Dressing Up For Halloween

Halloween isn't something that gets much attention in Sydney... but in New York, well, it can be easy to start wondering about what you might get dressed up as. Especially if it was as cute as this...

Picture: My Touch of Aloha on Etsy

This, while much less practical, still has a lovely sense of whimsy, and also reduces the risk of small children being mistaken for food...

Picture: Anton Perry via Post Punk Kitchen

But this, while stunning (both in appearance, and that anybody would try to do this and have it turn out to actually look good - in a quirky-designy sort of way - and tasty), would be far too sticky. And if you arrive wearing actual treats, that might hurt your chances!

Picture: Lukka Sigurdardottir via Gather and Nest

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Playing With The Box

Yep, couldn’t have said it better myself! Well, if there was a version that said will waltz for fudge, maybe. Or tell bad puns for pate. Or procrastinate for cake mixture...

Plate: Jim Bob Art on Etsy

I spent a long time with a vocal dislike for being pigeonholed, and a characteristically bolshie tendency to try to be unexpected in the face of such suspected sweeping generalisations (spent? OK, maybe I still do...). Although lately I’ve been thinking that it’s not pigeonholing that bothers me, so much as being thought of as the wrong sort of pigeon.

If somebody can make a 30-second assessment and come up with a verbose and stubborn gourmet gourmand who does sarcasm and self-depreciation to excess, is fixated by penguins, buys too many shoes and dances to preserve her sanity, then I’m more than happy to be filed away neatly in whatever pigeonhole that may be...

Of course, it may require a very specific set of pigeonholes...

Pigeon holes: Misha Kahn

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Beating The Fun Police

There are so many enjoyable and seemingly innocuous things that people want to stop you doing. Sitting on the grass. Bringing (proper) trumpets to sporting events*. Throwing confetti (yes, somebody has to clear it up, but it’s not like you’re doing something truly awful).

This might be a way to make up for the demise of confetti...

Picture: Restaurant Eve via Dessert Girl 

Girly frivolity so often looks just a bit too overdone to me, and veers into the territory of wearing a (fake) tiara (wearing a real tiara could never be dismissed as girly or frivolous). But this just seems fun and perky and a good excuse to go being a bit retro and cracking open the hundreds and thousands.

Ever since MasterChef put hundreds and thousands into a mystery box just to be difficult and hope that (to paraphrase) nobody would be as tasteless as to actually use them, I’ve been wanting to find a recipe, or think of a new way, to use them in something fabulous. This doesn’t quite get there, but it’s still kind of cool!

* And then permitting those awful vuvuzelas...

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Twinset Not Required

I’m not good with pearls. Some people look gorgeous in them, and either channel a wonderfully ladylike sensibility without crossing into Stepford wife territory, or can do a modern interpretation that really does look edgy and not just like a clanging discordant element, or something picked up in the $2 shop (notwithstanding that it probably cost the price of a large car, at least). I’m not one of them. I look, at best, like an escapee from Lost in Austen and, at worst, much more foolish than that.

Faux pearls seem to be an even harder look to get away with. But these faux pearls are something else entirely...

Necklace: Tickette on Etsy

There’s something very Tom Binns about this necklace, and I love how it adds a sense of humour and a different interpretation without sacrificing its visual appeal. Not one to wear with a tea dress and kitten heels, though...

Necklace: Tom Binns via Jewel Salon

Also, not the sort of thing likely to be seen adorning the queen (not the English one, anyway)...

Necklace: Tom Binns via Flibbertigibet Girls

I wonder if there’s somewhere that will customise anybody’s doodling into jewellery – that might be the motivation I need to pick up a pencil...

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The Kitchen Keeper

Custardian – the keeper of all secrets (and portions) of crème brulee, trifle, clafoutis, crème caramel, crème patissiere and good old plain regular custard. AKA the trifle-eating cat’s mum!

Trifle: the trifle-eating cat's mum; picture: me

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Face Value

If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck...

Picture: Urban Outfitters

... then maybe you really aren't good with mornings! If it starts walking like a duck, maybe try another coffee...

And maybe it's the English weather making me come over all Four Weddings and a Funeral, but I do think it should be called Duckface.

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Roast Dinner For One

Inconguroast* – things that you just don’t quite expect to see turn up in a “baked dinner”.

