| I mentioned a couple of posts ago that i've been doing cookware 'parties' selling Jamie Oliver stuff. As well as the gorgeous cookware, they've got a lot of nice christmas goodies at pretty reasonable prices (for example really good quality wrapping paper for £4 a roll, cards that contain a little pot of Norwiegan Spruce seeds, crackers with proper little cooking and gardening related gifts, cute fuzzy brush animal christmas tree decorations, etc etc), and since we're only a couple of weeks away from the last order date i've been sent a PDF of the catalogue and order forms.
So if anyone fancies having a nosey, leave a (screened) comment with your email and i'll send it to you to have a look at. The order gets sent directly to you (postage is £5 or free if the order is over £100, at which point you also get a price discount) and you get a free magazine too.
It would be doing me a favour, and might get some of your shopping out the way without having to brave the shops! | comments: 9 Prods or Prod me   |
| I gave in and accepted an offer of a google wave invite, because it looks like it might be a useful thing to know how to use with regards to work.
Feel free to find me, address is my first initial dot my surname at gmail. I haven't quite figured out how it all works yet.
I also have 8 invitaions, but it looks like these are multiplying exponentially now so I doubt anyone needs one who can't get it elsewhere. Still, if you do ask. | | comments: 2 Prods or Prod me |
| So, where was I? Oh yes, pizza!
Dominoes being shut, we went instead to a local pizza place a couple of doors down that was extremely good value for money. We got a large selection of calzone, pizza and garlic bread (though their garlic bread was not nearly garlicky enough for my tastes) and munched our way through some of it back at the house but with plenty left over: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mrs_crater I hope you managed to give some of it a good home the next day!
Friday mostly involved being in cars. mrs_crater having departed for work, smescrater, sessifet25 and I headed first back to mine to pick up some stuff, and then onwards heading south. The plan was to drop sessifet25 in Birmingham to get the train to Cheltenham, following which smescrater and I would continue south to London, where I would drop him at the house of bytepilot and thalinoviel in time for him to head out and attend the London Jonathan Coulton gig. We managed to get the Birmingham ok, the journey going quickly with some very interesting conversation, though it took us slightly longer than intended to find somewhere to park near New Street Station, and there was quite a bit of 'that way! no, that way!' and at one point I believe we drove through a part of Birmingham that is only intended as a route for buses. But we made it in the end to a car park with a very stupid layout, and lots of spaces blocked by pipes on the wall. I found a non-pipe space but still managed to scrape the paintwork on the side of my car on a badly placed pillar. Argh. So i'll have to get that sorted at some point.
Once the car was deposited (mostly) safely, it was time for our next quest! A recommendation had been obtained for a good place to have lunch, so on the basis of google maps and some vague directions we wandered around the bull ring shopping centre for slightly too long before realising that we had to go back outside again. We eventually found the place, and realised that it was a few dozen yards from where we'd started out. Oops. Still, tasty food was obtained - the place was called Urban Pie and did a wide selection of Things Enclosed in Pastry. However most of them included meat and I didn't fancy either of the two veggie pie options, so I decided to just have some mash. This turned out to be an excellent decision, since I was served three huge scoops of perfect mashed potato, doused in liberal amounts of (vegetarian) onion gravy and topped with grated cheese and crispy onions. Mmmm. I managed to eat two of the scoops before giving up and donating the rest to the other two for tasting. It disappeared rather swiftly.
Happily fed, farewells were said to sessifet25, and smescrater and I departed for London. Now, here I should point out that this is normally a 2 hour or so journey. We left at just after 3pm. So you'll be surprised to hear that at 5.30pm we were still on the road, and in fact still on the M6. It turns out that the final junction of the M6 where it meets the M1 (and where we were meant to be exiting the motorway) was closed. I'm not sure why, I suspect an accident. So we had to reroute via Hinckley, following diversion signs. Yet another quest! Finally at about 6pm we made it onto the M1 and back into traffic that was actually moving faster than a crawl. Happily smescrater and I had gotten deep into conversation, covering many diverse topics, and so the length of the journey was actually barely noticeable. I'm glad I had such good company, a trip which might have been unbearable actually became extremely enjoyable.
