A Good Pick

Sorry t0 share this with the world, but sometimes, isn’t it really wonderful to pick your nose? That glorious feeling of seek and destroy, finding a good splodge and removing it from your nostril – excellent.

My friend Rachel (the cakey bakey one) totally agrees with me, and anyone who says they don’t enjoy picking their nose is LYING!

Fireworks

Halloween and fireworks night are always over way too quickly in my mind. I like to prolong the autumnal celebrations to hold off the fear of Christmas for as long as possible. But now there’s nothing stopping Christmas hype taking over the world…

We (our household – that’s me, Joe and Nathan) decided earlier on in the week that we should hold a celebratory fireworks extravaganza on bonfire night (Nov 5th for you non-brits), with a bonfire and all. I woke up Saturday morning to find half a torso in our living room! Turns out Joe and Nathan had decided to burn their old clothes in the form of a guy. So over the course of the morning, amongst other things, I watched Joe and Nath construct the rest of guy, including using a cauliflower for a head…

Our mate Guy

After which we revelled in puns such as “Well, it looks like he has cauliflower ear”, and “I think he’s turning into a bit of a vegetable” – (hahaha we’re really funny aren’t we).

I really like entertaining and I jumped at the opportunity to make food for everyone, so I invited my friend Bec (the arty one) over to help prepare the dishes. And this was our bonfire night menu:

Salt and pepper roasted jacket potatoes with cream cheese and chive topping, sweet chilli sausages, and curried red lentil & sweet potato soup. So that was the main course…. Then came the real treat – dessert! I’d decided to go for something fireworky and childish, so the whole dessert was designed around popping candy! I made milk and white chocolate bark with toffee popcorn and popping candy, all broken into smores – it was delish! We’d also dipped some marshmallows in the leftover white and milk chocolate and then the popping candy as a kind of appetiser if you will. (We also made a backup plate of bark without the popping candy, but I consumed it today)…

I’ll treat you to the recipe for the soup and the bark:

Curried red lentil and sweet potato soup:

Curried red lentil and sweet potato soup

1 white onion
1 sweet potato
2 carrots
half a red chilli
a knob of fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp cinnamon
a few cardamom pods
a good slug of red lentils
boiling water
salt & pepper
1 lime
a bunch of fresh coriander

1. Boil the lentils in a good amount of water for approx. 20 mins.
2. While you’re doing this, chop the onion, potato, carrots, chilli, ginger and garlic and fry them in a little oil for approx. 5-10 mins.
3. Add the dry spices to the frying pan and fry for a further 10 mins until the onions are translucent but not browned.
4. Add the fried items (but not the cardamom pods) to the red lentils (which should have doubled in size), make sure you scrape all the dry spices from the pan into the lentils.
5. Boil the whole lot together for approx. 20-30mins until all the veg are squidgy.
6. Puree (or pulverize as I prefer to say) with a hand blender until really smo0th.
7. Then reheat and add salt, pepper, coriander and lime juice until spiced to satisfaction.
8. Serve in mugs with plastic spoons! – That’s how we did it

Popping bark:

Popping bark

2 packets milk chocolate
2 packets white chocolate
1 bag toffee popcorn
lots of popping candy (I don’t know how you’d buy it where you are, but I went to our local sweet shop – Mr Simms – and bought 4 packets each a different flavour)

1. Chop up the milk chocolate and put in a bowl – heat on high in the microwave, taking out every 30 secs to stir, until fully melted. Do the same with the white chocolate in a separate bowl.
2. Meanwhile grease up a baking tray or some sort of flexible flat surface with either butter or oil. You could probably use flat baking parchment as well.
3. Liberally spread the milk and white chocolate onto the tray making a flat surface, retaining some for drizzling over the top.
4. Drop the toffee popcorn and popping candy into the chocolate surface, retaining some popping candy for topping.
5. Drizzle over more milk and white chocolate.
6. Top with more popping candy.
7. Leave to solidify (I put ours in the fridge) for a few hours.
8. When solid, attempt to remove the bark from the tray (you might have to heat the base of the tray by sticking it over the hob for a bit – don’t do this if you used baking parchment)!
9. Break it up into smores (I used a kitchen knife).
10. Serve!

Back to fireworks…

After food we all mooched into the back garden to burn Guy. I’d actually become quite attached to Guy throughout the day, it seemed a shame to burn him…

Guy's hot stuff!

We then moved onto fireworks. Joe (the firestarter) was in charge of the display, which was pretty bloomin’ good!

Baby you're a firework...

