Falling Sky

See-Through Head

Finding Nemo was pretty good, yes, but ask yourself - wouldn't it have been that much better if Nemo had a transparent head and tubular eyes?  Ditto the Little Mermaid.

Well, I think it's cute.  Spotted by Sullivan.  Bloop!

One Score & Twelve

Huzzah! I've reached the ripe firm age of 32 and life's really rather splendid. I reckon I'm a born 30something (that's my excuse for a clumsy & awkward teenage/20ness) and I love the comfort, the ease, the happiness that I've ended up with. Thanks in no small part to the almost-missus, of course. And even if this has been a working birthday, it's still a happy one.

Of particular note for this blog is that I now have the ability to write posts all over the place on the iPod Touch upon which I am tapping this right now! It's an incredible piece of tech, of which I shall rave wildly later, and it's one of a whole bunch of lovely pressies that have been coming my way from even lovelier people that I'm lucky to have in my life. Cheers muckers!

Plenty more to be said, this is just to test out the posting powers, give an initial WOOHOO for all the goodies and greetings, and get used to the text input on this shiny bounder. Sat here in Iglu, enjoying a pint of Black Isle, awaiting the Lass, listening to some smoothly nonexperimental jazz, contempating the big juicy steak I intend to devour in the next few hours... like I said, it's a good life. Cheers to everyone who makes it so.

The Swede Chef

1. The Recipe, 2. Swede Turnip, 3. Peeling the Swede, 4. Chopping Chunks, 5. 3 Leeks, 6. Leek Preparation, 7. Into The Pot, 8. Just Add Cream... Not Milk, 9. Et Voila!

Börk börk börk! So far this year we've been cooking and devouring our way through all sorts of new recipes (well, new to us), thanks partly to some excellent new cookbooks - more on that in a future post - partly to the contents of our weekly fruit & veg delivery from Damhead. Sadly I've been completely useless at actually photographing or documenting any of this stuff, partly due to the completely natural-light-less kitchen we have, mainly as I can barely keep up with the cooking without also having a camera and supports to deal with. I've made the above recipe quite a lot over the last couple of months but never got round to recording it - until yesterday.

It all began with the swede turnip, turnip swede, neep, whatever the deuce you want to call it. It first turned up in our delivery late last year and I didn't have the faintest idea what to do with it (the obvious haggis, neeps & tatties aside). I'd never cooked with one, barely even registered their existence before, yet there one sat, waiting to be eaten somehow, challenging me with its purple mystery.

Straight to the index pages of the recipe books went I, quickly finding this one by Denis Cotter from Wild Garlic, Gooseberries and Me: A Chef's Stories and Recipes from the Land (of which I have previously raved). Crucially, it sounded a doddle to make, especially in comparison to some of his more challenging recipes, and the ingredients list was pretty straightforward. Following the recipe makes enough for 4, but it refrigerates well (in fact, I'd say the curry sauce tastes better after a few days in the fridge than when first served) so we basically get two dinners out of one recipe. Last night's wasn't the best I've made, mainly because I'd not bought enough cream. The recipe asks for 250ml of double cream, but the Lass doesn't take to overly creamy nosh well so I always use single - however, I'd only acquired half that amount, so I made it up with milk. Skimmed milk, at that. Inevitably, the result was a less creamy, more watery sauce - the taste was still fine, but it wasn't quite as photogenic as it can be.

Ah well, you still get the general idea looking at the above and it's well worth having a go at. The main curry itself basically consists of chopped swede turnip, leeks, spices, cream and yoghurt. I serve it with sesame-fried cabbage (chopped strips of cabbage stir-fried with onion, soy sauce, sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds, very quick & easy to make) and aromatic basmati rice (basmati rice cooked with water, lime and mustard seeds), both taken from Cotter's earlier The Cafe Paradiso Cookbook, and naan bread. As it's a bit too fiddly to be doing naan while juggling the rest, I've found that naans can be made in advance, taken right to the end of their recipe, then frozen. Defrosted and reheated in the oven, they still beat the pulp out of shop bought naan (plus you can make them however you want - extra spicy seeds, onion and garlic, peshwari style, etc). The curry sauce is relatively mild (depending on how much chili flakes you want to add) but flavoursome, while the swede properly cooked has a nice texture to it, a bit like sweet potato or winter squash, and takes on the flavour of the sauce nicely. I've still plenty to learn in getting even this relatively simple meal right - often I misjudge the water needed for the rice, or the aforementioned cream/milk malarkey - but it's a tasty and satisfying meal for these chilly months when few other vegetables are available.

