Christmas!

I feel like I've been running around like a lunatic for the last couple of weeks, Christmas this year has been a real pain to try and organize. As usual we went to the boyfriend's mum's for Christmas Eve and had an amazing dinner I didn't help prepare at all. Capon and roast vegetables, lots of cheese and a load of booze. I've never seen a capon before, and assumed it was just a big chicken, but it's actually a castrated rooster, and is apparently illegal to breed them (well you wouldn't be able to anyway, would you, wink wink) in the UK, but it is legal to sell them, so most capons come here from France, where they're a big deal for Christmas. Delicious, tastes just like chicken.
We finished the meal with the pudding I made a month ago. The boyfriend is really funny about his pudding, he threw some kind of a diva strop when he found out that I hadn't put any currants in it - he's the only person I know who actually looks forward to the pudding at Christmas. I was in the kitchen with his mum and she quietly suggested that maybe here was too much food already and we could save the pudding for New Year's, well, anyway, somehow he heard her from the other room and put a stop to that little plan. It was worth it, I'm really being sold on the pudding agenda, it was delicious.
The next night, on actual Xmas, I went to my parents house, and we had a ton of smoked salmon each, and then ate the other pudding in the living room, whilst watching this film.
Perfect xxx

Christmas pudding, candied peel, tangerine chocolate sorbet

I'm a bit of a deadbeat at the moment, the boyfriend and I have been eating a lot of sandwiches and leftovers instead of cooking something lovely. It's the first Christmas in the new place and rather pathetically I haven't really made much of an effort since we're spending the bulk of the holidays at our parents' and hey, read the side bar, I'm not a fricking millionaire! I just about dragged home a loser Christmas tree home this weekend but then realised that I don't have a big ole box of decorations anymore so ended up draping a bunch of my cheap tacky jewelery over it. Some of it glows in the dark. Here's my favorite little area
Also got a Hello Kitty advent calendar, which I've since abandoned because there were no pictures in the windows and the chocolate was horrible - that alone pretty much almost ruined my whole Christmas right there!
Anyway, I'm trying to get into it, watching a lot of cooking shows etc. and made Christmas puddings again. Last year I didn't know what the heck I was doing and consulted three different books, this year it was even worse. I missed stir up Sunday by about two weeks, it's fairly redundant to say that I was hungover, and for some reason I'd decided to rescue a few tangerines on the turn and make my own candied peel.
Candied peel is pretty straight forward to do, just boil up citrus peels in a sugar syrup, but of course I messed this up because I balked at the amount of sugar you're meant to use and as a result my little shreds of peel didn't crystallize - rats!
Anyway, I made the puddings, soaking the dried fruits (cherries, cranberries, dates and mango - shut up, yes, mango. I didn't have any currants) in whiskey for a week because I didn't have any Madeira. Also I didn't have any nutmeg or cloves so I dumped a load of orange blossom water in there. I'm not happy about any of this by the way, I know I didn't prepare properly and the results are bound to be questionable, there are no excuses. Only one word to describe it - deadbeat.
I'll conclude this account of a day in the life of a lazy loser with a simple sorbet form David Lebovitz. It's just sugar syrup, tangerine juice and chocolate. I had the wonderfully tangy, zesty leftover syrup from the candied peels, and leftover over ripe tangerines - perfectly economical.
Result: Believe it or not, the sorbet was too cold to eat in the winter. I let my portion melt and dipped biscuits in it. The taste is really great, like grown up chocolate orange, but not sure if I will go to the effort of making it again

Guacamole

I bought this book ages ago because I heard that there was an interesting recipe for vinegar in it, including how to make and cultivate a 'mother', which I wanted to try. But unfortunately there are 500 other pages of recipes in this book as well, each one using a bazillion different ingredients which are not native to this country and impossible to find. Well, we'll see about that when my general masochism reaches the next level, but for now lets make do with a nice simple guacamole.
There was some kind of buzz over the summer about some supermarket guacs having no avocado in them whatsoever, which is in equal measure pretty disgusting and quite incredible. How, I wondered, did they manage to compile a collection of chemicals to taste so authentic? The answer is that I apparently had no idea what guacamole is made out of. I mean I'm telling you, it's not just avocado and salt!
The lovely piggy molcajete is the traditional tool for making and serving the guac and I can see why, while it grinds the base ingredients very efficiently, they're not quite rendered into complete mush.
Result:
Lovely! At the risk of sounding redundant, mmmmm it's really fresh. Spicy but mild and cooling at the same time.

