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By Kate, 9 February 2010 8:14 pm

We just had a lovely long weekend in London visiting my friends Seema and Paul, who live near Canary Wharf in a little flat with an awesome river view. It was great to see them and have a bit of a mini break. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of London, but I like going to visit friends and I love some of the food you can find in the city. Jamie Oliver’s new chain of Italian restaurants have been lurking on the edge of my radar for a while now, and I heard a while ago that he’d finally opened one in London. Conveniently, it’s in Canary Wharf, about ten minutes’ walk from Seema and Paul’s. So on Sunday night, we went. Obviously.

Jamie's Italian, Canary Wharf

Now. Please excuse me while I once again sing Jamie Oliver’s praises. The man is a food deity.

Jamie’s Italian is a family restaurant. They don’t take reservations, so anyone can just walk in, immune to the hype a famous chef’s name might bring to the ability to get a seat in a restaurant. It’s not a fancy-pants establishment and it’s not meant to be. It’s decorated simply with a mishmash of different kinds of chairs and simple wood tables and there’s various fresh food all over the place. And it’s very affordable. The pasta dishes are no more expensive than Bella Italia (a big UK chain), and to be fair, they’re probably far better value judging by the quality of what I ate. I can’t honestly comment on the pasta, because I had meat, which was amazing, but more on that later.

We started with a carafe of the house wine, which is organic and delivered to them in environmentally friendly tetra pacs to keep costs down, then decanted for the table. It was great, and only £15 for a bottle-sized carafe. In the middle of London! Score! With that we got a bread basket that had about 4 different kinds of fresh, freaking amazing bread in it. I could have eaten tons of the stuff. There was crispy flatbread with rosemary, foccacia with garlic, rosemary and salt, breadsticks, and plain old white italian bread. All served with olive oil and vinegar, of course. We also got an artesian meat board of wild boar salami.

I could have eaten antipasti all night, but the thing I was really excited about was my main course. I haven’t eaten veal many times in my life, and not at all since I found out how cruelly they raise veal calves. So we’re talking years and years and years here. Recently in the UK, thanks to various crusades led on the celebrity chef side by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and on the production side by some awesome British farms, rose veal has popped into existence. ‘Rose’ because the meat isn’t white, because completely white veal requires the kind of horrible, boxed-up life most traditional veal calves lead. (For more info, read this article from a few years ago.)

I’m completely for rose veal, because veal can be a completely ethical thing to eat, and should be. Veal calves come from the dairy industry, which can’t use male calves, of course, so because of the drop in demand for veal raised in horrible conditions, many of these animals are just destroyed, which is an absolute waste and pretty horrible. The calves used to produce rose veal are not raised in a box they can’t ever move around in. Instead they have a good, healthy life where they can walk around, grazing, doing cow-type things, eating solid foods, and even be around their mothers (or stand-in mothers) for a while.

I like eating meat from animals that I know have lived a happy life, and I know that all the meat served in Jamie’s restaurants is pretty much guaranteed to be ethically produced. But you don’t find something like rose veal in your typical Italian chain restaurant these days. Jamie Oliver putting it on the menu at his place is a huge step forward for getting a variety of quality, ethically produced meat into more and more UK high street restaurants. At £15.95, the rose veal is one of the most expensive things on the menu, but that is a damn good price for the enormous, tasty, stuffed rose veal chop that I ate with relish and pleasure. It was so good I was literally sopping up the sauce with my fingers when it was gone. Seriously. Ask Scott.

Scott, by the way, had one of the specials, Porcetta, which is roast pork belly stuffed with all kinds of amazing things. It was just as good as my veal. I probably could have eaten both of them twice over.

Now, as we were going all out, we ordered dessert and coffee as well. I had the chocolate hazelnut cake and Scott had the lemon ricotta cheesecake. Both extremely tasty. And after such a big meal, I didn’t feel disgustingly stuffed like one sometimes does when overdoing it. None of the portions were that extra bit too big. If I had been feeling more gluttonous, I would have ordered more, because walking past the open kitchen on the way upstairs to the toilets revealed plates and plates of deliciousness just waiting to go out. (I love when the kitchen is open, because then you know there’s no shady stuff going on and you can see what the food is like before you even sit down.) And let’s just say it took all my will power to not yoink one of the enormous loaves of focaccia from the bread table and stuff it under my shirt to get it out of there for stuffing my face later in the night.

