Markets and airspace

Some media have recently claimed that the drought in the US reduced the available crop and, importantly, investors would not only benefit more than anybody else - it was them driving the prices. Nevertheless, it seems that this time a number of investors simply missed out. Actually, they held short positions or reduced their longs (e.g., Dow Jones UBS Commodity Index) on corn and wheat since the farmers were out on the fields early this year and a rather good turn-out was expected. Only recently, fonds invested in long positions to participate and for correcting their losses. Nevertheless, this suggests that at least the initial increase in prices in June was caused by food and fuel producers. Hopes are now focussing on harvests Brazil and other parts of South America. But if everybody is buying corn in Brazil, prices will rise - without the contribution of evil forces (investors) whatsoever.
On another note, the Financial Times Deutschland published a report saying that AESA was investigating three incidents on 26 July 2012. Following a thunderstorm at Bajaras airport (Madrid, Spain) all flights were redirected to the much smaller Manises airport (Valencia, Spain). This included all Ryanair services to Madrid. The small capacity of the airfield (compared to Bajaras) and the unusual large number of flights arriving resulted in a massive hold time, i.e. aircraft had to remain in flight and wait for a landing slot. Within a timespan of three minutes, three Ryanair flights issued a Mayday call to Air Traffic Control after their fuel was hitting the 30 mins in-air minimum requirement. Thus, these flights were given highest priority to perform emergency landings. According to the news, allegations include that Ryanair acted systematically in not refuelling their machines appropriately. This was backed by the German pilot union (Cockpit) alleging Ryanair of pressuring pilots into refuelling at the bare minimum. Furthermore, the Irish Independent published reports that pilots who would use too much fuel or refuel above limit would be bullied and had to report for failing to achieve target numbers, which was denied by O'Leary. The emergency landings caused potential dangers as other aircraft had to remain in flight for longer which in turn reduced their fuel. Thus, AESA investigates whether the safety of Spanish air space was put at a risk as a matter of misconduct. It should be noted that another three aircraft were calling Mayday over Valencia this day (two EasyJet and one LAN Chile). All three of them for the same reason - a lack of fuel. Though these cases appear to be independent from the Ryanair flights under investigation. A Spanish consumers association said Ryanair could be banned from Spanish airspace for up to three years which is one of their main destinations. O'Leary denied any misconduct and said aircraft were handled and refuelled as required by EU regulation. He argued the problem was not Ryanair's refuelling policy but an unusually long hold time in Valencia. Furthermore, O'Leary insisted Ryanair's licence was issued by the Irish regulatory body and Spain could not expire or amend their licence.

The market

Recently, a rather naughty person transformed the 3 ft tall letters forming the signage to the section L, U and T of the university. An additional three foot tall letter S was cut out from black card board and somehow attached to this wall location. The letter had been removed the other day - it could mislead visitors as section S is located further down. I should add a photo of this and put in here. See, this is the kind of exciting stuff that happens around here.
Well, I discovered a market in Bielefeld. They do sell like fresh veg there! So, find me there early Saturdays. Though, despite having stuff on offer they haven't lost their special personal warmth. I asked for floury potatoes and frisée. The response were rants on how I could possibly go about and ask for stuff like that on a warm and sunny day. Apparently, I had no clue what I did and hence, had to be told. This involved farmers, how and where they grow and after all, people don't buy frisée not to mention floury potatoes. From personal interest, what do people do with their waxy potatoes in this country? Chips are deemed to be the most unhealthy thing. And what else could there be?
My journey went on to the cheese stall. Actually, that is a normal place. They do cheeses of different countries, all sorts of makes from solid to creamy, old and young, with lots of stuff on them or just little. I know that because a group of three ladies was being served right in front of me. They tried almost everything but bought only little. More interestingly, there was a man with the second assistant buying large amounts of stuff. Like 60 oz of each sort. Also, he engaged the lady who owns the stall in a conversation about their goats. How much milk they produce, how many they had, how many nannies a buck could serve (40) and so on. During these conversations, the sunshine was taken over by clouds, a shower started and stopped again, and more sunshine returned. Finally, I got some cheddar (semi mature), some Le Jersy (no, this is not a typo) and some Italian stuff whose name I always forget.
Earlier that week, I handed my suit to the dry cleaners (actually a single little lady). On my collection, she tried wrapping it in some sort of plastic bag using sort of a primitive hanger with rolls of bags attached. Having failed her initial two attempts and completing the task with a long sigh, she looked at me (or shall I say scanned me top to bottom and up again) and looked at the suit. From her assessment, she concluded "You look different. Are you French?" My surprise made her explain, that it is alright to look different these days. There is a growing number of people looking different these days. My enquiry revealed the issue at hand were my proportions (or the size of my suit that gave her such a hard time). I'd look smaller (i.e. shorter, less wide, less long), but fiddling around with the thing she found, I was less smaller than her initial assessment. Just I appear to be more less than I am actually less. Nevertheless, less. I am not sure I am reproducing this properly.
Having been confronted with all these Olympic events, I have to spread some random fact, right? So, here we go. The winners of the 1896 Olympic games received a silver medal, an olive branch and a diploma. There was bronze for second place and nothing for thirds. Tug of war was recognised as an Olympic sport from 1900 to 1920. The highlight of the 1896 games was the marathon won by the local boy Spyridon Louis. According to myth, he figured that there was a competition and started spontaneously-ish. During the race, he stopped by the local in Pikermi and had a glass of wine (or an Orange and a Cognac). He quizzed the people on how much ahead his competitors were. Once being presented with the facts, he declared he would catch up and win the race, so he did.

