Problems getting supplies

God damn it.

It’s a Thursday. The sun is out. And again I am wondering what the hell am I doing with my life. Bored should not be an adjective to describe my short dwindling days, each one bringing me one day closer to my inevitable death. Sigh.

Anyway, Magic, my partner in finding random things on the internet (does that come with some sort of anniversary and hallmark card you think?) found this book called the Hungry Scientists Handbook which I think rocks! So that got me looking around and I found:

• cooking websites with a nerdy technical slant to it.

Which led me to :

• Cooking for engineers (which I think The Magic thinks should be changed to “Not-really -cooking-for-engineers-cause-they-don’t-use-ISO-standards-for-their-units”)

Which led me to :

• How to make edible underpants

Which led me to:

• How to make malted ice-cream with liquid nitrogen.

Which led to the inevitable search on Ebay:


Sigh. Another dream of mine bites the dust. How am I supposed to instantly get my ice-cream now, without having to wait the 6 hours of churning and freezing and churning and freezing and then forgetting and ending up with crystally ice-cream? Answers on a postcard. (And do not say “go to the fucking shops” cause that’s just fucking boring.)

WTF Wednesday? Rollin' with my Kobe

This is so weird and definitely counts as a "what the fuck???"

Japan's Solid Alliance is selling Ipod Nano cases that are designed to look like raw meat! At the very least they've had the good taste to make it look like expensive bit of raw Kobe beef. And to add to the realism, it even comes in a cellophane-and-Styrofoam pack.

Now don't get me wrong. Despite the fact that I am definitely a "please kindly just wave my steak at the open grill and bring it to me bloody as hell" girl, even I can not see any reason why I would want my mp3 player to look like a piece of dead animal.. I really don't think I am their target audience somehow.... Would it sell well with vegetarians you think?

As a very, very, very short aside, for an amusing example of flame wars gone bad, check out the comments on the Raw Feed page where I found this weird piece of gadget paraphernalia... This is a perfect example of what happens when people on the Internet, drunk on their own sense of anonymity, get too stuck up their own arses... very funny..

You're Friday Moment of Zen: Kebab-y!

Damn you cruel fate!

The Red Polar Bear, owned by Kazem Ariaiwand is officially the worlds most northern kebab van! Mr Ariaiwand moved to Spitsbergen after a failed asylum attempt in Norway, and set up his business in an old military van last year in Longyearbyen. Having already been to Svalbard once, it seems we have to go again! Kebabs!! The most northern kebabs in the world!! We've already been to the worlds most northern McDonalds in Rovaniemi, it seems only fair to have a chicken kebab with extra hot sauce back in Longyearbyen.

As a small aside, having checked out "The Worlds Most Northern" and I find I can cross the following of as places I've been to:

Town > 1000 people	Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway DONE	78°13′N 15°33′E
City > 50,000 people	Tromsø, Norway DONE!	69°40′N
Metropolitan area > 1 million	Greater Helsinki (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen), Finland DONE	60°10′N 24°56′E
City (proper) > 1 million people	St Petersburg, Russia DONE!	59°56′N 30°20′E

Shops and service facilities

Item	Place	Latitude/Longitude
Bank	Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway DONE!	78°13′N 15°33′E
Automatic Teller Machine	Longyearbyen, Svalbard, NorwayDONE!	78°13′N 15°33′E
Night club	Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway?? Where was this?	78°13'N 15°33'E
Pub	Longyearbyen, Svalbard, NorwayDONE!	78°13'N 15°33'E
Supermarket	Longyearbyen, Svalbard, NorwayDONE!	78°13′N 15°33′E
Tourist office	Longyearbyen, Svalbard, NorwayDONE!	78°13′N 15°33′E
University	University of Tromsø (ext link), Tromsø, NorwayDONE!	69°40′N 18°56′E
University campus	University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), Longyearbyen, Svalbard, NorwayDONE!	78°13′N 15°33′E

Anyhoo, just a small aside.

Ahh most northerly Kebab Van.. if only you'd been there when WE were there... I would have enjoyed you infinitely more than the cured seal meat I had, which was awful.

