Heston's Alice in Wonderland Feast

So here's something I've never done before: reporting on something I saw on TV last night. Channel 4 has a lovely food extravaganza called Heston's Victorian Feasts, featuring Heston Blumenthal experimenting with old and insane recipes, turning this whole show into basically tripping on acid in three courses. In a surreal ambiance, the guests were invited to jump through the rabbit hole and enjoy a feast made up of reinventions of old Victorian recipes cloaked in inspiration taken from Heston's favourite book, Alice in Wonderland. And this was the menu (more or less accurately, it was late and I didn't wanna take notes):

"DRINK ME" potion - inspired by the same drink in the book, Heston infused milk with six different flavours (toffee, hot buttered toast, turkey, cherry pie, pineapple and custard), then tinted them all pink and jellified every flavour slightly, so he could layer them in the glass. Which by the way was not a glass, it was more of a test tube. Therefore, as the guests indulged, every sip tasted totally different and it all became a "guess the flavour" game. I have to say they got quite a few right, the coolest thing was the look on their face as the flavours changed so dramatically in their mouths. Magical.



Mock turtle soup - this was by far the prettiest food I've ever seen in my life. The dish consisted of a soup plate and a teacup. The soup plate had in it a small turtle-shell made of turnip and swede I think, tiny mushrooms, black truffle cubes, a terrine of condensed pork fat and braised ox tale, micro greens and some other bit I forget. I'm so pissed I didn't find a picture of it on the internets, it was just delightful. Think of this colourful little wonderland in a plate, everything small and cute and colourful and flavoursome due to its condensed state. The teacup had in it the Mad Hatter's teabag: a pocket watch-shaped concentrated beef stock covered in gold leaf, which you had to infuse in hot water, thus making a soup which was then poured over the food toys in the soup plate. Double magical that was.

EDIT: got some more pics and you can see the soup being served here.




The main course I wasn't so enthused about. The idea behind it came from the fact that at some point during Victorian times when food was scarce, this smart fellow decided people should eat more insects - full of protein, free, what's not to like about them? The result was a Victorian garden the size of the whole table, with everything in it edible: flowers, greens, veg, potato pebbles, soil and gravel alleys made out of eel, anchovies, black olives and nuts and many other wonderous things, all this topped with crispy insects injected with a special sauce for extra taste. Now don't get me wrong, it looked great and it was funny to see the guests spoon up earth and eat it, but I just thought it was more of an artifice and I'm not sure the tastes worked great together, it felt more like a mish-mash of stuff put together for the sake of making the garden. Although, maybe it did taste good... I can't know, I wasn't there.



For dessert, Heston made a humungous glow-in-the-dark wibbly-wobbly Absynthe jelly, shaped like a, well, elephant cock, complete with a shaking table operated by dildo motors. It looked quite great. And while this one was more for show, I think, the individual desserts where strawberry, Absynthe and something else jelly with a creamy custard (?) center and served with Earl Grey ice cream. The adult desserts where also served with green balloons filled with helium and Absynth flavour. Inhale and enjoy.



I just really had to get that out. It was pretty freakin' brilliant and I wanna put it down while I still have it fresh in my mind. I'm exhausted.

A bit of Blixa never hurt anyone.

Purrrty

I was just watching Project Runway Australia, and it happened to be the "make clothes out of fruit and veg" challenge. And look what a beaut someone found! Never seen it before, it's a type of citrus called Buddha's hand, I just got really excited by it. Nature's so freakin awesome... Okay, back to my cage.

City of the day: Brussels, because I'm shipping my ass there for the week-end in a few hours.

Get a grip

I was just talking to a colleague about the WWF ad below that apparently caused a huge stir and was pretty much nailed to a cross, and I have to say I'm pissed.



Yes, it's a strong statement. Yes, it uses a terrible tragedy, but only to illustrate another. Maybe people all around the rest of the world should get pissed off at Americans because they apparently think the victims of their national tragedies are more sympathy-worthy than other nations'. This ad is tasteful, in no way lacking respect to what happened on 9/11 and most importantly, very very accurate. It's pure maths, and instead of learning what we should out of it, well... it's much easier to cry wolf and throw stones. For an ad like this to work, it's supposed to be shocking. It's supposed to use people's emotions and things they know and understand and care about at a personal level, so that they will get off their lazy asses and do something about it. I just don't get why some insist to turn a positive message into something negative that even their creators end up denying (apparently, after this ad won an award and the backlash started, either WWF or the agency denied ever approving it). Well, you know what, I think this is a great ad and I really think people need to start thinking a little bit broader than their own backyard.

