The Best way to Chop Chillies

I often cook with chillies and tend to like my food hotter than the rest of the family. The trouble is the chili juice tends to get on chopping boards and on to other food, As you can imagine I sometimes get complaints about this from other family members. Worse it can get on to my hands and make its way to my eyes.

Now wearing gloves and using a separate chopping board will solve these problems but it is a bit of a pain to do all that just to chop a couple of chillies.

So I stumbled upon the ideal solution. It only works because I tend to put the seeds in as well rather than scraping them off. The solution is when I buy chilies I freeze them when I get home.

I just take them out of the freezer and chop them while they are frozen. They are not hard to chop when frozen but as the "juice" is frozen it does not get everywhere.

Now I get too eat as many chilli's as I like without complaints from my family.

Review of Necropolis Rising.

This book was the first book I brought for my kindle though the Amazon store. I originally wanted a kindle as a way of reading various pdf books and other technical ebooks I had.

I read only a little bit of fiction and I could not resist this book. Partly the price of 86p, or something like that, and being in the pulp zombie fiction genre that I kind of like.

The story is set in the UK where there has been an outbreak in Birmingham which is then quarantined. A bunch of well trained criminals are trying to get into the city while the story of the city unfold.

I won't go into too much detail about the story, but will say it is what you expect...

The book is well written and I just about managed to polish it off in one evening. I guess the means it is hard to put down. A good read and excellent value at the price.

What To Expect When You Come Of Caffeine

I recently decided to come off of caffeine for a while. I do this occasionally just to check I have the will power to do it and I suspect it is good for my body in terms of giving it a bit of a break.

In my mind caffeine is a mildly addictive drug. The means you body adapts to regular consumption of it and have a withdrawal symptom when you stop consuming it. 

For me this means about two days of quite bad headaches. I usually suffer these without pain killers as I feel it is cheating to mask the withdrawal symptoms of one drug with another one.

After about two days these symptoms pass and I feel fine. While I do occasionally rely on coffee to keep me away when I am not using (sorry I mean consuming :) it I find the need for it greatly diminished. I guess I just sleep better. 

Coffee disrupts my sleep which means I need coffee to to keep going in the day. A viscous cycle. Caffeine is a clever little drug!

I usually time my withdrawal symptoms to be mid week as dealing with children and having a raging head ache is not fun. It is better to be at work slumped at my desk.

So if you come off caffeine expect a couple of days of headaches and feeling really bad and then it all rapidly goes away.

I usually try to stay caffeine free for about a month before introducing small abouts back into my diet. I am afraid I like coffee to much to give it up for good.

The Dead Time Business

Do you commute on a train? Spend your lunch hour not knowing what to do with yourself or have spare time waiting for the children's swimming lessons to finish.

Have you considered setting up a little business? With the internet is is quite simple you just start. Whether it is developing mobile phone apps or selling stuff on ebay/etsy. If you have a couple hours spare just sit down and start doing it. 

The Key to a Dead Time business is having your business mobile. So you can have it with you so you can work on it any time, whether you are on the train, at a coffee shop or even in a car while waiting to pick someone up. If you can draw create artwork to sell, if you can write blog or write fiction to be published as an ebook. Laptops really open a world of possibilities if you are technically inclined but even if you are not there are still plenty of possibilities that only require you to be able to use ebay/etsy. 

Sure it won't initially be an overnight success but to be successful at something you actually have to be doing it :)

Convert that dead time into a dead time business.

How Often Should You Replace Your Toilet Brush?

Yes I do seem to be thinking about toilets a little bit too much at the moment. Anyway this question popped into my mind. So how often should you replace your toilet brush?

The answer seem to be when it starts to look all worn out, that is the bristles start to look bent and a bit like an overused tooth brush.

If you are truly worried about hygiene perhaps you should try out some of those toilet brushes with disposable heads.

Also don’t forget you can clean your toilet brush if it starts to look shabby bit the bristles are still in good form.

2 Ways To Clean Your Toilet Brush

Yes this is quite an odd topic but I just suddenly wondered the other day what is the best way to clean a toilet brush. After a little bit of research it seems there are two competing methods.

1. After you have used the toilet brush flush the toilet clean and then put the bleach down the toilet. Put the bush in the toilet and leave it in the bleach to soak for a while, some recommend a few minutes while other suggest hours. Remove the brush and let it drain.
2. This method is a little bit more work and involves diluting bleach down to 1 part in 10 in a bucket and submersing the brush into the bucket. Leave for a couple of hours and then rinse off. Towel dry. This has the advantage of clean the whole brush rather than just the head.

I have also heard that some people put them in their washing machines which to me sounds odd and not something I will be trying.

If is safe to say that a toilet brush is probably the more dirty thing in you house so you should always put on rubber gloves when messing around with it.  Oh and of course you should only use a toilet brush to clean the inside of the toilet otherwise you could be spreading germs everywhere!

Carrot and Sweet Potato Curry Thing.

This is a very simple recipe I sometimes make as a side serving to go with wraps as an excellent alternative to refried beans. This recipe is not something you will want to serve with rice on its own but I do really like it with some fried veg in a wrap along with a spoonful of sour cream.


Ingredients

• A couple of medium sweet potatoes
• A couple of large carrots
• Curry powder (to taste)
• Oil.

Instructions.

1. Cut the sweet potatoes and carrots into chunks of about the same size. Boil in the same pan until the sweet potato is soft and starting to fall apart, the carrots will still feel fairly hard. Drain the pan.
2. In a pan heat some oil (add plenty) and them put in the curry powder, followed buy the carrot and sweet potato mix.
3. Cook on a fairly high heat and stir often with a spoon to encourage the sweet potato to break down even further. You may need to add more oil.
4. Once most of the sweet potato has broken down it is ready to serve.

The carrots will have kept their shape and will be covered by a delicious tasting curried sweet potato. As I mentioned we often do this with wraps or, as it is quick to make, we sometimes serve it when do a buffet of food if we have guest visiting.