Time remaining

Coping photos off my phone. It’s just wasted ages “Calculating time required to copy files” instead of actually copying them.
It estimated 51 minutes.
Two minutes later, it thinks 25 minutes is a better estimate.

Yup… I’m using XP with it’s infamously bad estimation of remaining time.

25 minutes, huh? I guess I’ll go brew a bowl of pasta.

I guess I’ll go brew a bowl of pasta.

The state of shelves in supermarkets these days I guessing that’s existing household stock.

Time for bed, there’s another day on the laptop ahead – unless I get called to start fitting switches in the private hospital borrowed premises.

The state of shelves in supermarkets these days I guessing that’s existing household stock.

Pasta crisis seems to be over in German supermarkets. Now we only have to cope with toilet paper crisis, plain-old-parboiled-rice crisis, yeast crisis (I had to look that one up in the dictionary..what’s the difference between “yeast” and “barm”?) and, the latest one, mozzarella crisis.

what’s the difference between “yeast” and “barm”?

According to my dictionary, the use of barm to mean “yeast or leaven” is only found in some dialects: for example, in northern England a “barm cake” is a small bread roll.

Outside of dialect usage, the only contemporary meaning of barm is “the froth on fermenting malt liquor”.

Two minutes later, it thinks 25 minutes is a better estimate.

Any news of progress, yet?

According to my dictionary, the use of barm to mean “yeast or leaven” is only found in some dialects: for example, in northern England a “barm cake” is a small bread roll.

Probably the case that the northern folk know about bread making and the southerners assume it just spontaneously appears wrapped in plastic at the supermarket or displayed in pretty baskets at the local organic produce shop.

southerners assume it just spontaneously appears wrapped in plastic at the supermarket

Well, I think that is a lot of people’s attitude to meat.

Girl I used to work with (care assistant, circa 2001) freaked out a moderate amount at finding out that beef was a cow like the ones in the fields (the hell did she think it was?!?) and she totally lost it when she found out how it goes from “cow in field” to “red stuff in a polystyrene container”. It, unfortunately, coincided with the foot and mouth outbreak, that was horror film level graphic about how the animals were being slaughtered. It’s just loadsa fun to see a terrified animal getting a bolt fired into its head while you’re eating dinner, and then to see a stack of dead animals in a giant bonfire. Both made it to the six o’clock news. Say, you weren’t eating a burger, were you…?

Anyway, yeah, I think some people really do believe that food produce magically appears in little sanitary wrappers on the shelves of supermarkets.

My wife, having grown up on a subsistence farm in rural India – in a tribal village, where they’re not vegetarian, although meat is only eaten three or four times a year because rearing it is bloody hard work in those conditions – was used to meat being so fresh you could watch the process from slaughter to curry in under an hour. (This idea that spices are to cover the taste of gone-off meat is bunkum.) A chicken would feed a large family, a goat would be shared between several families.

The stink of not really very fresh meat (that’s all of it from her point of view) in butchers in England turns her stomach.

Some butchers here smell of nice fresh meat. Others have that unmistakable smell of decay.
I know they struggle during the warmer months to keep their shop cool and to protect their produce from the sun, but I suspect it’s not related.

I’m not overly fond of pre-packed meat distributed from afar. The quality can be a little questionable. Far too many with swollen packaging too. I rather get it from the butcher shop. What I find interesting is how meat from the butcher needs to be used within a day, but supermarket meat keeps way longer.

Some butchers here smell of nice fresh meat.

Not from Grace’s pov they don’t. What you think is fresh meat is at least a few hours from slaughter, and to Grace that smells awful. I didn’t realize the difference either until I spent time in the village: newly slaughtered meat really does smell very different from meat that’s just a few hours from slaughter.