Cooking the book

Right, so like, I'm totes going to do this this time. I figured out that what all you lovely readers want, out there in reader-land with your glasses and your flat shoes and your hair all tied back in buns like sexy librarians but without the sexy. You want a blogger (bloggette maybe? Or bloggess?) who's going to take a major cookbook and cook their way through it, one recipe at a time, telling you all about the trials and tribulations along the way. That's like, so radical. I remember when I first starting watching Sex and the City, that's just so the kind of thing that the ugly girl would have done. Oh, get me! What would SJP say!!
But then I totes had a look around on the intertubes thingy, and there's so many people already doing it! And they've picked such weird books too, like they've gone for books that make food that only poor people eat, or books that only cook things that aren't food. There's this one blog where the poor women spent four and a half-day using a hair-dryer on this paste of olives and anchovies that she'd made and then foamed using hydrogen gas that blew part of her kitchen up! At the end of it she keeled over dead with exhaustion and now her husband's continuing the blog in her memory, only he can't cook properly and doesn't know how to use a knife, so his spelling's getting worse and worse and he keeps chopping fingers off and he's worried he's going to lose his job as a concert pianist soon, and... wait! This is my blog, not his-hers! They can go and buy google ads to bring people to their pages just like all the rest of the poor-people.
So I needed something different, something that would stand my blog out in exactly the way I stand out in a nightclub, or SJP stands out in every scene she's in in SATC. So I figured I'd pick someone else's blog and cook everything they do, and then explain how they got it all wrong. Darryl says it's a meta-commentary and a sad reflection of the parroting parity of modern life, but I think he'd been eating the cleaner's brownies when he said that, and she makes them with things I don't think are ingredients. Bless her, she thinks she's Mexican too.
So I had a look around and I found this woman who says she's on television and cooks there, and she does all this "semi-homemade" cooking which is like where she buys the stuff from the supermarket (oh my god!! Who goes to a supermarket themselves?! That's what Rosalita, the cleaner is for, when the catering company have underdelivered!!) and then hides all the packaging. And I'm like, I can totally do this.
So, on her blog she makes this "semi-homemade" beans on toast, and this sounded like a good place to start. I got my coat, got my servant-beating stick, and headed to F&M.
"Make beans on toast!" I said imperiously to the girl behind the counter, who looked at me like she was going to answer back. I thought quickly, what would SJP do? So I smacked her with the servant-beating stick and repeated my demand.
It turns out that they don't do that on the shop-floor, so they took me into the manager's office and I told the security guard to jump to it and get it done. He's left to go and do that, and I'm taking this opportunity to write all this up for you. You lucky, lucky, unsexy librarian readers you!

I'm back!

Gosh, it's been so long since I posted anything on this blog, lol, I hope you all totes didn't die while waiting for me to update! I'm sure you all remember that I've decided to become a food blogger, and that it all got a bit derailed when I had to move house just as I started blogging. Well, it's been a manic mess for the last six months! Honestly, every day I just sit there in bed after Darryl's left and think "What would SJP do?" Well, that's not completely true, before Darryl it was James, but I was still wondering what SJP would do. And before James it was Matt, but I never had much time to wonder what anyone would do then if you get my drift! How do I giggle girlishly in a blog?
So anyway, Jordan's gone off to do something with motorcycles somewhere, and he looks just so yummy in those leathers of his I almost made him come back and spend the morning with me, but then I remembered that Darryl might be back this afternoon so I didn't. But right, anyway, Jordan said he didn't feel like eating out again tonight, and when I offered to order in he looked a bit taken aback and said that he'd quite like to try my cooking. And at first I'm all like shocked and wondering what he thinks I am, and then I'm wondering if maybe the maid died and no-one told me yet, and then, right, I totes remember this blog and all you wonderful readers waiting on the edge of your chaise longues (I had to look that word up in the dictionary! I'm such a scholar!) and so I said yes. And then I phoned mummy, because those cookery books were just so heavy and such a drag; they're all "do this, then do that!" and there's no room for creativity.
"Samantha," said mummy, "I'm at a day spa with Maurice. He's called social services and had them take the children away for a week, and we're touring the Shetland Islands in an aquavan. I don't have the number of the catering service with me, you'll have to do it yourself."
Well, I don't mind telling you that I threw a little bit of a tantrum then, but I calmed myself down and thought of you wonderful readers waiting on tent-hooks (is that right? It looks weird...) and decided to man up. Bitch up. That's better.
The counter-girl in F&M looked a little like SJP before her nose job, so I figured I could trust her.
"Cook book!" I barked, gesturing with my handbag and concussing some wretched orphan child running loose in the store. She produced this brick of a book called Bocca and pointed me at the Food Hall, while some irritating poor woman clutched at my sleeves and bewailed some child she had. I shook her off, walked over the concussed orphan, and found myself a personal shopper. She didn't seem very grateful, but she carried the basket and found the ingredients for the recipe I picked, and that was good enough. Naturally I had the food delivered home so as not to have to carry any bags that don't contain clothes.
Jordan and Darryl came home together, so I chastely kissed them both (less than a minute each! What would SJP think!!) and showed them what I was going to make.
"Bone marrow risotto?" said Jordan. "Is that peasant food?"
"I'm trying veganism," said Darryl, looking thin and waif-like. My heart went out to him. "I don't think I'm allowed to each risotto, isn't that made from parrots?"
"It says here that there's a restaurant called Bocca," said Jordan looking at the book. "Why don't we go there and let them do the cooking?"
And over dinner I found out how Darryl and Jordan already knew each other really quite well and...
but that's not for this post, that's for the tv mini-series!

