Hangover Omelette

So, on Friday night I went out.  To make new friends, who knew some of my old friends.  It's a simple concept - you all arrive at a pub, share a table with some strange faces and at the end of the night - two pints of cider, a double Amaretto, and a lot of ill-advised conversations about one's personal life - you invite them back to your house for some Sloe Gin.

That night you remember that you are drunk, and very so, because it has now been Saturday for four hours.  So you drink a lot of water.  Nevertheless when you get up on even-more-Saturday morning, you have a headache and not a lot of motivation.  I prescribe:

1) Lots of water, and no caffeine - coffee and tea are diuretics and will make you more dehydrated.
2) Fizzy-good-make-feel-nice (alka-selzer) or paracetemol, for the immediate problem.
3) Hangover omelette.  You Will Need:

2 eggs
a splash of milk
bowl
butter
stirry spatula
leftover potatoes (or something)
sharp knife and board
frying pan
ketchup, to serve if desired

Melt a large knob of butter in the frying pan.  Slice the potatoes if using and fry them in the butter until browned and sticking annoyingly to the pan.  Add more butter.  Beat the eggs with a little milk in the bowl, and tip them into the hot pan.  Allow them to cook undisturbed for a minute, then try to turn over sections of the omelette one spatula at a time.  Shuffle the resulting chunks of eggy potatoey goodness around a bit until cooked through.  Flop onto plate.  Reflect dizzily how lucky it was that you didn't throw up, as that is what this creation reminds you of.  Put ketchup on it.  Remember to get a knife and fork out of the drawer to eat it with.  Serve with more water and a side of remorse.

4) Go back to bed to think about what you've done, and add some people on Facebook.

How To Throw A Dinner Party As Far As You Can

Tonight in the name of Friendship, Love, Career Prospects, and all good things, I am throwing a dinner party for the boyfriend, myself and two very good friends with Rather Good Jobs which I hope will rub off on me.  The food has been calculated to delight the eyes (male friend) the palate (female friend) the stomach (boyfriend) and the nerves (me).  Calculated is the right word; like the Bistromatics in Hitchhikers' Guide, dinner parties have their own ratios, sums and correlations which must be measured before you can start.  Once you have your totals, you can throw a dinner party like a Lithuanian shotputter, which is to say well.

step One: Calculate the relationships between all the people you wish to invite, and subtract or add until everybody has at least one person to talk to.  When introducing a new person to a group, calculate the contents of the group so as to include your most welcoming and outgoing friends, so as to involve the new person automatically.

step Two: Work out what you want to make.  This involves several variables:
-Dietary requirements, including allergies and so-and-so who say they hate cream and are therefore not a human being
-Time to prepare.  Starters where possible should be cold and made the night before, or easily reheated before guests sit down (e.g. soup).  I have made things difficult for myself by making a cook-on-the-day starter, but it looks posh and comes with a preparable-ahead and impressive sauce.
Main courses should be started before guests arrive and ready by the time you've finished starters.  Time the arrival of guests and amount of booze available accordingly.  Once again I have broken my own rule by making something which will need to be prepared while starters are still happening for everyone else.
Puddings should always be reheatable at a moment's notice, to go in when the main course comes out, or cold and prepared the night before.  This time I have managed to obey; the pudding is already only awaiting presentation.
-Faff.  The Faff Index is personal and varies greatly.  A general rule of thumb is that you should never expend more Faff on a dinner party than 7:5, where 7 is party and 5 is your usual tolerance when cooking for yourself.
-Cuisine.  It's often nice to have all your dishes from the same area, like Spain or Italy, as it creates a Theme (i.e. Posh) and means you can use all the same cookbook.

step Three: Calculate the amount of food needed.  This is not the same as the number of people; some (like me) can only manage halves of everything (but being hostess I will tolerate leftovers.)  Boyfriends on the other hand usually go back for seconds.  Most people will eat more main course than everything else, and more pudding than they say they will. The sums are something like this:

Size of portions of courses is inversely proportional to the number of courses
Size of portions of courses is inversely proportional to number of eggs/floz cream used in meal total
Size of portions of courses is inversely proportional to the poshness of each course

Let Starter= s.  If S=1, Main Course =2 and Pudding (P) = 1.7 (Oh, Go On Then, Just A Slither).

step Four: Shopping For Posh
Regarding the Faff Index mentioned earlier, you can reduce the Index whilst increasing the poshness of your meal by adding what is known in my family as 'Garnish, that's what that is.'  For example:
-slices of citrus fruit, thin, cut along a radius and twisted to stand on things
-corainder, parsley or mint sprigs, or chopped and sprinkled chives
-grated chocolate off an ordinary large-hole cheese grater
-cream, oil, condiment or balsamic drizzled in an artistic drizzle
-chillies cut on the diagonal to reveal the seeds
And, my personal favourite and trick for this evening:
-Colourful, foreign and where possible tiny vegetables, and a variety of them.

step Five: Schedule, Schedule, Schedule!
You don't have to be all 'T-minus etc. eighteen hundred hours' about this, but do work out before you start what needs doing in what order.  Then when you're turning back to the cooking after five minutes talking and drinking gin, you won't have really forgotten where you are or what you're supposed to be doing.

Let's see how it goes...

Toast

Since the boyfriend and I both started our new jobs, it has been imperative that a quick and Simple breakfast be devised which can be eaten together at the extremely stressful time of day, known as When The Today Programme Is On Radio 4.  He has gone for a mushroom omelette, being a manly man and requiring cooking.  I have settled for the default of the nation.
Toast.
It's one of those delightful English words which is both a noun and a verb -  a Make and a Do.  Perhaps the simplest Make/Do of all.  The words 'I can't even make toast' are known to be a lie (always) and excuse to get out of cooking/healthy eating the English-speaking world over.  How to make really nice toast just the way you like it however is a little more of a struggle, and requires personal experimentation.

From Vogel's website

I have always had to balance the desire to make perfect toast (which has in my humble opinion to be white bread, for that golden-brown look) with my desire to make perfect sandwiches, which vary depending on filling but generally call for more 'interesting' bread.  Vogel's products, pictured, in their green-and-purple or red-and-yellow striped packets, are a good compromise.  Burgen also do a seedy loaf with slightly larger, whiter slices.  Each loaf can keep me in toast (2 slices) and sandwiches (2 slices) for the vast majority of the working week.

Seedy bread is a great way to eat slightly better and tastier food without having to go down the brown bread route.  It doesn't feel like brown bread, which even home-made can have a slightly dusty taste to the crust; with jam, marmite, smoked salmon, hard and soft cheese the little niblets add texture and vitamins without impacting much on the overall 'white' taste of the bread. 

Seedy stuff also makes good eggy bread, or 'French toast' as they call it across the pond.  Take 1/2 a beaten egg per slice, dunk the slices in the egg so they're soaked all through, and fry in a chunk of butter.  I've had eggy bread with ketchup, or maple syrup and bacon, or sugar for pudding.  Yum.

Now all I need to work out how to do is get up at 7am!

Twitter - The Surrender

I had told myself that I would never get a Twitter, that it was a pointless waste of everyone's time, and that I couldn't understand it.  But that was in the early days, when everyone's Twitter was 'going to the loo' 'on the loo' 'reading the paper.'  Now it seems to be all about the linksharing, and after familiarising myself with its uses for work, I realised that having a Twitter feed could, actually, serve me well.

I often find myself collecting items for a project, thinking about a project, or doing something tiny yet creative which doesn't merit a full blog post.  For these snippets - such as the 'invention' of DIY egg mayo which formed my first post - Twitter is an ideal repository.

There are also several websites and resources which I use/rip off/exploit whilst seeking Simple Dos, which I could use Twitter to share much more efficiently than just posting them on here.  It's also an opportunity to do some ruthless self-plugging of this site whenever I post something new, which will hopefully increase traffic and therefore creative goodness vibes in the general population.

