"They’ve Closed Everything Real Down…"

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If there are any confused readers stumbling about, scratching their heads befuddledly and looking for recipes, this is my own personal catharsis post. Scroll down for normal food rambling…but if you have a heart, keep reading.

By the time you read this, Rent will have played its very final show on Broadway. I am in a strange position to comment on this, as in a way, having never been to New York, I’m mourning the loss of something I’ve never had, and now never will have. Before you make a hasty exit because I’m wallowing in mawkishness – well, maybe I am – please watch “Seasons of Love”, taken from the tenth anniversary in 2006, where the entire original Broadway cast reunited for a one-off performance. This song is the heart of Rent, and it’s incidentally the song that people who hate Rent seem to like, so everybody wins… It is also one of the most beautiful things ever written. The sound and visuals aren’t the best but the message comes through, and what a message: measure your life in love.

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I first came to know Rent through the DVD of the film adaptation. It is particularly special in that six of the eight original Broadway cast reprise their roles for it and it caught my eye because of Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs, who originated roles in another favourite musical of mine, The Wild Party. As soon as I heard those harmonies in “Seasons of Love”…and the driving sound of the drums at the start of the title song…I knew it would change my life. Sounds overwrought, I know. Even while I was watching it my mind was trying to come to grips with whether it was monstrously cheesy or utterly, heartbreakingly brilliant. Funnily enough, the pendulum swung towards the latter. And so I am forever thankful that this film exists. In spite of its debatable flaws – not enough Taye, the most haunting part of “Goodbye Love” cut, no New Year sequence and surely I can’t be the only one with an entire screenplay of “Christmas Bells” in my head – it is a gift in particular to people outside America who have had no chance to see it at the Nederlander theatre in New York. And there is no real way of explaining what it’s like to see Idina sing “Over The Moon,” in all its wide-eyed, ferocious, doofy glory for the first time.

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You don’t need me to give you a full-on history of Rent. If you’ve already decided that you hate it then you won’t want to know, if you are vaguely intrigued then you’ll hit wikipedia and if you’re anything like me you know it all already. So rather than tell you about it, I’ll let Rent speak for itself. Some of the most intriguing, clever…stick-in-your-brain, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that lyrics I’ve ever heard come from this musical. And, frankly, a few of the clunkiest (although I love that the character of Benny gets to rhyme “seductive” with “counterproductive.”) Here is but a bare smattering of phrases, snatches of sentences, reasons why Rent sticks with me like a lump in my throat.

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“How can you connect in an age where strangers, landlords, lovers, your own bloodcells betray?”

“Christmas bells are ringing, somewhere else – not here”

“No day but today”

“Will I lose my dignity?”

“Live in my house, I’ll be your shelter…be my lover, I’ll cover you”

“Follow the man, follow the man, with his pockets full of the jam”

“Once you donate you can go celebrate in Tuckahoe”

“The only way out is up…a leap of faith”

“This is Calcutta – Bohemia is dead.”

“To fruits, to no absolutes to Absolut, to choice, to the Village Voice”

“To being an us for once, instead of a them – la vie boheme”

“Hey mister, she’s my sister”

“German wine, turpentine, Gurtrude Stein, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Kurosawa – Carmina Burana!”

“And Roger will attempt to write a bittersweet evocative song…that doesn’t remind us of Musetta’s Waltz.”

“Life’s too short babe, time is flying, I’m looking for baggage that goes with mine…”

“To people living with living with living with not dying from disease”

“The opposite of war isn’t peace…it’s creation.”

“Take me for what I am”

“Without you, the ground thaws, the rain falls, the grass grows…”

“Marky, sell us your soul! Just kidding!”

“That’s poetic…that’s pathetic.”

“Just came to say, goodbye love…hello disease”

“I don’t own emotion, I rent…”

“We’ll somehow get to Santa Fe, but you’d miss New York before you could unpack”

“There’s only us, there’s only this, forget regret, or life is yours to miss, no other road, no other way, no day but today.“

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Jonathan Larson, the creator and writer of Rent, died of an aortic aneurysm the night before the show’s first off-Broadway preview. He would never see it win Tony awards, the Pulitzer prize, Drama Desks…he would never see his original cast flourish in their further careers, never see his show become the 7th longest running Broadway musical, never have a hand in creating the film adaptation. And he would never be able to write such lyrics as those that I reproduced above. Which makes so much of Rent all the more heart-wrenching to absorb. When AIDS-afflicted Roger sings of his desire to write “one song, before I go,” when Mimi says “you don’t want baggage without lifetime guarantees,” it becomes so much more than mere storyline. Of all the lyrics, “no day but today” I think is particularly brilliant – a consise improvement on that old cliche, “live every day like it’s your last.”

Sharp-eyed readers will know of course that this very blog takes its name from the title song from Rent. “We’re hungry and frozen, some life that we’ve chosen…” Rent is unfinished, raw, imperfect…perfect.

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I’m going to wrap up here otherwise I’ll ramble on ad infinitum. Okay, I’ve never actually been to the Nederlander to see Rent. But put yourself in my position: I’m from New Zealand. I’m never ever going to be able to see it. I’ll never get to have a photo of myself beside that famous wall. I’ll never be able to try for the cheap seat lottery. I guess I just thought it would wait for me forever… And despite not being a part of the generation of Rentheads from the mid-nineties – well how could I have been – my love for this show is so fierce that I just had to write something, and be it self-indulgent or incoherent, its my version of closure.

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I felt more empty today than anything else, especially when, sometime this afternoon I realised that the show would be winding up in New York. And then I saw this video of the final curtain call, and…the floodgates opened. I embraced my inner Mary Anne Spier and wept. The look on Tracie’s face, Gwen’s final high note, Anthony’s claps up to Jonathan, Wilson and Jesse standing together, Eden singing her heart out…I kid you not, it really made me cry. If you’re not a fan it probably won’t mean so much to you, but if you are, tread softly and carry a big hanky.

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Thank you, Jonathan Larson.

