Posts made by John Sayers

No - a "haggis" would also have a sheeps stomach in the recipe or was that left out by mistake

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john

I'm hoping Gia is going to post the all time Hungarian Goulash recipe with sweet paprika

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john

I love cooking - everyday I think about what I'm going to cook for dinner.
Here'a distinctively Australian recipe. It's called Steak Diane and was named after the wife of the chef who invented it in his Perth restaurant. I obtained the recipe from a chef who worked in that restaurant so it's the original version. (there have been many alternative recipes since but this is the original.)

Take a nice piece of Fillet steak and lightly flatten out with a meat mallett.
To a 1/2 cup of fresh cream add 3- 4 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce and two crushed cloves of garlic.

Fry the steak till done, remove. Add the cream mixture to the pan - scrape up any meat drippings and boil lightly until it thickens - pour over steak. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

It's very simple but is one of the nicest steak recipes.

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john

sure Kris - UNTIL you try windows update.

When I moved from my laptop to my new puter I tried to load programs from the laptop and many rejected the new puter "This program is not registered for this computer" - Windows is no different.

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john

as I understand it - when you register windows it notes the components in your computer, i.e the serial numbers of your MB, Hard drive etc. So long as they don't change too dramatically you can re-register as many times as you like.

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john

Fair point Ross. If they turned it into an exhibition center it would probably make money!

yup Eric - imagine how many opera houses you could build for that

BTW the opera house was built using a lottery to raise the funds. maybe we need a new lottery.

Yes - he's never seen the finished building. After the run in with the Sydney Council he left the country and has never returned.

Structurally the building pioneered new techniques. It's the first building to precast sections, lift them into place and glue them together with aradite. As the sails rose they were tied back with tensile steel cable, also a first in construction. I watched it grow - amazing.

They plan to refurbish the interior at a cost of $700 million!! Part of the expense is lowering the floor (into the sandstone base) to allow for a fullsized orchestra pit.

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john

unfortunately due to the breakdown betweent Utzon and the Sydney Council Utzon's interiors were never built and as a result the opera theater never worked well and everyone hated it. Similarly with the main performance hall., the acoustics were awful.

There are plans to rebuild the opera theater to Utzon's original design. That will be interesting.

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john

@unknownuser said:

THE Opera House has been declared a World Heritage site and a masterpiece of 20th century architecture.

It takes its place alongside the Taj Mahal, the Acropolis and the Pyramids as cultural sites of outstanding universal value. The building is the youngest on the list and only the second by a living architect.

Its Danish architect, Joern Utzon, who has never seen his finished masterpiece, said he was honoured by the inclusion which gave the building new value. "For an architect and for all the people who have worked on it [this recognition gives us] the real feeling of what we are here for."

pretty amazing stuff considering Utzon had no idea how to build it when he won the competition.

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john

pretty amazing stuff there Eric. I liked the Cheops house

Dell are now offering their new laptops with either XP or Vista due to consumer demand.

well I'm open to anything as last night Dr Who started again on TV - my favourite TV show

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john

Yes - I read a similar article on this Mike - what I found interesting is that two separate flights observed the same phenomena at the same time.

A dear friend of mine told me how her and her husband were travelling across a wide open plain and her husband remarked that a car was coming up behind them at high speed. They actually stopped the car and got out to see what sort of car could travel that fast. The lights came to them and then swung upwards and disappeared into the sky at high speed - there was NO sound.

I'm very open on this - I think there is something about to happen.

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john

I was at a restaurant today and a few tables away a man spent the whole time talking with his cutlery and eating with his mouth open. I was far enough away not to have to put up with the sound.

Am I just old fashioned?

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john

I thought Sagittarians were like that all the time

That's good news Gai - we too are realising the importance of wetlands and are encouraging our farmers to bring them back.

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john

@unknownuser said:

(we are letting forests "reoccupy" their old places here in Hungary)

That's interesting Gai - just the other day I was following the Danube from the sea to it's source on google earth and I was amazed at the lack of forest in not only your country but the others as well.

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john

@unknownuser said:

I fail to understand how anyone can doubt that Global Warming is being helped along by mankind's activities. There is very strong prove that this is the situation.

fair enough Mike - but if you look you will find there is just as much evidence to show that the warming is natural. We are coming out of a mini ice age when the Thames iced over and festivals were held on it. Dickens wrote about it. Prior to that period it was warmer than it is now and the Vikings established agriculture on Greenland and they grew grapes in London - hence all the Vine streets

Yes the glaciers are retreating in some areas, Switzerland for example, yet growing in other areas such as Sth America and New Zealand. The retreating glaciers in Switzerland are in fact revealing old silver mines which must have been created before the glacier covered them up.

BTW - since the global temperature peaked in 1998 it has remained either constant or dropped yet we haven't reduced our carbon output, in fact it's increased.

I'm not alone in my skepticism - there are many prominent scientists who are also skeptical.

Whilst I agree with Kris regards the global warming myth, I do accept climate change due to man skinning the earth alive by destroying the forests. The outcome is the changing weather patterns IMHO.

Where I live there was dense tropical rain forest where 70 men could hold hands around the buttress base of one cedar tree. They had to climb up the buttresses to get to the base of the truck. The seed of that tree probably germinated when Jesus was walking around.

They eventually destroyed the whole forest and turned it into dairy country. It would take centuries to replace should someone try.

Thailand, for example, used to be dense tropical forests yet it is now the world's largest rice exporter - check it out on Google, you can see where the forest used to exist.

There are now commercial carbon credit schemes where forests are planted and the credits sold to carbon emitting power companies. But the forests aren't forests - they are huge monocultures, they don't support any wildlife, are easily attacked by disease and eventually will be clear-felled for wood chips.

So I support any scheme that addresses the loss of wild forest full of wildlife.

cheers
john