You'll be able to see my last 3 tweets on the right-hand side of the blog now, thanks to a cunning 'gadget' available through Blogger.  Points for Blogger modders.  I encourage you all to follow me, simplymakeanddo, and make this work.  It's a co-operative effort, people!

Borscht

This is really a post about leftovers, especially garden leftovers.  Whilst (very sadly) unable to grow my own vegetables, I was bequeathed some home-grown things by the boyf's mother what was probably weeks ago now.  The potatoes and beetroot have kept well in the fridge, being roots which could traditionally keep a whole winter in a freezing Lithuanian cellar.  It is time they were used up.

It was (as usual) stepmother N who introduced me to borscht as a concept for home cooking; having previously thought of it as something foreign to be perfected by restaurants, I have now realised it to be as perfectable and yet homely as Momma's Apple Pie.  A quick search for a basic recipe on the Good Food website turned up some VERY angry commenters, each of whom had a different 'authentic' take on what is a national dish for about 9 different nationalities.  Given how little I have left in the fridge of any suitability, and my woeful lack of Eastern European ancestry, I present to you my riff on borscht - or what might be called Boish - 'almost Borscht', for the purists.  All nine of them.

Boish
You Will Need: Large pan, wooden spoon, large-hole grater, kettle and measuring jug, chopping board and sharp knife, potato peeler, apron or unfavourite clothes to wear (beets are super-purple), large dinner spoon and bowl :)

Knob of butter
Red onion
Two beetroot
Three potatoes, medium-sized
One sad tomato (as opposed to very fresh, happy tomato)
Remains of head of savoy cabbage
One teaspoon Bouillon veg stock powder (from all good retailers)
750ml boiling water
Approx. tablespoonful tasty vinegar
(sour cream optional serving suggestion - I didn't have any)

1) Peel and grate the potatoes and beetroot; chop the remaining nubs finely.  Set the striplets aside.  Peel and finely chop the onion.
2) Gently fry and soften the onion in the pan, with the knob of butter.  I use lightly salted butter for all my fat requirements nowadays, as it goes with pretty much everything, especially toast.
3) Boil the kettle.  Make 750ml of stock in the measuring jug with the Bouillon powder (that's a brand, and a good one, but it doesn't matter what you use.  It's best of course just to always have stock left over, but that's another story.)
4)  Add the beetroot and potato to the onion, and let the potato go purple before adding some of the stock.  Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to simmer.
5)  Finely chop the cabbage and tomato.  Add to the soup.  If it looks too chunky, add more stock.  SImmer for approx. 25 minutes, or one episode of 30 Rock.
6)  At the last 5 minutes before it's ready, add some red wine vinegar to taste.  Borscht is characterised by a sour taste, which is what the optional cream is for taking the bite out of.
7)  Serve hot or chilled, blended or chunky - although chunky is more authentic, and involves slightly less washing-up.  If you're feeling really posh, put some dill or lovage on the surface and get admiring cheffy glances from your co-diners.

Bead work

In my last post, I spoke of the difficulty of finding suitable electric-blue thread for dressmaking.  Thankfully I finally found the funds and the time to have a proper search, and once reunited with my trusty Viscount was able to make a tunic dress out of electric blue silk.  I'm hoping to wear it when the boyfriend gets back from holiday, so as to prove that I appreciate him going to to the trouble of buying the material.

Also to show appreciation of a present (Christmas I think, from parents this time) I incorporated some beadwork into the neckline of this dress.  It was such a simple design that it needed jazzing up, and beads (or sequins) make an excellent eye-catching detail when you're not confident of your embroidery.

First identify the area or edge which you wish to cover.  Measure the area or length with a measuring tape, and use this knowledge to identify either 1) how many beads you will need or 2) how far apart you should space the ones you have.  I had a good selection of large multicoloured, small white and small multicoloured beads, so I could make an interesting pattern.

