Custard and Beans

Due to a communications error this evening there was no food at dinner time. Our host home thought we’d be cooking, we thought they’d be cooking and we’d be making pudding (something that’s nearly impossible to communicate because the concept of pudding doesn’t exist for most people in East Africa). Our host brother said that he was happy to go to bed without eating because he was used to it (which is surprising but maybe he had a tough childhood) but that he was worried about us. Frankly, so was I. Not least because the whole family might be about to go to bed hungry because of our miscommunications and that’s more than anyone’s conscience should have to bear.

I set about bringing together everything we had to hand and we put on a ‘supper of snacks’. (You have to be specific about things such as this here as even hearty foods like samosas or chapattis count as snacks). We prepared everything in the dark because someone has removed the light bulb from the kitchen (I don’t know where it’s gone but I’d question whether its destination could possibly be more critical) and eventually served hopelessly unripe avocado, Ugandan porridge, Heinz baked beans, cake, custard and 2 cups of English-style tea. The highlight of the meal were the beans, custard and cake. We struggled to persuade our hosts to separate out the sweet from savoury. It’s hard to justify the intrinsic truth that one should finish their baked beans before adding custard to the plate – that’s just the way it is. It was commented that custard is the sort of food that would make a Ugandan want to visit London, which is by way of the highest compliment around – our English food is not always much appreciated here and we’ve had a few unsuccessful introductions to it. The tea is a good example – I had put milk in it but no sugar and it was deemed undrinkable by our host mum. I considered this to be just as well because when I made the tea I had thought it was to be mine.

A lesson in Western culture: Marshmallow toasting

One of the first things that the volunteers do with their entrepreneurs is the ‘marshmallow challenge’ (in which they learn to embrace failure and to put their customer (marshmallow) at the centre of their business). So yesterday I’ve been distributing marshmallows…and yesterday evening I introduced my host family to marshmallow toasting. We all crowded into the little dark outhouse that is a kitchen, even the men (although they didn’t pass the threshold by too far - men don't do kitchens here!) and toasted them on forks over the charcoal stove. While I was very pleased with the toasting, these guys hadn’t ever tasted a raw marshmallow before, so they didn’t fully appreciate the beautiful transformation that occurs when the foamy sweet turns soft, hot and gooey with that sugar crisp shell. My host sisters kept trying to store the finished article in a mug, which doesn’t work; if you eat cold toasted marshmallow it just tastes like burnt caramel.  Nevertheless, it brought the whole family together which was lovely. I’ve been asked to save a little bit of marshmallow for the youngest child who wasn’t present, which I’ve taken to be a very good sign.

The Kenyan Lunchparty

Host parents are encouraged to take their surrogate children to visit other parts of Kenya if the opportunity arises. My mama went to visit her cousins today. She didn’t think to invite me but as if to compensate for her disinterest, Jane and I went to visit her host mum’s parents in the ‘interior’. I do not know where the interior is and there certainly is no ‘exterior’. I think that interior is just a way of referring to rural areas or less wealthy parts – maybe both.

We travelled there in a landrover so old that it still had ash trays built into the doors. However, it did have a full set of working seat belts, which I was impressed by. Our 18km journey seemed to be going very slowly and extremely jerkily. I leant over to Jane in the back seat and pointed out that we were still in 2^nd gear, hence the terrible juddering of the car, it can’t be good for the engine to be driven like this. If only this simple explanation were correct. As we pulled over Jane's uncle explained that someone had been cleaning his engine recently and so the petrol tank was full of water in addition to petrol. The sensation was much the same as driving at 50mph in 2^nd gear but evidently more complicated. It being a Sunday my hopes weren’t high of help, but to my amazement we soon had a team of 5 mechanics gathered around the car. I’m so grateful to them for getting us started again (not that the quality of the drive seemed to have improved much but at least the car was running). We juddered along, right up until the first hill. At this point we established a habit of getting out and walking up every hill to take the weight out of it. This worked well for some time but then inevitably there was a hill that was too steep and we could go no further. So the women abandoned both the car and Jane's uncle to go on foot (we actually wanted to help give it a push, and did make as if to do so, but we forgot that we were women and therefore not allowed to do such things!) There’s an assumption here that white people can do no work and are generally incapable. Jane and I always enjoy surprising people by proving this to be wrong (we’re the only whites that do their own washing for example) and so we delighted in walking the remainder of the journey. Not least because both of us rather like walking and the scenery was amazing. To my amazement the scenery was lush and green, set on steep hillsides. It actually looked like another country, perhaps an Asian-pacific nation. If you saw a photo of it and had to guess where it was taken, you probably wouldn’t guess Africa.

