Always room for a little one...

Well, I've given up the ghost trying to make everything myself for tonight and have conceded defeat. The Gods of Cuisine have conspired against me. So, everybody is bringing something along with them and I no longer have to subject all and sundry to my exploding spring rolls. Phew! My only concern now is that my little table seats six; yet we have seven for dinner. Methinks the person with the littlest backside will be perched on a patio chair and we'll all be a bit squished. Oh well. How very classy, dahlings.

A Lazy Susan. I'd like to know exactly
who this Susan was, and why she was
so lazy. And how could her laziness
have possibly produced a spinning piece
of wood?? We may never know.

I'm off to dig out my chopsticks and dust off the Lazy Susan which I have procured from the Outlaws. I have never used such a piece of dining kit. It screams '1970s' to me but it's really from Ikea. I have spent a considerable amount of time today spinning it to see how fast it can go. (It goes very fast, if you're wondering.) Perhaps speak tomorrow if I haven't poisoned us all...

Toodle (or is it tootle?) pip for now.

How to be a rubbish domestic goddess...

Rant alert.

On Saturday, I am supposed to be having the girls over for dinner. This has now turned into some of the girls plus some other halves for a Chinese New Year supper. OK, I can cope with that. Ordinarily. Except this hasn't been an ordinary week. No. It's been a week of complete and utter culinary disasters. My domestic goddess halo has fallen. In fact, I've Frisbee-d it out of the bloody window.

Earlier in the week I made a big pot of ramen. It always goes down well in my house, does ramen. I just don't think I engaged my brain when making it, this time. Instead of shredding pak choi, in went red cabbage instead. I don't believe I've ever had luminous purple soup before. Radioactive soup. I bet Nigella never has such mishaps. A day later I tried my hand at melty-in-the-middle mini chocolate puds. They were lurrrverly. Rich, but delish. The recipe made four little puds, so I saved two for dessert the next evening. Only muggins here forgot that they were melty-in-the middle puddings, and whacked them in the microwave at full pelt to heat them through. They were no longer melty-in-the-middle puds when I fished them out. More like steaming rubber bouncy balls. Sigh.

Anyway, undeterred, that same evening I set about making a stew to use up all the leftover veg in the fridge. Now, I didn't do anything differently to what I usually do here, so I'd like to know why it all went hideously wrong. Casserole pot on hob, oil in pot, brown off meat and onions, throw in the veg, add stock and simmer for a bit, then bung in the oven. All was fine until I added the stock. Then I heard a sort of popping, crackly noise. Then a gush. The casserole pot had cracked clean IN HALF and a litre of hot stock proceeded to flood the hob, run into the oven and all over the floor...it was a flamin' stock tidal wave. £80 Le Creuset casserole pots should not shatter on your hob. No. They. Should. Not. I have a good mind to take the two halves back to the shop. Which I could have done if only I hadn't shattered them into several more pieces on the patio in a rage.

Last night I decided to practice some homemade spring rolls ahead of Saturday. I've had my three cooking calamities this week, I couldn't possibly be due any more, I said to myself. Ho ho, how wrong I was. I had the recipe in order (a usually trustworthy source - Saturday Kitchen), a very nice gal at work gave me some tips, all the ingredients were lined up and I was ready to go. The filling went well. The pastry - not so well. More bundles than rolls. Now, even though they weren't wrapped very well they still should have been ok. So I'd really like to know how in the name of all that is holy do spring rolls EXPLODE in the oven? What did I ever do to them?

I think I'll have the takeaway menu on standby on Saturday.

All the small things...

Here's a little update on what's been cooking this week:

Being a Plan 'B'
The dating game is a minefield. Blind dates especially. Now, I'm not going to get all sanctimonious here - while I haven't been on one for a very long time, I do know that blind dates can be fun. They can, however, also be a showcase of the biggest rotters and weirdos known to man. This week I was my friend's get-out-of-jail free card, otherwise known as the Blind Date Plan B, should her date have been a psychiatric ward escapee or something. He wasn't - but we still had the code phrase phone call at a strategic time, just in case it went awry. All very Sex and the City, but necessary. He didn't make the cut in the end, though.

2-4-1 equals good times
In these times of economic hardship we're all looking for a few ways to save the pennies here and there. So, when a group of mates and I decided it was high time we met up and had a good old chin wag over dinner, we scoured handbag.com until we found a suitable restaurant voucher. Tight? Us? Never! We're just thrifty every now and then. And what we saved in food costs just went towards the wine bill. Oh yes.

There's nothing like a good bitching session
When you've had a bad work week, sometimes that last thing you need is to rake it over and talk. But sometimes you do. Especially if a few of you have had similar troubles. Anyway, an apres-work drink seemed in order on Wednesday where some coworkers and I put the office to rights. And caught up on the workplace shenanigans - all those juicy little tidbits that are meaningless to everyone else, but to colleagues - they're gossip gold. And all things I couldn't possibly repeat.