Your Friday Moment of Zen: Being patronised the 1940's way

Why oh why did I go to Le Cordon Bleu school? All I needed to do was be patronised by this 1940s film made by the Home Economics Department at the University of Kansas. "Cooking Terms and What They Mean" is intended for young, newly wed white women and attempts to teach them how to interpret recipe instructions. "While the premise seems benign, it is delivered in such a way that puts the films main character, a twenty-something newly wed woman, on so low an intellectual echelon as to say she is incapable of divining meaning from common cooking terms."

In the film, Margie and Tim are just back from their honeymoon. Tim, being a man, heads off to work in the morning, while Margie stays at home, touching all her new appliences in the kitchen trying to decide what to make Tim for dinner. Will she be able to make Tim all the food he likes just like his mother?? What they don't show you is that after she makes a disasterous cake because she doesn't know what "cream the butter" means, she'll probably realise she can't keep Tim happy with her food, only use her kitchen as a place to drink sherry by the gallon, and sit around wondering why the fuck she didn't go off to university so she could be the one out at work and leave Tim at home to fuck up the cooking. And what will happen to Tim? Why he'll go out on the piss every night with his co-workers and try to pick up girls from the typing pool at the office of course.

Ahh the 1940's. Where the little lady was expected to stay at home and baby their hubby's just like mum. Watch this and enjoy. Enjoy the fact that us women are not expected to do this anymore. Unfortunately I actually know women who are still like this. And they're around my age.

I'd have posted yesterday if I hadn't passed out at 7

School is so much fun. But it's also absolutely exhausting!

Yesterday I gutted and filleted my second fish in my life, the first being on Monday. I've worked with fish a lot but I've never actually had to gut one myself... Just watched fish mongers and my mum do it... Yesterday we cooked:

Pan fried trout with beurre sauce
Medallions of pork with a herb crust and mustard sauce
Coconut Creme Caramels
Mixed seafood thai broth

I spent all day on my feet, but when I got home I was completely wiped out. So much started to feel like I was getting the flu, so at 7pm I packed myself off to bed, like a child in kindergarten.

Today we prepared and cooked our own lobsters.. I have always maintained that as a meat eater it would be completely hipocritical of me to be squeamish about where my food comes from. Beef comes from cows, tasty bacon comes from cute pigs, KFC buckets comes from chickens - let's face it that probably are not reared in the most fabulous of conditions (and that's an understatement). But when I saw the little lobsters squirming around on the plate before they were to be cooked in a boiling broth, I felt a real twinge of guilt. Poor little bastards. Poor little tasty bastards baked in their thermador sauce with guyere cheese melted on top (oh yes, I still ate one.. vegan I will never be).

We also made squid ink cannelloni with a crab filling and sweet sauce. I found out how to extract chlorophyll out of spinach (slowly) and I rolled my own cannelloni sheets! I suck arse at making pasta and even with Chef watching over me I managed to fuck it up a little. One side was a longer than the other and when I was cooking them two of the cannelloni sheets stuck together in the pot. Idiot.

Tomorrow is my last day (sob) but I'll tell you what, making all this food all day in a boiling hot kitchen is tiring work. And bizarrely I have no appetite at all. Cause I went to bed so early the night before I hadn't eaten anything, so I had to force myself to eat some toast for breakfast. I then had to force myself to have some a couple of rings of squid in a lime, tomato, olive, caper salsa for lunch... God it sucks to be me right now!

First day at school

Today was my first day of cooking school at Le Cordon Bleu!! And it was fucking fantastic!! Hot, quick, tiring, fantastic fun!

I learned how to cut up a whole chicken into 10 pieces, how to fillet a flat fish, how to french trim a rack of lamb, how to make veal stock with veal knuckles (16 hours of gentle simmering people, 16 hours..), how to prepare mirepoix and what ration of vegetables to meat to use, what the french term for the oyster of a chicken is - Le sot l'y laisse - "the fool leaves it behind".

The whole day was fantastic. Absolutely 100% would love to do this forever fantastic!!

All except for when the chef put some cognac in my chicken casserole.... As soon as the cognac hit the hot pan and it's heady aromas hit my nose all sorts of memories of bad casinos and free champagne cognacs in St Maarten, drinking Armagnac by the unreserved bucketful at our favorite East End pub, and horrendous hangovers where I could barely hold on to the floor in the bathroom what with it spinning out of control all around me came flooding back. My face got this contorted "EEEK I'm not feeling so good" look to it but thankfully I pulled it together and managed to control my urge to gag out loud. Being sick on the kitchen floors of the prestigious Cordon Bleu cooking school simply would not do.....

