Dinner at Cote

Tasty tea with M&D at Cote in Guildford. Tomato tart, chicory salad, veal escalope & steak frite with a lovely 'quaffable' fleurie.

Anticurate 4

Another trip down to the MAC for Anticurate 4! This time curated by the lovely ladies of Young at Heart I made it into the exhibition again :)

Dark cell culture

This image is from this Jstor article http://www.jstor.org/stable/3651440

I am reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot at the moment. Its a really interesting book about the most widely used and first human cell line HeLas, and the history of the woman they came from and her family's struggles. Last night I read a section about 'the immortal chicken heart' that was grown by Nobel prize winner, and fairly loopy, Alexis Carrel. He believed that light would stop cell culture from working and so had his lab painted black and the staff wear black lab coats, the only light coming from a sky light, as you can see in the picture. This is fairly hilarious from a modern prospective until I remembered that I did something similar a few years ago. We were getting a glutathione drop in our cells and didn't know why and it was suggested that the flavins in the monamine oxidases were reacting to the fluorecent lighting in the cell culture suite. So I did a few experiments in the dark (3am) and under red light! Of course this wasn't the reason at all, and now also hilarious, but it made me laugh and remember last night while I was reading the book! (The reason for the drop was disolved oxygen in the end).

Latest ceramics - more pebbles, birdhouses and nodes

The kiln was on again last night and I photographed all of the molecular pebbles I have made so far! I also made some more bird houses - one turquoise and one blue & white.

And I have made the first two nodes for the earth network:
1. Birmingham earth + toothpaste lid

and 2. Leicester earth and a button

Trying out Cafe blend - yummy!

Orange Meringue Cupcakes

Yesterday I bought a bag or tangerines and they were so sour that I couldn't eat them. So remembering the lemon meringue cupcake I had when we were in Cornwall I thought I try and make some orange meringue cupcakes! Easy peasy - regular cake mix (2 eggs, 100g sugar, 100g butter, 165g flour plus 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and soda each) with a teaspoon of orange essence, 2 tablespoons very tart freshly squeeze tangerine juice and the grated zest of 3 tangerines and a tablespoon of plain yoghurt to loosen it up. I put that in cases and then in the oven (180°C) for 15min until cooked through. I whisked up 4 egg whites til quite stiff and then whisked in 100g sugar. Once that cakes were cooked I popped 1/2 teaspoon of orange curd on the top, then piped on the meringue. Then they went back in the oven for 7min to brown. Very yummy!!

Down at the exhibition

       

STOP PRESS: The molecular pebbles just made it into Anticurate 3 at MAC! We'll have to pop down to see what the exhibition looks like tomorrow when the opening happens.

More Molecular Pebbles

Here are all the little molecules - now out of the kiln. I was quite impressed I didn't weld anything to the shelves!

Earth Network

I had an idea and I was wondering if anyone would like to help me realise it:

I'd like to make a network that represents the connections between people I know and those that they know and so on. That's nothing new really and is exactly what facebook and its like do.

But what I'd like to do is make the nodes that represent the people out of porcelain and glaze them with an earth/soil sample* from where the person is from, and to impress something into the node to represent that person (for instance a lid from a toothpaste tube, a pebble, a leaf etc etc).

*this would have to be earth or soil and not shop bought compost as that is mostly organic matter and will just burn away rather than impart any mineral conent and potentially colour to the glaze.

They could then be arranged in a number of ways - location, connection by friendship, time of arrival with me  - any of the LATCH principles would be great.

If you'd like to take part please wing me an email/contact me by facebook - I'll need from you a earth/soil sample about the size of quarter of a ping pong/table tennis ball (please make sure its not poo of any kind, that's not funny!!!) and the location it came from, something to impress into the clay, your name and if you want a node for yourself a return address (also if you want your impression material back).

Potting at home

The kiln arrived a little while ago and after a few false starts (and a new printed circuit board) I am up and running! I have put a couple of firings through now - for transfers, a bisque firing and a glaze firing to test out a whole bunch of colours I am trying out. So this week I went a little bit mad and made 20 molecular pebbles, including the 'macromolecular' version at the front right. Even Nick had a go. The shelves they're on here are a new addition to the garage too - good old Ikea!!

