What I Have Been Eating Recently

This doesn't have a good name, I mean, it doesn't have *a* name. I've been referring to it as "the lentil stuff" which I suppose is descriptive if not appetizing.


The Lentil Stuff

Chop an onion, sizzle it in a pot.
Crush a handfull of brazil nuts, pop in the pot.
Dump a bunch of puy lentils in, a mug's worth?
Open a can of chopped tomatoes, bung that in too.
Decide that that doesn't look like enough liquid- fill up the can with water and pour it in.
Cook covered for a while.
Remember that you were meant to put some bullion in, toss a vegetable stock cube in.
Oh yeah, and some sugar. Decide that honey is probably even better and spoon some in.
Look at it for a while.
You know what that could use? Some more tomatoes. Open another can and add those.
Simmer.
Simmer.
Simmer.
It's still really watery, take the lid off.
Simmer.
Get bored.
Discover that you have some fresh tomatoes, chop up a couple of those and throw them in.
Simmer.
Bet that some freshly chopped basil would be really nice on top...


Decide that the lentils are *cooked* and spoon it into a bowl. Add some basil.


Make the ultimate decision: spoon or fork?
Choose fork.
Regret that decision.


Num num num.

Food.

My food habits are getting weird.  (Again.)

I just had 9 clementines for dinner. Last night I had too many salted peanuts and a packet of blueberries (which are out of season! What were they doing in the shop??). On Sunday (or was it Saturday?) I had ice cream.

Which isn't to say that I haven't been cooking or eating well. Geoff and I made a delicately spiced, creamy parsnip soup. Last night I made a marinated turkey steak sandwich and some red cabbage Asian style coleslaw.

It's just that I don't eat that food for dinner. I pack those for lunch and go back to having my fruit and junk food at night.

That's balanced, right?

Easter et al

I know Easter was nearly a week ago, but I'm still excited about the flurry of cooking that went along with it- so in order to brag about tasty food- I'm just going to write about it here. Hmmph.

I spent Easter weekend at my friend Gwen's house where her flatmate Hanna was moving out and Gwen was moving into Hanna's old room. So in addition to the flurry of cooking we also did quite a lot of packing and lifting and moving and whatnot. It was good times.

When Gwen and I get together we tend to make elaborate meals followed by elaborate deserts. I am confident and happy to experiment and just play with cooking, but baking freaks me out. Gwen is, happily, opposite. So she helps me with the cakes, and I help her with the dinners.

On Friday we made pizza. Originally we were going to make the dough and everything but technology (read: the internet) got in the way so instead we just made tasty toppings. On one pizza: sauteed onions, peppers, mushrooms, and fresh mozerrella. On the other pizza: carmelized red onions, mushrooms, spinach, and goat's cheese. Cake: red velvet with cream cheese frosting (Also, shockingly, an entire bottle of red food coloring...it was...bright).

Weekend of New People

On Saturday Ella finally took me down to her Dad's house in order to meet her baby sister! Naimh is now 8 months old exactly and she's pointing, starting to say recognizable syllables, and getting oh-so-close to crawling. She's pretty adorable. Holding her consisted more of bracing her while she squirmed than actual holding- she's a strong baby!

Ella got a car for her birthday (or something like that, I think it showed up this summer which is after her birthday, but whatever) so I sat in the passenger's seat and navigated while Ella drove through London. We were using the London A-Z and at one point (I'm not sure how this happened) we ended up a good 4 pages beyond where I thought we were...oops. I think we ended up going too far East and having to back track a bit, but we didn't do any "oh wait, that was the exit" or "turn around, turn around!" so points!

Mark, Ella's dad, was tired when we got there, but he kindly supplied us with assorted cheese and crackers and tea and we had a great time playing with the kittens and having a very involved discussion about pets until Naimh woke up from her nap.

It was a pretty great visit: cheese, kittens, and a baby! Do you really want anything more?

On Sunday I went to evensong with Sarah Titterington and her parents at St. Pauls (I'm getting to be an old hand at this whole evensong thing) turns out this week is the first week of advent so the Christmas trees were already up in the sanctuary and there was a giant advent wreathe in the corner. I tried sketching some of it to put in my sketch book/journal for the class I'm taking with Mical. Obviously I didn't get my paints out so I was writing detailed color notes on the sketch "silver grey blue" "silver grey blue, but darker because it's in the shadow" I realized as I wrote 'brown' and then crossed that out to 'grey' that just because I know what color that object is in the light (for instance: wood) doesn't mean that it is actually appearing that color right now.