Japanesia, here I came - Introduction

So, Japan... where to start?

Before we got there I was pretty freaked out about the time difference. I really like my sleep and the simple calculation that if I would have to get up at 9 am there, it would be 2 am for my body, did not make me happy. Oddly enough, because of the long trip my body was totally confused by the time we got to Tokyo, so the next morning I woke up body and mind harmonized, believeing it was indeed 9 am. But let me back up here a little to the first day we got there.

We arrived in Tokyo at 10 am, exhausted and with our bodies basically giving us the finger at every move. It seems my legs don't appreciate being in the same position for 10 hours straight - the nerve. It took us three or four hours to get out of the airport, buy a subway card, get to the hotel by changing two subway lines and check in.
I had been warned that in Japan hotel rooms have a tendency to sway towards the small side. But man, I wasn't ready for this. Let me put it this way: how they got the bed in there, I'll never know. We didn't even have enough room to open our bags, unless we climbed them up on the bed. Otherwise, our bath had everything it needed (other than space of course), the bed was super comfy, there was a TV that would supply many joyous nights of Japanese programming and most importantly, we had air conditioning.
We took a nap and then we went out with some friends Timo made via his company - gotta love international networks. It was my birthday, and I really couldn't have spent it better. We went for a walk in the corporate part of Shinjuku, then to a restaurant where you had to fish your own dinner, and then to a karaoke place where they had rented us a room.


At the restaurant we had one of the best meals in all the time we were there. Me and Timo both failed at fishing, but one of our companions, Yamamoto-san, took only two minutes to return with the one we proceeded to call "Poor Richard". We had Poor Richard as sashimi, and after his bones served as very exotic decoration, they also turned into a soup, because Japanese people respect their food and nothing is wasted. We also had blue pickles (it was actually aubergines, but still) which broadened my food color palette.




The karaoke part of the night was a true "Lost in Translation" experience. I mean, these folk like their karaoke! So much so that there are numerous skyscrapers (yes, SKYSCRAPERS) full of private karaoke rooms you can rent for you and your friends. See, they don't like it our way, where you monkey around with an audience. They are private people. The song choice was so broad that it even got Timo to do a few duets with me - "Country Roads" by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and "Time Bomb" by Rancid. That's pretty good karaoke in my book any day.




So that was our first contact with Tokyo. I'm gonna structure my thoughts on this trip a little, since there's so much to say. I think there will be a post about the things we've done / seen that made the biggest impact on us, and another one on the things we found strange and different from what we know, culture and social environment wise. I was thinking of also making one with tips and tricks and practical advice on getting around, but meh, just ask if you're thinking of going there, I'm happy to help in private.

"Song of the day": Greg Graffin - Cold as the Clay.

Making a wish (1)

That one day he will fly me off on a plane, simply to have an anniversary photo shoot with him.


"Song of the day": Dredg - Ireland.

It's official: you suck.

Here's something I've been pondering quite a bit lately. It's a list of things that used to be cool and new and exciting and special, but that I think are now taking a fast dive into the depths of sucking. And not a moment too soon, might I add.

1. Girls saying stuff like "I've always been more of a tomboy, never getting along with girls, but always really good with boys. When girls were playing with dolls, I was smashing racecars and lusting over that new robot in the toy shop. I'm just one of the guys..." Erm, unless you've got a penis, no, you're not. And if you do, well, that's a totally different discussion.

2. Girls wearing colored dresses at their wedding or Converse shoes instead of proper shoes. Which yes, is a sin I am comitting myself (the latter I mean), but at least I am aware of the suckiness of it all creeping in slowly.

3. The trendiness of celebrities having babies is also living its last days I think. This one doesn't suck actually, it's just not as cool as it has been in the last few years. A lot of babies have been had, a lot of swooning over the little buggers has been done, I guess it's on to the next thing now.