4 weeks later

It's been almost a month since my 30th birthday, and what have I been doing?

Basically, anything I've never done before: so far, almost every week I've done something that I've not done in my previous 2 decades of life: skiing, dentist, hospital (not in that order). It's been fantastic!

My Almost Brilliant Career as a Ski Bunny
The most exciting thing I've done was go skiing in Cervinia, Italy with Li and her friends! And for all those of you who are now asking "how many bloody holidays can this girl take?" the answer is 28 sweet, sweet, non working days.

I've been skiing once before for a grand total of 2 days, about 12 years ago (god that sounds old), however that didn't work out so well for me.. I spent one day learning how to stand skis and how to fall on our skis. The next day we went up the biggest mountain I'd seen in Australia, where I was completely paralysed with fear of death, and had to be helped to snow plow down by a very unimpressed ski instructor. This time however, I refused to be gripped by fear and after 3 hours on the baby, baby, baby slopes, I was convinced that a life skiing was definitely one for me. I had decided then and there that we were all going to be going down the big blue run within 2 days - all part of my "just go for it" idiotic attitude I'm planning on taking now I'm in my 30s.

On our second day, Li, Mary (the girl I was sharing with) and I, who were all beginners, enlisted into ski school - which is just like primary school but for adults all acting like Bambi on ice. Within 3 hours, we were all snow plowing our ways down, and I was loving it. With my mantra of "knees bend, feel the boot with my shins, legs apart" I was plowing my way down the second level blue run. Snow plowing, which is the beginner skiers best friend and life saver works by keeping your knees bend, and your legs apart so the edge of the skis can slow you down as you go hurtling down the mountain. Unfortunately for me, I find doing this properly quite hard - my legs simply refuse to stay apart and my knees keep forcing themselves together - I guess 13 years of a catholic education with nuns really have driven home the idea that good catholic girls keep their legs firmly shut...

At the end of our second day, this is where I decided that a ski bunny life was the life for me: ski all day, party at night, get a tan whilst lying on a deck chair in t-shirts in the amazingly hot sun with snow under my feet. So on the mountain, next to the Matterhorn I called Dr D and told him to tell our boss I quit:

Dr D: Um, yeah she says she quits... yeah she says she wants to be a ski bunny... yeah I don't know what one of those is either..

So am I going to properly quit my day job and become a fully fledged snow follower? Hmm I'm not too sure... our 3rd day skiing down the insane run to the village almost killed me - if my fear of flinging myself off the cliff wasn't enough, then perhaps the constant falling over as snow boarder after sodding stupid brainless snowboarder smashing into me kinda took the edge off it... My second last day I was tempting fate and honestly was expecting to break something - unfortunately for Li, she took the bullet for me. On our way down from the top of the mountain, her skis crossed themselves and snap she micro fractured her femur, and tore the ligaments in both her knees. Clearly not a girl for doing things in half's. I personally reckon this was all a master plan for her to pick up the burly Italian paramedics who skied her down the mountain in a sledge... she might not see it that way, but she was getting an fearful amount of attention from the Italian boys when she was upstanding, so I reckon her damsel in distress should have had them flocking to her!

This brings me nicely to my next "I've not done this before" of my 30s:

Attaching my feet to my bike and peddling like a falling stone
As I'm doing the London to Paris cycle, I thought it was high time I learn how to ride in cleats - pedals that attach to your shoes. Having got a pair for my birthday, the Sunday I got back from Cervenia Calv attached them to my bike and off we trundled to the local park so I could learn how to ride - again. Cycling round the park, I was really getting the hang of it.. the whole "feet attached to moving bike, twist my feet to get them out of the cleats" thing seemed like a piece of piss. That was until I went round the gentle bend, saw a man and his massive german shephard, slammed on the brakes and in slow blurry motion went crashing into the ground, smacking my head into a metal bar fence, and seriously hurting my hand..

Thought I'd dodged the bullet of hurting myself by not breaking anything skiing eh? Yeah, well fate really hates me..