Picture: Pot roast quail with a creamy chanterelle sauce from My Glorious Food

Pot roast quail? First, get a really small pot...

It makes me think of the condiment thimbles at the Donna Hay General Store. I do wonder what those are for (other than looking neat, if that’s not a good enough reason by itself). They look like they should contain some sort of paté or potted meat sort of thing, but paté requires much more generous servings. Perhaps they could be to steam petit four sized Christmas puddings? Or for coddled quail eggs (keeping with the theme of the day)?

Any ideas about their actual purpose would be greatly appreciated!

* Strictly speaking, there probably shouldn’t be a ‘u’ in the middle. But it seems to help in the pronunciation and getting the intention across... and one of they joys of making up words is being able to break the rules!

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The White Post

What would you do with a magical mystery box?

Picture: Lissy Elle on Flickr

Would you climb in and let it take you to amazing places?

Picture: Lissy Elle on Flickr

Or would you reach into it hopefully, for magical mystery cupcakes?

Picture: Crumbs & Doilies via All Things Cupcake

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Not An American Elephant

If you go to London... even the elephants wear Paul Smith stripes! 

Picture: London Daily Photo

Something about the wearing of Paul Smith, especially in London, makes me think of the Estelle / Kanye West song, American Boy...

“Dressed smart like a London bloke

Before he speak his suit bespoke”

If you venture out as far as the wilds of Northumberland, even the castles are snazzy – they wear balloons...

Picture: Eglingham Hall by Tim Walker (via Curved White)

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Perky Penguin

In bygone days of youth, before things like Red Bull existed, there were (entirely legal, though not terribly sensible) ways to keep energy levels high during (relatively) short stints of running-about-like-a-loon. They included any (and, in times of serious need, all) of guarana tablets, utterly ridiculous quantities of Diet Coke* and undiluted shots of red (or, when under real pressure, green) cordial. Fueled by as many gummi bears as could be consumed while dashing from A to B to Z to splat!

Hence my potential excitement at this recent discovery of what penguins drink when attempting to stay awake and alert...

Picture: Guarana Antarctica, photographed by Brigadeiro

* Oh, those dark days before Coke Zero...

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Butter Wouldn’t Melt

There are lots of things I wish I could get away with*, and most of them shouldn’t be admitted to out loud. They often involve gluttonous food, questionable garments, and flippant remarks. Some of them, though, are cute, although likely to be impossible to carry off (potentially because of said cuteness – while I like cute things, I can’t do cute. It just doesn’t work. It’s about as convincing as a penguin in a party hat. Probably much less so), but they can at least be shared (if not worn)...

And there aren't just croissants... butter, meet brioche...

And this is our friend, cheese. We don't know what we'd do without him...

"I'm definitely worst for them!"..."No, I am..."

This makes me realise that there is another word needed (or that I just need to find out what the word is, although I suspect there isn’t one). A word to describe turning things into other things – and I don’t mean magic! More like a branch of anthropomorphism, where instead of making objects resemble people, they resemble other objects. Preferable other objects that are attractive and very out of context**.

PS: Belated apologies, but these t-shirts, all of which (did) come from Little Butter on Etsy, now appear to have disappeared well and truly down the rabbit hole. No idea where, but here's hoping they return. Clearly somebody was anxious to avoid ill-considered attempts at cuteness... But I still couldn't resist posting them!

* Although not as many as things I wish I could do – that list just keeps on growing, and would put the very model of a model major general positively to shame...
** In my case, even more preferably objects that are edible.

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Biting The Bankers

A while ago when I went out to dinner, the dessert menu had an interesting thing I’d not come across before – pithiviers. The last time there was a mysterious sounding thing on a dessert menu, it was at Flying Fish, where there were, intriguingly, financiers. On the menu (as well as potentially at adjourning tables).

Mystified by the idea of ordering it and having a pinstriped banker turn up huddled on my plate, I was distracted instead by an astonishing soufflé (but still had residual curiosity about the financiers). So at Monkey Magic, I swallowed my pride (takes up much less space in the stomach than swallowing dessert...) and asked about the pithiviers (after MasterChef, everybody seems alarmingly familiar with all sorts of mysterious and interesting culinary things, and while that is wonderful, it makes for feeling like a twit when you need to ask a potentially silly question...). And they were a bit like this...

