Oven gripe, but eventual cake.

So far I appear to be having baking disasters in the new house. The first time I made the lemon cake in our new oven, the wretched device burnt the bottom. Grr. That's what you get with a gas oven, I guess - much harder to predict, especially if you're used to the even cooking of an electric fan oven. But this is an odd thing anyway - all the gas ovens I've seen before have the heat source low down at the back of the cavity, along the line where the back of the oven joins the base of it. In this one, the heat is in a strip along the centre of the floor of the oven, running from front to back. That means that the heat rises straight up, making the base of whatever you put in very hot indeed. With the heat at the back you generate a circular convection current, meaning that whatever you put into the middle of the oven has heat going all around it instead of being fired from one directino all the time. Of course you're going to cook the side of whatever it is near the back of the oven faster, but you can easily turn it around to get it cooked evenly. It's not like I can flip a cake over to cook the top of it as much as the bottom, or like I can very easily protect the bottom from getting scorched with tin foil or whatever. I had intended to test whether or not it would be possible to shield the bottom or at least spread the heat a bit by putting any trays I can find between the heat source and my cake tin, but a whole OTHER disaster happened after that.

The oven stopped working altogether. ARG.

Of course, I found out it had stopped working as I opened the door to put a trayful of careful prepped raspberry fairy cakes in it. Grr. It was always dodgy to light, but I'd got that figured out - it just needs quite a large volume of gas running through it before it will consent to ignite - you just have to hold your nerve... It has a heat switch like many gas appliances do, whereby you have to keep your finger on the button for a few seconds after ignition until some heat has been generated, otherwise the gas shuts off. The idea is that if the flame goes out, the jet won't keep pumping gas into your kitchen creating a potentially lethal fire hazard. All well and good. But that switch doesn't seem to be registering heat now - however long you keep your finger on the dial, when you take it off the gas shuts off and your oven goes out. This makes baking fairy cakes impossible. Eleanor and I ended up in the car clutching bowls of cake mixture in a variety of hues and driving across town to bake them in John and Will's oven. We cleaned their kitchen in payment, and Will's in Japan in any case, but it WAS annoying. Landlord has been contacted.

Don't get me started on the fact that the shower has burst a pipe.

At least we got the boiler fixed and we can have baths with hot water instead...






















Raspberry cupcakes
6oz caster sugar
6oz soft butter (it was warm enough on Saturday that I kept having to freeze the butter so that it didn't just run away!)
3 eggs, separated
6oz plain flour
2 scant tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
12oz (300g) raspberries - fresh or frozen (one third of these will go in the icing, but it all needs making into puree)

Icing (this is for my favourite blue smiley face cakes)
100g plain white fondant
Few drops blue food colouring
2oz soft butter
4oz icing sugar
A small quantity of jam
More icing sugar for dusting

Also - one oven (that works) preheated to 200 degrees centigrade and a 12 hole deep muffin tin and corresponding papercases.

First make the raspberry puree. This is easier in the microwave, especially if you're using frozen berries. In a heatproof bowl, heat the raspberries until they turn mushy - try not to boil them. You can do it in a pan, too. When everything is liquid, run it through a sieve and put the resulting puree in a pan. Boil to reduce by half. This now needs to cool - I just put it in a cold bowl and stirred it while my lovely assistant made the rest of the batter. You could (shock) plan in advance and leave this to cool properly. Try not to eat it all on yoghurt - this is a problem I regularly suffer from when faced with raspberry puree.

To make the cakes, beat together the sugar and the butter with an electric beater, or a wooden spoon if you have more energy than that. Beat in the egg yolks. Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually beat in two thirds of the raspberry puree. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites to the soft peak stage. Take one spoonful of the eggs whites and stir it into the rest of the batter to loosen it, and then fold in the rest of the whites.

Divide the batter between your twelve muffin tins - they should be full to within about 1cm from the top.

Check your oven is still working. If it is*, bake the cakes for 12 or so minutes, until lightly browned and cooked through. They'll be a wonderful pinky purply colour. Test with a cocktail stick.

While the cakes cool, make the icing. Beat together 2oz of sifted icing sugar with 2 oz of soft butter. Drip in about 2tsps of the reserved raspberry puree and beat again. Continue adding raspberry puree until abotu half of what was left has been added, and then beat in the remaining sugar. The rest of the puree you can pour over yoghurt or eat with a spoon...

If you are lucky and have a chef girlfriend, you might have piping tips lying about somewhere along with some disposable piping bags. If not, you can roll up a cone of greaseproof to use, or cut the corner off a square sandwich bag. Whatever your medium, fill it with the pink goo and put to one side.

Mash together the fondant with the blue colouring until a uniform baby blue colour.

Heat a tablespoonful of jam and then run it through a sieve so it's smooth. Brush the top of each cake with this to act as glue.

When the cakes are cool, dust your work surface with icing sugar and roll out the fondant to a couple of millimetres thick. Cut circles using a glass or a biscuit cutter, and stick these to the cakes. Pipe your chosen designs on top, then leave to dry before eating.

By this point on Saturday, housewarming party guests started arriving, and I'd done *NO* cleaning. Such is life... They didn't seem to mind that much, there were cupcakes...

*If it's not, round up one friend, ring up another one (waking him up in the process) and ask in a state of fluster if you can come round and use his oven. Drive all the way across town and bake your cakes there, drive back, making the friend you took with you late for her lunch date... *sigh*.

