My Mum's Summer Pudding Recipe

Serves 6

• 8-12 slices day old white bread
• 900 g of frozen fruit blackberries/raspberries/mixed berries but not strawberries
• 100g-170g white sugar

Mum adds 1 chopped green apple (per pudding) diced to make the fruit go further.

Rinse a 900 ml pudding basin with cold water. Trim the crusts from the bread slices. Cut a circle from 1 slice to fit the bottom of the basin. Cut enough wedge-shaped pieces to fit around the sides. Press bread in firmly to line the basin making sure there are no gaps. Reserve a few pieces of bread to cover the top.

Trim the fruits and put them into a saucepan. Add the sugar, cover with a pan lid, and cook gently for 5 minutes, or until fruit is softened. Turn hot fruits into the lined pudding basin. Cover the top with the remaining pieces of bread and put a weighted plate on top. Allow to stand overnight.

Remove the weighted plate and place a serving plate over the pudding. Invert pudding on to the plate and serve with cream.

Mum's tips:

1. Very little extra trouble to make two instead of one (recipe is for one).
2. If you add a little bit of extra fruit and sugar it will give you extra juice. (Sugar and fruit must be in the same proportions).
3. Any type of pudding basin can be used (Not sure if metal OK because of the acidic action of fruit on metal).
4. The pudding should come to about half a cm from the top of the bowl.
5. If the top layer of bread is still white add a bit more juice.
6. Then cover with two layers of glad wrap tightly. With weight on top put in fridge.
7. When ready to eat remove glad wrap, loosen gently with a knife and put a plate on top and invert.
8. However careful you are, there are always white patches and stain with juice.
9. Remaining juice put in a bottle in the fridge and pour over pudding to serve plus cream.

Update: Mum got the original recipe from Katie Stewart's Cookbook ISBN 0 330 28556 4 (1985)

Best German Prepaid Sim Card 2013

Most German prepaid SIM cards generally suck with tiny 200mb 3G data allowances, don't even bother looking for prepaid LTE/4G...

The best by far seems to be Congstar, it's all in German, including text images, so Google Chrome translating isn't always helpful, so you will need to have a smattering of German to work it out and register.

You can by a prepaid SIM card from DM for €8.49 which includes €10 credit, or from any http://www.telekom.de shop, lookout for the pink T sign, for €9.95.

(BTW Congstar uses the t-mobile network, supposedly the best in Germany, but they only sell the SIM packs, no in store support)

There are two SIM packs, one in plastic which lets you choose options, the other one has a choice of two plans.

If you are like me, only after data, you can get 1Gb for €12:90 for 30 days which I think is the best you will find. 3Gb is only €19.90

Viel spass!

UPDATE

1. You can find out how much data you have used via pass.telekom.de, (not via WiFI or WLAN as the Germans call it)


2. This is annoying, surf packet (data) is per month, so once you have used up your data, you are speed limited to 64k. You can't upgrade to a higher plan until the next month, which is really dumb. You can however, via speed on, purchase a 500mb upgrade, via the pass.telekom.de, so I would really recommend the 3GB option

3. The live chat support via congstar.de is quite good and if you ask them to speak English they can :)

How the LNP killed off the Election debate over #gonski with one lie

Source: Google Trends

Windows Power Tip, right click task bar items for shortcuts to frequent uses

I only just discovered this by accident, if you right click on start bar icons,
you get a list of frequently accessed items.

So for web browsers, you get most visited websites and recently closed sites,
with Windows Explorer, you get your most frequently accessed folders.

Can't believe I only just discovered this after all these years of using Windows!

You can also increase the number of items in the list

Enjoy