Pumkinseed Mole

This was a recipe I found on the Ramekins website way back in 2006 after I got back from Mexico but sadly its not there any more. But I have a print out!! So here we are the nicest mole I can make and its pretty easy.

Ingredients:

For the chicken & stock

big pinch of salt

1 small onion chopped

2 chicken breasts

For the sauce

100g pumpkin seeds, freshly toasted (4-5min in the oven at 200C)

large can tomatillos (kindly provided by the laughinggeos in NOLA), drained and rinsed

2 green chillies

5 lettuce leaves

1 shallot, peeled and roughly diced

3 cloves garlic, peeled

3 large sprigs coriander

dash of ground cumin

big pinch of black pepper

Cover the chicken breast and onion in boiling water, add the salt and simmer for 12min until the chicken is cooked. Remove the chicken and slice it. Save the stock - straining out any onioy bits.

Put in a blender all the other ingredients with about 100ml of the saved stock. Blitz and then put into a pan. Bring the sauce to the boil and add the chicken, simmer for 15min and then serve with rice for a super yummy tea!

Stratford

On Saturday we all piled down to Stratford upon Avon to picnic on the banks of the river with Naomi for her birthday celebrations. The sun came out and the boys even hired a boat and meandered down the river for a bit. In the evening we headed into the newly refurbed Royal Shakespare Theatre for a tremendous performance of Macbeth - lots of (fake!) blood and interesting alterations - the made the witches into rather ghoulish children ghosts. Really brilliant!!

Information design at Central St Martins

Last week I was on a course at CSM to learn about information design with the wonderful Angela Morelli, you can find her TED talk here. Using cut and paste (no computers at all!) we learnt how to make information more interesting and several great ways to generate interesting graphics - from maps to charts, from words to numbers. In the slide show you can see various things we created - bar graphs of the niceness and utility of cups we had brought with us, the classes favourite foods displayed as a menu using a script made from their handwriting samples, a giant graph showing how expensive a weeks course is (!) and my favourtie piece is the map I made recording my travels on foot through the week. Its drawn on tracing paper so that when its closed the stacked images show how the routes changed and accumulated over time. The little pocket the map fits into is the map (wrapping paper from Stanfords) I used to trace my journeys from - its from 1947, but all the right places are there!

The course was fab - and while I was in London I took the chance to meet up with lots of friends, on the South Bank with Mum & Dad, and with Kim, Chris & Katie, with Sarah at the Wellcome Collection Dirt on Disgust evening (that's where those fabulous chemistry set lights are btw) and I even met some new folk at the Arts Catalyst's Kosmica night!And of course there was time for cupcakes! At both Peyton and Byrne and at Bea's of Bloomsbury.

Life & Death of Marina Abramovic at the Lyric theatre

We've just come out of the world premiere of the Life and Death of Marina Abramovic. What a performance!! The stage was set with three resting 'corpses' set amongst red lit bones with black dogs prowling through them as we entered the auditorium, a deep bass note sounding. As the play started Willem Defoe took us throuh her childhood, which itself was harrowing, and scenes were perfomed by the starstudded cast. There was Serbian folk-like singing and powerful songs from Anthony (of and the Johnsons) which reverberated in our ears. The stageing and lighting were stunning - very clean and crisp. Our attention was rapt, even when the man adjacent passed out and needed to be moved! After the interval the cast sang en masse, and we heard more stories from Marina's life. The performance came to a close with three angelesque beings rising from the stage to thunderous applause. Phenomenal!

Note: if you want to have a peak at the performance have a look at this youtube video

Molecular pebbles

Down at mac I have been having a lot of fun making these funny little pebbles in porcelain. They make me think of molecular models! I shall have to make some more when the kiln arrives!

Wednesday Cake Night

We had a meeting at work today and I mistook, at a distance, the little choux pastries for coconut macaroons. But it meant that I then had a hankering for a coconut macaroon so I decided I would pick up the ingredients on the way home and make some. I also bought some ground almonds to make an orange and almond cake - not quite the same as the one I had in St Ives but atill pretty tasty!

