This seems worth cross-posting from t'other place.

Sorry! I couldn't resist. I've created a Doctor Who version of the wordle game. Hopefully the words in it are enough of a mixture of normal words with Doctor Who relevance, and easily guessable words, with only a few names of aliens that have more consonants than strictly necessary!!!

It can be found at:

Doctor Whordle

Given I've been grappling with a number of completely unfamiliar web tools, all I can guarantee is that it runs in Safari, but hopefully it will run on phones and such like too!!!

First word is not terribly Who-y, but that's randomness for you.

I'm just flagging up that cross-posting from DreamWidth to LJ isn't working and hasn't been working for several days. At the moment it's unclear when, or even if, this will be fixed (DW blames LJ, LJ blames DW). I could copy and paste my posts to both places, but my bandwidth for blogging is low enough as it is, so at least at present, my posts are going to be DreamWidth only. Most of my interactions are over there now, even though I still have a couple of good friends who only read on LJ.

Q22: Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

Nyssa from Doctor Who.

She'd be interesting and sensible and not too much like hard work.

( Questions Under the CutCollapse ) This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/814014.html.

Crossposted to cookbook_challenge.

I picked this out of the "Vegetables" section of my mother's cookbook, partly because I was charmed by the description. It's another newspaper cutting that starts:

"Courgettes are the midget marrows you see in most greengrocers at this time of the year. At 10p per lb. you get quite a lot for your money."

Charmed both by the price and by the need to introduce the courgette as a kind of marrow, rather than vice versa. My father grew marrows in the garden and there's a stuffed marrow recipe in here I'd quite like to try* but marrows are a lot harder to find these days than courgettes.

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Mistakes, Changes and Substitutions
This felt a little like a Bake Off technical challenge. How many courgettes? how hot an oven? how long in the oven to "gratinate" (not a word I had come across before though its meaning is clear). Anyway we used four courgettes which seemed about the right amount for the amount of stuffing we had, and we baked them at 180C for 20 minutes in the oven which seemed to work.

I did not pipe the stuffing because I don't have a piping bag or nozzle though, frankly, if I'd been going to pipe it, I would have whizzed the lot in the food mixer before the attempt

Verdict
An odd one this. We liked the stuffed courgette idea and we liked the stuffing itself (I have a Delia pasta recipe that makes a mushroom sauce in a similar way) but weren't entirely convinced by them together - it was fine just not more than the sum of its parts, if you see what I mean. Our Rose Elliot book has several stuffed courgette recipes in it, so we may try some of them.

*I feel very nostalgic about it despite the fact I was a fussy eater as a child and hated it. This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/813502.html.

Ray is a companion that never was. The production team have explicitly said they were choosing between her and Ace as the next companion. While Ace was amazing, I often think Ray would have been great as well, bringing more of a mechanical mindset to the companion role than Ace's more warrior-like character (even though Ray is holding a gun in the above publicity still). This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/812925.html.

Crossposted to cookbook_challenge

From my mother's cookbook. This is a newspaper clipping of unknown provenance. It starts by stating the recipe is from "Leaves from our Tuscan Kitchen" so I had some hopes of dating the clipping by googling the recipe book. However it transpires that Leaves from our Tuscan Kitchen was first published in 1899 and my mother is not that old.

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Changes, Mistakes and Substitutions
I did not pre-cook the chicken. I was using breast and didn't want it to dry out and figured if it was finely chopped it would cook just fine. I also substituted arborio rice for long grain rice since the stuffing was described as a risotto.

We were a little dubious about boiling the peppers before we stuffed them (not something we normally do with stuffed peppers) and indeed one did fall apart when I drained it, but the others were fine and I think it just needed a little more care.

I also filled the peppers to the top. I hadn't even noticed it said three-quarters until I ran out of risotto - however given one pepper had fallen apart anyway this wasn't a disaster.

Verdict
As this reviewer notes, it is difficult to imagine this as a Victorian recipe, it feels very modern, which just goes to show, I suppose, that modernity is not as novel as we might think. Obviously the unknown newspaper columnist may have updated the recipe (the mention of using a stock cube, for instance) but I'm sure the essence of the idea of stuffing peppers with risotto must date back.

We really liked it, and also thought the general concept was an interesting one and are now contemplating our various other risotto recipes with a viewing to stuffing them into peppers. This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/812624.html.

The Back Page of Doctor Who Weekly Issue One. The text reads:

"I'd only landed on Magnon 5 to stretch my legs, but a malfunction of the Tardis caused it to disappear, leaning me stranded!

The natives thought I was a devil-being and tried to hunt me down with their tame tyrannosaurs!

I didn't know that their pet pteranodons were watching my every move from the air as well, and I was soon trapped in a sort of natural arena.

As the dinosaurs drew nearer, the tribe's chief appeared and had just ordered my death when the Tardis rematerialised right next to me on the sacrificial stone!

Just as well I'd left the door open!

... from the Doctor's Journal, entry 3512/A-7" This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/812206.html.

Cross-posted to cookbook_challenge.

This is from my mother's cookbook written in her own hand-writing. Judging from where it turns up, I suspect it is a recipe from the 1970s. Aphelia is probably the source of the recipe but I have no idea if that is a person, a magazine, or something else - probably a person though the name is unusual and I don't recall my mother ever mentioning an Aphelia.

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Changes, Mistakes and Substitutions
We had some discussion above whether "Doz coriander seeds" was some number of ounces, or a dozen. In the end we decided it was a dozen. I then decided to crush the coriander seeds and a similar number of peppercorns together with a pestle and mortar rather than having them floating whole in the casserole (I think this was a good choice). The recipe didn't say to chop the onions, though it did say to chop the green pepper, but I couldn't imagine that the onions weren't supposed to be chopped as well. I skipped the lemon rind since I was using shop bought lemon juice rather than an actual lemon.

Verdict
This was a perfectly nice but not very exciting pork casserole. The pork was a little dry but I think that was because "lean stir fry pork" was substituted for the stewing pork I'd ordered from Sainsbury's and I suspect the whole would have benefitted from more fat. This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/811292.html.

This is from The Ultimate Adventure souvenir programme. Most of the pictures in there are one's I often see accompanying discussion of the stage show but I didn't recall this one - possibly because the others are all staged publicity photos while this looks more like something taken during rehearsal. This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/810853.html.

Reading: Still The Outskirter's Secret

Listening: Still very behind. Currently listening to an episode of Sticky Notes on Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony.

Watching: We apparently have five years of unwatched Bake Off Christmas specials... This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/810032.html.