1 small pack asparagus tips
1 small pack fine green beans, trimmed
4 eggs, hardboiled (organic, free range), halved
Cos lettuce, shredded
1 can John West smoked tuna slices in oil, drained
1 small pack baby plum tomatoes, halved
4 medium new potatoes, sliced and boiled

Steam the beans, then when they are nearly cooked, pop in the asparagus. Steam until tender.
Place the tomatoes in two dishes.
Put the lettuce in each bowl.
Flake in the tuna and add some of the left over oil if you have any.
Top with the beans, then the potatoes, then the asparagus.
Pop the hardboiled egg halves on top.
Add black olives if you want them.
Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and serve.

This is either going to very good, or very, very bad...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7567840.stm

Hairy Bakers Monday 18 August 8.30-9.00pm BBC TWO

Dave Myers and Simon King
take to the road, once again, to
explore the history of bread

4 damned fine lamb chops
Greek yoghurt
Green beans
New potatoes
Munchies
A can of dulce de leche

*also distributes various comedians, Cornettos, chips, ginger biscuits and boys made of pizza*

I'm off down the shops. Anyone want anything?

http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/navigation/BYDLS-TheSpoonTheory.pdf

Thought I should post to this again in case people have no idea what I am on about when I mention running out of spoons.

In the words of s0b

And lo

In the early years of the second thousand years the land will turn dark; the wolf will rise up and eat the sun and there will be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth ....

(partial eclipse in 30 mins)

F List cull. Nothing personal, just people whose journals I simply never, ever have time to read or with whom I have nothing in common any more.

No hard feelings!

Now don't get me wrong, I am in no way shape or form a cake decorating person but, somehow, I feel that even I could have done better than some of these.

I bring you:

Am I playing at being a Domestic Goddess today or what?

Photo!

PS this site is ADDICTIVE. Oh yes. http://everythingcinnamon.co.uk/

I haven't done a Photo of the Day for a long while, so I think I shall just call it a Photo of the Whenever.

I'm slowly getting used to my treasured Canon G9 (thank you, team of Imps) and am now having fun with it, instead of looking at it with a furrowed* brow whilst trying to work out everything that it does.

Friday I went adventuring to Borough Market, mainly to buy steak but also to take photos. The stall holders were very nice indeed and didn't mind me faffing about at all.

This is the gallery: http://cookwitch.smugmug.com/gallery/5467889_utjii#334290166_JspfL

This is my favourite photo:


and this was lunch.

Today has been very nice. There was a very long lie in and then a fairly easy trip to the local shops to get supplies of various things. I foind a gorgeous cheese in Sainsbury's; Pié d'Angloys, which is like a slightly sweet brie inna box. It is a richer flavour than brie and has a touch of honey. I hereby state, with some confidence, that it is good on digestive biscuits. Very good, in fact. *ahem*

There has been movie watching this afternoon (Hellboy), crumpets, tea, online nattering with d_floorlandmine, photo wrangling and also roast pork with crackling. Nom.

Tomorrow will be a day of rest, some reading and roast lamb for dinner. Need to get a bit more salad in.

Yesterday, lots of fab people came and formed a wonderful Garden Army.

Many thanks go to :

ejde
kittylyst
simonb
kelemvor
illarane
silenttex

They all worked like Trojans and cleared 90% of our weed/bramble/grass mess. Three trees were admirably dealt with by Simon and Mark, as was the out of control grapevine.
The skip we hired was only just big enough! As a result, the front garden looks great and we can see the paving! ejde did a grand job of weeding out everything that was growing through the paving stones, and the boys were brilliant, despite the fact that they were all hankering after a flamethrower. A can of Lynx and a lighter was mooted at one point but, er, No.

For reasons I shall not go into here, we had a large area pf our back garden covered with a carpet. This had turned into a grass carpet and had to be removed, complete with its cargo of Ants' Nest. That also ended up in the skip, ensuring that the local kids did not climb on it.

Prior to this, to make a little more room in the skip, Kitty helped, mainly by having fun.

If you are planning on coming to help (weekend of 5th 6th July), please drop me an email on cookwitch at googlemail dot com and I will email you back address, map, directions, trains, buses, contact numbers etc.

kelemvor, illarane, do you need crash space?

I have been asked to password protect a folder on our public drive, which is on the server.

Can anyone tell me how to do this?

It needs to have a password so that only members of the specific team dealing with the work can access the folder. We need to do this for data protection reasons.

I've tried the 'right click - properties - security' but then got a wee bit lost and thought I'd stop before I did a bad thing by accident.

I have made a copy of the folder btw - I have Windows XP Professional on my PC.

Email from colleague to office:

Just a quick email let you know that we are currently looking to film a reconstruction with an 81 year old lady who was involved in a benefit fraud. The proposed date of filming is Friday 20th June 2008. If anybody knows an elderly lady who might be interested in a day's filming please can they get in touch with me and I can give them some more information about this shoot.

