Global Week 2017

It's currently Global Week at NTU. Essentially, each day of the week, students from various countries can set up stands in the Pavilion to represent their respective countries and show off aspects of them, such as food, culture and/or landscapes. Yesterday, it was the African nations who had the floor (I sampled some Somalian desserts - very sweet but very tasty!) whereas today the European nations were present.

I had intended to go in to see a particular stand I'd been told to check out but in addition to that one, I visited the Ireland stand. The latter was being hosted by a friend of mine - a third year student I met on my move-in day - and she was happy to see me; she invited me to help her out and I happily did so. For about two hours I helped my friend represent her country until I had to leave to attend a student forum meeting.

Having the chance to actually participate in Global Week - rather than just sample foods from stands - was a highly enjoyable activity and I'd like to be able to do it again.

Ireland marriage equality vote

Yesterday, Ireland held a referendum on whether or not the country should change its constitution to allow same-sex couples to marry. Not only did the people of Ireland vote for marriage equality but they did so by a convincing margin on a high turnout. There was no close 51%-49% result, which I was expecting, and no low-turnout election with a win for the "No" side.

I'm glad the margin of victory for "Yes" was overwhelming. Hopefully, it will mean that "No" won't try to initiate a second referendum to overturn the first.

Christmas cooking 2012

My mother, brother and I spent a part of the afternoon performing our usual Christmas cooking. For 2012, we made a white chocolate cherry "cake", a mincemeat flapjack and dark chocolate brownies:

This is the white chocolate cherry "cake". It was supposed to be white chocolate cherry brownies but it turned out like a cake instead. Next time we'll double the mixture and use a bigger pan.

This, believe it or not, is a flapjack. In the United States and Canada a flapjack is a small pancake, but in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia it's an oat dessert. The flapjack we made consists of mincemeat contained within a sugared oat base and top.

The dark chocolate brownies. This cooked mixture will be cut up into brownie-sized pieced, as it didn't turn out like a cake. It's been a few years since we last used this brownie recipe, so I'm really looking forward to eating it again!

I am happy to provide the recipes upon request. I would have posted them here, but as none of them are mine I don't think the authors would appreciate me passing off their recipes as my own!