Goodbye and Hello

Farewell 2010, and hello to the possibilities that will unfold in the year ahead. Have a wonderful New Year, y'all!

Time Travel

We stumbled upon a Tardis in Edinburgh.

Happy Merry!

A little belated, since Boxing Day is almost over, but Merry Christmas to you all! I hope you've had plenty to eat, plenty to drink, and plenty of presents still to open!

Eating Edinburgh (Part One)

A selection of junk food. Bad for the waistline, but strangely satisfying, nonetheless. 

 Ham and cheese croissant - train food.

 Nutella and banana crepe from the German Christmas Market. It was 'healthy' because it has bananas in it.

 Fried mozzarella sticks. We also had fish and chips but you all know what that looks like.

 Deepfried Mars bar. Yes, I did it! It was listed under 'Traditional Fried Foods' in the chip shop.

The 'Burgh Breakfast' crepe. Don't judge me, I was starving and it was a cold day.

Sour cream and chives pretzels - train food again, this time on the way back.

(Almost) Black Books

While in Edinburgh last week, the Manbeast and I quite literally stumbled into our new favourite bookshop. Shelves laboured under the weight of dusty tomes, while every available inch of wall was covered in pithy life lessons.

Suffice to say that the both of us left that warm, magical cave with happy hearts, light wallets and heavy arms from buying too many books. 

Armchair Books, Edinburgh

Half A Rainbow

I tried to make another rainbow layer cake last week, and the last layers (green, blue and purple) came out very badly. So badly that I had to chuck them. 

The flavours here are (from left to right): 

cranberries

orange peel

and hazelnuts. 

It was meant to be filled with alternating layers of vanilla and chocolate buttercream, and covered in cream cheese frosting, but I settled for chocolate buttercream inside and out. Let that be a lesson - do not bake when stressed, especially when it's the night before your wedding. 

Wedding Day

Sushi Hiroba

I love conveyor belts. Put me in an airport and I could spend hours watching travellers' miscellany trundle about on a mile-long strip of moving rubber. So it should come as no surprise that I love sushi from a conveyor belt. Bite-sized nuggets of moving food. Pile the plates up and see how high the stack gets before you explode. 

Ikura sushi. I prefer these bulbous orange ones to the little crunchy prawn roes ones, because you get such a great oily, fishy burst of flavour out of them. 

Octopus sushi. The plates generally came with 2 or 3 pieces on each, but the Manbeast was too greedy to wait til the shot was taken. 

Edamame. My first time eating them, and I'm a convert now. I'd mistakenly thought they were peas (the kind used to make mushy peas), and since I would rather lick someone's buboes than have to eat peas, I avoided them for the longest time. Only to timidly crack a pod open to discover they were actually delicious soybeans.

Gyoza. Fine, not fantastic.

Prawn tempura, with a sliver of carrot tempura. The Manbeast timidly went for the smallest piece on the plate, only to discover it was a slice of deepfried carrot. Sucker. 

Generous slice of unagi on a tiny blob of rice - the way I like it.

Lovely, sweet, soft crab legs. Soooooo incredibly perfect. I would have kept picking up plate after plate of them all night long, if I wasn't already so full and about to fall asleep. I'm gonna hit them first the next time I'm there. 

Red bean mochi - chewy, pillowy soft and just the right amount of sweetness. I wish these were more easily available everywhere.

We also had a plate of deepfried sweet potato cakes and some chicken-y stuff in sweet red teriyaki sauce, both of which I devoured before remembering to pull my camera out. You'll have to take my word for it that they were both yummy.

Sushi Hiroba

50-54 Kingsway

Holborn, London

WC2B 6EP

Goodies

Lovely Ai sent me another package recently, full of new goodies. The blue packet of 'cigarettes' actually contains candy - I haven't tried them yet, but I think they may be similar to 'Fads' back in Australia (once known as 'Fags'). 

Well-Made cheese crackers, in Quattro Formaggio flavour - you know what, they really are well-made. Crunchy and intensely buttery, and pretty much perfect.

Dreaming Of Apples

Woke up with an inexplicably strong need to have an apple, but I thought it would be too weird to eat an apple at 4.30am, so rolled around wide awake until the alarm rang at 6.30am, when I rushed right into the kitchen and bit into a gloriously crunchy, juicy Braeburn. 

And the pear - my breakfast, together with a second apple. 