To top it all off, we were brought the bill in good time without having to chase someone down for it. This is so rare in this country that I nearly fainted.

There are many, many reasons why I think Jamie Oliver deserves the praise and attention of the world, but the essence of why I think he’s so awesome is his simple approach to a healthy obsession with food. He wants everyone to learn how to cook, and love to do so. His recipes aren’t fussy and niether are his restaurants (including Fifteen, which, while slightly more upscale, isn’t pretentious in the least. In fact, the whole idea behind that restaurant is about as un-stuffy as you can get.). He’s really just all about loving and respecting food and what comes around it—family, friends, life. The Jamie’s Italian chain is a great example of this philosophy, and I really, really hope it keeps growing. I know I’d be a regular if he opened one in Edinburgh.

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By Kate, 31 January 2010 12:49 pm

More cupcakes this week. This time, I returned to something my mom used to make all the time—black bottomed cupcakes. I haven’t made them in about 2 years so I forgot how awesomely good they are. This is made even better by how easy they are to make. So I’m going to post the recipe, because more than one person at work asked for it, and everyone should be able to make these as there’s no real trick to it.

I know Starbucks has these sometimes, but I’ve tried one of theirs, and as with almost every kind of cake they have, they make it far too sweet and ruin the chocolate and cheesecake flavour balance. Do yourself a favour and make your own. Not only will it be tastier, but also far, far cheaper.

Black bottomed cupcakes

For the chocolate cake:

• 1 1/2 c flour
• 1 c sugar
• 1/4 c cocoa
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 c water
• 1/2 c oil
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla

For the cheesecake topping:

• 1 (8 oz) package cream cheese  (And don’t mess around with anything that’s not full fat.)
• 1 egg
• 1/3 c sugar
• 1/8 tsp salt

Optional:

• Chocolate chips or bits of a dark chocolate bar

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.
2. In one bowl, mix all chocolate cake ingredients together (and no, it’s not a mistake, there’s no egg in the chocolate cake bit). It’s probably best if you do this with some kind of beater, but if you like your baking to exhaust you, you could whisk it up by hand.
3. In another bowl, beat together all the cheesecake topping ingredients.
4. Line a 12 muffin tin with cupcake cases and fill each about halfway with chocolate cake mix.
5. Top each with a tablespoon or two of cheesecake mix. Try to drop this in the middle of the chocolate cake mix. It will look kind of like it’s sinking, but don’t worry about it.
6. Top each cupcake with a few chocolate chips or bits of dark chocolate if you want to.
7. Bake for around 15-18 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. The chocolate cake part is extremely dense, so it will probably look a bit more moist than you’re used to seeing with other chocolate cake.

In general, the cheesecake bit is supposed to stay kind of in the middle of the cake bit on top. Mine was a bit runnier than usual this time so it ended up around the outside of the top. Either way, it tastes just as good, so don’t fuss too much over what it looks like.

These are ok right out of the oven, but they’re the best when they’re cold, so if you can resist long enough, wait til they cool, pop them in the fridge for an hour, then eat one. Tasty times.

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By Kate, 24 January 2010 8:41 pm

It’s about time I start using this thing for what I meant to use it for in the first place rather than boring you with my rants and raves about society’s stupidity. So I’ll start with some craftiness and move on to the food.

My first embroidered elephant.

A while back, I mentioned that I had taught myself a new skill. Huzzah! But was not able to post the results of said new skill because the project in question was part of a super secret quilt meant for my best friend Kelsey’s baby, who was not yet born. Booooo. Well, Ms. Etta has now entered the wide world so the quilt is a secret no more.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the whole thing, but our friend Kedre got a bunch of Kelsey’s friends and relatives got together and got them each to do an animal square in their own style. I did see the finished quilt over Christmas and it’s awesome. All the squares are different but they pull together nicely.

