Dunnottar Castle

Aberdeen - day 5

The weather forecast was not good - 30mile an hour winds from the south and we were heading south, so they were in our faces all day! We set off from Rattray and headed in land and south, over a few small hills. Average speed about 5mph! We headed for Cruden Bay, hoping for a cafe but unfortunately there wasn't anything. Instead we bought some rowies and hot chocolate from the shoppie down by the harbour in Port Errol and sat outside, sheltering from the wind and rain. We peddled onwards to Newburgh, still no cafe, but at least the sun came out as we sat on a bench outside another shop for sandwiches. The wind was still mammothly strong and we battled to Aberdeen to the SYHA, 50miles.

To Rattray head - day 4

The weather wasn't quite so nice as last night as we squelched our way up the hill out of Cullen. Our first stop was Portsoy for rowies, from the local bakery, for breakfast down by the harbour. It was windy and wet but onwards we went and took refuge in The Coffee Pot Cafe in Banff. The owner did a fine line in sausage sandwiches (and also blackpudding sandwiches) and took pitty on us as we left giving us some lollipops to keep us going. We battled in to the wind up to Fraserburgh and spent only a few minutes looking round the harbour beofre ploughing on to Rattray Head where we were staying at the ecohostel, which is in the old lighthouse keepers house. Its was lovely, and we had it to ourselves - stoking up the fire and cooking up a lot of pasta. 52miles

Cullen - day 3

Setting off from Inverness we turned East and started our two days across the top. We pottered along next to the water and past Benromach and Glenmoranjie distilleries. We found a super place called the Loft for lunch (braised lamb shank) and as we came to Buckie the sun came out and we had a really good view out across the sea. The last leg was along a coastal path and then an old railway route over the viaduct into Cullen. We were booked into the Cullen Harbour Hostel and as we arrived they offered us some tea - roast pheasant no less! What a way to finish the day, watching the sun go down over the harbour. 68 miles

Inverness again - day 2

We slept like logs! But we up at 7.30 to have breakfast and set off again. Naomi from the hostel promised fewer hills and we bowled along to Golspie, where we had cupcakes in Poppies cafe. Past the Clynlish distillery. Onwards along the coast and past lichen clad trees. There were seals and lots of birds - oyster catchers, red shanks?, little waders, godwits and many more. For lunch we stopped in Tain, just past Glenmoranjie, at the SUnflower cafe, where they had haggis lasagne on the menu! THen in to the hills to Alness and a sneaky hop across the A9 bridge before heading on to the small roads through Culbokie and finally to Inverness. A massive 72 miles but in 10h so much better going than yesterday!

Helmsdale - still day 1

From Inverness we got a wee train up to WIck, passing by snow topped mountains and deer filled moors, even seeing a small heather fire. Quite strange as there was snow on the ground too. At Wick a Spanish woman asked which way to go with her bicycle to John O'Groats - very brave without a map! We pointed her north and set out south - into the wind. The sun was shining and though it was hard work we made good progress. And then the big hills began! The biggest had a 13% gradient and I made it up about halfway before having to push, quickly being over taken by a walker! Then we were rewarded with a full 4miles swooping downhill into Helmsdale and to a lovely little youth hostel in an old gymnasium with super high ceilings. In all 42 miles (including the 7 we did in Brum), arived at 8.20! SO the WIck to Helmsdale strtetch was 37miles in 5 & 1/2h!

Inverness

NSCR Wick to Edinburgh day 1

Last night we set off in the rain to New Street, being conscious of the new bike (Bertie) I locked him to Nick's bike on the train to
Crewe, using my new kryptonite gold standard lock. As we came to get off the lock wouldn't unlock but we lifted the bikes off the train together. The station master lent us a hack saw but we had to pay a visit to the fire station to get Dave, Phil and Chris to cut the lock off with an angle grinder as the key eventually fatigued and broke in the lock and there was no way to get it off, they even tried those pneumatic pliers which were damaged by the lock! Tough lock but not so the key! But we made it and got on the train to Inverness. It was freezing!! As the sun came up we saw a beautiful snow covered landscape and now we're in Inverness for a spot of breakfast before the next train to Wick.

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Vietnam & Cambodia February 2008

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Birthday treats!

Lovely birthday treats - including a home made carrot cake with vanilla frosting!

Eating out in Brum

Smoked haddock pasta at Red Peppers in the Mailbox - very yummy!



Extremely delicious ramen at Wagamama's with Sally!

Valentine's Day Cookies

We saw some cookies very much like these in Fortnum's when we were out for the Monopoly project a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd make some for today!

140 years of the periodic table

Catching up on reading Nature I spotted that it was 140 years since Dmitri Mendeleev came up with the first periodic table back in December. So to celebrate Nick and I have rustled up a simple sponge and decorated with icing for all the elements, though didn't quite have enough space for the lanthanides and actinides. It tastes very yummy!

