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Thought I’d try some chilli cooking today while it was raining and (relatively) cold outside. Today’s effort was mango and habanero chutney. I used the recipe from here, with double the chillis of course, but had to guess when to put the mangos in. They probably should have proof read the recipe first!

Tastes really good! And a big, big kick, which is nice.

Now I just have to wait to get some nice white fish to try it with.

Update: Looking at the photo on the site I realise that it might look like a big pot of sick. It doesn’t in real life, and really doesn’t taste like it, honest!!

Ok, this is it. A line has finally been crossed. I knew things were getting out of hand, and it seemed like every single TV programme had to have an “0900-Dial in and give us some money” aspect to it, but now it appears that they finally do have to…

The ITV NEWS has now had a 0900 competition during it! The NEWS! What the hell?!

I find this pretty damn disturbing. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right. It’s meant to be the news for goodness sake! Sigh.

But that reminds me. 0900 numbers have been in the newspaper lately for another reason. Well, the Metro at least. I’m sure that technically it counts as a newspaper.

Apparently there are some people really upset that they’d spent money on 0900 numbers to vote people off from Big Brother, only to find that they now have to spend more money though these numbers to stop the person that they’d voted off from coming back though some strange back door that the producers have thought up. There’s even talk of legal action over mis-selling the original 0900 numbers if they do come back.

Or something.

Can’t say I’ve really been that worried about it all.

All I can say is “get a life, and get over it, suckers!”

And actually, while I’m ranting, and on a related topic. The Metro seems to feel the need to have a “news item” about what happened the previous day in the Big Brother house. Look, either you watch the show, and you already know what happened, or you don’t watch it and really, really, really don’t care.

What the hell is the point!! Please give me some more real news. There has to be some around! And sack the journo who’s presumably made themselves a cushy job out of watching that shite all day to come up with a one inch “story”. They’ll be good for nothing now. Their brains must be mush!

I feel better now.

Having heard that it was on, it just wouldn’t have been right to miss it! The 2006 West Dean Gardens chilli festival!

The gardens themselves are down south from London, just out of Chichester. So we had a nice train ride through some countryside for a change, and then a bus ride though narrow country lanes. Makes a change from the tube every day! Probably took us about 2 and a bit hours to get there, but not a bad trip.

So what was there? A lot of people, all enjoying chilli related activity, and a heap of stalls with all sorts of chilli stuff, of course! Lots of sauces, hot (temperature and spice) food, plants, crockery, tea towels, cards etc., bands and beer and cider… And a lot of plants and seeds to buy. Managed to avoid buying too much though. Only came away with a lot of seeds for next year.

It was also nice to wander around the normal gardens though. There were massive vege gardens, glasshouses etc. to look as well as all the chillis. But it was all soooo dry! Brown bits of lawn, empty pools and ponds. All a bit sad, but not surprising given the extremely dry and hot summer!

Really nice sunny day out in the country. Good fun.

You’d think that a running live written commentary of a sports event would probably be quite boring, but the BBC news site manages to make the commentary as interesting as the game. Take some of the bits from today’s cricket game:

1539: Pietersen isn’t bothered tea is imminent and slaps Kaneria over his head for six. The crowd rumble their approval, like 17,000 Sid Jameses who have just clapped eyes on Barbara Windsor’s behind. Players go off for energy drinks. Pietersen is 82, Bell is nine.

1700: Inzamam looks like he’s got the hump. He’s got the air of a man who has trodden in some dog’s business on the way to his daughter’s wedding. Three from the over and players take drinks.

1715: Umar is retained and still bowling liquorice all-sorts. England are happy to milk him tenderly rather than yank his udders off and take four singles from the over.

And so on! But this isn’t a one of today, they do this all the time! Even if I’ve no interest in the game I’ve started scanning the live coverage when I’m bored just for a laugh. Superb that they don’t take themselves seriously. I hope they keep it up!

And here they are! Ripe and ready for the eating!

We’ve had one of the Habeneros with our nachos the other night… Nice and hot! But too hot just to chew on!

But what I’m really looking forward to is the chillli festival this weekend! I’ll let you know what that was like later!

I got a bit of a shock today. On the daily inspection of the chillis, there was a hint of colour on a chilli or two on both types! Yippee!

Which is a relief, as all weekend I’d been trying on and off to find a website that told me just how long it took until chillis started to ripen. The only sites I found all had pictures from around October time with ripe chillis, and I was starting to think that I might have to wait that long! NNNnooooooooooo!!

I can’t work out if it’s the weather today, or the long conversation I had with them yesterday that’s done the trick, but I’m not complaining! But there is a little concern with the plants though. All this hot weather is, I think, causing a few issues with flowering. I understand that the plants need coolish nights to set flowers, but for a lot of nights lately the temperature in the house seems to stay well about 20 to 25 degrees. Great for sleeping too!