Vegan Lemon Meringue Pie

Moron, what's wrong with you, don't you know that lemon meringue pie is made almost exclusively out of eggs? How are you going to make that vegan, you must be some kind of a dumbass.
Well anyway, it's my dad's birthday and because the Orthodox season of fasting is upon us he's going vegan/pescetarian for the month of December. Fun! (I'm so glad I don't live there anymore).
So cast yer eye on this sorry collection of objects. What possible cohesive dish could be conjured up from the bunch or nonsense?
I'm using the austere pie crust recipe from Sugar Blues (with a few modifications), a war time lemon curd recipe with marrow substituted for eggs, and a really bizzare sounding mix of what I would call chemicals (but really aren't) for the meringue top.
The crust is easy and boring and goes in the oven for blind baking.
Then, as illustrated in this delightful cartoon from Marguerite Patten's 'We'll eat again' you take your marrow, skin and gut it (or 'peel and seed' if there are any children reading this), weigh the pieces and then casually weigh out the same amount of sugar! Um, no. Normally I would follow a recipe even if seemed wrong to me, just out of curiosity, but I am not the sugar baron and haven't got piles of it lying around in my yard. My marrow ended up being 500g and I measured out a scant 150g of sugar and that's your lot. I suppose if you were canning it to keep for the winter, you'd want more sugar to help preserve it. But I'm planning on eating mine.
You mash the steamed marrow add in the lemon and sugar, and cook for half an hour. If you close your eyes and hold your nose it's just like lemon curd. If you open your eyes, it looks like this and smells like cabbage soup. But nobody's really interested in the curd! It's the egg-free meringue that you really want to see.
I had to go to Planet Organic for the xanthan powder, which is a thickener, 8 times more potent than cornflour, and made from sugar.
And I had to drag my ass to Holland and Barrett for the soy protein isolate which is made into a drink for body builders and vegetarians to get more protein, I think. This is my favorite summation of it's many uses, gleaned from Wikipedia
"Soy protein is used for emulsification and texturizing. Specific applications include adhesives, asphalts, resins, cleaning materials, cosmetics, inks, pleather, paints, paper coatings, pesticides/ fungicides, plastics, polyesters and textile fibres."
Yum yum, I'm ready, lets go!
The recipe I used is from this blog, but if you're too lazy to click I'll write out the whole thing at the bottom of this post.
At first it really thew me that the measurements for the topping are in teaspoons, really, good luck trying to whisk two teaspoons of anything together. It's wierd and annoying. But then you gradually add in more and more ingredients end it thickens up and starts to approximate whipped eggs, it's pretty amazing (and also, your arm falls off from whisking for a solid 20 minutes - use an electric whisk)
Result:
Here's two things I learned whilst making this thing, the blow torch your friends gave you for your birthday won't work unless you fill it with lighter fluid first, and if you leave a pie under the grill for too long it will burst into flames and you'll have to start again from scratch.
Anyway, the second pie was pretty amazing. I swear to God, you can't tell the difference between this and the real thing. Visually, the topping is flatter and less solid than a meringue usually is but the taste and chewiness is identical. The curd has a slight whiff of the vegetable before you cover it up with with meringue and isn't quite as thick and glossy, but I would imagine, much better for you. Try it, really it doesn't take any longer than a real lemon meringue pie would.

