Old Mold.

Mmmm, there is some tuna lasagne in the oven right now, can't wait for it to be ready to eat. Here's a goodie from last week - boeuf bourguignon, or beef burgundy.

 You can't go wrong with red wine and cooking.

I had found a HALF PRICE slab of beef in the supermarket a couple of weeks back, some braising, beef stock red wine, onions and mushrooms and hours and hours of cooking in the oven (I even made it one day in advance so it would have time to get really juicy before eating) turns into a really nice change in an otherwise very vegetable heavy diet. To be fair we have been eating many extra nice things lately, there has been pizza, chicken soup (thanks, Roomie), spinach crêpes (thanks Longhaired roomie and Finnish Friend) , vegetable pie (thanks again, Longhaired roomie) and wiener sauce (knackorvssås/nakkikastike). The vegetable soups, sauces and woks inbetween haven't been bad either, especially yesterday when we had some chicken dumplings with the wok, oh yeah!!

In other news Roomie vacuumed the house today, and apparently everything can get moldy in England:

 See those light blotches there?

The hard rubber soles of my slippers can apparently get infected. Granted, they had been lying around for two weeks maybe, since we're in a warmer period right now, but I mean come on! On the other hand, the rubber isolation on the windows get moldy all the time, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

England's rampant humidity never ceases to amaze me, I guess.

Flash Photography

Just popping in to show you what's going on in Canterbury:

Cheerio!

Cluck!

Easter break, at last (well, it's been going on for a couple of days already, but it'll be for two whole weeks)! Not much to report. I found some marzipan eggs, which is nice, and I also got this mysterious packet of provisions in the mail. Aside from small (delicious!) chocolate eggs, it contained a neat decoration as well:

A house simply isn't complete without yellow bunnies.

 

I bet you've all missed the foodblogging, so here's a sight for sore eyes and hungry tummies, a mirage that isn't often seen in this house.

Steak:

With garlic butter and everything!

We'll be heading to Brighton for a couple of days on Tuesday, it'll be nice to see something else than old Canterbury for a change. Have a lovely Easter y'all, and remember to eat a lot of eggs. Chocolate and otherwise.

Exciting Adventures

Marvel at the size shifting girl, her ethereal bicycle and the surreal midgetchair, Gonzo! *applause*

Just illustrating what life in England is like, as you seriously need more clothes indoors than outdoors, (the exception being the rare days when it's below 0° C)
because out there you're at least moving around a bit.

It does feel a bit silly sometimes. Carrying around all these protective layers, I would probably make a great knight. :B

Bloop!

We have some snow here right now, and according to BBC there shall be heavy snowfall tomorrow. Will be interesting to see what that means. At least it's a sunday, hopefully it will thwart the ensuing chaos a little.

We've been to London on a shopping spree, I found all kinds of interesting things, I shall make a coherent post complete with pictures for y'all to enjoy.

Oh, andI actually went swimming! Now I have a one year membership at the Leisure Centre, so for the sake of money spent I will have to go swimming again (I'm sort of aiming for once a week or something).

It's very calming to live in a house in which the heating starts to slack as soon as the temperature outside drops below the freezing point, i.e. when it is needed the most, really. It's just that the thermostat and boiler experience communication difficulties. If they had facebook pages I bet their relationship status would be stated as "It's Complicated". Thus far waving the thermostat in front of the boiler has solved the issue, so we're still alive, however barely.

El Listo

Badump-tun-tun-tun! If you scroll down you'll find The List. But before that, some news: Me and Roomie are going to Germany on a school trip 4th-8th March 2013.

This means, that I also gladly accept €uros as a present, not just pounds.

The List

Potentially Useful Stuff

Monies

Stålar

Fyffee

Always useful.

Kitchen thermometer

 Kökstermometer

 Keittiölämpömittari

 

Range to at least 200°C, doesn't need to be digital, 

I'll use it mostly for deep frying and candy-making.

 Wok

 

A good quality one please, the one we got from IKEA has gone from black to metallic to rust.

Big Sharp Kitchen Knives

Stora vassa köksknivar

Isoja teräviä keittiöveitsiä

 

The bigger and sharper the better.

Small, portable External hard drive

Liten, portabel Extern hårdskiva

Pieni, kannettava ulkoinen kovalevy

 

Something small and practical to store data on to ease my laptop's load. ( doesn't have to be Toshiba like the picture, but preferably a quality brand anyway, for obvious reasons)




 Warm leggings
 Långkalsonger
Pitkät Kalsarit

It's really cold and miserable in England, and some of my old ones are starting to wear thin. . .








Games
(I totally accept preowned (used) games too, if they work, what's the difference?)





Final Fantasy IV (DS)

Heard it's a really good remake of a really good game.

Proffessor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)

I'm also under the impresson that this game is great. 

Some kind of puzzle solving thing.

OkamiDen

Look at that, do I really need a reason?

Books/comics

Fables vol 2: The Animal Farm

 

Only read vol 1 this far. And look at that pretty cover spread!






 Dawn. The Worlds of Final Fantasy (by Yoshitaka Amano)

Very pretty book with many pretty pictures!