I ended up for the first time in my life in casualty not just visiting but getting my hand x-rayed cause it hurt like crazy. Calv said the worst thing that could have happened was that I broke something in my wrist. I said no the worst thing that could happen is that we go to hospital and they find nothing wrong with me and me looking like a total baby. You know what? I could have been a psychic. The nurse looked at my x-rays and say "well, it seems you've only sprained your hand.. you'll be fine in a few days". Bloody crap - Li fractures her femur. I, like a hypochondriac go to hospital with a sprained hand. And by the next morning it started to feel allot better. Definitely that's the worst thing.

Not yet paying for his kids college education
The next thing on my "not done this before" tour of my 30s: seeing if I can help the local dentist send his kids to Eton.

Strictly speaking I have been to the dentist. Twice. But both times were those "first check is free, but after you're addicted to the pain of having a sadomasochist ripping into your mouth, you'll have to pay" visits, which I don't really count because they didn't do anything other than say "if you want that chip in your front tooth fixed, we'll have to remove your back 4 teeth" (Why?). However seeing as I am now in my more, ahem, mature 30's I thought it was only wise to go and get myself checked out... So you can imagine the amount of abuse I got when I said I'd not been in 16 years. My dentist told me before I opened my mouth he was expecting to find lots of problems, and then proceeded to tell me off for not having been before (well I can't imagine why not..) Fully expecting root canal or all of my front teeth needing to be replaced and being forced to live with the nickname "gummy" forever, I was shocked to my core when the dentist said I nothing wrong with my teeth. At all. GET IN!! I'm not "big book of British smiles" yet!! WOOHOO!!

Tomorrow: Cooking, cooking, cooking
I have wanted to go to Le Cordon Bleu cooking school for about half a decade now. Finally, thanks to Calv, C, Dr D, and The Magic, I am going to a 4 day course starting tomorrow. I'm frankly shitting myself. I'm insanely nervous but looking forward to like you wouldn't believe!

So that's the cliff notes version of where I've been, what I've been doing, and were I'm going.

You're Friday Moment of Zen: The future of deep fried chicken, the Holy Grail of Deep Fried Chicken, the Cup of Wonder: The Col-Pop.

South Korean fast food joint BBQ Chicken (that's not Barbeque Chicken but "Best of the Best Quality Chicken") have invented the ultimate in fast time snacking that blows the Colonel's bucket o' chicken out of the water. The age old problem of "how do I walk along, eat my chicken nuggets, drink my drink AND scratch my arse at the same time when I've only got two hands??! TWO HANDS GOD DAMN YOU!" has been solved by BBQ Chicken by discovering probably the single most important invention in our life time: Ladies and Gentlemen, BBQ Chicken proudly presents the Col-Pop: The single cup that holds 32 ounces of fizzy goodness AND your deep fried chicken nuggets. IN ONE CUP! Now you can eat, drink, and scratch away!!


Those crazy South Koreans. I NEED TO TRY THIS! THIS is my holy grail.

The cup has a seperate container in the top to hold the nuggets and keep them hot, and the bottom is designed to keep your drinks cold, with the addition of two straw holes so you can hold it all in one hand. Genius!




The guys at serious eats have road tested this beauty, and I love the fact that they've also added this gratuitous graph showing the ease of snack portability through history:

BBQ Chicken is slowly and quietly working on it's world wide DOMINATION of the fast food industry, and hopefully will make an appearance in the UK. Until then, I might have to get my underscratched arse to Spain or South Korea to try one of these. If you are anywhere near a BBQ Chicken, I urge, no I beg you TRY ONE and let me know if it's the beacon of justice I know it can be.

Never a truer word spoken

Apparently this was sold in supermarkets and was a genuine mistake made in Ireland. I don't think it was a mistake - I think they described Ainsley just right.

Another restaurant struck of the list

Where have I been? No where in particular, just busy. Cook alongs, Australia Day BBQ parties/house warming parties, work... I have some posts I have to finish, but to make up for it, I offer a wee tale of embarrassment that happened to me last night, to keep you all amused...

I have a knack of getting myself remembered at restaurants (like the Yo! Sushi I go to where the waitress seems to think I work or live or huddle in a gutter nearby seeing as I eat there so often). Well, it seems I've done it again.