Recipe for Vegan Lemon Meringue Pie

Pie crust (makes enough for two small sandwich tins)
2 tbsp semolina/ cornmeal
1 cup plain flour
1 tbsp icing sugar
2 tbsp sunflower/ rapeseed oil
water
Combine the dry ingredients and mix in the oil until well blended. Slowly add water until the mix forms into a firm dough. Set in the fridge for 30 minutes, then knead, roll out, line your pie dish and blind bake on a high heat for 20-30 mins. (until cooked)

Lemon curd (makes a lot, half a litre)
1 marrow, peeled, seeded and steamed. Around 500g
1 lemon, juiced and zested
150g caster sugar
1 tbsp vegan margarine
Mash the marrow and gently simmer for 30 minutes with sugar, lemon juice and zest, and margarine. If the mixture isn't thickening up as much as you want, add a little cornflour mixed with cold water. Taste and add more sugar, lemon juice if you'd like to.

Meringue topping (makes just enough for topping one pie)
Sugar mixture - 6 tbsp caster sugar, 1 tsp soy protein isolate powder, 1/2 tsp xanthan powder

4 tsp soy protein isolate powder
5 tbsp water
2 tsp cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla essence

Mix up the sugar mixture and set aside. In a large bowl whisk together the soy protein powder and water until thick and well blended. Add the vinegar and vanilla and whisk until it begins to thicken. Gradually whisk in the sugar mixture, one tablespoon at a time, until it thickens ups and becomes white.

Sardine and Tomato Risotto

We haven't had any fish for a while, and I was trying to prove some point to the boyfriend (honestly, we have so may fights every day I can't keep really keep track of everything) so I made Nigella's poached salmon again a few days ago. Last time I made it I had to throw the poaching liquid away because it was so oniony, but this time I used quite mild white onions - the fish didn't suffer and I recovered just over a pint of tasty tasty stock.
After all the bad things I said about Sophie Grigson I still find myself crawling back to this fish book, all the recipes I've tried so far work. Another thing I like is the very practical step of providing substitutes for different kinds of fish. Fish, after all, is a seasonal thing and so much depends on where you live or what DEFRA's got to say about it. So for example, this recipe is listed in the book as anchovy and tomato risotto, but anchovies are now on the endangered species list (according to the Marine Conservation Society) so even though I love them I'm trying not to eat them. The alternative listed in the book is sardines, and the other substitutions I'm making are tinned tomatoes for fresh, parsley parsley parsley for all the herbs listed in the recipe and fish stock for chicken stock (why chicken stock with sardines in the first place?).
Oh and clock the fancy vialone nano rice, at £5 a kilo it's the most expensive ingredient I'm using (and that's including the wine, ahem) and I'm lucky I saw some today in a deli near work otherwise I'd probably be using basmati rice... or alphabetti spaghetti or something!
Anyway, you just mill around the kitchen for half an hour or so, stirring and adding liquid. The sardines melt into the sauce and you add the tomatoes just before the end. Ta-da!
Result:
This is plate-lickingly good. There's no cheese in it, so you don't get that sightly rancid melted grease aftertaste. It's mildly salty, very savoury and the best bit is that there's lots of it!

Seasoning a molcajete

A friend of mine got a Kitchenaid mixer for her birthday or whatever a while ago and I got very jelly. It was so big and beautiful and all the TV chefs use one, and it does so much! I've seen attachments you can get for it, to turn it into a meat grinder, a juicer or even a pasta extruder! A fucking ice cream maker!!!! So cool, I couldn't sleep for a week. Anyway, I finally brought myself round to the fact that I can't afford one, and even if I got one I would never use it often enough to stop feeling guilty about the price. So the low tech options for me age going to be the whisk, the mouli, and some kind of grinder.
I've never been able to use a proper mortar and pestle, there's no grip and everything flies out of the bowl and rolls around on the floor like an asshole. I saw some buzz around Thai granite mortar and pestles which has a slightly rougher texture than say, marble, and is meant to be a little easier to use (interesting thing about it here). But for the longest time I've had my eve on a Mexican molcajete. It's a wide shallow bowl on little legs made out of volcanic rock and is essential for making guacamole and salsas. You have to have real volcanic rock, apparently some cheap ones are made with a mix of cement which chips off and gets in to your food (here is a shop that sells the good stuff in London). And really the lava rock chips and gets in your food as well, which is why you have to prepare, or season it before using.
Step 1 is to soak it overnight, this gets rid of the surface grit
Step 2 is to get a handful of rice and grind it into a fine powder. It will start off looking like this, and four fricking hours and bright red and throbbing hand later it will look like this.
Gray powder that's a mix of rice and ground stone. This step will have smoothed the surface down a little and will have ground away the looser particles.
Step 3 is to grind some aromatics - I'm doing peppercorns, garlic cloves, cumin seeds and olive oil, and then you leave the mixture to sit for a few hours or overnight. The point is for the oil to penetrate into the remaining pores and seal them to create a smooth surface but with a coarse texture - does that make sense?
These babies last forever and get passed long from mother to daughter and the flavours of everything you grind in it are imparted into the stone so each successive salsa will be tastier than the last - but it pretty much obligates you to only grind similar things. We'll see when I finally decide to make a pile load of guacamole.

