Cheese

We had friends over for dinner and the subject of cheese came up. Natural enough as we were noshing on some nice 4 year old cheddar, some Boursin herbed cream cheese (which is the secret to my Snugglebunny's orgasmic cheesy scalloped potatoes) and nippy blue while waiting for the curry to be done. Mrs. Friend opined that "CheezWhiz" the processed spiced cheese product is an abomination. I rather like it on crackers to be honest.

I'm pretty broad church when it comes to cheese. Old Cheddar, Gouda, Gruyere and Brie for snacking (CheezWhiz too, but a proper Cheddar spread is excellent as well, I won't say 'better' just different). It's become a family tradition to have a fondue made with gruyere and jarlsberg every New Year's Eve. My wife likes a chunk of Velveeta with tea (although it's now priced so heavily it's cheaper to buy old cheddar or a good brie). Grated marble for making macaroni and cheese. A younger cheddar (2 or 3 yr old) or Swiss for sandwhiches. For burgers and grilled cheese I actually prefer those processed cheese slices over cheddar slices. They melt nicely and the creaminess makes for a pleasant comforting goo in between the slices of industrial white bread (about the only use for which is IMO grilled cheese sandwhiches).

I was facing the dairy cooler the other day. Shuffling 500 g blocks of cheese into neat stacks. Whenever we have a sale the old cheddar, the mozzarella and the marble sell quickest. Then the mild cheddar. But Medium Cheddar is the loser in the pack. Really we just shouldn't order any extra for a sale. Those who like cheese get the old cheddar (and we're talking Black Diamond or Cracker Barrel here, so really how old can it be? 2 years maybe?) and those who are afraid of strong cheese get the mild. The medium just loses out in the middle. Kind of sad. I'm sure it's a perfectly good cheese just waiting for a recipe.

About the only thing I really object to are 'cheese strings' or 'fun cheez'. I mean cheese already is fun. And convenient. Cut off a chunk and eat. How hard can it be? But cheese strings just take a perfectly good food and turn it into some chewy, waxy tasteless horror. Perhaps they don't want kids to actually like cheese?

In the movie "Notorious" (the one about Truman Capote writing "In Cold Blood" not the one about the rapper), big city, cosmopolitan writer Truman goes to small town Kansas to research his book. He's in the grocery store looking at a giant display of Velveeta bricks (back in the day when it was cheap so that's what mom bought to top the hamburger casserole with). There aren't any other cheeses in evidence. In despair he turns to the woman shopping nearby and says:
"Is that all there is?"
She replies: "Well how much did you want?"

Livery and Maintenance

So I was stocking the dairy section the other day. I was doing a lot of work in the walk-in cooler and freezers so I had my old CAW logo'd black hoodie on (at least it's black). The boss comes up and hands me a spffy Buy Food jacket "Here, wear this. I'm worried if my boss sees you in that sweater he'll want to fire you."

I suppose I could have taken offence, but I figure if the company is going to give me clothes I'll wear them. I'll wear Buy Food underwear if they pay for it. I've worked in union and non-union shops. One place the company was pretty fair and I thought the workers didn't really need a union. In another, the company seemed to enjoy jerking folks around and they needed one. As long as the management are reasonable and treat folks fairly they don't have to worry about unions. After all I'd rather have the money for unionn dues in my pocket instead of the union's.

As an added bonus I've passed the three months mark at the Buy Food. The boss came up to me and said "Well if I wanted to get rid of you the deadline was yesterday, so fill this out and get it back to me ASAP." It was paperwork for benefits. Benefits! How cool is that?

It's not as great a package as I had at Cooper, but it's way better than I expected. Everyone here needs new glasses and a trip to the dentist.

Black Powder in Haributistan

For the mountains of Haributistan, it was a decently nice morning. The bugles from the Native Infantry were tootling away, the sun was shining and we hadn't been sniped at all night. I was doing my best to get on the outside of my tiffin while listening to Padre Peterson prosing on about some philosopical work he'd just read about in the Times. Dam'd decent chap the padre and useful to have about; saved the whole column a few years back, so I make polite noises and try to look like I understand what he's saying. I was just wondering where Radu was with some more tea when my Chief of Staff, Maj. Jeeves, bustled in trailing ammunition returns and camel inventories, saving me from having to make some intelligent comment on the transubstantiation of field mice or somesuch.