Right now? I'm baking Greyston Bakery brownies, using The Greyston Bakery Cookbook which I bought earlier this week and have been gawping at with awe ever since. You can follow the recipe here - the brownie mix it creates is so superdense I swear it's distorting the very fabric of spacetime. However, this isn't just for filling my fat face - nope, this is research. That's the nice thing about deciding to make your own wedding cakes - obviously you need to try out each potential recipe just to see if it works. And if it does, make it again, just to be sure. Anyway, it's now time to drizzle some melted chocolate. It's a tough life.

A Matter Of Life And Death Metal

(Well, thrash hair metal really, but that wouldn't have fit the title half as well.)

ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL

One of the most surprisingly enjoyable & affecting films for some time, I went along to this expecting some kind of quasi-Spinal Tap/Still Crazy rockumentary about power chords, huge hair and bigger egos, a film of unintentional comedy and not much else. It turned out to be something else entirely, a film that should appeal to anyone regardless of their appreciation or otherwise for The Metal. After all, how else could a documentary about a Canadian rock group pretty much unknown to the UK be getting a nationwide cinema release?

A little background, for anyone who's not already heard it all, from John Cooper of the Sundance Film Festival: At 14, Toronto school friends Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, went on to become the "demigods of Canadian metal," releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982's Metal on Metal. The album influenced a musical generation, including Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax, that went on to sell millions of records. But Anvil's career took a different path - straight to obscurity.

Initially, it feels like it really is going to be Tap made real, with early 80's video footage of playing to huge crowds in Japan, appearing on outraged talk shows, playing the guitar with a dildo, a suitably RAWK band logo - only to fast forward a quarter of a century. Audiences once numbered in tens of thousands are now in their tens (if that), the two core band members have to do dull day jobs just to pay the bills and it initially looks like they have a deluded attachment to the music of their youth that they never grew out of. But it becomes apparent that these aren't epic egos living in a fantasy land, forever looking back at former glories - it's purer than that, a genuine belief and love for the music and their skills (and they do have them - there's some stunning guitar fret work to be seen, even when playing squalid clubs), not to mention the wonderful relationship between the two core members of the group, Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner (Yeah, that's what I thought - no relation).

That's the point of the film, not the music itself (though I quite enjoyed that, and Metal On Metal really deserves to be recognised as a lost classic of the genre) but the lives behind it. Which all sounds rather po-faced, when it definitely isn't. There's an awful lot of humour in the film, yet it's rarely at the band's expense - more at the bogglingly bizarre cards that life deals them - and there's plenty of heart to go with it. It's such a pleasure just to watch Kudlow and Reiner on screen together, so very different and yet energised by each other, Reiner's stoic introspection against Lips' wide-eyed mania (a handy glimpse into my future, though I really need to work on my gurning). As the film progresses you realise that, far from mocking them, you're rooting for them, you want reality to somehow bend to their will, to give them the success and audience they deserve... somehow.

The glorious thing is that the film itself has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, resulting in the kind of attention and media interest that just doesn't come to metal bands. And that's because it's not about the music but the people who make it, the incredible enthusiasm for what they do against ludicrous odds, carrying on when all common sense would tell you to give up. They make the perfect underdogs and anyone who's ever struggled with the desire to create with the need to earn will find plenty to relate to. What at times feels like a requiem for better days long gone ends up as a heartfelt celebration for keeping the faith, for never giving in.  Where they'll go from here, goodness knows - Guitar Hero? Glasto? - but having spent 90 minutes in their company it's a joy to see them finally getting the recognition they've hungered for.  It's a hell of a ride - moving, hilarious, inspiring, hugely uplifting.  For those who continue to rock, we salute you.

Surprise!

  

Yes indeed friends, your eyes are not deceiving you, those are wedding rings on our fingers! All that talk of May was a diversion! Hahahahahaha!

...

Not really. But those are the wedding rings, which just arrived in the post today. Given we both have freakishly scrawny fingers that needed extra-small rings to be made it was clearly important that we try them on and ensure the sizes were right. And they are, so that's a relief. They've now gone back into their little boxes where they will wait patiently until the fateful day. The above is just a quick snap from the iSight, there'll be much better pictures of them when they're on our fingers full time. Must say, the physical sensation of wearing a ring on a finger feels mighty peculiar, but I'm assured you get used to it and as long as it doesn't slip off while I'm up to my knuckles in bread dough we should be fine. And it really does look like the One Ring, so Gollumy behaviour at the wedding can't be ruled out.

