Ain't too proud to bug

Bug eating in Karon market, Thailand...

Making our selection

Sis's reaction to mealworm

Facing the locust...

...which apparently taste like pork scratchings

Bro vs locust

Bro rather enjoying himself

Me on the other hand...

Desert Island Dinners

I feel it is my duty to follow in the footsteps of @wuthering_alice and the lovely @alicestronaut who have so eloquently written about their dream dinner party guests. They've included historical figures, artists, feminist icons... truly inspiring people.

I've thought long and hard about my list. I've considered characters from the many works of classic literature on my shelves, influential critical theorists who have shaped my morals and values, and true heroes of our time.

So, for my distinguished evening of class and cultured conversation I'd invite:

Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez and Randy Jackson

The holy trinity. They'd sit one one side of the table with fuzzed out red C*ca C*la cups and microphones. They represent the surprise golden season of my (proudest) guilty pleasure: American Idol. Steven Tyler would most likely turn up with the mega munchies. On the plus side he's tell me everything I'd cooked was "beautiful". Oh, and @jessings would need to be there too.

Lady Gaga

Yeah she's a historical figure. Or at least she will be in a couple of millenia. AND she's an artist. She could do a big Art Attack with my dinner.

Shaun Keaveny

I think it only fair to reward him for the endless amounts of embarrassing laughter he causes me on my walk to work. I'd insist on a heavy dose of Brokeback Mountain intros for each and every guest. Why can't I quit you Shaun?

Bill Murray

I don't think I need to justify this one. I get Venkman, Bob Harris, Phil Connors, Frank Cross... and BILL MURRAY all rolled into one. Hell, I might even wear a pink wig and try my luck.

Eddie (Moose)

He's a natural comedian AND he can help clear up. We'd better hope Gaga's wearing some undies beneath that bacon though...

So - high culture from me. As you'd expect.

Nx.

Christmas "lardballs"

No, I'm not addressing what I see in the mirror post-festivities (although at certain angles...) Rather, I am catching you just in the nick of time. 

Got some leftover Christmas pudding you don't know what to do with? Can't bear to lose the Christmas spirit - sod the overdue advent countdown? Think you can push your stomach just a little more? 

Well break through that gastric band, forget the diet and banish the January blues by hitting rewind and cooking some of Nigella's Christmas lardballs (aka Christmas Puddini Bonbons).

Nigella is a bit of a *thing* at Christmas now. She leans towards a festive red wardrobe and manages to release greasier and greasier ways to cook up a Christmas storm year on year. 

Ni-jealous much?

A few weeks before Christmas I stumbled upon an older Christmas series. Less innuendo and less butter than recent series but still treats-a-plenty. My general demeanour when watching Nigella is to find myself in a bit of a 60/40 split of outrage vs jealousy (I'll let you decide which is which), but in a rare turn of events I watched her create something that looked a, quite tasty, b, rather boozy, and c, fairly frugal. Top marks Lawson!

Grab the hamper dregs, for I present to you... Nigella's Christmas Puddini Bonbons (or, as my esteemed friend Nicky calls them, Nigella's Christmas lardballs).

Ingredients

125g good quality dark chocolate
350g leftover, or cooked, cooled Christmas pudding
60ml sherry
2 x 15ml tablespoons golden syrup
100g white chocolate
Optional holly decorations/red and green glace cherries or writing icing will work.

What your finished bonbons might look like (image: styleathome.com)

Before you start - is your Christmas pudding cooked? If not, cook it. This won't work if it's straight out of the packet. OK, onward!

Crumble the pudding between your fingers into a bowl. Melt the chocolate in a bowl/pyrex jug over a pan of boiling water or in the microwave. Combine this with the pudding, add the sherry and the golden syrup (if you want them less lardy, use less syrup).

This is where it gets messy. Nige recommends you use latex gloves. If, like me, you don't happen to have these lying around, you're going to have to suck it up and use your hands. Be nice, wash them first, dry them thoroughly then begin rolling the mixture into balls. A heaped teaspoon of mixture will be a good guide. 

Lay these out on a greaseproof paper sheet on a baking tray then refrigerate to solidify and cool a little. Melt the white chocolate then dollop a little over each pudding ball to create traditional old-school looking festive puddings. If you have the patience, go for broke and get the holly detail on. 

Pop these in the fridge until they're cool and the white chocolate has hardened and VOILA! Lardballs are born. 

If you want something a bit more exact (and are dying for more ways to relive the Christmas "oooof" factor), the full recipe is available in Nigella Christmas. 

The beauty of these bonbons is that they last for weeks in the fridge. Ditch the diet, encourage your friends to do the same and enjoy an extended Christmas courtesy of me and Nigella.

Nx

Old El Passé

Yes. They do go well together. Very well.

You might well think - oh god another food blogger (yes I am), bet she's a right snob when it comes to food. Well, no. I'm not. I like a decent shortcut every now and then, and one of my ultimate comfort dinners is fajitas. From a dinner kit. Yes that one.