Walking in the snow

What will they think of next?

Not sure this is a great idea - chocolate probiotic drinks?!!

New Years Eve Dinner - with the Mafia

For New Year's Eve we had Vicki, Seb and Adrian round for dinner in a Mafia style party - all dressed in black and looking very swish! And of course a Mafia inspired menu to go with it!


Homemade minestrone soup

This one was adapted from a soup book I have had for ages but haven't really used - shame on me! Its very yummy and well worth the effort.

1 smoked gammon (~1kg)
1 onion quartered
1 cellery stick roughly chopped
1 tsp black pepper corns
1 bayleaf
4 litres water

1 tbsp olive oil
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely copped
70g tomato puree
2 beef tomatoes, skinned, seeded and finely chopped

pasta made from 1 egg and strong white flour, shapped as orrichette

fresh parsley and parmesan to serve

Roast the gammon and onions in a 200C oven, then trim off the excess fat and boil with the peppercorns, onion and bayleaf for 2 hours, uncovered, topping up with the water as you go, especially as 4 litres proabaly won't fit in one pan. Then remove the meat from the stock, keep the meat and strain the stock through muslin. Put everything in the fridge overnight.


The following day skim off any fat from the stock and shred the meat, removing any chewy looking bits. Fry off the new celery and carrots in the olive oil for a couple of minutes before adding the meat, tomato puree and chopped tomatoes. Then add the stock and simmer for 20min. Add the pasta and simmer for another 30min or until cooked. Serve with parsley, parmesan and seasoning.



Rum marinaded Sirloin with roast potaotes and green beans

This was inspired by a recipe from The Kitchen of Light but we didn't have any vodka, so substituted white rum instead. We took a 1kg peice of beautiful matured sirloin and marinaded in for 3 days in 1tbsp coarse seasalt, 2 tbsp crushed black peppercorns, 3 tbsp chopped parsley, 1 tsp fresh thyme, 3 crushed garlic cloves, 100ml white rum and 70ml olive oil. It was roasted at 200C for about 50min (though 40 would proably have done for a rarer roast) and served with yummy roasted potatoes and crunchy green beans.



Bombino! A melon wrapped in black icing to look like a bomb!

Duck racing in Bottesford

Snowmen

Yesterday we were at Jean and Dick's for the annual Higgs Christmas party, and this is the Christmas cake decorated by Jess, Anna and Lucy.

Glass decorations

Beautiful fused glass decorations

Evolution round up

Well it's been an exciting year doing the evolution project. I have looked at all the ingredients that have been used and made this wordl - as you can see aubergine was the most popular ingredient and made it in to 7 of the 12 recipes, closely followed by garlic in 6 of them! And here's my idea of an evolutionary tree - the distances between the months represent the number of ingredients carried on and the branch lengths represent the number of additional ingredients!

Evolution December - Christmas cookies

For the final recipe in the evolution series I have made a great shift to Christmas cookies using a few of the ingredients from Dougal and Soazig's contribution. The recipe can be found on this earlier blog entry.

Bristol

On Friday we went down to Bristol so that I could make some more fused glass for an up coming Christmas fair. While it was 'cooking' we walked all round the city, up to the Christmas steps and Clifton and the suspension Bridge, finishing off in the Olive Shed for delicious tapas overlooking the river.

Evolution November - Afghan dish and Honey and oat bread

This month the evolution recipe comes from Dougal and Soazig over in Stavanger, Norway. They have revisited the aubergines in this Afghan dish and made some very tasty breads too!

Afghan dish

4-5 aubergines
1 onion
tomato paste
bouquet garni
4-5 garlic
cumin
Yogurt
mint, parsley
Cardamon

Grill the aubergines in oil (or in the oven - I like the latter better). Sauce: Put oil, onion in a pan and let the onion turn golden. Add the tomato paste. Let it cook for a while and add some water and the bouquet garni and the cumin. Let it cook until you get a thicker tomato sauce. In a bowl mix the yogurt with the garlic and the mint . Add salt and pepper (lots). In a dish put 1 layer of aubergines, 1 layer of yogurt, 1 layer of tomato sauce and do it twice more. Put in the oven for 20-25 min at 180°C. Serve with rice that has been in the oven for 10 min to dry it a little bit. Add Cardamon seeds.