4. Protecting the environment done wrong. I much more respect someone who quietly takes their phone charger out of the plug when the battery is full and all these little things you do around the house out of common sense, than someone who blabs on about how much they love the planet and makes superior speeches about it in public, like they've found some sort of ship they can board to make themselves feel worthy of the space they take up on said Earth. It's just so off-putting it makes me want to set a tree on fire, but I guess this is what happens whenever something good becomes a trend.

More will be added down the line, but to end this for now, let me tell you a little story. A few years back, I bought a skateboard. I wanted to use it as a mean of transport or an alternative to the bike I didn't own then, and obviously not to learn to do tricks or break my neck on some half pipe. Even back then I was too old for that kind of stuff and I am very much aware of the strict limits of my athletic abilities. So I buy it, I ask a friend of a friend a few things about where I should put my feet and such technical details, and I proceed to the park to make myself familiar with the object in question. To make a long story short, after careful scouting for empty alleys where I could suck at it in the process of learning, after countless stupid remarks from random idiots passing by at the sight of a girl meddling with a skateboard, after being banished even from the parking lot of a supermarket because what I was doing seemed "dangerous to the parked cars", I gave up. In total, I think I took that skateboard out ten times. My husband's using it now, so all was not lost. But what I want to say is, sometimes it's okay to let people suck at something. Allow sucking as a learning process.

I guess this is number 5 on my list. Complete morons not letting other people suck in peace. And if you find yourself doing that, well, my friend, you yourself suck.

I conclude with my artist of the day: Travis Louie.

Reading Stephen Fry's "Moab Is My Washpot"

[...] "Music is the deepest of the arts and deep beneath all arts. [...] I don't know if you have ever taken LSD, but when you do so the doors of perception, as Aldous Huxley, Jim Morrison and their adherents ceaselessly remind us, swing open wide. That is actually the sort of phrase, unless you are William Blake, that only makes sense when there is some LSD actually swimming about inside you. In the cold light of the cup of coffee and banana sandwich that are beside me now it appears to be nonsense, but I expect you know what it is taken to mean. LSD reveals the whatness of things, their quiddity, their essence. The wateriness of water is suddenly revealed to you, the carpetness of carpets, the woodness of wood, the yellowness of yellow, the fingernailness of fingernails, the allness of all, the nothingness of all, the allness of nothing. For me music gives access to every one of these essences of existence, but at a fraction of the social or financial cost of a drug and without the need to cry "Wow!" all the time, which is one of LSD's most distressing and least endearing side-efects.
Other arts do this too, but other arts are for ever confined and anchored by reference. Sculptures are either figuratively representative or physically limited by their material, which is actual and palpable. The words in poems are referential, they breathe with denotation and connotation, suggestion and semantics, coding and signing. Paint is real stuff and the matter of painting contains itself in a frame. Music, in the precision of its form and the mathematical tyranny of its laws, escapes into an eternity of abstraction and an absurd sublime that is everywhere and nowhere at once. The grunt of rosin-rubbed catgut, the saliva-bubble blast of a brass tube, the sweaty-fingered squeak on a guitar fret, all that physicality, all that clumsy "music-making", all that grain of human performance, so much messier that the artfully patinated pentimenti or self-conscious painterly mannerism of the sister arts, transcends itself at the moment of its happening, that moment when music actually becomes, as it makes the journey from the vibrating instrument, the vibrating hi-fi speaker, as it sends those vibrations across to the human tympanum and through the inner ear and into the brain, where the mind is set to vibrate to frequencies of its own making.
The nothingness of music can be moulded by the mood of the listener into the most precise shapes or allowed to float as free as thought; music can follow the academic and theoretical pattern of its own modality or adhere to some narrative or dialectical programme imposed by a friend, a scholar or the composer himself. Music is everything and nothing. It is useless and no limit can be set on its use. Music takes me to places of illimitable sensual and insensate joy, accessing points of ecstasy that no angelic lover could ever locate, or plunging me into gibbering weeping hells of pain that no torturer could ever devise. Music makes me write this sort of maundering adolescent nonsense without embarrassment. Music is in fact the dog's bollocks. Nothing else comes close." [...]

I conclude with my "song of the day": The Grit - Straight Out the Alley.