Finally, at about 7pm, we reached north London. Several phonecalls has been made, and instead of dropping smescrater at the house it was decided that due to the delays it would make more sense for him to go directly to the gig. So I dropped him at Edgware station and then headed to my parents house where I got fed dinner, hurrah! I also got to meet a Romanian colleague of my parents who was staying with them for the weekend. I'm afraid she was rather tired having been traveling since 5am, and I was babbling somewhat having spent all day in rambling conversation, so i'm not sure what her impression of me was. But she seemed very nice and it was a pleasant evening.
The next day, after a fairly laid back morning with my parents, I pootled over to Edgware and the abode of bytepilot and thalinoviel, the latter of whom I hadn't previously met. In the last few weeks I seem to have been making a habit of meeting new people with whom I instantly feel comfortable and end up chatting for ages. It's nice, I am by no means complaining. So we had a nice few hours chilling and talking, and I was sat on by a cat. Then thalinoviel, smescrater and I headed out to the BBC Good Food Festival at Kensington Olympia, to which i'd been promised a couple of complimentary tickets because I was due to meet someone there to discuss doing a cooking demonstration at some point in Macclesfield. It was a huge event, with literally hundreds of stalls offering tasting samples of their wares. I hummed and hahed over the various alcoholic beverages being pressed on me (my car being parked back at the house) until I was kindly offered their futon to sleep on that night, which meant I didn't have to drive back until the next day. This turned out to be an excellent decision, not only because of the various drinks I tried (there was an absolutely gorgeous hazelnut liqueur) but for reasons that will become clear later in the post.
My purchases at the event: some '100% pain' hot sauce, a subscription to BBC Good Food magazine which came with a free pan, some dashi (japanese bonito stock) and sparkly purple edible glitter. I have no idea what I will do with the latter, but it was just so shiny I couldn't resist.
By the time our tastebuds and feet were exhausted, it was almost the end of the event. We successfully met up with the chap I was meeting, and sat at a table outside a Persian restaurant and drank some rather delicious Persian tea. Sort of lemony and sweet. The meeting went ok and some stuff was decided, and then it was back on to the tube to head onwards to the evening plans: Sushi!
We journeyed to Chalk Farm, where bytepilot was waiting for us at the Sushi restaurant, called Ikura. I've eaten a fair bit of Japanese food in my time, and even cook it occasionally. But it's been a good long while, if ever, that i've had such a wonderful meal as I did at this place. I heartily recommend it to anyone in the vicinity, or even who happens to be passing through. The decision was made to order sake, and I requested that we go for the cold sake, since in the past i've tried both warm and cold and generally preferred the latter. I've never had any quite as nice as that we were served that night though, in a beautiful blown glass jug with a cavity in the centre that held ice to keep it chilled. I was blown away by the first sip, and then shocked to learn that this was the *cheaper* option on the menu... blimey. So yes, I was quite happy to be staying over and not having to drive.
We ordered our food, and before it arrived were served an amuse bouche of tuna that seemed to have been marinated in some kind of spice mix, and cooked... i'm not sure how but it was meltingly tender and delicious. I then munched my way through most of a large pile of edamame as a starter, and ate more than my fair share of the marinated baked aubergine that thalinoviel had ordered. Then there was a selection of delicious sushi, including the most gorgeous tuna nigiri. Mmm. I also nabbed a bit of seared mackerel that was a revelation, and had delicious crispy salmon skin rolls. Having no particular dietary requirements, the boys asked the restaurant to 'bring whatever is good' and were thus served bounteous sushi... on a wooden ship platter! Finally, when pretty much all of the food had vanished, we were treated to a platter of sliced fruit. I unfortunately, having been nibbling samples at the food festival all afternoon, was pretty much defeated. But it looked lovely. And, I might add, all of this was for an extremely reasonable price, especially for London! Great food, great company, it was a wonderful evening.
