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We did it.
Last weekend, we cooked up our snails and ate them.
And they were good.

Yes, I did feel slightly bad for eating them and yes it was fairly disgusting but I would probably do it again especially as their death serves some sort of purpose rather than simply stopping them eating all Jo’s flowers.

As previously posted, we waited until their poo had turned orange as we only fed them carrots and water then we stopped feeding them about 24 hours before cooking time. I got a medium pan of water going on a rolling boil with a large kettle full of water ready to go as well. I washed them all with cold water and made sure that they all shrunk into their shells so were alive. I then dropped them into the water and kept it boiling for a good 15 minutes. I had to change the water about 3 times over. The first pan full turned bright green with a frothy scum on the top about an inch thick. The second pan was slightly less green with only a small amount of scum and the last pan had a bogeyish tinge to it but nothing else. After 15 minutes of cooking I drained the pan into a colander and doused with lots of cold water before using a thin meat skewer to take them out of their shells and dropped them onto some sea salt to help take off some of the slime that was still on them (or so I hoped!).

Next I chopped up far more cloves of garlic than I should have and added this to a small omelette pan we have with a large knob of butter. When the house stunk of garlic I dropped the snails into the pan and sautéed until I’d effectively cooked off the small amount of slime that was still coming off the little buggers. Note that I didn’t try to chop off the snail’s hybrid pancreas–liver thingy nor did I chop them up. I figured that I eat whelks, winkles, mussels etc. as is so I would do the same with these.

Whilst all this was going on I made a lovely, simple mushroom risotto to go with the snails and so poured in the cooked snails, garlic and butter into the risotto pan at the same time as the parmigiana. According to Jo it was very delicious albeit very garlicky.

Finally, here are some links that I found helpful during my research with the first 3 links being very helpful:

• Cooking with Richard: English Snails 4 - Snails with pancetta, sage, lemon and rocket
• SFGate: Eating Your Garden Snails
• YouTube.com: Gordon Ramsay - Picking and cooking snails
• mattbites.com: A Snail’s Pace
• Blogjam.com: Garden Snail Risotto
• eHow: How to Cook Snails
• guardian.co.uk: Shell shock
• BBC Food: Heston Blumenthal - Snail Porridge

Popularity: 20% [?]

Jo has starting collecting loads of snails from our garden and rather than killing them immediately, she suggested that we cook them as Gordon Ramsey suggested on the F Word a series or so ago. So we now have several jam jars full of them with carrots inside and in a week or two when their poo turns orange they are ready to be eaten! Yummy! Found this delightful article on eating your own snails which confirms much of what we suspected. Also found an entry over at Cooking With Richard (the new entry on my regular read blogroll) which is equally helpful. More will be posted when I have it.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Looking at these pictures posted on Flickr, the new Batman movie is going to be even more fantastic than previous shots I have seen in Empire show. I really do hope that Heath Ledger manages to at least equal Jack Nicholson’s performance as The Joker because he was, quite simply, brilliant.

Popularity: 35% [?]

There’s a new film coming out in 2008 which is another must-see comedy film for the geeks of the world. Fanboys is a geek road trip for a group of friends travelling to Skywalker ranch in 1998 to see Star Wars Epidosde 1 - The Phantom Menace before it’s released. Want to know why you should see it? Cameos from Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams and Ray Park should help as well as the fact that Kevin Smith was also going to be in it but work on Clerks 2 forced him out.

Popularity: 18% [?]

This from Ain’t It Cool:

Come to The Hot Fuzztival
It’s Free!!!

Join Hot Fuzz Director, Edgar Wright at the Prince Charles Cinema on June 10th as he takes you through his film inspirations for the action comedy box office smash Hot Fuzz. The film out to own and rent on DVD from June 11th will be shown along with exclusive live commentary from the director and cast from the film in the evening…and it’s all free!

Showing times are as follows:

11:00 Hard Boiled
13:45 Last Boy Scout
16:30 Point Break

20:00 Hot Fuzz with LIVE AUDIO COMMENTARY FROM EDGAR WRIGHT AND CAST FROM THE FILM!