Still food blogging

I'm so hung-over. So very hung-over, and it's totes not my fault. Jenn came over, and she brought Darren with her, who brought his sister, who brought her best friend and her twin, and they all wanted to try Coddled Eggs in Wine just the way I described it in my first post. And at first they were all Ewww and then I remembered that the martinis had helped a bit the first time, and soon we were coddling eggs -- well, egg-nog -- and drinking martinis, and... and now I feel like I'm being punished for being such a good cook and host. Hostess.
The reason Jenn came over, and brought Darren with her, who brought -- hang on, I told you all about that in the first paragraph. I won't bore you and tell you again! (Well, not in the same post, anyway. Read more about it tomorrow!) is because I have to move house tomorrow. I mean today. So she was going to help me pack, and so was Darren, but we wanted to eat first, and that means I never actually got started on this packing thing. Well I did, before they all arrived, but then I had to unpack some stuff to find the martini-shaker and the egg-nog coddling thingy (saucepan! See, I told you I was hung-over), so I'm now less packed than I was before.
Oh lord, what would SJP do?

Right, that was clearly the right question to ask, as I realised I could just hire people to pack for me. They were a bit rude on the phone when I explained that I wanted them right now, but I pointed out that I was a government worker and they jumped to it after that. I'd like to think it's because people respect the work we do in government, but I overheard one of them saying it's because they thought I was going to go postal. Hah. Like I'd know what to do with any post, I have a secretary for that. I mean, a PA.
So, cooking was going to be a bit tricky today, so I thought I'd do a salad, and I'd forage for the leaves myself, a really green post. But when I went for a quick walk round the shops, there were no free plants anywhere, which was a bit disappointing. Finally I stopped and asked the cute server in Dean&DeLuca where the foraging department was, and he said that foraging was all about going out into the countryside and picking things there. I slapped him. Naturally. (And got his phone number, but more on that when the media're interested in my blog.)
Well fine, I saw a park on my way to a restaurant the other day, I can forage there. Only I get there and realise I've no idea what the plants look like. In the end, I pulled up some pretty flowers and grabbed some clean-looking leaves and ran like hell when the park wardens saw me. Some of them are good shots, good enough that I now need to petition for park wardens not to be allowed firearms.
So, today's dish was park salad, and I poured a pot of mayonnaise over it, sprinkled some green stuff from a jar over it, and gave it to my helpful movers. (About that jar... isn't taramasalata supposed to be pink?)

Food blog

So, it seems I've just turned thirty and all my friends, who all watch old Buffy re-runs, Sex in the City re-runs and complain that the Jersey Shore makes them feel a little ridiculous now and then, tell me that I need to do something to stave off the mid-life crisis. What crisis! Lol. (Oh dear Lord, did I just write lol? Perhaps this crisis is happening faster than I thought. What would Sarah Jessica Parker(SJP) do?)

Right, crisis averted for the moment, as I remembered where I left the cocktail shaker (a gift from my father when he divorced my mother -- I'll go into that in more detail in a month when I can't stand to cook any more because it's all going horribly wrong, and because I'll have had a chance to attract media attention by then too. And they'll need something juicy to keep directing people to this blog!). Martinis all round. By which I mean, I'm surrounded now by martinis, and people, they don't keep. I am going to have to drink them all!

Ah, the martini is good, but I've just been back and counted all my exclamation marks and I think I've blown the budget for the month on them. So no more little pointy things with dots underneath! Except for that one.... Oh god, what would SJP do?

The plan for this blog (yes, yes I have a point you see) is to do something with my life. Something meaningful, something worthwhile, and something that will get me a book deal and my own tv show before I'm forty. Something like... a cross between Buffy and Sex in the City, only set on the Jersey Shore. With a bit of Desperate Housewives thrown in for good measure. But in order to get there I have to have a bit of a silly, but exacting, challenge. So I've picked a cookbook off the shelf (ok, it's the only one I own, and that's because Jenn gave it to me last year when I said I ought to blog about food), and I'm going to cook my way through it, every single recipe, in a month.
Ah, the book's called 1080 recipes. Probably not going to do that in a month then, not if I still want to watch TV, get manicures and swan round to the Devonshire to lord it over the girls! (Oops. That's not really an exclamation point, honest.) OK, well, we're going to cook all the recipes from there in a year, unless I get that book deal first. Which I hope I really do.

First recipe then, opening the book at random, is Coddled Eggs in Wine Sauce. No problem.

Well, I have no eggs, so I'm substituting egg nog, and I've drunk all the wine, so it's a martini instead, and... and... I can't see very clearly any more, so I'm going for a lie down. I'll blog about this when I wake up again. That's what SJP would do.