And there I think I will have to leave it again, because I suspect I have been rambling on for far too long and nobody is going to read this far. I may write some more tomorrow about the Sunday, the journey back up including lunch stop, Doctor Who, and borrowing Twilight to read (just so I could make a considered statement, you understand.. and now I have read it, and I can, and have been quite vociferously for the past day or two). Or I might spare you all further blather. We'll see. | | comments: 9 Prods or Prod me |
| Ok, so it's not quite the 'tomorrow' that I promised, but looking back at my 'recent' entries it seems that i'm averaging about once a month lately so at least it's better than that!
It's been rather hectic round here lately. Where to start with the update?
Well, the business has been going really well and keeping me busy. I spent three days at the Tatton Park Food Festival (standing up smiling at people for 8 hours for 3 days is *tiring*) and handed out about 1500 leaflets. A few of those led to people emailing me about courses, so that was good. I've done a couple of other ones too including a full day course yesterday which seemed to go really well.
I also added another aspect to my business by signing up to a franchise organisation of cookware parties, selling products endorsed by Jamie Oliver. It's rather nice stuff that I don't mind bringing to show people* and talking about because I basically want it all myself. So since I joined up about a month ago i've been doing a few parties (for friends so far) and have booked to do some local christmas fairs.
This has all been very exciting and just starting to properly get going. So obviously this is the point at which I get two job interviews... one of which I didn't actually end up going to because I attended the first one and got offered the job on the same day! This was last Thursday. They pretty much wanted me to start immediately, but I asked for a week to get things sorted so I start on Monday. I try not to write things in here that are too specific with regards to work and personal matters, but it sounds very exciting and really interesting so I may tell you all a bit about it once i've started and settled in a little bit.
So yes, Thursday afternoon was the interview, and two hours later I had a phonecall to tell me they were offering me the position. So it was very fortuitous that I had previously made plans that evening to go and see Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm! sessifet25 had arrived at our house earlier while I was out (having had her own rather interesting day that she chronicled elsewhere) and the two of us set out to the house of smescrater and mrs_crater who had kindly offered to put us up for the evening, living nearer to the venue than we do.
Which reminds me that I also haven't written about the fireworks party that hobnobs and I attended at said house, which was lots of fun and involved FIRE! and geeky discussions and several people ducking nervously from fireworks that were possibly slightly too ambitious for the size of gardeny they were being lit in. hobnobs also liberally distributed perry from the 35 pint box which he purchased at the AFPCamp and opened a few days before the party. There's still a fair bit left too!
Anyway, the four of us trouped into Manchester to the gig, stood in a queueueue for a while getting slightly confused by all the giggling teenagers, until we realised there were two gigs at the same venue and one combined queue, and they were there for the other one. Mr Hanson or something like that? I have no idea. Eventually they let us in, but there was still quite a while before the gig started. So we wandered into the student bar for some beer and a hit of student nostalgia, and ended up getting distracted by conversation long enough that we missed the start of Paul and Storm. Oops.
We made it upstairs in time for the pirate song though (AAAAAHHRRR!) so that was ok. They were great and so was JoCo, I haven't laughed so much in a while. There was lots of audience interaction, mostly good, despite a few chaps standing at the back near us who I think unfortunately had gotten a little too enthusiastic with the beer and persisted in talking to eachother loudly over the songs and banter.
After the gig we were all rather hungry, so there was an expedition in search of Pizza! This was the first of several quests over the weekend, but I think I shall continue to write about that in another post tomorrow or sunday, since this post is getting quite long and it's getting quite late. I suspect that if I keep typing it's going to stray into the territory of being too long to bother reading to the end.
Until tomorrow!
*I am seriously impressed by the carving set for example, it's a properly sharp, Japanese steel, perfectly balanced knife! Plus a fork and steel! For a reasonable price! | | comments: Prod me |
| Had a very exciting week and a marvelous (long) weekend.
Will update tomorrow with details of Things That Go Whoosh and Bang, various business/job related things, Jonathan Coulton, meeting new Shiny people, foody things, spectacular sushi, and Doctor Who.
But now sleep is calling. | | comments: 2 Prods or Prod me |
| This week, I have mostly been ill.
Some unspecified lurgy, which is different to the normal lurgy that I occasionally get and can cope with (hacking cough, gunge, runny nose, etc etc). No, I had all the joys of feverishness and shivers, oversensitive skin, sore neck and general lack of go.
And, oh yes. Loss of appetite.