Honey and Oat Bread

65g (2.oz) jumbo porridge oats
450g (1lb) strong plain white flour
2.5ml (1 tsp) salt
7g sachet (1 tsp) fast action dried yeast
30ml (2 tbsp) honey
30ml (2 tbsp) golden syrup
50g (2oz) butter
120ml (4fl oz) milk
120ml (4fl oz) water
75g (3oz) dried cranberries / or raisins
40g (1 oz) chopped walnuts milk, for glazing jumbo porridge oats, for sprinkling

1. Mill the oats. Add the flour, salt and yeast.
2. Place the honey, golden syrup, butter and milk in a saucepan and heat gently until the butter melts. Stir in the water. The mix should now be just warm; if necessary leave to cool.
3. Add the liquids to the dry ingredients and mix on minimum for 1 minute and 4 minutes on speed 1 to make a soft dough, which is smooth and elastic. Remove the Bowl with the dough inside, cover with oiled clear film and leave to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour, until doubled in size.
4. Lightly oil 2 baking sheets. Gently knock back the dough. Mix in the cranberries and walnuts. Transfer to a lightly floured surface, divide in two and shape into plump rounds. Place on the prepared baking sheets.
5. Cover with oiled clear film and leave in a warm place to rise, for about 30-40 minutes, until they have doubled in size. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6.
6. Brush with milk, slash across the top of each loaf and sprinkle with oats. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until risen and golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Alicante

This week I am working at the University of Alicante, last night I hot footed it down to the city to climb up to the castle. I just amde it as the sun painted the horizon red. On the way down I joined Anke, Cristoph and Alejandro for tapas after we all got a little lost! This was all after having a traditional lunch with my host at the university, so am feeling very full but delighted by all the tasty food, and kindness of strangers, again.

Evolution October - Rosemary Mushrooms, Prawn and Apple Quiche, Limy lentils and Seared Tuna and Thai Green Curry

The latest in the evolution experiment is from Laughing Magpie on Chattering Chough, what a splendid selection of recipes! They include something for everyone, and one of my all time favourites Prawn and Apple Quiche, pictured above!

A walk around Belton House in Linconshire

Food Bloggers Connect

If you're a food blogger in the UK check out Mowielicious's Food bloggers Connect coming soon to London!

Glass fusing in Bristol

Just a few examples of the glass I made at the Creative Glass Guild last weekend on their slumping and fusing weekend course - absolutely brilliant, and great fun with Vicki, and joining the boys for dinner in the evenings!

Evolution September - Prawn and lentil curry

This month I have been inspired by Wampe's ingredients and a recipe we've been enjoying from the Siansbury's magazine, a light coconut milk based curry with prawns. I would have liked bigger ones, but couldn't lay me hands on any!

200g big prwans, raw
a little oil
a thumb of ginger, grated
1 red chilli,chopped, medium strength as the coconut milk will counteract quite a lot of the chilli
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 teaspoon shrimp paste
200ml coconut milk, the lighter version works well too
1 400g tin cooked green lentils, drained and rinsed

In a wok heat the oil and then add the ginger, garlic, chilli and shrimp paste and fry for a couple of minutes without browning, add the prawns, lentils and coconut milk and simmer for about 5 min or until the prawns are cooked and everything is bubbling and hot. Then serve and enjoy! Very simple!!

Village Cafe

It was Charlie's birthday yesterday so we all met up in town for a wee trip to the Electric Cinema to see Away we go, splashing out and sitting on the sofas with a nice cup of tea or a bottle of beer! But first we went to the Village Cafe on Ladywell Walk opposite the Arcadian centre in Birmingham where they served me the best Mee Goreng I have had in years, the rest of the food was delicious too and such an authentic feeling place! Highly recommended!

Pitt Rivers Museum

A fleeting trip, on Thom's first birthday, to see the eclectic Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, full of so many treasures, and even a cleft stick, though it wasn't on show, I found it in the catalogue! The wart medicine was fantastic - first find a black slug, then secretly rub it on your warts and then impale the slug on a thorn! Everything had gorgeous labels, another visit is a definite thing

A trip on the Metro

I took the Metro for the first time, up to Wolverhampton to the Art Museum to see their exhibit on Andy Warhol, which turned out to be not as interesting as the exhibits on Works on Paper and The Northern Ireland collection. On the way back I got off at Bilston to visit the Craft Gallery, which was brilliant. The travelling Playing with Fire contemporary exhibition was fabulous. Then to round things off I popped into the RBSA to see the Friends Autumn exhibition!

Tissington Trail

A quick blast along the Tissington Trail from Parsley Hay to Ashbourne and back, splendid countryside! Whilst having my lunch on a bench just outside Ashbourne Bet stopped for a chat, admiring my independent spirit, as she seemed to be staring into the face of an imminent loss of her partner at 73, we talked for a while and parted with a hug, I hope all goes well for her.