A Modern Myth

I fought a ferocious battle with Roomie's USB stick yesterday, since it had suddenly turned into a monster (become write protected without having an external switch). Many lines in the command prompt were written, but the foul apparition was adamant about its read-only status. Several formating softwares were downloaded and utilized to no avail, since the cunning beast was able to evade them (disk not found). Firing projectiles of reason from behind the crenellations of safe-mode proved useless. This damned, loathsome demon was even able to resist the word of God (tampering with the registry), and the future of mankind (my pride) was indeed grim.

But in the darkest of hours, the ancient wisdom of a hero was called upon. Aeons ago, in a different age, the Lion sage had uttered: If there is no switch, it is a hardware problem, and it won't work. Buy a new one. And the words of the old one rang true, the vicious creature unveiled its true form: it is but the tiniest speck of mundane matter. A reaver of the shadows. Feeding on stolen time, frustration and lifepower. An atrocious behemoth of despair.

Ripped out of the den it is astonishingly defenceless against non-binary weaponry and the culture of consumption. If its unruly, broken spirit could not be tamed, another, more benevolent soul should be sought to replace the abomination. Thus, the contemptible fiend is forever trapped in the eternal void of unconnection between worlds. There it shall abide, dwelling in its own abhorrence until the end of its time, the terminal rift.

In the final strife of the odious horror, it is known to be devoured by one or all of three beasts, whose names are whispered by winds from beyond the abyss.

The Hacksaw.

The Grinder.

The Mallet.

Following its obliteration the very essence of the dreadful miscreation shall be trapped in the endless, everchanging sea known by numerous names, of which but one is truthful:  

Garbage. 

(Certain ancient sources claim that this is indeed not the end of th legend, but that it is still stated that the gorgonian vermin will stay imprisoned until one of two courses of fate will be set into motion. Either it is purged and granted a new existence, restarting the cycle. Alternatively, if the ultimate cycle and the death of time is nigh, the gargantuan sea will oveflow and the universe will drown.)

Moral: Do not engage with dreadful technological pests for more than four hours without retribution, as your spirit will be shattered and bitterness will ensue.

Alms

The evening was a success, our guests liked the food, and what's even better, they brought a lot of gifts with them:

And I do mean a lot.

We ate proper meat soup (I had to hunt an appropriate piece of meat across town. . . still couldn't find one with a bone), karelian pasties, archipelago loaf and last but not least banoffee ice cream with hot caramel sauce.

Tomorrow bro and his gf come to visit, we'll make them eat poached eggs for breakfast, now that we have some of these lovely, fresh eggs. We got even more today, apparently Di,s hens lay way more eggs than they can eat. . .

Oh yeah, didn't go to London after all, the other Finnish Friend in Bournemouth was ill, so she couldn't come, and she pretty much was the reason we were going, so we chose not to. We'll have to try it again soon.

Bonjour à tout le monde!

Today was a marvelously rainy Sunday. The weather was terrific for sitting inside doing nothing. A perfect day to get better. And I have literally just loitered, see, there's no treatment like loitering when it comes to colds. Good old lazing.

I'm trying to justify my not writing a beautiful picture riddled update here. But hey, I've got you something to get started with, a shot of me and roomie:

It is only very slightly photoshopped with a mousepad.

Poachers!

 After the museum visit in London ages ago I tried to draw coelacanths from memory. The finished painting below has a more correct anatomy.

 

Anyway, long time no blog. Been really really lazy. I'm back in Finland now, and there's no guarantees for any frequency in blogging. There's a couple of projects going on for me over the summer:

- thoroughly go through all the stuff and clean my old room at mom's place - it looks like a warzone. Really.

- get a job for the summer (in order to get money to pay rent during summer, and at least half of the tuition 

fee for next year would be ideal). I have an interview on Friday, wish me luck.

- watch Game of Thrones season 2

- create some sort of a script for my forest comic - helps me plan the length of the thing a little.

- creating a website would be nifty and helpful for the future

- maybe have another exhibition

- paint and draw

Well, that starts to look like enough things on the list for now. 

Here's some photos from our trip to a friend's place. First, we saw a bit of Sandwich, hometown of Lord Sandwich who invented the sandwich, since he enjoyed gambling and playing poker, so he wanted something he could eat with one hand, so he wouldn't need to interrupt his game whilst eating.

 

 

 

 It's not the size of the garden, it's what you manage to accomplish with what you got.

At the friend's place, we ate a really really nice lunch. The house was beautiful, and it was situated in the idyllic beauty of the English countryside. There were also dogs, and hens! Here's photographic evidence:

 

 

 

  Ta-daa!

 

And see, I managed to hold one without anyone 

freaking out or getting hurt in the situation!

 

Took a stroll and saw some baa baas.

We also got extremely fresh eggs with us as a parting gift. Our host recommended poaching them (boiling without the shell), and since we'd never tried it me and Roomie had to give it a shot:

 

 

At this point we were slightly surprised, because in the cookbook we looked up instructions from the poached eggs looked more like fried eggs,since the egg whites had spread, while our superfresh eggskept their shape.  When we tried with eggs from the supermarket theyspread out like in the book. Conclusion - freshness matters in poaching.

 

It was actually quite different from regular boiled eggs. The egg white had a wonderful, soft consistency. I really recommend trying - and try to get really fresh eggs too. It was very nice with regular eggs too, but the superfresh ones were amazing!


I think I have to eat some for lunch now. . .