Welcome to Newsletter #2.

This week we discuss a few more of the things which piqued my interest.

Food

With the courgette supply still very much at an unsustainably high volume, it's been another week of attempting to shoehorn the vegetable into as many meals as possible. Note that we're still reeling from the infamous July '22 egg surplus where we looked after seven laying hens for 10 days and ended up with more eggs than you can shake a stick at; you could say we had more than 'an-oeuf'.

My favourite concoction this week was a Korean-inspired egg fried rice which combines courgette, halloumi and homemade ssamjang paste. It's as simple as frying all the ingredients together before adding cooked rice and finally a beaten egg to lightly cook in the residual heat of the dish. The sweetness and heat of the sauce worked great with the saltiness from the halloumi whilst the courgette helped to bulk it all out!

For those of you wondering "What is this ssamjang paste?", it's a thick, spicy sauce, traditionally served in a leaf with meat, kimchi and rice. I discovered it earlier this year and have made it a few times now, always in a large batch where I can keep in the fridge for up to a month. It gets added to dishes where I want a nice kick of heat. I can recommend the My Korean Kitchen recipe if you want to give it a try.

Finance

The cost of living continues to dominate headlines as UK inflation hit double digits for the first time in the last 40 years and it doesn't look to be easing in the coming months with electricity and gas prices expected to rise again by ~82% in October as the price cap increases once more.

Working in the energy industry I see the wholesale prices on a daily basis and they are continuing to rise, which clearly isn't a good sign. Interestingly it's the gas generation prices which tend to drive electricity prices and with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war there is a real fear that Russia could cut gas supplies to Europe over winter. This is causing Europe to fill all their gas storage ahead of winter and although the UK is far less dependent on Russian gas, we are currently exporting it to Europe (highest demand) and the higher prices there are pulling up our domestic prices. We really need to hope for a mild winter.

Film

Onto a brighter topic, this time last week I watched Neil Patrick Harris on the Season 18 finale of Hot Ones. If you haven't seen Hot Ones - it's great: A-list celebrities eat increasingly hot wings whilst being interviewed. Need I say more? By the end, he was just about able to promote his new Netflix series and he comes across like such a genuinely nice guy that it prompted me to check it out.

The premise is a man has to come to terms with becoming newly single when his partner unexpectedly walks out on him after 17 years. The show is fun, very easy to watch and just about had enough in each episode to get me to watch the next. I can't say I'd recommend it, but it's harmless and if you fancy something a bit lighter, I wouldn't hold it against you.

I am also now working my way through the final series of Better Call Saul. I've held off until recently as episodes were being released weekly and I knew that once I got into it, I wouldn't want to have to wait. They're all out now and I can guarantee that by the end of today, I'll have seen it all.

I remember starting to watch the first season of BCS probably 4 or 5 years ago. I enjoyed it but felt like it was a sub-par spin off of Breaking Bad and so never continued with it. I'm so glad I gave it another try as it's proven to be fantastic and I don't doubt the final episodes will be worthy of similar praise.

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If you have any feedback, please get in touch and I hope to see you again for next week's newsletter.

Thanks for reading and have a great week.

Adam