Still not persuaded? Well here are some wise words from your Hot Fuzztival host…

Hey muddy funsters. Join me at the Prince Charles Cinema on June the 10th for a marathon of hot cop action. Not only will we screen three of our favourite actions films, but you will get to see a totally unique live commentary from myself, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, as well as other special guests from our Bad Bobby opus HOT FUZZ.

And who can argue with the triple whammy of John Woo’s classic HARD BOILED, the bruising, hilarious LAST BOY SCOUT and the palpable homo erotic tension of POINT BREAK.

I will be your host for the day, will join you in watching the marathon of bad-assery and will be flinging a few goodies and surprises your way.

Come join. First come, first served. And totally free.

Get there early. The hardcore will be duly rewarded.

Edgar

There’s also a signing with Edgar, Nick and Simon the day after the Fuzztival (June 11th to be exact - ie UK DVD release day) at the HMV - 150 Oxford St. London W1 The Sharpies start flying at 1pm. More signings to be announced soon, but that’s a definite! Enjoy, you lucky Londoners!

Pete and I discussed it and he reckons we are not hardcore enough to even get in as there are bound to be those more geekier than us who will camp all night to get in. We love Simon, Nick & Edgar but all night? On a London street? *sigh*

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Popularity: 16% [?]

Virgin School

Year: 2007

Media: On TV

Distributor: Channel 4

Rating: 3 out of 5

(Channel 4 - Tuesday 15 May 2007 @ 10pm)

Virgin School follows the emotional and physical journey of 26-year-old virgin James as he embarks on a unique four month course for sexually inexperienced men, in Amsterdam. Situated at Aquarion, an established ’school for love and leadership’, the course is designed by experienced professionals to boost his self confidence – both socially and sexually, and concludes with the opportunity for him to lose his virginity to one of the sex therapist coaches.

Explicit footage and mild titillation cannot hide the fact that this documentary is also tragically comic.

Discussing it with my wife, friends and colleagues we all immediately focused on the fact that when performing a strip tease for the woman he was about to lose his virginity to, James was seen wearing a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt and two pairs of pants - white briefs with navy boxers on top if memory serves - before moving onto the way the programme portrayed him as a geek - a label I and many others actually embrace - by cutting to the Buffy posters and X-Files, Buffy & Babylon 5 video collection in his bedroom.

It is very easy to label this obviously quite nice young man as strange because what he is doing is to public, but he is also a product of environment and one should not gloss over the fact that James has had learning difficulties, was bullied at school and still does his paper round as his only means of income at the start of the programme due to the way he feels about himself, that his social awkwardness and belief that he will never be perceived as a true man until he loses his virginity all stem from the rough time he had as a teenager. It amused and saddened me to realise that James obviously still believed that everyone in his school was having sex at the age of 14 when in fact they were all simply lying about it - something a handful of us knew at the time and the rest of us actually realised by the time we really did start having sex around the time we all buggered off to Uni.

One thing you cannot avoid, however, is that James is….well…..doing it with women who are old enough to be his mum or worse granny *shudder*. Some of the scenes are quite graphic and often amusing or compelling in a car-crash TV kind of way - the literally toe curling orgasm scene immediately springs to mind complete with voice-over informing me that James has just experienced his first orgasm with someone else in the room. Really? How very lovely!

The epilogue kindly informs us that since the making of this programme James has gained enough confidence to secure a job in the local cinema (one of the top five geek favourite jobs if I am not mistaken), has not had any more sex and is looking for a girlfriend. Now, whether this programme allows him to secure a proper girlfriend or simply provide a contact point for James to meet all the women of a certain age who have incredibly high HRT fuelled sex drives that he can lay his hands on remains to be seen. Quite how Channel 4 got away with screening it begs belief but I am kind of glad they did. As for the pants, I think it was probably his first time wearing boxers which - as I remember it from when I was 14 - they can be strange to wear at first so he probably wanted to keep the security of his tighty whities.

Tags: tv

Popularity: unranked [?]