When we arrived we were greeted by Jane's 'host grandparents'. They are 95. Grandmother has had a stroke and it affects her right side but she’s a very plump and smiley lady. Grandfather is slim, walks bent double due to a life of hard labour that has given him back pain (but he can stand straightened when he wants) despite his advanced age and physical state he still digs in the garden on a daily basis. The ‘Shamba’ (farm) on which they live is an acre and they haven’t let their old age stop them from working on it. I was shown a tall tree with no branches and a narrow trunk by his children and told that he’d recently had to be scolded for climbing and pruning it. I was amazed. Aged 24 I couldn’t consider climbing that tree! The children incidentally have told him they’d rather pay a tree surgeon than allow him to swarm up it again, but apparently he always just waits for them to go and then does the jobs he knows they’d disapprove of. Some people here really blow away your expectations away about the life expectancy of ‘poor’ Africans. I don’t think many of us in the UK imagine people living in such harsh circumstances living to be so old (other people have forgotten their birth date – I recently heard of someone claiming to be 203) certainly not in a more spritely state than our own pensioners.

We were joined by 2 of Jane's uncles and one of their wives. The 2 men looked very similar and both spoke good enough English to convey some wicked senses of humour (1 managed to convince me that he had 4 wives). They are actually a family of 10 but many of the siblings weren’t present. Jane and I were given a tour of the farm while lunch was cooked by some ladies (I’m not sure who they were, I’m sure at least one wife was there but there were 2 others I’m less confident of). As neighbours caught sight of ‘muzungus’ (white people) in the site they popped round to visit. One old lady (who didn’t speak a word of English and I would venture, not Swahili either, I think she was chatting away to us in Kikuyu, her tribal language). She had a big bag with her and I was given the chance to carry it Kenyan style. Jane had had a similar experience the weekend before. Jane had been lucky, the bag for her had been quite empty. Mine was full of potatoes! Without realising this she offered to escort the old lady all the way to the main road. Oh my gosh! Happily for me, Jane also offered to take turns with me as we trudged down the little dusty track and the old lady took over before we reached our final destination. The lady (who can’t have been younger than 75) was delighted by all this and found it very funny (probably because it was a white person doing physical labour, which would have been considered to be quite startling) she chatted to us most of the way in fluent Kikuyu and so neither I or Jane (who is better at speaking Swahili than me as she’s got a social host mum who likes to teach her) understood much at all. (I did get one word, ‘gosh’, but it wasn’t much help in putting a sentence together).

