One Exhausted Cook...

My lovely kitchen has been used and abused over the past few days as I have been on a cooking and entertaining frenzy. Therefore I am closing it down for at least twenty-four hours and am tonight going to indulge in the age old gourmet classic: cheese on toast. Perfect.

First there was Dan's birthday dinner for which I made a poached leek and dorset blue vinny tart with buttered potatoes and salad, followed by the biggest and stodgiest chocolate caramel cake ever.



Then on Friday it was butternut squash and paneer curry for Jen and Sam. And today I have made lamb rogan josh, tarka dal and mountains of rice and naan for my family who came to visit this afternoon.

It seems silly to just blog about food, but you may have noticed that I actually adore cooking. I am even a bit pissed that so many international foodie documentaries have been made as I myself would love to make a film just eating my way around the world. Bliss. I did a cooking course once in Siem Reap in Cambodia. The woman who was running it soon tired of my fussy ways and I'm sure at one point she wanted to make me into a Khmer Gem-Mok.

Anyway, my family came up to see the new flat today, which was lovely. A very chilled out day of eating, drinking, walking on Peckham Rye and watching Liverpool beat Manchester United. I never realised how many Liverpool supporters there were in East Dulwich. I might start calling it Little Liverpool. Just during football season.

So I am now thoroughly exhausted and need sleep. Ollie is watching Roger Moore as the world's most suave spy, so I am going to do my Medieval Monsters reading and read my brand new copy of Wanderlust xx

Mozza

Get well soon xx

Cold Coldy Cold

The weather today has been shockingly bad. So much so that I have ventured out of the flat precisely once to walk Jen to Lordship Lane and buy some milk. I'm starting to get used to the sad fact that autumn has very quickly become winter and have already packed away some of my wardrobe until the sun comes out again.

My flat is amazingly warm, partly because it's brand new and partly because the sheer amount of cooking and baking I do provides a never-ending supply of warmth. The chillies are still growing on the windowsill despite the bleakness of outside and everything is ace.

Sometimes when it's cold outside there is nothing better than curling up under a blanket, watching a great film with some yummy food and remembering how lucky you are to have such an ace home xx

Jen's Going to Borneo!!

So, the good news: I am feeling SO much better and my senses have returned, it is not long until I go to Paris, and my lovely friend Brock will be coming to London in just over a month.

And the bad news: The wars of words continue, although I am determined not to dwell on this.

Aside from news, good or bad, I had a lovely evening last night being local. Sam and Jen came over to the flat for one of our South East Asia reunion evenings. We ate some curry that I made from the new Anjum Anand cookbook (amazing), drank some Katy and watched a whole series of League, quoting the good bits and doing the voices. This may sound like an obscure way to spend an evening considering all that London has to offer, but they are the best times.

Jen has had some completely amazing news that Sam and I are so totally jealous of. Jen has obtained a bursary to go and work in Borneo for three months in building and environmental projects. The problem is that despite having a bursary, there is still so much money to be raised towards the expedition. So, Sam and I have decided to help with some fundraising to help Jen get to Borneo and continue some of the amazing work done by the Raleigh International Trust. The first part of the fundraising will be collecting sponsorship for a 5k run in Greenwich Park in December dressed in a Santa suit. I am going to be very persistent about sponsorship, so BE WARNED!! Also, I must stress that we are not fundraising to send our friend on a wonderful holiday, but help the Raleigh International Trust continue with their invaluable projects overseas. More details of what they do can be found here.





xx

Essential Film

Oh, and just one more thing...

Series 6 of Peep Show finishes on Friday (tear...) and when you all get bored of Strictly Come Dancing / X Factor / Britain's Got Talent and all of that other rubbish. Go out and rent/buy this film... it's amazing.



I saw it at the London Film Festival in 2008 and just got it on DVD. Even bought Ollie some Forest Hills...

Notes From the Sickbed

The dreaded lurgy has finally caught up with me. After smugly telling friends over drinks last night how "I never get sick", I now have all of the symptoms of a sick person: headaches, cold, sore throat and the inability to regulate body temperature. This has resulted in me spending two days in the flat feeling sorry for myself and venturing only as far as Barry's to stock up on more Beechams and trash magazines. Poor Ollie is also at home recovering from a minor eye operation, so the two of us are feeling a little pathetic at the moment.

However, it is better that we are ill now and not in a couple of weeks when we are going to Paris. So excited.

Also, this is the point where I offer another half-arsed justification for not writing the blog for a couple of weeks. The truth is, I have actually been really busy. The history department at Goldsmiths have seen fit to pile huge quantities of work upon their students in the first couple of weeks of term. I thought this would be at the detriment of my social life, but previous commitments and obligations have been kept, so what I have actually sacrificed is my sleep and my alone time. This probably explains why I am ill.

So over the past few weeks I have been to watch Flash Fiktion play in Brixton followed by drinks in Ivans Retreat (sadly the lovely Laura was working and unable to hang out with us), I have been to Bristol for the engagement party of Simon and Natalie and for breakfast with Thom the following day, I have entertained friends and family and had many great dinners out and home-cooked dinners in. I am ashamed to say that I have not yet made it to Club Sandwich, although my early start on Thursday kind of prevents this. My office is not very hangover-friendly.

So I fully intend to write more. But hopefully I will make time in my life for it, not just wait until I am housebound and bedbound xx

Slipping Into Old Habits

OK, so it's been a really long time since I wrote anything - but in my defence, I have been really busy. I am even supposed to be busy right now reading for my Empires lecture on Friday but I am procrastinating. Oh, how I miss the joys of procrastination. Last year I stressed and stressed over deadlines and still managed to spend hours trying to beat my score on Geo Challenge. Oh dear.

So this is my second week back at uni and all is well. I have managed to turn up to all of my classes and have only had to endure one lecture hungover, which is pretty good going so far (avoiding Club Sandwich may have been key in this). I would like to claim that it has been an alcohol free couple of weeks, but I cannot. There have been two drunken nights in the living room of some fellow evils Sam, Laura and Mike which usually descended into us playing as much 90s tunes as we can find, downing multiple bottles of the 2-for-£8 wine (not, I might add, the 2-for-£5 - things aren't quite that dire just yet) and performing random acrobatics both in the house and on the street.

On the subject of 90s tunes, we finally made it up to I Love the 90s in Islington, which is somewhere I have wanted to go for ages. It was ace, I drank vodka and red alert and danced to Britpop all night. It would have almost been like the 90s except I am not fourteen anymore.

So I have three habits that I'm slipping back into: procrastination, midweek drinking and blogging. The latter is certainly a good habit and I am as yet undecided on the other two. I guess in a weird way they are all linked. So more blogs can be expected in future.

This has been vague and a little random. I think this is because I know there is something else I should be doing right now. Will make much more of an effort next time. Done. xx