Spidercrab V The Lurgey

I'm not usually ill and even when I am I tend to just get on with things and try not to dwell on it too much. I had Pleurisy for a week once and didn't know so carried on going to work. The Doctors surgery is my most hated place (after the Dentist) and I try to avoid going there as much as possible.

However, this weekend, if I had had the energy I would have run there in my velour romper suit and begged to be put down. I think I have felt the worst I have ever felt in my whole life. The Hong Kong cough has developed into something completely horrendous and has totally ruined the last 2 days of my life. My symptoms are thus: death rattle, pink itchy watery eyes, sneezing fits, achy bones, can't breathe, hot sweats, cold sweats and pulled muscles from coughing so much. We had big plans with my brother being over from Sydney, with a night out planned for Friday, lunch and bowling on Saturday and more lunch on Sunday with our family. I have missed all of it. I don't know if it was this reason or the pain of the lurgey but I actually cried yesterday.  Poor old me.

Luckily I have had a very good nurse on stand by. The wig has been a much nicer nurse than I have been to him when he is ill! He bought me Lucozade, Lemsip's, Mansize tissues, a crappy magazine and a lovely letter rack for keeping post in from The Dog and Wardrobe. What a thoughtful Wig.

He also bought a huge Spidercrab from the fish shop on Broadway Market and made a delicious Crab and vegetable soup in order to try and kill my germs.

To make Spidercrab Soup:
Oven roast 1 x green pepper and 5 x vine tomatoes.
When cooked, blend and sieve to make a liquid.
Meanwhile, soften a white onion and 2 cloves of garlic in some olive oil.
Next add 3 x celery sticks in slices, a hand full of broad beans  and 1 x courgette to the pan and soften.
After a few minutes, stir in the pepper and tomato liquid and mix together adding a pinch of Smoked Paprika, Oregano and some salt and pepper.
The Wig also added some Moose Salami at this stage.
While this mixture is simmering, prepare the crab by pulling it apart, smashing it up and taking out the meat. We have done this a few times but you need to be careful to avoid any dodgy poisonous bits. Check online how to do it properly. Our crab was already cooked so by adding it to the soup it just heats it up.
(NB: if we made this again, we would just use a regular crab. Despite the fact that the crab looked stunning, there was virtually no meat in the body and taking it from the legs proved very time consuming and fiddly).
Mix the crab meat into the vegetables and heat through.
Add some fresh dill and a slice of lemon and serve with some crusty bread.

Enjoy! 

The curse of the Hong Kong Cough

Its hard squeezing out a blog when you are entertaining. And it's even harder if you are coughing up a lung. I appear to have caught my older brother's Hong Kong Cough (so called as he picked it up en route to Hackney in Hong Kong). Poor me. I shouldn't complain though, I've had such a super few days, it's worth losing some offal for.

So the last few days in a nutshell are as follows:


Monday: The travelers arrived, I was excited and wanted to make them feel really welcome so I made my brother and Frenchie a Lemon Meringue Pie. Lemon Meringue pie is my brothers favourite pie. Or is is mine....? Anyway, it took ages, their flight was late, and I had drunk half a bottle of wine by the time they arrived. I don't think they could tell. The evening was spent playing Buzz on the computer then an early night.

Tuesday: The March Hare's overly ambitious London Walk. But what a glorious day for it! My brother, Frenchie and I went from Hackney, through London Fields, past Hackney City Farm (it was closed), up to the Albion for a breakfast. Frenchie left the tour so my brother and I continued on our trip via a racy art exhibition, through Spitalfields, bought some new CD's, up past the Barbican to St Pauls, over the Millenium Bridge, past The Tate and The Globe Theatre, round the Golden Hind and up to The Design Museum Shop (best shop in the world) to St Katherine's Dock, over Tower Bridge, past the Tower of London for a beverage and ending at The Folly at Monument. My poor pieds...

The Folly, or 'The City's Secret Garden' as it's website refers to it, was awesome and I would definitely recommend it should you be sniffing around for booze in the city. I don't make a habit of mixing with city types but this place was a pleasant surprise. Great food, drinks and amazing interior. I would give this place 9 hardy perennials out of a possible 10.

http://www.thefollybar.co.uk/

Got home, put the new CD's on too loud, don't remember going to bed.

Wednesday:  Woke up with a hangover, went to Canteen for an illuminous Eggs Benedict, was going to complain about the rude waiter but didn't have the energy. (See how happy the eggs made Frenchie though!)  Then I had to go into town for a meeting. Eurgghhh.... Think I got away with it though.

