Best Of

Order these carbs by preference: bread, potato, pasta, rice.

I mean, why eat rice if you don't have to?

Taters, bread, pasta, rice
As a child i had the first two almost every day, spaghetti occasionally and the first rice I had was at 18 at a dinner hosted by my A level English teacher for all the English A level students post exams. Also my first curry. My sister had, a few years before, got my mum to do rice but me and mum weren't having that muck on our plates

In those days rice was only used for rice pudding

Still is here (ground rice, hard to find now). Yum, with home made jam or stewed blackcurrants from the garden.

for sure , even peach slices or rhubarb. though nowadays we use it a lot , basmati , jasmine and risotto

Off-topic:

My son brought a waif home after school today, another boy in his year. I let the boy's mother he was here, then offered him a simple dinner of chicken and rice.

He is twelve.

It was the first time he had ever had rice.

I was flabbergasted.

I was 18 before I had rice

When I was a kid, every week my mum would cook some concoction with lentils in it.

As a result, I *never* cook with lentils...

As for rice: it is simple to cook, but easy to muck up. We do it the Turkish way: fry some orzo in butter before adding the rice and water.

I like lentils tbf, and split peas. Nice bit of pease pudding.
Mum was an extremely traditional English cook - and a little of thrift dishes as we weren't ever so well off. Leftover meals, bubble and squeak etc etc and plenty Yorkshires to fill you up with roasts. Suet pudding of savory and sweet kinds, proper Norfolk dumplings and simple sinkers too. Yum.
But baking was where my mums family all excelled and excel, my great grandma was in service to the local big families (Gurneys etc), a senior member of various kitchens and through her the female members of my clan all bake like its second nature. As do I now tbf

Off-topic:

My son brought a waif home after school today, another boy in his year. I let the boy's mother he was here, then offered him a simple dinner of chicken and rice.

He is twelve.

It was the first time he had ever had rice.

I was flabbergasted.

When I was about eight a friend's mother gave me a baked potato. I had no idea what it was or what to do with it. I thought it was a pear.

It is an important part of growing up – discovering that your friends' families do things ever so slightly differently from yours. They might have strawberry rather than raspberry jam with their rice, for example.

Sometimes different and wrong, though. I was served a pasta dish at a friend's house once where the bacon pieces had not had the rind cut off. Not the fat, the rind.

The rind is the best bit, surely?

Some idiots cut the rind off Stilton. There are monsters in the dark

Your homework is to keep rereading this bit of the post you're replying to until enlightenment hits you:

"Child A says, at least one of mine has no holes.

This rules in (at equal probability):
ggg, ggb, GBG, bgg, gbb, bgb, bbg

and rules out:
Bbb"

None of which changes the probability of reaching into the bag and selecting a good apple

This is clearly a bit like the classic probability question - the Monty Hall. Clearly some will think that as the apples were initially randomly chosen and you then randomly pick one it doesn't matter. But if course we know that some possibilities no longer exist. At least one of bag A is good (no holes) ruling out then all being bad. And similarly for bag B they are not all bad.
The phrasing is tricky, and apparently has been refined from the initial puzzle. Essentially by showing you an apple or just telling you about one you change the statistical distribution that remains.

Rentoul’s going for a big priced winner

Why I think Emily Thornberry will win

Keir Starmer would rather have Bridget Phillipson elected unopposed as deputy Labour leader, in order to avoid an election campaign that is bound to open divisions in the party.

But I think 80 Labour MPs will be prepared to have their names made public as nominating Emily Thornberry or Lucy Powell. Thornberry makes clear her intention to be a thorn in the prime minister’s side, mentioning welfare, Gaza, a wealth tax and special educational needs in her launch statement.

Powell is more loyalist in tone, but if she is up against Phillipson she will be driven to criticise the government too.

I have written today about why I don’t think Phillipson – or Alison McGovern, the other minister who is running – will win, despite being popular with party members. In the end, the members yearn for a more “left-wing” party and will vote for whichever candidate is most critical of what 64 per cent of them think is Starmer’s “wrong direction”.

Interesting but I make Emily a longer price than she is. It balances the ticket for left/right but skews it badly otherwise replacing North of England working class with North London posh. SKS + Thornberry would look too (insert insulting word of choice about North London progressives). Both lawyers too. A gift for Farage. And he doesn't need any.

I just find it hard to imagine Britain as a Republic.

Not even a banana republic?

Britain as a republic is not so hard to imagine. I agree it's hard to think of the United Kingdom as a republic.

One banana, two banana,
Three banana four,
four bananas make a bunch and
so do many more.

Loved the Banana Splits. Real part of my childhood.

Banana split in one of those Italian ice cream parlours by the seaside. There was a wonderful one in Dunbar, but I remember North Berwick and Portobello too.

Most seem to have gone.

Nardini’s in Largs still sell them. Go west, young man.