Worm's World

It's not a good sign when you have a dream about cutlery, worse still when your favorite piece of 'eating leftovers at work related' cutlery - my wonderful £2.99 bright pink Light My fire Spork. In fact, I've been meaning to write a post about how useful this bit of camping kit is when it comes to sharing a kitchen, and a dwindling selection of miss matched, orphaned and donated cutlery with however many people use the little kitchen next to me ( maybe it's time for a cutlery amnesty - I can't be the only person with contraband cutlery at home can I? ) - this cheap little gadget, brought randomly from the National Trust shop at Shugborough House,  has done me well for months - unusually for a bit of multi purpose cutlery all of the relevant sections are the right size to both use in Tupperware and to eat from. Back to the dream - which was random at best - but the section I remember and oddly the bit t...

My Uni is blessed with an excellent selection of slightly odd Korean noodles in the student shop. You can tell I'm deep within the semester because my eating habits have dropped to abysmal levels. Anyway this is my choice: (they were on a BOGOF offer so 2 x noodles = 85p - bargain, and very handy due to the fact I've just paid the deposit for my Christmas Dinner and the cash machine is broken) Anyway, on the Left - the spicy 'artificial lobster' flavor, on the right the 'spicy shrimp' flavor. In a lesson as to why you shouldn't read the ingredients for things I learnt the following: The 'artificial lobster' has shrimp in it, the 'spicy shrimp' one doesn't, it has artificial shrimp in it - I'm not sure what artificial shrimp is, and I'm not sure why it requires beef extract - as a thickener I imagine. All of this is largely academic, because whichever of these I eat - and in fact I went for the 'artificial lo...

I'm blessed to work somewhere with not only a small, but functional kitchen, but also a well stocked shop, a bar, a canteen and an alright coffee shop. While this is lovely, it doesn't really help with snacking. I love snacks, ever since I was packed off to school with a flapack for my 11am break time - but it's a habit that's hard to break, specially since I spend so much time in front of my pc writing things. I used to find I was doing quite a lot of 'stretching my legs' and going off to buy a muffin, or a chocolate bar - and when even disappointing, dry  mass produced muffins are £1.50+ then I started casting around for something else. First Up The Graze Box  - this is sent to my door every Monday. I get a nice mix of sweet and savory things and it's excellent for padding out left overs or just having a little pick me up. One box will last me all week and for the most part I have everything available on 'try' because otherw...

Someone must love me enough to buy me this =D Superpunch Toy Roundup

I didn't mean to leave this a month - I'm not entirely sure where the last month has gone. A whirlwind of lectures, networking, stuff, Pete's gigs  (see #openmicgems ), things, games - some of which I have pictures of. Pete playing at The Adam & Eve in Brum I've been playing Curisoity  - I don't understand it. At the recent Launch conf I learnt Intel have spend their marketing budget on interesting things. Yes, that is a branded peanut Stunning views from the 25th floor of the Hotel Indigo ( more here ) And one of my students named his squad after tutors on FTL, then killed us all - that's cool, we're down with that (It happens a lot) It's Christmas lights switch on tonight, Olly is coming to stay for the weekend and Pete has a gig later - fun times ahead

Why is there always a toaster oven?

One of my favourite things that I own is a Dalek cookie cutter - brought as part of a make dalek cookie pack thingy. Guess which one didn't make it to the decorating stage...  It does have a habit of making slightly misshaped, mutant Dalek's, fit only for the asylum, but I think that has more to do with the cookie dough recipe then anything else. I'm still casting around for the perfect sugar cookie recipe if anyone has suggestions.

I'm not the only smart phone geek in the house, and when Doug was living with us we had between us an iPhone, a blackberry and an android galaxy S. It's also tricky to balance a shopping list between 3 people, 2 is bad enough. So we turned to an app, and the first one we found that would work on all 3 devices, and sync accordingly OurGroceries And, to be honest, it's worked ok, but with some issues on syncing. I think at least once I've deleted all the things Pete has added by updating all of the things I think we need. The recipe aspect didn't seem to work too well either so well it's done us ok for the past year we've investigated a new, similar app Food Planner We've only just started using it, but it's already handy to put in place meal planning, like a digital version of our wipe clean planner board. It will be slightly annoying to build up the categories of shopping again.

Just for once, something worked... The Original Pin.... Source: cakecentral.com via Nia on Pinterest And Mine - well, they arn't as tidy - but they kind of look like lego bricks...

So, we've found a place for the slow cooker to live, nestled in a big deep drawer with the pasta maker and a selection of ice cube trays and I think we're getting the hang of it. We also seemed to have started a bit of a localised Stafford based slow cooker revolution but it seem people get a bit obsessed and cultish about them. My mum described it in a lovely way, like "having a mam in the kitchen leaving your dinner on the stove". We've found it excellent for tomato based things, chillis and pasta sauces,  Pete did a slow cooked Spanish omelet after a tip off from a friend at work, I've used it to cook a stewed fruit crumble filling, loving the fact that it frees up the rings on the cooker for more immediate things. I think I'll keep an eye out in charity shops for a more general slow cooker cookbook - The veggie one is good, if a little limited - but we're getting there on adapting recipes where we need to. I'm keen to try ...

I can't be the only person who finds restaurant desserts unappealing can I? I mean, usually it's ok, if a little uninspiring - slightly too sweet chocolate fudge cake or a slightly sad bit of cheese cake with some artificial tasting fruity sauce I wish more places took the lead of one of our local swish restaurant  The Swan , and put after dinner cocktails on the dessert menu. Mmm, Brandy Alexander I bet they're probably better for you then a cake too..