Our local Chinese is fab. I know that buffets are not peoples ideas of haute cuisine, and having had some amazing Chinese food in China last year, this is not exactly up there with the greatest chow in the land. But it's good. And it's 2 minutes from our front door. And a young male waiter is always really friendly with us, and when we walk in, he'll automatically bring us chop sticks, a diet coke, 3 Tsing Taos and know we'll herd ourselves to the family feedbag that is endless crispy duck with pancakes.

Well now he has another reason for remember who I am...

Last night I went out with our work Social club for our annual meal (and to be honest, free piss up). After our thai food, much debate of the events this year, the budget, gossiping about whom we don't like, and 8 bottles of wine between 5 of us, I went home a little bit, well, smashed. Unfortunately my ability to keep the crazy in doesn't work so well with that much white wine sloshing about, cause when I got off the bus, I passed our local Chinese restaurant, and saw all the waiters and chefs inside their little gated bit next drinking tea, smoking, and generally relaxing after a hard night of work. I then saw the waiter who is always really nice to us. Now remember, the crazy is spilling out everywhere, so I stop, and say in probably glass shatteringly loud levels "HELLO!! IT'S YOU!! YOU'RE FINISHED FOR THE NIGHT EH?! HELLO!!!". (oh the shame, the shame). So he gets up, cigarette in hand, opens the gate, speaks to me for a bit, asks if I want to come join them inside, to which thankfully I managed to mumble "no thanks, I'm stumbling home", then totter myself down the street.

So when Dr D suggested (and I'm sure his motivating factor was not the endless supply of spring rolls) that we go there for dinner tonight I flatly refused. I am not going back, as I will die of shame and pray that the ground opens up and swallows me whole.

Well, at least until the calling for crispy duck is too great for me to turn down... So I give it a week?

Come to me Gordon

When C & I were on holiday in Italy (well St Moritz to be exact) recently, we shared the largest, smelliest, kirsch spiked, cheese fondue I've had in ages. In fact, the cheese fondue, much like many people's fashion taste in St Moritz, seemed like a good idea at the time but on execution was actually was pretty horrid.

I know that I say "cheese dreams" quite a bit, but I kid you not, cheese fondue causes me to have the bizarest, freakout, never-in-thousand-Sundays-will-come-true, Lucy-In-The-Sky-With-Diamonds kind of dreams more than any other substance I've come across. After my fondue extravaganza, I had the weirdest dream that Gordon Ramsey was teaching me how to cook. Being Gordon Ramsey, he started yelling and screaming at me, telling me I was rubbish and what not, which pissed me off no end, so I yelled at him to go and sod off, threw my knife down and stormed out. The strange thing that happened was this: he ran after me, swept me into his arms, like his Rhett Butler to my Scarlett O'Hara, told me he wanted me to be his girlfriend(!), and couldn't bare to be without me.

Now this was a dream. A dream. If you can't fulfill your wildest fantasies with a world famous chef in a dream, then god knows when you're supposed to. Calv has accused me of being one of the most contrary people he's ever met, and maybe he's right. Cause rather than ripping Gordon Ramsey's clothes off, and saying "yes! yes please!", I said "um.. well, you're married aren't you? And you've got some really beautiful kids right? Yeah, I'm sorry about this Gordon, but there's no way I can possibly go out with you..". Yes. In my dream, where Gordon Ramsey was begging me to be his girl, all I could do was say mutter some prudish rubbish about him being married and say "no" (and no, I'm not saying that sleeping with a Michelin star chef whilst he's married is something that I condone. But come on - it was a dream!).

Well, today Gordon Ramsey on Channel 4 is doing a live cooking show where you are supposed to you cook along at the same time with him. He's making scallops with fresh salsa, steak with wedges, and chocolate mousse for afters. Here it is people. The dream was a sign! Now all I have to do is watch his show tonight, cook along with him, get mad, tell him to sod off, then calmly wait for him to rush from his live studio mid show, straight to my front door, confess his undying love, and see if I am as "good" in real life as I was in my dream...

I'll keep you posted with what happens... It's a sign.. Yup, defo.

When you need to find a new sushi place

Whilst at the register at Yo Sushi! paying for the bill:

Waitress: "That'll be £30."
Me: "Ok"
Waitress: "Excuse me, but do you work for Shell?"
Me: "Um.. no?"
Waitress: "Oh ok. But you do live around here don't you?"
Me: "Um.. no?"
Waitress: "Oh ok. (Pause) So why have I seen you so many times in here?"
Me: "Um... I like sushi? (mumbles) I'll probably be back here next Tuesday..."