After evensong we went to YO! Sushi (yes, that is actually the name of the restaurant) for a bit of tea and a snack. It is so nice to see all of them, they're lovely people. We had a good talk about things we might do in Kansas when everyone is there for the wedding in August. Kansas in August, who thinks that is a good idea temperature wise? Sarah and I keep joking that we should make sure all of the guys are in full morning suits (tails, waistcoat, cravat, top hat) since that is an English tradition.

Sunday evening (and here is where the new people come in again) I went to a meet up of blog readers from Jezebel.com which is a feminist leaning news and pop culture site. They were such lovely people! And none of them were musicians! We ended up at this bar right next to Tottenham Court Square that was *deserted* except for us (I guess Sunday early evening isn't a big time for bars?) so empty was it that we actually were hanging outside for a while convinced that it wasn't open until I asked (innocently and just covering our bases) "We did try the door, right?"

I think all told there were about 14 women there. I was on the younger side of things, but felt right at home anyway. Most people were ex-pats of one kind of another: Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and a couple of actual English people. They were lawyers, Women's rights activists, a recently published novelist (who I will tell you more about at Christmas since at least one of her books is becoming a gift), book store clerks, unemployed, and me. (I'm sure there were some other careers as well but there was such a flurry of talking that it was hard to keep everyone straight. I only caught about four names total.) Anyhow the evening was really lovely and I'm glad I had been brave enough to go show up at a random place in London to meet random people I knew very little about other than that we all enjoyed reading the same blog. Which, actually, it turns out is a fairly useful thing to know- there is a sort of baseline for assumptions you can make about that person.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've spent the afternoon eating stuffing and pretending like I'm going to have an appetite for all of the food that I've been making. (But really, let's be honest, it's all about the stuffing. And the cranberry sauce.)

Hey, guess what? My VISA SHOWED UP TODAY! So I'm good to go until November 18, 2011 now! And all that work that I've been doing? ALL of it is legal now! Woo!

We're having Thanksgiving at Sarah and Dave's place this year since A: they have the biggest living room/dining space and B: Sarah's parents are here, which is great because they are fun. There is going to be about 14 people there (Will there be enough chairs? No.) and since this year there are going to be a number of meat eaters- I've put myself in charge of the turkey again. Finding a turkey in London...

There was a giant turkey breast for sale at Morrisons, but since it was 35 (!) GBP, I thought...no. Tesco's had a sale on Chickens: 3 for ten quid, so I did that and then bought a couple of giant turkey legs since I figure that white meat is white meat, but turkey dark meat and chicken dark meat are *different.*

Currently in the oven I have two chickens, one turkey leg, and a rolled up roast of turkey breast. On top of the stove I've got one small casserole filled with stuffing and one loaf pan filled with stuffing (the loaf pan is staying at my flat so that Ella and I can have left overs.) The brussels sprouts aren't done yet, the corn bread and cranberry sauce was made yesterday, and this blog entry is turning in to a to do list for me...but that's still fun reading, right?!

Cranberries were hard to find this year, probably because I'm no longer living or going to school right next to a fancy, expensive grocery store. I managed to find *one* package so there is only a very small batch of cranberry sauce this year. (I may horde it. I'm not making any promises.)

I hope you all enjoy your Thanksgiving and have a wonderful holiday!

Don't Drink Tea at 8:30pm

I don't deal well with caffeine. Or maybe I deal very well with it...depends on how you look at the situation I suppose. In any case- there was a tea break during the rehearsal tonight and so I had a big warm mug of tea, and it was delightful. But it means that is is 2am and I am AWAKE! WHEE!

Which is kind of a problem because I need to wake up and go to work tomorrow morning.

Anyhow- since I am AWAKE! WHEE! I figure I might as well use my time well, right? So I've made my lunch for tomorrow.

I've been trying to make my lunch a lot more recently- mostly because I have to make sure that I'm carrying around enough food to take me through a big long day of teaching when I'm out of the house for 12 hours at a time in an expensive part of town.

I find that I do better with some protein-- I stay more awake and engaged and what not-- so as a half-assed vegetarian who has trouble with dairy this means I have been making a lot of egg and tuna salad sandwiches. Um. Apart. Not together. Because, weird.

Anyhow- I just finished tomorrow's tuna salad and thought I would share the "recipe"

1 can of tuna
1 hand full of flat leaf parsley- superfinelychopped
(use a big knife, it's more fun that way: You can rock it back and forth and pulverize it)
1 hand full of green olives- superfinelychopped
(see above)
2 stalks celery-- chunkily chopped
1/8th of a red onion--chopped however you like
1 T Dijon mustard
2 T mayonnaise


Mmmmm.

Put in a little Tupperware container to put in your lunch bag along with some rye bread and carrot sticks.

Ponder whether to add salt and pepper

Decide that probably the olives and the parsley will be flavorful enough

Stop farting around on the Internet and go to be already! It's a quarter after 2 in the morning!