For my square, I decided to dive into the world of embroidery. The results did not suck. And I found that I enjoyed doing it, especially because it’s something I can do while watching TV, which means I feel like less of a lump while sitting on my couch. Double bonus! I’ve done some more little projects since then (a stocking for my parents’ new dog Randle, who is awesome, and a set of dish towels for their new beach house), but this is the only one I’ve got a picture of at the moment.

Unforgettable Elephant from Sew Everything Workshop.

Continuing with the elephant theme, I made a little stuffed elephant with a pattern from Sew Everything Workshop by Diana Rupp. It was fairly easy except for sewing up the top seam. I’m absolute shite at handsewing, and even more hopeless at slipstitch, so I gave up on trying to hide the stitches and just did as neat a seam as I could. It ended up ok, especially because no one, let alone a baby, cares about a little visible thread when an elephant is involved. I also figured it was more important to make the stitch strong rather than invisible, because kids like pulling at stuff. In any case, I think I’ll be making more of these little guys, because I sort of want one, and there are other babies I know who are about to enter the world.

Back in the present, this weekend I decided it’s been far too long since I’ve done any baking of the cake variety. The urge to bake was further spurred on by a visit to the Cup Cake Caffe, which is basically the wee coffee shop extension of the restaurant in the main National Gallery Complex. I was in the gallery shop buying some stuff with the gift certificate I won in the staff drawing before Christmas (Score! Good way to start a new job.) and I had been meaning to try out these cupcakes I’d been hearing about. No cupcake in my world can ever go uninvestigated. Especially when the few I’ve bought lately haven’t been up to scratch. In any case, these particular Cup Cake Caffe cupcakes were actually pretty good. They only had two kinds left at the time, so we tried both. One was a coconut cake with vanilla frosting and fresh blackberry-ish jam, and one was pretty much victoria sponge with raspberries and cream. Both were super tasty. I’ll have to go back and try the dark chocolate and cherry one. Too bad there’s no employee discount on the cupcakes.

Mocha cupcakes with Kahlua and coffee icing.

As I said, all the cupcake sampling got me in the baking mood. I made Rachel Allen’s mocha cupcakes with Kahlua and coffee icing today. They are pretty freakin’ good. I feel like maybe they could be a bit more coffee-ish. I used all coffee instead of coffee and water like the recipe says, but maybe next time I’ll go get some espresso and use that. The texture is awesome though, really light and moist and a good complement to the buttery icing on top. I may put more Kahlua in the icing next time. We’ll see.

As for the burger I mentioned, we went to Guilty Lily for lunch today and both had burgers. I think it may have been the best burger I have ever had in this city. Burgers in this country tend to be disappointing because I think the whole hoof and mouth thing a few years back freaked people out and they really don’t like cooking a burger any less than very, extremely well-done. I, as you may imagine, am not cool with this. Scott is even less cool with this, especially after he had an amazing burger at Brewer’s Alley in the states that was just about raw in the middle. Now, I don’t need my burger to be as bloody as my steak, but you just can’t cook the hell out of a burger, because it looses all its flavour and dries out and isn’t at all pleasant anymore.

The burgers at Gulty Lily aren’t quite pink in the middle, but I have a feeling if they were cooked about 2 seconds less, they would be. They were nice and juicy and fatty, as a good burger should be, and the sweet onion chilli jam that was on top of mine I could have eaten from a jar. They only had one beer in the cask, but I had a nice glass of wine (ok, two) and we’ve had the cocktails there before, which are fantastic. Highly recommended. And I think we’ll be going back and trying the breakfast, because I spied one or two plates that made my mouth water.

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By Kate, 13 August 2009 11:46 am

Lately, due to the economy’s nosedive, there has been a spate of cooking shows, tips in magazines, and articles on the internet about being a more thrifty cooker/eater/food shopper/etc. This is potentially extremely helpful, and it also often focuses on eating good quality stuff, not cheap crap just because you can’t afford a sirloin steak. So in general, I like the trend. The problem is, it hasn’t been very helpful to me.