Bitch ripped me off!

No, not really. Even I am not that vain and deluded. But dig this clip from a recent episode if Nigella Lawson's new show where she mentions the black supper scene from A Rebours and then makes a squid ink risotto!

Poulet aux olives

So I got way too much food for the my birthday party (oh and booze too, by the way. But I'm not complaining about that, don't change the subject), so now I have a big ass bowl of leftover olives. My first obvious thought was eeew gross, how many people have had their ratty mits in that bowl? But I found a recipe that suggests blanching the olives to get rid of some of the salt, but will also take care of all the toxoplasma and plague or whatever.
You see, now that I have to spend all my money on stupid things like rent and the electric bill I really can't brig myself to throw food away. Maybe that's how I picked up last week's stomach bug...
Anyway, I picked up this book a couple of years ago, it's kind of a collection of family recipes from Casablanca, North Africa was colonized by France so this is fusion cuisine here. The book is replete with romantic tales of going to the market to buy a live chicken, I mean seriously, believe it or not, they didn't have supermarkets! OK here we go.
You brown the chicken pieces, then stew for an hour or something like that with most of the other ingredients and then shove in the blanched olives 20 minutes before the end and wah-lah!
Result: Aline Benayoun writes that this is the chicken dish she always loved best growing up, and that's exactly what it tastes like - a stew that someone's mother used to make for them when they were little, and they really liked it, and the memory was formed. This is quite an inelegant pan full of random ingredients, every mouthful should have a bite of meaty chicken, a still salty olive and a bland potato to help everything blend in your mouth. It's nice. Smoky from the paprika, savory and sweet, but could do with some lemon. Also, two potatoes is just not enough. Meh.

Birthday loot

So I had a little party a couple of weekends ago, and it's taken me this long to recover - factor in a nasty stomach bug, decorators and the boyfriend's mum moving in for a week. Or maybe I'm making that up.
My friends have all been so generous, and of course they all know me so well that I got a buttload of kitchen stuff. Check it out
A couple of mugs (Mr Happy to counteract Mr Grumpy hahahahahahahahaha)
A really interesting cookbook full of quotes from Zola - more on that later
A set of cute mini quiche tins and a fricking blowtorch! I've wanted one for a while but never had a good enough excuse to get it for myself, but I now see a lot of individual lemon meringue pies in my future.
Funny ceramic pie bird - good excuse to get a nice deep pie dish
A cast iron tortilla pan and a molcajete, both of which need to be seasoned.
Also, a cookbook I borrowed from a girl at work so many times it wasn't even subtle that I wanted it. Bad.
A pretty wooden bowl. When we first moved in to the place and I was looking for nice salad bowl, I saw lots of nice wood ones I wanted and I couldn't afford any of them. This is very welcome (but apparently not welcome enough to photograph)
And a mouli grinder from the boyfriend's brother and his girl. They can't have known that we don't have a blender yet, but I really wanted one of these instead and I don't know if you noticed, but I always seem to get what I want.
And lets not forget the normal human sized fridge that my dad got to replace the tiny loser student one we had.
Thank you so much!
All in all, great birthday xoxo