Chicken noodle soup

Chicken noodle soup (two portions)
Stock
Some chicken bones - buy legs and bone them if you don't fancy boning a whole chicken (a whole bird is a faff...legs, you just hack the bones out of the middle of the meat - neatness isn't required!). You can buy bags of wingtips for stock in butchers sometimes, you just need to ask. Or you could roast a chicken or a couple of legs one day and eat most of the meat, and then use the bones and the remains of the meat for this.
A piece of ginger the volume of your two thumbs, roughly chopped
2 star anise
Handful of peppercorns
1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tsp red chilli flakes (I ALWAYS add more than that, but I like it hot...)
Juice 2 limes - keep the juice to finish the soup, and the shell of one goes in the stock
Other things that sound good - I add a dried lime and dried mushrooms because I have them around

Things to go in it
Enough of your favourite sort of chinese noodles for 2
around 350-400g of mushrooms (whatever two portions looks like to you), quartered or chopped into bitesize but not small pieces
Two heads of pak choi, or maybe one head of chinese leaf, or two big handfuls of spinach leaves - something green and leaf, chopped in such a way as to make portions.
6 spring onions (scallions) sliced finely
Tsp honey
50ml soy sauce
sprinkling of sesame oil and sweet shilli sauce to serve
cooked chicken meat if you want it (i usually don't, because I'm being frugal!) - you can poach it in the stock.

OR, new thought, buy commercial chicken stock! Buy the fresh stuff, and organic if you can. Cubes...not when you're ill. About 750ml? I've not tried this way so you may need more

Commercial stock version: throw your chicken stock in a pan and add the same quantity of water. Throw in the stock ingredients EXCEPT the bones and simmer gently for 2 hours. It'll smell ace. Strain the liquid. You're probably aiming for about 750ml of liquid left, so if there's more boil hard to reduce it.

Bones version: Throw the chicken bones and the rest of the stock ingredients into a big pan. Cover with water - around 2 litres. Bring to the boil and simmer for as long as you have time for in an evening - ideally as much as 6 hours. I never have time for that. 3.5-4 is fine. Leave to cool with the bits in and then strain just before you make the soup. There will be clear fat on the top and it looks horrid, I promise it tastes good! When you're going to start the soup, boil to reduce to around 750ml.

When you're ready to eat your food, heat up the stock. Heat some oil in a wok and throw in the mushrooms and half the scallions. Stir fry until nearly cooked and throw in the greens. Taste the stock and add the soy, lime and sesame to taste. Add some soy, lime and sesame to the mushrooms with the honey. When the veg is done, put your noodles into the stock to cook.

When THEY are cooked, heap the veg and noodles into bowls and pour the stock over the top. Add sweet chilli as you eat.

I'm sure it's not authentic, but it tastes good. And you'll get very messy eating it.

Eureka moment.

The picture came from this post on the 101 Cookbooks blog - which I literally started following today. Can't believe I hadn't looked it up before, I *HAVE* heard of it, many times. It looks like a cracker.

But I wanted to have this picture somewhere. If I ever do the opening-some-sort-of-eatery thing, then I want to have those plates and that cutlery in it. Colours and rustic and interesting, but not busy. I just wanted them there...

Gah. I tried to post a comment on that post checking for permission to re-publish. Couldn't find a contact. However. I HAVE linked back to the website...

Cacophony.

I love this time of year. Summer is still a thrilling concept - we aren't bleached and wrung out by it yet. There's still a coolness in the nights that means you can sleep, but you don't need extra layers. Getting out of the shower doesn't mean speed-dressing as close to the radiator as possible, but you haven't reached the point where a cold shower every 8 hours is an absolute necessity.

I love the way it smells, too. It reminds me a bit of India, but only because smells seem so much more pungent in warm air. (Actually, I think that might be an Actual Fact, or nearly - something about speed of diffusion.( I was cycling around the city this evening at breakneck speed to catch up with the Van of Stuff, enjoying the way the scents changed with neighbourhoods in between willing my bike to change gear and not drop its chain or its pedals or anything like that.

Where I live, there were barbecues. Charred meats and hot fat spitting into charcoal. The difference between steak and sausages discernible. I was starving, too, that's partly why I noticed. Down near our new house there are large communities of Chinese and Indian people, and the smells change. Curry, of many sorts, interspersed still with barbecues - sometimes also Indian-flavoured. Odd to pick out the scents of a western meal in that setting, actually. There's the river with its own smell, and the diesel smell of buses that I kind of like in a perverse way. In a brief period of calm, the clean smells of the launderette and a tanning salon permeated through the food odours. Late, on the way back through town and up the hill to home-for-tonight, the pubs were full and spilling into the warm night. As you go past the door, apart from the thumping music, you are assailed by the cloying smells of sticky alcoholic drinks, cigarette smoke, cheap aftershave and sweat. It's odd that that isn't really off-putting - it's just an indication of what a place is.

And home, at last, there's the smell of me. I stink. I've been chasing about all evening doing things that make me sweat. Bleugh. I need to peel off the clothing and shower. Then I shall smell of soap, rather than fading deodorant and ick, and this will be better. But the smell of me tells me that I did work and can be satisfied with myself for that. Not that I recommend house-moving as the ideal get-fit activity - I suspect it only works for me, and even then I'm not sure it counts....

Shift.

I'm looking forward to this house. I only recall looking forward to moving house once before, and that was in similar circumstances, in a way. That's saying something - I moved 5 times within one city in one year, last year, and moved twice at least in the year before, between three cities. Some might say I lack stability, or am flighty, or get bored easily. Those might all be true, but they aren't really the reasons I had to move. A catalogue of unfortunate circumstances, for the most part. This year is going to involve some moving too, but I'm excited about all of it.

