I love you, Jamie but have you seen my kitchen?

After coming back from US I am all about catching up with excellent British TV (and the BBC have just upped their ante with fascinating documentary by professor Helen Beard about life in ancient Rome) and one of the programmes on the iPlayer was a brilliant cooking programme by a British girl in Paris - Rachel Khoo. After, ekhem, devouring indeed, the whole of the series available on iPlayer until wee hours in the morning I made a mad dash this afternoon to get my hands on the copy of her cookbook.

It is exactly what I was after to prompt me into cooking a bit more in my shoebox size kitchen in our Edinburgh flat (which I was able to avoid recently, I must admit). Rachel's kitchen in her Belleville flat (and she demonstrates it on screen when she stretches her hands and is able to touch both walls of her kitchen) has no space for dozens of pots and pans or that ultimate British object of envy aka the Aga. Instead Rachel creates her magic with a mini oven and two gas rings!

Though we have not moved too far from Jamie's territory – David Loftus did the pictures for the book (and Rachel illustrated the chapters) with his beautiful little depth of field and tilt and shift effect known from Jamie's publications.

I've had a long conversation about Rachel with the guy at Waterstones bookshop when I was buying the book, his face lit up from within when I passed it on to him at the checkout. It turned out that he is watching the programme too, though he admitted that it not necessarily the recipes but rather the prettiness and natural charm of the cook herself that draws him in. I do agree as I cannot take my eyes off Rachel's perfectly drawn in trace of black eyeliner and rouged pout. Though using loads of butter and full fat cream ('If you have to cook, do it properly' as she puts it) is what I like as well, not to mention her charming, slightly chipped metal bowl to whisk all the ingredients in. Aha, one more Rachel's advice – when you're mix in it the batter for your madeleines a la crème au citron, fold it in with your wooden spoon while turning the bowl at the same time.

All I need to do now is to get my hands on a multitasking Le Creuset casserolle dish and a mini nutmeg grater. Et voila!

http://www.rachelkhoo.com/blog

Back from Texas!

Nope I have not disappeared from the surface of the Erath, I just went to Houston Texas, and now I am finally back in Edinburgh and slowly emerging from my first jetlag experience (16 hours sleep two days in a row anyone?).

That trip was long time in the making (I had to go to Belfast from my American visa which was an experience in itself!) and 9 days in America went by like a dream (a hot and sweaty one I must say, it was +35 degrees, tornado in Dallas and 90% humidity - even our Ethiopian driver was saying that the life in Houston in the summer can be unbearable), now we are back and we are supposed to get back to work mode pronto.

Here are some images from our stay in Downtown Houston and from our 8 miles walk (yes, walk!) into the real american suburbs (these houses looked like taken straight from 'Desperate Housewives'!). More can be seen at my other blog www.theillustriousillustrator.blogspot.com or at my Twitter/Instagram feed.

Enjoy! All the visual clichees are really there, just look up and you'll see another one:

I am back...before I go again

And I got myself some...Marni. For H & M.

We seem to be socialising as never before!

...remarked Simon today.

Yesterday we seemed to excess all the limits! Our friends came over from Ayshire (it is 2 hours drive from Edinburgh after all) and as we have not seen them for a long time (they have had a baby girl meanwhile, she is 6 months old now!) we had to catch up properly. And before we knew it, it turned out to be a...7 hour chat in Spoon! Spoon staff were lovely as usual, bringing on the menus and constant supply of home made ginger beer while we blabbed on, about work, bringing children up (their babydaughter was super patient and undemanding while oozing charm in her carefully curated pink ensemble - parent are great visual artists after all!), photography and life in general. 

I must confess that I am sometimes rather put off by lukewarmness of British people in expressing their oppinions (like you would have to drag it out of them and all you are getting for your efforts is sometimes just these ummmm and ekhmmmm sounds but no proper statement) but not these two. It is very refreshing to have such a long (well, this one was uber long! Sorry guys, we have not even noticed time passing!), personal chat, punctuated by untamed laughter and interesting gossip. I do appreciate it a lot that I do not have to be very very careful  and proper in what and how I am saying in our conversations.

Another person that we have such a great connection with is our friend, photographer Sophie Gerrard, who was showing her personal projects tonight to the audience at Edinburgh College of Art. We have managed to drag her out for couple of drinks afterwards, which I am ashamed to admit, but made us both completely drunk, and Simon and I, we have only had one beer each!

It is lovely to catch up with friends these days! We have not been doing it too often before or maybe only now we seem to get our own crowd.

We were supposed to meet yesterday in the National Museums of Scotland (but we chose food instead!) so here are some images that I took there on my previous visit in this institution, before they get lost in the mess on my desktop. So any illustration to today's post has no relevance to the text featured, apart form the fact that we really enjoy our coffee in the museum's cafe!

Couple of more interesting objects:

Only in Belgium

I am back from my travels - I went to meet my mum and our friends in Belgium last week. If you follow me on Instagram/Twitter you know now what I ate, drunk and what was the weather like.

But you have not seen yet a protest of Flemish firefighters that we have accidentaly became a part of. It was -12, police was on one side and bored firefighters on the other side and our Belgian friends were extremely excited about the street in front of the PM headquaters was completely empty. They have never seen it that way - apparently there is a permanent traffic jam there so they immediately wanted to have it documented in pictures! And this is how we ended up in the middle of the protest - someone opened tha park gate for us and here we were!

Later on I saw in the local newspapers that the firefighers poured water all over the police...

So here we are: Mamma with the police and firefighters in the background, Andre and Wout celebrating the lack of the traffic jam and the general view of the street and some worried firefighters (they would have to work two years more before retiring...).

Other highlights of the stay included lots of Godiva/Leonidas/Boon chocolates, tasty beers (and this is from someone who is not a big fan of beer!), proper winter, early starts and late nights (Belgium people work hard and party hard) and coffee (do not ask for tea in Belgium, you might end up with a beverage that does not have much in common with what is popolarly known as a cup of tea...).

I definitely need to come back to have a proper look at a new Rene Magritte museum.

Oh Justin

Latest Twitter finds

Racy meadieval nuns:

http://www.gotmedieval.com/2012/01/needs-more-naked-mmm-marginalia-91.html