Banoffee pie

Well, I have been asked a few times how to produce the Banoffee pie. So, this is how. Though, I am not transforming this into a cooking blog as there is so much good stuff out there. Just check the Grilled Cheese Social, the Pioneer Woman, Saveur and of course BBC (look for Sophie Dahl and Lorraine Pascale). Mainly, this will be about substituting ingredients with stuff that is available in Germany.
For a quite substantial 28cm cake that will serve ten hungry people (or something between 12 and 14 normal people), you'll need:

• Chocolate Hobnobs, which are not available and substituted by one package of wholemeal biscuits (like Leibniz or De Beukelaer)
• A 100g chocolate bar (like something that wasn't sure whether to become milk or dark chocolate)
• About 1.5oz (some 50g) butter
• A tsp baking powder
• Two 14oz (397g) tins of sweetened condensed milk, I'd say Carnation, but in Germany you'll find Dogvan or Steinhauer products. The pre-caramalised stuff is fine and saves you a lot of time. If you can choose, the Steinhauer stuff is a bit more caramelised and more solid making the cake less likely to "melt" away.
• Six medium sized bananas (but since that's the healthy part, you can have six large ones with no probs)
• A big containter double cream (16oz/450g), which is not available in Germany. But there are two options. If you're lucky your supermarket offers "Crème double". There is only one supplier in Germany who lives in Bielefeld and and for some reason they believe it was sort of Crème fraiche (Can you believe it?). Second option is Amazon. They offer a 1l (aka 35 Imperial oz) package of Frischli Creme Double. You'll need four thimble sized packs of Dr Oetker or half a Frischli package.
• Finally, some cocoa for dusting

Once you've got all that stuff together, you've been to a number of shops and assistants will have looked at you as if you were alien. Dare you. Asking for double cream.

The toffee: For starting with the stuff that takes longest, you put the tins with the condensed milk in a saucepan and fill it up with water. You make it boil and leave it there for almost 2 hrs. Take care, the tins have to be covered by water at all times. Otherwise, there is a certain risk of the stuff exploding. Also, you might want to use an old-ish saucepan as something leaves some horrible stains on a stainless steel one. The tins will increase in size over time and they will be piping hot at the end of the process. So, you'll need something to get them out of the water. Maybe place them in the sink for a moment and get some cold water. This will caramelise the condensed milk. If you have the pre-caramelised stuff, you don't have to do that and you save almost two hours. Also, this is already cold and you don't have to wait.

Photo Gallery by QuickGallery.com

The pie: Whilst your toffee is boiling, you crush the biscuits. This should be sort of fine crumbles at the end of the process. You add those crumbles, some 1/3 of your chocolate bar finely chopped, the baking powder and the molten butter in a bowl. Mix it nicely. You want to press this in your cake tin such that it is packed and evenly spread out. You put that in the fridge and let it sit.

The banoffee layers: Chop all the bananas and lay half them on your pie. Again, this should be evenly spread out. Then you are careful with opening your first toffee tin. If something squirts out of there on your hand, put it under running cold water right now. Try to spread this toffee evenly (it can be quite thick and sticky and refuse to do so. But it's fine if it's not perfect - we gonna cover this with cream later). Put in the next layer of chopped banana on top of this toffee layer. The remainder of the chocolate should be molten by now (have I told you to put in a bowl and melt it?) and you use a spoon for sort of sprinkling the chocolate it all over the place (but within the boundaries of your tin). The idea is that once the chocolate becomes solid again it provides sort of a grid for stabilising the thing. As a side effect it tastes like a bit of extra chocolate. Finally, you aim for spreading the toffee from the second tin sort of evenly.

The cream: So, this is the double cream. Now, the toffee stuff is all warm and putting whipped cream on warm stuff is not a good idea. So let it sit, put the cake in the fridge until you are like serving it. It's only 5 mins from now. You put the double cream in a bowl and start whipping it, just way more gently than German so-called cream. The cream becomes stiff and fluffy faster than German whipping cream and if you're doing too much it'll turn into butter rather quickly. So give it a gentle whipping. Spread the whipped cream evenly all over the cake. Now this time you actually try to get it nicely evenly spread. Just in case there is some cream left, you might want to do some creamy decoration or just taste whether it's nice and fluffy (though too late for making amendments now). Finally, dust some cocoa powder all over.