Lab Olympics Medal Shortbreads

Hadrian's Wall

Over the bank holiday weekend I dragged Nick off to the north of England to cycle Hadrian's cycleway route 72. Starting off from Ravenglass, on the coast of Cumbria, we first visited Glennaventa roman baths and then cycled to our first campsite, battling the wind but enjoying dinner in Seascale. Then off north, along the coast past Sellafield, I had no idea it was such a big complex, and the BNFL owned their own trains. Onwards we came through Whitehaven, past the coast to coast marker and along the Solway Coast to Silloth, stopping at a Roman museum along the way. After our second night of camping we came to the start of the wall at Bowness on Solway, making it to Carlisle and hitting 100miles, but peddling on to Haltwhistle, in the rain, for our final camping spot, and a fine dinner in Rowfoot. The last leg took us across the Northumerland National Park and via Vindolanda roman fort and acheaological site, before peaking at 225m, followed by a glorious 7mile downhill run. Finally we cycled in to Newcastle under a threatening sky, and celebrated with a wee drinkie by the river before the train home, after a mere 195miles.

Dougal Pu me on to mapmy ride - and here is the approximate elevation for our trip!

Evolution August - Sajor Curry of Terrong & Sambal Goreng of shrimps with petebeans

This month the evolution recipe comes from Wampe in Zutphen Holland:

"Here's my contribution to the food evolution...It's indonesian, I hope people will like it.

1) Sajor Curry of Terrong (aubergine) (Cooking time 30 min - 4 pers.)
Ingr.:
- 6 small or 2 large aubergine
- 6 potatoes (in small pieces)
- beef stock (1/4 liter)
- Coconut milk (100 ml)
- 1 piece of lemongrass
- 2 limeleaves

Grind the following spices together:
- Grind 10 small onions / 3 large ones
- + 3 garlic + Terassi Powder (1 teaspoon)
- Brown sugar (Tsp), Tamarind (Tsp)
- Piece of Ginger, Kurkuma/Koenjit (Tsp)
- Coriander seeds (2 Tsp)
- Cumin (1 Tsp) + Salt

Peel potatoes & cut in pieces, boil for 10 min. in beefstock + ground lemongrass + limeleaves
Put on the water for the rice
In a wok fry the ground spices, till oil separates. Add this mixture to the stock + potatoes
Meanwhile, peal the aubergine (not necessary is optional) & slice in small pieces. Add to stock mixture.
Add coconut milk and cook till aubergine is ready (never put lid on pan when coconut is added)
After this you start with the next dish.

2) Sambal Goreng of shrimps with petebeans (4 pers.)
Ingr:
- 400 gr. Prawns medium sized
- 2 or 3 red chili's
- 1 slice galingale
- Tamarind juise (concentrated) (1/2 Tsp)
- Same amound of Terassi/Trassi (Shrimp paste)
- Concentrated coconut milk (100 ml)
- about 15 petebeans
- 6 small onions

Grind & mix all the spices together (except the Petebeans), add bit of brown sugar
Heat some oil in wok, fry mixture till oil separates (about 8 min.)
Add Coconut milk + prawns. Add bit of water
Cut Petebeans in pieces and add in mixture
Let the sauce thicken & stir every now and than
The sauce is ready when it is reddish

I hope people will like this. Some ingredients will be hard to get hold of in England, but there are still a lot you can use for the next month."

Hanbury Hall

We had a lovely trip out the this National Trust property near the Jinny Ring.

Lampwork bead making

At the weekend I drove up to Enderby and attended Diana East's Introduction to Bead making course - what a lot of fun! I learnt many techniques and made about 20 beads! This picture is just a few of them made into a bracelet.

Hay-on-Wye

Cheesy Chicken Schnitzel by Patrik

A little while ago I was contacted by Ronja from Pitaya Media to review their newest application for the iPhone, so with iPhone in hand I downloaded Parik's Easy Cooking. Brwsing thorugh the recipes I saw that they were divided into various catergories and levles of cooking skill (easy to advanced). They sll looked like they were quite quick too, so I pottered off to the supermarket and bought the ingredients for Cheesy Chicken Schnitzel - chicken, eggs, parmesan cheese, butter, oil and tomato sauce. It was easy to butterfly the chicken breasts and dregde them in a cheese egg mixture, but not so much stuck to my chicken, so I had a cheesy omlete too, by frying everything off in the oild and butter. The tomato sauce warmed in a separate pan and soon it was time to serve. We had made a potato salad with chives, pepper and celery to go with the chicken. It was tasty and easy to cook, and there are plenty more to try, though I'm not too sure about chocolate noodles, but hey, why not try it!

