Oooo, new routines…

This was not the best site to stumble across while feeling like a fat flobbery cold-ridden blob of putty, but there are some fun-looking kick-arse workouts on it.  Also a timely reminder that I really need to sort out a new gym workout.

Definitely going to try those once I’m feeling better.  This is not turning out to be my best Christmas holiday ever; one might say that it’s been quite strikingly shit so far.

Foooooooood

Hope everyone had a Happy Christmas!  Mine was mostly marked by the sniffles; given how hard I’ve been working for the past month it was probably inevitable that I’d end up getting ill as soon as I stopped work, but hey, it didn’t stop me stuffing myself!

Anyways, I haven’t done a food post for a while, so thought I’d post a few recipes, most especially the one for Christmas dinner!

Walnut and broccoli pasta
Head of broccoli, broken into small florets
1 red pepper, chopped
1 yellow pepper, chopped
Scant handful of walnuts, smashed
2 cloves of garlic
 Around 50g of mature cheddar
Around 150g (uncooked weight) of linguine or spaghetti

1.  Finely chop the garlic and fry gently in olive oil, taking care not to burn.
2.  Put the pasta on and cook according to packet instructions.  While doing that, add the veg to the pan with the garlic and turn the heat up a bit.  Cook for a further 3-4 mins and then add the walnuts.
3.  Remove from the heat and stir through the chopped cheese.
4.  To serve, twizzle the linguine into nests on the plate and top with the veg mix.

Bacon and prawns with pasta

2-3 rashers of bacon, fat removed
Packet of cooked prawns
1 onion
Clove of garlic
Chilli to taste (I use around half a medium one, which gives the sauce a nice kick)
Either a tin of chopped tomatoes or 4-5 ordinary tomatoes, chopped
1 red pepper or half a courgette, chopped
Generous handful of spinach, roughly chopped
A little oregano
Around 150g of penne or some other robust pasta

1.  Fry the chopped onion, chilli and crushed garlic in a little oil until softened.  Chop the bacon into small bits (using scissors is a lot easier) and add.
2.  Add the tomatoes and oregano, plus a slug of red wine if you like, and cook for a further five minutes or so.  Add the pepper or courgette.
3.  Cook until the veg is softened (around 5-10 mins) and add the prawns and spinach.  Heat through thoroughly.  Optionally, if you like, you can stir through a tablespoon or two of low-fat creme freiche and then remove from the heat.
4.  Drain the pasta and stir through the tomato mix.

Christmas Pig

Boneless joint of gammon (smoked or otherwise – mine was an unsmoked one from Waitrose) 
For the stock:
Couple of sticks of celery, onion, carrot, swede, bay leaves, parsley, or whatever other aromatics you like

For the glaze:
Around 100g of dark muscavado sugar
3 tablespoons of mustard powder
Generous tablespoon of honey
Enough hot water to make a paste

1.  Put the gammon and stock ingredients in a large pan and bring to the boil.  Simmer for around 2 hours.
2.  Drain off the stock and reserve (leave in a bowl in the fridge overnight and the fat will congeal out on the surface; skim off).
3.  Slash the fat on the joint into diamonds and put onto a foil-covered tray.  Pour the glaze over and work into the meat thoroughly.
4.  Put into a hot oven (around 230 C+) and roast for half an hour to forty minutes, turning and basting frequently.
5.  Leave to stand a little while before carving.


Stuff to go with the pig:



Braised red cabbage


Around 1/4 of a red cabbage, sliced
Half an onion
Blob of butter
Slug of red wine
Around a teaspoon or so of allspice
Genersou tablespoon or two of marmalade

1.  Fry the onion in the butter until softened, add the cabbage.  Cook for a further five minutes or so.
2.  Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a gentle bubble.  Simmer for an hour or two.

This is great with cheese, bread or oatcakes as well.

Lemony carrots

2 large carrots
Teaspoon of honey
Squeeze of lemon juice
Slug of olive oil

1.  Slice the carrots into chunky fingers and parboil for around five minutes.  Mix the honey, oil and lemon.
2.  Drain the carrots and put in a baking tray.  Pour over the dressing and grill until tender.

Roast potatoes

Around 4-5 roasting potatoes
Plenty of olive oil
Polenta
Salt

1.  Cut the potatoes into halves or quarters if they’re big, and boil for around five minutes.  Drain, and shake around vigorously in the collander to rough them up a bit.  Leave to stand and steam for a few minutes.
2.  Put plenty of olive oil into a baking tray; you can either heat it or add the potatoes cold, both seem to work OK.
3.  Put the potatoes in a mixing bowl and dust well with polenta and salt.  Add to the baking tray and cook for around 30 minutes or more at a high temperature (230C+), shaking every so often.

