Success

Yay St Louis Cardinals won the World Series in comfortable fashion in the end. 

Apparently it was the most exciting World Series in many a year.  In my attempts to be in on it I watched the 2nd innings of game 7 but through a combination of too tired and nerves decided it was best to sleep and find out in the morning.  Unlike all the other teams I trust my happiness to St Louis seem to deliver when it wasn't even expected.  It's Liverpool's turn now :)

They've only gone and got Oolong!

After months of no oolong tea I finally have oolong tea.  Tescos (again!) stopped selling Twinings Oolong a while ago and since then I haven't been able to enjoy the delicate lightly sweet satisfaction and refreshment a manly cup of oolong brings.  Yesterday though I had a whole tea pot full, and it was very nice.  The tea menu at the Park Plaza afternoon tea service said it was one of their favourite oolongs, if this means they have tried bad stuff and discarded it it doesn't seem fair when I would be happy with any.  So if you want some go there, it will cost about £20 pounds but you get champagne and other stuff if you aren't happy enough with those two items.

Crazily enough it turns out Amazon sell Clipper Oolong and some twpsin has given it 3 out of 5 stars thinking it would make them slim, they also didn't like the taste, but it's probably worth getting some.  Says on Amazon that it has been made famous by it's celebrity drinkers (Gin Do' Friday I presume) which actually makes sense, I recall watching the Drunken Master 2 where Jackie Chan asks for some to drink and knowing it was the drink for me.

Equally excitingly is that the World Series has gone to 7 games, and though I won't be likely to win on my MVP bet of Jon Jay it has been an amazing series and I could even watch a bit tonight when I get in as it's Friday :)  I'm sure I won't though as the tension will be too much and I am a wuss.  Unlike in the Euro 2004 shootout I won't be able to go sit in the garden for this as I don't have one.

Chili Manliness Part 2

So on to the proper sized Bhut!  Before getting into the eating we should appreciate the beauty of the chili, it started off all green but during the past week has slowly become a magnificent shade of traffic light.  I'd say if you're going to get packs of these chilies from Tescos for anything it should be to scatter around your home as art(similar to what you could do with cocktail sausages), turns out eating them still isn't that exciting.

A brief diary of the usage of the pretty large, almost tree sized!, chili above:

• 1/3 used in a salmon stir fry, 1 finger chili chopped up raw on top with coriander.  This was reasonably hot.
• 1/4 used on a pizza, this was just above mild.
• 1/4 was chewed raw by me  (the after shot of my bite is shown below) to see if it was worthy, I got pretty intense striking pain on my lips and tongue for a minute or so and I considered the end, but this came and went quickly enough to remember that the pain Western Balti chilies give my stomach is much worse in the medium and long term.

• 1/3 used in a beef curry today, medium heat in the mouth afterwards, but again this was mostly from other sources of pain - a finger chili used in a relish and the Tescos spicy poppadoms were both worse.

All in all a more promising but ultimately over hyped specimen.  As I think I said before, the next one will ruin me, at least then my 90p will have been spent on a good chili and not just on developing the phrase "the hottest" that was used on the packet (6 chili symbols! crazy considering it's usually out of 5).  I will also add scotch bonnets from Tescos (I'm afraid I don't use other supermarkets) were just as hot as this and provided a much more distinct and interesting flavour.

Brief World Series news, St Louis are now trailing 3-2 in the series in spite of winning game 3 with 16 runs :(  Pujols may only have 1 game left which would I guess make me uninterested in baseball for a while again.  Next game is Wednesday night and I won't be watching it as I'll be asleep.

Baseball's Once a Year Treat

I always find with baseball the thought of watching a game isn't appealing and is mainly the image of being bored for the majority of the time and seeing someone make it to first base maybe twice in an hour.  Usually throughout the really long season (150 or so games per team) I watch the brief hit or catch highlights on the St Louis Cardinals' website, or more desperately a dramatic strike out.  It's basically something that could help me survive the NBA lockout (lots of opinions on twitter! none by me) and doesn't involve me having to do anything.

This though is wrong, the last time I watched a game I was in an airport and loads of sweet action was going on, hits runs and all and a few days earlier I'd forced my holidaying companion to watch about 30 minutes of exciting play - I couldn't watch enough, it was better than going outside and sweating and being tired.  The time before that was in my third year of university, after a swell Comeplay a friend with Sky Sports said I could come and watch the last game of the 2006 World Series with him as it featured St Louis battling for redemption after being swept the last time they were in it.  We got to his flat, he went straight to bed and I sat on my own and explaining myself to his flatmate who wandered in confused.  It was awesome and the Cardinals won it for me.  This was a team I became a fan of, bought a tshirt for and played as on Triple Play 2001 because of a large ginger goateed player whom Wikipedia claims confessed to using steroids throughout his career but not for performance, for health..