This makes me definitely know that I am ill.
On Tuesday night, just as I started getting Ill, sessifet25 came round and we cooked together. Luckily I was still mostly ok and ate the food more or less happily (though not as abundantly as I normally would have) and it was num. Sessifet brought her delicious 3 squash soup, and then we constructed a lasagne based on vague ideas of how to use stuff I had in my fridge, plus a few extras picked up en route. This was the result:
- A full colander worth of fresh spinach, wilted down in a frying pan with some butter and two cloves of sliced garlic
- Two salmon steaks, sliced thinly and cut into sections and lightly fried on both sides in the pan the spinach was done in, and set aside
- Half a small log (150g) of very nice goat's cheese, rind removed, cut into small cubes. Popped into the above frying pan with
- 3 good tablespoonfulls of creme fraiche, and reduced to a sauce.
- 4 sheets of fresh egg lasagne, layered in two small oven dishes with the above
It turned out *really* nicely. I mean, damn that was good. Very rich though, so I was only slightly suspicious that I was quite happily satisfied after eating only half the contents of one of the dishes. I hear the other dish got a good home. Then we had pancakes with chocolate sauce and a bit more creme fraiche for pudding. Yum.
Anyway, so the next day I struggled out of bed for an appointment at 10am, and straight after said appointment returned to bed feeling quite sorry for myself, canceling all other appointments for the day. I took receipt of a mercy delivery of lucozade (thank you muchly those concerned!), which was all I consumed until about 8pm. I felt a little bit better in the evening, and managed to put a 'snack size' pizza from the freezer in the oven. I struggled to finish it.
Roll on Thursday. And here's where I started getting creative with things in the fridge that needed using up. 'lunch' was half of a half portion of porridge. I decided in the evening that I really should try and have some dinner. I had some leftover rice that I didn't trust keeping another day, so using all my available Go I put the rice in a baking dish, put some tinned tomatoes on top, put some spinach leaves on top and put a (frozen but previously bought from the butcher) minty lamb burger on top. 45 minutes later it was hot and the lamb was mostly cooked so I broke it up with a spoon and smooshed it all around to be mixed in evenly. Then I put it back in the oven for another 15 minutes, and after that tentatively dished myself up a quarter of what i'd made. It was absolutely delicious! And you know what? I struggled to finish that quarter portion...
So onto today. For lunch I had a bit more of the ricey tomatoey lamby thing, but still had to throw some away (being leftovers to start with it wouldn't really withstand another reheating). And then this evening for dinner another experiment. I had a small squash that i'd roasted half of a few nights ago in expectation of doing *something* with. So I took one of the leftover lasagne sheets, cut it into strips, boiled it then added it with a bit of the resulting water to some smooshed up squash and a dab of butter with some seasoning. Again, amazingly delicious! And yet again, I couldn't finish the meagre portion i'd allotted myself...
So, the moral of the story? I seem to be very good at creating yummy food which requires almost no preparation out of leftover bits and bobs. But when i'm unwell and have no appetite that fact is almost depressing because I don't eat the results! Ah well. Hopefully i'll be better soon. At least my waistline might be appreciating it!
At some point I might do a catch up post, not involving cooking. But to sum up: Doing Business stuff. Going well. Doing job applications. Going slowly. Doing fun stuff, intermittently. Doing some Jewish festivals, overeating involved! | | comments: 2 Prods or Prod me |
| So, the bank holiday weekend. We came, (to possibly-Wales*) we drank, we took over the pub. Well, not quite. But the lovely woman who ran the bar and campsite was a little overwhelmed by numbers, and had several staff not show up, so being AFP we offered to help out and ended up with several of our members gleefully running the barbecue, bar, and doing front of house service for the buffet. I'd worry that people ended up working at the event I helped organise, but they all seemed to enjoy it so much.
There was some rain, but also some sunshine, and overall it seems that everyone had a lovely time. I certainly did! Roll on two years time. Though before that there's a certain convention to attend...
