Mid-term Marks

I am so pleased with my marks so far this year. My highest has been the dreaded Icelandic culture essay at 65, the second Prose essay got 63 and first one got 61. (marks out of 90) The only thing that has let me down is the bloody Icelandic grammar translation...I got 8 questions right out of 20 so I got bang on 40% which is the pass mark. Got another grammar test coming up after christmas which I am not particularly looking forward to doing, I would have preferred that we did it before we broke up but I was outvoted by about 13/2. Interestingly, it was only the younger students who wanted to do the test after Christmas, it was only me and another mature student who decided that we would rather do it beforehand. I just hope I can remember everything by the time it is made live! Wish me luck!!

I'm Dreaming of a Wet Christmas (and other irritations)

Following is a piece of writing I did for my creative writing module at university last December. It was intended to be a lighthearted column centred around my feelings on the winter season but as usual I went off on a tangent!



I hate the festive season. It’s that time of year when eccentrics and lunatics come out in force. Now I’m not suggesting that if you like Christmas that you are automatically one of these people; I am merely pointing out that this particular time of year is seventh heaven for people with a ‘certain’ disposition. Take charitable organisations for example. The Yuletide celebrations give them the perfect excuse to bombard the rest of us with advertisements (or propaganda, as I prefer to call it) trying to persuade us to part with our hard earned cash in favour of some poor starving/neglected people/dogs/children (delete as appropriate.) Apologies for the cynicism, but if they spent half the cash that is normally spent on advertising on helping these poor creatures, the probability is that they would collectively write off the entire debt of war-torn Eritrea whilst providing drinking water and portaloos to sub-Saharan Africa.

That was merely an example though. Hate is such a strong word and I would never wish harm to any poor creature in the world. Except maybe the grinning goons that you often see gracing the front of your local ‘free’ newspaper with their houses garishly decorated in 50,000 watts of festive lights and ‘Santa Please Stop Here’ signs. These specimens are probably the very same people that drive ‘green’ cars the rest of the year and vilify anyone who doesn’t recycle every last piece of waste that leaves their homes. I call them the Bandwagon Parade. I shudder to think of the appalling hypocrisy. I was once asked by one of these insufferable gits if I recycled. I said, “I throw shit away if that’s what you mean.”

Of course though, I do recycle. As does everyone else who lives within a council borough. We are fined if we dare to even drop a cigarette butt on the streets of Leeds. They fine you for dropping orange peel in the park even though anyone with half a brain could tell you that orange peel and most other foodstuffs are biodegradable so therefore dropping it on the grass is recycling it. If only the council would employ people who can grasp this simple logic, life would be so much easier.

I grew used to recycling as a child as I was brought up in a very poor household where it was the norm to recycle as we couldn’t afford to buy more of life’s little luxuries. I was 23 before I realised that it isn’t normal to recycle teabags to my colleagues amusement. I can’t seem to go anywhere nowadays without making a fool of myself. It’s almost compulsory now to leave the house wearing at least one item of clothing inside out and smelling of toilet duck after blindly selecting the wrong bottle whilst showering.

I think it was my experiences of Christmas celebrations as a child that has made me so cynical. In school I was always the one chosen to play the Arch angel Gabriel due to my natural blonde hair and angelic face. (Damn my parents and their favourable genes!) Naturally, I hated this role and conspired to sabotage the play by any means possible, usually in the form of itching powder sprinkled generously in Mary and Josephs’ costumes. (When interrogated on the possible causes I used to surreptitiously implicate that the donkey had fleas). Of course nobody suspected little old me of any wrongdoing and I was free to cause chaos and mayhem at every available opportunity. Which I did, with vigour and relish!

My favourite memory of Christmas was when I discovered that the elusive Santa character was in fact my dad in a fat suit. I remember being told off at school for telling the other kids that I had seen Santa stumbling down the hallway, pissed out of his head shouting “Come here Rudolph you red nosed bastard!” It was a secret victory for me because I always knew that if Santa did exist he would probably be a piss artist.

And the festive season looms ever closer. We can probably look forward to rain, rain and more rain followed by a sharp freeze which will turn every part of terra firma into a veritable death trap and will guarantee me a permanently bruised rear as I go on my daily trip arse over tit every time I step outdoors. Oh joy. Bring on the summer!!

For Your Tastebuds Only...

Now, ths is not a cookery blog by any means and I am in the process of writing some new material for your reading pleasure but I thought after my last post, I had better offset the level of disgust that many of you may have experienced with a more palatable creation.....CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES. Incredibly easy to make, if a little expensive but not only do they taste amazing, they make good gifts too (if you can bear to give them away). Im not really a chocolate person, especially not milk chocolate (yuk) but I do like dark chocolate.

So here you go, you will thank me for it later!

For the Filling:

200g Dark Chocolate -(must be 70% cocoa solid or more)

200ml Double Cream

For the Coating:

Cocoa Powder

You can use whatever you fancy for the coating but I like coconut or ground nuts on mine.

Method:

Boil the cream, pour it over the chocolate and whisk until the texture is thick and it becomes glossy. Let the mixture cool for a few minutes and then put it in the fridge for an hour.

Dust your fingers with cocoa powder to stop the chocolate from melting and becoming too sticky and then roll a small piece of chocolate between your fingers to form a little ball. Dip it into some melted chocolate to coat and then dip the ball straight into whatever you want as your outer coating.