"People Pick Up On What I’m Putting Down"

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I apologise for being an entirely neglectful blogger, but there’s two reasons why this particular post has been late-coming. Firstly after amassing 36 comments for my tiramisu, I refused to believe that my subsequent post could peak at only 12 comments. But there you have it, and now I have to face up to reality and move on. With the dizzying highs come the plummeting lows, and I remember when I used to be excited beyond belief if someone not in my gene pool commented. Ah, Tastespotting and Foodgawker, how you toy with my self-esteem. The other reason why I haven’t posted is because I’m 99% sure that my life is happening in double-speed, like when you press fast-forward on a DVD. It’s the only explanation for why it’s SEPTEMBER THE 9TH already and I still feel like it’s mid-June.

I found out a morsel of intensely exciting news recently: Neil Young is headlining the Big Day Out music festival next January! *hyperventilates* I am such a fan of his, oh my goodness, his music is amazing and he’s so amazing that he makes me forget my grammar and write unintelligible run-on sentences. I have a small but perfectly formed list of people who, if they ever come to New Zealand, I have to drop everything for, and Neil Young holds pride of place on this list. (In case you’re wondering the other members of this exclusive club are Idina Menzel, Jamie Cullum, Morrissey, The White Stripes, Leonard Cohen, and Rufus Wainwright, who we were lucky enough to see earlier this year.) I absolutely have to go, even if it’s the most dire, shambolic set he’s ever played it won’t matter because it will be Neil Young. If you don’t have the faintest inkling of who this man is, please get hold of one of his many many albums. I personally recommend Tonight’s The Night or Rust Never Sleeps, (which features such choice lyrics as that which I quoted in my title as well as the particular gem, “I’m gonna ride my llama, from Peru to Texarcana.”) His most mainstream, crowd-pleasing effort would be Harvest, but I prefer the other two. Of course, it’s all genius.

Speaking of people that make me hyperventilate, in this case with laughter, Tim and I went to see Bill Bailey on Thursday. I’d never been to a comedy gig in my life so wasn’t sure what to expect – apart from imminent hilarity – but it was an absolutely scorchingly funny night. Bailey has that classically British comedic grip on the English language, like say, Steven Fry or Rowan Atkinson does, the sort of person who knows how to use the word “fettle” or “thicket” to best effect. Laugh? I positively wept.

And we got to meet him after. As I’m not from London or New York or some other theatrical metropolis there isn’t much opportunity for a gal to go stage-dooring. The last time I did it was to meet Baryshnikov in 1995. In fact Tim and I weren’t quite sure if Bailey would even appear or what the protocol was, but we decided to be adventurous. There was every chance that we could have inadvertantly found ourselves in the “discreet back entrance” (as it were) of the strip joint next to the theatre but luckily the stage door was clearly labelled. We waited for about half an hour, and there were about ten or so other people with the same idea as us. I must say we were the quietest. I figured that if he was going to appear it would be best to remain calm and respectful rather than thrust a ballpoint in his face and demand he take a dozen photos.

And then he appeared! Famous person! Aaagh! He had his very young son with him and I felt a bit bad but he was very jovial, signing and taking photos with everyone. Tim and I got sort of pushed to the back but we managed to get our programme and tickets signed. I told him that I enjoyed his cameo in Hot Fuzz, he said thank-you. Someone took a photo of us but unfortunately the camera didn’t save it. Well that’s what we thought till we found it on the memory stick three days later…

Not the best photo by anyone’s standards but a photo nevertheless, and therefore precious. Look at him! Isn’t he delightful looking! And in case you’re wondering, I’m not actually that short, I was just lunging to remain in the frame.

On Friday Tim and I went to see The Dark Knight again with some vouchers that we had for the Embassy theatre at the end of Courtney Place. I’d never been before but it’s a staggeringly beautiful building. I can see why Peter Jackson chose to have the premiere of LOTR there. The toilet alone is nicer than our flat, and almost as big. TDK was all the better for a repeat viewing. Heath Ledger really was incredible in the role. And all those explosions! I hope it does well at the Oscars.

Before the movie, and with some sense of giddy extravagance, Tim and I decided to go out for dinner. We ended up at Istanbul, a delightful BYO on Cuba Street. I’m almost loathe to tell you about it because it was so good. Reasonably priced, fresh, delicious, enormous meals, astoundingly swift service, and these filo pastry rolls filled with feta cheese that make me weak at the knees just thinking about them.

Speaking of things that make me weak at the knees…okay so this oaty slice – or scrottage as it’s known here – may not look like anything special, but it tastes fabulous. I whipped up a batch of these yesterday in about 20 minutes, they are the perfect thing to eat if you are in a hurry as the sugar keeps you going right away and the oats give you energy down the line. And it tastes amazing – chewy, nutty, caramelly, old-school delicious.

Scrottage

Adapted from the Best of Cooking for New Zealanders book.

150g butter
125g sugar
2 T golden syrup
1 t baking soda
175g rolled oats
90g dessicated coconut
120g flour
1 t cinnamon
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Melt the butter, stir in the sugar, golden syrup and baking soda. Carefully fold everything else in, spread into a good-sized tin, well greased, and bake for 15 mins at 180 C. Cool, and cut into squares. It may look a little soft and puffy coming out of the oven but this is fine. Consider this recipe a mere blueprint though, as it can really take anything you throw at it. I added bran and kibbled rye to mine, but you could add all manner of goodies – chopped dried fruit, sultanas, chocolate chips, quinoa flakes, linseeds ground or whole, pumpkin seeds, etc. If I am going to be adding more things to it I tend to up the butter slightly just to give it more “glue” to hold together.

Above: In spite of the fact that it makes me sound like someone who would name their child Sebastien and make him learn ancient Latin and French at the age of two, I would smugly like to make it known that I used 7-grain flour in this recipe.

And finally this post cannot go by without acknowledging Fathers’ Day. I’m not really into making a huge fuss of these kind of days – to me it feels too much like the people who call Christmas the “Primary Gifting Period” have won – though it’s possible I’ll be all about the presents once I actually have children. But in the spirit of enforced nationwide cheesiness…to Dad – musical genius, staunch defender of Otaua Village, cat whisperer and maker of the best scrambled eggs:

Above: Wait, what does that piece of paper say, Oscar?