Otherwise things have been fairly busy here. I'm continuing to promote Cook Clever**, and have been to several networking events and suchlike. Unfortunately I also managed to drive into the back of someone who slammed their brakes on too quickly, and wrote off my poor little micra. Yes, I was fine, other than a bruised inner lip (where the airbag hit my chin) and minor whiplash that lasted a day or two. They're going to give me a decent amount of money for it considering the age of the car, but now I have the hassle of finding a new car, and deciding whether I want to stick with a micra or try something new. Ho hum. Luckily i've also got a hire car for the moment, which let me get to Hay.
I have also been looking for a 'day job' to pay the bills while the business gets going. I had an interview last week for a job similar to the one i'd just left, but they didn't think i'd 'fit with the team'. I'm not too offended, seeing as I got a similar vibe from the interview and probably wouldn't have been happy there. Another interview this afternoon for something Totally Different. I'll give more details later, probably, depending on outcome.
*Apparently the border shifts every so often and Hay-on-Wye ends up randomly on either side of it.
**Follow @cookclever on twitter for cooking hints and tips! | | comments: 2 Prods or Prod me |
| So, i'm officially launching my new business, and so you lot all get to know about it!
I am proud to introduce Cook Clever, at http://www.cookclever.co.uk
I'll be giving courses in 'kitchen management' and cooking skills - how to make tasty, healthy, simple meals out of low cost ingredients, and a technique to teach people how to make up their own meals based on the ingredients they have in the cupboard or fridge.
It'll include things like using leftovers to avoid throwing food away, and what kind of things you should keep in your cupboards to ensure you always have options of what to make.
I'll be going to people's houses to give the courses, so at the moment it will only be local to where I am (the North West). However i'm willing to travel a bit further for folks I know, so if you're somewhere else and interested in the course let me know and i'll see if we can arrange something. UK only though i'm afraid ;)
Also, since i've only been going a short while and am still looking for feedback on the courses, anyone who is willing to be a customer in the next 2 weeks will get a severely discounted rate (or even possibly free if you're local).
Wish me luck! | | comments: 15 Prods or Prod me |
| Currently I have two sponge cakes in the oven, to be theoretically assembled into a victoria sponge. This is cause for trepidation. Despite the fact I bake fairly often (there are still some chocolate beetroot cupcakes left, despite best efforts to scoff them all) I have never yet successfully made a sponge. I don't know what it is, but they seem to be my downfall - they always end up flat as pancakes or dense as bricks or both.
It's been a while since my last attempt though, and a lot more baking experience, and I did everything by the book (trying to keep lots of air in the batter) so we shall see what happens. It will be good if I can get the hang of it because they make excellent birthday cakes, and hobnobs is very fond of victoria sandwich cake.
Otherwise it's been fairly quiet here. Work is progressing on the Secret Business Project, which will be less secret very shortly. The website is now live but i'm not going to point people at it until i'm all ready to go. Yes, i'm being slightly superstitious/paranoid but I feel better about doing things all in the right order and not starting the 'marketing campaign' until everything else is set! Actually I was hoping to be all done by this week, and i'm nearly there, just waiting on a couple of trial runs of the material. You'll be the first to know when it's there ;) | | comments: 3 Prods or Prod me |
| It would be helpful if Livejournal told you when other people add you as a friend. Just realised that someone I met ages ago friended me and I didn't notice. I would have added them back immediately if I had. Oops.
Having said that, I won't automatically add people who friend me - I only add people whose posts I think are interesting (either for good or bad reasons) and that has no bearing on whether I like the person or not. So please don't feel offended if I don't 'friend' you back, it doesn't mean I don't like you. And you are perfectly welcome to keep reading my waffle, or to stop reading it even if I read yours. Etc etc. I don't use friend's locked posts for this reason (among others).
Had a fun weekend camping with ex-housemates and other assorted folks. Was a 6 hour drive to get down there, but definately worth it. There were tents and fire and marshmallows and pub grub and sunshine. I saw several people that I haven't met in person for far too long, and met several nice new fun people too. It made me realise that I need to find some local geeks - the atmosphere sitting around with intelligent people whose conversation can meander from lego to religion to comics to biology to film casting to 'unusual celebrities to find attractive' and onwards is something I miss having on a regular basis. There are a few folks within easy driving distance, but surely there must be some geeks in macclesfield? That I can call up on a sunday afternoon and say 'fancy meeting up for cake?'. Or who do fun things like brickwars. Or whatever.
