Thursday 23 December 2010

Seeing as i'm stuck on the ferry to shetland with nothing to do, except blog and read blind willow sleeping woman, a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami i thought i would treat you all to a nice christmassy blog... and yes i do know its a little early but i probably won't get another chance to update this till after the new year so i figured i would get it done before Christmas was actually upon us so without further ado here it is a round up of christmas inspired things from recipes to books and songs/poetry all about that special winter holiday (god that sounds cheesy when i read it back)...

 CHOCOLATE CHRISTMAS CAKE
 the following recipe is a copy from nigella lawsons feast book and can be found in the chocolate cake hall of fame chapter. It has now become the cake of choice in our family and imo is much better than a traditional fruitcake...
 you will need
 350g prunes
 250g raisins
 125g currants
 50g piece candied orange peel
 175g softened butter
 175ml runny honey
 125ml tia maria ( or any other coffee flavoured liquer, for a change cointreau would probs work as well)
 juice and zest of 3 oranges
 1tsp mixed spice
 4 tblsp cocoa powder
 3eggs beaten together
 150g plain flour
 75g ground almonds
 half a teaspoon each of bicarb and baking powder.

 prepare the tin in the normal method for baking a fruitcake and preheat the oven to gas mark 2 or 150 degrees celcius. Place all the ingridients except for the eggs, flour, almonds bicarb and baking powder in to alarge heavy based saucepan and bring to the boil simmer gently for 10 minutes then REMOVE  from the heat and let it cool for 30 minutes. Once cooled add the remaining ingredients and stir gently, pour into prepped tin and bake in prehated oven for 1 and 3/4 - 2 hours it should feel firm on the top when cooked although the skewer method doesnt actually work as this makes quite a sticky cake so it the skewer will come out ;looking sticky even when its had the full cooking time ...

 we've all heard the traditional 12 days of christmas song but this is one of my favourite versions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2O0GOfolNA&feature=related i dont think i would be able to sing the traditional version now even if i wanted to ....

Monday 13 December 2010

lazy student 10 minute supper

right the following recipe is the results of me staring in frustration at the contents of my cupboard/fridge and wondering what in the world i'm going to have for my tea so without further ado i give you the "lazy student 10 minute supper"

 you will need:
 3 fish fingers
 2 rashers of smoked back bacon
 half a mug of pasta and the same of frozen peas
 a dollop of ketchup
 a knob of butter
 a smallish saucepan
 boiling water ( enough to cover the pasta in the pan)
 a grill set to the ighest temp it'll go to

 what to do:
 1. wack the bacon and the fish fingers under the grill at the same time put the pasta onto the hob to cook. Once 5 minutes are up turn the bacon and the fish fingers.
 2. about 7 minutes into the cooking time add the peas to the water the pasta is cooking and boil on high for remaining 3 minutes
 3. once 10 mins are up drain pasta and peas and tip back into saucepan.
 4. tear bacon (which should be nice and crispy by now) and the fish fingers in to the pasta add ketchup (as much or as little as you like) and a good knob of butter and give everything a quick stir before tipping the lot into a bowl and tucking in

 nb the above definatley isn't something you would serve at a posh dinner party and is more the kind of thing that you would cook up and eat after coming home at 3 in the  morning from a wild night out and hey its semi balanced after all it contains the 3 major food groups and the fish fingers could be substituted for sausages although i would reccomend cutting the sausages in half lengthways to cut down on cooking time. finally any of the meaty ingridients can easily be swapped for vegeterian substitutes :)

 let me know if you've tried this and what you think of it

mouldy cheese, comments etc to the usual address or you know just post a comment on here lol

Friday 10 December 2010

10 things that have made my week

10. rediscovering my love for classical music
 9. having the week off college due to snow even though i only live 2 minutes walk away
 8. i finally got around to reading all my etsy newsletter emails and whilst i've got a snowballs chance in hell of actually being able to afford the items i want i still had a very pleasurable evening of drooling over pretty things
 7. cups of tea and mr kipling festive bakewell tarts omnomnom
 6. taking part in the bbc book challenge and discovering i'd read 96 of the books listed , the bbc book challenege for anyone who doesnt know is a list of 100 books compiled by the bbc  and there is a group on facebook where you can tick all the books on the list that you've read popular belief is that the average person will have read only 6 of the books on the list.
 5. its nearing christmas time yay for advent calenders and christmassy stuff in general
 4. i have a bottle of wine sitting in my fridge which is just crying out to be cracked upon and have acheeky glass taken out of it :)
 3 this tune http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0faT_aNicGc&list=QL&playnext=5 its making me feel slightly teary eyed but so what its pretty :)
 2 www.flutterbydaisy.co.uk check it out there's loads of pretty things on there and her blog is just the right mix of whimsical fairytale prettiness and and something a little harder to decipher
 1. playing with my makeup i managed to get a passable makeup look for an elfin warrior/archer concept that i'm working on and once i've perfected it i'll put a couple of pictures up on here :)

Thursday 2 December 2010

harry potter and the deathly hallows part 1 and Jrock

so after 2 weeks i figure i should update the old blog ...
as you can probably all guess from the title i went and saw the new harry potter film a couple of weeks ago or so... and this is what i thought of it
i absolutley loved it this film in particular is so much darker than the previous films which isn't that surprising as i reckon the deathly hallows is probably the darkest book out of the lot of them i have to admit that there were certain issues that annoyed me in the film but thats more to do with me being picky then anything else, in general though the film is a fairly good representation of the book and i can't wait to see what they do with the second film and the battle scene, although i'm not looking forward to watching the bit where fred, tonks, remus and severus die mainly because i know i'll probably spend most of the time crying at those points, i cried when dobby died and i knew it was coming so the fact that i'm going to have to watch some of my favourite characters die is going to be even worse :(
On a slightly more cheerful note i've recently refound my collection of Jrock music and have been having a fabulous time with getting reaquainted with bands like:

Nightmare
TRAX
Gackt
MiYaVi
Alice Nine
Malice Mizer
D
Janne Da Arc
Due 'le quartz
Kra
Kaggra
X-Japan
Raphael
Antic Cafe
Vidoll
Baroque
SID (Shido)
Merry
Sex Machineguns
The Dead Popstars
Phantasmagoria
Rentrer en Soi
DAIGO STARDUST
Clavier
the Pumpkin Head
CRAZE
ANTHEM
Scar.
FAIRY FORE
GARI
KING
MUCC
12012.
Kagerou.
Deathgaze.
Balzac.
GISM.

i'd actually forgotten how much i love Jrock and visual kei :)