Gen. Wooster encourages the troops

"Excuse me sir, but the enemy has been sighted in strength blocking the pass. I've given orders to deploy as we discussed last evening, sir."
"Ah well, Jeeves. Jolly good! Let's go give that Wazir chap a sound thrashing!"
The Wazir of Pakora had been entertaining Russkie envoys, disguising themselves as fig merchants. But Calcutta got their wind up about Cossacks in the Khyber Pass so off we were sent to thrash the Native Johnnies, show the flag and levy a fine of rifles and sheep from the mountain tribes who'd been getting uppity of late.
This morning's objective was to force the Gates of Pakora; a nasty collection of rocks set in between even bigger and nastier rocks. But about the only place you can get through with a camel caravan. The Wazir had deployed his small army of medieval equipped troops around the Caravanserai where the camel wallahs stop for bhang and bints. On the mountains to either side he had Usman Khan the Hawk of Haributistan with his bands of Pathans occupying sangars.


Usman Khan, the Hawk of haributistan


view of Pathan lines


Pathans in sangars


the caravanserai

As I rode out on my horse waving my topi to encourage the lads I could see Jeeves had things well in hand. The Gordons and Gurkhas were on the left. In the center was my old regiment, the Blandingshire Fusiliers and the Madras Sappers. On the right we had the 21st Lancers and Hodson's Horse.


view of Anglo-Indian deployment

"Where'd those Guides chappies get off too, Jeeves?"
"The Guides are moving through the mountains to the north to try and turn the position, sir."
"Ah yes. Good show. Smart chaps those Guides."
A battery of heavy guns packed on elephants moved past, trumpeting away noisly.
"Right. Put those guns over on the right where they can shoot and move the 21st to cover them. In the meantime get the screw guns banging away and order a general adavance."


elephant battery advances

Jeeves gave the orders and sent gallopers flying hither and yon. Bugles sounded. Bagpipes squeeled and everybody started adavancing. From the rocks the pathans started banging away in fine style too.
In the center the Madras Pioneers were advancing on the caravanserai, one company out skirmishing. But a small cannon in the compound and some Pathan marksmen kept pinning them down and even made one company retire.


advance in the center

I galloped up waving my topi enthusiastically. "C'mon you lads! Don't let the side down, eh? Remeber the regiment and the Queen and there'll be extra chappattis for all." After a few minutes of this they got sorted and moved off again.
Meanwhile the Wazir had been pushing forward with his spearmen and Col. Bearsham brought up the Blandingshires to form a firing line. Arrows met Martini Henry fire. The spear chaps gave a jolly spirited charge but the good old Blandingshires held them and they broke.





Over on the right the 21st took a lot of stick fro the Pathan snipers and retired in complete disarray. I'm going to have to give them a sharp talking to tomorrow I'm sure. The elephant battery got fired on too and the padre had to bustle over and give them an encouraging sermon to buck them up.




Maj. Wentworth the cavalry commander noticed some tribal cavalry moving out from behind the mountain to turn our right and he quickly sent Hodson's Horse to block them. The Bengal Lancers charged in fine style but with disappointing results only managing to stop the pathan riders but not breaking them.



On the left there were mixed results. The Gordons kept tripping over their kilts and one company never advanced at all. I'll have to take away their beer ration for a while I think. The Gurkhas got stuck in though and charged up the mountain like a bunch of vicious goats driving off the tribesmen and exposing the Wazir's flank.


Gurkhas turn the flank


Highlanders don't do much except look pretty

After this the defender's spirits seem to flag and the pathans faded into the hills to send down a fine of rusting old fowling pieces and some scraggly sheep. The Wazir sent envoys to negotiate having a British resident in Pakora.


the Wazir

The above was a 28mm Colonial game we played using Black Powder. Since number of figures don't matter we went with 10-12 figure companies or 5-6 figure squadrons for the 'standard' sized units. A good time was had by all and three of the four players had no experience with the rules at all but we still managed to do a lot of gaming in about three hours. Plus I was able to put alot of my toys on the table. If we'd gotten started earlier then the Guides, Guide Cavalry and Sikhs would have been on the right flank, plus a few dozen more Pathans.
The Wazir of Pakora's troops started life as my Medieval Saracen/Moorish army but they've seen more action in Colonial wars than Medieval.
All in all, I'm quite pleased with the rules. They move quickly and allow for a lot of toys on the table. As you can see, I have a lot of toys and it's a shame to leave most of them in the box.