This sequel did not suck

A few words of advice, if you haven't seen it already: it's damn long, so don't go to late screenings because if you're tired it's hard to follow the metal screeching and fusing and battle action. You won't know who's who and who's winning or whatta-whatta's going on. Two, try to sit as far back as possible, that transforming stuff's fast and you totally can't fully enjoy it if you're sitting too close to the screen. Thrice, I wish that ice-cream van got more screen time, but I guess Bumblebee's gotta do.

I conclude with my "cool person of the day": Invertebra.

What's in a name

Let's face it, every word and therefore name has a unique personality stigma attached to it. You hear it and it triggers a certain mood, or instantly gives you a certain feel of the said word or name. If you're Romanian, when you hear the name "Vasile" you think of a thick-skinned, sun-burnt man from the countryside, if you hear "galoshes" you think of a posh English man trotting about on a rainy London day, if you hear "cinnamon" you think of warm childhood mornings and your grandma's cooking. Of course, every interpretation of any word depends on the hearer's perspective on things and life experience, but there is, as in all things, an agreed "general" opinion established by the majority or if you will, by the so called "normal" class. The reason I'm going on about this is that this past week-end my perception of one certain name has done a very unexpected 360 on me. I'm talking about The Hague.

I'm not sure what imagery others get in their heads from hearing of this city, but for me it used to be, until this past Saturday, international politics, trials, Queen Beatrix and Milosevic. When I thought of it, I pictured something dry, grey and boring, resembling the UN quarters in Vienna. Which shows how much imagination I have.

On Friday, the husband, kind of tired of my moaning about how because of the wedding costs we can't really afford to up and fly to wherever we feel like when we're bored of Düsseldork, said he'll take me out for a roadtrip. I like roadtrips, especially because I get to pick the music and we make numerous stops at gas stations to buy guilty pleasure snacks under the pretext of "hunger". So on Saturday morning we left the house armed with our cameras, CDs galore freshly picked off the shelf and an assortment of beef jerkey he brought back from the States. We drove and drove (I had no idea to where, and as it turns out, neither had he) until we hit a roadblock and I fell asleep. I tend to do that in cars.

When I woke up we were stopped in a gas station in The Netherlands and the husband was getting directions. He shyly admitted he was going to take me to this one place, but it's so remote it doesn't even show up on the GPS, so the man in the gas station told him to take me somewhere else, really close. This is how we ended up in The Hague, the Scheveningen district to be precise.

Now, I've never been a girl to get excited by the sea, the beach, a colorful pier, a lively promenade, pink candy stalls, rainbow pillows, lime-flavoured drinks and carousels. And by never I mean always. And this is exactly what we found here. I kept asking Timo if he's sure we're in The Hague. He said yes. And I'll tell you what, it wasn't just the beach. We drove around the city a little before heading back home and I literally wrote down names of streets I want to walk down when we go back. The harbor looked cute, the area next to it was full of little bars where locals were playing poker while tending to a jug of beer each, then we got lost on some little residential streets that were quiet and looked like a film set, then the posh streets with expensive houses so beautiful and different, yet harmonious and understated. Yes, I am officially a fan and officially pleasantly surprised, for the first time in a long time. This is so not how I imagined The Hague. And I can only hope these accidents will keep happening in the future, otherwise there's a lot of little gems that I'll lose in the travel dust due to some unfortunate name mishap.














I conclude with my "song of the day": Bouncing Souls - Sounds of the City.

Beautifulness, with a cherry on top

Inchei cu "song of the day": No Doubt - Stricken.

What I love about Düsseldork

First off, let me mention that I'm slowly switching to English so that my husband can understand what I'm going on about around here. I actually thought about translating the whole thing in English a long time ago, but since it's not exactly literature, I can spend my time doing more useful things. But I digress.

