Last night we put some dried beans to soak, so they could go in a soup today. The main part of the soup was made by boiling some veg (potato, carrot, onion, garlic, butternut squash, herbs) in chicken stock. When the veg had gone soft, everything was put in a liquidiser.

I started cooking the beans by boiling them for 10 or so minutes in water. They then needed an hour or so of slow simmering so I decided it would be easier to do that in the soup rather than in another pan of water. Unfortunately our pans didn't seem to be up to the job. They aren't cheap rubbish pans - they are stainless steel with copper bottoms, so the heat should distribute evenly and prevent localised burning. The trouble is the pans aren't non stick. The beans would sink to the bottom of the soup mixture and just sit there, eventually sticking to the bottom of the pan. I needed to get up and stir every few minutes to stop everything from sticking and burning.

Next time I think I'll simmer the beans in water or stock, rather than a thick soup. Or cheat and open a tin of mixed beans instead.

It may come as a bit of a surprise but I'd never seen this film before. We taped it when it was on TV a few weeks ago and finally got around to watching it today. I tried to watch it once before, many years ago. I rented it from a video library and started watching it. I found the opening few minutes to be excruciatingly boring and decided that I would rather be outside on such a sunny day instead. The video went back to the shop unwatched.

Since today was cold and wintry, I had no such distractions. I still found the start to be very slow and boring. The rest of the film was more like a second rate kids fantasy film, rather than a sequel to the first two films. The alien costumes looked more like something from a low budget TV series. The acting was very poor as were most of the special effects. One the whole I found the film to be very disappointing.