Anyone?

One of our new shows is about to air. There has been a lot of hard work put into this, and I am really quite proud of Big Boss, as it was his idea.

Dicken' Secret Lover - presented by Charles Dance - will be shown on Channel Four on Monday 16th June at 9pm, as part of their Victorian Passions season.


http://www.kent.gov.uk/filmoffice/film-focus/dickens2019-secret-lover

You are all amazing. Yes, you are.  I am overwhelmed by your generosity and kindness.

We will do out best to sort out room/space for crashing if needed, and I will provide Food. Now to work out who eats what!

A house in Harold Hill needs your help.

We have A Garden. It is out of control. Very much out of control. To clear it, a firm wanted £500, and they csnnot start for 4 weeks at least, and so I am going to appeal to you all.

Can anyone help us clear this jungle we have? It's too much for us on our own, what with my Various Things and Tex's Back o Doom, so i throw myself upon your tender mercies and strong arms.

Weekend of 5th and 6th July
Our place in Harold Hill
Wear dirty/old clothes and heavy boots
There will be Copious Amounts of Lisa Food provided

Thank you in advance.

This time mine, using the new G9.

This was taken on Sunday night, but the moon was a bit too low for me to really get a good shot, and I really needed a tripod, but the one I could find did not extend high enough.

Still, nae bother. I quite like this!

Finally, Jacob's Fig Rolls are back in the shops. catpooka I found mine in Somerfield.

*chomp*

I was thinking about John Peel today for no apparent reason, and realised that I have wanted to share this Mitch Benn song with people for ages.

http://download.yousendit.com/F6552CB166A8C856

It'll be up for 7 days. Hope it works!

Last weekend, d_floorlandmine and I toddled off to a church in South Norwood, armed with cameras and comfy shoes. The weather was warm, but changeable, so we ended up with photos taken in both extremely bright sunshine and cloudy-but-full-of-glare conditions. We had fun though as it's a very large church with a sprawling churchyard, full of marvellous nooks and crannies and stonework. I even spent a while communing with the moss under a tree.*

Here is the gallery should you wish to see. spikeylady and lolliepopp, there is even a cute bug, just for you!

http://cookwitch.smugmug.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumID=5006160&AlbumKey=YgYkK

* In other words, I fell over and stayed down there for a while....

Hmm.

Over on mock the stupid there is a post about tattoos and how some lass has had loads of tattoos done after splitting with her BF, and that she is 'stupid' because all her tats have no meaning, she just picked the ones that 'looked prettiest'.

http://community.livejournal.com/mock_the_stupid/3046646.html

This makes me a bit uncomfortable. Surely if you choose a tattoo, then it has meaning for you, whatever others might think? Okay so it might be stupid according to others, but I do think people have the right to have what they want on their body, regardless of how 'stupid' others may think it. After all, they will be stuck with it, not us! I have a celtic moon with a Chinese symbol that says Moon on it. (It does say that, I have checked with Chinese people) and yet a Chinese person may look at that and think how silly it is.

Maoris may see non-Maori people with Maori styled tattoos and think the same thing.

This comment pissed me off.

She's one of those people who gives people with legit, thought out tattoos a bad name.

Why does every tattoo have to be 'thought out', and what makes one more tattoo more 'legitimate' than another?

Hmm. Maybe I am just spoiling for a fight today.

Poll #1190826 What would YOU say this is?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What would you say is the definition of 'decottelage'?

I'm trying to get back into remembering to take photos, as I wandered away from it for a while. I read a bit in Digital SLR magazine about kitchen macros, and it got me started.

Today we present...The Tomato! Nestled in the nice new thyme plant that I bought today. Isn't she pretty?

Where can we go to buy silver body paint, in London? We need to get it today.

Brother TN-7600 for an HL-1850 printer. I think we have 3 to get rid of.
Our machine, er, died by way of the floor. *ahem*

£26.99 + VAT list price so £20 each? ONO

Can anyone on my F List read Chinese? We need someone to check out a website.

Please contribute ideas. It's going to be fun, whatever we do.

http://emmelinemay.livejournal.com/1001751.html

Promote around your journals too if you want to.

My co-worker has just come back from the shoot that vampwillow,
asrana, spikeylady and bathtubgin went to, plus some of ifimust's offspring as well.

She says they are all lovely and were absolutely perfect. Excellent.

Hope you enjoyed yourselves ladies!

Oh dear.

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/recipe/0,,2265305,00.html

This was rather a good exercise really. There's a lot of debate on La Delia's 'new' cooking concept (powdered eggs and butter substitutes during the war dear?) and Aldo Zilli decided to put her 'recipes' to the test.

£3.98 for a 1 CAN of creamed chunky chicken to make a pie when you can buy a ready made chicken pie for £1.99.