Black Powder at Soggy Bottom

Had a first go around with Black Powder last night, the hot new set of rules from Warlord Games that all the cool kids are playing these days.


We used some of Mike B's massive Fire & Fury collection; just made 8 stands (24 figures) a 'standard' regiment. He's really geeked out on the period and even gotten down to supply wagons and such which are always nice. Notice the reins on the 15mm wagon and team below:

I set up the town of Soggy Bottom at the convergence of some roads and littered the landscape with corn fields (made from artificial Christmas tree branches) and clumps of trees plus fences and a few stone walls.

Each army had 3x 4 regt. brigades of infantry and one two regiment brigade of cavalry. Each brigade had a battery of guns. Everybody was pretty vanilla and all the commanders had staff ratings of 8 since this was our first go at the rules.

But even with the inevitable chit chat, joking about (something my gang likes to do) and leafing through the rules to figure what to do we played to a conclusion with the Union cav breaking the Reb cav and starting to turn the Reb left flank while in the center after a titanic 4 round fight in the town three Union regiments broke two Reb regiments driving them out of the town. I tried over running a battery of unsupported Reb guns, but their closing fire drove me back shaken with three hits. On the right the Rebs (Mike B) were hampered by really crap command rolls. You live and die by your command rolls in this game and how you issue your orders is very important. It creates a nice amount of friction which I like.

It was a fun game, not too much unclarity we couldn't sort out by looking at the situation and as Walter observed "a lot happened" in a few hours. We played from about 8:30 until midnight with almost 600 infantry and 64 cavalry plus 8 batteries of guns (two models each, which was nice; they took up more room and looked prettier) on the table, did a lot of moving about and reached a conclusion.

Here's the Union left wing pushing through some corn after driving back the Reb advanced regiment.





Here's the view from the Reb perspective. Mike's finally gotten his brigade moving to get up and hunker down behind the railway embankment. Two regiments in line with one out front in skirmish.



Here's the after math of the fight in the town. Two Union brigades are pushing in while the remains of the Reb brigade hang on to the other edge of town.





This is the situation on the right wing. I started firefighting the Reb cavalry at the fenced road in the foreground and drove them back over the fields to turn the Reb left.



But the Rebs detached a brigade from pushing onto town in order to face left and make a new line along another fenced road. the battery of guns in the center are the ones that drove off my attacking regiment with close range cannister.



A longer view from the Union right down the battleline.



The fences, walls and buildings are Mike's. The buildings are paper models from the Fire & Fury rules. the fences and walls are scratch built. Mike also provided all of the figures (and we didn't use all of them either!). The trees are mine.

Ths gives me hope for playable, big horse and musket games.

In the Irony Dept.

Frustrated in my attempts to start the lawn mower (broken priming bulb methinks...) I decided to wander about the yard and pick up the assorted rubbish that had blown in from my neighbours garbage over the winter. I'm getting a good arm load and just thinking I need a bag when I chance upon a seredipitous bag beside a rose bush. It's a nice bag too, in pretty good shape. Not even sure it had even been used before since the folds were so neat.

So I unfold it and stuff in my wrappers, Timmies cup, foil and soiled pie plate when I notice the bag is sporting the recycling symbol and the slogan:
Be the Difference. Support a Green Ontario.

Rather like the bumper sticker I saw a while back:
Support Ontario Farmers. Buy Local.
on the back of a VW Jetta! Unlike Toyota or Honda, VW doesn't have any plants in North America.

But then how many CAW workers sporting the
Out of Job Yet? Keep Buying Foreign!
bumper sticker shop at Wal-Mart where 97% of the crap they will buy is made in China?

These are all good thoughts and intentions, but the road to hell and all that. The Devil is in the details and the problems come in the application of these lofty sentiments.