Kartoshka Cake Pops

Yay! It's my birthday in a few days - this is definitely the year that I get that pony...
The boyfriend and I are having a little party and wanted to get a big ass cake to feed the mob we invited. There is a bakery near by our new flat so we casually sauntered in, all cool, like we knew what we were doing, and I told them what I wanted

Make custom Glitter Graphics



They told me that it was going to be both impossible and out of our price range - amateurs!
So I suppose I'll have to figure something else out.
Cupcakes are kind of old hat, and my new oven is too tiny to make them in significant amounts so I'm totally joining the newest new band wagon and going the cake pops route. A cake pop is a piece of cake, mushed together with icing, shaped into a ball and served on a lollypop stick. If that sound retarded that's because it is, but I'm going to use a Russian recipe for the best cake in the world, so should be fine.
I remember these little dumplings from when I was little, they're called Kartoshka, which means 'potato' because presumably calling a cake 'little shit' wasn't a very Communist thing to do. You basically bake a sponge cake, break it up into crumbs, mix in some condensed milk and cognac, form into 'potato' shapes (feel free to draw on 'sprouts' with whipped cream if you feel like it) and serve to little kids. If memory serves, three or four of these are meant to make you very drunk. I got the recipe from this book, good luck with that
I didn't take a picture of the cake because as soon as it came out of the oven and I put it on a wire rack to cool, the boyfriend came along and started cutting himself a slice in a very matter of fact way. Obviously I hit him over the head with the rock I always carry around, and then had to drag his lifeless body out of the door, down the stairs, across the road, and dump it in the canal behind the house. That took like 40 minutes, so by the time I came back and wiped all the blood off the floor, the cake was cool. I don't have a food processor yet so I used a cheese grater to crumble it. Here are the ingredients by the way
At this point you're meant to mix in some sweetened condensed milk, one cake should take about 3/4 of a tin. Or if you're feeling fancy you can cook it down into a dulce de leche, always very nice, or if you're in a really good mood you an use this amazing goat's milk dulce de leche. There are no words in the English language to describe how delicious this stuff is. It's sweet but also a little tangy from the goat's milk, and there is white wine in the ingredients list which adds a bit of sourness, this is probably the nicest thing I've ever put into my mouth. They boyfriend got it for me in a Mexican grocery store in Bethnal Green. I miss him so much...
You might also notice a bottle of genuine Armenian 5 star cognac in the background, trust me, that's the shit, those Frenchies don't really know what they're doing when it comes to alcohol. I ended up pouring in about a cup, trust me (again) that's the correct amount, if that seems like too much to you then get back to me when you grow a pair (I might also be interested in hearing from you when you grow a pear).
Form the mix into little balls and leave to firm up in the fridge overnight. This gives you enough time to call the police and confess, assure them that if he makes it he won't be pressing charges, visit him in the hospital and tell him that you hope he learned his lesson.
Result:
Here's the mugshot, OMG yummo. For the party I will dip them in melted chocolate and coat in sprinkles, but for now I'll enjoy them in the manner they were meant to be consumed - for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Sweet and Sour Pork

