Worm's World

Yeah, I'm still not convinced they're worth the hassle. I feel much the same about broad beans. Anything you think isn't worth the effort of prep for the return?

Dammit, I saw a Gbbo spoiler on twitter, so I know who was booted out... But anyway, catching up.. Contestants Victoria is a little odd, I bet she's a member of the local WI, or maybe she thinks she's above them, I don't know, I'm sure she's lovely, but. Can't warm to her. I love the vicars wife, sarah jane, and her lucky Pastry knife. I'm finding Kathyrn a bit odd, I've seen people like that camping, and that shot of her in a gilet explains a lot. The lads are lovely, especially last weeks Star baker, maybe... Ok, here's my crib sheet for the identikit blokes: PE Teacher - Stuart Scottish one - James. the other one, umm, Peter... Challenges Signature - tart tatin, I've had hit and misses with these, I love the idea of a savoury one, never though of that, especially taken with the pear and blue cheese one. I have however made plenty of rough puff pastry - miles better then the frozen stuff, although that has its uses. There's a interesting m...

Week 2 GBBO Ok, it's week 2, I'm not watching this live, I'm a few days behind (it's Thursday) but I've not spoilers, just no community to snark with this week. The idea of 2 days of bread baking does not fill me with joy, much as I love eating it I don't care for making it. I did buy a bread makers when I was tipsy once in Asda (aah, 24hr super markets) but we freecycled it years ago when my beloved kenwood came on the scene, since we only ever used the machine to make pizza dough. I've long since relegated every type of bread making bar chappatis to Pete. He makes excellent pizza. Contestants I'm pretty sure there's people in this weeks episode they didn't even feature in the last one, like the bloke who collects recipes from magazines to cook with his son. He seems nice, but I've already forgotten his name.  I'm sure Brendan being called a 'keen gardener' is a euphemism, who goes through breads of the world as a project, that...

We're not long back from a trip to Germany - which was many shades of awesome, and one of the stand out things was the food. I kept a food diary for once (I'll let my husband blog about the veggie offerings, but my fears were misplaced, everywhere we went had a choice of veggie options, with no fan fare) Anyway - this is from a week, in Augsburg & Muinch. We were visiting a friend so some meals were family meals - which always makes food taste better --- Monday - Hueveros Rancheros at Giraffe, lunch with Anna's mums - roasted tomatos and a couscous salad . Pretzels. Peppermint tea. Beer. Tuesday - Nordsee cold fish finger type thing, chips with tartar sauce, tiny weeny Cokes. Ice cream. Schnitzel with Bavarian pasta and mushrooms. Beer. A pretzel waiting for Pete and Anna to come back from running. Wednesday - coffee and Apple cake (in a weird, dated coffee shop) Hofbräuhaus ! Brockwurst, German potato salad, pretzels and bread. Beer, more beer. Coke a Colas, afri Co...

props to whoever did this, I love my job....

From theKitchn

I've spoken before about Pinterest, and how pretty everything is on there, but there's another side, a very definite, and I can only guess american trend - the easy fix. Easy cheats, how to make things without the effort, how to cheat, how to make restaurant specials at home, so you end up with a massive jug of frappachino mix or a dressing not too dissimilar from the amazing blue cheese dressing at Pizza Hut (this is our holy grail - we've gone to PH just to eat the Blue Cheese dressing) and it shows an interesting side of people, and if you look at the ingredients they use, and most of these tips and tricks would be impossible to remake outside of the states. Source: therebelchick.com via Rebecca E. on Pinterest This isn't a new thing - Top Secret Recipes was one of the first websites I remember checking back and linking too - even if I was looking at recipes I had no idea what the original tasted like, but it's impressive so much effort is given over to ma...

I have to admit this is genius as an idea, one of the best things about the D&D games I used to run / play in was the communal eating aspect - and there's only so much pizza you can eat (curry and chinese gets a bit messy). We used to share it in turns on one game, which I think was more fun then the playing in parts. So yes I've backed it, so I should get a physical version of it - and I'll write about it again when it arrives....