Of course the Detroit Three are gleefully sending production to the Developing World (like my nice job went to Korea), so what does buying foreign or buying domestic really mean anymore? CAW workers (well those who still have jobs) making their $20-30 or more an hour can actually afford to spend a bit more and take politics into consideration. They can actually afford to Buy Canadian rather than buying the cheap stuff at Sprawl-mart, but (judging from the support for a local Wal-Mart that was voiced on the shopfloor when I worked in an autoplant) they don't for the most part. But when someone on Social Assistance or Minimum wage comes into the Buy Food to purchase their meager groceries, they have to go with what's cheap (which usually means China or South America), so I can't really fault them.

And a Jetta isn't a cheap car to buy or maintain, so what kind of message is that farmer sending?

A Busman's Holiday

I tagged along with my Snugglebunny while she did some grocery shopping for work the other day. Her employer has a charge account with Zehr's so that's where she goes. After months of working at the Buy Food it was a shocker.

The Buy Food is an old fashioned, built in the early 70s, neighbourhood grocery store of the type you don't see any more. They've all been bull dozed or turned into Giant Tigers or convenience stores or something. So I walk into Zehr's and it's like a Medieval cathedral; the ceilings are lost in the vaulted heavens, you can't see either end of the store because of the curvature of the earth and need a bus to get from Dairy to the Deli (transfer at Children's Wear). Serried ranks of bottles and cans await my purchasing decision. They have 20 feet of toilet paper. TWENTY FEET!! I've got 4 feet each for toilet paper, paper towels and tissues. And really packages of TP only come so small nowadays so I think some product lines ought to be cut from the mix.

They probably do in a couple days what we sell in a month. But I think we do get a lot of people who like the human size of the Buy Food and find the other stores a bit too overwhelming. Now the yuppie fellow who came in looking for coconut milk and lemon grass for his Thai recipe had to be sent away dissapointed... the Old El Paso taco seasoning and Wong Wing frozen chicken balls are about as exotic as my Fail Street and No Daddy Lane customers want to get. Ragu pasta sauce being on sale for .97 cents, now that's excitement.

Reinforcements for Herbie Canuck

It all started with Tau.
Yeah, Tau. Those ultrasleek space commies from Warhammer 40K. I had met the then President of Games Workshop Canada socially and commented that I thought the, then new, Tau were the most interesting thing GW had released in a while. So like a good drug pusher who uses free samples to get you hooked, the next time we met he gave me a few packs to start a Tau army.
"Hey cool," I think. Free stuff is always welcome. Besides friends played 40K so I thought maybe I could play with them. And I liked the sleek SF look to the army with the drones and grav tanks and sleek modern looking helmets. So much nicer than the spikey goth Mad Max refugee look of the rest of the 40K universe. Then I started planning an army and realized that they really needed their tanks and at least 3 to 5 tanks at that. Each unit of basic squaddies requires an expensive Infantry Fighting Vehicle model at about $50 to $60 a piece. Ouch.
That's a lot of money for a rule system I'm not particularly keen on just to play with my buddies. So I took what I had and traded it in at a local FLGS that carried GW and Flames of War (like every other FLGS). I got a $50 credit which I promptly used on a Battlefront "British Rifle Company" boxed set. This gave me two platoons and a nifty resin HQ bunker.
Here they are posed among my Italian ruins:


Here is the command bunker. I've added a trio of Peter Pig's "Tommies having a brew" to set the tone:

Of course I had to add some tanks. What's WW2 without tanks? Two troops of Shermans from Old Glory purchased using someone's Old Glory Army card which put them at a more economical $5 a model. Each troop has three Sherman Vs and a Sherman Vc Firefly. I want the army to be able to fight scenarios from the landings in Sicily in '43 to the end of the war in North West Europe so Fireflies were needed.


