My girlfriend is bringing her work laptop home from work today for the weekend. Why is she lugging it all the way home with her?
So that tomorrow morning I can check that Danny's flight is on time, using the wireless broadband from the comfort of my own bed. Excellent
Off to Engerland.
What a world traveller I am. A jet setting playboy of the highest order.
Since I'm hanging out with nerds and my cohort of laziness, I imagine I'll blog at least once. I said the same thing when I went to Malaysia and look how well that worked out. No seriously, go look. I'm not going to tell you.
BBC2's new schedule features 2 cooking shows in consecutive 8:30pm slots. They couldn't be more different. On Monday we have Nigella Express, Nigella Lawson's show that claims to show you how to cook very quick and easy recipes. Now, Nigella is no trained chef but her 'sexy' style has won her a lot of fans.
On Tuesday Heston Bluhmental's show, In Search of Perfection, takes classic dishes and uses the latest in gastronomic science to try and elevate them to the highest possible level that you can achieve in a home kitchen.
Now, on paper I'd expect Nigella's show to be more suitable for the LazyView reader, the concept of very quick easy recipes to make when you've got very little time is just what I need on a day to day basis. However, there is one major flaw, and it's not Nigella's ridiculously over the top flirting to the camera or her conveniently ethnically diverse "friends" who pop over for a surprise Sunday lunch. (although who does that? Who randomly pops over at the last minute and expects to get given a roast?) No. The problem is a combination of finances and a complete detachment from normal life.
In her last show Nigella got a phone call from 'the girls' who were going to pop over that evening for a drink. Nigella fancied a quiet night in but, of course, being the perfect hostess she says "sure, come over!" and because she's cooking the express way she hops in a taxi to her butcher and buys what must have been about £30 worth of lamb loin. Excuse me? I'm lazy, but I wouldn't get a taxi to the fucking butcher! (and I'm sorry to say if you pop over for a snack with your wine, you won't be getting prime cuts of lamb on a salad either... I might make an awesome cake though). Once she gets the lamb home she puts it together with a few bits and pieces she finds in her walk in pantry, which is organised geographically so if you want some south east asian flavours you just walk down to that section. I've seriously seen less well stocked specialist delis.
So yeah Nigella, it is easy to throw a meal for 4 together in a few minutes if you're going to throw £60 worth of ingredients and taxi fares at the problem but your average Joe like me considers a tin of tomatoes or some butter to be a store cupboard staple, not a packet of north african spicy sausages!
Heston on the other hand is one of the best and most creative chefs in the world. His restaurant, The Fat Duck, has been in the top 2 in the world for the past 6 years. Along with Ferran Adrià at El Bulli he is generally seen as at the forefront of experimental cooking. In his show he spends 6 months experimenting in his lab and traveling to the best restaurants and food science centres of the world, trying to perfect a series of what seem to be the most mundane of dishes, this week he tackled the mighty burger. Easy? Well, have you tried getting the perfect bite sized bun? Making cheese slices at home? Perfecting the blend of meat for your burger? I doubt it. Last week he spent a lot of time trying to achieve an oven temperature of 350 degrees c (gas mark 25) ina way that people could achieve at home. He was trying to replicate the heat of a Tandoor oven.
Heston's recipes are intensely complicated and the product of tens of hours of research, I doubt anyone will actually ever make them at home BUT you do learn a huge amount from them. Not only the science but little tips of the trade. eg. Star anise has a chemical in it that reacts with caremelising onions to produce a chemical that give you the Umami (meaty) flavour, in a similar way to monosodium glutamate, so if you put star anise in with the frying onions when you make your bolognese sauce it'll taste meatier.
LazyView verdict: Heston wins by miles.
Heston's show is brilliant, interesting to people who like cooking or science and despite his lofty credentials and the fact he's cooking at a level that most people will never even eat let alone be able to cook to he's totally in touch with real life. Watch his show and you'll learn something. Nigella's show is smug, annoying and completely out of touch with a normal person's reality. As a lazy person her show professionally offends me. Avoid.
Next week my fellow lazyblogger, Danny, is flying over from the Good Ol' USofA for a week. Excited Reader: "That sounds great! What are you going to do?"
Er. A very good question. Between us two of us we have the organisational motivation of a sloth recently tasked with shipping himself to the Abbatoir de Sloth, Paris where, upon arrival, he will be skinned alive and prepared to be made into a series of unpronouncable French delicacies.
I have already done a huge amount of things to prepare though. I thought before I started writing this blog that I'd done hardly anything, but in fact I've done loads, or at least I've facilitated loads.