My crazy mother
Every time I visit my folks, I come away with random items from her loft. Tuesday was no exception. After a very strange meal that consisted of mashed potato, some oddly spiced carrots and not much else; gossip about people I still have no idea who they are (Mother dearest: "You know him over the road with the bad leg, well he left his wife - the second one, not the one with the bad perm. You know them - you used to go to birthday parties with their daughter." Me: "Who?!"); she produced a bag of bits she 'no longer has room for'. What am I going to do with a school project about the Amazon, a box of Forever Friends stationery and some clay pots I made in school ceramics classes?

Planning for next Saturday
My gal pals are coming over next weekend for eats and drinks. I'm thinking Chinese, since it'll be Chinese New Year. There will be lots of flicking through recipe books and practice sessions in the kitchen, no doubt. And I'm sure The Other Half will happily hoover up the results. Lead-lined stomach, that one.

It's not worth crying over spilt vino...

Remind me never to play board games whilst tipsy with my equally inebriated Other Half ever again. He's just far too competitive. I mean, honestly. It was only Cranium - not exactly high pressured. (Have you ever played Cranium? It's ace. Like 4 games in one.) And certainly not worth going in a strop and throwing a prop from the game - a ball of purple plasterciney play dough stuff used in a clay form of Pictionary - at me mid-sulk. Except he didn't aim properly. Oh no. The stuff missed me and knocked my wine off the table. Luckily my hand-eye coordination is better than his, and I caught the glass. Tsk.

My Facebook graffiti of the Incident. The Other Half was not impressed.

Anyway, apart from that, last night was tres amusant. A wee gathering of chums to celebrate our pal S returning from the Big Smoke. It was supposed to be themed (her idea) and that theme was Italian food (again, her idea. But a crowd-pleaser, nonetheless) and everyone had to bring something. As people arrived, our table became laden with an entertaining mix of garlic dough balls, spinach ravioli, mini tiramisus, teddy bear shaped pasta and more pizzas than in Rome. Therefore this turned into a Pizza Party. And a good time was had by all. Until the flying plastercine incident, that is.

Boys. Honestly.

Forget your troubles, c'mon get happy...

It may be a new year, but things seem to be looking pretty miserable at the minute with the economy collapsing ever more by the day and unemployment soaring. The predictions aren't too good for 2009. So, to counterbalance the doom and gloom we're fed by the news on a daily basis (and because I was a bit bored) I've made myself a happy forecast. All the things I'm looking forward to this year. Here are just a few:

• Feeling 15 again. One of my bestest friends in the whole wide world relocates from the Big Smoke this coming weekend and we'll be living in the same town again. I feel several teenage-homage sleepovers and drinking sessions are on the cards. Splendid.
• The inauguration. A fresh start for those across the pond in a week's time - although I think I along with many others will miss the ludicrous "Bushisms" we're so accustomed to hearing.
• Traveling a bit closer to home. I don't think I'll get away on a transatlantic jaunt or anything this year, but I'm looking forward to days out in places that are on my doorstep really yet I never have time to visit. Edinburgh, The Lakes, maybe a short hop over to Amsterdam or Barcelona, and my friend is getting married in Berlin this summer.
• Making the house our own. The foray into home decoration continues in 2009. Living room is done; porch, kitchen, dining room and bathroom to finish; bedroom and garden next on the list. We'll get there. Room by room, we'll get there.
  
• Vive la France. New Year can be such a let down - nothing magical ever happens when the clock strikes midnight. But I'll be ringing in 2010 with a group of chums in the middle of nowhere in Normandy. Good times lie ahead.
  
• Getting things in order at work. We're due a big office shift-around, and I'll be hopefully sitting with the rest of my team near a window instead of plonked on a row with The Most Annoyingly Voiced Coworker Ever Bar None. Good opportunity for me to get rid of the collapsing towers of paper that appear to have eaten my desk.
  
• Family and friends stuff. Visiting my sister in London Town; a couple of 30th birthdays; a 50th wedding anniversary; a wedding; crazy-themed birthday parties...who knows what else the year has in store?
  
• The Oscars. I love them. Sad but true. I try to stay up late each year to watch them but inevitably fall asleep and end up watching the main winners on the news. Along with the bad red carpet outfits.Hey, I can judge if I want to. They can't hear me.
  
• The next Harry Potter flick. How gutted was I when they knocked the release date back to July '09? Very. And, The Other Half has finally got around to reading all the books - so when we settle down to watch The Half-Blood Prince, he can ask himself what bits they've left out, instead of me. Hurrah!
  
• The longest eclipse for a century. Spacey things have always fascinated me, and this total solar eclipse in July will be lasting over 6 minutes, apparently. I won't be going to Bhutan to witness the event, however - but the t'interweb is a wonderful thing.
• First aid course. I've always wanted to do one and have finally got a place on the big 4-day course through work in February. Tying knots has never been a forte though, so I think I'm going to have to practice slings and bandages otherwise my casualties will look like extras in a war film.

Not too shabby a year, I think.