Talisker beef

This is a very yummy and quick recipe. Buy the best piece of siroloin you can!

For 2 people
225g beef sirloin steak, trimmed and cut into strips
1 tablespoon chilli flakes and peppercorns , crushed (that's total not each!)
3 tablespoons Talisker or other very good whiskey
3 tablespoons light soy sauce
4 spring onions sliced
2 peppers, red/green, sliced
1 tablespoon veg oil
1 tablespoon seseme oil
120g angel hair pasta

Mix the beef, chilli, whisky and soy sauce together and marinade at room temperature for 30min (or more in the fridge). Cook the angel hiar pasta according to the instructions (usually 2-4min in boiling salted water), then drain and add the seseme oil. In another pan heat the veg oil and fry the spring onions and peppers for 2 min. Add the beef and stirfry for another 2 min until just cooked, then add any remaining marinade and cook for a minute. Then bring everything together and serve! Very good if you're hungry and in a rush (hence the dodgy photo) - for instance after climbing!!

St Ives part 4

We'd booked ourselves into Alba for a tasting menu at 8 so we thought a bit of exercising in the shape of a little cliff walk would be a good idea. So we headed off down a winding road again and left the car at Levant Mine. Sadly it wasn't steaming as the 1990's boiler had broken! We had a good explore and then joined the first tour of the day, learning all about the workings of the mine and its good fortunes until the early 1900s. Then we ventured further towards Botallack mine before heading back for a rest on the beach! Dinner at Alba was very delicious - the menu was matched by a series of Cloudy Bay wines from New Zealand, the most interesting being the Te Koko which was a Sauvignon Blanc aged in oak barrels. WHile we dined we watched the RNLI whiz out on a little zodiak, there was much interest by everyone around the harbour but it seemed that there was no medical emergency as the doctor came and went fairly rapidly. Needless to say we were the last people in the restaurant and definitely could have done with some trolleys to help with the full tummies up the hill!!

St Ives part 3

As it was Saturday we decided to take it a bit more slowly so we headed out after another superb breakfast to Tate St Ives. We played with the balloons filling the sea-facing galleries by Martin Creed, (Half the Air in a Given Space) and took part in Roman Ondak's Measuring the Universe by having our heights recorded on the wall - we were decidedly in the average streak! There was lots to see and we rounded it off with a cup of tea and flourless orange & almond cake on the roof terrace. Then a potter through many galleries finally ending up at the Barbara Hepworth museum, where the lady custodian invited us to trial our hands through the water in one sculpture to play with the light. A light snack of glistening Cornish strawberries overlooking the harbour before a quick change and back for dinner at Sims Restaurant. We'd certainly been spoilt before, because their food was really good but just not quite as excellent as everywhere else we had been. It was scallops and bacon or mackerel pate followed by lamb cutlets or cod in a creamy sauce. We declined dessert but had ice creams watching the biathlon competitors complete their race on the far side of the harbour having swum from Carbis Bay!

St Ives part 2

It was a stunning sunny morning so we decided to go for a spin down the very windy roads to Land's End (the most westerly mainland point), we arrived before any potential hoards but missed any end to enders too, so it was quiet and we got a little stroll in along the cliff. Then off to Mousehole for a mid morning ice cream and on to the Lizard peninsular (the most southerly maniland point), which was much nicer and more rustic and charming than Land's End. We walked down to the lighthouse and into the little harbour for a scramble over the rocks. Finally we headed down even smaller roads to Glendurgan garden and its amazing maze and tasty lemon meringue muffins! Back at the Nook we had an hour to put up the feeties before dinner at Saltwater. Another delicious meal - baked scallops or scallops with bacon jam, seafood risotto or Cornish crab linguine followed by chocolate mousse with honeycomb or pannacotta!

St Ives part 1

Its a long way to St Ives, so we set off first thing in the morning and poottled down the M5 and then A30, taking a little break to Yandles, finally arriving around 5. We had a cup of tea in the Nook, where we were staying before having an explore - what a beautiful place. We chose Rhurbabs for tea - exceedingly yummy - mussles, baked chicken with sweet potato wedges & salad and then a rhubarb crumble cake for dessert!