I have told other people who know Danny and are stupid enough to want to see him whilst he is in the country that he is coming over. Well, some of them anyway I probably forgot a lot of them. Some of them are even coming to visit.
I've booked tickets to a football match... well, I say I booked them. Technically I faffed around like a bufoon trying to sort something out until a crack team of my friends kindly dived in to save the situation. (this is meant to be a football analogy, not a comment related to any recent drownings).
I've also arranged a party for the Saturday night he arrives. It's my girlfriend's birthday around that time, and we haven't had a housewarming party so we figured that was enough excuses to have one. Well, I told some people it was happening but have only just put some details on the interweb so that people actually knew when and where they were coming. Facebook Events FTW! I also ordered a lot of booze on the internet, using the excellent Majestic home delivery service that I think I've recommended here before, which arrived last night. I also started drinking it last night but hopefully there'll be some left by Saturday.
I got the guy who organises our weekly Sunday afternoon 6 a-side football to upgrade our booking to the double size pitch so Danny can join in.
I've arranged an evening in the pub with some other internet nerds in London.
I've even thought of two whole cities other than London that we could visit whilst he's here.
I'm exhausted! To be fair to Danny, he's been busy too. He's packed a shirt and a pair of jeans already.
My current car is a 10 year old Toyota 4Runner with 137,000 miles on it. To say it's a little used would be like saying I'm a little addicted to internet porn. Recently I decided to buy a new car. I'm going to tell you the 5 part saga of what turned out to be an epic quest. A battle between good and evil. Between right and wrong. Between two epic forces of laziness. Between me and a Car Dealership.
A few weeks ago, in a town not too far away I took a Saturday trip to a car dealership. I've been looking for a car for awhile so I knew exactly what I wanted. A Nissan 350z. The only question was the color.
Well, like all the other car dealerships I had been too, they didn't have many cars on the lot (that weren't SUVs. Shockingly SUV sales aren't too strong these days). I was approached by seemingly affable Sales Guy (aren't they all) about 2 minutes after I got on the lot. After the initial chit-chat and introductions I cut right to the chase and laid out what I wanted. Sales Guy knew I was not to be toyed around with. Sales Guy said to me, "If I can find you the car you want, will you buy today?" I said, "I'm ready to buy today." Sales Guy ran some fancy inventory searches, using this strange device called a Computer, on other Nissan dealerships in this area of the country. He found one that matched my specifications! Touring package, San Marino Blue, grey and black leather interior. In Georgia! That's not too far away. They "contacted the dealership to make sure the car was available" and it was, so we moved forward.
Now it was time to talk numbers. He gave me the list price, I told him my price and said that was it, I wasn't negiotiating. He said back, "If I can get this price, do we have a deal?" He's a very quizzical Sales Guy. I said yes and shook his hand. Lo and behold, they matched the price and after some discussion and arm wrestling, we agreed on the financing. I put some money down to secure transport and to lock me into the deal so I wouldn't get buyers remorse and try to back out of the deal.
All seemed great. In a few days I would have a brand new car. I didn't realize at the time I had made a deal with the devil.
Those brilliantly ingenious Japanese have done it again, they've come up with brilliant new gadget for your car. Next time you or one of your pesky offspring are caught short on a long car journey there'll be need to stop for a 'comfort break' at an expensive service station where you'll be tempted into joining the RAC, buying a meat and pastry product or a cheap 80s music compilation performed by cover artists. No. Now you can relieve yourself in your backseat with the in car toilet.
THAT is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the stomach to suffer
The pangs and rumbles of outrageous hunger,
Or to take arms against a sea of chocolates,
And by eating, end them. To die, to eat;
"How do I make such a choice?" I hear absolutely no one ask. Well I'm gonna tell you. And you're gonna like it. And if you don't, maybe you'll comment about it in the comments section and I can call you a testicle sniffer and things will be great.
People have accused us in the past of being lazy because we actually do stuff. But being lazy isn't about not doing stuff, it's about doing stuff the lazy way. Being lazy is about going with the flow. Taking the path of least resistance. And giving in is the path of least resistance. This article and the undeniable science behind it back that up. The more you resist something the more you must have it. You have to give in at the start. Never try to resist. Resistance is futile blah blah blah Borgy Borg Borg. A lazy person would already know this, not resist, and therefore not stuff their face with 40% more chocolate.
Of course, according to science, in the area of food, men are immune to this phenomenon owing to the fact that we're not fucking crazy. I'm going to guess in the area of sex we're highly susceptible though.
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