Hope you get to spend at least part of your day looking like this:

Why yes, I am attempting to parlay Oscar’s cuteness into his being an internet sensation.

Tomorrow: Rent closes on Broadway after 12 years, and I will attempt to provide some kind of tribute to this flawed but incredibly important show.

Wickedly Good

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Inspiration doesn’t just come from cookbooks. When re-reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire a couple of weeks ago, I was struck, not just by what a cracking read it was, and how I was completely unable to function after finishing it, but also by the descriptions of food. There’s not a huge amount of eating that goes on in Wicked but what’s there is distinctive and evocative and made me want to cook. The food is somehow otherworldly and yet very earthy and imagineable. If they were all cooking up snozzbangers or eating frumblejump soup, amusing as it sounds it wouldn’t make for such satisfying reading. Anyway, like the utter geek that I am, I devised Sunday’s dinner entirely based upon what I’d read. I sort of hinted as much to Tim (who in fact has been reading Wicked rather fervently himself although refuses to admit enthusiasm) and he sighed in an I-saw-this-coming kind of way. But you know, better that he heard it from me first.

The saffron cream: “They spooned the airy mounds into one another’s mouths, sculpted with it, mixed it in their champagne, threw it in small gobbets at one another until the manager came over and told them to get the hell out. They complied, grumbling. They didn’t know it was the last time they would all be together, or they might have lingered.”

So naturally, I had to try and make some for myself.

I had envisioned a kind of syllabub-style dish, and indeed nothing is stopping you from replicating this without the mascarpone I used – a mixture of yoghurt and whipped cream would have been my choice otherwise. I began by macerating a pinch of red-gold saffron threads in a capful of dry sherry, a spoonful of honey for sweetness, and a couple of crushed, fragrant cardamom pods. Interestingly, despite saffron being more expensive per gram than crack cocaine, I spent more or less nothing on this dish. Saffron – gift from Tim. Sherry – a gift from Mum, who instinctively knew I needed some. Honey – in the cupboard. Cardamom pods – another gifty from Mum. As for the mascarpone – well, I had some sitting in the fridge leftover from my tiramisu. And yes, I do get given food as presents and you better believe I love it.

It went from this:

To this…

Look at that gorgeous, golden yellow colour, and not an E-number in sight. My seratonin levels have skyrocketed at the very sight of this stuff. Saffron: I’m just mad about it.

Once strained and folded into the mascarpone, (with the juice of an orange for added zing) it toned down to the palest primrose colour. To go with – because they mentioned biscuits being served with the cream in Wicked – I did a batch of Nigella’s fabulous madeleines from How To Eat. I made these for the first time back in October (and do read the post if only to appreciate how my photography has improved) and haven’t attempted them since, luckily the silicone tray I bought for them was cheap enough to warrant such reckless neglect. To lift these madeleines out of the ordinary, to make them…wickeder if you will…I added a dash of ras-el-hanout, a morrocan spice blend usually used in savoury foods. It is so fragrant and warm and cinnamony that to me it makes perfect sense to get a little fusion-y and use it in something sweet.

Above: The batter has to wait for an hour in the fridge. And you have to wait for it for an hour. Nigella doesn’t say what this adds to the end result. But I daren’t disobey.

They were a cracking success, so much so that it’s threatened to go to my head and I want to sprinkle ras-el-hanout in everything. I’m picturing it in ice cream, in cupcakes with cinnamon icing, in rice pudding, in biscuits…needless to say, I’m going to give you the recipe because such is the nature of people who read food blogs, I just know that some of you out there have a madeleine tray kicking round. Gathering dust. Giving you the guilt-eye whenever you open your cupboard. Be guilty no longer – make a batch of these.

Ras-El-Hanout Madeleines

Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How To Eat

(insofar as adding half a teaspoon of spice is adapting.)

90g butter, melted
1 T clear honey
2 eggs
75g caster sugar
90g plain flour, sifted
1/2 t ras-el-hanout (optional, you can of course make these without it.)

Mix the butter with the honey. Beat the eggs and sugar together in a bowl – using a whisk if you dare – for ages and ages till thick, pale, and expanded. Sieve the flour in, then add the honeyed butter, and fold it all gently together. Leave in the fridge for an hour, then take it out of the fridge and sit at room temperature for half an hour. Sometime in this half hour’s sitting you want to set the oven to 210 C. If you don’t have a silicone mould like me, then lightly butter the indentations. Place a spoonful of now-puffy mixture in each shell-shaped cavity, don’t worry about filling it as the heat makes the batter spread. Bake for 5-10 minutes. I find 7 minutes to be perfect. Let them cool slightly before eating…however you like. Sprinkled with icing sugar, dunked into hot tea, a la mode with ice cream or…

…to be used for a loving spoonful of saffron cream.

Of course it wasn’t all pudding. My desire for a roast chicken (well, chicken is geting more expensive by the day, I can’t even remember the last time we’ve had it for dinner) happened to coincide with mine eyes alighting greedily upon this passage from Wicked:

“The guests tucked into snails and garlic, roast crest of fallowhen with cilantro and clementine chutney, and…a sumptuous helping of lime tart with saffron cream.”

Now, both Wikipedia and Google render the fallowhen non-existent, and I have an inherant fear of gastropods, and I’ve already covered the saffron cream AND limes are jaw-clenchingly expensive…but after reading this I thought that a plump, free-range chicken, smeared generously with butter that has been flavoured with chopped coriander and orange zest…roasted with garlic cloves and half an orange up it’s…cavity…and served with coriander and pistachio sprinkled rice…would be a fabulous precursor to the pudding.