Neutral shadows…and new hair, part 2

As requested by the most fabulous Em, here are some piccies of my new hair.

From the side:

And front elevation!

This is the best haircut I’ve had in a while; it can be sleeked up or roughed down very readily, which I love.  The colour isn’t bad either, although I think I might prefer a slightly denser darker black, it looks a bit too brown just now.  We’ll see how it’s looking after Christmas.

I’ve been meaning to post for a while on neutral eyeshadows, because I’m mildly addicted to them and have a growing collection!  I’ll try to get some of my favourites out and photo’d over the holidays, but meantime I wanted to show this collection:

I love these.  Heaven and Velvet Revolver are the perfect base and crease shadow colours on me (I’m wearing both in the photos but it’s not very visible).  I’m not so keen on Nude Beach, because the sparkly bits are too chunky for my taste, but every other shadow is a lovely colour and texture.

It’s not cheap (£22 I think) but it’s very well worth it.

This is another collection of nude-ish shadows that I like a lot:

This is MAC Notoriety palette.  The colours don’t show so well; the topmost left is a more pinky tone and the bottom left is a gorgeous dirty gold, perfect skintone colours on me (hence the name, I suppose!).  This is a great palette for a classic-neutral-with-a-twist eye.

What are your favourite nude eyeshadows?

Festive tag!

Spotted on the lovely Blinking Idiot’s page.  This will show up just how generally un-Christmassy I am!

Favourite Colour  It varies, but mostly black.

Facebook? Yes, rarely, mostly to share photos.

Favourite Christmas Song It has to be confessed that I hate almost every Christmas song in existence (Scrooge alert).  But this year’s no.1 is all right 😉

Christmas Tree – Real or Fake? Neither, I don’t have one and haven’t for the past few years.  If I did it would be a black one (I saw someone carrying one yesterday).

Hottest Celebrity? Oh dear, it’s a long list.  Right now, since I’m re-watching Battlestar Galactica, it would be Jamie Bamber, who plays Lee Adama.

And just to show that this has nothing to do with my uniform fetish

Viggo Mortenssen, Nathan Fillion, Johnny Depp and Adam Baldwin all get a vote too.

Favourite Restaurant Impossible to choose just one, but mentions must go to The Boathouse in South Queensferry, No. 16 and La Vallee Blanche in Glasgow and an utterly superb little restaurant in Florence whose name entirely eludes me.

Favourite Magazine Elle probably, although I don’t read them that much.

Favourite Holiday Drink I have a weakness for mulled wine.

Favourite Christmas Movie Die Hard!

Glutes

A while ago, I stumbled across this article on glute strength, and was intrigued.  There are some Pilates exercises (the rear leg extensions and all their horrible variants, not to mention Swan Dive) which I’ve always found unusually hard, and which I’ve never been able to improve on very much.  This always puzzled me a bit because I have strong legs and glutes.

The article talks about glute activation and shows a couple of simple tests to help you figure out how well your glutes activate.  I aced one test and miserably failed the other!  Out of curiosity I did the remedial exercises recommended in the article and lo and behold, two weeks later I can pass both tests and all those rear leg extension exercises are suddenly a whole lot easier.

Did it actually make any difference to my ass?  Not visibly, no, but I’m liking the power I can get into a Swan Dive.  Interesting how the small things can make so much difference.

New hair

After delaying it for about three weeks due to mentalness at work my hair is finally looking respectable once again.  Actually I hope it doesn’t look too respectable (one of my mum’s neighbours once mortally offended me by saying my haircut looked very smart); I asked for a cross between Agnyss Dean’s shaggy, erm, shag and a graduated Danni-Minogue-esque bob (I suspect I’ve misspelt names there but I don’t care), and that is pretty much what I got.  I dyed it Midnight Red myself; this is basically black but with a red glint if the light catches it at the right angle. 

This is as dark as my hair has been in a very long time and I was quite interested to see the impact it has on my makeup.  I have always thought (possibly wrongly!) that I can wear both warm and cool colours, although perhaps not extremes from either category.  With darker hair I think this definitely pushes me a bit more towards the cool end of the spectrum; certainly I’m thinking about jewel colours more now, rather than the olives/browns/generally sludgier colours I was wearing when my hair was redder.

