All The Live Long Day: February 2014

Friday, 28 February 2014

Fine Tune: Emilíana Torrini - Tookah

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Monday, 24 February 2014

Things to do in Margate

I've showed you bits of Margate ~~one~~, ~~two~~, three times before.

Here are some more activities that you could engage in while there:

Visit a sliding house.

Try the pear and cambozola combo at the Great British Pizza Company.

Take pictures of sand and pretend you're looking at the moon.

Breathe deeply and fill your lungs with fresh sea air.

Hunt for textures.

Spent a couple of hours rummaging through the stock at Scott's Furniture Mart.

Look for colour.

Stop for a rainbow on your way home.

Friday, 21 February 2014

Fine Tune: Glass Animals - Psylla

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Wednesday, 19 February 2014

A very, very, very fine house.

Part of the Sensing Spaces exhibition I wrote about yesterday was a little movie featuring interviews with all the architects, including Pezo Von Ellrichshausen. Their segment of the film included footage of a house that made me feel all flustery.
If you'd let me, I would move into Casa Poli in the blink of an eye. It is my dream house. High above the ocean, build out of concrete and glass, it still blends perfectly with the nature that surrounds it. From the outside, you see a grey cube. From the inside, you see the ocean, the sky, the cliff-face. There are different textures of light and shade all around you, and the many viewing angles make the stark structure come to life.
Seeing this building made me quite emotional, actually. If you gave me the space and the guts, this is exactly what I would want to build and exactly the kind of land I would want to build it onto. I am looking at this at a time when Marco and I have been trying to make our minds up about where we want to live and what kind of place would make us happy. I wish I could find a place that would give me the same sense of joy and serenity that looking at the below pictures gives me. I wish I could feel so in tune with myself that I could close my eyes and be sure in my mind about where this place is and how I can get to it.

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Tuesday, 18 February 2014

Sensing Spaces

I am very lucky to have a three-day weekend. I do not work on Mondays, and that third day off has been very successful in curbing the back-to-work blues that I used to experience every Sunday afternoon.
When I first started working part-time, I enthusiastically vowed that Mondays would be fun-days: filled with outings, crafts and awesome dates with myself. I was going to use those 24 hours wisely. Never happened. My typical Monday sees me in sweat-wear, lounging around the house, maybe doing some laundry and having an afternoon nap. Hm.
This Monday, mind you, I did go out! My friend Christina smartly shipped her two girl-kids off to Germany for half-term and was looking to fill her free time. She asked me if I wanted to do something in town together, and I surprised myself by saying yes! So we ended up having a fantastic day filled with culture, tea and shopping.
I suggested we go see the current architecture exhibition at the Royal Academy. I had read about it a little while ago and it looked and sounded interesting. It's called Sensing Spaces, and consists of 7 large-scale installations by different architects trying to convey the essence of their design beliefs. It felt like we were visiting a big playground, as you were able to walk through, touch and interact with the structures. If you are near London and interested in architecture, I can really not recommend this exhibition enough. And I am pretty sure that even if you don't give a rat's bum about architecture, but love to be inspired and to explore, you'd like it, too.

After all the art and a stop-over in Anthropology, we went somewhere secret: a tea room hidden above a Soho pub. You tell the pub staff that you're there for tea, and they will phone up and then invite you to step behind the bar to ascend a flight of stairs into a room that looks like you've made a trip back in time to 1940s London. Vintage jazz was playing, and we were served our tea on mismatched china at small tables with fresh flowers on them. I liked!

After tea, I proceeded to drag poor Christina all over Chinatown to track down ingredients for some Vietnamese cooking I have planned. She was a good sport about it and helped me hold baskets, look through bags of dried mushrooms and even lined up in one of the long check-out queues while I was still searching for an elusive oil. Thanks, Friend!

I enjoyed my London day. I can say I will probably not go straight away and do something again next Monday, but being out in town during the day and not having to hurry anywhere has reminded me that I once used to love this city and all it has to offer very much, and that I should try and keep that love alive.

Friday, 14 February 2014

Happy Valentine's Day!

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And more importantly: HAPPY GALENTINE'S DAY!

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

Ice Cream Bread

A few days ago, I didn't even know about ice cream bread. Then I saw a post on Katie Loves Cooking. Then I went WHAT?! and started a googling spree. And apparently the whole internet knows that this is a thing, but simply just chose not to tell me about it.
Thanks, internet.
Anyhow. Katie's post was swiftly pinned, and instead of leaving it at that (as I normally do), I instructed Marco to bring some ice cream home from his next trip to the grocery store. The only specification I gave was that it be chunky, because that is meant to make the bread more interesting. He choose some chocolate fudge with brownie bits. The only other things you need for this are plain flour and baking powder (or self-raising flour to make it even easier) and I always have those at home. Thinking about it, it really is no wonder that this recipe works, seeing as ice cream has most of the ingredients you need for successful baking: milk, eggs, sugar, and fat.
While the recipe was super-easy and fun to throw together, the end result was slightly disappointing. Not to say very. The bread has the texture of pound cake, but even though the chocolate ice cream was almost too sweet to eat plain, most of the sweetness had disappeared after baking. I did heed the advice to use chunky, but the brownie bits were too similar to the rest of the loaf to make a difference. I did throw some chopped dark chocolate on top just before it all went into the oven, and that was this concoction's saving grace. It tasted best with a bit of butter spread on it, and one morning I used it as a base for French toast and that also wasn't too bad.
I might try this again using an even chunkier variety of ice cream (cookie dough or nuts are supposed to work well), but for now I can only give the recipe points for it's gimmickiness.
Have you made ice cream bread? Did you like it? Let me know if you give it a try, I'd love to hear how yours turned out!

ICE CREAM BREAD (adapted from Katie Loves Cooking)
Need:
500ml ice cream 250g flour 1 tbsp baking powder
Do:
Let ice cream thaw until quite soft. Preheat oven to 175°C. Mix ice cream, flour and baking powder until just combined. You can use your mixer or a spoon for this.
Pour batter into a lined loaf tin and bake for about 60 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool in the tin for about 10 minutes before transferring the loaf to a cooling rack.