So is it time to find a new Yo Sushi!? Or is it cool that my sushi restaurant is becoming like Cheers, where they all know my name and my order of Hairy Prawns and Ikura Gunkan? I'm not sure yet...

Never say "and get yourself something nice" to me

Last week Dr D asked me to get him his lunch, and with his best "East End" geezer, I'm a cockney lad I am, voice, the threw me a tenner and said "er' you go luv treat yourself to something nice".

So I did. I bought myself some £99.50 per kilo, still on the bone, hand carved in front of me, Jamon. Aka ultra expensive, cured, beautiful, would eat this every day if I could afford it, ham from Brindisa.

And it was dead tasty. I love how it says on the label "Eat Within 3 days". I scoffed my 5 paper thin slices within 3 minutes. Flat.

Proof I eat things other than nutella and white bread!

It's nasty but I love it

On Monday, a very stressful day forced me to go the local shops near work so I could get my chocolate fix. In the store, whilst meandering around, trying to take as long as I possibly could, I noticed the holy grail of sugar fixes: a jar of nutella. Oh god how I love nutella. But it's the sort of thing I try to steer well away from, because it's a dirty, bad, nasty, in motel rooms kind of love, not a wholesome, meet your parents, sing you sonnets from afar sort of affair. Unfortunately, this day was bad, and like a junkie I found myself unable to walk away. I threw my £1.98 on the counter, before scurrying quickly away back.

Now, a jar of nutella at my work would not go down so well.. Why? Because everyone at work eats responsibly like an adult. I'm the one who owns the Kellogs Crunchy Nut. Everyone else has organic muesli, shredded wheat, cardboard cut into little squares with added fiber. It's all salads and bags of fruit, wholemeal, locally sourced, organic, with added nuts, ultra low fat. Naughty things like nutella have no right to an existent in our work kitchen.

Worse still, I only like my nutella, thickly spread, to the very edges, and folded in half, on nutrionally neglibable white bread. Oh yes - no wholemeal, whole wheat, whole boring brown bread with my ultra high in sugar, low in anything else, nutella. Like a criminal I have to sneak off to the kitchen, get my jar of sugar and cocoa out from the back of the top shelf of the cabinet (where I've hidden it behind all the jars of green tea that no one drinks), sneak my white bread out of the fridge (out from behind the salads and couscous). And I'm off: quickly and silently make myself up a sandwich that only 5 years old these days are eating. Once it's all put together, I only have to try to avoid any disaproving stares, appologise for the lack of fibre in the bread, and pass it off as an ultra thickly spread, zero fat marmite. Hurah! Am practically a resistence fighter. Though resistence to responsible eating doesn't quite have the same tone as covertly fighting an invading regime from taking over your country...

And you know what: my dirty, nasty love is even tastier knowing that everyone would shun me like a scarlet woman and disapprove.

Friday Moment of Zen: Tasty Tasty Tasty

We’re off to the Taste of London festival tonight for hopefully a bang up night of Michelin star food, drinks, good times and celebrity heckling. Unfortunately my old mate, that twat, Jean Christoff Novelli or his equally annoying coutnerpart Anthony I've-Kissed-A-Goat Warol Thompson will not be there (who will I try to insult to their faces now?!), but Angela Hartnett from the Connaught will be, as well as Stuart Gillies from the Boxwood Café and people from Fino (who make the yummiest Crispy Pork Belly!). The weather report has said it's going to be pissing down all day, so I'm wearing massive hiking boots, which really goes a long way to making me feel all feminine.





If you're in London this weekend, I'd say you'd best get your arse to Regents Park because this is a fantastic 4 days of foodie treats! If you're not, then this is my Friday moment of Zen: A Chocolate Bunny getting the brunt of my annoyance and anger. I hope you enjoy it more than the bunny did!

I'm a pretty vegan bunny

What's that? Can't hear you?

I can't see!

AAAHHH! YOU HEARTLESS BITCH!

Your Friday Moment of Zen: Let them drive cake

I saw this ad last night on the tv and it is fantastic!! Not just because it's cake, but because I have always had a bit of thing for the "Sound of Music".. (I defy you to find anyone my age from Sydney who didn't love the Sound of Music.. or maybe that was just something wierd with the all girls school I went to. I think I could recite the entire movie, sing all the songs, and possibly do the dancing bits too. Captain Von Trappe. Grrr).

