Chicken Farming

Technically not a Stumbleupon posting, but had to share that we have now enjoyed our third egg from the chooks, not bad for less than a week's work. Our initial purism of only giving them mixed corn and layer pellets lasted about half an hour, and they now enjoy lots of scraps - even less waste to put in the bin! Another enjoyable aspect of having the hens is that Seamus now has Cat TV - little brainless ginger furball sits for hours at a time plotting how to get through the wire - bless.

All of which makes me think, is this the real life? And how tenuous a link is that to the excellent Sporcle site which has some challenging and fun games - so, can you type out the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody inside ten minutes? Or are you just a poor boy?

Enjoy.

http://www.sporcle.com/games/bmo1616/bohemianrhapsody

Chookie Chooks!!!

We got chickens! We all jumped in the car and risked our lives going out to a farm up in the hills near Buxton (ice, thick fog) and came home with three Warrens, lovely natured hens with a reputation as good layers. It was supposed to take a week for them to get used to their new home, but just two days into their new adventure, one of our girls has produced a beautiful egg.

Ok, its not the biggest thing you'll have ever seen, but it was probably her first ever, so a good effort (its the one on the left - the one on the right is a local large free range for comparison. We fried it gently in some butter, great colour and rich creamy tasting yolk.

And yes, we're sure there will soon be plenty to share.

Anyway, this blog is supposed to be about gems that Stumbleupon serves up for me, so here is a recent egg-related one (there's an egg in the recipe - it was as close as I could find, ok?). Instructables seems to be an amateur-led site to post your favourite ways to do things. The one that stumbled up for me was the 5-Minute Chocolate Cake. I made it in a mug as suggested here, microwaved for two and a half minutes, and Ta-Da! A really lovely chocolate cake. Nobody more shocked than me at the ease and success of this recipe, so if you fancy a quick cakey snack - go for it!

Enjoy!

http://www.instructables.com/id/5_minute_Chocolate_Cake/

Rip Off Great Britain

I spent most of Monday sounding like a tabloid headline. I took wifey and the nippers to London for a few days. We stayed at my Uncle's flat (still washing the fag smoke out of the clothes) and tubed in to the centre each day to see the sights. My headline here refers to the cost of lunch on Sunday. To be fair, it was on Whitehall at a place called Churchills, you could see Horseguards Parade to one side and Westminster to the other. But is that ANY excuse to charge £4 for bowl of chips???? Probably.

And then Stumbleupon gave me this - a wiki posting of hundreds of mad playable card decks. I spent a number of years playing a card game called Magic: The Gathering (they're still going strong) so find myself drawn to this sort of thing. My current favourite here (out of the quarter I've been through) is Mornington Crescent, and how I smiled each day this week as we went through that station and heard it being announced.

Enjoy!

http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/index.php/Category:Playable_decks

Further Proof!!!

Remember the "Iamawesome" website? How many of these wonderful sitea re there out in cyberspace?

Enjoy!

http://www.isnickelbacktheworstbandever.com/

Head Case

I love social psychology experiments, and this is one of the many really good ones. What a mixed bag of neuroses us herd animals are!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTOwE3hnEWk

Enjoy.

100 Ways To Cook An Egg

We're getting some chooks! I've been converting an old hut into a coop, and building an enclosure, wifey has been scoping out the local farmers market at Chelford and has acquired a huge amount of chicken wire. So one weekends work left to do, and as soon as we get back from a jolly in London at half term we'll be buying a nice cage of hens. I can't wait to see how the cat reacts to them.

So, good recipe sites make your mouth water and this one did straight away. I will certainly try some of these, and in a few weeks time we hope to do so with eggs from our own chickens.

Enjoy!

http://www.endlesssimmer.com/2009/04/16/100-ways-to-crack-an-egg/

Animals On The Underground

Wow! I love this for so many reasons - creative, funny, challenging, utterly pointless. Makes me want to have a go. Perhaps Cars on the Underground? Instruments? Food?

Enjoy!

http://www.animalsontheunderground.com/the_animals.html