this was christmas dinner

It wasn't bad. I didn't cook it mostly even though I had promised I would.
I did make the cherry sauce to go with the duck.
We had duck with cherry sauce and chicken with gravy and brussel sprouts with chesnuts and bacon and potatoes roasted in goose fat and some peas. We forgot the stuffing. We'd planned on cooking goose but a goose costs FIFTY POUNDS. Too much.
It's not a good year for cheese this Christmas.

my house burnt down

The only thing they could rescue was my heart necklace.
I will write about this properly in a bit.
Here is a picture of my heart necklace which is a little bit burnt and smells like a housefire.

I keep sniffing it.

I have been subletting my friend Tre's room until a few dyas ago when my friend Jay who has a flat upstairs went to India so I moved my stuff up there and was going to be staying there until January the 14th. I was working at Cargo when I got a call from Tre saying that it was on fire so I got Ally (who lives there too) as he was watching the bands and we got a taxi back. Holloway road was blocked off from the Odeon cinema to just by the dominoes. This is a long distance. There were a lot of fire engines. I stood with Ally and Andy and looked at the smoke for a bit and got that song (THE ROOF, THE ROOF, etc) stuck in my head and couldn't help singing it a little bit. I got three buses all the way to Woodford to stay the night at James' house. I was very hyperactive on all the buses and wanted to tell everyone what had happened but managed to mostly keep it in, then one guy at the bus stop was asking about how to get to Stratford and I said "OH YEAH I DONT KNOW, I AM GOING TO WOODFORD BECAUSE MY HOUSE BURNT DOWN", he did not know what to say. I took two cans of fizzy rubicon guanabana (the best drink in the whole entire world possibly) and a bag of skittles and some cherry menthol chewing gum and some starburst and he met me at the bus stop.

Today I went back to see what stuff I could get out because all my clothes and writings (zines, screenplay, novel, diary, etc) were there as well as a lot of my music and some other things. The thing I wanted the most was my heart necklace though, which is lucky because it was the only thing that survived. Jays flat got hit the worst I think, something to do with the way the fire moved. I'm not actually really that sad. I can still remember a lot of the stuff I wrote (not word for word obviously) and my clothes can be replaced. It's a good excuse for a fresh start but I feel really bad for everyone else. I am a little bit sad about my clothes but only a little bit, mostly my ruby slippers and my yumi dress and my good lumberjack shirt.

halloumi with pomegranate salsa

Yesterday my friend Finbar came over for dinner. I know him kind of from school and from college and from living near Dorking. He is one of my favourite people to see.

I made us halloumi kindofkebabs with pomegranate salsa.

Ingredients.

1 packet of halloumi cheese.

tabasco

pitta breads

some tomatoes

a red pepper or two

for the salsa

pomegranate seeds (I got some in a little box from the sandwich bit in Sainsburys)

some ginger

red chilli peppers

coriander

mint

olive oil

balsamic vinegar

salt

spring onions

chop the pepper and tomatoes up and throw them in a roasting dish with some olive oil, balsamic and salt. you might want to put some other vegetables like courgettes and aubergine in too. The only reason that I didn't is because I couldn't afford any more vegetables.

In a bowl mix together your pomegranate seeds, some finely chopped or grated ginger, finely chopped spring onions, finely chopped red chilli peppers (and don't touch your genitals or eyes afterwards because it will HURT) and some chopped coriander and mint. Though I hadn't really made pomegranate salsa before and now I think maybe you could just use mint and no coriander. Put in a few grinds of salt and some olive oil and balsamic and mix it all together a bit.

Put your pittas under the grill, in the oven or in the toaster and cut up your halloumi and fry in some olive oil and tabasco and then put everything together in the pitta.

We also watched I'm not there, I've seen it so many time now but it was really good watching it with Finbar because he could tell me lots of things it was referencing because he is a big bob dylan geek. We also made a miniature village in 1 hour. It was just to see what could be done in 1 hour.

girls

I have trashy taste.

Reasons I shouldn't drink.

-I act like a dick.
-I act like a dick.
-I act like a dick.

I haven't been drinking for the last few months because of the above reasons and also because I hate not being able to remember stuff and because I kiss people I do not mean to kiss and then don't remember it. This means that someone could tell me I had kissed them when I was drunk and I would have no idea if they were lying or not. I was once having a conversation with a friend who looks a bit like a rodent, he was making a joke about me wanting to kiss him. I told him I would never kiss him because he looks like a rat, only to have him tell me that when I was drunk a few months before I had jumped on him and kissed him.