But I guess I won’t have to wait too long now the scary part. Finding out just how hot they are! Gulp!

Toast – a favourite food of the British……. Also the name of the NZ Wine and Food Festival in the UK. A fine sunny Saturday and what better way to spend it than heading off to one of London’s great parks, Regents Park, to indulge in some fine NZ food and wine.

With the wine selling opening at 12pm and it being really, really hot we set off to find a nice glass of vino blanco. But as it was so hot and the glasses were so small we had to have a few more…. The majority that we tasted were from Central Otago. Not sure we can remember what any of them are anymore! But the one we really wanted to try somehow managed to sell out in 40 mins, so there was either not much of it or it was extremely popular!

To break up the day and escape the sun for a while we went and watched a cooking demonstration – sushi skills. We learnt that fresh grated NZ grown wasabi is really yummy! It’s quite different to the normal paste, and I guess the best description would be the wasabi paste flavour without the really sharp bite. Good fun to watch, but we didn’t learn that much that we didn’t already know. Nice to know that we aren’t really that bad at making sushi!

Oh yeah and we made sure we used the food vouchers you get when you get your ticket by eating 2 lots of salt and pepper squid, some very expensive seared tuna, some fantastic green lip mussels and of course nothing better than to finish off with some boysenberry cheesecake!!

It was a great day out and good to taste some NZ favs again. But we were left wondering a little just what it meant for the exhibitors, and who the target “guest” was. The whole place was packed out with mainly young Kiwi’s, quite a few of us just there to enjoy the day and have a few drinks. It doesn’t really seem like a show where the products are getting introduced to a new audience, and I reckon you could count the number of people who can remember what wines they were drinking.

But it didn’t seem like the sort of show where everyone exhibiting was out to make a killing either. Most of the food and wine was relatively resonably priced (in fact, compared to some shows it was pretty cheap).

But I’m sure that for the Kiwi’s coming across to show off their stuff, a weekend in the London summer has to beat all the cold and snow back in NZ!

The organisers had also made a good decision (in our minds at least) of shutting the bars at 4pm. 4 hours was long enough for everyone, I think, even though some would maybe not admit it. We didn’t see anyone who was in a very messy state, but I think closing them one hour later and there would have been quite a few.

All in all, a grand day out.

Once again it’s been a while since the last chilli update… But here they are! The latest pics.

And damn! They’re starting to look good enough to eat! No idea when the Habeneros will start to change colour, and not sure how big the Ring of Fire’s will get, or when they’ll ripen either, but we’ll see.

I just hope they’re getting enough sun on the not so sunny window sills. I’ve been really surprised at just how prolific the Ring of Fires have been given that they’re in pots that are really too small for them, and that has obviously stunted their growth a bit, but given the size the Habeneros have got to, that’s maybe not a bad thing! Next time though, maybe a pot size somewhere in between would be better.

And it’s maybe a good thing that the hundreds of flowers on the Habeneros have not all managed to pollentate through the “shake that plant” pollenation method, else we’d have enough to feed a whole Carribean community! Amazing amounts of flowers.

All looks good for a full production run one day though.

After the real experience of Wimbledon, queueing, it was great to be able to wander stright up to the gates and get in with some preorganised tickets. I’m not sure where they came from, but Bec managed to get 2 Centre Court tickets through her work. Much quicker and easier (and meant we could have a much longer sleep in that morning), but not the same as Friday’s effort.

Which was probably just as well, as it was a LOT hotter than on Friday. Too hot! We were melting all the time, and couldn’t last watching a full game from the seats. There was just no air at all moving in the court, and no shade all day where we were sitting, so we had to get out now and then for a bit of shade and try to track down any breeze that was around. There wasn’t much of that!

On a fine summers day in London, where better to be than at Wimbledon watching some tennis? We didn’t have tickets for the day, but they run such a wonderful system where there are always a large number of tickets available on the day for those that are keen enough to try their luck queueing.

After our disastrous effort last year when we got there a bit late, queued for ages only to find that we were about 20 people away from the front when they had sold out of on-the-day tickets and we had to wait until people left before we could get in only to have it rain about half an hour after we got in, we got there just a bit earlier this year at about 8:30am. The queuing took about 2.5 hours, so we were done with the queue and through all the security well in time to see the start of the days play. Whew!

Because so few of the courts are ticketed, you can wander around and see all the players you can find. And you can always spend a lot of the time up on the hill watching the big (huge!) screen there if there is a good game on one of the main courts. Which we did. Great place for drinking Pimms in the sun too, although there is not a lot of shade for when it gets just that little bit warm. But then you can go off and find some shade for a while.

A great day out.