Thursday, December 07, 2006

BLOGGING BLUNDERS

I have spent the day trying to recover my e-mail, which totally disappeared after my book posting last night. After setting up the blog initially, I move on to Beta - after many problems I discovered that it is not compatible with Safari so I downloaded Firefox - it didn't seem to be any better and definitely slower than Safari. It seems to me that after posting a photo yesterday, that is where the machine started to go wrong.

Fortunately my son also has a Mac, and his worked - he had a Wifi connection, I didn't - so using his internet settings I tried to reset mine - no way! In total disgust I shut down the laptop, I even banned it to another room incase I was tempted to throw it in the trash and went and did some mundane jobs. An hour later, feeling calmer, I go back to the laptop, and everything works! Why? I have absolutely no idea (I trashed Firefox) but so far, so good - we shall see if I can post this.

What annoys me is that after a night of snow, the weather here today was simply gorgeous - sun, blue skies and sparkling snow; all very 'carte postale'! And I wasted the whole day trying to get the laptop to respond. I took a couple of photos this morning but don't think I will post one yet - it might be tempting fate!

Tonight we are having 'raclette' - the real McCoy! I will take some photos and post them another day! Raclette was invented in the Valais, so we are spoilt for choice as far as the cheese is concerned. We used to eat raclette in France using our little Tefal raclette machine - we no longer dare bring it out here! The real way to prepare raclette is to melt it in front of the fire but unless one is properly equipped this becomes a hot, greasy and difficult operation. We now have a large raclette machine which is electric and nearly everyone now melts the cheese in this manner - I know of only two restaurants here that still melt the cheese in front of the chimney. The quality of one's raclette depends on the cheese and there are as many different raclettes as days in the year! We have a wonderful fromager here in the village who has some excellent raclette on offer but I must confess to buying tonight's raclette in Carrefour yesterday - they were having a 'degustation' so Lucie and I had a mid-morning snack and decided that it wasn't bad!

The raclette is served with cooked ham, air-dried ham, 'speck' which is in fact streaky bacon (air-dried too), viande de Grisons (dried beef), coppa, lashings of gherkins, pickled onions and the special raclette potates. I can eat 3 to 4 portions when I am really hungry - Pierre ate 11 portions in a restaurant last winter! Fortunately for me, it was a 'much as you can eat' formula!

The minus side of this dish is the smell in the house afterwards - the chalet smells of raclette for 48 hours, despite eating with the windows open! It's a good thing that blogs don't smell!

13 comments:

richard of orléans said...

OK so now we know you are in Valois. Verbier I presume?

Louise said...

In the Valais, Richard, in the Valais! And yes, in Verbier...anything wrong? You were a bit off track in Klosters, weren't you?!

richard of orléans said...

Yeah but it's still a sloany hideout

Anonymous said...

Verbier is great! And near there (in Thyon) is where I had my first raclette. I love it!

sciencebod said...

That was clever, Paul. How were you able to insert that link into your post ? That's the first time I've seen that done.

Louise said...

For those of you who don't understand Colin B's comment, he clicked on the name "Paul" and up popped raclette recipes in Australia!

Sarah said...

Cheese fondu also stinks the house out afterwards. It's sooooo yummy though!
I had a raclette machine but let the ex-h take it. The boys don't like cheese so I didn't see much point keeping it.

Louise said...

I'm still having problems with my computer - this morning (Friday) after publishing my post about Noel, I put my computer to 'Sleep'. An hour later, opened it up again and hey presto! nothing worked! So, shut down the computer completely, unhooked thee modem and waited ... and when all was hooked up again, everything came back! When I leave a comment, all is fine - when I post, all hell is let loose!

Anyone else having this problem? Should I log out after posting? It can't be my laptop, it's a Mac!!!

sciencebod said...

Actually, it was the blue link to "raclette" to which I was referring, Louise. But clicking on "Paul" also brings up the recipe, instead of his Profile. Now there's someone who's shown Blogger who's boss !

sciencebod said...

Geeks' corner: I've been snooping in Paul's html code, and have figured out how he managed to embed a link in his post.

The proof of the pudding ? Click on blue Google below to go to, guess where ?

Google

Anonymous said...

Well done Colin! I just used some html code to link to some info I thought would be good for readers.

You know, raclette is probably the best Swiss food I know! :-)

And... Louise, you mean you suspend the computer over night instead of shutting down? I think the sleep mode is only for a few hours, not overnight...

Anonymous said...

...spooky, I didn't think that hover effect over the link would work...

enough geekyness now!

Louise said...

No, Paul, you just shut the lid and the laptop goes into 'sleep' mode. I only every shut it down when I take it away with me or when things get very nasty viz. my connection and the only thing to do is to close and unplug everything!