This time around, I'm going to a place with two of my favourite people in the world. We're all going together, at the same time. That's important, it gives us equality. We're going to a pretty house, with the nicest landlord I've ever come across, in one of my favourite areas of town. We were fussy about what we wanted and we got it more or less exactly - up to and including having the rats living on the property with us. We have two big bedrooms, a decent living space and a garden. AND it's summer.

Next move will, with any luck, be to London. There will probably be a hiatus in St Albans, but still. LONDON. I've lived on the edge all of my life, and so much of the world goes on there, and I'm so looking forward to it.

Moving is usually hard work and seems to get me nowhere. Shifting restlessness with no purpose. I have a purpose now. I'm happy.

A different sort of post.

Or one more diary-like than they've been of late. I have new poetry books on order - gushy thoughts on Carol Ann Duffy will resume shortly. And I'll probably re-visit lemonade and get summer-food excited. I'll even try and remember to take photos of it...

T and I and various assorted others went to the Cambridge Beer Festival yesterday (I drank cider). It was a wonderful evening of random drop-ins - we were the centre of a small group of wanderers from all areas of my Cambridge existence. GSM people came, a few ADC types were about (including some we hadn't planned to see), Matt the director of the the play he stitched me into producing dropped by, Carl was there, and even Linda from the college chapel set. Even a kind of vicarious family element, though that definitely doesn't count. I had to keep double-taking to keep track of it, and drifted around the circle trying to make sure that everyone had someone to talk to, because in a lot of cases they either knew me a lot better than they knew one another or often were only in the same group because of me. Linda spent a long time explaining spider reproduction to Marion (whom she'd never met), and bonding with Matt over the fact that they both have connections to the zoology department. Leave Linda in any situation and she will proceed to gross out everybody with Bugs. I love Linda.* Carl found someone he'd lived with in his second year of uni in a city 200 miles away to chat to. The attractions of a beer festival break down great disparities. It was a little confusing, and a little stressful because of it. We left before it got too late. T had been on breakfast and I had to be on top of a tower wearing a cassock at *7:15* this morning (more later).

It was a beautiful evening still when we made it home, not too hot or too cold or anything. Hopefully it promises more to come, but I don't gamble when we're talking British weather. We went to sit on the garden wall for a bit. And then there was a hedgehog.

More or less totally unconcerned that we were there, it came bumbling through the fence and snuffling through the undergrowth. It was full dark by that point, no moon, barely any light seeping around the blinds from Will's film inside. Just glimmer enough that it was possible to follow the creature's progress by means of an occasional glimpse of a waddling body on the grass, but it was quiet enough that we could hear it. Listening to it eat was hilarious - so much relish from the little animal. It was chompchompchomplipsmackpotterslurp for a good ten minutes, getting nearer and nearer to T's foot on the lawn. Both of us were still as stones, craning towards it and straining our eyes in dimness to see what it was up to, wondering if it would actually get close enough to touch Traci's shoe (it didn't). When it began to move up the garden towards a bush at the back, I crept inside to fetch Will to show him, but though we could still hear it, it didn't come back from under the bush and it left our patch via the back fence.

But a HEDGEHOG. I like hedgehogs. I like the way they move and the expressions on their faces and their attitude. I don't often see them though; in Cornwall I suspect they're either out-competed by the badgers, of which there are many, or just scared of the dogs, or both. And tiredness and tense and awkward social situations melted into our watching of a wild thing enjoying itself. No deadlines, no nothing. Not long awake from a winter sleep and enjoying a spring glut of fat worms and bugs. No concerns beyond dinner.

I like how even in a city there are still so many bits of things that are natural that hit you if you look. People say that city-dwellers have no idea about the seasons because they never see the plants. But there are hedgehogs and foxes (currently irritating a houseful of London friends of mine) and birds and the odd growing thing and all sorts, and there is the colour of the sky and the weather - it still has an impact.

I wasn't really a country kid, in that nobody in my family farms or raises food animals or manages forests or anything of that sort, but I did grow up in a village. I can milk a cow, believe it or not, though I wouldn't like to be challenged to. But city kids get taken to farms to do that, now, so they can too. I think they probably don't see much of the fields or what goes into them or comes out of them and how things grow, though. Not in a field-wide sense. Not a whole crop, just a bean at school, unless someone has an allotment or a vegetable patch. My mum did and does have a vegetable patch, and she supplements it with ducks now. The llamas still serve no useful function. But I had a childhood spent climbing on rusting tractor hulks, chasing rabbits with my dog, and picking blackberries - until I was 11 anyway, and I loved it. I then spent years living in a city, and got used to the idea of streets of houses and postage-stamp gardens and shops that weren't an event to go to. I know I'm lucky to have had that upbringing - not many kids do these days. But the thing I like most is that it has left me with the ability to have just a small handle on how things the natural world fits together, and how our and everybody's lives are affected by seasonality in a way that it must be difficult to grasp in quite the same way if you've never been that close to the countryside. And it is that slightly closer bond that makes me want to respect it enough not to eat meat that hasn't at least seen daylight and been able to stretch its legs a bit, and to try my best to make choices that have as little impact as possible. I'm not there yet, but I try, and it's got to be a start...