It's a good idea to lay down different sizes or colours of beads in succession, so that if one set are badly misplaced you can unpick them without disturbing the others.  I laid the larger beads first.  Tie in the thread on the wrong side of the garment and pass the needle through to the front.  Thread a bead down the thread (you may need a very narrow needle for small beads).  Pass the needle back through near to the first hole, and pull tight.  Make two small stitches on the wrong side, just underneath the bead, crossing over each other.  This will firmly attach the bead.  Now pass the needle through in the next place along.

Laying down a row of widely spaced large coloured beads, with groups of three coloured-white-coloured small ones in between, made a lovely beach-pebble effect which really goes with the tropic blue material.  You can buy packets of beads in single or mixed colours, and I can recommend using the mixed colours all together in your pieces - they're grouped for a reason.  If you find that some beads don't fit over your narrowest needle, don't chuck them but put them apart from the others in a different pot so that you don't have the same trouble next time.

Difficult Things

More of a lifestyle post today.  I've been having trouble keeping up with the cpd23 Things course after starting work (yay jobness!), despite Thing 4 being Twitter, RSS feeds and something called 'Pushnote.'  All of these are tools to collect and recommend webpages to other people, and part of my job now is using Twitter to gently shove our merchandise at people through twitting relevant news items or trivia.  Despite the ease with which I've got into this, I've not set up my own account.  I tend to use the Facebook share option to spread things I find, as it allows me to target rather than spam 'followers.'

Thing 5 is 'Reflective Practise.'  The organisers recommend that participants consider what they've already done in the scheme, and how it has worked for them, in a slightly structured and calm way.  Not having kept my post count up, I've had plenty of time to do this.  So far, the most impactful 'Thing' has been brand-building, leading me to slightly merge my online presences.  But I've let blogging lapse- both here, and in the sense of looking at other people's.  I've not been converted to Twitter, despite using it every day.  Are me and the Internet just not cut out for each other?

We'll see how the other Things go down.  But for now, I'm finding it hard to find time to do Simple Things, let alone Professionally Developing things.  Where, for example, will I find the electric blue thread I need to make a tunic/dress with the electric blue Thai silk boyfriend bought me?  Do I need more bobbin reels?  Do I have the money? So much in #John Lewis, so little time...

Creating a Personal Brand

Stand out.  That's what most people want to do when they're looking for a job in real life.  It's not the sort of thing most of us want to do on the Internet.  If people know who you are, they might find out where you live; they might find out your bank details; they might try to sell you drugs to enlarge organs you don't even own.  Sure, you could be a massive blogger, or tweeter, with hundreds of followers; your opinion might be sought by media pundits and traditional journalists; but most of us want to keep ourselves to ourselves.  The Internet is somewhere we can say things we could never say in real life.  'Hello I'm 'easily-searchable-identity' isn't one of them.

This week however the course I'm on recommended Googling yourself, coming to terms with the fact that this information is out there, and then gathering it into a consistent, flattering portrait of how you want to show off to the world.  Deep breaths.  I put my real name into Google.  About four genuine results came up (I have an S, not a Z, and I have never been on MySpace).  One was my Facebook, which is locked down anyway.  One was my LinkedIn, which I barely use, and is utterly professional.  But there were some surprises - a testimonial on my university website; my account activity on CompletelyNovel.com, who I briefly worked for as a beta-tester and book-reviewer; and my Lulu storefront, where I make no effort to sell either version of my fantasy novel.

Unsurprisingly this blog - 'Ishamel''s blog - did not come up.  Not even on the third page.  This is a little puzzling, because I have pointed prospective employers here on the bottom of my CV for almost a year now. It never occurred to me to open my profile here, add a little piccy of me, a bit of info, some contact details.

Reader - I'm still too scared.  I still keep my email address private as much as possible.  But I have added the same photo of myself to my profile here as I have for LinkedIn.  I'm changing my name.  And, reading through those links from Googling myself, I saw nothing which I would be ashamed for my boss to find.  As for this blog?  Two people have told me it's pretty and interesting, and one of those people is now teaching me to do her job.  So I suppose my brand is 'pretty and interesting'.  I could do a lot worse.