I got given champagne last night, then a malibu and pineapple juice and then I drank a lot of vodka and tonics. I'm not really sure why I did it. The results were not good. I have a cigarette burn on my forehead today, I think I may have got it from playfighting two italian guys at the bus stop. I also have a vague memory of sitting with my boyfriend in the middle of the road, this is bad behaviour.

Today I went to the Diner in Camden with my friends Claudia and Sarah. I was thinking HANGOVER EAT TRASHY FOOD HANGOVER EAT TRASHY FOOD so I had a cheeseburger and when she asked me how i wanted my burger cooked I told her "bloody". I'm a FOOL. Have your steaks bloody, not burgers. I changed my mind halfway through the burger and the very sweet waitress took it to get cooked a bit more.

Three things

Thing Number 1 - KITCHEN IS GO.
The cooker works now, and there is even an oven so I can bake now too. These are exciting times. I can make cakes now if the mood takes me.

Thing Number 2 - SNOW GLOBE.
I started to build the base for a massive snowglobe today. Jay helped me with suggestions and I did the practical stuff which involved a lot of wax melting. I have been working on trying to get the consistency right for the glitter to swirl around well.

Thing Number 3 - BEST ADVERT EVER.
http://www.gumtree.com/london/45/32017845.html
I've written to him.

Eds Diner burgers.

A still from waltz with bashir.



Apparently the kitchen will be ready tomorrow.

After having survived on a cup of cous cous for the whole day I went for dinner at Ed's diner yesterday evening. I had pictured a cheeseburger in my head and we (me and James) went on a big hunt for a good place in the west end to eat one which started at The Diner (too busy) and then to Bodeans (too busy) and ended at Ed's Diner which was actually pretty empty.

I ate a cheeseburger and some onion rings and half of James' chips and I drank a peanut butter and banana milkshake.


Some important points about my meal.

• the peanut butter and banana milkshake is great and has just the right amount of sweetness and saltiness in it and it comes in a big jug kind of thing so you can fill your glass up twice with it.


• James didn't let me pay for my half. It did cost a lot for burgers and sides really.


• The burger was tasty but not enough burger relishes.


• The lighting is not quite right in there.

I felt sick after eating but I think that's because I hardly ate all day then went crazy and stuffed my face.

After dinner we went to see waltz with bashir at the curzon. It's a really beautiful looking animated film about the film maker trying to remember his time fighting in the 1982 lebanon war. All the images at the end (crying women and dead children) stayed stuck in my head for the rest of the night though.

emptiness, state of mind or stomach? and things I want to learn.

I have spent the whole day feeling maudlin and empty and have switched my phone off a lot, gone for walks and attempted to draw pictures of crows (I am bad at drawing and they look like something a really happy five year old drew after eating too many sweets with e numbers) and trying to work out why I feel so empty. I have considered all the possible options (not doing enough with my life being the main one) and decided that the feeling of emptiness is coming from my stomach and it is because I am hungry and all I have eaten today is a slice of yesterdays pizza with some melted st agur cheese and some apple and walnut chutney on it. I usually eat 3 meals a day, at the very least.
The kitchen still isn't ready. My new plan is to eat something filling every time I feel empty and I don't know if it is stomach or life emptiness, I may become obese.


Here is a list of some things I would like to learn...

• how to make good snow globes. I tried to make my first snow globe today. It looks like shit. I decided that those miniature jam jars would be the cutest thing I could use. I stuck a miniature minotaur inside and some water, glycerin and glitter and then screwed the cap on. The minotaur takes up the whole jar and you can barely see him and the glitter floats upwards. finding good miniature things to put inside is hard too. I want to make one as good as these (they are made by walter martin and paloma munoz)...
• wood block printing like Billy Childish...
• miniature sculpture, just how to make things in miniature in general. I am going to build a miniature town or village by the end of the year, maybe by the end of January instead.
• how to break dance and beat box properly. I can't do any breakdancing moves and I can only make one beabox sound, it is one of the most difficult ones though.

The Walkers crisps competiton.

