Dinner, life and long lunchbreaks.

OK, so, I have nothing to say about long lunchbreaks other than I’ve not had one recently, but it made a good title. πŸ˜‰

My first dinner party at my house (actually, ever) went well other than I made twice the amount of sauce I needed and 4 times the pasta.. next time I will know better.

The pasta sauce, made of 1Kg lean pork mince, two bottles of passata(I dunno what it’s called.. italian liquified tomatoes) with basil, lots of oragano, salami, mushrooms and salt to taste was a success despite it being a recipe I made up on the fly. The warmed focaccia bread as a side dish worked well too.

Pudding, sorry, desert course was made up of a Vienetta which my guests kindly brought with them and the Carte-D’Or strawberry ice-cream I’d bought for the occasion. This was followed by tea/coffee in the lounge.

I was amazed that I managed to squeeze 4 people around a table in my kitchen.. though the term squeezed is very descriptive.

I couldn’t be bothered to wash up after the guests left at 10:30pm, so I left it for yesterday. There was a lot of it.. it took nearly an hour to do, including cleaning the hob where all the tomato had splashed all over the place.

I’ll I’ve got to do now is work out how to store the rest of the pasta sauce which is filling up my fridge in its saucepan. I have a freezer but no containers to currently put the stuff in so as to store it in the freezer. Oh well. πŸ™‚

Tonight, I’ve the final push of getting the house back the way it was ready for my parents to arrive tomorrow for the Jubilee holiday weekend. (Not that I’m doing any Jubilee celebrating.)

Talking of which, I saw on the BBC teletext news pages this morning that a poll said that they had found that 75% of people are going to be celebrating the golden Jubilee.. how come then, no-one I know is taking a blind bit on notice of the whole event and any that are are actively avoiding it? It seems the 1006 people polled are a very unrepresentative sample.

8 thoughts on “Dinner, life and long lunchbreaks.

  1. Nice πŸ™‚

    Thanks for the recipe – sounds like a real italian country style meal!

    I don’t know anyone who is celebrating the jubilee, either. Another media event.

    • Re: Nice πŸ™‚

      There is apparently an event on at work and I’ve seen a banner up for a party – the only effect it’s had on me however, is a determination to avoid those places at all costs!

  2. Better to have too much food than too little.

    As for the jubilee at least one poll I saw included “Going to the pub” and “Watching a jubille concert on television” in it’s ways of celebrating the jubilee.

  3. I saw on the BBC teletext news pages this morning that a poll said that they had found that 75% of people are going to be celebrating the golden Jubilee.. how come then, no-one I know is taking a blind bit on notice of the whole event and any that are are actively avoiding it? It seems the 1006 people polled are a very unrepresentative sample.

    Despite the fact I don’t believe it either, I’ve got to say that the 1006 people selected for the poll are bound to be be more representative of the overall population than the statistical sampling of ‘people knows’. And slightly larger too.

    • Hmm, well, seeing as I’m in contact with about 50 people a day regularly and have reasonable contact with about another 120 through the week and none as far as I’m aware are doing anything related to the Jubilee this weekend, this suggests that there might be something wrong with the survey’s results. This is especially true as another survey done by the same company only a month before showed only 25% planning anything.

      Surely, if 75% of the population are planning to do something I should know at least one person who is going to do something?

      All surveys have both systematic and sampling errors.. and that’s on top of those members of the survey who lie.

      As a whole, how reliably can you extrapolate a sample of 1006 to mean anything for the whole 65 million population? It means each answer represents 65000 people!

      • Whilst I’ll still happily agree that I don’t believe the figure of 75% either, as I said before, I can’t agree that people you know is a reasonable statistical sampling, better than that of the research company’s sample.

        Even if you meet 200 people a week, that is still most likely restricted to a limited geographical area. If it’s people you work with, then that is a further restriction on your sampling. Given the area is Oxford, there is a known bias in the type of people who live in the area, (I mean Oxford isn’t known for it’s heavy industry). How many retired people have you included? Unemployed?

        Surely, if 75% of the population are planning to do something I should know at least one person who is going to do something?

        And, just because something is highly probable doesn’t mean it’ll happen. πŸ˜‰

        But of course, I still don’t believe the figure either. πŸ˜‰ I guess what people meant by ‘doing something’ was making the most of the bank holiday and going somewhere or having a barbecue or similar.

        • I agree that my sample isn’t representative either.. but it’s probably only about 75% less accurate than a public survey given that the whole lot is skewed by those who agree to be surveyed, those available to be surveyed and those trying to screw up the survey. πŸ™‚

          • …than a public survey given that the whole lot is skewed by those who agree to be surveyed, those available to be surveyed and those trying to screw up the survey…

            Well that is where the quality of the pollers comes into account.

            Anyway, I think for many surveys, in true ‘Yes Minister’ style, you decide what answer you want to hear, and then choose the appropriate question for those answers.

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