23 Things to Make and Do

Hello all!  My few regular readers will know that this blog is a vehicle for me to share my handicraft and baking projects with the world.  Maybe one day I'll get round to developing the instructions and recipes here into a book; maybe not, maybe I'll just get round to picking up some more followers...  but for a while, I'm running another function alongside the usual Simple Things to Make and Do.

It's a professional development programme called the 23 Things.  Each week, one or two 'Things' are covered, which can range from how to use Twitter to how to present yourself in a professional context.  It's aimed at librarians, but also other media people.   I'm trying to get an entry-level job in publishing, and being new-media-savvy can be a really important skillset for those jobs.  Getting some advice on how to make this blog more useful would be terrific, and I could really do with career-progression advice. So for a few weeks, I'll be blogging in posts tagged 'cpd23' about each of the Things.  Hopefully it'll serve as a repository for some good advice, and also help me keep track of what skills I've gained.

Despite these posts being part of a wider programme with hundreds of other participants, I've decided to try and keep my usual post format going of intro/bold heading/instructions.  After all, the Things are supposed to be 'recipes' for success... and one of them is 'building your personal brand,' which requires consistency.

Week One

Thing One - Blogging

Well, I'm a little ahead of the game here!  Starting a blog with Blogger is a very Simple Thing to Do indeed; it's keeping the post count up with content of interest that's the difficult bit.  Hopefully I manage that well enough; certainly being unemployed has resulted in plenty of projects to document.  This little programme should also help up the numbers, and stimulate my imagination.

Thing Two - Reading Other Blogs

I have to admit it - I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to internet content, but then I don't have a great opinion of my own writing either.  The 23 Things programme was the kick up the arse I needed to go out and try and find interesting, like-minded people.  Wasn't the internet supposed to be all about meeting people you'd never met and exchanging profound ideas?  And hopefully I could increase my own profile as well - maybe a fellow cpd23er would find this blog, decide they loved my cake and keep coming back.

With this in mind, I searched through the programme's participants list and picked a couple of blogs to read at random.  Some were empty, not having started the week's Things yet; a couple were very, very library-orientated and were clearly established discussion groups for other librarians.  One involved a picture of the author's dog.  But I did find two kindred spirits - young professionals, a little sceptical or nervous about the whole point of this blogging thing, but clearly determined to make a go of it in style.  I've left comments on each of their first posts, and subscribed to their blogs.  Little acorns, great oaks etc; I already feel more connected and professional.  It's a sort of electric green inner glow...

Hazelnut Latte Buns

Okay, so maybe I make far too much cake for my own good.  But there's only so many cover letters a gal can write in a day...

A Note on 'Beating'
Beating a cake mix isn't like beating a carpet or your wife; it's a specific technique.  Tilt the bowl away from you so that the mix gathers at the far side.  Now paddle furiously at it in a steady rhythm with your wooden spoon, as though trying to turn a coracle or log canoe away from a waterfall in a Harrison Ford film.  You should find that it makes a very satisfying 'doff-doff-doff' noise, which is the sound of air getting trapped in the wake of your spoon and hitting the batter, becoming incorporated and making those tiny Aero-bubbles you find in great sponge.  Every so often you can group the mix into one blob again by scraping around the edges in a big circle.  It can also help to rotate the bowl every so often.

Hazelnut Latte Buns
You Will Need: large bowl, wooden spoon, cup, fork, butterknife, chopping board, large knife, coffee-making apparatus, scales, teaspoon, muffin tin.

2 beaten eggs
4oz butter (kerry gold if possible)
4oz sugar
4oz self raising flour
approx. 50g hazelnuts
small cup of strong black coffee
1 capful vanilla essence