Office Workers Of The World Untie

Not that I wear a tie to work, granted. Still, these are for all of us who spend our days staring at a glowing screen, tapping at keyboards, the mouse grafted to our hand... and then come home and do it all over again for fun.

SONG: Electronic Plantation by the No WTO Combo. (Feed readers, come on over to play it)

VIDEO: Clip from Mike Judge's spot-on Office Space, a DVD of which should be included in every admin job induction.

WHRRRRRRR KTHUNK-KTHUNK fwishwishwish BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMM RATAKATAKATAKAtakatakatakaBOMP!

As you surely already know, a week back we received an early wedding gift thanks to the Lass's Grandpa (a thoroughly excellent fellow with an eye for a good beret) - the all-shiny, all-cutting, all-devastating Magimix 5200 food processor. Now, that's money that could've purchased a perfectly shiny iPod Touch (an object of great desire in this household ever since we looked at Chatiryworld on one in an Apple Store, but anyway...) so what the deuce are we playing at?

Well, as the Lass noted, as we've got more & more into cooking, we've been getting increasingly frustrated by recipes reliant on a food processor. The plan had been to plonk one on the yet-to-be-created wedding list and we'd started researching the various models. In a staggering Channel Five Mildly Useful shock, the best review we found was a review from The Gadget Show with the Hairy Bikers having a go at three models. It's one thing to have written reviews, quite another to see the devices in action, and while the KitchenAid looked a beauty, the Magimix clearly was the better machine (and cheaper too). BUT! You know all this already - what more can I add? Why, the gems of my experience since we unpacked the chunky beast and whomped it onto the worktop.

First up, this thing is heavy. It needs to be - the base has to be hefty enough to keep the processor stable and static while a 1100W motor flings the food about at a startling speed. This also means you're not going to be walking down the street with this from the shops. Despite the whopper of a box, it doesn't take up a great deal of room, a base of 21cm x 26cm, though there's also a box containing extra blades for grating, whisking, dough, etc, so you'd be wanting room for that too. Cleaning really isn't the hassle you might expect, relatively few parts to clean - a dishwasher would certainly be handy, but we're doing fine washing it up by hand fresh after it's been used, before anything can dry out on it.

Now, using the bounder. Here's what I've done with it so far, and how it fared:

BANANA MILKSHAKES! Absolutely olympian, I've made these about four times in the last week. Three nicely ripe bananas into the processor, plus a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream, a tablespoon of honey and 300mls of milk (even skimmed worked fine). A good minute or two produces a milkshake as fine as those I've coveted from Wannaburger.

BREAD! Followed the recipe included in the natty recipe book that comes with the processor, which uses a special dough-kneading attachment. However, the recipe only required three hours as opposed to the usual overnight recipe I follow, and that difference was immediately tangible in the texture, the rising and ultimately the taste of the bread. It was adequate, and maybe if I'd only known shop-bought bread it would've been okay, but it just doesn't compare.

SOUP! Normally when a recipe has asked for blending of a soup, I've used a hand-blender. It's worked okay but takes time and often bits get missed, so it was good to have a chance to blend a carrot & coriander soup in the Magimix last week. However, the aforementioned Gadget Show clip highlighted a deficiency with both Magimix and Kitchenaid - when the soup's being blended, it starts to leak from the join near the top. It's not gushing, but... well, see the video. It's not a deal-breaker, and I still plan on blending soups with it, but it's still a shame.

PARMESAN! One of the attachments is a nifty grating disc for grinding down parmesan and chocolate. And it works a treat, devouring a good chunk of parmesan in seconds when hand-grinding would take a sodding age (and leave much of the cheese still on the grater). Ruddy marvelous.

ENCHILADA FILLING! Last week I did the black bean & sweet potato enchiladas that've become a regular standard in this house - again, in the past I've used the hand-blender to blend together the boiled sweet potatoes, drained black beans, coriander and lemon juice. Worked like a charm, with none of the leakage that happened with the soup. The fineness of the processing compared to hand-blender was definitely tangible in the final dish, that much smoother.

SHREDDING! The grating discs are absolutely mint for tearing up vegetables, gloriously demonstrated with a red cabbage that was ripped to shreds splendidly, again taking seconds whereas I'd normally be chopping away for a fair bit of time.