Winning!!

What a week! On Tuesday I had (the day from Hell) an interview and a big presentation to give. The interview was really hard and to be honest I thought that I had completely blown it so I headed off to the presentation thinking I'll give this my best shot and see if I can find a job else where. So I was really surprised to find a message when I got home to say they'd like to give me the job! Of course I said yes and next week I will meet with the head of the department to finalise a contract and duties - fingers crossed it'll all work out! The newest member of the School of Dentistry lecturing/academic staff.

When applying I said if I got it I would buy a kiln - might be a bit surprising but then I have been hankering after one for ages and over the last 6months down at the MAC I have been making all manner of strange and interesting objects. Today I got some time to go to the Earth and Fire Ceramic Fair at Rufford Park and I did indeed buy a kiln. The lovely people at Potclays are building it for me and I can pick it up in about 2 weeks. Its dinky - so I can get it in the car and can run it off the normal electricity supply. Starting small!!

While I was at the fair I bought a ticket for the tombola and I never win but I did this time! I am delighted to now own this pretty pot made by Katherine Winfrey! Back at home I harvested our burgeoning crop of raspberries into it. Fabulous all round really!

Gardener's World

We had a super time yesterday at Gardener's World Live at the NEC. Mum was volunteering for the RHS and we had time to potter about all the beautiful plants - I managed to come home with just 2 - a cephalotus (Australian picther plant) and a tiny hosta called snowy mouse ears. Wonderful fun! Then for Father's day we popped down to Highbury Hall where they had a bird display going on - and nearly got eaten by the biggest vulture I had ever seen - she could have gone off with my car!!

Anglesey

And back at Easter we took a trip to Anglesey with Jean and Dick - visiting Amwlch, Tregarth, Plas Newydd, Parys Mountain and South Stack

Grasmere

At the beginning of May Nick, Charlie and I went for lots of walks around Grasmere - Silver Howe, Helvelyn and Helm Crag - some more pictures on Charlie's blog too. There was also the start of the use of the Tom Tom

Bio-ceramics

I have been toying with ideas around the use of plasticware in the lab for a little while. I am struck by how durable yet disposable they are. To highlight this I have been making porcelain casts, which are delicate and not so disposable, of the humble Petri dish and trying different glazes on them to represent biological samples - either eukaryotic or prokaryotic cells - growing on them. I particularly like the one above where I have used a very tiny sliver of red glass, which seems to have pooled in small colony like patches. I have also been wondering if there is enough iron in biological preparations - for example bacteria brown on iron rich agar - to make a glaze. Below I have used Porphromonas gingivalis, which is fairly iron rich - I think a hint of brown can be seen! Next I would like to track the route plastics take through the lab - from pristine box fresh to autoclaved distortion.

Barcelona - beautiful food

Dinner at El Xalet on Montjuic - a special place for a special 70th birthday dinner for Jean

Some of the delicious tapas we had - this was at Taller de Tapas in Born, totally demolished!

Yo! Sushi

Yesterday we had a big old wander through Brum and ended up at Yo! Sushi for lunch. We'd both never been in before so it was a great little adventure - yummy yummy fishy lunch!

A trip to Hay

Last Saturday we took a drive in the sunshine down to Upton upon Severn to visit Andy at Upton Wines, principly to check out what wines he might have for the wedding. Then as we were halfway there we carried on down to Hay on Wye for a little potter and a nice lunch at Richard Booth's Cafe at the back of the book shop. N had a yummy pizzetta with eggs on top. Along the way we found a tree keeping warm!

Action Weaver and Curious about Craft

...came down to the University today to give us a taste of weaving with Travis Meinolf's super easy to use back loom. Helen and I had a super lunch time creating a little section for what will become a blanket made by the people of Birmingham. The one in the picture (with Travis) was made by the people of San Francisco.


(here's a bit I made!!)

