Wednesday Night Psychology Chat and Eat

Taking off a chunk of Annual Leave this week. Almost over this horrendous cough. Will get back into exercise soon. 

One month to the Santa Dash. I actually booked time off to blog, but most of the blogging I wanted to do is now done, including 4 blog posts about the For the Love of Horror. They’re all live now. I’ve got 2 more recipe posts to go up, plus a third that I’m working on now. 

Manchester Psychology Social Group, my third Meetup group, grows larger every day. It’s now at over 100 members. We’re a bunch of mates with an interest in psychology, meeting to chat about science, eat and make friends. We’ve settled on Hinterland as a regular venue, a vegan alcohol-free joint in the Northern Quarter. 15 Turner St. We’ll be back there next Wednesday, 7:30pm. Cosy, warm, fair priced, healthy. If you’ve an interest in psychology and want to do something different to drinking, come see us. There’s plenty of space. I’m planning on throwing topics of discussions onto the site that might inspire conversation at the Meetups themselves. 

In other news, former UFC welterweight champ Matt Hughes liked my picture of him.

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James Duval and the Dehydrated Trip to Hinterland

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Not the best of weeks. Forgot a water bottle for the gym class on Wednesday. Dehydrated myself badly. Then went to the Manchester Psychology Social Group, the second meet, this time in Wholesome Junkies in Hinterland. Drank a lot of water there, but had a cough that started to get worse. Tried to get an MOT on Thursday (day off). Failed. Booked in for more work. Called in sick Friday. Slept all day. Sleep schedule has been utter garbage ever since. Had to cancel the Saturday Meetup with Manchester Nightlife. Thankfully I’m off until next Friday anyway now. Cough subsiding. Strength replenishing. 

Recipe cooking as we speak. I have tons of Psychology Saturday posts to go up. 

Here’s a good moment from this week:

James Duval, Frank the Bunny from Donnie Darko and Miguel from Independence Day, liked my Instagram story pic.twitter.com/IsSqVNgW2Q

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) November 3, 2024

And another:

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Wild Rice Winter Salad

From Rukmini Iyer's The Roasting Tin comes Wild Rice Winter Salad with Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Pancetta, Feta and Sunflower Seeds. 

I’m hardly a sprout fan, but I wanted to give this a shot as it was a little different. Should have been 40 mins total cook time, took me an hour 10. Other alterations: Aldi had 200g packs of sprouts. I only got one of those as I didn’t write down the weight from the recipe. The pancetta should have been cubed, I only remember seeing sliced in Tesco (Aldi and ASDA didn’t have any). I used double the required feta to use it all up though. 

End result was a success. Parents came around, I served it between three of us with some potato slices. There was a little left and I had it for lunch the next day. Certainly they were the best tasting sprouts I’ve had. I wouldn’t say sprouts are the worst veg, but they’re not popular generally (who remembers that Bottom Christmas Special?).

 

This recipe process, in contrast to what is possibly BBC Comedy’s finest hour, certainly mellows out the veg.

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