Last night, I checked out the BBC’s latest offering on the subject: Economy Gastronomy.

The point of the show is to learn how to decrease your food bill and eat better at the same time. Last night, the show’s presenters took on a family of five who have been spending nearly £400 a week on food. That’s an INSANE amount of money. And to make it worse, they pretty much ate the same two recipes all the time. And bought around 50 pre-made desserts every week. Madness.

Obviously, these people needed the help. The advice they got focused on the age-old ‘make a grocery list and stick to it’. And while some people may need to be told this, I can’t actually imagine NOT shopping with a grocery list, so dedicating a good third of an hour on emphasizing the importance of planning a menu and buying what you need for it seems like time ill-spent.

However, I guess a lot of people must shop without a list if this tip keeps popping up. My mother has never gone to the store without a list, nor have I. Even if it’s a short list in my head (milk, butter, toilet paper), it still exists. I just don’t understand how it’s possible to walk into a grocery store for a big weekly shop with no menu planned and no list of what you need and come out with something that’s going to get you through the next 7 days properly. I can hold a lot in my head at once, but planning a week of meals as I go down the aisles just isn’t going to happen.

The other big tips were also old standards: making one big roast or meat-based meal at the beginning of the week that generated enough leftovers for another two meals, making your own desserts, packing your own lunch, using less popular cheap cuts of meat, buying produce in season. These are all things that I stand behind 100%. These are also all things that I already do.

I’m not trying to be all ‘I’m awesome because I knew that already’ here. If anything, I’m trying to give my mom props for showing me the glory of lists and thrift. But I really want some advice I haven’t heard before. I think this show was great, and I think it will show a lot of people what they’re missing while keeping some of their money from flying out of their wallets on their weekly food-buying excursions. But I want to save more money too.

I do my best, but food is our luxury. We (especially I) really like food. GOOD food. We spend around £35-40 a week on food for the two of us. It’s not bad, but I’m sure we can spend less, even if I don’t mind it being a slightly bigger expense than it probably needs to be. However, I will not buy crap.  I like knowing where my meat came from, and I like knowing those animals had a good life, so I go to a good butcher. I like knowing where my veg comes from, so I get it delivered from a local farm (which is actually far cheaper than buying organic, or even non-organic, at the grocery store. It also supports local business and provides a crap-ton of potatoes, which go pretty far in terms of creating meals).

I like knowing what I put in my body is quality. But I also like spending less money. These things can go hand in hand quite well, but I’m sure there are some things I’m overlooking, and I want a show or an article that gives me a tip that makes me go, ‘Hey! I never thought of that!’

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By Kate, 27 July 2009 8:34 pm

Because I’m not ready to post my pictures of our closer-to-finished bedroom yet, I figured I’d talk about some other good stuff.

First of all, the ginger beer. It’s ready! It’s fizzy! And quite good. After drinking two pints the other night, I have concluded that one pint a day (and probably even just half) is all I need. Not because of the alcohol content (it’s only about 3%), but because of the amount of sugar and fizz involved. I don’t usually drink soda, and I rarely even drink lager or other fizzy beers (I’m a real ale girl, as you may well know), so I’m not used to that amount of bubblage, nor is my gut. Enough said. But at this rate, the stuff will last for ages, as we started with 40 pints. And next time, I’m going to try making it properly from scratch. The Coopers kit is good, but it involves some artificial sweeteners, which I’m not really down with.

Next up, courtesy of my friend Mali and Jezebel, Sister Salad Thinks Yo Comments Are Wack. In which two smart ladies, using Sir Mix-A-Lot as their muse, berate the moronic commenting hordes plaguing YouTube (not to mention plenty of other sites open to comment by the public). Part of what makes it so great is that they are taking their message fairly seriously, but not themselves, so plenty of bad dancing ensues. And costume changes! I approve.

