Several random things

1. ghost_of_a_flea and I are getting addicted to stuffed peppers. My usual recipe involves rice, sautéed onion, vegemince, bit of tomato, and various different seasonings (last time there were raisins, pine nuts, garlic, and spices that focused heavily on the cinnamon side of things). For those of you who don't know how to stuff peppers, you cook up the filling, slice the top off the pepper as a lid, cut away the seeds, stem and so on, shove the filling inside, plonk the lid on, and stand them in a pyrex dish with about 1/2" water round them, proceeding to bake them in the oven for 20 min or until the peppers are starting to blacken nicely. Any recipe ideas for variations? What other veg are happy to be stuffed? I haven't stuffed an aubergine in years, although I recall it as being a bit more hassle.

2. I had a chap come to the door the other week doing a market research survey on attitudes towards environmentalism in the home. I answered various questions about recycling, light bulbs and solar panels (yep, very likely in a 170 year old B-listed building, where I don't even live on the top floor), and then he came to the question, "Do you think there are too many foreigners in the UK?" Has anybody got a clue what that question was doing in there?

3. My local library directed me towards Calibre, a free audiobook postal lending service for people with sight problems or other disabilities which make it difficult for them to read. This is very cool. You have to tick a box to confirm that you are happy to receive X-rated books, which means anything that mentions the existence of sex at all, as far as I can tell. I mean, I, Claudius is listed as X-rated. And the novels don't even have Patrick Stewart strutting around being a sexy sadist. (No, really, he was hot in the miniseries, and also looked surprisingly like a younger Richard Gere.) Also I've caught them putting phrases like "Homosexual practices" in the book descriptions, which is raising my hackles. It sounds worryingly like a warning.

4. Does anyone know how I could find out what this plant is, so that I may look at other photos of it and turn it into a quilt design?

Several random things

1. ghost_of_a_flea and I are getting addicted to stuffed peppers. My usual recipe involves rice, sautéed onion, vegemince, bit of tomato, and various different seasonings (last time there were raisins, pine nuts, garlic, and spices that focused heavily on the cinnamon side of things). For those of you who don't know how to stuff peppers, you cook up the filling, slice the top off the pepper as a lid, cut away the seeds, stem and so on, shove the filling inside, plonk the lid on, and stand them in a pyrex dish with about 1/2" water round them, proceeding to bake them in the oven for 20 min or until the peppers are starting to blacken nicely. Any recipe ideas for variations? What other veg are happy to be stuffed? I haven't stuffed an aubergine in years, although I recall it as being a bit more hassle.

2. I had a chap come to the door the other week doing a market research survey on attitudes towards environmentalism in the home. I answered various questions about recycling, light bulbs and solar panels (yep, very likely in a 170 year old B-listed building, where I don't even live on the top floor), and then he came to the question, "Do you think there are too many foreigners in the UK?" Has anybody got a clue what that question was doing in there?

3. My local library directed me towards Calibre, a free audiobook postal lending service for people with sight problems or other disabilities which make it difficult for them to read. This is very cool. You have to tick a box to confirm that you are happy to receive X-rated books, which means anything that mentions the existence of sex at all, as far as I can tell. I mean, I, Claudius is listed as X-rated. And the novels don't even have Patrick Stewart strutting around being a sexy sadist. (No, really, he was hot in the miniseries, and also looked surprisingly like a younger Richard Gere.) Also I've caught them putting phrases like "Homosexual practices" in the book descriptions, which is raising my hackles. It sounds worryingly like a warning.

4. Does anyone know how I could find out what this plant is, so that I may look at other photos of it and turn it into a quilt design?