*facepalm*

Adapted from Nigella's White Chocolate and Pistachio Cookies.

I'm making them to take to work (some of them) and one of our girls is allergic to nuts, so pistachios were out from the get go. I'm not keen on white chocolate in cookies, so I substituted chopped dark. She used 1 tsp bicarb. I hate that taste of that, so went with 1/2 a tsp.

Also, the recipe states that it makes 36 cookies, and it actually does!

This is what I ended up with.

Not done this for a while.

This was taken on a frosty, clear morning, walking to the tram stop from d_floorlandmine's house. It's an old, gnarled tree stump. I loved the mix of colours.

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As said earlier on this LJ, I have a hankering for baking.

I remember watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall make a Victoria Sponge during the River Cottage series, and it won a prize at the local show, so I think I may have to give it a go. I'm not going to do the jam and cream filling though, as silenttex is allergic to cream, I'm going to use a filling of thick custard and home made rhubarb spread. I also don't have two cake tins of the same depth, so I shall try baking it as one cake, and then splitting it when it's cool. Now, do I replace 1oz of the flour with ground almonds, as my Nan used to do, or not? Decisions, decisions....

I do like the method of weighing the eggs, and then measuring the other ingredients accordingly.

Victoria Sponge Cake

From Nigella's How To Be a Domestic Goddess

The page was marked with an old B Movie flyer. *sigh*

I made sure that I left work bang on time tonight, and that worked well as I was able to get the 18.33 train, instead of the 18.52, which meant that I was indoors by 7.30. A hankering for cooking basically a slab of meat led to me grabbing the last half leg of lamb from the Co-op and planning to turn it into dinner.

It was a small one, weighing about 1 k (2.2lb) and on the bone too, so as soon as I got in (after a cuddle with Tex of course) I boned out the joint, butterflied it and covered it in a spicy marinade.

Marinade

2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 1/2 tsp dried mint
1/2 tsp Ras El Hanout* spice (I bought mine in Tesco)
1/2 tsp ground sumac**

Pound the garlic with a pestle and mortar with some sea salt until it's a smooth paste. Add in all the spices, pound again then slowly mix in enough olive oil to make a fairly liquid marinade. Enough to cover the lamb.

Massage the paste into the lamb and then roast, skin side up, until done! I think it only took about half an hour. It stayed tender and juicy and we may have eaten it rather fast, hence the absence of a photo.

*     http://www.maroque.co.uk/catalog.aspx?p=00914
**   http://www.maroque.co.uk/catalog.aspx?s=sumac

Since I've been in, I've put on a load of washing, fed Tex chicken soup as he has a cold, the poor boy, and made one batch of nut free flourless 'browies' to take into work tomorrow. Second batch just about to be started. Getting in early (7.30) is good!

http://www.drfells.com/

Hope to see some of you there.

I'm really pleased with this version. Seeing as the last one had me feeling weird for ages due to the red wine, and I felt that the meat was too dry anyway, I was determined not to have that happen again.

Another shot taken in St Thomas's Church, Noak Hill. The bright sunshine made it possible for me to get so many reflections in there.

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The plan was for Tex and I to head home and have a quiet night in with a takeaway and each other. This plan was somewhat scuppered by a fatality at Romford, which basically stopped all trains going out of Liverpool Street. After some text discussion, I met Tex at Liverpool Street and we went for a wander down to Spitalfields Market place.

It's really been revamped, and there are a lot of large but cosy looking restaurants there.

The S&M (sausage and mash) café looked inviting, and had spaces, but it didn't quite fit the bill, so we wandered a bit further. Giraffe was totally overloaded, Canteen wasn't but their seating looked rather uncomfortable, so we plumped for Leon.

http://www.leonrestaurants.co.uk/index.htm

It was warm, and the music was there but not intrusive. Gentle reggae tunes, smiling staff - especially our waitress (who I have introduced to National Cake Day) - and nice food.





The drinks were extremely good.


Tex had a Hot Apple Toddy. Spiced apple juice with a shot of rum. I can't vouch for how good it was but he definitely enjoyed it and it smelled gorgeous.



I'd quite like to go back again at some point, even if it's only to try their sweet potato falafel and the lemon cheesecake!

There should be a National Cake Day.

There is a suggestion that as St Honorè is the patron saint of bakers, and his day is 16th of May, that it could be on that day.

What say you and how to get it nationally recognised?

Before I forget!

Extreme close up of a tiny flower in the Wildlife Habitat section of the church I visited on Saturday.

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Hmm. It no longer allows you to click on the photo to see the larger image. No wee 'hand' comes up when you hover your mouse over the photo. Apologies.

Taken after dinner with lolliepopp on Tuesday.

It's not a great photo, the lanterns do not like keeping still, but I really like it. The blaze of orange against the night sky was so pretty.