1) Butter six of the tin-holes.  Chop or blitz the hazelnuts very finely, and put a teaspoonful of crumbs into each hole.  Roll around the holes to coat the sides, leaving some at the base of the holes.  If you have nuts left, drop a few whole into the base of each hole as a surprise for nommers.
2) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
3) Cream the butter and sugar; add the egg a little at a time.  Beat to a smooth batter.  Add the vanilla.
4) Beat in the flour 1/3 at a time; alternate flour with coffee, until the mixture is latte-coloured, fragrant and batter-like, but not runny.  You want it to hold its shape on the spoon when a spoonful is lifted out, but easily drop off the back of said spoon.  Add the coffee very slowly, and don't necessarily use all of it.
5) Beat almost excessively to a very light and fully combined mixture; try to get plenty of air in.
6) Divide the mixture evenly between the tin holes, and bake until fully risen, and a skewer in the middle comes out clean.  You may find that the buns erupt slightly as the unbaked centres rise through the baked outer shells; don't worry, that's normal and makes a lovely light cake!

Sesame sponges

Captain's Log, Lifestyle supplement: When tired of writing speculative work-experience emails and doubting your own worth as a human being, remind yourself that you can make cake.  Damn nice cake.

Now that I've decided to call these sesame sponges, it's reminded me of two childhood memories: my father reading me the Arabian Nights, in which the wicked brother can't remember the password 'open sesame' and tries 'open cumin!' (i.e. open, come-in oh the lulz).  Also the bit in Winnie the Pooh when Owl's house has blown down, and Roo identifies an object as a 'spudge': 'You know what a spudge is Owl?  It's when your sponge goes all-' '-Roo dear!' interrupts Kanga.

Appropriately enough, these little noms were inspired by baklava, the middle eastern sweets/pastries/things which are sold the length and breadth of Edgware Road and contain sesame and honey.  Also, one of them (the one I instantly nommed) did turn out to be a spudge.

Sesame sponges
You Will Need: muffin tin (slightly deeper holes than a normal fairycake tin), wooden spoon, teaspoon, very small saucepan, large bowl, scales, cup, knife and fork.

4oz soft butter (I recommend Kerry Gold, it seems the softest brand)
4oz golden caster sugar
2 beaten eggs (with fork in cup)
3oz self-raising flour
1oz ground almonds
approx. 50g sesame seeds
approx. 6 teaspoonfuls clear honey

1) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.  Grease 6 of the muffin-holes with butter, and pour about a teaspoon's worth of sesame seeds into each one.  Shake and swirl the tin until the seeds have coated the base and sides of the holes.  Might be an idea to stand over the sink or other large, wipeable surface for this one (mine went under the toaster.)
2) Cream the butter and sugar.  Add the beaten eggs a little at a time.  Beat in the flour and almonds together, a third at a time, and combine to a smooth batter.
3) Divide the batter evenly between the six seeded holes.  Bake in the hot oven until risen and a skewer comes out clean, about 10-13 minutes.
4) Melt the honey gently in the little pan until very runny but not simmering.  Poke little holes in each cake (still in the tin) and spoon a 6th of the honey over each one.
5) Leave to cool, a good while.
6) Turn out onto a serving plate or cooling rack, by putting said plate/rack face down onto the tin, and flipping both together so that the cakes come out upside-down.  This will be very tricky and result in failcake trifle if the tin is still hot, so be patient!
7) You could serve as a cake with tea, or still warm as a pudding with honey icecream and/or creme fraiche.

First Aid for Jam

Every so often, you just make a mistake.  After a lot of chutney-making, which involves a very long boil until a spoon drawn across the base of the pan leaves a trail, I lost my touch with jam.  After dad asked me to use up some plums, I created the most ridiculously toast-ripping plum toffee in a jar to be imagined.  Luckily, a little troubleshooting on the internet found a solution.

You'll need two saucepans, the offending jam, a butter knife and some water.  Half-fill one of the saucepans with water, and put the jam-jars inside, with the lids off.  Slowly bring the water to a simmer, and edge the butterknife down the edge of the blocks of jam inside until they are coming away from the sides.  If need be, clean and heat the knife in the simmering water as you go.
Upend the jam jars into the other saucepan, and prise the jam out.  Pour some of the hot water into this pan, and mush up the blocks of jam.  Now bring the watered-down mix to the boil again until you have acquired a real jam set.  Test this by dropping a blob into a cup of icy water, or onto an icy plate.