Good thing the third: french toast. I made some this Sunday morning. This follows on from the previous good thing because french toast is something I love more than any other breakfast food, and Mali’s family makes THE BEST french toast I have ever had (sorry, Dad). It doesn’t so much have to do with the toast-making technique as it does the myriad of accompaniments served alongside. French toast at Mali’s house means all sorts of fresh fruit, yoghurt, syrup, and anything you could possibly imagine wanting with your french toast. Unfortunately it has been far too long since I have experienced the breakfast of breakfasts at the Royer household, but when I do manage to make some of my own, it always gives me happy thoughts of the event (and a happy stomach).

Yet another happy thing on the list is my parents and their buying of a house in Bethany Beach. It’s another place I haven’t been in too long a time, but we went there nearly every summer for a while, and my parents have continued to go back regularly. It’s a good beach, and now we’ve got a more permanent place there. While I may not be able to take advantage of that from my current overseas position, it’s good to know it’s available to me when I manage to be around. I’m already planning it into my Dan-and-Kathleen’s-wedding-going trip for next year.

Last but certainly not least, I get paid tomorrow. I definitely like the reinflating of my bank account. However brief and minor it may be, it still buys me groceries.

And soon enough, I will show you my newly painted bedroom, which is also something I like, this week and beyond.

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By Kate, 6 July 2009 8:14 pm

For hands-free luggin' around.

Although I tend to feel like I’m being too lazy all the time, I’ve got a few things that I’ve finished recently, and some other things I’ve started.

The first project is top secret for now, so I can’t post pictures for a few months, but I tried a new skill and did not suck at it, so I’m proud of myself.

Project 2, a yoga mat bag. I got tired of carrying my mat in my hand after one class. I have to bring it to work with me and then bring it most of the way back towards home before I even get to class, so that’s 3 miles before I even unroll it. I made use of some scrap IKEA fabric I had from my sister’s christmas present and whipped this up in about 3 hours. I’m pretty happy with it. The bottom was sort of fiddly, and the stitiching on the top of the strap is kind of crap, but overall, a good result.

Third on the list is a pair of pajama pants, which I don’t actually have a picture of. I’m not too big a fan of the waist, mostly because it relies solely on a drawstring rather than a drawstring plus elastic, but they’ve got super wide legs, and since I made them myself, I was able to make them long enough for my legs, so they’re cozy. The fabric is maroon cotton with little cartoon elephants, giraffes, lions, pineapples, and palm trees. Awesome!

nomnomnom

Next! So I make a lot of cake. I get used to having it around. When it’s not, I can get a little stroppy. Because dammit, I like cake! I don’t want a chocolate bar, I don’t want a lollypop, I might want a cookie depending on what it is, but really, I just want some cake. So I raided my cabinets and my recipe books and decided to make chocolate cupcakes with some raspberries on the top. (I had frozen ones. If I had fresh ones, I would have just eaten them on their own. Scottish raspberries in season are THE BEST IN THE WORLD.) I used Rachel Allen’s chocolate cake recipe for the first time. It’s all right, but it would probably do better with frosting instead of raspberries. For the record, every other cake I’ve made from her book, Bake, so far has been absolutely freaking incredible, so it’s a good book to have. Anyway, that put some cake in my house, and by some miracle, it’s still not gone. Mission accomplished.

I’ve also started a few longer-term things. The first being a batch of homebrewed ginger beer. Scott’s been doing a lot of beer with mixed success rates, but I hadn’t tried anything myself yet. Then I saw our homebrew shop had a ginger beer kit from Coopers, so I jumped on it. It was even easier to brew than a beer kit. I decided it had to be refrigerated for the best result, so this was our first foray into bottling (we’ve just kegged everything else). It seems to have gone well. It tasted pretty good before it went into the bottles, and now we just have to wait 3 weeks til it’s done conditioning. It’s supposed to be about 3.5%ABV, so I’ m looking forward to having properly alcoholic ginger beer around whenever I want it. We’ve got 40 pints of it. I think it will last a while. I might even try making a cake with it.

Soon, there shall be tomatoes.