The drive back was fine, with a quick stop on the way at my parents for dinner, and the motorways were all clear. I would have arrived back about midnight, except that about 10 miles from home one of my tyres split, and I had a lovely 'kerchunk kerchunk kerchunk' noise and left a black smudge on the road. Called out the AA and got sorted, but didn't get home until after 1am and now I need to pay for a new spare tyre. Oh, joy. | | comments: 17 Prods or Prod me |
| It's probably less time since I last updated than I usually leave between posts. But it feels like a very long time, since a lot has been going on.
Those of you who view my updates on facobook or twitter may be aware that a couple of weeks ago my company let me know that I was being made redundant. I didn't want to go into any detail or post on here until it was all officially signed and sealed, but that happened on Wednesday so now i'm posting!
I'm fairly upbeat and positive about it. For a while I hadn't been completely satisfied with my job, and had been considering looking for something else so this was a kickstart in that direction. I have also been doing lots of research and legwork into starting my own part time small business, so this has given me some more time to really get that up and running. I'm hoping to officially start trading in a couple of weeks, at which point you will not be able to escape pimping on here! For the moment though, i'm doing things like getting a website sorted, speaking to accountants and bank managers, and attending a business start up course at the local chamber of commerce.
I'm also looking for a new job, obviously, but probably not in the same area as I was previously working. I liked the actual nature of the job (event management and project management) but wasn't convinced the pharmaceutical industry and agency work specifically was really me.
Other things i've been up to include a trip to the Taste of Birmingham food and drink festival, at which I tried lots of tasty things including carpaccio of tuna with summer fruits, tofu penang curry, and trout cheesecake. It was a lovely day, with good company too. I was very good and didn't spend any money above that already accounted for in the ticket price, which included £15 worth of vouchers to be spent at the event. I came away with a bag of porridge related freebies, two bottles of alcoholic ginger beer (which does not taste alcoholic at all, just like very very good quality ginger beer) a purple kohl rabi, a box of dark chocolate florentines and a box of stilton cheese straws (both made by Fudges). Oh, I just remembered I did spend some money above the ticket, but that was on a bottle of St Germain Elderflower liqueur which i'd decided before going that i'd purchase if I saw. Delicious stuff.
And why the blood? Well, today I donated blood for the first time. No problems at all, but my arm now feels slightly odd where the plaster is. I suspect i'll have a lovely bruise there. I think i'll be giving fencing a miss tonight, especially since they had to take it from my right arm (couldn't find a vein on the left arm) | | comments: 4 Prods or Prod me |
| Our kitchen is finished, whoohoo!
Every time I walk past it/go in I am still going 'eee!'. This might last a while yet.
Pictures can be seen here
We now have about twice the cupboard space we had before, plus a cool pull out spice rack thing (which we need to get an extra drawer for, since it doesn't fit all my spices, let alone the ones in the spinny spice rack or any more I might get). Lights have been fitted under the cupboards to shine directly on the cooking area - i'll be able to properly see what i'm chopping! There's also a whole extra side of work surface, and the corners have cupboards with double doors that open outwards so you can get right to the back!
Ok, I know i'm getting far more excited than most people would about kitchen cupboards, but it's fab to be able to fit all my stuff in and still have free space! It's going to take a little while to get used to where everything is now though.
Beyond that it's been a bit of an odd week really. On Friday I went out for dinner with some friends and had a lovely evening. The weekend was mostly spent taking everything out of the kitchen in preparation for the builders coming in. Monday/Tuesday I ended up with a last minute trip to Paris for a funeral. I've got the week off work, so Wednesday and Thursday were spent sorting lots of things that have been being put off because I don't generally have time. And yesterday I went to see sessifet25 and we had a picnic for her birthday. On the way home I got stuck in the M60 nightmare traffic (due to a big accident) and it took me three times longer to get home than it should have done.
This afternoon I am planning on mostly watching tennis. | | comments: 4 Prods or Prod me |
| Ok, so at some point soon i'm going to need some help designing some website content, for a Project. I'd like it to look fairly snazzy and professional, and i'm willing to pay (a reasonable amount!). I already have the domain and simple hosting paid for.
