate their eyes. I really wouldn't have thought there was a huge need for such a product and couldn't understand why it was being advertised so much. That was until I spent 2 days in an over-air-conditioned conference centre which seems to be sucking all moisture from my body. Now I understand. If most offices are as bad as that then there is definitely a need for the product, but surely a simpler solution would be just to turn the air conditioning down a little. Where I am right now, there is a bridge between the conference centre and the hotel and there is often a howling gale blowing though, probably caused by an imbalance in the air conditioning in the two buildings.

OK, I spent longer prattling about medicines and air conditioning than I really intended. One thing which has impressed me about Chicago is the public transport. The buses and trains are cheap at $2.25 for a journey or $23 for a pass which is valid for an entire week. This even includes a trip from the airport to the city centre. The buses also have a loudspeaker which gives the name of the next stop or road junction, which makes it really easy to find out where you are and when you need to get off. This is so much better than the buses in Coventry, which are expensive and not part of a properly 'integrated transport' system and half of the drivers don't seem to know their route very well so if you try to ask them if they go past a particular place they can't or won't answer you. The 'Travel West Midlands' company which runs most of the Coventry bus service can't even be arsed putting prices on its website so as an infrequent bus user it's a pain finding out the prices because all the buses are 'exact change only'. The Chicago buses are also exact change, but since all journeys are the same price and that price is well publicised, it's a much friendlier system.

Beer is quite expensive here with pints being between $5-8 depending on bar and type of beer, but a lot of bars seem to stock a good range of 'proper' beers and not just industrial factory-made tasteless lagers. I've been impressed with the beer selection in most of the places I've been to so far.

Food in bars is reasonably priced and of course the portions are enormous. We've not been disappointed by either size of quality. Food in shops is quite expensive, with fruit often costing $1 a piece and snack bars are at least that much too. I was terribly disappointed with the american Tropicana juice. Back home, Tropicana is a premium brand and is nearly all 'freshly squeezed' or at least not from concentrate. All the juices I've seen so far here have been made from concentrate and have other flavours added, usually listed as something like 'Naturally occurring flavours not from Orange' or something similar. The flavour is nowhere near as good as the UK Tropicana.

Last week we watched the episode of Glee which featured the cast performing songs from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It made me want to watch the film again, which we did last night. I have mentioned in the past that I'm not a fan of musicals but the Rocky Horror Picture Show is one exception. The less said about the sequel, Shock Treatment,the better.

I got our old VHS video recorder set up so we could watch the old tape of Shock Treatment, just to remind myself how bad it is compared to RHPS. The songs are very lacklustre (apart from Bitchin' in the Kitchen), and the story (mainly a parody on TV taking over society) isn't as interesting. The film is trying too hard to be quirky and could really do with a strong character such as Frank-N-Furter.

My 'first impression' of the film was that it felt like someone trying to make a bad musical but that might be a little harsh. The film completely lacks the 'fun' element which made Rocky Horror great.

We went to the Good Food Show at the NEC today. The ticket included entry to the Saturday Kitchen, a live version of the BBC TV show hosted by James Martin. It featured a lot of the usual items from TV, including the Omelette Challenge (with guest chef Lawrence Keogh) and wine tips from Olly Smith. The celebrity guest today was 80s singer Paul Young (who has started to look a lot like Gary Glitter as he's got older). The chefs cooked a spiced breaded chicken for him (a bit like home-made KFC).

Back to the show, we noticed garlic and chillies seemed to feature prominently. There were a few stalls selling garlic bulbs, including some Elephant Garlic where the individual cloves were bigger then normal garlic bulbs. We tried quite a lot of chilli based foods, including chilli sauces, cheeses, chilli vodkas and liqueurs.

Each year I normally manage to eat something new and different. This year it was a scorpion. One of the vodka stalls had a jar filled with scorpions and the bloke there dared me to try one. It tasted of vodka but it wasn't a very pleasant experience. I had to chew it a lot before I could summon the courage to swallow. The texture wasn't very nice and I'm sure I could feel all the legs as I chewed.

I also 'ate' some gold flakes, but that was much more pleasant. The first bit of gold was from an sample of Goldschlager. I'd never tried it before - I first heard of it several years ago in Wetherspoons. Someone in the queue ahead of me tried to order it and the bartender mis-heard and thought they wanted a Grolsch Lager. The second bit of gold was a sample of a sparkling wine which contained gold flakes.

We saw the naan breads being made on the Saturday Kitchen on TV and it looked so easy we decided to give it a go. We followed the recipe from the BBC web site but needed to add a few extra tablespoons of water to get the dough to come together properly. We also found that gas mark 1 was a bit low so turned the oven up to 2 and gave them a few more minutes.

The naan bread tasted like 'proper' bought ones. The black onion seeds are vitally important and give the bread most of its familiar flavour.