Last on the list are some tomato plants I started about 3 weeks ago. It was a little late in the season, but they’re coming along nicely. I need to put them in bigger pots soon and hope they do well enough in the window to give me a bunch of tasty tomatoes in a month or two.

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By Kate, 2 April 2009 11:50 am

About a bajillion years ago (or 3 months, depending on how you look at time), I decided that the most awesome way to celebrate our 3-year anniversary would be to go to the Glasgow Science Centre and then to Wagamama to stuff ourselves full of tasty, tasty noodles. Because we’re stupidly busy with DIY and, you know, life, we had to put off the actual date of this excursion to two weeks past our actual anniversary. But no matter. I can become a zen master when there are noodles at the end of the tunnel.

So, Saturday, we got up and went for a full Scottish breakfast. According to something I’d just seen on TV, this put us way over our recommended salt intake for the day. But man! Was it tasty. Bacon, egg, sausage, haggis, black pudding, mushrooms, and a tattie scone. I don’t do that baked beans thing they love so much in this country. We don’t go for the full breakfast very often. In fact, usually we don’t eat breakfast like that unless we’re on vacation. So it wasn’t exactly a guilt-laden meal.

Fully satisfied, we got on a train to Glasgow. Once we arrived, I decided the easiest way to get to the Science Centre was by subway. Seeing as how this was only my third ever trip to Glasgow, I could have been wrong, but it was easy enough save for the fact that I wouldn’t want to walk through the area between the station and the Centre in the dark.

The Glasgow subway system is the third oldest subway in the world, and it’s tiny. The trains have 3 carriages and they’re just about tall enough for me to stand in the very centre. It seems like you’re on more of a model than a real subway train, but then it doesn’t need to be very big anyway, as Glasgow is not the metropolis that London or New York is.

The system is just one line that runs in a loop (it’s nicknamed The Clockwork Orange). I suppose the advantage of this, from a tourist’s point of view anyway, is that it doesn’t make a lot of difference if you get on the wrong loop, because you’ll just come back around to the right place eventually. And a full circle only takes about 24 minutes, so you really can’t go wrong. It only took about 8 minutes to get to our stop.

As a lover of Bill Nye the Science Guy and all such make-science-fun things, science centres always initially excite me. I say ‘initially’ because there are a lot of science centres that cater almost exclusively to kids, which pisses me off, especially when I’ve spent the money to go in without any indication of this from the staff. I want to be able to play with just as many of the cool science toys that the kids can without people looking at me like I’m stealing their youngster’s chance at a happy day. I don’t want to get that feeling that other people are thinking ‘whyyyyy is she here?’ because fuck that! Science is for everyone, not just little Timmy, drooling on the buttons that control the giant magnet.

Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised. The Glasgow Science Centre caters for all. And while the place WAS crawling with some kind of scout group, they weren’t so numerous that you couldn’t get at any of the exhibits without tripping over someone under 12. In fact, we never really had to wait to do anything. And there was SO MUCH to do.

They had the usual stuff about how light and electricity works and how the human body is put together, but they also had a lot of things I’d never seen before. There was a music maker thing that worked using beams of light and an LED harp, there were a few games that tested your reaction time, there was a giant Soma cube to put together, there was a bunch of stuff on cloning and stem cell research (Scotland will not soon forget that they produced Dolly the sheep). There was even a thing where you put together a news report about stem cells, which was basically for kids, but it was teaching them that the news is supposed to be impartial to either view on the subject being reported so that people get the facts, which I think is a valuable lesson. I played a computer game that simulated how hard it is to save everyone who needs an organ from the donor list. And there was a whole special exhibit on DNA and the human genome where I got to compare myself to a duckbilled platypus. Apparently we’re not very similar.

When we had our fill of science (and our stomachs were starting to rumble) we ventured back into the city centre and went to Wagamama for an early dinner. When we ordered, I told the waitress that I was allergic to shellfish (because you’re supposed to tell them so they know). Regardless of this, when our Duck Gyoza came, it was actually Prawn Gyoza. I knew this because I took a bite and thought ‘this is not duck’. They apologised and switched it and I, being preemptively cautious, took a benadryl. I wasn’t going to have one piece of shrimp ruin my Wagamama! And to be fair, the Duck Gyoza looks exactly like the Prawn one on the outside. Next time I’ll get Scott to taste my food.