I’d post a piccie but the light is terrible (it might be categorised as Glesgie Grey) and I look like a ghost anyway.

Perfume

Inspired by Laura, and my ever-growing collection…..

Narciso Rodriguez

I like Essence and Musk, but my favourite is the original For Her.  Someone described it as smelling rich, sophisticated and dirty.  Yeah, that about sums it up.  For a long time it was my signature perfume.

MAC MV3

Possibly my very favourite perfume ever; it’s sweet and quite intense with vanilla and jasmine overtones, but with a dark leathery and vertiver depth.  Utterly delicious and very sexy.


Paul Smith Story

I tend to prefer male perfumes to female ones, which I think often are too sweet/florally and don’t have enough depth. I like this one for its mix of citrus, floral and wood; it’s a very nuzzly fragrance.  It’s one of my standard work-wear fragrances.

Lancome Hypnose For Men

I suppose this might be described as a masculine oriental fragrance; it’s quite spicey with lavendery and musky overtones.   I think it’s almost feminine-smelling on first sniff, then the spices and warmth deepen it.  It’s my boyfriend’s signature scent; he’s a proper boy’s boy but with an unexpected feminine streak, and it suits him perfectly. 

Viktor and Rolf Antidote

Another citrus-floral-wood-leather fragrance; citrus spicey topnotes and then a vanillay woody base note to finish.   It’s a classic-with-a-twist; quite sophisticated and polished (a little at odds with V&R clothes perhaps!); gentlemanly in other words!  I like subverting that by wearing it when I’m working serious black leather and shedloads of black eyeliner.

John Varvatos

Utterly delicious; a warm, sophisticated and dirty mix of leather, spices and tobacco with an underlying unexpected sweetness.  I stumbled across this at T5 in Heathrow and bought the last one on the shelf.  It’s one of the most masculine fragrances I have; love wearing this with something very feminine.

I do think about whether the perfume I wear will work with what I’m wearing (the same goes for make-up as well).  There is the obvious masculine-frgrance-feminine-outfit juxtaposition, but I also tend to associate smells with colours and textures and if the “colour” of a smell doesn’t work with the clothes I’m wearing, I get annoyed.  Yes yes, I am weird.

I really want to try Narciso Rodriguez For Him and Jo Malone Vanilla and Star Anise and Black Vetyver Cafe perfumes; too skint to buy them now but come later in January I’ll be checking them out.

What’s your favourite perfume and what do you like wearing it with?

I’m alive!

Rather to my own surprise, after two of the hardest weeks I’ve ever had, at least in terms of work.  I don’t think I’ve worked less than 11 hours a day for the past ten days.  I’m not back at work until next Tuesday and I dread to think of what’ll happen when I get back, but there it is, I care not for the next few days.

Feeling pleasantly smug because nearly all my Christmas shopping is done.  I need to get one more thing for The Boy and mebbe a bottle of summat for dad, but that’s it otherwise.  I even have Christmas cards (I despise Christmas cards and resent the fact that I spent £15 on cards, paper and all that shit, but my family expect them, so I have to submit).  I was quite pleased that I managed to find one for The Boy which has skulls on; that’ll amuse him, ageing rocker that he is!

Christmas party on Friday; not really terribly keen but I have to go, so there we are.  I’m wearing a slightly drapy jersey LBD with a twisted detail at the bust, a wide bronze bow-shaped cuff, nude fishnets, nude flats with studs (ta Topshop) and this necklace, which is huge and unbelievably lovely IRL.

I have to fly to get to the party venue, and have every intention of travelling with nowt but my Tabitha Minx handbag as hand luggage.  My outfit was chosen specifically for compactness in packing!

And in other news, many thanks for the lovely LionLovingTiger for getting my parcel to me – thanks gorgeous, you’re a star!

Leftovers!

On Tuesday evening I made up a big batch of the geeky weirdo chick beef chilli – it involves lean mince, shedloads of veggies, borlotti beans or whatever else I have kicking around, tomatoes etc etc!  Some of it went onto spaghetti for dinner.  Some of the leftovers were mixed with chopped spinach and stuffed into beef tomatoes and peppers for dinner yesterday.  And tonight, the final portion has been mixed with some grated courgette and feta cheese and mixed up with some pasta (and bloody gorgeous it tastes too, I must say).

That’s six decent nutritious meals for around five or six pounds.  I am quite impressed.

Good smells

A vat of lentil soup on the stove and foccacia cooking gently away in the oven.  A pile of freshly done washing in my bedroom.  Pretty smells!

This gives me much satisfaction.