I know at least three people on my friends list do freelance web design (and one that runs a company that does it, I think?).
If you think you might be able to help me out, please leave a comment with what your your rates would be, and preferably a couple of examples of sites you've designed. I've locked comments, and i'll leave them locked unless you request otherwise.
Ta muchly! | | comments: Prod me |
| Come one, come all to the 2010 Discworld Convention, which I seem to have volunteered to be involved with ;)
http://www.dwcon.org
It's in Birmingham, over the August Bank Holiday next year, and will be masses of fun. The website has been up for just over a week, and already over 300 memberships have been bought, so sign up and come along!
Slightly smaller and more informal (and a whole lot sooner) is the afp camping event. http://community.livejournal.com/dw_augbh_2009/ If you have any connection to afp at all, you're welcome along, so come and put your name down. A new poll has just gone up about meals and stuff. | | comments: Prod me |
| Yay summertime! It's been lovely weather recently and i've been trying to take advantage of it. Lots of sitting in the garden, either ours or one belonging to a nice pub (usually the Vale). I hope it lasts.
During May our town had a 'festival' that they hold every four years, with lots of events on including concerts, lectures, stand up comedy and an open-house art trail. And lots of other things too. I did a few bits and bobs, though not as much as perhaps I would have liked, since I was either busy or it was wet and I didn't fancy going out. I did go for a really nice walk around the town boundary with the Ramblers Association (though I think they've just rebranded and are now 'The Ramblers') and i'm definately thinking of joining up. I like walking and we live in such a beautiful area it would be a nice to get to see more bits of it. Also a nice way to get to know people!
Speaking of getting to know people, I went to a 'tweet up' the other week, which is a get together of people who use twitter. It was good fun, I met some very friendly sort-of-local people, and I had free dim sum. Yummy. It was at Sweet Mandarin restaurant in Manchester who deserve the mention for being very friendly and generous, and also doing rather yummy grub.
I have also been busy doing some organisey things, which I will give a separate 'plug' post to, just so you can't avoid it :) | | comments: Prod me |
| Yup, it's nearly that time of year again, i've been sent an email with some ticket offers for the Taste of Birmingham festival on 10-12 July
http://taste.visitbirmingham.com/
There are two main offers, and it looks like it's a choice between the following (i've assumed people want £15 of crowns that are included in some of the tickets, and added them onto the others accordingly - it's about the right amount i've found in the past, since the dishes are priced between £1-£4)
£20 - ticket and £15 of crowns (multiples of 2 people only)
£23 - ticket, £15 of crowns, entrance to the VIP covered seating area and a free glass of champagne
So, who's interested in coming, would saturday or sunday be preferable, and which type of ticket would be preferred? | | comments: 2 Prods or Prod me |
| I see that it is a month since I last updated, and three months since any actual content on me, rather than 'wot i've been cooking' or 'here's something interesting'. Most remiss.
There has been lots of stuff happening, but i'm sure I won't remember it all so i'm not even going to try. I will randomly mention some things that stick out, in no apparent order.
Weekend just gone I was down in London, for a wedding. It was really lovely, the weather was beautiful, and magslhalliday looked lovely in the absolutely gorgeous outfit made by lordshiva. )I must remember to check those usernames to make sure they're right.) The groom scrubbed up well too ;) I saw several people at the reception that I don't see often enough, and it was Fun.
I should also mention the hen night that was a month or so before (see? no order) which happened to be held on my birthday. There was a trip to Cornwall, and a stay at this place which was fantastic and highly recommeneded. There may also have been dressing up in Dr Who themed costumes. Thanks for birthday wishes received by the way, being away was the reason I didn't reply individually.
Tomorrow I am off again, flying to Israel for another wedding, family this time. I decided to go at the very last minute, so i'm not really in the 'going abroad' mode yet. Oh well. It should be fun. I will also get to meet up with a friend I haven't seen in about 10 years! Which will be very nice.