Crisis averted (I got a tingle of an itch, but I think the benadryl shot any other reactions down), we sipped our Asahi Premium Black Lager and ate our duck dumplings. Then the noodles arrived and the slurping commenced. Scott had Chicken Itame, which is a spicy coconut thing with rice noodles, and I had Salmon Ramen, in which there was an enormous piece of salmon involved.  Scott had never been to Wagamama before, so I was happy to hear that his dinner was the best chicken noodle soup he’d had in forever. I wish they would open a restaurant in Edinburgh because I would be in there all the time. Takeout noodles for lunch? I think so.

We don’t know much about Glasgow and the stores were about to close anyway, so we decided to head back to Edinburgh early where we ended up drinking wine, eating chocolate cheesecake, and watching some of my Long Way Round DVDs (further increasing my undying urge to get our asses to Russia and Mongolia). The perfect anniversary? I think so.

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By Kate, 23 March 2009 1:39 pm

Tasty, tasty kiwi with a spife.

When we were in Australia and New Zealand, we renewed our love for kiwifruit (green AND gold, yum). Before we left Christchurch, we picked up a few kiwi spoons, or as I’ve discovered they’re called, spifes. Yes, spifes! Spoon+knife, obviously.

They’re nifty little tools for kiwi lovers, and we now use them all the time. Until Scott broke his (while eating a kiwi, no less). This was a sad, sad day, as we’re the sort of people to get very excited over something such as a spife. (When we discovered what I like to call the spforkn… well, we still haven’t shut up about it.)

As the spife is kind of a promotional thing for kiwis, you can’t easily buy them unless you want something unnecessarily fancy from some crazy kitchen gadget store. But we just wanted the green plastic happiness that helps us eat a kiwi. So I emailed Zespri (the kiwi people) and asked them how I could go about acquiring more of these tools.

It turns out the people at Zespri are awesome. They emailed me back almost immediately, asked me for my address, and said they’d send a few our way. I LOVE when companies have kickass customer service like that. I didn’t even buy anything from them and they were all over it (I mean, we buy kiwis all the time, but I didn’t buy anything directly from them). Plus it pretty much guarantees that I’ll talk them up for a lifetime.

So, bravo, Zespri! And thank you for the spifes. Ask and ye shall recieve indeed. They will be put to good use. Go eat some kiwifruit, everyone!

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By Kate, 5 March 2009 1:17 pm

I made some red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting to bring into work for my birthday yesterday. I should have taken pictures, but I’m not yet used to this ‘recording stuff for the blog’ thing. It was a recipe from Bake by Rachel Allen. I’d never made red velvet cake from scratch before, so I was a little worried at first, especially because it’s kind of a crazy recipe with a lot of steps (and bowls), but they turned out well. And I ate two of them during the day before I even got a piece of the birthday cake Scott made me. It was his first ever from-scratch cake, Chocolate Stout Cake from Green & Blacks Chocolate Cookbook, one of my favorites (the book and the cake), and he did a flawless job.

We ate some before we went out for dinner, which may have been a bad plan, because dinner involved quite a bit of food. I didn’t know where we were going til we got there because I wanted a surprise, so all day I was wondering what kind of tasty stuff I was in for. We went to The Outsider on George IV Bridge.

According to reviews on The List, More than a few people have not been impressed with the service, but we had absolutely no problem. They had a weird policy of having to take outdoor coats to the coat room, but aside from that, our waitress was lovely and the rest of the staff I encountered were quite normal. But lets get to the important stuff.

They clunked a plate of bread and dipping oil down in front of us before we even had menus, which bodes well with me, especially in this country where you rarely ever get bread for free. I ordered a bottle of Australian shiraz, don’t remember what kind it was now but it was excellent.