Thursday: The cough kicked in. Went in for a meeting again in a company which is like a hareem for my ex-boyfriend. His girlfriend before me, me and his current wife were all in there today. You can never escape your past in Soho. Shame.

The exploding Moussaka Sausage

We are not Scottish. The Wig has never been to Scotland. So there is no logical explanation for the fact that he insisted on cooking us a Haggis (with neeps and tatties) for dinner. He bought it before we went to Sweden and I thought/hoped he would forget about it so we could sling it when we returned. However, he didn't forget about it and the night before we went on holiday I had one final chance to escape from it and offered it, in desperation, to my upstairs neighbour. I was sure he would jump at the chance as he's a pretty easy going chap who looks like he might enjoy his food, but he let me down. He's a Vegetarian. Or at least that's what he told me but to be honest if he offered me a sack of sheep guts I would say the same to him. So, it remained in our possession and has lived in the freezer for over a week until tonight, when the Wig had his wicked way with it.

According to the internet, haggis is traditionally served during the week of January 25th when Scotland's National Poet, Robbie Burns is commemorated. It's made of sheep heart, liver and lungs with a bit of oatmeal chucked in. When presenting the haggis to the table, you are supposed to recite the Burns poem "Address to a Haggis" while your guests do a slow hand clap. This ceremony did not take place in Hackney this evening. The Wig presented it, I said the Lords Prayer and hid a sick bag under my chair. Not really. Quite surprisingly though, it wasn't too bad although I would certainly not describe it the way The Wig described it to me, "It's just like a big sausage that tastes a bit like a Moussaka". He lied. And it exploded all over my clean oven so it was pretty obvious that the haggis and I were not going to get on. Pre-explosion, it looked like a shiny brown condom that had been inflated and post-explosion tasted like tomato ketchup as that's what I covered it with. Interestingly, even the Scottish don't like to think about what a Haggis is made of so they invented a story that states the Haggis is a small animal, native to Scotland, with 3 legs, all of differing lengths that makes a mating call like the sound of a bagpipe.

http://www.electricscotland.com/haggis/haggis1.html

Apart from having my first taste of sheep gizzards (...gag...) I also had my first go at using Das modeling clay today. I really want to do a pottery course but still haven't got round to doing anything about it. Not only has it somehow slipped down the To Do list, I also have a vision of the kind of people that might attend a pottery class and I'm not sure I would fit in. Firstly, I don't own a pair of crocs and secondly I don't like josticks. Also, I'm a bit shy. But I recently discovered Das which is an air drying clay that you can use at home as you don't need a kiln. Perfect! So, this morning I made a 'Welcome to The Hackney Hotel' gift for my older brother. It's meant to be a coin dish or a dish for putting a watch in. Or an ashtray...? Peanut holder...? I'm not really sure. The first one (with the letter 'M' on) might end up in the bin as it was a bit trial and error and looks a bit scraggy, so I made another one using my biscuit stamp which looks much better. Not sure I'll be setting up my mail order coin dish / watch holder / ashtray /nut holder business anytime soon though...

Bienvenue à Londres, Frenchie!

I am knackered. I have been cleaning all day, apart from a short half hour break to the local greasy spoon where I cried onto my sausage about the wedding. They were happy tears I think and I don't know what it was about the greasy spoon that set me off, I was inexplicably overcome with excitement, frustration and fear (with a little bit of hangover mixed in) while discussing venues with The Wig. But apart from that I have been cleaning like I've never cleaned before, since on Monday we have two guests coming to stay. My older brother and his friend Frenchie (he's French), are coming over from Sydney where they live. My brother moved over there about 8 years ago and really is living the dream. As opposed to me, who most of the time feels like I'm living a Boursin induced nightmare.

The last time a French person stayed over was when I was a kid and for some reason my dad offered to take in a French Exchange Student. It was a disaster. He was rude, moody and kept a flick knife tucked down his socks. We never had a French Exchange student to stay again. I am obviously more hopeful about next weeks visitation and am starting to get quite excited. Think of all the touristy stuff we can do together and all the food places I can take them to! Their visit is very exciting of course, but it has meant that the flat needs to be spotless. My brother is the King of Clean.

As well as the endless surface wiping and crevice polishing, I did also find time to make Frenchie a small welcome gift. I have never met him before but any friend of my older brothers is a friend of mine. I also don't know if Frenchie has ever been to London before and want to give him a a good impression of us Brits. Since he is French, he must love cheese so I have made him a jar of Onion Marmalade to have with his cheese board when he goes to back to visit his family in Paris after he has left London. I made some of this for a few friends at Christmas and no one died so I guess it was ok. Also, it was very easy to make even if it did take nearly 3 hours to cook. The same time it took me to clean the kitchen. I'm not very quick at cleaning.

