Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom…

… but not too short to pile things on top of a mushroom in a haphazard manner.

I cooked this for brunch (2 big mushrooms each) but you could do one mushroom each as a starter with a few leaves underneath to make the plate look prettier.

• Put oven to 180C
• Put about 1 dessert spoon of oil into a roasting pan
• Halve cherry tomatoes (I did 5 each), rub the cut face in the oil, put cut-face-up into the pan (not in the oil) – I find I use less oil this way than if I try to drizzle later
• Sprinkle tomatoes with dried basil put them in the oven (it doesn’t matter that the oven is not yet hot)
• Put a small frying pan onto some heat with a little bit of oil
• Chop half a medium-large onion quite finely, stick it in the pan
• Cut up some bacon (with scissors is easiest) into bits that are as small as you can be bothered. I say “some” bacon – 2-4 rashers is probably correct – if you have one of those annoying packs of bacon that has 7 rashers this is the ideal time to use 3 and keep 4 for something else
• Stick the bacon into the pan with the onion
• Stir the bacon and onion around on a medium heat until the onion looks soft and hte bacon looks not raw
• While the bacon and onion are cooking, turn one end-piece of bread into breadcrumbs either by crumbling with your fingers or by whizzing it up in a food processor
• Mix the breadcrumbs into the bacon/onion
• Take your 4 big mushrooms – portabello ones are nicest – take the stalk out and put them open-face-up into a roasting dish (or anything that can go in the oven really)
• Stick your bread/onion/bacon mix into/on top of the mushrooms
• Cover with tinfoil, put in oven for 15 mins
• During this 15 minutes, grate a bit of cheese. You’ll probably grate too much. This is fine because you can eat it with your fingers
• Take tinfoil off, put cheese on top, put back in oven
• While cheese is melting, make bloody marys (if making brunch for grownups)
• When cheese is brown and bubbly, put on plates and eat with the tomatoes that you have probably forgotten about

• 

  Okay, I didn’t wait for the cheese to go bubbly – I was hungry

Bloody Mary:

• Tomato juice (compulsory)
• Tabasco sauce (compulsory)
• Worcestershire sauce (compulsory)
• Vodka (compulsory)
• Celery salt optional)
• Horseradish sauce (optional)
• Lime juice (optional)
• Salt (optional)
• Pepper (optional)
• Mix well with ice – taste – add more of things that you think it needs
• Put in glasses with a bit of celery to stir
• Drink

Try to remember that the celery will slide down in the glass and so cut it longer than you think (oops)

 

Glamour magazine and editorial consistency

“If you write an article against something, better make sure other articles or ads don’t seem to be pro-that-thing”

Friends on Facebook and Twitter have been telling me that this month’s Glamour magazine has a great article on rape, so I’m breaking my rules of only getting by magazines free and paying money for the free gift. It was only £1, usually £2,and there was a free mascara, but it’s nowhere near as good as the benefit mascara from lay month’s Elle. For a proper mascara review check out this – it has real pictures of eyes with and without the mascara – I wish all makeup reviews could be as honest!

I may be breaking my “only buy if the free gift is worth more than the cover price” (worth more to me, nor just in the made up rrp) rule, but I am sticking to my plan of looking for inconsistencies. In an edition that is being feted for addressing an important issue, are the other articles and the ads suitably on-message?

Back page, 17 questions we really don’t want to be asked. 
6 Can I kiss you? 
Guys, if you’re not sure the answer will be “yes”, asking us for permission won’t boost your chances. Best to go for it. (We’ll duck if you’re wrong.)

I know it’s not the most romantic thing in the world, but is asking permission before smooshing your face in someone else’s face really so bad? Better safe than sorry, I say. Glamour seems to think better sorry than safe.

What really happens on a guys’ holiday? 
If we’re honest, a group of boozy Brits isn’t going to have the ladies a-queuing.

Surprisingly good. No mentions of “conquests” or ogling.

