Persona Synthetics — Attention! Product Recall

Humans, a joint production by Channel 4 (UK) and AMC, was an enjoyable eight-part series that ran during the summer of 2015.  It was well-received in the States, and a huge hit in the UK.

The marketing for the show is flat-out brilliant, as can be seen in the ad above, which captures the calm, reassuring, public tone of a corporation on the brink of disaster.

The second series will run in the UK later this year, and in the US sometime in 2017.  The UK version is the one to watch; although the American release of the show’s CDs includes the full British episodes, AMC’s televised version deleted some interesting material.

Here’s one of the ads for the first season:

2016 Cookery Project — Autumn Roasted Veggies with Apples and Pecans

Autumn Roasted Veggies with Apples and Pecans

Once again, I turned to Cooking Classy for a recipe, and was sold by the photography on the site.  I followed the instructions, and the results were quite good, but I made a lot of notes on changes I’ll make if when I cook this dish again.  The recipe, for instance, “serves four,” but resulted in enough food to serve eight.  Or 10.

The vegetables were brussels sprouts, red onion, and butternut squash*.  I’d never worked with butternut squash before, even though I’ve become addicted to  butternut squash soup lately, and I was surprised how difficult it was to cut and peel.  To this, I added two sliced apples: One Honey Crisp (sweet) and one Granny Smith (tart).  I spread the ingredients in a single layer on a baking sheet, and topped it all with melted  butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon juice.  I baked it for 40 minutes—I’ll reduce the time to 30 minutes when I make it again—tossing it once and adding pecans and  dried cranberries a few minutes before I took it out of the oven.

A happy result.  With that combination of colours—orange, green, brown, red—it looks like Autumn, doesn’t it?

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*Isn’t butternut squash a fruit, rather than a vegetable?  I’m too lazy to look it up, but I think the seeds-inside = fruit law puts it in the same category as tomatoes and cherries.