When we got back to the house, which I probably ought to describe to you a bit better, it was nearly lunch time. The home is a series of out houses. I understand that it wasn’t always this way but as the family ‘progressed’ (in their words) they learnt that having a firewood stove in the house wasn’t healthy so they moved the kitchen outside. Also the animals no longer sleep in the main house, they sleep in the detached kitchen where there is a wooden pen. There are also outhouses for a corn mill and a couple of bedrooms. The building in which we ate was the biggest, it had 3 rooms, the one I was invited into was large (about the size of our kitchen), had a concrete floor, corrugated iron walls, it was gloomy with windows only on one side of the room, it was lined with an amazing number of chairs and there were 2 tables in the middle (but too many chairs for the seats to correspond to a place at the table). Living room chairs in Kenya are always decorated with cloths that are about the size of napkins and they always have matching sets. Even though this family were less well-off they still adhered to this slightly bemusing tradition. My host mum will change her ‘napkins’ every few weeks. At the moment we have blue ones with white trim, before that we had ones that looked more like woolen doilies, before that it was very big white ones (actually the latter set were more like table cloths than napkins). For lunch we had chapattis, peas and chicken. I was quite pleased about this because it’s a well-balanced meal (something you should never take for granted!) and I haven’t eaten chicken in a very long time. I really shouldn’t have been so pleased. I had served myself 2 pieces of chicken in the gloom. The first turned out to be kidney, or at least that’s what it tasted like, but it was much bigger than a kidney should be (about the size of a 10 year old’s fist), maybe I shall claim it was a lung. The second was a leg or wing, but had no meat on it, just skin. Nevertheless, I’m glad that it wasn’t a head or foot, because both of them were in the cooking pot. Also, I do love chapattis.

When all the plates were cleared, we were encouraged to have seconds. Surprisingly Jane and I weren't very keen to get more 'chicken roulette'. I compromised with a little more chapatti and veg. Then when this still didn't seem to be enough I had thirds. Despite this grand gesture, Jane's mum told everyone we met that her two girls wouldn't eat ANYTHING. Frankly, she feared for us.

I like Jane's mum.

Little Drunk Chef

After the wedding I was exhausted, as was my Kenyan sister, Georgina, but our mum wasn’t in so we had to cook dinner. We could have bought it in town but knew that we’d be in trouble if there weren’t leftovers at home for mum. So I went home to cook. Importantly, I’d drank almost a quarter of a litre of brandy at this point, but I didn’t feel very drunk and so I’d forgotten that I wasn’t sober. I approached dinner by chopping up all the types of vegetable that I found in the fridge and making a stew. This was all going rather well but then I couldn’t find any carbohydrates to go with it. No pasta, rice or potatoes and so I decided to make dumplings. There was a hitch with this – no milk. Ever resourceful, I decided to use tea instead (because there was always a thermos of tea in the house, whatever time of day). I thought this might taste a bit odd and wanted to mask the taste of the tea with ground black pepper. Unfortunately, my hand slipped while pouring this in and rather a lot was added. This couldn't be helped though, the show must go on! Having come this far I didn’t let the next discovery that I didn’t have baking powder stop me either, so I used bicarbonate of soda instead (despite the fact that I didn't have an acidic ingredient to activate the rising agent in it). I then found that I had rather a lot of mixture. Not to worry, I poured it all into the pan to top the stew (what’s the point in leftovers right?) The problem then was that I had an enormous quantity of mixture, and it took forever to cook. The second problem was that it tasted disgusting (possibly because it wasn’t cooked). This was more of a problem. Especially when my quite nice stew was underneath. Georgina (my Kenyan counterpart) was very kind about it. She said that she liked it and then didn’t eat it. When I came home the next day from my day trip I found that it had all disappeared which was rather a relief. Jane says it makes her feel good to know that even I mess up in the kitchen sometimes and so I’m happy to think that this disgusting disaster has brought comfort to someone.

Kidney Bolognaise...mmm delicious?

I have accidentally invented a new classic dish: Kidney bolognaise.


This came about as a result of an error made by the muppet doing the grocery shopping (i.e. me) who was unable to ask for "mince" in Swahili. I therefore got what looked like diced steak, because as it transpired, the butchers didn't have a mincer. I stood there, the wally I am, watching them hack a lump off the dead cow strung up in the shop window and chop it up for me, wondering if it was going to turn into mince at any point. It was then wrapped in newspaper and handed to me; no such luck.


I resolved to cut all the meat up into small parts so as to look like mince and compensate for my mistake. This worked very well for all the parts that didn't have bones in.


