On buying newspapers
Posted on June 25th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,980 views
My favourite Boer Blogger, Johan Swarts, mentioned today in his blog that he’s no longer prepared to buy a newspaper because by the time he reads their news, it’s already old news, having been picked up by him already either on his laptop or cellphone.
As a side issue, he mourns the plight of the homeless bergies (who use newspapers as blankets) and slap chip purveyors (who he thinks still use newsprint to wrap their chips).
I’ll second you on the bergie issue, Johan, but the Fish and Chip shops have long ditched newsprint in favour of pristine white wrappers. At least the good ones have. The ones I buy from. Yes, I am a snob.
My father and my brother both buy and read newspapers religiously whereas I have eschewed them for as long as I can remember. I can’t recall a time that I bought any newspaper religiously.
If I recall correctly, I believe it was Vincent Maher who blogged that newspaper circulations continue to rise despite the encroachment of freely available online news. I wonder if that was just media spin from a person who is employed by a large South African paper? Or perhaps things have changed since then?
I wonder if in 20 years time, all doubt will have been removed and we will know that printed newspapers are now in a steep decline?
I just can’t see printed newspapers as having a very long term future.
Tags: Johan Swarts, Newspapers
Filed under Newspapers | 11 Comments »
Why Jacob Zuma will be a good president of South Africa
Posted on June 25th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,208 views
One reason so far: Zuma is not following in the troubled footsteps of Thabo Mbeki in respect of Zimbabwe.
Zuma refuses to unconditionally support Mugabe’s failed regime, and is instead calling for urgent intervention in an "out of control" Zimbabwe.
So, that’s good, right?
I think people need to keep an open mind towards Zuma. I instinctively feel he won’t disappoint us, if we trust him to lead us.
Jacob Zuma is not another Thabo Mbeki and that is a very good thing.
Tags: Jacob Zuma, Robert Mugabe, Thabo Mbeki, Zimbabwe
Filed under South African politics | 3 Comments »
The Irony of South African politics where killers walk free and talkers get fried
Posted on June 25th, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,435 views
Julius Malema and Zwelinzima Vavi are being taken very seriously by many South Africans and the South African Human Rights Commission for using evocative language recently.
"Oh no!", they are being told, "you can’t tell us you’re willing to shoot and kill for Zuma! That’s very naughty and we demand that you retract your utterances within 14 days or we shall become very angry."
Please. Give me a fucking break.
Who gives a shit?
South Africa is the same country that gave amnesty to the APLA gang who shot up the St. James Church in the massacre of July 1993 and followed that up with a shooting spree at The Heidelberg pub in Observatory, Cape Town.
We let actual killers and murderers walk free. They didn’t make any speeches about killing – they just went and actually did it.
And we let them walk.
Now, we are supposed to work up some angst over a couple of politicians who chose to express their sentiments of loyalty (for another politician) in fighting language?
Sorry, but I can’t take you seriously.
First go and lock up the real killers. The guys who killed the people at St. James, The Heidelberg, and the killers of Amy Biehl and then we’ll talk.
Until then, you are a clanging hollow drum that is becoming increasingly stupid and annoying.
Tags: Amy Biehl, Jacob Zuma, Julius Malema, St. James massacre, Zwelinzima Vavi
Filed under South African politics | 1 Comment »
Still want to run away to Blighty? Read this first!
Posted on June 10th, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,425 views
So you’ve decided that life in Souf Efrica is pretty fucked up, mate, and you’re off to join the real world in Blighty, eh?
Well read this first, you idiot, because if you’re a married man with kids, you might be making the worst fucking decision of your young life.
You’ve been warned, fella. Don’t fuck it all up. Stick it out in Efrica, mate. Them pommies is all washed up, they is.
Tags: Fuck the poms, Piss on the Brits
Filed under Family life | 1 Comment »
How to pack on the pounds for under $10 a day
Posted on June 6th, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,881 views
Since we all have this Global Food Crisis and all, I thought I would contribute to the war effort by giving all you skinny malinks the secret to becoming really really fat on under $10 a day.
The secret is simple: Eat more pasta!
Pasta is a really forgiving meal and it’s really hard to fuck it up, but even so, listen carefully and follow these directions closely for a mouth watering dish fit for a royal hound.
There are 3 basic parts to this pasta dish:
- The Pasta
- The Meat Sauce
- The White Sauce (optional, but worth the small additional effort)
The pasta is easy. Grab a 500 gram bag of macaroni and boil the hell out of it until it’s nice and soft and juicy and good to eat. The secret to making great pasta is to dump the macaroni into the pot first, pour on some sunflower oil (so it doesn’t stick to itself) and season it liberally with a lot of salt before you cover it with boiling water.
Cooking pasta is pretty low maintenance. It needs to be stirred maybe once or twice, so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot, and it may need to be topped up with extra boiling water only once before its ready.