Above: I said generously. My pestle and mortar (or mestle and thingy as ex-flatmate Kieran used to call it) wasn’t entirely necessary for this process but made me feel like I was really creating something, and capably at that. I’m certain that Gregory Maguire must have a love of cooking because the food translates well from page to plate: the earthy freshness of the coriander matching excellently with the perky orange zest, the honeyed-yet-grassy saffron lifting the creamy, tangy mascarpone…

Can you believe it’s September already? Sorry it has taken me so long to post, firstly I nearly fainted away at the amount of comments I recieved for my tiramisu – an absolute record of Micheal Phelps proportions for this blog – secondly I’ve just been plain busy. Time is dissolving like baking soda into milk. Like icing sugar into melted butter. Like arrowroot into raspberry coulis. Where was I? It promises to be a splendid week: my best friend is in town for a conference so hopefully we will be catching up for coffee, on Thursday night Tim and I are going to be seeing Bill Bailey’s comedy gig, and on Friday we are going to go see The Dark Knight again with some movie vouchers. Uni has started again and we had genuinely spring-like weather today in Wellington. Of course, tomorrow it will probably be back to raining again but you take what you can get…

Strange Brew

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So, (she says casually), I made mascarpone. There’s something about creating one’s own dairy product that is monumentally pleasing, and makes me feel like a one-woman, fully functional, to-scale fromagerie. I’ve made creme fraiche before and mascarpone isn’t too far removed in terms of method. I heated a litre of cream, till small bubbles appeared round the edge, then stirred in just under 1/2 a teaspoon of cream of tartar, and let it bubble away merrily for about 5 minutes. I then allowed it to cool, and lined a sieve with a couple of coffee filters that Tim had mysteriously acquired for me from Starbucks. This bit is a little cumbersome but not complicated: Sit the lined sieve over a bowl, then pour the cream mixture carefully into the sieve, and leave overnight in the fridge to slowly drain. Or, if your abode is as cold as my flat, you can leave it on the bench.

Seriously, our kitchen is so cold that the olive oil on the shelf by the window has solidified in its bottle. Which is what happens if you put it in the fridge.

Et voila! Mascarpone!

Above: The mound of mascarpone, with the strainer, coffee filters, and drained liquid.

I love how the mascarpone took on the folds and curves of the filters and sieve so it resembles a plump, billowy pillow.

As I said in my last post, I planned on making tiramisu this weekend. I realise this Italian specialty is fairly unexciting and run-of-the-mill these days, but – gasp – I’ve never tasted it in my life. Let alone made one in my own kitchen. I used a recipe from Cuisine.co.nz but just realised there was a perfectly serviceable one in my Claudia Roden “Food of Italy” book. The two recipes are very similar though, and it would seem that the greatest discrepancy between any of the various recipes I’ve seen for this occurs in the number of eggs used. The Cuisine recipe only used three eggs, which was a nice, small, non-frightening amount.

Above: Making the zabaglione, rich with Marsala wine.

I am, if nothing else, forever indebted to Nigella for introducing me to the heavenly liquor that is Marsala, and I was very pleased to see that the Cuisine recipe called for it. The whole process of making tiramisu isn’t terribly difficult, and I did the whole thing in about an hour. The fiddliest thing is the zabaglione part, which involves all sorts of things that I tend to avoid – separating eggs, fitting a bowl over a pan of simmering water (don’t let the base of the bowl touch the water or a kitten dies!) and endless whisking. Despite the pain, it is pleasing to watch the eggy, sugary mixture come together. Into this, I folded the mascarpone, and whisked-till-stiff eggwhites (another thing I dislike – recipes that use lots of bowls. Such is life though.)

Above: Freshly brewed coffee, made capably by Tim, plus the Savoiardi biscuits and the Marsala (I added a splash to the coffee as well. It belongs in everything.)

Slightly untraditionally, I put a layer of grated chocolate in each layer, basically because I had some bitter dark chocolate that needed using up. I also ended up – aided by some judicious spatula work – with three layers of biscuits, which used up exactly one packet, in a regular sized loaf tin.

Above: The biscuits soaked up the coffee very quickly – a deft hand is required. I usually err on the side of undeft, but it’s not difficult or anything. The only thing I found taxing was trying not to get crumbs of the biscuits caught up in the cream mixture.

Then of course, the moment of truth – the eating. Not that I flatter myself that my own personal tiramisu is the definitive article, the ur-pudding, but I followed the recipe and everything went to plan, so I’m guessing what I created is more or less what it should have been. And it was delicious. The texture is just…mad. Damp biscuits which crunch hollowly against the most voluptuous, rich cream…oh yum. More please.

The snap of the darkest dark chocolate against the cream is, I think, my favourite part. Oh, and the coffee was perfect – of course!


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Yesterday afternoon Tim, Paul and I went to see the Wellington Phoenix play some Melbourne team. We got trounced resoundedly, and to add insult to injury it utterly, without reservation, bucketed with rain on the walk home. I was glad that I’d had the foresight to bake a casserole earlier in the day – using a recipe from my delightful Supercooks Supersavers Cookbook from 1980 – and it was basically the nicest thing in the world to come home to. I had the crock pot ticking away overnight making vegetable soup into which I biffed a lamb shank, it smells heavenly and we are going to have it for dinner tonight along with the leftover casserole (made very cheaply with gravy beef)…much as I absolutely cannot wait for summer to arrive, I do love winter comfort food wholeheartedly.

After eating our delicious casserole last night, Tim and I managed to stay up till 1.30am to watch the closing ceremony of the Olympics. I guess it’s really saying something if, comparitively at least – it seemed fairly low-key. The reason we persisted in staying bleary-eyedly awake is because Jimmy Page of Led Zep was supposed to be playing, little did we know it was going to be alongside British songstress Leona Lewis, she of the particularly awful song “Bleeding Love.” We could not, however, deny that she has an excellent voice…nor that Page seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself as she gyrated beside him. The whole London bit seemed altogether bizarre – here’s a bus! And a celebration of our awful weather! And a child descended of multiple ethnicities! And now the bus is turning into a…hey, there’s David Beckham!

I’ll definitely miss the Olympics, it’s astounding to think of all that buildup just for two short weeks. The New Zealand team certainly were amazing, I will not, however, at all miss the pitiful New Zealand reporting/commentating team. Finally, and speaking of rock music, my title refers to the 1967 Cream song, but you know, brew…coffee…cream…tiramisu…a little forced, I know, but it made me chuckle.

