Time traveller's thai bride

Continuing my shameless recycling of old posts here is one I picked by playing 'Guess what an earth she cooked from that post label' . It's a really good game. I go through the list of keywords that link to my post history and decide whether I want to pick 'bubblewrap', 'napping', 'hungover', 'i hate boys', or this one, which was emblazoned with 'I'm turning Japanese, yes I'm turning Japanese I really think so.' I clicked and it plunged me into September 2010. a.k.a the orient.

China Girl

The other night when Chaz, Bob and I were being wined and date-raped (not!) by the band of generous Turks, we were mildly baffled when one asked me if I was a bit Jap. Before I could wrinkle my brow Chazney interjected, 'She can be anything you want her to be' (..as long as you keep giving us free gins and chicken shish..). Now, when I say only mildlybaffled it's because although you'd think this query is completely startling I do receive it probably about five times a year (on average). Put it down to dark hair and pallor coupled with a look of incomprehension when strangers I don't want to be on the same bus as try to talk to me, the occasional coat buttoned up the wrong way, and according to a colleague who enquired about my cultural background, a certain roundness of face.

To do honour to my faux roots I took my patients to China Town today. I didn't really enjoy my shrimp and vegetable vermicelli but they slurped up theirs happily. Must taste better than cold tinned macaroni cheese eaten with wooden spoon.

As that wasn't very tasty todays recipe is going to come instead from my escape to Pink Granny and Grampa's for Friday and Sat. We had a beautiful prawn and lime risotto suggested by our very own Dave W.

Soften one red onion, one stick celery. Commence risotto with liberal application of vermouth. As you keep stirring and it develops add one chopped courgette. Add lime juice as the arborio rice swells up to absorb it. Add the prawns just before finished. Grate a bit of lime on to the top. Serve with parmesan.

We had two puddings. One was very refreshing with layers of orange, with sweet juice and cinnamon. Oh also had home made cinnamon ice cream. The chocolate cake was rich chocolate tart baked in a crisp pastry case. Had that with double cream. Mum had iced it with my Granny and Grampa's initials when she'd been there a few days before but we scraped that off. Bit old. Everything else was sublime.

Yo! Tom!

Now I live in the suburbs it is quite a gasp to drag myself in for my tete a tetes. Have refused at least three dates this week I'll have you know.

But I had to make an exception for a meet up with the ever so dashing Tom Hardy.

Oh I've got ever so sad whilst looking for images of him to decorate this page with, as he's already romantically linked. Feel so down now that I can't be bothered to tell you all about seeing This Means War (with him acting in it) with Bob then having a Yo! Sushi.

I'll just put a few photos in and hope that Bob's sweet little face will perk me up.

Hmm. Not really.

Fire fire

Lying snuggled up to Roast on his bed the other night, sated with leek and potato soup and crusty bread, we began to smell burning. Hmm. I just assumed it was the scent of our hot hot hot looks burning through the sheets, but sensible/anxiety disordered Roast was a bit more paranoid. Can't we just carry on watching our programme? NO. We need to check what it is.

Pouting, I was disturbed then anyway by a siren cutting through the restarted episode of 30 Rock.

Quickly as possible, though careful not to disturb the windowsill groaning with trinkets that every self respecting member of our group is familiar with, we wriggled up and out of the window. Ooh, look! A fire engine with a bevvy of firefighters in nice wet look onesies. Sashy should SO stud those.

They unravelled their flat hoses and snaked them down the street. Funny, Roast and I had always assumed that they kept the water in the engine! But no, they were cranking open the fire hose covers on every street to get to the water mains. Funnier, I always thought that the FH metal covers stood for Frances Harkness. What fire hose?

We got a bit bored once Roast had had an ironic cigarette, and went back to watching 30 Rock with some melting chocolate pudding.

Let's galette outta this place!

On my penultimate day in Charterhouse I invited myself to sleep on Alex's sofa as I had cleverly had all my furniture removed days before. I went to the garage to mount Rhapsody, and shock horror, she was gone! Had some weeping neighbour taken her as a souvenir? One did accost me to mention that she was very sad I was leaving as her family really liked me. "Not the other two". She actually said that.. Oh. Maybe I should have been the one to complain more when they threw rubbish into our garden.

Anyway. Where am I? Three days previously, I had cycled to Kingsland road to go to Tesco, and walked back, quite forgetting about my trusty stead. Poor lamb. Hurriedly I ran and got her (no one could lift her to steal her I assume..) and pedalled over to Alex's.

When I got there Alex and Chaz were producing puy lentil galettes and fennel and pomegranate

salade to practise for the impending house warming of the year. They were very nice. Thinking about how careful I would need to be not to drop creamy puy lentils on my silk dress, I practised my eating skills over the new sanded table. Spill and die is the house motto. Maybe Payne and Bond could whip them up a nice carved sign for the door.