San Diego

After my jaunt to New Orleans I headed across to San Diego for the IADR conference. A busy busy time but we had a chance to discover Chocolat and Pinkberry. Fabulous crepes and frozen yoghurt!

New Orleans weekend 2

Today D and I went out of town to the plantations and checked out Houmas house and Oak Alley meandering our way back along the edge of the river. No armadillos spotted but it was a super drive and we got really close to the train going over the Huey Long bridge next t us!

New Orleans weekend

I headed off to New Orleans on Saturday and by Sunday morning we were all pottering around the French Quarter! First stop brunch at the Court of the two Sisters - beautifully draped in wisteria and delicate jazz being played in the courtyard as we ate a tasty brunch of eggs benedict, New Orleans King cake and crawfish. Of course we then had to stretch our legs and had a good browse around the Quarter before heading back to D&S's house for a spruce up before a special tea at NOLA - delicious fish and fabulous desserts, even a little becandled ice cream for me. A super day!

Laboratory Life Exhibition

All things come to an end but the exhibition of Laboratory Life is still on til Monday and there will be a public forum tomorrow if you're in the area. Its picked up quite a bit of interest already! Check or wired and culture 24.

Giant agar dish and inoculation of the dress

Today we've had a really busy day. Sarah & Brian made 10L of agar and poured it into our homemade petri dish. The Chinese shop even ran out of clolourless agar so we had some yellow, green and red too, which is kind of exciting looking! Then we made our embroidered dress damp and pressed it into the agar. Finally we harvested all our bacteria (that we'd grown on other agar dishes) and innoculated the dress. Pretty pooped now!

Lots and lots of embroidery and some bacteria!

We visited the micro lab at the hospital to find out what our nasal swabs had grown - the white plates showed none of us were carriers of MRSA but several of the group had Staphlococcus aureus (of a non-resistant strain). Then we went back to Lighthouse to embroider (lots)! And then to the hostel also to embroider!

Regency dresses with Martin at Brighton Museum

Today we were incredibly lucky to visit Brighton Museum stores with Curator Martin Pell who showed us one hundred years of dresses covering the Regency period and surrounding times. The Regency period was 1780-1830. In the slideshow there are images of the detailed embroidery and patterns in the fabrics - we're going to be using these as inspiration for the embroidery we'll do to our regency bacteria dress. The threads we use have been dyed and impregnated with natural antimicrobials.

Visiting Simon's lab

Here we are in the lab painting with coloured bacteria. I think we also look like bacteria moving around - we vanish to visit the warm rooms. I think I also captured a spider walking across the lens.

Lab life day 2

Today we went out on a big ramble aound Brighton visiting the fish mongers for some fish to grow some bioluminescent bacteria, to various monuments associated with the Regency period and Mrs Fitzherbert, the Brighton Pavilion and of course the seaside! WHile we were in the lab I also set up a time lapse (a photo was taken every minute) - you can see we were pretty busy with visitors!

Infective Textiles at Laboratory Life, Brighton

A couple of days ago I headed down to Brighton to join Laboratory Life at Lighthouse. This art-science set of collaborations has drawn together members of both art and science communities to work on some really amazing projects. I am working with Anna Dumitriu on a project called Infective Textiles. We're going to try and use bacteria to colour and pattern fabric and then, as its Brighton, create a Regency dress. We spent yesterday getting to know each other in the team - there's Anna, Brian, Sarah, Rosie and me - and getting together some ideas of how the project might work. Today we went on several field trips to source some bits and pieces. Our first port of call was to the hospital microbiology labs to pick up some of the more scientific bits of kit - a microscope, some agar plates, bins for disposing of the bacterial waste at the end. Then we popped into ASDA for the less scientific things - plastic boxes, salt, spring water etc. And finally we drove a little way down the coast to Widewater Lagoon and Nature Reserve where the water is a little brackish and there are some good sulphur eating bacteria in the mud. There were also a lot of swans ( and rabbit droppings!) but we had a fun time in the freezing cold splashing about in our wellies! Back at Lighthouse Oron Catts gave a short talk about tissue culture histories and there was an interesting debate afterwards about using living organisms in art (and science) pieces. Thought it was nearly tea time after all that we did get a moment to make up some of (Dr Simon) Park's Kitchen agar - from agar (from the Chinese supermarket), marmite, honey and pea protein powder (it was supposed to be skimmed milk powder but somehow we lost that on the way back from the supermarket!!). Tea was had at the basketmakers.