It’s Good To Warm My Bones Beside The Fire

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I don’t have much to go on with, I’m only really posting because I know that Mum will have been checking this impatiently (she even has a nifty spring-loaded shortcut icon to this blog on her desktop) even though she knows exactly what I did this weekend because I flew home for a whistle-stop trip…*waves*

While at home I made the same cookies I am pathalogically incapable of going a week without:

Mum and Dad’s new oven is big and shiny and I think this batch was my best yet. They certainly went quite fast. Considering the modest oven at our flat has two options: bake or grill, and probably has carcinogens from 1982 clinging greasily to its door, I haven’t done too badly so far under my own steam.

I had a great weekend at home, even though I had an essay to get done (remember, they’re more scared of you than you are of them), I still felt as though my batteries had been recharged. And I absolutely basked in the warmth of home, I’m not even talking in huggy figuratives here – it was a deliciously well-heated house. My flat usually errs on the side of chilly, but in comparison to where I’ve been it’s particularly noticeable. Still, it’ll make a good story for the next generations – “when I was young my breath would make condensation clouds in the kitchen in the middle of the day, and we had to punch each other mercilessly every morning just to get the circulation moving from the heart to the brain and back again, you don’t know how lucky you are…” By the way, the first of those statements is true.

But yes; I had a seriously lovely time, it was fantastic to see lots of extended and immediate family again, so many people in such a short time and so much food, too. Mum bought Tim and I a kilo of pickled pork which I wrapped up in my clothes and took on the flight home; the airport security may have had a minor CSI moment as it went through the scanners. It also reminded me of this Garfield cartoon strip. It was a fine time to be near a television as New Zealand excelled itself at the Olympics, despite being hampered by lamentably awful commentary, I can only be thankful that no-one else in the world has our spokespeople as their first point of contact. Seeing the remarkable Valeri Villi completely eclipse the competition with ease and grace reminded me of when I had to do shotput (entirely under duress, you understand) at primary school, and with my tiny hands I could barely grip the leaden thing. You’re supposed to hold the ball behind your ear and then thrust it out through the air with a forward lunge…unfortunately lacking in a certain amount of upper body strength (I must have been about 9 years old at the time) I distinctly recall lunging forward and driving the ball solidly into the back of my own head. It didn’t do much for my already withering contempt of athletics day.

All painful anecdotes aside, the New Zealand team has really done rather brilliantly – with the ones who didn’t get medal placing still being ridiculously high up compared to 99% of the population. And of course we always get to smugly top the ‘per capita’ tables. Think about it – and I’m barely mathmatical – 6 medals (to date – we’ve just snagged another bronze!) spread over a scant 4 million people.

Keeping in with the recent theme of distracting you from my lacklustre photography with gratuitous cat photos…and because I do love them…I got quite snap-happy around Rupert and Roger during my time at home.

He’s just over a year old. When I first met him in April last year, Roger was a tiny, mercurial sprite of a kitten, named after ex-Pink Floydian Roger Waters. Now he has matured into a broad, sleek, tiger cub who seemed to enjoy mugging for the camera. He also has the wide neck of a rugby prop which gives him a very comical, Easter Island Statue look when he sits upright.
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Rupert, on the other hand, we’ve had since about 1997. He’s outlived a few other of our cats, and recently developed cancer of the shnozz, but seems to keep on existing placidly. You’d never have called Rupert a small feline, but I’ve never seen him this big…

Above: To wit: the size of a piano stool. Heh.
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Away from that chilling glimpse into my future (I am predestined to be one of those mad old biddies with many cats) I have managed to scrape my essay together on time and handed it in this afternoon. Tim is watching a Monterey Pop Festival DVD, (was there ever a man who so suited orange ruffly blouses as Jimi Hendrix?) and I’m about to head to bed because I have work tomorrow. Hopefully now that I have a bit of space between assignments I can be less hopelessly neglectful of this blog.
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Next time: well, sometime this week I want to try and make mascarpone and attempt a tiramisu; I have some Savoiardi biscuits that I bought on an excited whim ages ago and I’ve just realised that I need to do more and look at them dreamily…

These Things Take Time

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(Yes, that is The Smiths I’m quoting in the title. ) Finally! A new post. It has been a long time coming. Uni is keeping me good and stressed, and I have a presentation and a 2500 word essay to pull out of the air this week…

Above: Bla, bla, chocolate shmocolate. Yes, I made another chocolate cake, this time the Chocolate Meringue Truffle Cake from Nigella’s marvelous Feast for Emma’s 22nd birthday; the cake was amazing, the photos weren’t, but I rather liked this swirly shot.

I’m sick of seeing sweet things on this blog, and I’m sure you must be too, but bear with me – I’d hate to lose a reader for want of a sausage. (heh!) Because I’m temporarily relying on our old digital camera which is really…not very good (I know, artist – tools – do not blame) and our actual camera is still unavoidably detained, the only way I can take blog-worthy photos is if there is natural light. Considering our flat gets about 14 minutes of natural light per day in winter, and that it has been raining non-stop for the last month or two…well. It doesn’t make for snap-happiness. Plus, it’s always dark by the time I start cooking dinner. During the day is when I bake. So that’s what you get to see. It’s a pity, because if I say so myself, I’ve been making some pretty nifty dinners lately – pumpkin and black bean curry, corn chowder, bobotie, raw salad with hot and sour dressing and sesame noodles, mushroom risotto…but for you: more sweet things.

There were some blackened, rock-hard bananas that had been in the freezer forever. Because our freezer space is limited at best, and because they were just sitting there balefully, annoying me, I decided to turn said bananas into some muffins. Sounds dull, sounds obvious, but once you bite into one – fresh from the oven, with the warm tickle of cinnamon present in your throat and the flavour of honey flooding your tastebuds – it makes me wonder why I don’t encase this fruit in lumps of quickly-stirred batter more often. They’re squishy, they’re sweet, they take five minutes to make, and they freeze well. This particular recipe of Nigella’s is quite apt for the current economic downturn – minimal butter and sugar, no eggs…

Banana Muffins (from Nigella’s equally warm and cinnamon scented How To Be A Domestic Goddess, my love for this book is intense!)