Evolution July - Turkey Herder pie

This month Helen makes Turkey herder pie:

'I promised Mel I’d do the foovolution (sounds like a kylie song!) in July and after trying very hard to come up with something exciting I failed and went for a variation on ‘Sheppard’s pie’ as that is what the ingredients screamed at me. (Can’t help it I’m just not good at savoury, cake I can do but savoury usually get a ‘well it’s edible’ response from he who does the shopping). So ‘Turkey herder pie was made on Saturday with the help (and I use this in the loosest sense of the word) of boy and girl. Mince featured in March and April and made a come back in the form of turkey mince influenced by the fact that I don’t eat mammals (it’s a dissection room thing!). So while the kids ‘cooked’ pasta for mummy’s dinner (e.g. chucked half a pack of dried pasta around the floor with diggers!) I proceeded to create tea. I think most things used have appeared before but this time they have ‘de-volved’ into a simpler form.

• New potatoes (bigish one bort by mistake by he who does the shopping) were cut up and put on to boil in their skins. (I could claim some sort of added fibre benefit but I just couldn’t be bothered to do any peeling!)
• Olive oil put in a pan and diced onion added to soften.
• 1 clove chopped garlic added
• Sliced carrot, courgette and diced yellow pepper and aubergine added. (Boy said yuk to every thing but the carrot and returned to his pasta)
• Pinch or 3 of mixed herbs added (Athenian mix)
• When all veges soft (ish) they were transferred to a waiting dish.
• More olive oil added to pan
• Minced turkey put in pan with 2-3 teaspoons of bisto best chicken. (paper from the bottom of the turkey mince also added as girl was wedging herself between my legs at the time.)
• Paper removed!
• When turkey cooked the veges were returned to the pan
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes and 1 teaspoon of smooth peanut butter were added.
• This was mixed well and put into an oven proof dish.
• When the potatoes were cooked they were drained and mashed with milk and a knob of butter.
• The potatoes were then put on top of the turkey and vege mixture using an ice-cream scoop. (boy will only eat mashed potatoes if they are in ‘scoops’.
• This was covered in cheddar (the mildest and most bland white cheddar available to mankind – boy will only eat this sort!)
• They whole thing was put in the oven (~200 degrees) till the top went brown and it was bubbling
• Served with cranberry ‘red’ jelly.

He who does the shopping said it was quite nice (which is praise indeed). The kids were less impressed, but then anything that isn’t chocolate or spaghetti hoops usually fails to impress them. Girl tried it but started to fling turkey chunks around the room. Boy did eat the cheese covered potato and red jelly. He tried a carrot but pulled the ‘yuk’ face, at least he tried it! I though it was fine. And so on to the next person………'

The Tower of Time

This afternoon we popped down to Perrott's Folly, near Edgbaston Reservoir. Its the last day of Yukio Fujimoto's Offsite installation for the Ikon gallery. He has installed 1111 clocks within the tower (which may be one of the towers that Tolkien used as inspiration for his Lord of the Rings trilogy). On the first floor just one clock sits on the floor ticking very quietly away, then up the circular stairs again and there are ten in a row, and you can hear them quite well, then up another revolution and there are one hundred in a square and there is a rhythm to the ticking. Finally on the last floor there are one thousand clocks. There's a holding room on the floor below as there's only space for a couple of people to stand in the room with the clocks now, and as you come out of the holding room and start up the stairs it sounds like its raining quite hard upstairs. This last room is also the most beautiful room, with decaying splendor and plaster reliefs on the ceiling. The clocks cover every surface and form a 'white noise', its harder to decipher any rhythm too. Great stuff, I recommend you go and see it, but they shut at 5, so you have about two and a half hours!

La Banca, Cotteridge

A new restaurant opened about a month ago, just down the road from us, La Banca in Cotteridge. I went with work a week ago, and thought it would be a good place to go with Mum and Dad, so we walked down to have dinner last night. The building used to be a Barclays bank and has be tastefully turned into a restaurant, retaining the old safes as features. When we got there it was already quite busy and so we were ushered upstairs to our reserved table. This smaller dining room felt quite private, and a million miles away from the hub that is Cotteridge with all the buses going by outside. Dad ordered us some very tasty wines (La Joya sauvignon blanc and a Verramonte Merlot) and we all had different dishes. I started with the Gigante pasta filled with ricotta and chard in a tomatoey sauce, then a very tender rib-eye steak with pepper sauce and finally a light tasty tiramisu. Great stuff, I recommend you have a try, and I hope they will continue the way they have started, with friendly waiting staff and lots of good reasonably priced food.

Chaddesley Woods

Dad has a book called Living Britain and having enjoyed our trip to Thursley common we had a look in the book and found various places to visit near Brum. So our first outing was to a Worcestershire Wildlife Nature Reserve at Chaddesley Woods. As soon as we arrived we could see there were lots of butterflies and we could hear lots of birds. Walking through the reserve we saw long tailed tits, buzzards and butterflies of many kinds, including the sliver filigree, which we were told by the passing butterfly surveyor is the biggest in Britain. What a super outing, and then we had lunch at the Jinney Ring too.