The boyfriend went to Spain for a long weekend to visit his mum - what a selfish bastard!
When you're living in a flat you can barely afford you kind of stop going out, and when your other half goes away for four days all your sources of entertainment vanish - you can't play drinking games on your own, I've tried, it doesn't work. I don't know how single people do it.
But the one good thing about being on my own is getting to indulge the cheesy, awful cravings that no one must ever know about. My local charity shop is always a good source of food porn.
I love Chinese food, it's my go to takeaway, and there's one thing that I always want and can't persuade anyone else to split with me. The sweet and sour, gross yuk yuk yuk, but I just can't resist that toxic looking sauce. I always thought there was a mystery to Chinese cooking, but look, come on this is just ketchup and vinegar! According to the book, this is an authentic dish - ahem, excuse me while I don't believe you, but whatever, check out these ingredients.
Pork, yeah ok. Pepper and onion, makes sense. Egg and cornflour for deep frying (which I hate doing, it's just so dangerous! And the fire blanket in my new kitchen is hung just out of reach near the ceiling, very exciting). Ketchup, is a totally bullshit ingredient, the boyfriend usually doesn't let me keep this stuff in the house (watch this, all about how mayonnaise is better than ketch on your chips). Rice wine vinegar, an entire fricking bag of sugar (!) and two jars of mystery vegetables - the recipe called for Chinese pickles, nice and vague.
Result: Yeah, my pancreas has been getting pretty snooty lately, what with all the insulin production, and trying to digest all my food like he runs the place. You gotta show em who's boss, so I like to threaten him with a bit of diabetes whenever I get the chance. He can take it, this didn't really have a whole bag of sugar, only 170g. And really that's only a teacup full, but you're not meant to eat the whole serving yourself, this is meant for 2 people, so it's more like 85g of sugar each. The recommended daily allowance is 90g so we're free and clear! (ketchup contains sugar... but... um.. shut up).
So, little jokes aside this was really way too sweet. It tasted just how you would expect, which was great, but I never want any ever again. I'm not a snob, and I don't really care about what goes in my food, as long as that food is totally delicious and not something that people would have to dare you to eat (this is what a boyfriend is for, people). This was nice, but I would probably not make it again. And I just can't get this reference out of my head

Pirojki

Yeah I got a place where I get this stuff. I shouldn't really talk about it, it's just something to take the edge off, you know?
Nah mate, that's not Charlie, just a bit of yeast.
Live yeast is pretty amazing stuff, I got this in a Russian shop within Wood Green shopping center and really it's the only place in London I've seen it for sale, out in the open at least. I'm sure you can probably stroll into a bakery and ask for some but that doesn't really guarantee anything. Most people who bake use dry yeast, which doesn't like me very much and almost always refuses to work.
Anyway, yes, I'm baking.
I finally decided to see if the oven at the new place works properly, and of course I had to do it in the most stressful way possible. I invited a couple of girls from work for dinner and planned to serve them a big bunch of Russian stuff, which pretty much meant I was shopping, cooking and cleaning all day on Saturday and Sunday - you know, woman's work. I switched on the oven to preheat it for a cake, and got a noseful of the most revolting burnt bleach smell, the landlady hadn't cleaned it properly, so gross. It took the boyfriend all afternoon to scrape it clean, and I ditched the cake idea and went out for a little stroll instead.
These are the ingredients for dough for little hand pies, pirojki in Russian. Usually when I make these I'll buy a pack of shortcrust pastry from the supermarket and a pack of puff pastry and squish them together, but now that I'm almost a real adult I guess it's time to learn how to make it from scratch. The packet on the right is of kefir, a cultured milk drink that's totally good for hangovers. The way to make it is of course pretty nasty, you have to get a special kind of mushroom and dump it in a pint of milk and the next day you get a slightly thick, tangy load of kefir. You fish out the mushroom, give it a rinse and pollute another pint of milk with it, the kefir is your to drink. I actually have a friend who has one and she keeps threatening to give me the offshoot, once you get it you're pretty much obligated to keep it alive with a fresh supply of milk every day. I'm thinking about it.
Anyway, the dough, I got this recipe from a blog and the woman who posts it recommends putting the bowl with the dough in a basn on warm water to rise - such a good idea. After two hours it goes from this
to this
You then roll it out into little circles, if like me you left your mother's beautiful marble rolling pin behind when you flew the family nest, then use an empty wine bottle (or a full one, if such a thing is to be found in your house) and fill them up. I made half with cabbage and half with beef and egg. Bake them in the oven for a bit, serve, and get a wrist fetishist to take the photo (yeah, that's a thing)
Result:
Well I tasted the dough before it was baked and it was pretty delicious, tangy almost meaty with a warm yeasty flavour. So I was a little disappointed that once baked it turned super dry, but stayed soft. I think I need to try again...

