The times they are a'changing

I noticed on Saturday that the price of bread had increased 15% from the week before. Once upon a time that would have been a sign of impending famine. Now, I hardly noticed. Maybe I should just eat brioche instead.

Zimbabwe

Here's my prediction for what's going to happen in Zimbabwe. I don't think Mugabe or his potential heirs in ZANU-PF are going to allow an opposition win. Equally, I doubt (could be wrong here) that they are dumb enough to try and persuade the world (South Africa really because no-one else really matters) that Mugabe has polled more votes than Tsvangirai. So, my guess is that the official results will show that Tsvangirai polled just less than the 50% needed for outright victory thus forcing a run off which Mugabe will narrowly win through a combination of actually winning over most of the third candidate votes and fraud exercised a bit less negligently than in this round.

Laksa - quick and dirty

Tonight I experimented with a jar of commercial Laksa paste. The soup was the jar of paste, a 500ml container of coconut milk and about the same of water plus seasoning to taste with fish sauce and lime juice. I threw in half a packet of fish balls, half a packet of tofu puffs and a couple of handfuls of bean sprouts. I cooked 200g of rice noodles. I stuck about a quarter of the noodles in a suitable bowl (about the size restaurants use for pho) and topped up with soup. The quantity I mad amounted to four bowls worth. It was good and really did taste like Laksa.

X=posted to gastrogasm