Moving, just keep moving...

I don't even like that song. Sorry if I have now earwormed you.

Just to say that I am moving to wordpress for no particular reason.

Twitter promised me that it would be better.

I blame @MmeLindor in particular

Weeeeeeeekeeeeeends

Oh how I love a bit of pottering. A bit of not-going-anywhere-ness. I've been deprived of a real weekend for the past 3 weeks by having to do stuff.

Okay, so it was in theory nice stuff (going to a wedding, away for the weekend, hosting a party) but it wasn't very weekendy. "Weekendy" means not setting an alarm. It means looking at the clock when you wake up and thinking "I could get up, or I could not". Weekendy means drinking coffee in pyjamas. It means doing everything quite slowly. It means spending time contemplating the next cup of coffee or picking a tomato from the plant or watering the chillies or maybe even putting a wash on. Weekendy is not about not doing chores, it's about doing them in a leisurely manner with no feeling of rush.

So here's my weekendy day today. Feel free to call it boring, or to bitch about my laziness in an envious manner. Perhaps you are the sort of person for whom getting up late equals "wasting the day". Fair enough, I say. Some people like to play football, or crochet, or research their ancestors online, or bake cupcakes with 3 inches of perfectly-sculpted icing. I like to get up late and mess about on the internet before getting dressed. I don't criticise your hobbies so leave me in peace with mine.

A note: I hate the word "hobbies". Why should people have hobbies, and what is it about some activities that they are promoted to the status of "hobby" whilst other activities (mostly things that I like to do) are referred to as just "doing stuff" or occasionally "doing nothing"?

My proper weekendy day so far has included:

• wake up lateish
• make coffee
• potter about in kitchen tidying things while coffee brews
• drink coffee while looking at internet
• go back to kitchen for more coffee, look at recipe book regarding dinner tonight
• drink more coffee while reading paper (yesterday's - remember I'm not dressed yet)
• shower and dress
• cut labels out of new top - who puts white labels in a black top anyway?
• look at chilli plants - be pleased that some chillies are turning red
• make brunch, or whatever it is that you call a meal eaten at lunchtime on a Sunday that serves for breakfast and lunch
• look at paper while eating
• come and mess about on internet some more
• write blog

That's it. It's 2pm now and that sounds like a lot of stuff to me.

I know the internet likes pictures of food, so I'll tell you that breakfast was a bit like this

That's not the actual picture, the one today had mushrooms as well, but I wanted to eat it and didn't take a picture. What you see above is black beans/chorizo/tomatoes with scrambled egg on a tortilla. It's my approximation of huevos rancheros.

The recipe I was looking at for dinner tonight is this

That's Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food - chicken with parmesan and "posh ham".

Mmmm. Posh ham.

Anyway, I've got a bit more pottering to do. Enjoy your weekend.

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This post inspired by my friend's new blog on which she is posting all the bloody time. Be nice to her, she's very pregnant.

Not your usual party preparations...

We've having a party tomorrow.

Not a dinner party, not a soiree, just a good old-fashioned booze-up.

The homebrew has been brewing for a few weeks now (it's nice, I promise), a big grocery delivery made up of mostly bottles came this morning, and do you know what I did on my lunchbreak today? I made soup.

Soup. Not very rock and roll, is it? Not exactly debauched. It doesn't scream "P-A-R-T....Y? Cos I gotta"

There's no excuse for that picture, it's just that I've been told some people hate blogs without pictures, and I wanted to illustrate the quote. I used to really like Ace Ventura when I was younger. Then I grew up. Now I only like Jim Carrey when he's not being Jim Carrey (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is great).

In fact, I'm so grownup that I make soup when planning a party. It stems from university days, eating in halls and encouraging friends to load up with carbs and stodge to avoid "throwing plums" later. (I may tell you that story another time). So now when we have large drinking planned, and friends visiting from afar who will arrive early, I make soup.

Here is my soup. It's very simple.

Roughly cut up some leeks and some garlic, fry in a bit of oil. No onion. If you add onion it will taste of onion and not leek, and since leeks are more expensive than onions if you have bothered buying them you should really try to be able to taste them in the end product.

This looks ok.

Then you add one big potato chopped up roughly, some water or stock (or water with a stock cube in like a normal person), a parmesan rind if you have one kicking about, and boil it for a bit.

This is less attractive.

When everything's soft you do the blendy thing. I prefer to let it cool for a bit (less chance of boiling-hot spatter) and whizz it up with a hand blender. Mine was about £6 for Argos. It's not important.

 Now this looks more like soup.

Add salt/pepper/some cream or something. I had creme fraiche in the fridge so stuck in some of that.

Eat with bread/cheese/ham and be pleased that your stomach is now lined and you can embark on the drinking.

I would have laid out the cheese/ham/bread/soup all nicely, but we're not eating it til tomorrow so instead here is a picture showing you that the loaf of bread is bigger than my computer.

Optimism and commuting

"Commuting won't be that bad, I'll have all this TIME, I can do productive things on the train and I'll be SO well-read".