But hold your horses and sighs of no-cooking-needed relief. I'm fine with shortcuts but I also love spending time actually cooking, so getting out of the kitchen quickly isn't always a good thing. I tend to embellish every sauce, dinner kit, paste or other shortcut (including Paxo).

Roast dinner leftovers

Forget expensive chicken breasts. On Sunday we had a lovely roast chicken. A roast dinner works out far cheaper and tends to generate some amazing leftovers for the week following - even with our huge appetites. This week we used our chicken in a comforting risotto and, for the first time, risked using it in a fajita dinner kit.

Slow(er) cooking

Quite by accident, my man's late arrival home from the football meant things cooked for far longer in the pan. Turns out slow cooked sliced red onions, green and red peppers, scraps of roast chicken and the fajita seasoning turn into something a bit magical. I threw in a handful of chopped coriander and some diced fresh mini plum tomatoes just to freshen up the mixture. 

Sides

Old El Paso kits miss a key ingredient for any Mexican meal though. Guacamole is so simple to make and I may as well make something a bit authentic to accompany this dinner.

For two people, mash one large ripe avocado. Finely grate about one quarter of a small red onion and half a small clove of garlic. Finely slice some coriander, squeeze in the juice of half a lime and stir through. Season with salt and pepper and finally stir in a little finely chopped red chili and tomato.  

Your kit will come with a just-ok salsa, so if you want it spicy, throw in some chili. If you want it chunky, stir in some fresh tomato. We are a generation of supermarket lovers and these prescribed dinner shortcuts scare us into thinking we can't play with them. We can!  

The result

So we've got slow cooked shredded fajita chicken, fresh guacamole - and I included some leftover watercress and a nice bit of grated cheese in each tortilla. I might have cheated, but I feel anything but guilty.

The perfect brownie

Wow. Just wow. 

Office brownie from The Hummingbird Bakery cookbook lovingly made by Vix from the team.

 

Food hell

On reading the Guardian's article on Britain's most hated foods, I realised that I started something I never finished: my food hell.
Waaaaaaaay back in November 2010 I posted a little something about the evil disguised as food that is Scotch eggs. My opinion stands but this is just the tip of the food hell iceberg.  
Come into my courtroom....

Defendant 1 - Shop bought coleslaw

I'm going to write this under the rationale that everyone has seen Never Been Kissed. You have right? Drew Barrymore being adorable. David Arquette being.... David Arquette. Popular kids and High School nerds. All the usual tripe that gets me scoring films 9/10 on IMDB. 

Well, there's this one scene that fills me with dread, where Arquette's character necks a cafetiere-sized bucket of coleslaw. Shop-bought coleslaw is the food of Satan. Mayonnaise? Mayonnaise my arse. This is salad cream in all its evil genius glory, overbearing and smothering those poor lovely shredded vegetables. They never even had a chance... GUILTY!

Defendant 2 - Brussels sprouts

Damn you Christmas! All I've ever done is love you and yet you delight in tormenting me year on year with these little green bastards. Hidden under roast potatoes for years of my childhood  ("just one Nathalie" - yes just one, but it's ruined the flavour of my mouth for the whole of the 25th December) I'm happy to say I've almost completely rid myself of the enduring terror of the Brussels. Better still, they sell them on trendy sticks nowadays and I can pretend I'm morris dancing. Still, GUILTY!

Defendant 3 -  Cottage cheese

When I googled cottage cheese I ended up looking at a picture of a woman's cellulite-rich thighs. Nuff said. GUILTY!

Defendant 4 - Stilton

You know cheddar cheese? You know when it gets mould on it and you THROW IT IN THE BIN? That. GUILTY CHEESE!

Defendant 5 - Baked beans

Yes, that is Pete Townsend

Many of the comments following the aforementioned article focused on the issue of texture. Mushrooms and bananas prove a huge issue for so many people. I've been there. I hated mushrooms, bananas and, in fact, tomatoes for that very same reason. But flavour won over in the end and I eat all three of these squeaky/hairy weirdos regularly.

Back to baked beans.  I feel a bit peculiar just talking about these. There are enough of these in a tin to mount an army. I can feel the film forming inside my cheeks, I can smell the metallic nasties threatening to be eaten cold in the tin.

You know the way they slowly spread on the plate? Like the mercury puddle in Terminator 2 (or Alex Mack for that matter) they threaten to intoxicate all good fry-ups everywhere. Someone! Anyone! Save my bacon! GUILTY!

Defendant 6 - Egg mayonnaise sandwiches

They stink, and if you eat these in public I probably hate you (a bit). GUILTY!

Defendant 7 - Hersheys chocolate

America. Land  of the plenty. Land of the vomit aftertaste. GUILTY!

I'm not fussy though, honest!

Nx

What's on the menu?

I had to share a fellow food blogger's post, which manages to combine what I do for a living with one of the things I like most. That's food, if you hadn't guessed.

Melissa Loves Food's post What I want from a restaurant website rejects the nonsense (nonsense nonsense!) and embraces simplicity. Enjoy!

Nx