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By Kate, 16 August 2010 9:36 pm

Last weekend started off right. Friday, on my way home from work, I was starving and craving a snack and a beer, per usual. But rather than go to the pub and end up with some stupid bag of crisps with my beer as I’d normally do, I thought about the bottle of Raison D’Etre in my fridge. I thought, ‘I can drink that bottle now, because I just bought two more to store as emergency bottles, because Cornelius is the best beer shop ever in the whole world* and managed to get a whole ‘nother case of the stuff in when Dogfish Head doesn’t even officially export to the UK! YES.’

And then I thought, quite rightly, ‘you know what would go well with that? KUMARA FRIES!’ But as I am not in New Zealand, sweet potato fries would have to suffice. So I stopped at Tattie Shaws and grabbed some sweet potatoes and sweet chilli dipping sauce ( I can’t make everything myself), then went home and got on with the fry-makin’.

Raison D'Etre and sweet potato fries. I'm pretty sure this is what they're talking about when they say 'just like heaven'.

People, it was the best idea I’ve ever had on a Friday afternoon. And I think I’ll be doing it more often (mind you, with different beer, because I don’t think I’ll be lucky enough to have my Dogfish Head all the time, but no matter). And because Scott decided to go to the pub after work, I will shamelessly admit that I ended up polishing off the whole lot of these fries myself. Something he was none too pleased about. But faced with the other half of a bowl of piping hot, homemade sweet potato fries, I think you’d do the same. Don’t ever make more of these things than you should reasonably be eating, because you will not ‘have leftovers’.

If you do want to make some of your own sweet potato fries, don’t think it’s difficult. You basically slice up a sweet potato into fry-type shapes, toss in some olive oil (and I like to add a ton of black pepper), and bake ‘em in one layer on a cookie sheet at full whack in the oven for about 10 minutes on each side. Adjust to your particular taste for slightly burnt (read: carmelised) outsides, and dip in your preferred stuff before consuming. I use sweet chilli sauce and greek yoghurt (in place of sour cream), because that’s how we had our kumara fries in New Zealand, and it kind of gives you two different taste options.

Saturday, the food goodness continued with a trip to the farmers’ market for lunch. We got some buffalo burgers from Puddledub and scarfed them down standing up. The only way to do it.

When we were back home, I made some bread in the bread machine we acquired from Scott’s parents when they moved to Canada. It’s a great thing to have, but it’s so big that we have to store it in the closet, so I don’t use it as much as I’d like to. However, I had the other half of a bag of malthouse flour, and I had big plans for this bread.

Sunday morning, I woke up and made some EPIC french toast with my homemade bread. Big, fat slices of the stuff topped with proper Canadian maple syrup and the tastiest bacon around (again, from Puddledub). Fresh coffee for Scott (from Italy even!), a cup of tea for me, and orange juice (unfortunately, not fresh from one of those crazy fresh squeezed OJ machines with all the moving bits, but we can’t have everything, can we). I love french toast, half because it’s so good, and half because I’m hopeless at pancakes, but french toast I can DO. I think next time, I need to explore making it with some kind of crazy bread. Maybe with fruit in it. Who knows. But the homemade bread was definitely the right thing to do.

I don’t really have a recipe for french toast. I just watched my dad do it and absorbed. It’s a bunch of eggs, some milk, a little sugar, and, for me at least, more cinnamon than anyone should have the business putting in anything. Dip bread, fry in butter, keep warm in oven, douse with more maple syrup than your mother would say was good for you. And preferably serve with bacon. I’ve also made baked french toast before. With Grand Marnier in it. It’s not quite as good as the basic stuff, but I think I’ll have to try it again sometime soon anyway. Perhaps at a breakfast-for-dinner party.

For lunch, we were at the Foodies Festival in Holyrood Park because we had free tickets. It was sort of lame. And by sort of lame, I mean not nearly enough free samples going on, especially as people who actually had to pay dropped £10 on admission. We did get some good sausages and I replenished my supply of citrus pepper and some other awesome blends from the Organic Blending Company, but that’s about it. We left to go to the pub for a beer so we wouldn’t haemorrhage any more cash.

I used the garlic pepper I bought on some lamb neck fillets for dinner and made potato salad with cumin and lemon, based on a recent recipe on Everybody Likes Sandwiches. We had no greens, so I cut up some apples to go with it all. Simple, tasty end to the kind of food weekend I wish I had more often.

*Cornelius is so good, it got me to join twitter. (Me! Twitter! Unheard of!) Solely to receive beer updates via text. It was so worth it.

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By Kate, 1 May 2009 2:37 pm

I miss Washington College a lot today.

I tend to miss it a lot, and not in the way that I want to go back and live it again, because reading The Great Gatsby often enough (and, you know, living life) will pound into your head that such things aren’t possible. No. I miss it more in the way of remembering how awesome a time I had for four years and then being a bit jealous of myself, and then a little annoyed because maybe I didn’t appreciate it quite as much as I should have at the time. But no one ever does, because if they’re anything like me, they’re having too much fun to notice. As it should be.

May Day, just like Birthday Ball, is a major Washington College holiday. For those of you who have no idea of the traditions of my alma mater (and why should you?), May Day is generally known as a time of naked dancing around the flagpole. Usually at midnight. And usually large quantities of alcohol are involved. But I don’t really associate May Day with nudity alone. (I never did participate in that particular element anyway.) I associate it more with the general happiness that the semester is over, your work is (mostly) done, and it’s time to sit on Middle porch with some beer and some friends and some bullshit. And one year, a makeshift barbecue of Foreman grill proportions. I feel like that’s a particular feeling you don’t get very often in life, and even less so outside of college.

In any case, because I’m at work waiting impatiently for the metaphorical bell to ring so I can get on a train to London for a weekend break, I’m wiling away my time trolling through the WAC website looking at all the stuff I miss about sunny Chestertown. And pining. Maybe not for my college days in particular, but just for that ‘Hey, it’s summer and this beer is good and I’m not really concerned about anything else right now’ feeling. Because it’s a good one.