While I'm taking time off blogging and the dinner is cooking

I had these thoughts which I couldn't possibly deprive you of. (I'll take time off grammar instead)
I'm making Ghee! This is probably way beyond the call of duty but since I began this curry with rosewater and saffron, (which are rare, expensive and precious stuffs*) I feel I ought to be following the directions as far as I possibly can.
So you take a lump of butter (A BIG lump of butter) and heat it gently 'until all the milk solids turn brown and cling to the side of the pan or fall to the bottom. Towards the end, watch carefully in case it starts to burn'. Oops. I'd better go and do some careful watching!
All this fiddling about with butter is just so I can fry crispy onions properly to add to a biryani. However, the Biryani in question is (I quote) "the true princess at the ball, tall, pale and properly pedigreed, her tastefully chosen diamonds and emeralds glinting in the light of a thousand oil lamps". In contrast to the South African "hot chick" Biryani.
If you will use recipes written by a famous actress, writer and Indian socialite I suppose you can expect a bit of exotic excess :) And Madhur Jaffrey claims to have obtained this antique recipe from an aristocratic family and says it was probably used in the 18th C courts of the Moghul Emperor**.
Well, as instructed in the original recipe, I "began with a silent prayer directed heavenwards and commenced proceedings" Um, well, no not really, it was more in the way of a muttered curse directed downward at the bottom shelf where the black Cumin wasn't. But should have been.
She says the recipe is foolproof. Hmmm. Pudding. Eating. Proof.

Moving right along from dinner (which is now sealed in the oven for 1 and 1/2 hours), I'm a bit cross with the local council.
They're supposedly entering into a major rubbish recycling scheme which will improve on the, admittedly feeble, one they used to run. So instead of glass and cans in one little basket and paper in another, we now have two boxes for paper and glass and a bag for cans and plastic.
Now wouldn't you think, if we used to get all our bottles and cans into one small basket, we'd only need two small - perhaps even smaller - baskets for each? Especially as the plastic only accounts for bottles, no yoghurt pots or other packaging please!
(Well and wouldn't you also think that 'plastics' might mean plastics of all kinds not just milk and drink bottles).
Then you might think that a household accustomed to accommodating two small baskets might have a little trouble finding space for three. So it seems a little excessive to have to put the cans and plastics into an enormous bag. Not a nice solid weatherproof bag but a big soft floppy one (already after being used once, fraying round all its edges and seams and silly handles) with a huge flappy lid and carrying handles on two sides and a strangely placed third handle somewhere else. And then to have to find indoor space for the huge paper box. You wouldn't want to keep it outside in the English summer, never mind any kind of winter. Since the dustmen (sorry, waste removal operatives) wouldn't thank you for leaving them a huge box full of sodden newspapers.
Well obviously the whole scheme was designed by a person who doesn't, ever, themselves, deal with the recycling of waste. What's more they live in a BIG house. And they haven't paid attention to any serious design considerations and what's more they don't care about recycling anyway since they obviously didn't bother to do any research. They didn't even glance at what's on the market already. (I've seen several better recycling storage systems in the junk mail). Sadly, I don't even think this farrago can be blamed on gender. I suspect that there are plenty of women who don't recycle, who live in big houses and who don't bother to check out the market or to research the subject when they're asked to come up with a new system.
Also, I suspect that this is just a smaller version of whatever the disposal firm have been selling to manufacturers and offices. I don't think they even considered the needs of a small household.
What a cock up. And I don't mention the grand beginning of the new system. The various organisational disasters have made the local press and resulted in some rubbish not being collected at all for several weeks!
Neither do I mention the cost of the whole exercise. Nor the probable overunning of budgets.

For once, I firmly believe even I could design a better system. And that is a terrible sad thing! (especially if you could see the typos I managed when ranting about it). Hells Bells, I could probably design a better system and get it to work in a foreign language, using MS word as my translator! (not blogger though)
:(

*Yes I know 'stuff' is singular but I began in the plural so it was easier, and interesting and possibly medieval, to add an ess instead of changing the whole sentence and all its bits and pieces. See!
**A word which the blogger dictionary doesn't recognise - what is the world coming to?