Well the obvious news is they're back in it and here is the crazy game they won to get there, Cardinals - Brewers Game 6, it's intense stuff.  The added emotional/poignant reality is also that the teams best player, Albert Pujols, is potentially off at the end of the season in spite of being offered $200 million to not abandon me.  The best hitter and defend all in one, it's like a combo of Steven Gerrard.  Anyway, the conclusion is I would watch some games if they weren't on late.  Sneak ad:

X Factor brief opinion, Sophie is good, Frankie gets worse each song, unusually the bottom 2 was correct and Rebecaa Ferguson's first song was played on the radio today, yay!

Tescos Chili Manliness Dispute

Unimpressive stuff.  I once bought a pack of dried Habanero chilies from Tescos and they were massively hot.    The old Habanero Wikipedia page suggests the Scoville rating for these is between 100,000 and 350,000.  Usually about an eighth was used in a spicy meal and the pack of 10 lasted me about 3 months.

The other day in Tescos I saw they started doing Bhut Jolokia chilies, potentially rated at 850,000 on the scale, after 2 days of fear we decided to use them tonight... Well we used about a third of one in our dinner (did a quick test on a small bit first) and it felt less spicy that no spice, even when I peppered the hell out of it.  Basically it took all the heat out of my food :(  After this disaster I decided to eat the remaining 2 thirds, I did that while videoing just in case it got terrible and it tickled but little else (actually it was reasonable but no more than a piece of vinegared jalapeno).   All in all a disappointing experience.

Looking at all this sensibly it makes no sense other than maybe I am being deceived by a feeble Bhut and the rest of the pack will ruin me - highly believable.  Both the habanero and bhut jolokia give the old mouth pain and maybe a mild sweat but nothing like the misery that the long thin chilies in Indian takeaways we used to give when trying to be manly where after a severe mouth burning you'd then be treated to burning in the stomach that made you feel sick for about 2 hours. 

The real pain was from Western Balti, everything else Tescos (I also bought some weird ball shaped chilies at Tescos once that were horrible and bland all at once)

:(

England were robbed

No Disappointment

The wait is over and Sean didn't disappoint, obviously, not only that he delivered more than I could have ever hoped for.   I got back to my flat at 7.30 after thinking Yodel had failed me and there was a huge box, after preparing the evening's schnitzel (of which there are photos later)  we opened it up not really noticing how a box for 2 pies would be a lot smaller...

This is what I found

Thanks O2

Uhoh, 8 whole cans of Greene King IPA, 4 Full English Breakfast pies, 4 Bean Egg and Mushroom pies, 2 ice packs and most importantly - as can be seen in the top right of the box - a George flag!  Ahh Sean you are more perfect than I ever though possible.  I sense The Twps agrees.

Pieminister: A Pie for All Seasons (this is a pie recipe book)

So if ever I needed a reason for England to go further it's for the chance to get another one of these legit good times.  There was also 50p off a beer in a pub but I would probably be ashamed using that.

Here's the schnitzel, bit of tarragon sauce and German dark beer.  For extra health we made them using Best of Both breadcrumbs, yes please fibre with the taste of white bread.

Sean Bean is bringing me pies!

Terrible phone reception is work has finally paid off, Sean Bean (O2) and the England rugby team and delivering pies and beer to my house before England dominate France next weekend.  Apparently they will phone around Thursday and ask when it would suit for my priority to be the priority of the Yorkshire courier.

Of course I'm a liar and Britain's Second Greatest Current Actor isn't really bringing me any pies but I think he did speak on the advert and due to his talent it's all set, he compromised my reality in a way Andy Townsend's analysis couldn't.

Back to rugby, still haven't thought of anything to give up when England win, maybe not using my phone for a month while I'm using the toilet.  I think given the emphatic win on Saturday that England are assured of glory, also I guaranteed 100% that during his and my entire lifetimes Chris Ashton will never drop the ball while doing his dive thing, so that's a relief i haven't just doomed us both.

Unrelated to rugger, X Factor actually gave me a few surprises tonight in spite of the clear give away extended footage of the obvious going through people.  We feel that they may bring back some mainly because it seemed obvious they wanted the Scottish girl who hated her home town through.  My main disappointment was that The Keys with their big arms didn't go through (except the small armed one) while The Risk did :| they suck.  I'm going for Liverpool hairdresser, Gav's was the same but for competitions sake is going for Irish yellow nailed girl.  I've only heard my guy sing once but at least he's from Liverpool like Rebecca the best, I should probably follow him on Twitter.