Invite

For a special event happening soon, and also appearing in the upcoming issue of The Great Unwashed. 

In The Bathroom

And Now, For Something Completely Different

Geffrye Museum, July 2010

Best Price

Warning, gentle readers - This post will most likely turn out to be a massive rant which includes the kind of swearing a Russian stevedore would blush at. It may or may not also include jibes at Barbour jackets, tourists, overpriced coffee and of course, Uggs. Look away NOW if you think you'll be offended. 

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Things around here have been fairly hectic recently, which is why I haven't posted much. I've had a semi-permanent spot at the Tea Rooms since the end of October, and I enjoy being there a lot more than most of the other craft fairs I've done this year, so it is fairly likely I will return there next year.

However, the one thing that puts a damper on it, are the customers. Well, the non-customers, actually. What really pisses me off is that fact that, because the Tea Rooms is billed as a 'Brick Lane market', the people who shop there often expect ridiculous discounts, or just want things for stupidly cheap prices. I've tried to grow a thick skin and just brush it all off, but a couple of experiences this past Sunday really got to me, and I figure if I let it all out into the interwubs, then I can let go of my rage and behave in a civilised manner next weekend. 

Anyway, incident one - Home Counties* family look at a shawl I have on sale (but not SALE!) for £10. I'm hiding behind my display stand, keeping a surreptitious eye/ ear on them. Teenage daughter is trying on the shawl, tying it various ways. I don't expect them to actually buy it, because, let's face it, they're just here for the 'Brick Lane Experience'. Then, I heard Daddy saying to darling daughter 'Ask her what her best price is, go on, ask her what her best price is'. 

Seriously, What. The. Fuck?! My best price is a fucking knuckle sandwich to your teeth, how about that? I'll throw in a set of knuckle-dusters to the groin for free! 

Darling daughter ended up deciding against the shawl, which left me both relieved and disappointed. Relieved, because I didn't have to yell in public, and disappointed, because I wanted to tell them that my 'best price' was the price on the tag, no more, definitely no less.

They then proceeded to browse the stall across from me, Daddy picked up a globe costing £8, and of course, used his favourite pick-up line on the stallowner. He, of course, has been dealing with these idiots for a lot longer, and told Daddy in bored manner '£5'. That's a huge percentage off, and you'd think Daddy would be pleased with that. Guess what happened? 

'How about £4 for it instead?'

How about a bull crushes your two Land Rovers and shits all over your Barbour jackets instead, darling Daddy?

*Barbour jackets (on both Mummy and Daddy), public school accent, puffy hair, puffed out chest, general smug demeanour. 

Incident two - similar incidents have occurred before, but, this just joined forces with everything else to help turn the day into a huge turdball.

Two tourists - short shiny plastic jackets, huge-arse cameras (possibly more on that later), hyena giggle. They look around at my display, spy the Cat Power! postcards, and shriek 'Ohhmygodthisissonice!' Which of course pleases me, because I am vain and neurotic and constantly seek the approval of others. Why the fuck do you think I have this blog?

So, you'd think the fact they said 'Ohhmygodthisissonice!' is a good sign, which will lead to them buying the card and paying me with cash money for a card with a cute kitty and rainbows on it, right? You're so innocent. 

Hyena girls: 'How much is this card?'

Me (aka dark mass of seething hatred for humanity, but still with a smile on my face): 'They're £1 each.'

Hyena girls (faces fall, eyebrows rise): 'Oh' (puts card down, exit stage left).

Why does this piss me off? Because the same thing happens so often - like card, exclaim loudly, ask price, don't want to buy card anymore.

Dudes, I know £1 for a postcard is about 70 pence more than a postcard of the London Eye, and I'm not about forcing people to buy my shit (I don't even like trying to make small talk with potential customers cos I always think they'll think I'm just trying to sell them stuff. It's also why I prefer to hide behind a huge stand instead of standing in front of my stall). BUT, you obviously like it, and I know because you said to your friend 'I really like this card' or 'Ohhmygodthisissonice!' or something else very similar, with some variations. 

But come on, out of all the money you spent at Brick Lane that day, my postcard isn't worth £1 to you? How much do you expect it for? 10p? Free? It costs me about 70p to produce each one, and after paying rent on my stall and bus fares and everything else, it's not like I'm even making any sort of profit from these cards. I'm just wanna get some fucking rainbow cats out there!