Weekend fun

Last Friday Nick and I went off to the Hampton Cort Palace flower show, enjoying the recycled orange juice cartons as plant pots and more, then on Saturday it was off to the Summer exhibition and Tas , a Turkish restaurant, before The Winter's Tale at the Old Vic. None of us new the story so it was all a wonderful surprise and the setting was beautiful - lots of candle lanterns for the palace. Then on Sunday we went to Thursley Nature Reserve to see the multitude of sundews that they have! What a weekend!

Marina Abramovic Presents......

On Sunday I dodged the rain drops to catch the train up to Manchester and after a little meandering randomly through the streets of the city centre found my way to the Whitworth Gallery for Marina Abramovic Presents.... part of this year's Manchester International festival. My friend, co-worker and current artist in residence Kira O'Reilly was one of the innovative artists selected by Marina to perform in this exhibition. The show will take place over the next 2weeks, with the artists all preforming for 4hours each day.
When I arrived I was given a white lab coat, containing a small paper cup in the pocket, and I wandered into a large gallery, the walls nude of the regular hanging and lit by the enormous picture windows down one wall, it felt a little like a gymnasium. Along the window lined wall there was a dais, putting me in mind of a catwalk/runway. Milling around were my fellow participants, all clad in white lab coats too. This uniform was good, it made me feel part of the crowd even though I had come on my own, as it seemed many others had, though there was also a large party of teenagers, most likely on an 'A' level art trip, who giggled nervously. A gong rang out and we were all instructed to take one of the camping stools from the back wall and line up in rows facing the windows. I was quite surprised to see that there must have been something like 200 people in the gallery and eagerly awaiting the start. Marina and 4 helpers, all clad in the lab coats, stood on the dais before us and Marina started to explain the ideas behind her exhibition. The idea of body or performance art had started in the 70's and she wanted to use it to get us to appreciate the little things and to become comfortable with our boredom. She talked eloquently for a while and then we got out our little cups to be filled with water and then took 10min to drink the water, not just snatching at it as may be what happens in our busy every day lives. Staring out into the park beyond the windows, allowing thoughts to drain away, I felt very relaxed in a 'yoga-esque' way. Then we looked into the faces of 3 strangers, appreciating their features and trying to remember them. I first looked at a young girl with lots of freckles, then an older lady with wrinkles and finally another young girl with her fringe in her eyes. Finally, we walked from the room, considering each movement as Marina chanted lift, stretch, touch, move, which to start with was very fluid but as time passed took on a weird quality that put me in mind of dictatorship, quite peculiar.
As we were released from the room an irregular pounding started up and an occasional scream/screech could be hear from somewhere else in the building, and these continued throughout the rest of the exhibition. We all dispersed into the surrounding areas and galleries of the exhibition. I first encountered Terence Koh dressed in white sitting on his heels staring out into the foyer, he moved very slowly and different emotions rippled across his face. I spent some time watching him and then moved on into the adjacent room where Nikhil Chopra stood in a pair of white baggy pants scribbled arcs of charcoal onto the wall. Through all of his movements he drew a charcoal line on the wall or floor. The floor and surfaces but not the walls were wrapped in brown paper, meaning as we walked through the gallery there was an audible rustling. At one end he had scribbled six foot high letters reading Sir Raja III, and around the room with brown paper parcels and a table with an opened parcel of charcoal sticks. He moved with purpose but also in a slightly frenzied manner. By the end he had covered much of the space and I wondered if the room would be set back to its untouched state or would continue on from here for the next day's performance.
The screaming sound was louder here, and as I passed into the next area by one set of stairs I came across Amanda Coogan in a yellow dress, poised on the banisters above a large 'haystack' which I found out must be made of crash mats or mattresses, for she screamed and then threw herself on to these. Then slid down from them and walked up the stairs again and to her perch. Through a glass door, I came into a room that smelled a little unpleasant, as the few people in front of me moved to the side, I could see a large triangle of shoes, singularly pointing towards the rear of the room, down the diagonal was a long long trestle table laden with earth, and my initial thoughts were that this is where the smell was coming from, but then I saw that atop the dirt was a pig's head at each end. Not that this was offensive in any way but it lent the air that smell of a butcher's shop, which I happen not to like very much. Rounding the table there were more shoes and a chair holding a pile of shredded paper. Walking on I found Alistair MacLennan sitting, dressed all in black, with a large black boot balanced on his head and two pairs of spectacles on his nose in front of closed eyes. He never moved, and when I returned later it seemed that he had stayed this way for the entire exhibition. The collection of objects and the stillness didn't connect with me as other elements of the day did, and I wonder what I couldn't feel/see.
