white trash food!

On account of some sort of annoying dermatitis, I've been endeavouring to keep my diet cow's milk-free, not an easy thing to do for someone who LOVES cheese and yoghurt. Poking about on the internet, I found a recipe for "Bread Machine Peanut Butter Jelly Bread", something which sounded so horribly trashy that I had to try it. It turned out to be absolutely delicious! Here is the recipe:

1 cup water
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup jam (jelly) - I used the apple and bramble jam I made during the summer
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup wholewheat flour
2 cups bread flour
1.5 teaspoons active yeast

Put everything in the bread machine and set it to "Sweet", 1.5kg, "Light".

The bread ends up quite dense and nutty, sweet but not overly so.

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Finished re-reading Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four. As with Brave New World, I'm surprised at how much of it I had forgotten. I'm also amazed at how much Orwell predicted. Everyone goes on about CCTV cameras being like "Big Brother" but to do so is to miss the point: things are far worse...

2 Minute Hate - Daily Mail, hysterical anti immigrant articles in The Sun, Jeremy Kyle, etc;
The instigation of a lottery to placate the "proles";
Thoughtcrime - the hysterical condemning of ideas. Try denying "man-made global warming" or "multiculturalism";
Doublethink and Minitruth - political spin;
Phony wars and invented enemies - "the war on terror", Iraq, Falklands, etc;
Newspeak - "The War on Terror", "Axis of Evil", "Five A Day";
The training of the population to marginalise and reject the unorthodox and outsider;
Oceania - The alliance between the UK and the USA, complicit in state-approved torture (Guantanamo Bay and "extraordinary renditions");
Prolefeed - Junk television aimed cultural anaesthesis such as... "BIG BROTHER"

I wasn't frightened by this book when I read it at school but it is a terrifying book, moreso when it can be read as a catalogue of what has already been happening.