I can't find the youtube link so I'm afraid you'll have to actually go to here to watch it from the Skoda site. It's a brilliant ad, and since all I feel like I've done for ages now is eat cake, this is a perfect, Friday afternoon zen like piece. Feel like eating a bit of tyre now.

Typing on a waffle

Just a quick post because I love this, which I found on slashfood.com today. It's fantastic! Chris Domino has created a waffle iron in the shape of a keyboard. This must be a sure fire way to be able to lure your geek away from their pc, even for only a few moments over breakfast, without them getting teary.

Truly random.

Travels in China: Beijing Day 2: My Idea of Heaven

My second day in Beijing - from the endless posts that I write, but forget to actually, you know, post!


Today we visited Tianamen Square - and in case you're wondering, yes someone in the group (no that wasn't me) asked where precisely the tanks tried to kill the university protester. Our tour guide told us in China they've never seen that footage (not surprisingly) and so she didn't know too much about it.

Visiting the Emporers Forbidden City was pretty amazing. Looking at the private rooms, squares and gardens, it's amazing to imagine that I'm standing in the very same spots as so many emperors who would never have imagined that the China of today would be the China of their future.

My idea of heaven: well that was 3 things:

1) The Summer Palace, where the last Dowager Empress of China spent 10 months of the year. It was so beautiful, that I was completely blown away. I could have spent hours there.

2) We went to dinner at a famous Peking Duck restaurant (we are in Peking after all), and there seemed to be an endless supply of beer, duck, pancakes, and my table was full of middle aged men and women, watching their cholesterol. Hurrah! I'm fully embracing "holiday mode" and normal food intake has been completely suspended until I get back. The fact that I can actually feel the fat starting to join up different parts of my body so that I resemble more of a ball like shape hasn't quite stopped me yet... not quite...

3) The company that my mum has been working with to help organise this tour sent us two ladies to come and give me and my mum massages in our rooms. And no, these were not "ladies" of that sort, just two, very friendly, middle aged women, whose hands were able to relieve tension in my poor old body. I've had loads of massages before, but I've never communicated with any of my masseuses as much as I did with these two women. Neither one spoke much English, so it was all through body language and pigeon English/Mandarin. I had bought a little Mandarin-English phrase book, and the fact that I could work out they were saying "fangsong" (relax), and how to say "we're walking the Great Wall of China tomorrow" more than made up for the 12 Euros I spent on it.

Another fabulous day in China all in all.

Most embarrassing moments: None yet - looking exceedingly chubby in my photos isn't pleasing me.

Best Moment: It's a toss up between standing on the edge of the man made lake, that's shaped like a peach, looking out on to the temples on the other side at the Summer Palace, and at dinner realising with increasing joy that no one else wanted any more duck and it could be mine! All mine!! Tricky.. I'll post some pictures very soon.

Humph

People constantly bring goodies from their holidays into our kitchen at work, for everyone to enjoy, and to show off the fact they've been on holiday, and not in our damned office. Today, someone brought in nougat and biscuits.

When I went this afternoon to try my first bit of nougat, someone walked into the kitchen just as I was about to put a piece in my mouth, and said "You know the first place that's going to don't you? Straight to your hips".

Humph... I know I'm carrying a little bit of holiday weight, but honestly...

Egg-tastic

Li, from veganstore.co.uk fame (ethical food at very reasonable prices, shipped all over the world, for your guilt free pleasure), very kindly donated to our poor IT firm 13 delicious organic Green & Blacks easter eggs today! The squeel of delight that came out of us when we opened the box was deafening, and as you can see from these pics, that's alot of chocolate to get through.

Funnily though, of the 13 boxes that arrived 4 hours ago, only 5 seem to be left, meaning that there are going to be many people in our office who are about to contract type 2 diabetes.

Despite the amount of chub I've put on in China, that hasn't seemed to deter me from stuffing my face with chocolate today (not 8 boxes worth of chocolate mind you, I'm not an animal).

Obviously the empty boxes will soon join the "wall" between Dr D's desk and myself, to help keep the peace in the office...

Thanks Li! You truly are a superstar.