The beaver is a proud and noble animal

Last weekend was very productive!

Katy’s parents were over for the weekend and we managed to:
- install stair gates at the bottom of the stairs and in the kitchen, because Doofus has officially started to crawl
- put up some Christmas decorations
- clear out some weeds in the garden and rip out more of that bed liner crap
- plant our tulip and crocus bulb
- put the sleepers back around the empty pond

We also got our FU DOGS!!! Woot!

I’ve been going crazy trying to find a pair of fu dogs for the garden. It took me 6 months to find some. And now we have them! Behold the glory of Elvis and Jeff.

I’m so happy I could burst.

Reenie also showed off her tree climbing skills and I managed to snap a few pictures of the gorgeousness.

It’s been getting colder these days, which is nice. The beastie is also starting to go back to his happy, non-permanently-pissed-off self, for which we are thankful.

Current Mood: Happy

I tried this last weekend, as a practice run for our xmas roast.

Start with a 2.5 kg turkey breast from our local butcher and cut it open.

Stuff it with 500g of sausage meat and one envelope of Paxo stuffing.

Roll it and tie it back together and season with pepper and rosemary.

Top it with latticed bacon and give it a good glug of lemon-infused olive oil and leave it overnight in the fridge.

The following morning, put it in a roasting pan, add about an inch of water to the pan and put two large pats of butter on top of the roast to keep it moist while cooking.

Make a tent out of foil and place it over the turkey breast to hold in heat for even cooking. Remove it during the last hour of cooking for a nice golden brown colour.

Check the water level periodically and add more water if needed.

Cook in a pre-heated oven at 170oC

The typical turkey breast cooking times for thawed turkey breast in a conventional oven are:

* 2 to 3 pounds – 1.5 to 2 hours
* 4 to 6 pounds – 2.5 to 3 hours
* 7 to 8 pounds – 3 to 4 hours

Cook until the internal meat temperature is above 165oF and the juices run clear. (Took us about 2.5 hours in a fan-assisted oven)

Current Mood: Full

Articles like the one below really point out to me the digital divide between the upper management of large media conglomerates and the man (and especially the teenager) on the street. Rupert Murdoch wants to block Google from indexing his news. The chairman of Sony has been quoted saying “I’m a guy who sees nothing good having come from the Internet. Period.”

The bottom line is, of course, the bottom line. Big Entertainment wants to make as much money as is can and will spend millions of dollars trying to prevent the loss of a few thousand. Yes, piracy has had a major impact. But look at it now. the RIAA and MPAA are spending millions upon millions of dollars to try and stop piracy. In the end though, they’re generating so much bad publicity, resentment and spite that they seem encourage the act they rant so much about. And the weirdest bit? Digital sales are actually going up, now that new pricing and distribution models have been introduced. It’s time the dinosaurs caught up with the times. The old bosses just don’t get it, and are so entrenched in the “good old times” that they can’t even begin to comprehend that those rules just don’t apply any more.

Murdoch may block Google searches

Rupert Murdoch has said he will try to block Google from using news content from his companies. The billionaire told Sky News Australia he will explore ways to remove stories from Google’s search indexes, including Google News. Mr Murdoch’s News Corp had previously said it would start charging online customers across all its websites.

He believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results. “There’s a doctrine called ‘fair use’, which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,” Mr Murdoch told the TV channel. “But we’ll take that slowly.”

Mr Murdoch announced earlier this year that the websites of his news organisations would begin charging for access. The target had been for all its sites to charge by June next year, but indications are that this is now unlikely. News Corp owns the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.

Newspapers across the world are considering the best way to make money from the internet, particularly in a time of falling advertising revenues. The risk is that charges may alienate readers who have become used to free content and deter advertisers.

Source: BBC

Current Mood: Cold