The new A-Z of sex
W is for Where?!
As in “Where exactly are you trying to put that?” Is he lost or trying to sneak elsewhere? We asked 500 men what the deal is with anal sex – 29% like it; 33% said no way;38% were undecided. So, no, we’re none the wiser.

Maybe the question they should have asked was “Would you try to put your penis in someone’s anus without their prior permission?”. Joking about “trying to sneak elsewhere” is not actually funny guys, and very very off-message!

So what did this mean? I guess it means that these kind of thoughts are so ubiquitous that even the most well meaning publication can end up with “jokes” about “putting it in the wrong hole” without realising quite what they are suggesting, and while of course nobody wants to be kissed by someone who they don’t want to be kissed by, it’s still seen as unromantic to ask.

A slightly depressing conclusion, but not an unexpected one. And the rape article was very good.

A visit to the English Spirit Distillery

Also known as the English Vodka Company - I’m going to guess that they got their web domain before they branched out into other drinks. They can be found on Facebook too.

Regular readers* may already know that I rather like gin. And other drinks too.

 

So when I found out that there was an actual distillery not too far from my house, I had to go have a look. Note the word “distillery” – this is not just a place where spirits are flavoured but where not-booze is turned into booze, and then turned into stronger booze!

An actual copper still, with real flames under it

This was earlier in May when it was FREEZING – you can’t tell but I’m actually standing right by the gas flames for warmth

We got a brief tour (they do ask that you ring ahead but if you don’t they’ll be nice to you anyway) and an explanation of what they do and how they do it. Sadly the “Dr J” of “Dr J’s Cambridge gin” was not in, as it would have been extra interesting to hear from a biochemist.

Apparently the major difference between their small-batch-produced booze and high-throughput booze produced in a rolling/continual process is that they are able to take the more volatile chemicals (the things that evaporate before the alcohol, like acetone, which smells like nail varnish or pear drops) and throw them away. This “head” is what gives other vodkas that hairspray sharpness at the back of the throat.

We did a little tasting – I don’t normally drink spirits neat but I could appreciate the differences here (especially when we compared to some Smirnoff!). The tasting was in a fresh-from-Homebase-looking shed, which was actually leaking in the rain. Who needs glamour when you have good drinks?

The tasting shed

So here’s what we came home with:

Dr J’s Cambridge gin

(one of the founders is called John, and he has a PhD)

“Cucumber gin” – or cucumber-ginned vodka. It’s vodka with cucumber in. The process is called “ginning”. Is it gin? Is it vodka? It’s not legally gin because it has no juniper. It’s nice though.

1 of 5 – pretty exclusive!

Raspberry liqueur – great for making a kind of kir royale ( I normally call non-champage kir royale “kir pleb”, but this is not very plebby)

Say it to the tune of raspberry beret. You know you want to.

Finally I have a cocktail recipe. Cucumber and elderflower collins. You want 2 measures of cucumber gin (or Hendricks), 1 measure of elderflower cordial (elderflower liqueur would work beautifully if you have any), a ribbon of cucumber, top up with soda water.

 

 

Cheers!

—

*Yes I know I don’t have any, but I can pretend.

Book review – Gone Series by Michael Grant

I’ve been doing a lot of very short mini-reviews in my 50 book challenge post, but I thought this series deserved a post all to itself.

The cover is just some teenagers looking moody, it doesn’t exactly give much info…

Who or what is gone? All the adults. Everyone aged 15 or over (timed to the very minute!).

Where are they gone from? A 10-mile radius circle (dome! sphere?) centred around a power plant in a small town in California.

How are they gone? Nobody has any clue. Is it because of something nuclear? The cleverer students say “nuclear power doesn’t do that”.

Anything else weird? Well yes actually, a few weird things have been happening before the “poof”, and it’s about to get a lot weirder. (note: Americans just think of this as a disappearing-type noise, not a derogatory term for a camp gay person)

What happens now? Chaos, as is to be expected.

Let’s be clear, this is no Teenage Wasteland. Well, it is, but there is also the entire range of other people-under-15. Babies. Toddlers. Children old enough to do something useful if they could only pay attention (but they can’t). It could be classed as Only Fatal to Adults, but was it fatal? What happened to the adults? Are they just outside the dome? If so, what are they doing/thinking?

