We had friends over for dinner the other day and I decided to make this Greek lamb recipe. The recipe was given to us by a friend and is one of the nicest ways to cook lamb I have found so far. It involves slow cooking the lamb surrounded by the vegetables and covered in foil for several hours. The lamb just falls off the bones and the vegetables have the flavour of oregano and cinnamon. I cooked this for nearly 5 hours rather than the 2 and half suggested in the recipe.

You can find the recipe in full here if you want to try it. But to summarise I put the lamb in a large roasting tray. Put the peeled potatoes, onions and carrots around it. Poured a cup of olive oil, a cup of water and the juice of one lemon over the top. Seasoned it with salt, pepper and cinnamon. Added three good sprigs of oregano from the garden and left it to cook for about three hours on 170 before turning it down to 150 for the remaining two hours of cooking time.

If this article is to be believed a lady from Leicestershire got a little more than she bargained for when she opened a bottle of wine to find it included a frog. Isolde Beesley opened the bottle of Moscatel de Valcencia at a family celebration and had drunk a glass of wine before finding the small frog floating in the bottle. It is not yet known at what point the frog was introduced to the bottling process but the wine has been taken off the shelves whilst it is investigated.

According to this article purple potatoes could soon be in a supermarket near you. The variety which is called the Purple Majesty has a distinctive purple colour and reportedly contains more than 10 times the antioxidants that are in white potatoes. It was developed at the Colorado State University from a traditional variety and despite looking a little odd is not genetically modified. If you want to try some it is due to go on sale at Sainsbury’s stores in Scotland and south east England this week. I might look out for them when I am there next.

A group of Australian women have recently broken the world record for completing the fastest relay race in stiletto heels. They completed the 263 foot course in one minute and four seconds whilst wearing 3 inch heels. The original article comes complete with a video. It makes me wince just looking at it.

According to this article Sainsbury and Asda have been accused of misleading customers over the prices of some goods. The supermarkets advertise some larger pack with slogans such as “bigger pack, better value” but this is not necessarily the case. In fact the bigger packs often cost more than buying the same quantity of smaller packs. In one example a bag of 2kg spaghetti cost 27p more at Sainsbury's than buying two 1kg bags. Based on this I will be looking a little more carefully at prices in the future.

According to this article there has been a record number of people needing treatment after eating mushrooms this year. The Health Protection Agency's National Poisons Information Service has received 209 calls this year from NHS staff treating people with suspected mushroom poisoning. This is quite an increase on last years total of 123. It seems the increase might be down to this years bumper mushroom crop which seems to have attracted people to start foraging. Personally I don’t know enough about mushrooms to know whether they are poisonous or not so I will stick to buying mine in the supermarket.

According to a survey published by the RSPB hedgehogs are spotted in 25% of UK gardens. The survey counted the number of birds and mammals in 70,000 gardens in June. Almost 30% of those who took part had seen hedgehogs in their gardens before. In rural areas almost half of people has seen hedgehogs in their gardens. The most frequent visitor to UK gardens is still the blackbird but other creatures such as roe deer and moles were also reported. It just goes to show how important the garden is for wildlife. I am yet to see a hedgehog in mine but we have a large population of foxes, and birds including woodpeckers, jays, blackbirds, a sparrow hawk, collared doves, robins and crows, just to name a few.

This is interesting its a car park that parks the car for you. Users of the car park are issued with an individual key fob which is unique to the user. They swipe this when putting the car in the car park. A lift then takes the car away turns it around so it will be facing the right way when it is returned and finds a space for it. When you return to collect your car, you swipe your key fob again and consult the screen to see which lift your car will be returned to. It’s an interesting idea, you can see the video of how it works here.