I Hate Thomas Harris Books

I hate "Hannibal", "Silence of the Lambs" and "Red Dragon". Don't get me wrong, they're excellent books but they mislead and lie to you, before you even pick them up. You look at the 300-400 pages of any of them and think, 'That should keep me going for a few days.' You read the first two or three chapters and then go to bed at around 9, 'cause you're ridiculously tired.


Four hours later, you finally put down the book having finished it! I'm tired and now without a handy book to read! Bah!

Blogger Beta

I'm writing this blog using Blogger Beta. Now, it has been a while since I used the non-beta version, but I can't say that I've noticed a huge amount of difference. Of course, this could just be because the Blogger people have added features/functionality that just works (or just because I have poor long term memory) but I'd love it if someone could enlighten me as to the actual differences.

A feature that (as far as I can tell) doesn't seem to have been added (and the lack of which I have blogged about previously, in another blog somewhere) is a counter mechanism. It'd be nice if I could actually confirm that no-one but myself is reading this, rather than just assuming that that's the case...

Rye Flour

Believe it or not (I barely can), another bagel post. I don't normally spend this much time thinking about them but they were (presumably) just on special offer and, as such, the household is inundated with them. So, once more into the bagel, my friends:

Cinnamon and raisin bagels really, really suck. You can smell the cinnamon on them (just barely) but there is absolutely no taste of it once you're eating them. You're lucky if you get a raisin every other bite (and even then they taste weird, presumably because they've sucked up all the cinnamon taste). How can it be called a cinnamon and raisin bagel if you can't taste cinnamon or raisin half the time? Added to this, cinnamon and raisin bagels have a firmer texture to them (for reasons best known to the New York Bagel Co.).

Plain bagels, on the other hand, are great. You don't get any great disappointment because they don't taste plain. They do. They also have a much nicer texture and they don't mess up the taste of anything you put on them.

So I decided to do a bit of investigation and, comparing the ingredients, while both types contain wheat flour, only plain bagels also have rye flour. Why can't they just put rye flour in the cinnamon and raisin ones?! And, in fact, while they're at it, why not throw in some cinnamon and raisins, just for kicks!

Pre-Cut Bagels

I don't know whether my mum has stopped buying them or whether the supermarkets have stopped selling them, but I miss pre-cut bagels.

Simply put, they taste so much better. I'm never able to cut an un-pre-cut bagel right, it always ends up with two wedges or some other undesirable configuration of bagel 'halves'. This normally doesn't affect the toasting of the bagel (unless I'm having a particularly bad day). Once I'm eating it, though, I can't help thinking about how it would probably taste better if I'd cut it properly.

I just want to enjoy my bagel!