30g melted butter
60mls (1/4 cup) honey (I sometimes use half honey, half golden syrup)
3 large, very ripe bananas
150g flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
Good dash cinnamon

Heat oven to 190 C. Mash the bananas, add the butter, honey and cinnamon. Carefully fold in the dry ingredients. If it looks tooooo dry add a couple of tablespoons of milk. The main point is not to overmix them. Spoon evenly into a 12-bun muffin tin lined with paper cases (or use a nifty silicone one like I did) and bake for 20-25 minutes. Leave in the tin for five minutes before removing. Eat.

Not revolutionary…but delicious.

Because it seemed as though on this particular day we were going to get more than our 14 minutes of natural light, I decided to really go nuts (yes, this is my version of living it up) and make cupcakes. Wait, it gets better – Pina Colada Cupcakes.

Nigella’s cupcake recipe has served me well. In each of her 6 cookbooks (all of which I own – ker-ching!) she includes one or other form of cupcake, and between the simplicity of the recipe itself and the amount of times I’ve reproduced it I hardly ever actually consult the text. Not everyone is as vigilant as I though. This variation on Nigella’s ur-recipe runs thusly – take 125g each of butter and sugar, cream thoroughly, add either a drained can of crushed pineapple in juice or about 200g chopped real pineapple, then two eggs, 125g flour, 2 t baking powder…a teaspoon of Malibu if you like, and a splash of milk if the batter needs it…divide between 12 cupcake cases, bake at 180 for 15 minutes. I iced with a slapdash buttercream (you know, butter, icing sugar, bit of water) to which I added a pinprick of Boyajian orange oil…finally I strewed some coconut over the fragrant cupcakes to complete the Pina Colada effect.

Even though I didn’t soften the butter enough and so it sort of affected the baking process, the finished cakelets tasted fabulous. There’s something about coconut and pineapple, they’re such a classic combination. Which is why I’ve appropriated it here and then tried to take all the credit for something really quite unimaginative…

I realise it’s bordering on churlish to complain about my rapidly diminishing time and then talk about a film that I watched, but I couldn’t spend the whole weekend doing schoolwork. Anyway, Enchanted – you know, that self-reflexive Disney film – has come out on DVD and I rented it from the video hut down the road. I ended up watching it alone because Tim’s a hater, but it was actually really very good. I laughed out loud more than I expected. And it has Idina Menzel in it! She doesn’t even sing, she just acts, which is pretty cool. It’s a small but relatively pivotal role, and they could have gotten, oh I don’t know, Demi Moore or Rachel Griffiths or…I don’t know, even Hillary Swank to play the role, it’s not like they didn’t have the budget for it. Anyway, Idina is very cool in the role, she looks gorgeous and it’s nice that she didn’t get the “bad stepmother” story arc. James Marsden, as the uber-prince Edward, is hilarious. He manages to wring every drop of physical humour out of his role, and I love how he exaggerates the trad Disney prince. Susan Sarandon, for someone so awesome, is surprisingly…meh…Patrick Dempsey does a decent straight man, and Amy Adams is really likeable. I’d seen pictures of her and she didn’t look like she had a lot of spark, but she lights up on screen. Timothy Spall is as nifty as ever.

Speaking of movies, okay, so I often catch the cable car into Lambton Quay for work. On the swipe-card turnstiles there are these signs saying “No Entry for Small Children.” Every time I see those signs, I think to myself, “Gee, I should buy No Country for Old Men for Tim. It’s violent, Oscar winning and Coen-penned – he’ll love it!” And then I think happily about Javier Bardem for a spell. And then I soberly nay-say myself, refusing to be jettisoned into capitalism by a suggestive sign. Don’t fall into their trap, I think with caution. This can go back and forth. And it happens every time I go to work. I’ve tried to catch myself in the act, but those signs get me every time. You know what I’m talking about, right? (*small voice* just me?)

Aint No Sunshine

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Another day, another chocolate cake. Seriously, I’ve eaten more chocolate cake in the last month than I normally do in a year. It has continued to rain steadily in Wellington – indeed, over the whole country – and there was even a sizeable slip not far from where my flat is. But on Saturday morning I felt the oddest sensation. I woke up with the sun streaming through the windows. I didn’t know what to do with myself at the sight of blue sky. I felt like a babushka from Old Rumania, shucking off my winter cloak to prepare for the feasting of Springtide. Well, it wasn’t so much “sunny” as “not raining” but Tim and I took the opportunity to zoom into town to do some jobs and that afternoon, while there was still more blue than grey in the sky, I made a cake.

I had some cream cheese leftover from the cheesecake I made for Tearaway magazine, and although it would have been entirely more economical to use it in some pasta sauce or something, I decided to build a chocolate cake around it. And no, I didn’t use it in the icing, which is more conventional, but in the actual cake mix. The recipe comes from the bountiful Nigella’s Feast, a cookbook which keeps on giving. No matter how much batter I shmeer on it, its pages never get stuck together. No matter how many times I read it, I always find something new I want to make now. In this case, the Tropical Chocolate Cake, which hosts an intriguing mix of pineapple, chocolate and coconut flavours.

I decided to modify Nigella’s method somewhat. She makes an enticing two-layer cake sandwiched and slathered with a coconut meringue frosting. She says, a little snippily, to “lose the Bounty connection” if the idea of meringue palls somewhat, but I decided against it because I just couldn’t be bothered. Instead I made one bigger, bungalow-type cake smothered in a coconut custard buttercream. Still sounds good, right? In fact that’s all I’m-a talk about today, uncharacteristically. Because this cake is the only thing I’ve managed to get decent photos of.

Above: This isn’t exactly photographically sound, but then the food-processor shots don’t really have to be, do they? In fact they don’t even offer anything at all; they are what my media studies lecturer would call a “kernel,” that is, a sort of light, C-plot segment that doesn’t move the narrative forward but offers light relief from the main thrust of the action. Consider yourself schooled!

Tropical Chocolate Cake, adapted slightly from Feast

1x400g can pineapple pieces in juice
75g cream cheese
200g butter, pretty soft
200g flour
100g sugar
100g brown sugar
40g cocoa
2 eggs
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
2 T malibu or juice from the can of pineapple

Set the oven to 180 C (360 F) and line a 23cm Springform. First you want to whizz up the pineapple and cream cheese. Then add the rest of the ingredients, scraping occasionally with a spatula. Pour this alluringly delicious mix into the caketin, bake for roughly 40 minutes, maybe more. And uhm, that’s it. Simple, no?