Ok, so a new series of Great British Bakeoff has started. I'm not fanatical about it, I'm not that fanatical about baking (well, that may be a slight untruth), but having been uninterested when it first started but now I'm hooked - thats probably as much about the twitter community on #gbbo. Anyway, they have my upmost respect for entering, and I can't ever make anything pretty enough at the best of times to ever think about entering anything like The Great British Bakeoff I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring about the contestants this year. Contestants Too early for any of them to make much of an impression - apart from the already departed Natasha and the master baker this week, whose name escapes me but the odd neckline on her top will confuse me for weeks. There's a vicars wife,  a quirky Scottish one with glasses, one with perfect hair, a handful of blokes, one a student who says he bakes cakes after coming back from the club, one who looks like he play...

I've been playing on Pinterest for a little while, since I was aware of it I suppose - a visual version of reddit, mainly American, and judging by some of the names of people that follow my pins, big in Scandinavia. If you're not familiar with it then it splits into board - which are made up of peoples individual boards that are sorted into these categories - sometimes it slips up - weight loss pins seeping into the geek board but the Food & Drink board is pretty solidly full of pretty, yummy things to eat. That's the first thing you notice is how pretty everything is on there. There's the instagram effect - everything looks pretty with a faux-vintage digital filter (even us ) and the rise of good cameras on mobile phones I'm sure has had something to do with the quality of photos on the boards - even if everything I take a photo off comes out yellow - but so many of the pins focus on pretty little party food - things on sticks ( Coming soon, a board entire...

Hopefully, next year, I'm going back to the states for a holiday. I won't have been back since a History and Sociology school trip to New York & Washington in my final year of sixth form, over a decade ago. In that time I've consumed daily amounts of US Television and cinema. I promised my husband for his 30th birthday that we would go to New Orleans, we put it off for a year so we could save enough and at some point soon we'll actually go and book it - or else we'll put it off for ever... Anyway, I'm so super excited, I get to eat American food, in America again. My pinterest addiction and my selection of expensive, imported pop tarts at work has only fed my desire for honest to god, in now way good for you American food. A little annoying it was a Rick Stine documentary on e food of the deep south that made me really hungry (rick Stine is on my top 3 list of tv chefs that annoy me) but watching all the arrived chicken just made me so excited, I'm just ...

Last night was the 5th annual Stafford beer festival - backed by CAMRA  and it's nice to see it grow as an event year on year. It's also held in a Catholic high school, which amuses me no end, I'm not sure why, it works really well and the beer festival in Liverpool was held in the Catholic cathedrals crypt so maybe it's totally normal. Anyway, I'm quite a fan of beer festivals, in that I'm quite a fan of beer - I like cider and perry too - but they tend to be lethally alcoholic at a festival and mixing them both lies madness and drunkenness. What I couldn't help noticing is how very 'British' it seems, and where do all these people come from - and more to the point why do some of them still have mullets (how do you even still have a mullet in this day and age). But there's lots of people stood around peering at a festival listing, trying to juggle a tankard, a pen, a beer and a programme - working on what they want to drink next based o...

You'd have thought, because I love cookbooks, I'd love cookery programmes. Alas, I just don't. I used to, somewhere I even have nigella bites on DVD, which replaced the VHS version I picked up cheap (you don't want to know what happened to the VHS version) but even my love for Princess Cupcake leaves me cold when I watched it. I'm not 100% sure what it is, I really love food, and I love cooking, but I find watching people on tv cook so uninspiring. There's some chefs I'm sure are lovely, with cookbooks full of amazing recipes, that I won't go near too because  they've annoyed me so much on screen (my top 3 most hated tv chefs are as follows : 1) Bill Granger 2) Rachel Allen 3) Rick Stine - I was fine with rick until I saw a documentary that was so smug I though it was a parody until I realised it wasn't ) I'm sure it boils down to this, if i eat something out and about, I can try and work out how it's made, what's in it, how it's ...

According to my colleagues it's weird that I'm happy my new title at work after the faculty shake up has an ampersand in it (more then one actually): I'm now ... " Senior Lecturer School of Art & Design Faculty of Arts & Creative Technologies" It's even stranger it seems to collect pretty ampersands in a pinterest board I just really love the symbol & - everyone surely has a favorite typographic character don't they?