I just wrote a post and then lost it, now it will be much smaller.
Walkers have a competition to invent a new flavour. I entered two flavours. I keep getting emails from walkers about other things. I always think at first that the email will be to say CONGRATULATIONS you have won fifty thousand pounds.
my flavours were smoked salmon and wasabi and
duck and cherry.
I had to submit a picture too for each flavour.
my picture for smoked salmon and wasabi was the scottish flag and then the scottish flag made out of smoked salmon and the Japanes flag and then the Japanese flag made out of wasabi. It was a great idea I think, but it looked shite anyway.
My duck picture was a potato stamp I made.

money money money

I am burning through my cash this week. I live on a pretty tight budget anyway. Most weeks I work one night (Thursday), I earn £100 from this and £50 is spent on rent and then the other £50 is spent on food, phone credit and topping up my oyster card. I've had a bit of extra money since I came back from tour (I was selling merch for my friend Frank) in November and have been getting some extra work here and there so I had 40 quid more than usual this week. It's almost all gone.

Not having a cooker is expensive. Realistically I could easily survive on cous cous for a week as we still have a working kettle and this wouldn't cost me more than a couple of pounds and I would lose a bit of weight probably too. But it's so borring to eat cous cous all the time, even when it's drenched in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and tabasco and covered in salt. So I keep on eating take away.

Lauren is my friend who lives in the room across the hall (which is my old room) and she came in here and hung out all day and we took it in turns looking through my plastic heart necklace at lights which is like a kaleidoscope. We got really hungry and couldn't think of what we wanted to eat so Lauren invented a London number and I called it in the hope it might magically be a take away place, it was not. We ended up combining google and Laurens memory and found a pizza place on Essex Road called Base Pizza. They took over an hour to deliver but it was tasty thin crust pizza when it came and was so massive it couldn't fit through the door properly. We ate pizza and drank coca cola (I'm not really a coca cola drinker, I don't like the taste that much and it makes my teeth feel soft) and watched miracle on 34th street and it was overall a pretty good Sunday afternoon. This has been my laziest weekend ever.
That's not true, obviously. But it has been my laziest weekend in recent memory.

I plan on making snow globes tomorrow, and going to see a Billy Childish exhibition.

why not having a kitchen is depressing, even when it's only for 1 week.

Tonight is a Saturday night and I have decided to stay in because I want to finish writing some zine stuff and because I am in pain. I have also been channeling the nineties for a secret 90s thing I am writing. Channeling the nineties involves a special kind of lighting (fairy lights), burning incense, listening to Nirvana, wearing leggings and a lot of eyeliner and dark lipstick.
I am subletting my friends room for the last month and the kitchen isn't amazing but it works. There is a little wind up grill thing that I don't really use and an electric hob, I have been making a lot of curries. The other day the hob got ripped out, and the fridge and microwave got moved to another room. A whole new kitchen with a proper cooker is being built in the other room and it's all very exciting but won't be ready until Monday so tonight I ate a microwaved 'mini chicken meal', and also 4 mince pies and 2 mini yule logs. The Christmas food was an attempt to alleviate the depression of having to eat microwave meals and it wasn't even that good.

bento cafe sushi pros and cons.

Where I ate: Bento Cafe, Parkway, Camden, London.
When: Wednesday evening.
Who I ate with: James. He looks a bit like Sean Slater from Eastenders and uses the word 'damn' a lot.
What we ate: We each had a plate of salmon nigiri and avocado maki.

Here is a list of pros and cons about our meal.
pros.

• They don't use mayonnaise in the avocado maki. (yo sushi use mayo and even some proper sushi places use it and I don't know why they do it but it makes me feel SICK. I am not a mayonnaise hater but it feels wrong with rice and seaweed).
• The wasabi was really hot. I hate pansy wasabi. James doesn't like wasabi but told me he would match whatever I managed to eat of it so I ate the whole lot on my plate, it was almost the size of an eyeball. It made my nose run and I did cry a tiny little bit but it was worth it to see James eat it, even if he did think it was some kind of competition and he'd won it.

cons

• We weren't allowed to look at the menu. The waitress that served us told us that they were basically about to close and she was doing us a massive favour by letting us eat there. She said it would take us about ten minutes to read the menu and we should just let her know if we wanted to eat noodles or rice.
• James found a pubic hair on one of his pieces of avocado maki. I thought it was an eyelash at first but on closer inspection it was definitely a pube, it was quite glossy and healthy looking but that didn't make it being on the sushi okay. James thought it would be hilarious to blow the hair onto my plate. I was not amused and we had to swap plates.
• It cost £24 pounds for what was a pretty small amount of sushi and one beer. There was no discount for suffering the trauma of the pubic hair.

what this is

This is a blog for me to write about food and sometimes other things and to put nice pictures of food I have eaten.
Laura Taylor told me to do it.
Usually when I want to write I do it in a handwritten zine and give it to my friends. This feels less personal and more exposed, like getting undressed in front of the window.