Free christmas recipes and some sciency news that caught my eye

This morning I was listening to the radio , and heard an ad for a Christmas recipe booklet from Bord Bia. So, I went had a google, and found it, as you do. Thought I'd share it with you, see if there's anything interesting in it - here it is (it is a pdf, so might take a sec to load)I might try the orange and chocolate ice-cream... sounds yummy.

2 bits of sciency/techy news I came across today that were interesting. A private company, SpaceX launched a spacecraft to Low Earth Orbit yesterday, and retrieved it from the ocean after re-entry. So they're well on the way to providing private launch capability for NASA, to feed the ISS, and presumably for other satellite customers. I think it's hugely impressive that a private company, without NASA's resources can make such a vehicle so successfully. From what I read, it seems that they have developed a simple, modular vehicle that will bring down the cost of bringing material to orbit. This is, it seems from the press release, intended to allow NASA to concentrate on other projects than feeding the ISS, particularly with the retirement of Space Shuttle. I'm sure there's more to come!

The other was the use of a 3d printer to bring an idea for an iphone cradle to production, fascinating! The thoughts of 3d print shops on your street corner, where you can "print off" a design you've made up yourself, or bought over the internet. It's all explained on the BBC news website.

Mmmmm Sausage Plait thingy

See what I made? Link in title to the recipe, though it's hardly needed. Get some sausage meat (Superquinn sell theirs in 500g packets), some onion (these are sold in shops throughout the country) and some ready made puff pastry. Fry the onion, after some chopping has been applied. Mix with the sausage meat in a bowl. Or, you could use a number of mugs, or you could mix it on your couch - mix it how you want to.

Apply the mixture to the middle of a sheet of puff pastry (the ones I got comes in a sheet about this wide by this long) and then you can either fold the two sides over (after washing with some beaten egg, not the egg that won) or you can be fancy and make some slits in the pastry and plait the resulting arms over each other.

Oven at 473.16 Kelvin - preheatin is good as ever - and time it for about 40 minutes or until it looks yummy (which happened for me at about 40 minutes). Then remove from oven and consume. With Ballymaloe relish.

473.16 Kelvin is approximately 200 degrees Celsius.