To make the Onion Marmalade:
Whist wearing a snorkel mask, finely chop about 2 kg of onions, cover and sweat in some olive oil for about 50 mins or until they are soft.
Add 150g of redcurrant jelly and 200g of demerara sugar.
Turn the heat up, stir regularly and cook uncovered until the mixture turns brown, after about  45 mins.
In the meantime, boil and oven dry your jars.
Once the onions have turned dark brown, remove from the heat for 5 mins to cool.
Next add 300ml of cider vinegar and 50ml of balsamic vinegar and return to the heat.
(If you add vinegar to a really hot pan it will evaporate and the fumes will probably strip the skin of your face).
Continue cooking until all the liquid has gone and the mixture has become thick and sticky.
Season with salt and pepper, spoon into the sterilised jars and eat within 12 months!

The 'W' word

Grandad + Grandma Trustrum

Granny + Gramps Percival

My Dad with Uncle Tom + Auntie Pam 

My Mother with her 1st husband, Bruce . . .

My Dad walking Auntie Margaret into Church

Auntie Margaret + Uncle Fred

The only problem with taking a diamond ring off a boy on holiday in Skiathos and placing it on the 4th finger of your left hand, means that at some point in the not too distant future, there really ought to be a wedding. Shudder. It's not that I don't want to get wed, its just that organising a wedding feels to me a bit like organising the worst shoot ever. And I have been to 31 weddings in my lifetime and feel a bit wedding-ed out. Also, since neither The Wig nor I have families that will be able to stump up any cash, we will have to save up to pay for it ourselves, which feels a bit daunting due to my current employment situation. On top of that, I'm not sure how I feel about the whole 'centre of attention' thing. I don't really like being stared at.

On the plus side though we have a pretty good idea of what we would like to do. A simple old London wedding. Registry office, food, a party then home. We want all out friends to be able to come and not have the worry or expense of having to pay for hotels etc. If we make them have a hangover the following day, the least we can do is let them wake up in the comfort of their own beds. I also have a pretty good idea of things like the stationary, seating plans, menus, table decorations (we can make these ourselves) flowers (also we can do ourselves), cake, etc since I must confess, I am the lame owner of a wedding scrap book. Its positively jam packed with reference pictures from magazines, blogs and google image searches.

After we had got engaged, one of my friend's became a little obsessed with wedding magazines and every time I saw her she would hand me a bunch of them. This not only gave me loads of things to stick into my scrap book for ideas but it also absolutely mortified The Wig. I think it had taken so much out of him researching the ring, buying the ring, asking my brothers permission, carrying the ring around for days waiting for the right moment, and then doing the deed that he'd forgotten there should really be a wedding to go with it. The first time my friend gave me a Smith's bag full of magazines, The Wig's skin changed colour. I think Farrow and Ball would call it Elephant Scrotum Grey. So after that I had to hide them from him so as not to freak him out. I would have to take the mags into the bathroom to look at them like some dirty perv with his collection of Hustler's.

I thought that maybe today, now I have most of my ideas, while I'm kicking around at home, I should really start doing some research into costs. Also, people keep asking me about 'the big day' and I need to have a better answer than 'Don't ask me...'. I thought I'd start by looking into Photographers. Unfortunately it has not gone well. I have looked at one website and thats enough research for one day. I don't know if this is normal, but this particular woman charges £1500. £1500? I could buy a car for that, if I wasn't scared of driving. But hang on, what's this? You don't just get a set of wedding photos (80 pictures in a book and on her website), she also throws in a set of, not at all staged,  'Engagement Photos'. Again, I don't know if this is normal and was starting to wonder if  The Wig and I had missed out on something, until I perused the 'Engagement Photos' section of her website. What I saw horrified me so much, I am unable to do any more research on weddings today. I'm too traumatised. The gallery consisted of photos of couples in the most curious locations, either staring moronically at either under street lamps or leaping around derelict buildings like some sort of demented dance duo from Pineapple Dance Studios. Whilst holding balloons. Shameful. Also, I recognised some of the locations as places I had filmed at and believe me, they are not places you'd want to go prancing around with a stranger poking a camera in your face. Is this what people do nowadays? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? Sweet Jesus.

So, the planning is on hold again for a bit longer and I have no idea when the wedding will be. All I know is that I'm not paying £1500 for some photographs even if you do get a day trip to Dungeness with a balloon thrown in.