Coca Cola Jelly

Well I had a bottle of wine for dinner last night, and decided to make a jelly with my boyfriend's name on it for dinner tonight. Anybody got a problem with that?
But looks a bit butch, lets bedazzle it a bit, bitches love that shit.
Yeah girls!

Recipe here

Sauerkraut

Now that I have my own (almost) flat, it's time to start turning my kitchen into a science experiment. The boyfriend and I kind of have an unspoken understanding that I won't go into the box room/office and he won't go into the kitchen. I literally couldn't sleep last night thinking about all the smelly projects I'll finally be able to embark upon. So lets start with something easy, sauerkraut. This is my dad's recipe and the results are always amazing. All you do is shred a head of white cabbage and a couple of carrots, and then layer them in a clean jar, sprinkle each layer with a teaspoon of salt and kind of scrunch it down with your knuckles, try and compress it as much as possible. The salt and friction with tear the first layer of skin off of your knuckles, which is very cool if you're going to a party later. People will ask you what happened to your hand, and then you can slam your drink down and scream 'Stay away from my man, bitches!' and everyone will want to be friends with you.
Anyway, after the final layer you cover the top of the jar with an unshredded cabbage leaf and figure out a way to weigh the whole thing down somehow, next time I go to the beach I'll look out for a nice big rock. Now, I've seen recipes for this that require you to top the whole thing with water to make sure all of the cabbage is submerged, this is wrong, and the best way to make sure your sauerkraut rots instead of fermenting. If you've used enough force the cabbage should start reacting with the salt immediately and releasing enough liquid to cover it completely. Should look like this. At which point, try and stir in a big spoon of sugar
Leave it for at least a week on your counter, poke it around a bit every day to make sure a bit of oxygen gets to all the layers, and then eat or store in the fridge (if you have a fridge that's big enough to store a jar in. I currently don't).

Correction!

The friend referenced in this post has demanded credit! (or some horse shit like that) So please enjoy this video of some guy I went to school with (Jack Brotchie), and other beautiful boys, being asked slightly creepy questions by Peter Lorre. Look out for the one with the calm human face.
And after that, watch this totally awesome cooking video! I love you, internet. x

A new place to hang my hat

So here's what happened - for the first week in our flat we had no internet access. The my loaned us his wifi dongle, but for some reason it wouldn't let us into any hot and nasty adult sites, of which blogspot is apparently one. I lost the cable that connects my camera to my laptop in the move. I spilled water on my phone and it stopped taking pictures. I was really really busy at work after my 'holiday', and clearly the universe was conspiring to keep me from posting anything. My car broke down, we ran out of gas, there was an earthquake, a terrible flood, it wasn't my fault!
We got broadband finally today, and I used my stupid chicken brain to discover that I can just take the memory card out of the camera, I don't need a cable to get my pictures. I put my phone in a bag of rice for a couple of days and it dried up and totally works again, I'm pretty much back in business (but nobody reads this blog anyway, so it doesn't matter).
This is my new kitchen, it's actually in the contract that we're not allowed to change the colour of the walls, and check out the baby fridge, yikes!
and this is what I've been furnishing it with
Like a robbed a frickin' little kid's tea party! I'm sure all of this crap won't seem so cute in a couple of months, but this is the deliberate look I'm cultivating. Every time I come home with shopping bags the boyfriend rolls his eyes, moans and says 'Well, what fresh new fuckery is this?' and then I give him a little present
I'm also kind of into demented salt and pepper shakers at the moment. Nobody I know keeps these on their dining room table, they're not very fashionable and it's kind of a chore to fill them. I guess if you're cooking for yourself you'll just add salt and pepper in the kitchen, right? Well yes, that's why I got 4 of them
One's for salt, duh, one's for white pepper, one's for sumac (kind of sweet, lemony and peppery at the same time, I'm addicted to putting it on salads), and the last one for cayenne. I had a little daydream about having like 20 shakers lined up on the table filled with all different kinds of pepper, and I would, of course, always select just the right one for my meal. What a buffoon I'm turning into...