Odds and Ends

1. This is probably unimportant, but I was really pleased with my lunch today. I made a turkey sandwich. Which seems really normal, and it is, but I don't normally make them. Plus, it was on fancy, tasty, deliciously chewy bread from the Polish store with nice, thick cut Swiss cheese and Dijon mustard. Also, I had cut up a bunch of vegetables (including red pepper) and I had a banana. Doesn't that just seem like a lovely, classy lunch? I enjoyed it. Part of the appeal was putting the sandwich in my favorite Tupperware container which has a snap on lid so you really know it's going to stay.

2. Go see Star Trek. Go see it now. I cried, tears streaming down my face during the first 10 minutes and then spent the rest of the movie infernally annoying the poor guy next to me with my bouncing and flailing about with excitement. Awesome, amazing movie. I've never seen any of the TV shows or movies before, so I know that there was a lot I was missing. (Like all of the reveals where they're like "My name is thus and such" and you're clearly supposed to go "Ooohh!" Yeah, I didn't get those.) (It didn't matter.)

3. My final project has a title now! Instead of being "Untitled IPE, Casey Middaugh." It will now be called "The Three Elements." Which is a bit confusing because there are either four or a whole periodic table full of them. But trust me here, it works.

4. My ankle is mending. It is still about half again as wide as my left ankle, but I have given up the crutch now and have taken to slathering my whole foot in arnica gel a couple of times a day. I don't know if that actually does any good, but it makes me feel like I am doing something for my foot.

Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was wonderful. We had it at my flat and the kitchen is just perfectly sized for a bustling eight person party where everyone is helping to prepare the food and talking over each other and catching up and generally having a wonderful time.

The party came together rather last minute after many permutations of people, locations, and events. We ended up with nine people over the course of the evening- the old school dinner club folk and some new people as well. Meredith, my old flat mate; Tim, her boyfriend; Dave; Sarah who was visiting from America; “Other Tim”, Dave’s friend and new dinner club initiate; Jon; Latana; my friend Kanika whom I stayed with this summer; and myself.

Everyone brought various parts of the feast. We were too last minute to actually get a turkey to defrost, which is probably a good thing since we ate barely a quarter of what I did purchase which was a giant turkey leg and a couple of turkey breast roasts from the meat section at Morrissons (the very good grocery store a short bus ride away from the flat). Everyone showed up about an hour later than they said they would which worked out just fine because it meant that I had time to clean my room and the kitchen and make sure all the dishes were clean and ready to use and things like that.

Dave, Sarah, and Other Tim showed up with bags of vegetables, stuffing mix, and two bags of marshmallows which- for some reason- in England only come in mixed pink and white varieties which is unfortunate as the pink ones are strawberry flavored and gross as we discovered earlier this week when trying to introduce Dave to s’mores. Jon showed up shortly thereafter and was immediately sent back out into the cold to purchase various things that we kept discovering we didn’t actually need once he had already left the house. (This was an unfortunate pattern; I think we sent him out three times.) We had things boiling on every burner and three levels of things baking in the oven. It was a good thing the turkey wasn’t a real turkey as it was much flatter than would otherwise be the case and meant we had more room to shove other things in the oven like stuffing, cheese balls, parsnips, etc.

Meredith and Tim showed up with a vegetarian shepherd’s pie, the aforementioned cheese balls, and three pies made from scratch including two pumpkin pies that they had made from an actual pumpkin. I was very impressed.

Latana showed up right as the food was being laid out which was perfect timing on her part. We cleared off the side board and had platters, sauce pans, and casseroles full of food all over the kitchen. (Meat and veggie versions of everything.) People were serving across the table so that there was this lovely pattern of arms across the table which went nicely with fretwork’s consort music in the background.

The best part though, was that at the end after all the food and the pies and the ice cream everyone cleaned up! There was a giant assembly line of dishwashers, dish dryers, leftovers patrol, counter clearers, and one very special garbage man. It was brilliant, they even scrubbed the roasting pan-all while screaming/singing along to Ben Folds and Bruce Springsteen. Impromtu dance parties were clearly taking place.

All and all a brilliant success- everyone agreed the food was better this year and thought it was A-okay that we neglected to do hand turkeys.

Extra Special Office Blog Part I

I've spent the last two days at work filing. That is it; just putting files back on the shelves in alphabetical order. Now, this may sound typical since my job title is after all "temp-filing" but usually I get to do something else- like labeling, or pulling files, or franking all the mail. But no, the last couple of days have been just filing.

Wednesday I held up pretty well and put back nearly all of the files that just kept piling up, but today I found out how much I can slack off and still pretend that I am at work. To that end I thought today would be a great day to take pictures for a photo blog of work...