Molecular gastronomy

This year is the International Year of Chemistry and we decided we would celebrate with a little molecular gastronomy. But not Heston Blumenthal for us, noooo we thought we'd make edible molecular models! We asked our friends what they would make - from insulin to methane came back the answers. I sketched out all the potential molecules (on the back on an envelope no less - quite unintentionally) and we chose two to make. The bonds would be lollipop sticks and the atoms would be cake balls (ala Bakarella)

'back of an envelope!'

Can you guess what they were? Or highlight the following text to find out They were vanilin (at the top of the page) and theobromine (at the bottom of the page) from vanilla and chocolate respectively. We made cake from 5 eggs, 220g butter, 220g sugar and 220g self raising flour. Then we split the batter into two, adding vanilla essence to one half and cocoa to the other. Once cooked we mixed the crumbled cake with vanilla frosting/icing and shaped the sticky mixture into 46 cake balls/atoms. Using a little melted chocolate coating we stuck the lollipop sticks into all of them (plus some doubles!) and let them set in the fridge.

'sketch molecules'

We started with the uncoated cake balls making a 'sketch' model before we got into the serious business of coating the cakes with chocolate coating (candy coat from Hobbycraft). Once coated each cake ball/atom was pushed into a piece of oasis by the lollipop stick/bond so it could set. Popping them into the freezer helped quite a lot. Then time for assembly, we heated up a skewer to melt the chocolate coating so that we could push the bonds in and voila molecules were made!
We've been carefully counting bonds and fingers crossed everything is present and correct! Remarkably tricky but great fun.

The chocolatey brown atoms are carbon, the red ones are oxygen, the blues are nitrogen and the white ones are hydrogen.

Tagxedo

A while ago I got really excited about wordl, well today I have found something even better (could there be?!!) and that's Tagxedo - where you can make a word cloud and make it an interesting shape too!

String Bean

Today we went in search of new fish tank plants but the usual place was completely sold out. So pottering a bit further down the road we happened upon another garden centre with aquatics and a tea shop! We were lucky in the plant department and then had a very yummy cup of tea and piece of carrot cake :-)!!

Last weekend we all had a super time in Guildford - going out for tea at Olivio before seeing Alan Ayckbourn's Life of Riley at YAT. Then a trip to see the butterflies in the Glasshouse at RHS Wisley!

Jelly baby fudge

This afternoon we went for a little potter down to Webs of Wychbold and while browsing through their food department I discovered they were selling fudge covered in jelly babies. Now I thought that sounded like a good idea and having a can of condensed milk in the cupboard I thought I would try and make something similar. Never having made fudge before I found a recipe online and once the fudge was ready and poured into the tin and applied a whole bag of jelly babies to the top. A couple of hours later and the whole thing was set. I sliced it up and Nick and I tried a piece out. Delicious! The fruity flavours really add an exciting twist - but the jelly babies were still really runny - and so the whole experience was rather sticky!! Speaking of which I must finish off the washing up!

Marmalade

Whilst we were away, I found some Seville oranges in Wilton. So I thought I would knock up some marmalade - very simple: I put the oranges (about 7 I think) into a casserole dish, covered them in water and baked them for a couple of hours. Then I cut them in half and scooped out the insides and threw that back into the cooking liquid. I brought that to the boil and boiled for 5mins. Then I sliced a few of the oranges thinly, I like not too much peel. I strained off the bits out of the cooking liquid and returned the liquid to the pan. I added sugar (500g to 750ml liquid) and the sliced peel, brought it to the boil and waitied til it 'jammed' (about 118C). Then all that remained was to put it in sterilised jars! Yummy!

Happy New Year!

A few sparlers from a lovely few days at Dinton Mill near Salisbury.


And here's our delicious New Years Eve dinner, handmade of course!