I iced it with a mixture of 40g butter, 1 T custard powder, enough icing sugar to turn it into a cohesive substance, 1 t coconut essence, and a tablespoon each of milk and water. And then I thought I might as well dust it with chocolate sprinkles that I found in the cupboard. They were a year or two past their best before date, but how bad can sprinkles get?

It is moist, fragrant, delicious, and a genius combination of flavours. Very summery too, with elements of Pina Colada and Hawaiian Tropic Sunscreen. This hardly a bad thing; I say this as someone who can happily pass several minutes’ time sitting there inhaling the scent of a bottle of SPF 40+ (truly, it’s gooood.) As soon as I finished taking the photos of the cake it started raining again and hasn’t really stopped (it’s now Monday.)

Since the little tacker was so popular last time, and because Tim managed to catch this doozy of a picture, I thought we could be graced by the presence of *cough*Oscar the non-existent kitty*cough*.

I love that flagrant disdain he has for the laws of, you know, breathing.


Next time: well, the bread photos weren’t so crash-hot, hence their lack of presence here. Who knows?

Grainspotting

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It has recently occurred to me that while I frequently wax lyrical about rolled oats and quinoa flakes and kibbled dust and the like, I rarely consider them in their most natural state: porridge. I have a few childhood porridge-memories – my late maternal grandfather making it for me when I stayed with him, having a bowlful at Nana’s place and bemusing her (I distinctly remember this bit for some reason if you’re reading Nana!) by sprinkling over white, instead of brown, sugar. To be frank I wasn’t the biggest fan of its blandly creamy flavour, I ate it more out of an early-indoctrinated sense of politeness than anything else. But, as you may have gathered from my endless praise, I’m having something of a porridge revolution. I guess that would make this Revolution 1 (as opposed to “number 9…number 9…” get thee to the Beatles White Album if you don’t know what I’m on about. Not that I know what they’re on about.)

Even though it sounds faintly vile, I tend to have cold ‘porridge’ in the mornings – just oats, and whatever other kibbled and ground bits I have to hand, with cold water stirred in, and a dash of cinnamon. The oats soften remarkably quickly – I usually leave them sitting wetly for about five minutes – and the fragrant cinnamon makes me feel like I’m actually eating something more than paste. The ratio usually goes something like; 2 1/2 T oats, 2 1/2 T quinoa flakes, 1 T wheat bran, 1 T ground linseeds, 1 shake cinnamon, water to cover. What you see in the picture above though, is actual porridge…after a Swiss Ball class at uni on Wednesday I felt like something a little sustaining and warm, as it was inevitably raining again. So I microwaved the bowl of oats for a bit and added a swirl of golden syrup – perfect! It’s funny, even though I was not, as aforementioned, a massive fan of it as a child, there seems something so wonderfully comforting about eating it now.

Forget what the Milo and Cornflake and Nutella ads tell you about sustained energy for today’s kids, oats are so filling it’s ridiculous. When I wasn’t having them for breakfast, I always would end up feeling all light-headed and incompetent around 10am, and now I just feel incompetent (sh-k-boom!) but in all honesty, I can putter along quite happily till 1 or 2 without really needing to eat a thing, I realise this is hardly a new revelation – I’ve mentioned it before on this blog in fact – but until you try – she says wide eyed and evangelically – you have no idea of the difference it makes.

Before you run away in fear from my Flanders-like enthusiasm (“it’s less fun that way!”), I present you the dairy-laden spectre of cheesecake.

In the name of journalistic integrity, I can’t tell you toooo much about this cheesecake, as I made it for the September issue of Tearaway magazine. I was getting a bit freaked out because it has been raining nonstop here in Wellington (and most of NZ in fact) for the last couple of weeks – oh, you think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. Utterly, utterly mercifully, it eased up on Tuesday afternoon and I had a window of opportunity to take some photos in natural light. Thank goodness, otherwise who knows what I would have done (my deadline is a-looming!). Anyway, I won’t show you all the rather nice photos I took, because they’re for the mag, but I couldn’t resist just one, especially because it is such a great recipe, and absolutely fuss-free – no gelatine to deal with (which, in my case, inevitably turns into gooey strings instead of folding coherently into the mixture) and no baking. Five points if you guess who the recipe is from. Oh that’s right…

Cherry Cheesecake from Nigella Express.
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By the way, this is only ‘cherry ‘ by way of the conserves that she specifies you heap on top of the finished cheesecake. I’m sure you could use anything you fancy without the Cheesecake Police coming after you.
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Base:
200g plain sweet biscuits (Nigella says 125g but friend, I like a thick base)
75g soft butter (I tend to trust Nidge’s instinct for butter, and didn’t add any more)

Blitz the biscuits in the food processor with the butter, press into a 20cm Springform.

Filling:
300g cream cheese (At room temp, unless you have serious guns)
60g icing sugar
Juice of a lemon
250mls cream

Beat the cream cheese, sugar, and lemon juice. In another bowl, whip the cream, then fold, about quarter at a time, into the cream cheese. Pile onto the base, smooth…refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight…and that’s it. It does hold together, despite not having much to it, and is coolly, creamily, tangily delicious. I don’t know if it’s just me – do all family parties have a buffet table? – but it is just begging for a can of drained, crushed pineapple to be folded through the mixture too.
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By the way, thanks for the suggestions regarding the brisket, I cooked it tonight (didn’t photograph, as I still find it difficult to make stews look anything other than sloppy), slowly with canned tomatoes, garlic, onion, cumin, nutmeg, a pinch of…tumeric…twas delicious! As I said before, natural light is a bit of a rarity here. Not only does it rain whenever I leave the house, it also seems to be particularly deluge-inous whenever I leave the house for Swiss Ball class at the uni rec centre. Maybe someone up there is trying to say something. We don’t have it so bad though – Mum and Dad have been repeatedly without power, their driveway was flooded and a tree fell over, and Tim’s parents’ farm is a complete mess, with several sheds absolutely smashed. It’s scary how quickly it all happened.