The next room, also entered via a glass door, was full of the sound of untuned radios. Eunhye Hwang, with her long dark hair falling into her eyes, dressed in a peculiar combination of dark blue shirt, creamy stripy skirt and white kitten heels, was moving four radios emitting static noise around her body, allowing them to open up so that she was making changes in the depth of the noise. It was brilliant to watch and she moved with deliberate actions, involving the audience in her performance too. There was also a fridge in the room, with a plate of green jelly on top and a large radio, which I presumed wasn't on. Later on there was a large piece of the green jelly on the floor and a man was eating jelly from a plate and the artist continued to make her noise music.
I then went in search of the source of the clanging, finding muscly Nico Vascellari in black t-shirt and jeans at the bottom of a stairwell bringing a large gold coloured rock/piece of metal down on to a smooth stone. He was sat in a pool of dust, and had remarkably beautiful feet, coated in the dust. Behind him were a couple of microphones, and as he brought the rocks together a reverberation was heard and felt through out the building. The banging was incredibly loud, and I felt the need to put my fingers in my ears, but he had no protection. I couldn't linger too long as it did hurt my ears, but the feeling of the vibrations through the floor were good. In the stair well at the other end of the building I found Kira, slowly falling in a very controlled manner down the stairs. When I got there, she had made it down about a quarter of the staircase and was upside down sprawled across the hard stone stairs, wearing just a pair of black driving gloves and a bruise across her shoulder. From being upside down her face was a deep purple and she was deeply concentrating on her slow slow movement. The deep purple colouration really made it look like she had been falling down the stairs, in perhaps a nasty accident, but as she righted herself, still lying across the steps her face returned to a more normal colour. Then upside down again, I moved closer and she opened her eyes to look at me and I felt a great connection, that she was observing me too.
Going past Ivan Civic clad in black climbing a wall displaying a video of his return to Sarajevo after ten years, I went upstairs and came across Marie Cool moving from table to table and other areas of the gallery, where she was re-enacting sculptural pieces, rhythmically moving string or papers or piles of salt, or walking past a line of folded paper so that her movement caused it to wave in the eddies of the air. The light here was beautiful, filtering through high windows onto the white walls. This was a very tranquil exhibit, and in great contrast to the dark room I next visited. Here, I was first read the 'rules of engagement' by a lab-coated assistant, I was to go in and 'worship at the alter' or words to that effect. Inside was an auditorium in the dark, with only lighting around a plywood construction on the stage. There were several other people inside in a cue before this, and one at the top of the steps feeding a mouth through a small 'glory hole', this was all we could see of Fedor Pavolv-Andreevich, who was making a homage to Vitaly Titov who had lived for twenty days attached to someone else's body. There was a mechanical voice-over too. I felt uneasy, whether this was because of the language used to describe what was to happen or whether there was something more I don't know, but I made myself stay and was instructed to wash my hands and then given a price of card that indicated I should feed the mouth a piece of cheese and tell it a nursery rhyme. Never one to remember nursery rhymes I eventually dredged up hickory dickory dock and felt particularly foolish reciting it. Not a comfortable experience all round, whereas all the others were so.
Jamie Isentein was barely visible beneath a pile of sheep and bears skins, playing and Melati Suryodarmo had yet to make it through the visa system so this left one artist to see, Yingmei Duan, naked moved in a vulnerable way around a darkened gallery. May be because I had already seen many things I spent just a few minutes with her and then seeing I only had half an hour left made another circuit of the performers, until a gong sounded again and we were all gently ushered towards the exit. Relieved of my lab coat I wandered out into bright day light and hot footed it back to the train station feeling contemplative and relaxed. All the artists had looked weary by the end of the 3hours we had been observing them, and I wondered how they would fair over the next two weeks as the exhibition continues.