We served the naan breads with our chicken korma, and washed it down with a glass of Indian wine. The wine was an Indage 'The Grey Count' chenin blanc and went rather well with the curry. The wine was ok on its own but the spiciness of the curry seemed to bring out more flavour if you take a sip immediately after a mouthful of curry.

In the second series of the BBC TV series 'Grow your own drugs', James Wong gave a recipe for a herbal moth repelling mixture. We haven't had a problem with moth-eaten clothes but we do sometimes get a lot of tiny moths in the house.

The recipe calls for sage, rosemary and wormwood. We already had sage and rosemary in the garden so I bought some wormwood seeds. It took a few months for the plants to be big enough to pick the leaves but a few weeks ago I picked some of each herb and spread them out to dry.

I put some of the dried herbs in a small bowl in the living room and after a few days it seemed to be working - there are definitely fewer moths in the room. I have since read that moths don't like cloves so I added a few cloves to the bowl first.

This morning I made up some of the moth repelling sachets, adding a couple of cloves to each. I didn't have any muslin so I cut an old tea towel into squares and used that instead. The material was a bit too thick so they were a bit fiddly to make. I put the sachets in the wardrobes and on the bedroom shelf so I will see if they make a difference.

Last week I received an email from someone at ITV - they had seen my blog and thought I'd be interested in entering the Britain's Best Dish competition. I'm not sure whether I should enter - you need to cook a starter, main & dessert but I usually just cook main courses.

I don't really have a 'signature dish' which I could use to show off. Also since I don't make desserts, I would have to choose one I really liked and learn how to cook it.

If anyone does want to take part their email address is bestdish@itv.com or phone them on 0871 62 66 222.

I am currently watching the new BBC adaptation of The Day of the Triffids. It's ok but they have made rather too many changes. It's ages since I read the book so I can't remember all the details but the original Triffids couldn't move very quickly, unlike the ones here. The original ones would kill a victim then patiently wait for it to decompose. They also couldn't reach out and pull people towards them. I never imagined them to look like angry Aloe Vera plants.

The book had slower pacing, which gave time for the characters to develop. They obviously decided to speed things up to make the adaptation more dramatic. The narration in the book helped create the atmosphere, making the events seem scarily plausible. Unfortunately this is lost in the tv version.

I can't remember the exact details of the original ending, so it doesn't matter that I'm posting this before the programme finishes.

Occasionally the programme felt like Aliens: The Vegetable Edition.

We videoed the film Ghost Rider when it was on Channel 5 a few weeks ago. We watched it tonight. I really hope it was supposed to be some kind of comedy. It didn't take itself too seriously but it looked and sounded a bit stupid, as if it didn't know it was so ridiculous. The acting was fairly bad but a lot of that might have been due to the awful script.

The Nicholas Cage character seems to have the same taste in music as The Stig from Top Gear. In the early parts of the film he regularly listens to a lot of easy listening stuff such as The Carpenters.

Paradox is a new tv series on BBC1. The first episode looked interesting - images from the future which hint at a disaster are picked up from space. Tonight's disaster included a dead body and a mangled bridge. It looks like other episodes are going to follow a similar pattern of: see photos/try to work out where/try to avert disaster. We'll have to wait and see if it can maintain interest.

The episode claimed to be set in or near Manchester. The city centre featured in a few scenes, and there was a mention of a character taking a train from 'Manchester Station'. No actual station name was given at the time. Amazingly though when this information was relayed by the main character, she had miraculously deduced that he meant Victoria Station.

For some reason the show decided to use fictional place names: Hazel Hills and Marlingham. There is a Hazel Grove near Manchester - perhaps the writers heard the name but didn't like it so they changed it.

The bridge where the 'incident' took place was over the B204. This immediately sounded fishy because I knew that '2' roads were mainly around London, Kent and parts of the south coast. It turns out that there is a real B204 but it's in London, near the Old Kent Road, and not a few minutes train ride from Manchester.

I don't know why there were so many sloppy mistakes in the programme, nor why nobody noticed or bothered fixing them while the programme was being made. It was as if some southern writers decided to set something 'up north' but couldn't be arsed doing any actual research and just made things up.

Last night I watched a programme called Keith meets Keith, where Keith Allen went in search of TV chef Keith Floyd, who was responsible for turning food programmes into entertainment rather than dull dry tutorials. He enjoyed drinking as much as cooking and usually had a glass of wine in one hand during the programmes.

This morning I was saddened to read that he had died last night. I had been a fan of his books and TV programmes for many years. Whenever I had a glass of wine while cooking, I would call it 'having a Floyd'.

Torchwood made a welcome return to tv last night. It is maturing into a very good series. I was surprised to read that the move from BBC2 to BBC1 has led to an increase in viewing figures. It is as if people are incapable of finding a programme if it is on BBC2. The same thing happened with 'Have I got news for you'. The viewing figures more or less doubled after it moved to BBC1.

It's not like BBC2 is a new channel and people aren't used to it. It started broadcasting in 1964 so everyone should know about it by now. Do people just not trust it? Or are people just too stupid to stray from BBC1/ITV1?