It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

I had the very special treat the other day of meeting Roast's new amour Adam. Hi Adam. Doubt anyone reads this now but I'll pretend. Sob sob. Slit Slit. (My bed is like a village pond around me with all this liquid literary distress. I know just how Virginia felt).

We went to Byron burger for, well, a burger. My favourite bit about it is how it comes with a gherkin on the side. Just like my lunches in New York. Because not everyone likes gherkins I got quite a few at Byron. Not just like New York, as in New York I lunched alone. So I only got my one. Alone. Like me.

Sorry I'm being too me me me when this blog is actually about Chris' burger pain. His juicy burger arrived much later than everyone else had finished theirs. It was tres embarassing for him. And we hated watching him eat. To distract us he put his gherkin in the top of the burger like a candle.

We all got puddings to cheer ourselves up. And to cheer himself up Chris taunted me with a glace cherry for what felt like days...

OOh i've got a new eyeliner...

and other girl stories.

I'm ever so sensible and into infection control and brown Clarks' lace ups, but when I get with Chazzah and Bobbeh we get quite silly billy.

Anyway, we reunited and shared our new eyeliners (mine's Neal's Yard fyi) and got extremely overexcited about going out. See, look at Bob's face. She can't wait.

That's probably the best bit of this story. Certainly, wasn't when she got forty pounds stolen, or when my vodka pouch got caught by security, or when an 8 year old tried to pull us (no Callum, I'm your teacher), or even when Bob knocked a tray of water onto the bed and we had to sleep in it wrapped up in towels like babies fresh out the bath.

P.s it's not just the camera perspective on the soupy photo. Bob and Chaz made me have a serving bowl full. Well, the joke was on them as I ate it all and enjoyed it probably more than their company.*

*joke. Although as if you even read it now to see.

"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,

bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens..."

NO NO NO Maria. Sssh. Those are not my favourite things. My favourite things are carbs.

"Gravy drops on potatoes, and chocolate on creme cakes. Bright buttery croissants, and warm plates of risotto balls. Big wedges of lasagne tied up with cheeeeese. These are a few of my favourite things!"

Ah yes. I think you'll find only those will soothe the pain of a dog bite (not that Lexie would ever do that to anything else but vulnerable nesting birds), and soak up the tears of my leaving for New York with their absorbent carby textures*.

* p.s yes this is yet another month overdue blog. I'm surprised this blog hasn't gone as past it as the bread I left in the cupboard for two weeks.

Anyway, right before I went away I went for breakfast at Ottolenghi. I had a heavy plate of french toast and my fellow diner El had a whole carb board.

The bread board even comes with its own toaster to the table. And a trough of butter.

The last supper

I'm spoiling the end of the story by writing this blog post now and not a month ago like I should've, but anyway, this is the tale of the last group dinner before I went to New York.

We've had more since. I'm not dead like Jesus.

Sorry, non existent.

The beginning:

Well, as usual I accidentally invited round ten people for dinner. My friends are like those strings of Walls' sausages. Very hard to separate. Not that I'd want to, as I like strings of sausages that tumble into the oven together. Oven, or medium sized kitchen with ten people in it talking very loudly about teaching (for some reason) whilst I tried to not rub raw mince into my chilli stinging eyes.

Everyone dipped in (stirred the meatballs, not double dipped) and soon it was ready. Moroccan meatballs with herby cous cous. It was widely commented that this was my best dish yet.

The end:

We finished the main. Polished off orange marmalade upside down cake courtesy of the lovely Alex. Did some group youtubing. Then made heavy hints for everyone to leave so we could go to bed.

A dressing down

Vegelezzas go on loads about how meat is really bad for you because of all the stress hormones the animal contains from seeing their fellow animals getting killed in front of their terrified eyes, but I've recently discovered that salad is much more dangerous!

Look, the dressing cut me!

(the top of the glass was broken)

Toad in the wholesome

After going out most nights on a diet of martinis and shows tunes my Uncle and I were ready to stay in with a nice home cooked meal.

I whipped us up some individual toad in the holes with sweet potato mash, special mushrooms (I never believed that mushrooms not from Tesco basics have "loads of flavour" but they do), gravy, and spinach cooked with a bit of ginger.

As you can see from the photos of my individual TiTHs I've gone SUPERSIZED!

Yellow, is it me you're looking for?

When I was in New York recently my Uncle and I went to the farmer's market and were shamed into buying a dozen eggs for $8. Not noticing the $4 ones on the next stall. Oh well, I think the hippy woman said they were fed on falafel, or alfalfa, or something good for us.

For the first few mornings I tiptoed around them in the kitchen feeling that I couldn't possibly be worth a 75 cent egg for breakfast. At that point I hadn't even worked out which coins made up 75 cents.

However, after some gentle chiding from Robin about wasting the most expensive eggs in the world I took the plunge and ate scrambled eggs for days on end.

Look how bright yellow they were. More than the bananas and my Reiss jumper. They were the yellowest eggs I'd ever found. Shame that everything I make looks a bit like sick.