You may wonder if twitter is the reason for lack of posts. But you're probably not, since if you've been paying attention you'll note that I don't post much anyway, and I haven't really been posting much to twitter. When I have, it's been things that I wouldn't have bothered making a post about, mostly either replies to people or 'wot I've been cooking'. So there you go. I did make homemade crumpets, which turned out excellently, so that's something interesting. And there you go, i've told you lot too ;)
Generally though i've been enjoying the lighter evenings, trying to get some exercise in (oh yes, I went fencing properly for the first time in a few years! I'm going to try and make it a regular thing, though the weddings business has meant I haven't been able to go back yet or won't until next week) and watching various things on tv including The Wire (very good but slow to start), Lost (brilliantly engaging fluff) and Dr Who (would be disappointing if I expected anything beyond mediocrity these days) but not Ashes to Ashes (might have a look on iplayer later if I can be arsed).
What a lot of parentheses. Now I shall go and make fish pie. See you in a few months, probably! | | comments: 6 Prods or Prod me |
| Last night I wasn't really sure what I wanted to eat, but I knew that a) I wanted something more interesting than my usual standbys and b) It was pissing it down with rain and so I didn't want to go out to the shops.
After wandering vaguely round the kitchen for a bit, I remembered that I had a packet of ras el hanout spice mix that I had yet to do anything with. This is a spice blend which i'd seen mentioned on one of the various food blogs I read, and so when I saw that sainsburys now sell it in little foil packages (I can't recall the name of the company that makes it) I had to grab some. It's gorgeous stuff, spicy and warm with hints of cinnamon and cumin and lavender, and dried rose petals in with the mix. Apparently the name means 'top of the shop' and it's supposed to be the means by which a moroccan spice shop would impress you with the best of all thier produce.
So what to do with this now that I fancied using it? I hadn't had rice for a while, so I went with that as a starting point. A lot of recipes online involve lamb, but I don't have any in at the moment and certainly not defrosted. I definately want to try it rubbed over a slow roasted lamb joint at some point though. The next option would be fish, I think it would work brilliantly with salmon, but none of that either and the rain was making a hell of a noise. So I rummaged in the cupboard and decided that chick peas are in vaguely the right direction for the type of cuisine the spice is normally used with.
A little more rummaging in the fridge came up with some nice sweet organic carrots, half an aubergine, and some slightly sad looking bok choi. Right then. I chopped up the carrots and aubergine, dosed them liberally with olive oil and put them in the oven to roast. After ignoring them for a while, I put the rice on to boil with a generous tablespoon of the spice mix. In hindsight, I probably overdid it a bit with the rice, more of that later.
When the rice was cooked, all fragrant and tinged slightly brown by the spices, I added the chick peas from the tin, and gave it a few minutes to warm through. Then I threw in the bok choi, letting it wilt in the heat of the rice. Finally I added the roasted vegetables, stirring it all through.
The result was a qualified success. The spices were as delicious as they'd smelled, enfusing the whole dish. I was surprised by how much heat there was in the mix, it was actually fairly spicy, probably a fair bit of cayenne in there. But something was missing, there was nothing to contrast with the fairly uniform flavour. I mused that perhaps some yoghurt might hit the spot, except that I didn't have any. Didn't stop me eating a fair bit of it though.
So, about those quantities. Yeah, I often make too much. This time I ate my fill, and had a whole large bowlful remaining, which duly went in the fridge for today. But then this evening, walking home, I had an inspiration.
I grabbed the pointed leaf cabbage lurking in the bottom of the fridge, freed up all the leaves and blanched them in some boiling water until they were soft and pliable. Then I put a tablespoon of the rice mixture in each one, rolling it up into a little parcel and put it in a baking dish. When i'd used up all of the cabbage (it was a small one, but there were about 10-12 leaves) I topped them all with a packet of chopped tomatoes, seasoned with some salt and pepper. This went in the oven for about an hour, hour and a half.
Now *that* is what I was looking for. The addition of cabbage and the tomato sauce took it into the realms of the sublime, without compromising any of the subtlety of the spices. And what with the chick peas and all the veg, it's a pretty healthy meal. That's definately one for the book.
Oh, and there's still half a bowl of the rice mixture in the fridge, and a fair few stuffed leaves.... | | comments: 4 Prods or Prod me |
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