This little film is a time lapse of photos taken every minute over a 3hour period of the area where the hedgehogs are living in Sarah and Juul's garden. I tried to bait the area with a slug found trying its best to demolish some tomato plants, but it had other ideas and is seen speeding away at the start of the movie, the little hedgies are in there too, the best shot is right near the end!

Chocolate cells

After finding the 1696 article on medicinal uses of chocolate I was chatting with Kira in the coffee room at work. We got to a point where we decided that may be we should try feeding chocolate to adipocytes (fat cells), though now I can't remember what all the connections were. Naomi is an expert on adipocytes and kindly said that we were welcome to use some of these cells that she would extract from stored tissue. The aim would be simple, we'd incubate the cells in the presence of some chocolate and hopefully they would expand in size as they took in the fat from the chocolate. A nice circular idea whereby the cells, which had been discarded to remove 'fat' would get fed fat. Kira was also interested in embellishing them with gold or other precious objects. After some research I reckoned that the easiest way was to add so cationic gold (positively charged) that would adhere to the outside of the cells through an electrostatic interaction as the cells are slightly negatively charged. Rachel generously said we could visualise them on the scanning electron microscope (SEM) too, which meant we'd be able to see the gold and the structure of the cells.

So first off Kira and I spent the afternoon trying to get chocolate into solution. I had hoped that just warming it to 37°C would be OK but this had a tendency to sit as gloop at the bottom of the tube. After a lot of fiddling we decided upon grating some high cocoa solids content chocolate (85% Green & Blacks in these experiments but later Kira sourced some French 100% from Cortes Ingles in Valencia) and melting and mixing it into standard serum supplemented media.


Adipocytes in culture

Then Naomi kindly supplied us with some cells, but the transport between labs caused massive infection and they all died, so we decided to go to them and spent a couple of days over at Aston. We helped to process the tissue and extract the individual cells before adding the chocolate solution. We gave them an overnight incubation to see if they would take up any fat. The next morning the chocolate stimulated cells certainly looked different from the non-chocolate stimulated ones, but it was more that they had a fine coating of particulates rather than having swelled in size.

To add the gold we had to tether the cells. They were floating atop the liquid in which they were growing so using poly-D-lysine coated coverslips (making use of electrostatic interactions again) we captured the adipocytes. Once isolated we coated with the gold solution, taking only 10min, before fixing in preparation for the SEM. Further dehydration was required, as the SEM works under partial or near vacuum, before we could 'see' the fat cells. Rachel and I had a quick look-see under the low vacuum instrument before using the higher powered one over in the microscopy suite with Naomi. And ta-dah!!! We found lots of things, mostly bits of chocolate particulate but also a fat cells that had adhered and then subsequently lost most of its cell contents. It looked like the nucleus had been ripped from the cells, looking like a fried egg missing its yolk. Using back scatter electrons we could also see the gold - looking like constellations sprinkled across the membrane!


Whole fat cell missing its insides

So what does all this mean I hear you cry? Well, according to Naomi, its the first time anyone's tried to visualize adipocytes under SEM and hopefully we can use further experiments to characterise these cells. So from a scientific point of view this 'Friday afternoon experiment' has been incredibly useful. On other fronts, this has been totally mind blowing - I've never used such high powered microscopes before and seeing a cell in such high magnifications is really quite something, and add in the gold stars/sparkles and I'm very excited! So the cells didn't do what we expected, but then as Prof Einstein said 'If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be research' and as such trying something different has brought out something new and exciting, not to say broadened all out horizons.


Magnification of the mambrane using back scatter electrons to see the gold labelling, like little stars

Fresh Garden Salad

To accompany or BBQ on Sunday I picked some pea shoots and borage flowers to go into the green salad, I just need the courgettes, cucumbers lettuce and beans to be ready at the same time and then everything will come from the garden!

Sylhet Spice Cuisine

My favourite curry restaurant in Birmingham - the Sylhet Spice Cuisine in Kings Heath - just yummy! This was Nick's fish dish on Friday night - complete with chilli 'green beans' ala Dougal on the Bramaputra!

Evolution June - Aku Shaak

This month the evolution baton passed to fellow food blogger Sabine of A lot on my plate who has summarized the progress so far and made a fantastic contribution with Aku Shaak - stuffed vegetable curry. Go and read her blog entry for more info!

Some lovely foodie pictures from our Gothenburg trip!

First potatoes

Today we dug up the first of our potatoes - variety rocket - that we planted back in February in a big pot in the garden. They were delicious made into a Spanish omelette!

Ireland surprise

It was Dougal's birthday at the weekend and Soazig organized a surprise - that we would all meet up in Dublin and spend the weekend staying at Ballyknocken cookery school. We couldn't have been more lucky, the weather was magnificent and the food was fantastic. Late on Friday night we tucked into tapas in Al's Diner in Wicklow and then snuggled down in the very comfortable hotel, to be greeted the following morning by the chucks and brilliant french toast at breakfast. Then a whistle stop tour of the region, calling in at Glendalough and Powerscourt. The back to the cookery school where Catherine created beautiful antipasto, potato and lemongrass soup, pork tenderloin with stuffing and polenta cake.



The following day we celebrated Dougal's birthday with another splendid breakfast, followed by a walk along the coast from Bray to Greystones, in the sunshine, we really didn't need lunch but had ice creams on the beach. Then to Bates in Rathdrum, behind a lively Irish pub, for a delicious locally inspired dinner - Wicklow crab ravioli, Dover sole, lamb and creme caramel with orange sorbet!



Our final day took us back to Dublin to the Guinness Storehouse and a little Guinness tasting, and to Trinity to gaze at the Book of Kells and the evocative Long Library.