The Outsider doesn’t do traditional starters. Instead they have various plates of skewers (or ‘Chunky Healthy Lines’). We got the monkfish with bacon, roasted tomato, and salsa, which also came with salad and a carroty-raisiny coleslaw type concoction in a pita. There were two enormous hunks of monkfish on my skewer and, because of the cake I’d already eaten, I was worried about getting through my main course. The fish was cooked perfectly, and I got extra tomatoes because Scott is not a fan.

For the main course, I ordered venison in juniper berries with barley and steamed greens. Scott got half a rabbit with prune and calvados sauce and parsnips. We also ordered a side dish of sweet potatoes in cumin-y spices and pumpkin seed to share, which was absolutely unnecessary given the size of the main dishes, but I ate some anyway because they were lovely.

My venison was perfect. The light in the place was too low for me to tell for sure, but I’m fairly sure it was nearly rare, because it melted in my mouth. I ate all the greens, per usual, and I would have eaten all the barley had I not been stuffed to capacity. Scott’s rabbit was a bit dry and the sauce was a little overwhelming for him. I tasted it. Not awful, but not the best rabbit I’ve ever tasted. Then again, I’ve only ever had it in a stew-type pie thing, so who knows what it’s meant to be like? Anyway, I definitely picked the better dish this time. Usually it’s the other way around. There was a pork belly confit on the menu that we both wished we could have tasted as well.

We had absolutely no room for dessert, so instead we went to the Bow Bar on Victoria Street for some whisky. They’ve got 145 malts! First I had a 16 year-old double matured Lagavulin, which was about £6. Nice, warm and rich. Scott had some Blair Athol whichw as a bit lighter. I’m no good at tasting notes when it comes to this stuff, but I know what I like, and what I like tends to be Islay malts. Peaty, strong and delicious. A lot of people can’t handle the stuff. That’s not meant as a boast, I’m just saying, for reference, that I like things that other people tend to think they could run their car on.

We had a pint each after that as we sat there staring at the wall of whisky, and Scott said ‘why didn’t you get a 25 year-old whisky for your 25th birthday’? We eyed a 25 year-old Laphroaig on the top shelf and decided to share it, because what the hell? It was £18, but worth it. I know grown men who have issues with Laphroaig 10 year because it’s like drinking smokey, alcoholic peat (so naturally, I love it), but this was really mellow. That extra 15 years really takes the edge off.

All in all, an awesome way to turn 25. And on top of it, Scott got me some nice balsamic vinegar, a salami flavored with white truffle, and some epic argyle knee socks. (I am a fan of long, crazy socks. Especially in the winter.)

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By Kate, 23 February 2009 10:20 pm

Rosemary Raisin Pecan Raincoast Crisps

Scott’s parents are moving to Canada in about two months, so his mom went over to get started at her new job for two weeks at the beginning of the year. She brought all sorts of presents back, including a tin of Raincoast Crisps. And holy mother of snackyfood, they are REALLY good.

I’m a big fan of healthy snacks. Mostly because I’m pretty much constantly eating so I can appreciate a snack food that’s guilt free on some level. Happily, there are no chemicals in the ingredient list. They don’t even LOOK bad for you. In fact, they look like someone made some homemade brown wholegrain-type bread with loads of seeds and nuts running through, sliced it superthin, and baked it til it was crispy. They don’t even look mass-produced!

My tin had the original crisps, which are just nutty and grainy, and the rosemary raisin pecan crisps, which are like the original ones plus rosemary, raisin, and pecan. The latter were so good that I’m already scheming a muffin recipe based on them. In fact, I’m thinking I might try the rosemary raisin combo in other places as well. With meat, perhaps lamb?

I’ll also be testing the recipe for artichoke tapinade that came inside the tin. Too bad I won’t have any of the crisps left to spread it on. (They were gone in about 3 days. Would have been gone faster if I didn’t keep reminding myself that I couldn’t get anymore.)

Sadly, it looks like there’s pretty much no way to get these crisps outside of Canada. That means two things: I know what I’m asking Scott’s parents for for Christmas, and I have another thing to add to the list of reasons to go to Canada.