These books exist in the level of Young Adult books which, like The Hunger Games, would have to be cut down pretty severely if they were to be made into films. There is a lot of violence. There is also mention of what happens when all the adults disappear and nobody thinks to go check empty houses for babies (yeah, not nice) and of what happens when the person driving a car suddenly disappears (this made me think of Flash Forward, where everyone in the world suddenly passes out, including people driving cars and planes and helicopters).

The “it gets weirder” that I mentioned above keeps the level of action high, but personally the parts that I enjoyed the most were those dealing with the practicalities. There are small children to look after. A limited supply of food. In a dome where it never rains, how long til you run out of fresh water? How do you motivate children (who are, after all, just more-selfish and less-forward-thinking adults) to do the work that needs doing when they’d rather someone else just did it? How do you enforce any kind of lawful behaviour, and who gets to decide what the laws should be in this new world?

Start here with Gone. Then come back and thank me.

What’s being sold is you… Another magazine read

This is one of those posts where I read magazines and ramble.

Another month, another magazine. Another excuse. This time the excuse is that I quite like mascara. Some people say that foundation or concealer or bronzer is their favourite or most important of “must-have” item on makeup. Mine is without a doubt mascara. (not that you “must” have any  of course) I don’t mind you seeing what my face looks like, but I do want to encourage you to focus on my eyes.

This month’s Elle magazine has a mini mascara on the front from Benefit, called They’re Real! The exclamation mark is part of the name. Some swear by Benefit. Others say it has funky packaging but that the stuff inside isn’t so good. The name refers to fake eyelashes – I imagine one is supposed to summon up an imaginary friend who says “wow, look at your eyelashes, are they fake, what mascara are you using?” and answer both questions with just the name of the product.

So, a chance to try out a £20-ish mascara for £4. Not too bad. You don’t get the full £20-worth, but you get enough to know if you like it.

And along with that mascara you get a free magazine. This is the key to reading these magazines. Pay for the “free gift”, think of the magazine as free. Because you’ll never feel that you’ve got your money’s worth in terms of reading material. I have paged through to page 27 to find the first page that was not entirely adverts, and it’s just the contents page.

I’ve said that Elle costs £4. It does in the shop, and on the cover, but page 30 tells me that I could subscribe and get 12 issues for £15, a much more reasonable £1.25! And along with that, you get some Benefit makeup. Who could refuse? Watch the small print thought, it looks like the subscription automatically renews at a higher price. Plus subscribers never get the free stuff.

The obsession this month seems to be with smoky eyes. The subscriber gift is an eyeshadow kit, with the admonishment (I am now wondering if that word means the opposite of what I meant) to look at a later page for a guide to making smoky eyes. A few pages later Lancome have bought a page of extra thick glossy paper, the kind that makes the magazine fall open on that page, to advertise their eyeshadow kit and give you dine instructions on how to do light, moderate, or dramatic makeup (the lightest of which requires 3 different colours of eyeshadow). It’s a bit like the YouTube tutorials. They are great for learning how to do things, but the women demonstrating seem to have a rather skewed view of what is “light”, or “casual”, or “quick”. “This only takes ten minutes”, they say, “TEN WHOLE MINUTES?”, I think.

There is also the invitation to go “behind the scenes” of the cover shoot. If you like that sort of thing you should definitely have a look, and check out Adam Gichie of Image and Picture, whose diverse portfolio includes behind the scenes at fashion magazines, Richard Branson, and SwiftKey.

It’s page 43 before we get any real content – the editor’s “welcome to this month’s magazine” piece. It’s an internet truism that if you are getting something for free, the thing being sold is you. Your data, your eyes on adverts. I didn’t get this for free, but I feel that my eyes on the adverts are a bigger money maker than the cover price. I’m actually now suspicious that the high cover price is there to persuade the advertisers that they will be advertising to the “right kind” of women. The kind who will throw away £4 on a magazine.