I felt that feeling again this morning. The adults were down to sing the Ascension Day service from the top of the GSM tower at Frightening AM today. I think the last time I got up before 6:30 it was winter - so that time actually felt like dawn, with greyness and mists and sunrise. We're edging on to summer here now, so the sun is well and truly awake at 7am, which was when I left the house. I was slightly disappointed not to be privy to that secret dawn...I like that time of day, though definitely not more than sleep. I can see the season changing, though, and that's ace. On top of the tower today it was a little hazy still from spring dampness, but you could see Ely Cathedral on the horizon 15 miles away - 'the ship of the Fens'. Cambridgeshire is SO flat...

I like that I'm not attached to academic years any more. They create artificial breaks in the progression of the year. Christmas and Easter do that, to a certain extent, too, but they're less intrusive and regimented than the three terms, three holidays arrangement that we use to order our years. I like that I can sink into something more natural, rather than trying all the time to break the year into shorter segments. That just results in feeling like a failure when you miss a deadline that was set with no regard for what the task is and your personal work speed.

And I don't have to watch the end approaching with the same finality that you do with the end of the term, the end of the year, the end of school, the end of university...and there is life beyond whatever the deadline is because the months and the years keep going and don't stop because you've reached a certain milestone. Dates are only a way of talking about time - in themselves they shouldn't be deadlines on their own account. There shouldn't be exams 'just because it's summer'. A couple of college friends have said to me that they always feel guilty if they're in Cambridge in the summer - they should be revising, that's what May means. No. All that May means is that the sun will be edging its way out a bit and that the peas have sprouted. All. Exams are not seasonal. They have nothing to do with the sun and the weather and the natural order of things. There are still deadlines, because otherwise there is no way of functioning, but they are more fluid and less metallic. They move with not against the flow of the year.

*She is actually ace. Used to date a housemate of mine, who made his own mead and shoes and spend a lot of time dressed as a Viking and talking in dead languages.

Repetitive.

It's amazing, music. How a single song will take you somewhere you never imagined you could remember that clearly.

'Graceland', and my stomach is knotting that I won't see her again, that she's gone. Until I remember she hasn't, and I can just feel the intensity of that original emotion still there and squirming.

'Blessed be the God and Father' and I'm 10 in the choir stalls in Ashwell. 'Lead me Lord' and I'm a similar age, in my cabin bed with my dad singing me to sleep.

'Walking in Memphis' and I'm in a sunny room in an ancient college, watching someone sing his heart out for the love of it, with one of my best friends in the whole world ever playing the piano and enjoying it just as much.

'The Sunscreen Song' and I'm 14 in an RE class, watching the eyes of one of the most short-lived but influential teachers I ever had as he played it to us at the request of a girl whose presence shaped my teens, albeit indirectly.

'I don't know how to love him' and I'm 17 or so, on stage and singing it wrong.

'Living on a prayer' and I'm 16 walking along a street in Melbourne with 4 other girls dressed in tracksuits (lacrosse tour), singing at the tops of our gravelly hungover voices.

'I will survive' and I'm in a hotel on the Isle of Wight, aged 9 again, fighting with the girls I shared a room with that trip. Or I'm in the kitchen in St Albans, shouting at my dad while the TV plays the Weetabix ad version of the song, about alligator dentistry.

Bellowhead's 'Prickle-Eye Bush' and I'm in a car with T and singing because we've listened to the song so many times we know it by heart.

'Canonball' (Damien Rice) and Andy's playing it next door. Or I'm crying, from a far earlier moment - that passed, and is now important for something not sad.

Eel's 'I like Birds' and I'm sitting with Dan and Steve in that funny flat with two presences so different but related and definitely faded a little now.

How many times will it strike me? I love that music has this kind of effect. I should write a real post, or finish a poem, or both... A list of songs and moments is not really worth public consumption, except for those who might remember the same moments. I must take more photos.

The Best Brownies Ever

These are based on a Nigel Slater recipe, with my edits.


250g soft butter (who has soft butter? Throw in microwave on defrost for 30s or so works...)
60g best quality cocoa
60g flour
300g caster sugar
3 large eggs + one extra egg yolk
½ tsp baking powder
250g best quality dark chocolate
¼ tsp each of the following:
- ground allspice
- ground cinnamon
- ground nutmeg
- cayenne pepper (or, if you can find it, ground ancho chilli powder – it’s MUCH milder. The cayenne will make these warm)
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Line a small roasting tin (around 20cm by 30 cm) with greaseproof paper. Break up 200g of the chocolate into squares and melt in the microwave – the recommended method is to heat for 30s, stir, and heat again until nearly all liquid. Overheating it is Bad. Chop the other 50g into gravel-sized pieces.

Beat together the butter and the sugar until light and creamy, and then beat in the melted chocolate and vanilla extract. Beat in the eggs one at a time, and then sift in the flour, cocoa and spices, baking powder and salt. Stir in the remaining chocolate and scrape into a tin. Try not to save TOO much to eat raw – the flavour of the spices is EVEN BETTER in the cooked version.

Bake for no longer than 25 minutes. It should still be soft in the middle, though not actually raw. A bit of gooeyness is important…

Leave to cool in the tin, until completely cold. They fall apart if you try and get them out when they’re straight out of the oven.

Lemon cake.

If I was going to do the food blog thing properly, I'd have to start taking photos of things as I cook them. I'd have to get into food styling. I don't really do styling with my food. A heap on a plate is usually what I'm after. I KNOW that the Japanese say 'you eat first with your eyes', but I disagree. You eat first with your NOSE, and THEN your eyes. One day maybe I'll get time enough to think about how things look on the plate, but my dinner parties are always more low key affairs than that.

In the food blog spirit, I'm posting a recipe or two that I keep cooking for work and that people often ask for. I have just trawled through the archives and am slightly perturbed that I never posted the lemon cake recipe. Gah. So. Here it is.