Then there were sparklers – there had to be really, it wouldn’t be complete without them!

Sparklers

And that pretty much was the end of the entertainment – then came beer.

All in all, a great bonfire night for all… except Guy.

I’ll do another post with all our bonfire night pics on… watch this space…

Last week’s temping

Was actually really good, glad it happened, wanna be doing more of that… It only lasted 3 days though, I think I worked too quickly.

Interview

So I had my interview with the BVA on Tuesday, but I don’t think I got it. They were meant to call me back on Friday and they didn’t. In the cold dark miserable world of job-seeking, I don’t think that’s normally taken as a god sign…

Next week

I might get a part-time job in a shop, we’ll see…

I leave you with…

…the fact that I just made oat biscuits – yeah! xx

Halloween Dream

It’s Halloween tomorrow so HAPPY HALLOWEEN to you all! (Or SPOOKY HALLOWEEN if you prefer, it’s your choice, take it or leave it).

I made a cheeky pumpkin carving, and yes you should be incredibly impressed, this is the first pumpkin carving I have EVER done in my life…

Pumpkin!

I was so chuffed! Incidently I just had the biggest camera-computer malfunction, it was literally touch and go. There were raised voices (well just 1 raised voice – mine) and expletives. Crikey, it was quite an ordeal! So much so that I had to actually go and buy a yorkie. I’m eating it now. It’s really good.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, yorkies aren’t for girls… Well I challenge ANY man to eat a yorkie quicker than I just did. Hell, I could even fit in more, I laugh, nay, quaff at your yorkie, ha ha ha!

I’m getting off topic here…

Back to pumpkins… I carved some little ones too, wanna see?

Munchkins

They’re dinky. In the shop (Sainsburys) they were marketed as munchkins, which is just so cute!

I think Halloween is a really underrated holiday in the UK. In the USA it’s massive, people dress up and have a right old jolly time of it – we just get drunk – nice. I made a slight effort to dress up this year and felt sorely out of place amongst the group I went out with last night! Last year was amazing, we all made an astonishing effort and really looked the part. I dressed up as Lady Gaga, it was literally awesome.

Temporary employment

So next week I actually have some temporary employment! This will inevitably make me sound like a nerd, but I’m actually really looking forward to it. I’m even a little bit… dare I say it… excited?…

It’s only data entry but I’m just delighted to be leaving the house. I also have an interview on Tuesday, which I believe I’ve already mentioned in a previous post. However, I cannot for the life of me find the job description for the role I applied for! It’s for Marketing Officer at the BVA in London and I’m really excited to be invited to the interview, I’ve done my homework and researched the organisation, looked thoroughly through the website, etc etc, but it would be the cherry on the cake if I could find the role description…

This is a major downside of unemployment, having no reason to leave the house. I could potentially spend all week indoors if I didn’t force myself to leave the nest sometimes. Not that my home isn’t lovely, it’s just the outside world is really something isn’t it?

Musical whimsical fantastical…

I appear to have a wealth of songwriting inspiration at the moment, which is always a good thing. I have half written a folky sounding song and intend to finalise the words this week. Once I’ve written the bare structure of it (without thinking through the instrumentation or other such things) I’ll record it just me and guitar and see if I can upload it so you can hear. We’ll take it from there. Would be great to get some opinions once it’s uploaded!

I never heard back from Thorntons about me gigging there – boo. Although I don’t feel as bothered as I probably should…

Itchy feet

No guys, I do NOT have a rash!

A foot

Following on from being bored with sitting around on my ever expanding arse all day long, I’ve been really thinking about this travelling malarkey and have come to the conclusion that it sounds grand. There’s only 1 place I really want to go to and that’s America… and while I’m there I may as well visit Canada, it would be rude not to!

In true Karen style (that’s me) I would like all this to happen immediately. THAT MEANS NOW! But I do feel really selfish for wanting to do this, however many times people keep telling me it’s not. It’s just that I know my parents will be upset at me for wanting to go, and I know it will upset the delicate household balance I live in because while I’m living with my boy and his friend they’re able to save up to go travelling themselves, which they wouldn’t be able to do if I left. Although now I’ve just written that down I’ve realised that what’s happening is that I’m forfeiting my dreams to support theirs. That’s not fair is it? But if I follow mine, I doubt they’ll be able to follow theirs.

I am in a pickle people, a little help here?? Please?? I don’t want to hurt anyone but I want to do what I want too!

Arrangements for next week

I MUST remember to record Due South, or life will not be worth living!! (Melodrama – gotta love it)

Peace out y’all xx