I had a sweet week-end. Not easy, because I've been husband-less for more than a month, since he is in the US for work (or so he says). But my mom was visiting, so I went out more than I usually would. There was a Jazz Rally in town, which meant the whole center had different spots where various bands, groups or individual musicians were performing. It was pretty cool to just walk around and switch to a totally different mood and music at every corner. We had pretzels (twice, damn they're good... the guy at the booth already knew to put out the ones with lots of salt when we appeared), enjoyed an old man and his banjo (amplified by his "i am a man who should play the banjo" look) then walked around until we got to one of the bigger stages. A band was just starting, so we stopped to see what it was about, and it turned out they were about being awesome. It was a highschool big band, and I love big band music. That aside, I looked around. There were people aged from 16 to 60, with Slipknot patches on their schoolbags or perfectly matched vintage suits, all drinking altbier from proper glasses, smiling, listening and tapping their feet. No BS, no labels, no pushing, no noses in the air, no negativity, no fakery, just people listening to the big band and tapping their feet together. And just when I was thinking, well, this is pretty neat, they started playing Oasis' Wonderwall big band style. +1 to that one.

On Saturday we decided to go to the neighbourhood communal garage sale. I don't know if it was the sun, or the smell of thirty kinds of homemade cakes or the colours of the vintage dresses, and let me stop before I start sounding like a hippie, but it was pretty freakin' charming. Of course there was a lot of junk too, but after I resisted the urge of buying an awesome bright yellow Fornarina felt hat for a fiver or any of the toys or the old paintings or the odd kitchen contraptions, my mom gave me a treat and bought me the funnest skate scooter for 20 euros. I came back home riding it, laughing my ass off, while my mom was shaking her head telling me to stay off the road and wondering if she didn't buy me enough toys when she should've.

We got home and I took full advantage of the fact that we have a huge living area, by riding my scooter in the house, annoying my mom who was trying to watch Come Dine With Me on the TV. We had tickets to an American football game that night, but we both fell asleep on the sofa... we could afford the luxury because on Sunday we had more stuff to do, namely a Jazz Festival in a nearby city. And that was pretty awesome too, but a totally different story for maybe another time.

See, this is what I love about Düsseldork. No matter what you like or what your mood is, there's always something to do. And it's no big fuss, no trendy bells, it's just something natural. It's just the way it is.

So I conclude with my "song of the day": Dan Black - Wonder.

Behind, in parallel and ahead.

The past is irrelevant.

The present is improvable.

"Hello my little wifey, Family Guy is on my TV. You know I hate watching this alone... I miss you even more. I'm not in a writing mood, but then again it doesn't feel very good if I don't write about what I'm doing. My room is clean and there are almost no pants laying around anymore. The bed looks OK as well and I had a sandwich two hours ago, because I was very hungry. Guess that's not very interesting :-) . Right. You probably just woke up, and now you have to read this not very interesting mail from your missing husband. I'm trying to imagine how your day starts. How you wake up in a hurry and maybe sometimes you have some breakfast. Then you read my mail, maybe at work, maybe at home. I don't mind if you read it at work, because I know my baby isn't in the best mood in the morning :-) ."

But the future sounds like happiness.



Inchei cu "site of the day": why not customize some shoes.

Weird resemblances

Cred ca e ceva in aerul de primavara (relativa) de pe aici. Timo se transforma in Frank Rossitano...


... in timp ce fratele lui si-a luat un catel, Mortimer, IDENTIC cu o jucarie pe care am adus-o eu de la Bucuresti.


Coincidence? I think not.

Inchei cu "song of the day": Bad Astronaut - 500 Miles.

Off Facebook and onwards

Iau un experiment de pe Facebook si ii dau drumul pe alte canale, pentru ca m-a distrat. Ideea e urmatoarea:

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random” or click here. The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations" or click here. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click here. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

Daca va amuza randomness-ul si faceti chestia asta, dati-mi si mie un link sa vad ce a iesit. A mea e chiar ok:


Inchei cu "song of the day": Joey Cape - Errands.

Weddo blog

Avand in vedere ca planific o nunta departe de casa si mai ales de multi oameni pe care i-as fi vrut implicati in proces, am hotarat sa scriem un jurnal al evenimentului, unde contribuim si eu si el. A fost gandit in special pentru prieteni si familie, dar cred ca o sa ne lovim de mii probleme on the way si poate cineva care planifica sau se pregateste pentru aceeasi treaba poate gasi acolo un mic ajutor. In plus, sunt atat de multe de facut incat vreau sa retraiesc lunile astea cand o sa am timp si loc in cap. So, here goes: Silvia and Timo's wedding diary.