Picture: Grab Your Fork

Just look at those crunchy-flaky-crackly layers... It's a bit like the appeal of a stack of identically sized folded jumpers in the sorts of beautiful shops where you want to buy one in every colour. But edible.

Picture: Novice Baker

And you can (if the mood should take you) make them with pheasants as well. The mind boggles. Although not as much as it would for pheasant financiers, the sheer alliterative value of which is just great!

But that didn’t solve the mystery of the financiers and so I went hunting. It turns out that there are quite a few more financiers turning up in various places – perhaps this is a sign that the financial crisis is abating...

Picture: Cherry hazelnut financiers from Meringue Desserts

Picture: Gluten-free chocolate financiers from Spoon With Me

The ones I’ve been seeing online seem like a bit of a cross between a muffin, a friand and a madeleine. (This has, quite surprisingly, as it was based on peering hungrily at the pictures, been borne out by Wikipedia – which means it must be true!).

Canelle et Vanille (which has some of the best combinations of really promising sounding recipes and gorgeous photos) seems to have a definite thing for financiers. But these ones also look wonderful...

Picture: Honey financiers from Dessert First

I think I'm a sucker for anything involving honey. And ginger. And icing. Hence the honey jumble obsession - perhaps I could try icing some financiers instead... oooh - bankers on ice! That could be a TV show. Or maybe something less salubrious...

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Where You Least Expect It

Never mind the sublime and the ridiculous – give me the mundane and the incongruous! I love the combination of real life and... not quite real life, whether that’s in books (Jasper Fforde does it brilliantly, and Alice Hoffman, Sarah Addison Allen and Tom Holt can also be good fun. Douglas Adams, though, may be, if not the absolute original, then certainly a master indeed), in fashion (jeans and black tops with any number of faintly outlandish accessories, tails, pyjamas that think they’re streetwear) and certainly in random little thoughts (a bit like a this and that for the mind, as it were).

It must be that combination of the expected, but in an entirely unexpected way, that makes this picture appeal to me

Picture: Jordan Matter, from the Dancers Among Us collection (via Penny's Day Book)

Something about the photo also strikes me as very French, so it seemed an appropriate thing to share this week (sensing a theme?). I realise there have been quite a few leaping things jumping out at me lately (and I honestly wrote that before I read it back and had a Clang! Bad inadvertent pun! moment) – I’m sure the armchair psychologists would have plenty to say about that!

And then I came across this quote (by John Burrows) about leaping, and it seemed so appropriate...

“Leap and the net will appear”

You don’t always feel ready – but that’s partly the point to leaping...

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C’est Quoi???

Cupcakes are resoundingly not French. They might be starting to colonise Paris (and, heaven forbid, further afield), but they are not French.

But these ones almost look like they’re wearing little berets...

Picture: Montreal Confections via The Cupcake Blog

They look a little like a cupcake version of a religieuse. Well, if you tip your head to one side and look hopefully at them (a look I find comes naturally when considering baked items...).

And something about them seems a tiny bit French, even while (especially with that mountain of buttercream) they’re so resoundingly American. And perhaps it’s the colour combination, but it reminds me, just a smidge, of the perverse fun of putting two opposing things together every once in a while!

Picture: Sharon Montrose

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Tra(y)de Offs

I can’t make my mind up about this dinner tray - is it great because it has a place for everything? Or would it drive you mad because it’d be almost impossible not to continually want to straighten that cutlery?

Tray: Royal VKB from Pelican Pear (designed by Wendy Boudewijns)

I think it’s definitely a passing distraction – it’s a little too open in admitting to eating on the couch, rather than just taking a plate and a fork over and quietly having done with it. But maybe that’s just because I’m hankering after a real dining table (not just a small repository for Stuff).

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Not As Prickly As You Think

Combining yum cha and hedgehogs - squishy, rather than prickly. Surely proof that the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts (especially the ones that have custard inside)...

Picture: Wananga on Flickr

Although once you find one, and find yourself searching “hedgehog bun”, you feel like you might just be starting to lose your grip on reality...*

Picture: A Whiff of Lemongrass

Picture: Absentmindedprof on Flickr

Picture: Fenchurch! on Flickr

Picture: Insatiable Critic

Picture: tofu_catgirl on Flickr

Picture: hmw029 on Flickr

But I think it is always very hard to eat cute things. Even if they’re just made to look cute. Chocolate rabbits are a particular challenge. Not so very long ago, there was a giant chocolate penguin living in my kitchen cupboard (doesn’t everybody have one of those?) and, while I frequently went and admired him, I couldn't bring myself to actually eat him**. Even though he was from my total utter favourite chocolate shop. Maybe this is a(nother) sign that I really need a pet.

