Category Archives: Recipes

Me. Baking red velvet cupcakes. Are you kidding?? I mean honestly, if you’d told me a year ago, wait scratch that, if you’d told me three months ago that I would be creating from scratch painfully scrumptious and most adorable little red velvet cupcakes, I would have probably gagged on my vitamin water (orange+orange, c+calcium, I don’t know why I’m plugging vitamin water but yum, it’s my current favourite thing) and possibly made a mess of me. And you.

Three months ago, I didn’t even own a mixing bowl.

But stranger things have happened. From my first foray into baking, straight into some hiccups which were quickly frosted over with vanilla butter cream, and my very new crazy awesome Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, I’m now a total pro at uh… at least at removing the whisky bits from my electric mixer because trust me, that one took me quite a while to figure out.

Read More →

I read Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner a few months ago. It was such a tear jerking, soul wrenching story, so far from the usual trash that I read (chick lit, Steig Larsson, The Twilight Saga! Eeek!), that it moved the emotionally stunted mountains within me. I don’t even know what it is, I mean it’s not like I relate to the protagonist, god my life is brilliant-cut 5-carat diamond compared to his, but you know a book has changed made a dent in your life when it makes you want to be a better person.

Or eat a brownie.

Read More →

So we had a friend over for dinner the night I cooked my pork & prawn fried rice. He’s an English guy, born and bred, about five heads taller than me and clearly far more intelligent. Because here I am cooking away, he pokes his head around the kitchen door and says “hey what’s for dinner?” to which I reply “oh, just fried rice… it’s got pork and prawns in it.. and egg.” and then he goes “oh right, yong chow fun”  with a totally straight face.

What?? Is that what it’s called? 

I would have keeled over laughing at his geniusness if I wasn’t so appalled by the abomination that I am – a completely useless Chinese person.

Read More →

Sometimes Panu goes to work and comes home with little gifts. Mostly they’re techy gifts, like this awesome teeny tiny unbreakable water resistant usb stick (I love techy gifts by the way, because I’m too much of a numpty to buy them for myself) or a new wireless mouse or an awesome KEF surround sound system. Ok, so that last one wasn’t for me, but hey, I can now hear Ari Gold sexily screaming profanities from all angles, so I’m happy.

But the best present he’s ever brought home was when he came home with two lovely Italian-Canadian human beings ~ David and Isabella. David is great, he makes me laugh and tops my wine glass like he really doesn’t believe I’m about to hurl, and Isabella? Well, Isabella, she made that tiramisu you see right there.

I love her. I’m keeping her.

Read More →