If you have any cream and chocolate left over you could also make some real hot chocolate out of it. Its even easier than the truffles, you boil the cream and pour over the chocolate as usual then just top it up with milk. Simple and soo tasty it beats the crap out of powdered hot chocolate anyday. If you can be bothered, you can add cinnamon and other flavours to it but I like it plain. That's it. Enjoy!

Food, Glorious Food! (However Unpalatable it May Be)

Last night, I excelled myself in the culinary stakes. I also managed to make my partner feel very sick which in my opinion is killing two birds with one stone. It is quite well known amongst people that know me that I am fairly unpicky with food and will consider eating almost anything; if it's edible then it's fair game. Particular favourites include anything that is considered a foreign delicacy: if it's good enough for them then it's good enough for me. When we went to France, Darren turned his nose up at Frog's Legs - even though they were delicately cooked in white wine sauce and smelled delicious he didn't want to know. In fact, I were so impressed with it I took a picture.

Just for the record: it might not look all that appetising but it tasted delicious. Also, Frogs legs are not only tasty and nutritious, they have entertainment value too. See its little legs? Well when pulled apart they have a tendency to rapidly spring back together so I had lots of fun picking them up and making them bounce round the table whilst making 'boing boing' noises. I don't think my French hosts were too impressed but I had a good laugh.

I am always the first to attempt to try new and potentially disgusting foods with a particular fondness for any sort of offal, which brings me neatly to the whole point of this post. Last night, I cooked a variation of Nandos' Peri-Peri Chicken Livers dish, but I substituted the livers for a pig's heart. I have never attempted anything like this before and prior to preparing the food I took the opportunity to examine the heart because I am currently studying for an NVQ in Exercise and Fitness and my current module is on the heart and muscles. I figured that this was the closest i'd ever get to seeing a human heart so I made the most of it. By the time I had finished, it looked like someone had been murdered in the kitchen, I even picked up my knife, stabbing randomly at the air and made Psycho-esque screeching violin noises for effect. Well, you know what they say - small things please small minds. Plus, I tend to do things like that when I think no-one is watching.

As it happened, once cooked, the spicy pig's heart was delicious. It was more or less the same recipe as features on the Nandos website - I didn't want to deviate from it too much because of my severe lack of experience cooking Portugese food. Anyway, here's what I did:

I used...

350g Pigs Heart

Dash of Olive Oil

Knob of Butter (tee hee)

2 tbsp Paprika

2 Cloves of Garlic

Handful of Soya Beans

Splash of White Wine

1 Bay Leaf

Splash of Nandos Hot Sauce

Then:

After trimming and dicing the heart, I heated up the oil and butter in a wok and added the heart and paprika. I fried them for a little while before adding the chopped garlic, bay leaf and soya beans then as the garlic started to brown, I splashed in some white wine and let the whole thing bubble for 10 mins or so, until the spices and wine had boiled down into a lovely sauce. Then I went for my piece de resistance and coated the lot in hot sauce. Meanwhile, I boiled a packet of rice and chucked a bit of paprika in with that too and served up with a few olives on the side. Delicious.

Darren didn't eat with me surprisingly enough and he thought it looked and smelled disgusting but I didn't expect any less from him. He is not the most open-minded person when it comes to food, he hates most things: mushrooms, nuts, pepper, onion, tomato and anything spicy is strictly off the menu, which makes it difficult for me to cook certain things. On the other hand though, it gives me the option to be creative in the kitchen and whenever I make a spag bol I tend to substitute mushrooms and peppers for peas and carrots, sometimes even new potato. His favourite meal is a sunday lunch and I can always predict what he will have when we go out to eat. Bless him, we are a good match but the polar opposites when it comes to affairs of the stomach.

Fingers Crossed

So...I am currently awaiting a decision from the School of English as to whether I can change my degree programme to Single Honours English Lang and Lit. For those who don't already know, I'm currently doing Joint Honours English and Linguistics and I am wanting to drop the Linguistics because A) it is too hard! I have come to realise that I do not enjoy language as much as I thought I would and B) it is not as interesting as I thought it would be and C) I have got loads of friends doing SH Lang and Lit and they are all making me very jealous with their Norton Anthologies under their arms!! I am the in-limbo girl, I don't want to work too hard on Linguistics if I am only going to be dropping it anyway and at the same time I don't want to be putting all my hopes on getting accepted so the only thing really to do is .....slow down.....deep breath!.... Chill.

Chill, though is harder than it seems. Supposing they don't accept me, what will I do then? I don't want to be stuck for the next three years with a degree programme that I am not enjoying! No! stop panicking now, I need to think positive about what will happen if I am accepted. Of course I am an asset to the School of English, I have many skills and attributes....um....I think so anyway. Obviously my love of literature is the number one reason for wanting to change and since I have started studying middle English it has come as not a huge surprise to me that I actually love the old stories and poems and find the Old English riddles frankly hilarious! For instance:

"A small miracle hangs near a man's thigh,
Full under folds. It is stiff, strong,
Bold, brassy and pierced in front.
When a young lord lifts his tunic
Over his knees, he wants to greet
With the hard head of this hanging creature
The hole it has long come to fill"
Broadview Anthology of British Literature v1 the Medieval Period


See? Ace isn't it? I can only imagine what you dirty minded so and sos are thinking is the answer to this riddle but I can assure you it is not as filthy as you might imagine. No, really the answer is a key. Hahaha those medieval monks really did know how to have a laugh at the peasantry didn't they?