This first post is going to deal with the most important aspect of work: the tea!
This is an average sized kitchen cabinet. This average sized cabinet is used solely to hold tea bags and sugar. Each of those PGtips bags holds an "average of 1150 tea bags." The first time I opened this cabinet door I burst out laughing. One of the most common phrases heard in the office and one that I think I could now do in a flawless British accent is "would anyone like a tea or coffee...?"
These are the kettles (and the toaster, but whatever). I don't know how well you can tell this- but the kettles light up- the red one in the back is red because it is heating the water, the one in front is blue because it is not currently heating water. They glow. I think it would be more useful to have the light turn blue again once the water is no longer hot enough to make tea with- but that would be significantly more difficult and you can always just look to see if the kettle is still steaming or not.
This isn't a terribly appetizing example- but one of the best things about Finsbury is that not only are there innumerable tea and coffee breaks- but there is always cake! (cookies, chocolates, little gummy candies, etc.) Today there were variations on date cakes.
You can't really see this in the picture, but the sign on the window asks us to please wash our own dishes/cutlery so that other people don't have to. As you can see by the state of the sink- this is largely ignored. On Wednesday someone was soaking a jumper (sweater) in the little section on the right of the sink. It was weird. I tend to wash mugs/cups when I am desperately in need of a filing diversion.

That mug at the top there is my perfect cup of tea- I always use that mug (because you have to have one you always use- ya know?) and I like mine very strong with one sugar and super milky/white. (Alternatively I like it black.)

Comments

There have been a bunch of advertising comments recently- so I have just enabled comment moderating and changed it so that you have to type in squiggly letters before blogger.com will let you post. This should completely rid the blog of spam comments- but it does mean that comments may take longer to actually show up now because I have to receive an email saying that you have posted a comment and then approve it.

So, a little more work- but hey! No more spam!

I'm back in London and I went shopping again today- this time for clothes that I can actually wear in the Gambia. (We leave on FRIDAY. Everyone is sending emails back and forth, I'm getting excited) I went to Camden and found this awesome shop that sells light, but fitted clothing from India. So I'm totally down with the fabric and the cuts. I bought a very nice shirt that I think I will even be able to wear to work after the trip- and a pair of Aladdin pants. They are billowy and peacock blue and a bit silly but I *like* them.

I've just about gotten over my jet lag and am having crepes with Latana tonight. She got back from Paris this morning and I met her at the St. Pancras Int'l station. There are more creperies then normal there. Probably this is because that is where the Eurostar leaves from and why not get a head start on Parisian food?

London: Official day #1

I found Guildhall! That was my goal for today: to get down to the Barbican and find where I am supposed to be tomorrow morning. I wanted to know how long it would take (roughly 45 minutes door to door) and figure out a route from the flat to the school. Good thing I did too, I walked all the way around the Barbican (I think I found the restaurant that we ate at after the Philly concert when we sat one table away from the conductor-man whose head-shots were all pretentiously arty and of his hands) and wandered around a good deal of that section of London as well. I ended up going up a level somehow, over a super cool water feature (there is this sunken section in the water that is dry and covered in wire and ivy domes-I want to go play in it), past an annexed section of Guildhall administrative offices, and back down again. But eventually I found it by hearing a soprano warming up and following the sound.

Now for the awards for the day:
Grammy pulls ahead of the competition once again for her e-mail titled "Look Right!" which has been very helpful to remember when crossing streets. Mommy gets an award for telling me to get some sleep when I called her last night, crying (I slept for 16 hours, think I needed it?). Andy gets an award as well for his suggestion of tiffinbites- which is this chain of Indian fast food restaurants, one of which I ate at tonight. You choose from a series of meals named things like "pride paneer" and uh. other stuff. (That was the only one I committed to memory because I thought it was amusing, but they are all alliterative or rhyme-y.) Anyhow, each meal is a set of three plastic tubs stacked together that you can microwave either at the shop or at home. I had something-or-rather mumbai. I think. Anyhow, there was a tub of potatoes in a tomato sauce, a tub of eggplant in tasty sauce, and a tub of rice. Anyhow- it was nice and everyone who worked there was very polite and helpful when it became clear that I had never been there before and didn't know how the whole set up worked. Actually, the guy who helped me out was very unobtrusive in his help, I didn't feel like "hey, you're a doofus for not understanding" which is always nice. Nobody likes being a doofus.

Speaking of other nice people-(this time on the tube) a woman got her hands and bags, but not her body, on to the tube before the doors closed, so she was very stuck. About four people went to go and try and get the doors to open, and when they finally at last did- another fellow jumped on right as they were closing again. The whole car laughed while the fellow looked around, confused.

All in all Life is good. I'll let you know how the first day of the workshop goes tomorrow.