8 oz butter
8 oz self-raising flour
8+2oz light brown sugar
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
2 lemons

Preheat the oven to 200ºC and line an ordinary roasting tin (around 35cm by 25cm) with greaseproof paper. In a pan on the hob, gently melt the butter and 8 oz of the sugar together. When melted, remove from the heat and grate in the zest of the lemons. (The purpose of doing things in this order is to allow the mixture to cool a bit before you add the eggs.) With a whisk, beat in the eggs and then the flour, salt and baking powder. Bake in the preheated oven for around 20 minutes, until golden brown and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

In the meantime, heat together the juice of the lemons and the remaining 2 oz of sugar until dissolved. When the cake comes out of the oven, prick it all over with a fork and pour the drench all over, making sure you don’t miss the edges. Leave in the tin to cool completely (overnight), and then cut into squares. Eat within 24 hours… NB, the recipe can easily be halved, but it then relies on you having a 20x20cm tin, which nobody ever seems to have…

Clean slates and baglust.

I've been a bit useless. I think if I had a more regular life I'd be better at the blogging thing. I do enjoy it, but I haven't had a great deal of time recently. Not enough time to think about things deeply enough. I've written bits and pieces in my journal, but nothing very much on here. I haven't read a great deal that has excited me and I haven't had any great cultural experiences. Mostly, I've been eating, sleeping, spending time with people I love and making things for people I care about. I'm making Carl a cookery book for his birthday. His email asking for it went as follows:

Subject: For myyy birthdaaayyy

You can get me some sex! Not, you know, directly, but through referred
skill.

I cook, occasionally, and most of what could be deemed impressive
knowledge has come from you (eg, frying veg with cumin or chilli flakes,
veg chilli, ubercrispycake, frying salmon...). But I keep having to ask,
cause my filing system is flawed, so I think to save the frequent
lunchtime emails to you getting the information again, here's what you
could do:

If you write down in a hardback notebook or something the recipes for
things that suit my particular cooking limitations...
including all the stuff I should already know but probably have
simplified in my head to be not quite as good as they originally were...

So stuff like:
veg chilli,
ubercrispycake,
curry
fajitas

Anything else you can think of that's easy and doesn't take too long
(cause it'll take me twice as long as you) and can be carried out by
someone relatively clever but not at all good at multitasking and
generally mentally slowed by a day at work.

This will be an awesome thing you could do that no-one else can. :¬)

xx

...Carl

I can't work out whether this is a present for him or just him being nice to me. He DOES ask me for cooking things sometimes, and putting those things together in a good way is something I can do. I cook for and with him on a something approaching weekly basis [exciting aside: will be more often if we DO end up living together, but that's a whole other story...] - nothing very dramatic, just ordinary things that I like to eat, that fill me up and are reasonably healthy and (important) quite cheap. But I'm so flattered to be asked. I like that it means that Carl likes the food I cook, and the fact that he has gone so far as to ask me to write down my recipes so that he can use them himself has given me one huge warm fuzzy glow. For the record, the boy is a perfectly acceptable cook, he just doesn't really get excited about food in the same slightly obsessive way that I do. This is not a bad thing. Anyway. Thanks, Carl. :-)

I like making things that people enjoy eating and that I enjoy eating. Something of the mother in me, I guess. Or just something of the instant gratification of seeing people enjoying what I make. I love food, and I like to share things that excite me with my friends, so that they can be excited about it too. In reality, I don't know THAT many people that are excited by dried beans or peculiar Mexican herbs (at least ones that you can't smoke), but when I make them into things I like to think that people begin to see the point. And everyone can be excited by interesting sorts of chocolate and things you can do with that.

If I ask you if I can turn up at your house and cook you dinner, it really isn't me doing you the favour but me asking you for the favour. Just a warning, though, if I ever cook for you: I am possessive of my kitchen, even if it's your kitchen. I'm very, very bossy when it comes to cooking. Comes of caring about it, I guess. I'm better behaved than I used to be, which is a product of knowing more people who really care about cooking. If I'm in your kitchen getting in the way or genuinely being nagging or jumping to change things, REALLY don't feel bad about telling me to go next door and not get involved, or to attach me to the sink and the washing up by a short leash. That way, I can't annoy you by leaning over your shoulder and going 'I think it needs some chilli and lemon juice' (the two things I usually consider ANY dish to be in need of). Do not let me patronise you, I don't mean to, I just get over-enthusiastic.

I like the fact that I can cook something every day, so disasters get written over and I can forget about them and move on. Any cringeworthy mistakes can be anhilated with successes, or just by the sheer volume of non-disasters. This is important...I need to be able to overlay bad errors with better achievements. I'm dependent on past experiences for current self esteem. Does everyone have that? I'm fine provided the LAST thing I did, in any area of my life, wasn't one I'm ashamed of. There are many things in my life I'm ashamed of, but provided the LAST one in any given category went ok, then I'm ok. I'm stuck if the last thing in a category is the Last Thing, and I can't over-write it. THAT is the point when my self-esteem takes a permanent knock and I look to see if I can re-assign categories to overlap the one where I failed. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't. In food, I can. Always. I eat every day, and I cook meals for people regularly enough that I can overlay food memories. At least in MY head, which is what matters for this purpose.

Moral: Things that could be regarded as repetitive can be incredibly satisfying. It's probably a life lesson, if only for me.