Gorged on galettes, Chaz regretted a spontaneous purchase of ten cans of beans and a loaf. I don't know who she thinks has a big appetite around here? I definitely haven't got an appetite for life at the moment as I managed to slip through the hand of a party and into Alex and Tom's guestbedding trunk. So, swaddled in sheets I slept right through on their sofa to the next day when I left Charterhouse for good.

"Ah Sad".*

* Alex said that after we dropped our keys off. See he must have liked living with me really!

Going green

Feel too tired today to write any new posts now I'm a Chingford commuter so like a good little Guardian reader I'm going to start recycling. This is the first ever post from 2009.

I'm going where no Fran has gone before and starting a blog. Only because all my friends have them and I feel left out. I've got a few months before my new job will start and I haven't got much money so i'll mainly be writing about staying inside the house. Those box sets won't watch themselves!

Today I got back from my Mum's birthday weekend in Edinburgh and Roast came round to make a toad in the hole. Dave was already here when I returned home so we had a cuddle and some Scottish shortbread. Careful not to get crumbs on Jim's freshly cleaned bedroom (this is where we all sit in my flat as we don't have a sitting room).

The four of us meandered through Shoreditch park to the Co-op and got toad in the hole ingredients, mince pies and brandy cream. Roasty really likes doing the cooking so he did most of it, I was in charge of the carrots and the other boys started on X Factor.


Toad in the Hole. Prick the sausages and pop them in an oven dish with a tbls of oil. Put in the oven for 10 mins at gas mark 4. Crack 2 large/3 med eggs into a measuring jug. Take note of how much they take up in the jug then put the eggs into another bowl. Then measure out the same amount of flour and add to the egg bowl. Then the same amount of milk and add that. Whisk. Pour mixture on top of sausages (the oil in the dish must be hot). Half an hour cooking. We made gravy, sticky bottomed carrots from Jamie Oliver's how to cook book and did some broccoli to go with it. Mmmmm.

Everybody really enjoyed it. I'm going to have to wash my new heat tech leggings after all that spilling.
We then watched x factor, I'm a Celebrity and the Osborne thing all cuddled up together. Had to end when Jim made us watch the football. Bye for now. Sweet slumber angels xxxxxx

Ham S(hock)

So I know I live around murder mile. I turn my pillowed ear away from sirens. When Big Ted's limb comes off in my hand in the middle of the night I chalk it up to geography and sleep on. I carry on living my Waitrosey life amid the meat is murder of Ridley Road.

I just wasn't expecting to find this tossed into my garden. Or to come home from leaving it snoozing on my lawn and find it had moved to haunt another side of the garden! I was half expecting it to be tapping on my bedroom door that night after dragging its nibbled haunch up the rapidly not cream stairs.

Luckily I wasn't alone with it for long as I had ten people coming round for dinner.

"Come in. May I take your stylish coats? Collectively they look worth more than the entire contents of the market stalls down the road". Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Whoops tongue, "Sorry Roast. Come through. Have a drink. Now, come and look at my centre piece in the garden." "Oh." "You don't even see that in Croyden", squeaked Bob. "That isn't what we're having for dinner is it?" And so it went.

No, I'd gone for a subtler flavour of meat that night with sausages roasted on a tightly packed bed of cherry tomatoes, handfuls of rosemary, thyme, and oregano, and lashings of balsamic vinegar and wine. Soaking through mash potato and mopped up with crusty bread.

Unforch we don't have any chairs or tables left to sit on as Alex moved out about ten months ago leaving me wailing on one sofa cushion in a three story desert of smudged cream.

So we made a fort. Very Enid Blyton. And suitably, that kids, is the final page of 'The Adventure of Charterhouse Road'. It's been lovely having you round.

THE END

Night MARE to get there Street.

Not really. I can't talk. I don't even have a home. And it was only 20 minutes walk from Dolly Day care ston. It's obviously time to leave the sanitised sceneland of Charterhouse and suck it up in a place where Harrie's friend saw someone stabbed at 11 am, and I personally was asked roughly for 50 pence for sweets by a tramp. As if mate. I told you, I don't have a home either. But if I did round here it would be twice the space of Islington, at half the cost. With exposed brick and wooden floors throughout.

So Mark and I oiled on our Shackleton jackets and made the short scenic journey to Alex and Tom's new super apartment just off Mare Street. It was a beautiful evening with beautiful food, delightful company, and the amount of wine that I'd forgotten

Alex can put away without forgetting the whole evening like me and only being able to piece it together from blurred phone photos and ten status likes on facebook.

I'd be careful I don't get too comfortable boys. Unlike Oates

I may not be some time getting back. Yes, this photo is your new bedroom.