Now that we have got to the content, a quick rundown of three things that I have learned.

No, I am not going to wear a sailor hat. Or a summer jumpsuit. Or any kind of jumpsuit. Or a playsuit. I have enough trouble with dresses, when the average height of a woman in the UK is 5’4. Something designed to be knee length never is. I’m not likely to take the same risk with the crotch of a jumpsuit, if that’s too high the consequences are much worse than simply having a bit more leg on show.

There’s going to be a TV adaptation of a Philippa Gregory book. I probably won’t watch it but I do like those sorts of books. If you like them, and if you would like them even without the sex, I highly recommend Melanie Clegg’s books about Marie Antoinette and Minette, youngest sister of Charles II.

The V&A is having a display on 80s fashion. I had a conversation lst night about buying things to last, and whether you’d think it looked good in 10 or 20 or 30 years time. I thought that in the 80s everyone believed not just that their clothes were “in fashion” but also that they “looked good”, and so who knows what people (including us) in the 2040s will think of what we wore in the 2010s. My bets are on leggings and ubiquitous skinny jeans as the items with the best “what on earth were they thinking?” score.

Apparently this is a cocktail made with Cointreau. It looks nice. I think I might go and have one.

(EDIT: I realise that looks like I’m off drinking at lunchtime on a Monday – while I like this idea in principle it’s not true, I wrote this at the weekend!)

How to be a good friend to someone with depression

This is not a real blog post – it’s mostly a link to posts from someone else.

Adventures in Depression and the long-awaited follow-up.

I’ve had friends with depression (I still do, they’re just less depressed right now) and the part of these posts that really resonated with me was this

“wow, those are super dead. I still like you, though.”

This makes more sense in context…

That might not sound like much, but not trying to “cheer people up” is pretty critical.

Trying to beat depression by “cheering up” is a bit like suggesting that the cure for flu is a brisk jog, or that the cure for vomiting is a massive curry. The existence of the problem make the solution impossible.

Anyway, go read those posts (set aside some time). And try to find some corn under the fridge.

Not-quite Jamie Oliver Thai Chicken Laksa

One of the best skills a cook can have (not a chef, but a cook) is not just the ability to follow a recipe, but to look at a recipe, look at what they have in their house, and think I can make something nice that is a bit like that. Of course the essential secondary skill for that to work is the ability to have nice things in the house in the first place!

The full name of the recipe is “Thai Chicken Laksa and Mildly Spiced Noodle Squash Broth”. I skipped the squash, and my broth was not just mildly spiced.

Jamie’s food – styled by professionals, with professional lighting

I used Jamie’s recipe more as inspiration than as a rule.

I made a paste of onion (not spring onion, didn’t have any), chilli, garlic, ginger, turmeric, limes leaves, coriander stalks, fish sauce, soy sauce and sesame oil for the base of my broth. Instead of squash (I find butternut squash too sweet, and I didn’t have any) I had orange pepper and tinned bamboo shoots. Instead of asparagus I had sugarsnap peas, because I had half a packet in the bottom of the fridge. Instead of flat rice noodles I had those very thin rice noodles, because that’s what I had. Instead of a tin of coconut milk I had some coconut milk powder, because I was only cooking for two and it easier that way to have just the amount you want.

I put fivespice and sesame on my chicken as instructed (actually it turns out Jamie puts sesame seeds on at the end, but I thought that I was following the instructions there). I failed to bash them flat so they took a lot longer to cook – I’d recommend getting some flatter bit of chicken to start with. I replaced the okra with nothing, because who wants okra?

At the end instead of “styling” the meal in a cauldron and a board I just put it into two big bowls. I found the picture a bit confusing as to how you were supposed to actually eat it!

My food – styled by me (not styled at all, just put in a way that seemed sensible for eating) with the lights from my kitchen.

This was tasty, and since the replacements that I made were mainly swapping things that  I don’t like for things that I do like I’d say it was just as tasty (for me) as if I had followed the “correct” recipe.