In other news, I have developed an obsession with this bag. I want the green version* but it appears to be out of stock. There's an offer for the People Tree in this Guardian article. Such things are dangerous. I thoroughly approve of the People Tree. They make beautiful clothing (they even have and outlet via Topshop), and they have ethics I'd love to be able to afford to endorse more in my clothing shopping - fair trade and responsibly sourced from organic cotton. Everyone knows garment workers are some of the most poorly paid in the world, and cotton is one of the world's most chemically treated crops. Wikipedia says that it uses 'approximately 25% of the world's insecticides and 10% of the world's pesticides', which is more or less what I've heard elsewhere. So if possible, I'd like to support the People Tree. BUT, I can't afford to until after the end of the month (cars are very expensive things, this month). And I have a SEVERE case of baglust. BUT, even after the end of the month, I mostly need summer tops, not new bags. *sigh*. But all of my 3 readers, YOU should all go and look at the People Tree website and see what you think. I reckon they're close to the most affordable of the ethical clothing outlets out there, not that I've conducted exhaustive research, and they're doing an important job.


*I ALWAYS want the green version

She loves her bag.

If life was just about budgetting TIME, I'd be ok...

This article irritated me a little. The guy implies that it's a really difficult thing to do, to live on £10 a week. I grant that it's not THAT easy and that when I do my mental weekly sort-of budget calculations there are things that I automatically drop into the 'necessary' and 'luxury' categories.

Travel
# I don't have much in the way of transport costs, because I live close to work and I can get anywhere in the city on a bike in less that half an hour. I fill the car once a month, if that, and use it mostly for going to the supermarket or transporting tat around town. I have used a bus once in my entire time living in this city, as far as I remember - not a major fan. I have a bike. I like it. Even if it creaks. It costs me around £40 a year in parts and servicing, I reckon, maybe a little bit more. Literally, peanuts.


Food
# I cook for myself. I love food (shock) and I cooking is something I genuinely enjoy. Someone who didn't would find all of this harder. I reckon the only pre-prepared products I buy regularly that are more expensive to make than to buy are bread, pesto and bacon. I might solve the bread thing at some point, but that will be more because I want to be able to make good bread rather than for saving money reasons. I'm prepared to buy bread.
# I try and buy meat with bones in so that I can make stock from it, for soups and so on. I don't buy much meat, at that. A chorizo sausage will last me a few weeks, as will a packet of bacon. Chicken thighs or a whole chicken represent several meals. Vegetables and pulses are great. Veggie chilli. Veggie curry. Stew made with two portions of meat that will feed six at least because of the quantity of leeks in it. Refried beans with a tin of tomatoes stirred through for chilli for 3.
# I'm getting better at doing this properly - the feeding myself with food I like without spending a lot of money. Fewer meals involve pasta and pesto than they did at college or when I was 18. I LIKE pasta, pesto, peas and bacon/chorizo, though, so that tends to feature once a week on a day I'm in a hurry or have run out of whatever the main dish I made that week was. I'm sparing with the pesto and the bacon though...they make many portions.

Budgets
# I don't think in weeks, and I use the freezer. Is working by month cheating? Surely just better planning. I did a shop the other day that I hope will last me for two or three weeks, with milk top ups.
# I also share. £20 for two is much easier than £10 for one. It means £80 for a month for two of you.

Luxuries
# The glaring one for most people is booze. Or maybe it's that for me because I don't find going without alcohol most of the time I hardship. Any booze is a luxury. I usually have a bottle of whiskey or tequila/triple sec (for margaritas) around. I'm pretty certain I don't drink one of them a month though.

# Designating something 'luxury', and therefore allowing it to come out of a different area of budget is the problem bit. I tend to count more or less ANY meat in this category, and I do usually have SOME of that around in some form - even if it's a chorizo I use very sparingly that's in the back of the fridge. Exciting chillis. Unusual spices. Fresh herbs (that I haven't grown). Any booze, for me anyway. Good chocolate - I aim at one bar a week as a sort of staple that lives in the fridge at work, to prevent me going down to the café for stupidly expensive Wispas (mmm Wispas) with the other girls I work with. I do like to have it to cook with though - for hot chocolate, or brownies, or other baking. That's something else - baking. I have controlled myself a bit recently, but I DO love doing it. Not a necessity, but sometimes actually cheaper than having fruit for pudding.


Other
# And then there are things that aren't food. The toiletries and house stuff - they're just necessary. Having my car fixed is, too. [I'm waiting with nervousness to see how much it's going to cost me this time. Arg.] Presents for people. There are times when they are necessary, to show how you value a friendship. They don't have to be big things - thought is most of the point, but it's nigh on impossible to do without spending SOME money. As is going out once in a while with your mates. That's not actually a luxury, though it's only fair to everyone not to make it too much of an expensive obligation if inviting people out for dinner or whatever. We need each other, and we're only any good to one another if we see one another and know what's going on in each other's lives. So going to London to see that crowd or cooking dinner for Carl or others or going to the pub with the choir are important things to do. Carefully. As is buying my wonderful girlfriend chocolate or flowers or a beer or some badges or, this being Traci, some exciting chilli of some sort when she feels sad and it needs more than just a hug, or I'm looking for a NEW way to tell her I love her. Once in a while, things like that need to happen. Hard to budget for. I guess that's why we have savings, and instant access ones at that. Which is why savings have a massively important place in any budget. I must bump mine up...

A potato salad

Another one not to forget. I had a craving. Sometimes such things just happen. Loosely based around something Elaine's friend Mary made the first time I met her, in Belfast in May nearly a year ago.