Radio antenna on the tanks and the FOO (you can see him follwing the rifle sections in the second picture) are made from the nylon bristles from a cheap Dollar store snow brush. That was pretty much where my army sat for a while; one understrength rifle company and two troops of tanks. Needless to say, they got their asses handed to them in the first few games.
I quickly set about adding some supporting elements. Since I play I Ain't Been Shot, Mum from Too Fat Lardies I wanted supporting elements appropriate to a rifle company. Units organic to a rifle battalion would be first; carrier platoon, mortar platoon and anti-tank platoon. Given the nature of the terrain in Italy a lot of the Brigade and Divisonal assets got stuck in the rear without room to deploy anyway, leaving the battle to the rifle companies adavancing behind an artillery barrage. IABSM puts the artillery suitably off table, so the artillery support is well represented by the FOO team already.
At Hotlead 2009 I was able to get a Battlefront 3" mortar platoon blister. That is one thing I like about the Battlefront packaging for their Flames of War miniatures; you buy a blister pack and it has everything you need for that platoon. It makes life easy instead of the Old Glory bags with 50 figures, then you need to buy a bag of Bren gunners (50 more!) then PIAT teams then command etc. etc. See the issue?
Here's Number 3 Platoon serving their 3" mortar tubes in an Italian farmyard while some staff wallahs pore over a map and in the background.

The staff group are from the Battlefront British artillery command pack, which I bought for the two Bren carriers and jeep. The wind screen on the jeep was missing, so I emailed BF and they promptly sent me a whole new blster, so for the price of two I now have 4 Bren carriers and two jeeps (ironically both missing windscreens). I used extra bits from some German field cars to make windscreens and gave the second staff vignette to the Mad Padre. The carriers I turned into a patrol from Number 4, Carrier, Platoon and added a .50 cal and Browning .30 cal. machine gun to two of the carriers to boost their firepower. From my readings carrier crews did that and some of them bristled with scrounged weapons that would make a Games Workshop sculptor weep. Of course I've forgotten to photograph them. Oops.

Edit: Here they are, late for the party! [Added 09/27/10]

During all this time I was off work and money for the project was tight. Fortunately a friend wanted help painting some German paratroopers and had lots of extras from his own 15mm Canadian army to trade. So those big bags from Old Glory came in handy.

Here are some 6 pounder antitank guns from Number 6 Platoon:


The guns are Battlefront and two of the crews are as well. Those crews are actually 8th Army figures in the African shorts. But a bit of filing and some paint and they look like they're wearing battledress trousers. For the other two guns I cobbled together crews from extra figures. The fellow loading the shell is actually holding a PIAT trimmed down and the fellow behind is actually holding a 2" mortar, but I've got enough 2" mortar crews for a Division! But with some trimming, some paint and hiding things in the flocking they all look pretty good from more than a foot away.
Next to be added was a Vickers machinegun platoon from the Divisional MG battalion. The Old Glory bags feature MG teams walking and firing. Brian and I split a bag so I got 4 teams firing and a bunch trudging up the line. Here they are marching past a burned out Sherman:

Here they are deployed in some shell craters ready to drive off the expected counterattack and support the next stage in the advance:

Lastly comes a patrol of Old Glory Dingo armoured scout cars from the Divisonal Armoured Recce Regiment. I got one in trade from Brian and two more Mike picked up for $5 at the Cold Wars 2010 flea market. They don't look like much but in WW2 one apparently did knock out a Panther with a lucky shot from it's Bren gun. They caught the Panther unawares as it was driving down a narrow twisting street and hit the exposed crew commander. In his surprise and panic the driver reversed into a wall and brought an entire house down on top of them putting the tank out of action.

Above it all flies a 1/100th scale Spitfire. I also have a 1/144th scale RN Hellcat with rockets and sporting Invasion stripes, but I thought the Spit was more suitable air support for Italy. The Spit was a pre-painted quick to asemble kit. The Hellcat was one of those prepainted jobs you can pick up at Walmart. I got both super cheap.

So far, so good. I've got about another company's worth of riflemen (more trade goods from Brian) and two more 3" mortar teams to paint. This will enable me to launch battalion attacks with two companies forward. Of course, I'd like to add more Shermans, carrier sections and some Humber armoured cars to support the Dingos. I can always use more Bren carriers and jeeps and I don't have any 15 cwt trucks. Then for NW Europe things like Wasps and Churchill engineering tanks start showing up.
But still it's a reasonably well balanced force now and since I got most of it in trade or second hand I think I may have spent about $50 total so far. That would've gotten me one tank in 40K. I think I'm ahead of the game.
Herbie was apparently the nick name for Canadian squaddies during WW2 after the popular cartoon published in the Canadian army magazine featuring the sad-sack Herbie in his baggy battledress, getting in trouble with MPs, staff officers and QM Sergeants.