JUICE! Oh aye, it comes with a juicer, so no need for one of those on the wedding list. Huzzah! Anyway, the juicer is another attachment, large enough that it doesn't fit in the attachment box but goes, well, wherever the deuce you want to stick it. Anyway, it does a superb job on lemons and oranges, with us getting a lot more juice out of the oranges compared to the Lass's last juicer. Splendid!

So, all in all, it's brilliant. As a piece of kit it's pricey, no question (Amazon's probably the cheapest place for brand-new) - but first impressions are that you definitely get what you pay for, a reliably sturdy (soup dribbles aside) machine that we'll still be using years to come. It's already sped up our food preparation and we're only a few days into using it, barely scratching the surface of what we could do. It's not a miracle machine, but it is a time saver par excellence for those who regularly cook with fresh ingredients, and if you're thinking of getting a food processor then it's better to invest in something as sturdy and guaranteed-to-the-nines as the Magimix than some cut-price lump of plastic that burns itself out in a year. Now, who's for a milkshake?

"We Are In Hawaii!"

Every man & his dog has already blogged this, but care I?  Nay!  It's tremendously simple, just a wee girl looking at pictures of cats and giving them captions, a barmy combo of word association, wide-eyed-French-kid and I Can Has Cheezburger.

In Which The Author Attempts To Shake Off A General Malaise Of Blogging And Struggles To Find A Point

Yet another fallow period here on Falling Sky as I find myself wondering quite what this site is for these days, the ensuing existential crisis blocking off any actual writing. It's tricky - I've no real insight or knowledge to share with the world, any opinions on national politics have to be kept shtum in deference to potential future job prospects (the downside to not writing anonymously and having an exceedingly Googlable name), there's barely any artwork to share with the world any more, and as far as food, music, films, the economy, anything - there's far better, specialised blogs out there that cover all that. So why bother here?

At this point, I haven't quite got an answer for that, but I'll be using Typepad for the next few months anyway so may as well attempt to witter (but not Twitter, which I've absolutely failed to see the point of) on here. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I'm already into the habit of sharing websites/videos/music on Facebook and Google Reader, so is there still worth plonking them up here? Again, dunno. Feels like the more stuff I do, the less time or inclination there is to blog about them - hence the lack of writing on such eminently bloggable events from the last few months as getting locked out, going to Brussels, boiling myself in the bath to humiliating unconsciousness, Christmas and all sorts of wedding-related malarky, whereas my far better half is always on the ball. I'm not even sure who's reading anymore - stats are no good, pretty much every one of the 100+ visits logged coming from Google looking for nude men, giant bunnies or those Pic of the Weeks I used to do before getting the copyright-infringement fear. You get to imagine a reader-less blog, putting up posts like a forest full of falling trees that no-one ever hears.

It's tricky. Falling Sky's always been an exercise in vanity publishing, complete with a cost (about £8 a month currently) and while it's brought me so very much (hellooooo wife!) I find myself increasingly frustrated that I can't seem to sit down and just write the way I used to. That's probably down to a more intense job and an ever-increasing enjoyment of cooking and reading. Why spend half an hour blogging about making flapjacks when I could just cook something else? And who wants to read about flapjacks anyway, if you can't attach edible samples? What can I add to an internet already awash with information and opinions?

Lots of questions, sod all answers. Regardless, I'll be here until at least the wedding, since I'm using Typepad to host the wedding website (now password protected, for guest eyes only now that the first wave of invites have gone out). After that I may close down the Typepad account and set up a smaller blog on my Mac account, since that's paid for anyway, if indeed it seems worth doing. One variable will be the new job I begin later this month, travelling to which will take two hours out of each day. This might spur me on to more, shorter postings, especially if I can put together posts on the way or during breaks at work. Then again, it might be the last straw.

The above all sounds terribly moribund, but that's not it at all. If anything, it's because I've reached such a state of general, stable happiness in my life that I've that much less to write than in the old days of noise, fury and capital letters. Conflict is so much more interesting to read (and write) than contentment - writing about the latter just comes across as smugness, like a christmas round-robin constantly updated. Let's see how the next couple of months pan out - if I can get back into the habit of highlighting good stuff here again, rather than just Facebook and Reader, and write things while they're fresh in my noggin rather than leave them to rattle around, then there'll be a point to all this. If not, well, I'm sure the internet'll manage.