Not sure that writing a blog counts as productive exactly, but it'll be a step in the right direction from sitting and reading easy books because my brain needs a rest.

So here we are, on the train, with a seat and everything. I still haven't worked up to getting out my laptop but that's ok because it doesn't have Internet. Either tethering to iPhones cannot be done or it can be done with difficulty - either way I am not doing it. In consequence I am typing this from my iPhone, which likes to capitalise itself and also the word Internet. My typos are likely to be of similar frequency but with higher amusement value. Damnyouautocorrect shows predominantly iPhone screens for a good reason.

The woman sat next to me is writing code. On her laptop. On her actual lap. Whilst travelling backwards on a train that goes through ear-crushing tunnels that make you feel as if you are underwater. She is a hero. I don't envy her the feeling of "must keep working", but o do envy the cool with which she undertakes intellectually taxing tasks in a decidedly suboptimal environment.

The man opposite me is fiddling with his phone. Work emails? Perhaps. He is wearing office gear. Organising a stag weekend? Maybe. He's about the right age that a lot of his friends might be tying the knot. Some kind of game? If it is then it's a slow one, not a virtual button-masher. I won't know unless I ask him, which I am
Not going to do.

The woman in the 4th seat is more intriguing. She is doing nothing at all. Her only entertainment is inside her head. No book, no computer, no mobile device, no music, not even a crappy free newspaper. She states ahead, slightly to the right and down. Her face looks sad but so do most faces when their owners are focused inwards. I'd look sad if I were on a train with no book to read, but I would BE sad if I were on a train with no book to read.

I long ago reached the point where my phone refused to show me what I was typing and instead displayed about 2 paragraphs above. Good handling of text boxes there Apple! So I will see how ridiculously short this is. And try to load up some Twitter for entertainment.

Adventures with poached eggs (part 2)

Part 1 is here

Oh yes you lucky people, you get to read more about the excitement that is poached eggs, "the most difficult of ALL eggs to cook. FACT." (so says the comment).

Today is the test of the second method for making poached eggs. I say method, but really it's no method at all. Put eggs in hot water (no typhoon this time) wait til they look cooked, take them out again.

So let's do it.

Here they are, two eggs in a pan. Yes, this is the selling point of method 2 - you can cook more than one egg at a time.

They're looking a bit foofy though aren't they? Don't you think? A little bit less cohesive than might be preferred?

Hey look, another picture that looks exactly the same. Sorry. The point was going to be that the eggs began to rise up in the pan.

Here is one on the way out of the pan

 And here they are looking pretty on the plate. Not too bad eh?

Method #2
Pros

• You can cook more than one at a time
• You get an edible egg (or two)

Cons

• Much more egg left in the pan, where the white decided to go all airy-fairy
• Actually is that even a con?
• Better yolk: white ratio

In conclusion - do it like this, the typhoon is fun but I am hungrier than 1-egg-at-a-time.

Hangover

I was going to write something today. It may even have been poached eggs part 2. But instead I am sitting on the sofa in pain (a smaller amount of pain than earlier, but still some pain).

Am I getting old? Or is it just that I have gotten used to a better quality of booze?

I'd like to blame the cheap wine drunk in a field by a river, and the even cheaper lager than followed it.

I am too old for this shit. From now on I must imbibe only high-quality beverages.
I need gin and tonics and locally-sourced ale and perhaps some champagne. Actually I am not a champagne snob, cava or prosecco or nice English or New Zealand sparkling is fine too. This is very nice, although if you offered me a nicely-chilled glass of it right now I might have to say no.

Yes, that's definitely more like it.



So... hangover cures. No raw eggs here, and no magic, what you need is a good dose of each of the following:

• water (or any liquid)
• caffeine
• salt
• sugar
• painkillers (this won't cure anything, it'll just make life more bearable while the other ingredients do their work)

In the meantime, think pleasant thoughts - this can be aided by a look at the lovely website Tea and Kittens.

Aaaah.

Adventures with poached eggs

Finding myself with more time than usual to have breakfast this morning I decided to do something a little more exciting. Not exciting in a strict culinary manner, but something with a sense of danger.

I decided to make a poached egg.

This may not sounds dangerous to you, but think for a second. You are boiling an egg without the shell. There's nothing to keep it together. You could just end up with slightly eggy water. That wouldn't be very tasty. It'd be a pain to clean up too.

So here we go. Living life on the edge. Making a poached egg. Rock and roll.

There is conflicting advice on how to go about this, but one of the stop suggestions is to get the water to nearly-boiling and stir it very very fast until you have a vortex of water that will keep the egg in the middle.

Oh no! It's going all over the place! The vortex is not pulling the egg into the centre but instead spreading it everywhere.

But wait... the egg slowly brings itself together. I'm not sure this is anything to do with the swirling water or if eggs just have special egg-magnetic properties.

Here it is. Sorry for the blurriness, that'll be steam. It actually looks like a poached egg! Success!

So in conclusion, swirly stirry water method.

• Pros:
• you get an egg to eat
• it looks like a poached egg

• Cons:
• the FEAR
• only one egg per pan, could get tiresome

Mmm, yellow