Inchei cu "site of the day": Offbeat Bride - my personal helper and source of inspiration.

Pic tag

Tagged by Monique. Zice ea acolo la ea pe blog:

Go to the 4th folder in your computer where you store your pictures.
Pick the 4th picture in that folder.
Explain the picture.
Tag 4 people to do the same.

Okay, here goes.


Very random stuff - poza e facuta in bucataria primului nostru apartament din Germania. Era ziua Dianei si petrecerea era inca la inceput - desi toti arata destul de afectati in poza. Personaje: Simon, Jacqueline si Julia. Si cam asta e, as I said, it's very random.
Si sa taguiesc niste oameni? Hmmm, doar Maria o sa se bucure de onoarea asta.

Inchei cu "song of the day": The Gaslight Anthem - Old White Lincoln.

Jucarii pentru copii mari

In ultima luna am cheltuit niste sume obscene pe jucarii. A inceput slow, cu cateva papusi Momiji, un Gloomy Bear de 16 inch, seria King Ken mini si o cutie completa de Dunny Series 5. Dupa asta, simtindu-ma infiorator de vinovata, am zis ca stau cuminte, eventual caut pe E-Bay cei 3 Dunnies care imi lipsesc din seria asta si atat. Acum vad ca pe 22 se lanseaza deja urmatoarea serie - Ye Olde England UK Edition. Si chiar daca nu prea am de unde, o sa storc cardul sa comand o cutie.



Da, probabil ca sunt prea mare pentru asa ceva, dar nu as putea sa va explic ce frumos e sa deschizi pachetul in care stau 25 de cutiute pline de surprize. Si le deschizi pe rand, si toti sunt mult mai misto in realitate decat pe net, si dupa aia toata lumea din birou vine sa ii vada, si alegem cate unul pentru fiecare personaj din agentie, si facem filmulete cu ei, si le punem nume si le facem poze si printam checklist-ul si le bifam pe astea pe care le avem... It's pretty awesome.



Sunt un pic dezamagita ca in Germania nu prea e cultura de colectionat Dunnies. In Austria vad pe net ca au trading parties, launch parties, treaba serioasa. Oare in Ro cati colectioneaza serios? Am dat un search pe Google si am gasit doar un blog in directia asta. As fi vrut sa existe un loc altul decat forumul de pe kidrobot.com unde sa se poata face schimburi si organiza evenimente. That being said, eu nu mai sunt in Romania si nu vorbesc inca destula germana incat sa revolutionez aici piata sau sa fac un site de gen.



Also, in quest-ul de a aranja voiajul in Japonia am cumparat de pe Amazon cea mai tare carte ever - Tokyo Underground, in care pe langa niste tips-uri super dragute despre cum sa te descurci in diverse situatii, exista locatiile tuturor magazinelor de jucarii posibile din oras. There's gonna be an overload.



Nu, scratch that, nu sunt prea mare pentru jucarii. Adica finally, nu m-am facut mare ca sa imi indeplinesc dorintele din copilarie? Ba da. Buy more toys, I say!

Inchei cu "site of the day": Kidrobot.

Sa ma ajute si pe mine un cineva...

Ma chinui cu un research despre Japonia, in vederea unui voiaj. E destul de dificil... Daca a fost cineva acolo si are niste sfaturi, ar fi absolut fantastic si drept multumire promit sa ii aduc o jucarie inapoi. Sushi-ul se strica in trei ore.

Eu va multumesc in avans, optimista fiind din fire.

Inchei cu "site of the day": Google, awesome everyday.

Corners

Ma gandeam acum cateva zile la locurile in care ajungi total intamplator. Mai ales atunci cand trebuie sa se alinieze multe ca sa ajungi acolo.

De exemplu: un mic apartament in care am ajuns pentru ca un prieten s-a mutat aici si avea nevoie de o casa, asa ca o colega l-a lasat sa stea in a ei cateva saptamani pana isi gaseste altceva si intamplator eu m-am dus sa il vizitez exact in acel scurt interval de timp. La genul asta de incident ma refer. Si apartamentul e mic si dragut si m-a fermecat asa cum putine locuri o fac. Asa ca mai jos, cateva fotografii.














Inchei cu "song of the day": Lamb - Angelica.