Saturday, October 25, 2008

A New Toy?

Halloween Approaches

And so halloween is again descending upon us. Trick-or-treating and bonfires aside, there are a few things looming ahead, which need a bit of preparation. Firstly, a scarey costume, so I don't stand out from the crowd next Friday. Next is a pumpkin, with eyes and a mouth, because lets face it, a halloween without pumpkins with faces is like christmas without presents. Lastly, I need to get my lazy butt into gear, and make me some halloween themed treats, possibly involving said pumpkin, killing two metaphorical birds with one big stone, or in this case, big orange gourd.

10 cookies if you can name my new toy :) The clue is in the photo.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Dealing with the Masses

"You just have to this party, it'll be fun!", my sister told me a few weeks ago. Only after I'd agreed to trek down to London, did she mention that she actually wanted me to cater for it! Apparently, the host had actually requested my sushi. I'm sure he must've read about the legendary last batch which turned out so well...! Or maybe he just likes sushi. Anyways, I like a good challenge, so I went for it.

I planned to go to the Japan Centre for essential sushi-making supplies the day before, but after a slight detour to a pub, followed by a salsa club, and then a quick kip for a few hours, it seemed like my day of preparation had dissappeared, and had been replaced by a few hours before the next party in which to improvise up some much-anticipated sushi. A quick trip to the local supermarket didn't yield a lot - no special sushi rice, not even any tamari! I had to make do with plain old shortgrain rice. I even ended up buying some placemats, which looked a bit like something you could use to roll sushi. Luckily I had bought the nori with me, which was a good thing, else it would've had to have been nachos...

Sushi

With all the ad-hoc cookery going on, I was expecting a bit of a disaster, but by the end of the afternoon, I was the proud owner of a several plates of delicious looking sushi! My single previous sushi session must've been a good enough training experience to let me loose on a sheet of nori and some rice.

They didn't last long I can tell you. A success!

Sushi