Don’t undercook pasta and don’t overcook it. After a couple of hundred tries, you’ll still be trying to figure out what ‘al dente’ is. If you ever work it out, let me know. I believe it is one of those occult Italian cookery terms that is deliberately obscure so that no matter what you do to your pasta, someone who wants to appear more knowledgeable than you can cluck their teeth, shake their head and make sad eyes at you. Fuck ‘em. If you like it, it’s done right.
The meat sauce is where you can get really creative. There’s so many different things you can do here. I’m going to describe a meat sauce variant that has been giving me a lot of culinary joy of late.
It’s comprised of 3 basic ingredients:
- Chopped onions
- Tuna
- Baked beans
I made this for myself last night. I started off by frying 2 chopped onions in extra virgin olive oil, until they were translucent (which means you can sort of see through them). Then I added in some chopped garlic paste and some crap my brother left behind called ‘choppy choppy’. It didn’t look too terrible, so I just chucked that in. The whole thing. All of it. Mixed that around a bit. Noticed that the ‘choppy choppy’ contained some feta cheese. Ah well.
Next I dumped in about a half bottle of soya sauce. Okay, I think it was about 100 ml, but I don’t measure anything I chuck into my meat sauce. Then I added the baked beans and stirred that in good. Don’t be afraid to add some boiling water if the mixture gets too thick and starts sticking to the pan. I added a whole lot of Mrs Ball’s original chutney. I also like the extra hot variant, but I had some WoolWorths sweet chili sauce and I didn’t want to overdo it with the hot stuff – it quickly reaches volcanic heat if you put too much hot stuff in. I also dumped in some chili bovril mixed in with boiling water and a beef stock cube. Finally I added 2 cans of tuna and sprinkled on various Robertson’s herbs and spices.
Just one thing about the tuna. Some people get all huffy and complain that dolphins get caught up in tuna nets and stuff, and so it’s environmentally unfriendly to consume tuna, unless of course, it’s 100% PETA certified dolphin free tuna. Well, in my experience that PETA certified tuna is crap, probably because they’ve taken all the best parts out. Mmmmm, crunchy dolphin.
So in the background, whilst stirring and experimenting with your meat sauce, you’ve taken the pasta off the stove, drained it and poured it into a deep dish to wait for the addition of the meat sauce and the white sauce.
If your meat sauce is a bit thin and needs thickening up, use some Bisto. Just put 1 or 2 teaspoons of bisto in a cup and pour in a small quantity of water. Mix the bisto in and then pour into your meat sauce. Stir until it thickens.
The meat sauce is done when you feel its done. I basically go through my cupboards and see what interesting stuff I can add to it to spice it up and when I’m done experimenting and it looks and tastes right, I take it off the stove and pour it over the pasta and mix it thoroughly in.
The white sauce part is where a lot of people’s (mostly men’s) eyes glaze over and they want to hit the skip button or whatever because they feel it’s way too complicated. Well, here’s a terribly easy white sauce that you really can make and it will turn out well.
The thing to remember about white sauce is that it’s not something you can do on the side while you also attend to other things. White sauce demands your full and constant attention.
White sauce needs three basic ingredients:
- Real butter
- Flour
- Milk
Melt about 3 – 4 tablespoons of butter in a frying pan. Dump two heaped tablespoons of flour into the melted butter and stir it in. Keep stirring. Making white sauce is all about stirring – you never stop stirring.
The initial mixture should not be thick and clump together. If it is, add more butter. Keep stirring over a medium heat and you’ll soon see that the mixture starts to bubble. The bubbles have white edges. Don’t let the yellow mixture turn brown. It will thicken slightly. When it starts to thicken, it’s time to add milk.
Pour in a quarter cup of milk and stir it in. The mixture should immediately thicken and clump together. Add another half a cup of milk and stir that in. The mixture will be thin at first but quickly thicken. When it starts to thicken again, pour in a full cup of milk. The milky white mixture will be quite thin at first, but after about a minute or two of constant stirring, it will achieve a smooth thicker consistency.
The time to take it off the heat is a judgement call. The longer you keep it on the heat, the thicker it will become. You can add more milk if it gets too thick and then stir it until it reaches the desired consistency, but if you judge it correctly, you won’t need to add more milk.
As soon as you take it off the heat, pour it immediately over your meat and pasta mixture. The white sauce will start to set as soon as it is off the heat. The last bits of it in the pan will set and become stiff.
Use a wooden spoon to blend the white sauce in with the meat and pasta mixture. The white sauce is optional, but it does make the meal much more enjoyable.
And that is it. You can serve your pasta dish with grated cheese on top if you like or just as it is. This dish will feed one adult male for 2 – 3 days, depending on how good it is. The better it tastes, the shorter the time it will last.
Bon appétit!
Tags: baked beans, Pasta dish recipe, tuna, white sauce
Filed under Food | 6 Comments »