For one-and-a-half, without much else:
- 6 or so thumb-sized baby new or charlotte potatoes
- 1 dessertspoonful of mayonnaise
- 1 smaller dessertspoonful of plain yoghurt
- A small half teaspoonful of green pesto
- 8 or so slices of pickled green jalapeños, finely chopped
- 3 teaspoons of capers (it would have been better if I could have got them just in brine or salt...mine had vinegar in too) - these would be the making of the salad if I'd got REALLY good ones...
- 1 inch of chorizo, cut into half centimetre dice (so that's a piece about the size of the top joint of my thumb)
- Black pepper
- a drop of olive oil

Boil the potatoes until cooked but still firm - unpeeled and uncut, so they don't get soggy. Meanwhile, mix the mayo, yoghurt, pesto, chillies, capers and black pepper. When the potatoes are nearly done, fry the chorizo bits in the oil until crispy and then add the whole contents of the pan to the rest of the dressing ingredients. Combine and taste. I find it unlikely you'll need salt, but you never know. When the potatoes are cooked, slice into bite-sized pieces. Use a few bits to mop up the chorizo oil in the pan (don't waste it!) and then add the still warm potato to the mayo mix. Stir to combine. Eat, with gusto.

She.

And I am more. Bigger. Stronger. Greater. Because of it. And it isn't air or puffed up fur like a pet wanting to look big. It is solid being, layering around me like the folds of an onion. And I am alive and brimming. Bursting with it.

But I am not one substance, any more. Not a pure element. An alloy. A pure one.

An excuse, language and gender theory and feminism. Sort of.

Sometimes work takes over. Not very often at present, I grant you, but sometimes. And things like laundry and cleaning require to be done. And photos, which haven't been attended to for months. They're not done yet - I need to find another evening or two to fiddle with them, but evenings are at a premium and it's not looking that likely, at least for the time being.

That's my excuses made, anyway.

Traci and I went to Ely on Sunday, because we had a free afternoon on a lovely day and it was nice to get out of Cambridge for a bit. Went to Evensong at the the Cathedral - now THAT is a fantastic building. The girls and men were doing Howell's Worcester Service, which I didn't know but knew I'd love (and did), the Leighton Responses, which I can still sing by heart and Leighton's Solus ad Victimam* which I've been wanting to hear for ages and which was divine. The building itself is spectacular - one of the oldest and largest Medieval buildings in England if not the world, built in 1109 (that's 900 years old this year). We wandered into the Lady Chapel, where I did a concert in January, to admire the light and the acoustic, and then wandered around the town a bit. It's a pretty place, and the light was nice. I took some pictures I might put up if they're worth it.

The bit that grated was the sermon. I don't listen much to sermons in general, regarding them as interludes between the singing, unless something grabs me. A really good speaker is worth listening to, almost no matter what they are saying, and the kind of people who preach in Cambridge or in the Cathedrals will say something worth hearing, that might have a Christian basis but will be applicable for nearly everyone. And they say things, usually, in an interesting way using interesting words and with anecdotes to make points. This guy, and I don't know who it was because they don't seem to publish a helpful service sheet with things like the readings or the name of the preacher on it, had an incredible voice, too, and I can always listen to a good voice. (Music list, I can get hold of, but surely that's less liturgically relevant and hence less important to the work of the foundation, and hence shouldn't be easier to find than a sheet of the lessons? This is the second time I've had this problem in an English Cathedral in the last three months; what's going on?!) Anyway. Maybe he was the Precentor, that would explain the voice, though he didn't seem to be acting as cantor.

The reading was from Romans 5, which is more or less irrelevant to my point, except that it comes from the letters of Paul. He's quite widely regarded as having been fiercely misogynistic, and it's often from his writing that people have taken the excuses for discriminating against women in the Church and hence in more secular areas of life. One of the key parts is 1 Timothy 2 - particularly verse 11 to the end^. There are people who don't believe that Timothy letters were actually written by Paul, but it's like debating the authorship of the plays of Shakespeare in terms of amount of speculation - worse, in fact, given their age. Anyway. Romans 5:14 mentions 'Adam's transgression'. The speaker interrupted the flow of his sermon (which focused on the free gift of the sacrifice of Christ) to point out 'for those who believe that Paul was a misogynist that he describes it as Adam's transgression.'

Yes, it is described as 'Adam's transgression' - Paul doesn't blame Eve for the Fall of mankind at least at this point. I have no idea about whether he does elsewhere in his oeuvre and now is not the time to trawl. But WHY does he not blame her? Is it about chivalry? About taking responsibility? But it IS Eve's fault. SHE is the one fooled by the serpent and Adam blames her and by implication God, saying in Genesis 3:12, 'The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree'. The blame, for Adam's part, is shared between God and the woman. God cannot be blamed, and so it is Eve's fault. God punishes both of them. They are equal in their fault. Paul's claiming of the sin for Adam alone in the passage from Romans makes her a child. His chivalry enfeebles Eve. Her reasoning is felt to be inferior than his and she is regarded as incapable and hence cannot be held accountable for her actions. This is worse than blaming her outright and extending that to the whole of the female species.