Now, I know that most people associate 'buying things from a market' with 'having to haggle for the best price', probably because some guidebooks told them to. But, the Tea Rooms is quite obviously NOT a flea market/ car boot sale situation. There's quite a bit of rent to pay, plus we have to spend hours making and/or searching for the items we sell, then cleaning them, often researching their history, and ferrying them to and from the stall. Even if we do make any sort of profit at the end of a weekend, it may simply mean we're making 50p an hour. That's waaaaaayy lower than minimum wage. 

So if we ask you for £10 for that framed print, it's not like we're trying to rip you off. We're just trying to make the rent, and be able to keep doing this next week so you can gawk and bring your huge cameras here to capture some of that exciting (but not really) 'Brick Lane Atmosphere'. Will that measly £2 you've saved by haggling with us change your life in any way? Will you give it to charity, or even one of the homeless guys shambling around asking for change?

Another thing - I wonder if Home Counties Daddy dares ask the checkout chick at Waitrose what her 'best price' is when paying for his weekly groceries. Does his daughter go to H&M, pick up a blouse priced at £12.99, and then tells them she only wants to pay £7 for it? Somehow, I suspect they don't, because that would be so declassé of them. Obviously, we're not 'proper' shops though, and therefore our prices don't deserve any sort of respect. I wonder if they ask the manager at their local Barbour outlet (is there such a thing as a Barbour outlet?)  for a discount? 

If you're going to say 'But the customer is always right', then don't say it to me, because lucky you, it's very likely you've been fortunate enough never to have been on the retail front-line. If however, you want to send me stories of stupid/annoying customers you've encountered, then I'd love to hear them. Okay, rant ends, now. Thanks for putting up with this incoherent stream of rage, but I do feel slightly better now. 

Bleeding Ghoulies

While the cool kids were out trick-or-treating this past Saturday night, I was holed up in my kitchen, cackling in glee as I knelt in front of the oven. The reason? I was waiting for my little ghosties and jack-o'-lantern cakes to come out so I could devour them. (But the real reason is that I'm way too uncool to be invited to any Halloween parties, and I suffer from acute social phobia.)

These little cakes are an homage to the Satan cakes Googy and I used to bake while we lived in the Pony Club - so named because they were devilishly delish. They're gooey chocolate cakes with a spoonful of Nutella hidden in the middle, and a far cry from the sickly, vapid fairy cakes supermarkets tend to offer. 

I've been sworn unto death not to reveal the secret of Satan cakes, though, and these ghoulish cakes were the result of me throwing some ingredients together, so I haven't got a recipe for you. What this post is, instead, is a kind of 'how-to assemble your own bleeding ghostie cake'. 

The silicon ghost and jack-'o-lantern moulds came from Sainsburys, but it's not a big deal if you can't find them. You can always bake them as regular cupcakes, then draw scary faces on afterwards.

You'll need:

Ghost/ Jack-o'-lantern silicon moulds (if you can find them)

or

Cupcake liners

Your favourite chocolate cake recipe

Your favourite red jam (I used a raspberry conserve)

100gm white chocolate

50ml milk (I used vanilla-flavoured soy milk*)

1. Preheat your oven if needed, and grease the silicon moulds. Make up the chocolate cake batter.

2. Drop a couple of tablespoons of cake batter into each mould, then add a teaspoon (or 2) of jam on top. Add more cake batter until each mould is about 3/4 full.

3. Bake for time required. Remove cakes from moulds and let them cool.

4. Once cool, start preparing the white chocolate ganache for the top. Finely chop up the white chocolate, place it into a heatproof bowl and heat up the milk. Pour the milk over the white chocolate and stir until you get a smooth, homogeneous mixture. Pour or drizzle the mixture over each cake, leaving a thin layer of ganache on top. 

5. Try and wait til the chocolate cools before eating. Watch as they magically disappear into your tummy! Spooky!

*The combination of white chocolate and vanilla-flavoured soy milk makes the ganache taste like condensed milk. I'm a fan. 

Buttons!

Went over to A's flat on the weekend, and came home with these! This is only about half of what was in the bag. They were coated in a weird brown gunk, so I spent ages washing them off, but still, whatever - it's a bag of buttons!

Old Cold

Since it's getting colder now (and I'm taking a break from sitting on a freezing floor cutting out fabric) here are some photos from last winter. 

 Thai takeaway +  Caddyshack on in the background = A great night in.