Picture: M.M.Miro on Flickr

* It never ceases to amaze me how many Other People have photos of, thoughts about, or blogs relating to all sorts of strange little things that I was sure could only be a peculiar one off or a mad momentary thought (and there are thoughts that are not just momentary... just not quite so often). However, it also never ceases to amaze me how incredibly bothersome it can be to try and track down something online that you are convinced is really obvious, only to find that you might as well hunt the Snark.
** The Other Penguin, with a great deal more sense than me, pointed out that chocolate penguins were meant to be eaten, and that it was their purpose in life... and helped by eating him as well (as, while I agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment, I felt far too attached to act on it!)

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Being Remiss In The Morning

Negligeence – forgetting to take pyjamas with you when staying at somebody else’s house. A variation of this exists in relation to opening the door to room service breakfast while wearing a towel (even a large towel...).

Picture: Black and White of Unreality

Or, if you really get caught short...

Picture: Sarah Klassen

Can forgetting pjyamas now be used as justification for retail gluttony (to procure large and elaborate hat-boxes, and similar concealments)? Hmmm... best not to go there...

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Watch Out For The Plane Trees

Paris is known for the plane trees that line its boulevards. But just imagine if those trees were replaced with these...

A macaron tree? There’s only one possible response - Squeee!

Picture: Tea Lily Photography

Perhaps they could alternate planting these with the tea trees. Although, on second thoughts, if macarons grew on trees, there might very well be no Laduree, no Pierre Hermé (travesty of justice!) – and what would they do on Masterchef?!

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The City Of Lovers

Nobody said those lovers had to be human, did they...?

But they don’t always get along so well – those chairs can sulk like nobody’s business

Pictures: Little Brown Pen (who always makes me wish I was in Paris...)

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Eyeing Pies

Mystipie – the confusion experienced when you no longer know what is a pie and what is something else...

Two (other) things confuse me about pies (and pie-like items), although these are only the beginning of all sorts of other food-related ponderings that have been cropping up lately...

Firstly, galettes – I’d always thought of these as a French buckwheat crepe with a filling in, but there seems to be a variety of galette which is a rustic type of tart. They look delicious (and rustic baking is always a personal favourite!) but have me a little concerned that, when venturing to Paris, I may be ordering an entirely unintended galette. A little like the risk of ordering sweetbreads instead of veal risotto, perhaps*, but with far less squeamish consequences.

Picture: Fig, prosciutto and thyme galettes from Citrus & Candy (top of the list of galettes to try, this one... looks so tasty!)

Picture: Peach, blueberry and lemon thyme galettes from Tartelette

The other curious pie item I’ve recently come across is hand pies. Are they so called because they’re made by hand? Or the size that fits conveniently in your hand? Or because they don’t sit in a pie dish? Is it, perhaps, a little of columns A, B and C? And how is a hand pie different to a pasty? It seems to be a much subtler distinction than, say, between a raven and a writing desk...

Picture: Apple and hatch green chile hand pies from Bless Her Heart

Picture: Prosciutto and cheese hand pies from Not So Humble Pie

On a tenuously related note, all this thinking about pies gives me an excuse to share what I think is a very cool (in a geek chic way) necklace...

Pi necklace: RGB Laboratory (I like that the numbering starts at the back, so from the front it just looks like a random sequence of numbers...)

* Beware the ris de veau...

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Black, Blue And Sparkly

It seems to be a particular thing of minor scrapes and bashes sustained in the course of exercise that you only notice them afterwards. And wonder how you did that without noticing (especially for penguins, who are less of the little blue variety than the middle-sized black-and-blue variety). Especially after a little too much dancing – while you wouldn’t think of ballroom dancing as being wildly hazardous, it does seem to have its moments.

And then I found these...

Band Aids: Cynthia Rowley via Oh Joy

And decided that all the scrapes could be worth it!* I’m not sure if I’d be bold enough to team one of these with a short black cocktail dress rather than hide away in black pants, but I do like the idea of trying...

* Theoretically, they already are, under the guise of “getting to be a better dancer”. Hmm...

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