With one word, it emasculates every woman. Not that you can emasculate a woman, really. But it's the right word. Makes them impotent. Another word you can't use about women. Maybe I need to read the theories about gender and language I always sniffed about at college. In fact I probably do - our language is inherently masculine, inherently limits what women can be in our thoughts. Well. Up to a point. Everyone knows what I mean when I use the terms 'emasculate' and 'impotent' about women. I mean 'render powerless' and 'ineffective'. Maybe I should have used those, but they don't contain within them the cut to the self esteem that the words I did use do. Is there an equivalent feeling in women? The inability to have children does have some of the same helplessness to it, I suppose, but it's not the same. Does it create the same 'I am not a woman' feeling that losing essential pieces of anatomy does for a man? I guess it does in many women. But there isn't the same level of competition between women - it's not about prowess. Maybe those words are so masculine because women actually can't feel those things, though they can imagine them well enough from understanding men to comprehend the concepts in the words. So language isn't inherently sexist?

But the sermon irritated me because this man clearly wanted to score points for Paul and felt that this was the way to do it. In a public space, he expressed these sentiments and didn't see what was wrong with them. It implies that he, too, holds such patronising opinions about women as expressed by the author of the letter to the Romans. And he would deny that he did, and would hold up this sermon as an example. It could be an honest mistake; he could be blinkered by arguments from feminists about Christianity blaming women for the human condition. But I don't think it is.


*The words to that are amazing, as is the story of Abelard and Heloise. 'Alone to sacrifice thou goest, Lord, giving thyself to Death whom thou hast slain. For us thy wretched folk is any word? Who know that for our sins this is thy pain? For they are ours, O Lord, our deeds, our deeds. Why must thou suffer torture for our sin? Let our hearts suffer in thy Passion, Lord, that very suffering may thy mercy win. This is the night of tears, the three days' space, sorrow abiding of the eventide, Until the day break with the risen Christ, and hearts that sorrowed shall be satisfied. So may our hearts share in thine anguish, Lord, that they may sharers of thy glory be; Heavy with weeping may the three days pass, to win the laughter of thine Easter Day.'

Peter Abelard (1079-1142), trans. Helen Waddell

^'Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.'

I didn't mean to do this...

untitled
Originally uploaded by hazelsheard

...but I quite like it. It's an enormous table, and is making my computer hurt while it undoes. I need to take some photos and organise some new desktop backgrounds. I'm bored of mine. While this is cool, I don't think I want to have it anywhere reminding me of work I'm supposed to be doing...

Paris.

We could speak about the meaning of life vis-a-vis non-consequential/deontological theories, apodictic transformation schemata, the incoherence of exemplification, metaphysical realism, Cartesian interactive dualism, revised non-reactive dualism, postmodernist grammatology and dicey dichotomies. But we would still be left with Nietzsche’s preposterous mustache, which instills great anguish and skepticism in the brain, which leads (as it did in his case) to utter madness. I suggest we go to Paris instead.

The Principles of Uncertainty
Nod to Deb, where I found it while digging for dinner...

Not finished, I suspect.

My Easter

Make the best of it, my father said.
As though it were no hotwater mislaid keys sixfeet
of snow carcrash (no one hurt).
As though earth did not shake rocks
crack curtain split
and light did not flash
over silver (bromide) like nova through history.
He was keepcalm and carryon stiff
upperlip terror__________alert
No glow (worm): the blinded.
Me she we splitlocked
the blowtorch blue Light of the world.

Did you see the unknown soldieress walk again?

Pure vent.

I dislike the tone of this article. Depression does not equal a pre-disposition to murder. It was a terrible, tragic thing to happen, but frankly the guy appears to be disturbed in some way. This article risks damaging the very small amount of progress we as a global society have made towards de-stigmatising mental illness.

Cross. Have a less cross post I'm half way through, perhaps I'll unruffle feathers by finishing that.

Music...food of?

Finding this today prompted debate. Nobody ever agrees on what should go into that kind of list in the first place, and in any case it was probably written by a group of people 10 years older than me. Which means I don't feel too bad about how few of those albums I've heard. I did agree with Ok Computer and, unsurprisingly, Graceland. Those are definitely in my top five all timers. I'm not sure what else would be - nothing that mainstream, I suspect, just things that mean something to me. I wouldn't want to put the rest of Radiohead up there. I suppose I also agree with Bridge Over Troubled Water, though I tend to listen to their work in compilation form nowadays because I find some of the less well known stuff much more poignant and that particular album is a little too wet for my taste - maybe it suits the American sentimentalism more than the British cynicism. It is GREAT work though. So that's three. Others would be classical I suspect. I have an Orlando Gibbons album that I would rate pretty highly. And probably some jazz would make it pretty somewhere near the top. Zoe Rahman? I like what she plays. But the requirement here is 'influential', and while I love listening to Rahman, she hasn't opened many new doors to me. Millenia Nova (there isn't even a Wikipedia page in English for those guys) or Massive Attack.

But what makes music great? I'm not sure about influential, and I can't answer for anyone apart from me. Who knows why a song or a style or an album fires a generation for a moment? For me, music must have tune, harmony and something distinctive. Words are pretty important - or at least voices are. Something in there about conveying emotion, or maybe I'm just too much of a singer. I need it to keep my ever-wandering attention. It needs to connect within itself, draw me along with it to the next stage. An element of patterning is important. The pattern can be monotonous - I have a weird but definite love of trip-hop/electronica that can only be explained by an enjoyment of patterns - but it must be interesting by itself, as well. I'm not interested in things that are just noise and not music. I suppose that's what describes music for everyone, except that everyone's definition of what the difference between those two concept is will be individual.

How do you say what makes something interesting? There is an enormous amount of power in music to connect to events, as I've thought about before (at some length, it appears from the number of posts that just found). If anyone can tell me why I find the trance kind of thing addictive, I'd love to know. Is it just about pattern and association? Is there something intrinsic in music that makes it more than it is?

Must go, finishing whiskey and then bed...