Next time: might be a little while off as I am getting freaked out with assignments for uni. However, I absolutely excelled myself as far as time management goes by mixing and kneading a loaf of bread this morning before work (at 7.30am). I left it to rise in the fridge, and baked it to go with dinner when I got home at half five, and I will blog about it when I get the chance, should the photos be useable.

Finally – finally – Tim and I splashed out on tickets to see the marvelously hilarious Bill Bailey (of the intensely funny Black Books show, etc) when he comes to New Zealand! They were pretty expensive but we run a fairly tight ship most days of the year and it will coincide with his birthday. Tim’s, not Bill’s. And we are totally going to wait at the stage door for him! Squee!

Solid Gold Easy Action

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These potatoes are neither radioactive nor laced with the sort of E-numbers that will keep a three year old awake for a week. It is in fact, my new friend tumeric, which I’m sneaking into everything these days. It has a squillion medicinal properties (and Mum, according to Wikipedia it repels ants if you sprinkle it in the garden), a delightfully earthy sweet flavour, and stains your food pleasingly, eye-scorchingly yellow.

Panchphoran Aloo, or potatoes with whole spices, comes from Nigella’s seminal text How To Eat and is what I made for dinner tonight. HTE is so densely packed full of wonderful recipes that with initial reads it is impossible to take everything in. It took me a while to pick up on this fabulous potato dish but now I’ve made it so many times that I don’t even use the (tumeric-smudged) book anymore. What you want to do: Get lots of floury potatoes, scrub them and then parboil for five-ten minutes. Nigella doesn’t instruct you to do this, but it makes them a lot easier to cook. Drain and dice the potatoes, then toss them into a hot, non-stick pan, stirring occasionally still somewhat golden. Add a spoonful or so of the following and stir: cumin seeds, coriander seeds, fenugreek, fennel seeds, mustard seeds…tumeric. There’s a bit of standing and stirring involved but it’s really simple to make and tastes marvelous, especially with plenty of sea salt.

This is a very cheap meal for me because I have all those spices to hand (including a 500g catering-sized pack of cumin seeds that I’ve made surprising headway with) but I can see why the lesser-stocked amongst you might freak out at an ingredients list like that. I find health food stores really handy for cheap bags of spices and things if you want to start somewhere. There’s one on Cuba Street which has all manner of enticing wee bags of things…that I am quite embarrassingly addicted to purchasing. Last time I was there (on the way to The Dark Knight) I walked out clutching 2 bags of quinoa flakes, a bag of kibbled rye, a bag of ground linseeds and a bag of bran. It’s addictive I tells ye.

By the way, I apologise for the harsh photography. I’m having ongoing camera issues, which, coupled with the total lack of natural light here (it has rained for about 3 weeks straight) does not good food porn maketh. I also apologise if this post is lacklustre…these assignments are keeping me stressed and busy, instead of stressed and stationary.

With the rain and the sleet and the damp and the cold comes a couple of benefits. For example: steamed pudding. I first bought my pudding steamer in the infant days of this blog (back when I had permanent poor exposure and no depth of field, ah, circularity) and it occurred to me that it hadn’t gotten any use in a while. A casual flick through Nigella’s delicious How To Be A Domestic Goddess (while I should have been doing something more productive) had me longing suddenly to introduce butter to its amigos sugar and flour. You have to get going in advance – the whole two hours steaming thing – but apart from that these things practically make themselves. And they’re so delicious, not stodgy at all, but miraculously light. And I love the way a fat, golden jammy slice of this pudding slowly soaks up the milk pooling in the base of the bowl…I highly recommend you look up all your very old cookbooks, you know, the sort that have recipes for salads set with gelatine, and make yourself a darned steamed pudding. Unless you’re in the northern hemisphere in which case maybe wait a few months. It’s one of the best things about this weather.

If I can’t be perky, nothing livens things up like the neighbourhood cat – seriously, I defy you to view this and not feel the slightest stirrings of mirth in your soul.


Above: This isn’t our cat. If the landlord is reading, this isn’t even a cat, it’s…a teddy bear (ceci n’est pas un chat?) But seriously, it’s this kitteh that hangs round our ‘hood and occasionally stands by the door looking cute and vulnerable and what would you do? Turns out that its most natural, ideal sleeping position is…face-planted. Did you know cats can breathe out their ears?

Next time: I’m not sure, again, so I’m also not sure why I persist with this “next time” feature. I bought some brisket though, with a view to cooking it slowly somehow…any suggestions?

The Dark Of The Matinee

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Overheard:

Tim: That was amazing.
Me: Oh my gosh yes. I haven’t been this moved by a film since Rent.
Tim: *exasperated silence*
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Well, since everyone else in the world is talking about it I might as well too…Just a quick post to say that we (myself, Tim, Emma, Paul, Scotty and Matt) went to see The Dark Knight when it opened here in New Zealand on Tuesday night…okay it was actually 5.30 in the afternoon but it was pitch black and howling with sleety wind so none of the excitement was lost. Anyway; WOW. I hate scary movies and go out of my way to avoid them, but this wasn’t so much scary as intense and brilliant. The hype is pretty well justified, I’d say. Heath Ledger was just electrifying as The Joker but it was eerie seeing him, so recently dead, 20ft tall across the screen. And Christian Bale is quite amazing as Batman/Bruce Wayne – darkly charismatic. Maggie Gyllenhaal I could take or leave, but Micheal Caine was as fun as ever. A very, very good movie.

In other housekeeping, I’ve just discovered that I have about 470 assignments and presentations due over the next three weeks so posting might be a little light. Or, you know, daily. I am also having…erm…camera issues…and clumsiness issues…and warranty issues (you join the dots) which is very depressing and might take a while to sort out, thus impinging on my already dubious ability to take blog-worthy photos.

You can find my articles (2 so far, another one on the way) for Tearaway magazine here, if you feel like wincing at my overeager attempts to sound down-with-the-kids, or indeed trying the recipes, which are quite good I think.

And I’m done. Cakes below. Not sure whether I’ll pop back in here or not at this stage, but have a good weekend!