While cooking it dawned on me that my 'diced steak' may have more than diced steak in it (ie kidney). It's the smell of it that gave them away. I don't actually like kidney (apparently this is typical white person behaviour, we're not keen on innards) and as a result I wasn't prepared to taste test my creation until I was jolly sure it would taste nice. Instead I gauged the taste of my dish by smell.


Unsurprisingly, the smell caused me to believe that it didn't taste like spag bol should and so I put a WHOLE BULB of garlic in to compensate. After that I felt brave enough to give it an actual taste and found that it tasted powerfully of garlic. Caw!! So I added some extra tomatoes to dilute the flavour and hoped for the best.


I presented this dish to my family as a cross between Kenyan and Italian cuisine. A "sort of spag bol". A nice compromise. I didn't enjoy it myself because of the kidneys but Georgina (my Kenyan sister) loved it and resolved to cook it at all sorts of future events such as birthdays. So in many ways my odd creation was a success.

Hot Cross Buns. How hard can it be?

I got the idea to make hot cross buns for my host family at Easter. Unfortunately, I was too busy at the time and so it’s taken me until today to make this happen.

My host family were initially very impressed at the idea. They particularly liked the fact that a ‘Muzungu’ (white person) would acknowledge the significance of Jesus on the cross.  I didn’t like to correct this view and say that I am a typical English atheist ready to embrace anything I can eat.

There were 3 of us who had taken on the challenge of baking today; 2 were suffering debilitating hangovers and 1 had an oven in her host home. Perfect.

The day started easily enough when I went round the supermarket to stock up on ingredients. It’s a bit hard to know how many grams of sugar ‘3/4 cup’ is, but I managed. Luckily for me none of the Kenyans have had hot cross buns before and so they won’t know if I mess up!

                                                                                                                                                                

The more I cook in Kenya the more I learn. The egg shells here are tough, for instance, and so in order to crack an egg, you should tap it against the wall rather than the plastic mixing bowl. It feels quite counter intuitive, and I’m sure my UK-mother would be alarmed, but it’s much more effective. The recipe also required a lot of kneading. It’s not something I’ve ever had to do much of before and I would have been very unconfident if it were not for the fact that two of my entrepreneurs have patiently taught me to knead dough within the past month (one was a baker and I was learning his trade, the other wanted to find an activity I could do with his mother), both believed themselves to be my first teacher (clearly I was a slow learner!). It was nice to be able to put these skills to good use and soon our dough was looking nice and smooth

After 2 rounds of kneading and leaving the current filled dough to prove while naps were taken, we were ready to put the 19 spiced balls of dough in the oven on gas mark 3 (although I can’t be 100% sure about this as I know very little about gas marks, it may be that 3 was a poor guess). Lighting the oven was a bit of a faff because it made us so nervous to put our hands inside a flammable gas chamber while holding a lit match. Worse still, the oven kept going out once we turned the gas all the way down to gas mark 3 and cockroaches continued running out which was quite off-putting. Presumably they weren’t enjoying the gas chamber either (although I’m glad they were running away from the baking tray – it seems like the most hygienic direction).

Very little cooking time had elapsed when the oven ran out of gas and everything came to an abrupt halt. My host by now was fast asleep on her sofa and we didn’t like to disturb her more than necessary so we decided to take a couple of still squishy buns to a nearby house with a microwave. We were welcomed there by the friendly resident volunteer-host-mother (Elizabeth) and given a cheerful lesson in how to operate the necessary appliance. She appeared to have a great deal of faith in our ability to bake bread in her microwave; which was good, at least someone did.

3 minutes later the microwave pinged and we took out a piping hot bun. I know that microwaves tend to cook from the inside out and so although the outside didn’t look cooked (the cross was barely visible – it was white against beige) we felt that it might taste good inside. We burnt our fingers investigating this and were surprised to find that the inside was actually like toast. (There’s a reason we don’t microwave sandwiches back home and this is it). We were just about to put a second one in for a shorter amount of time (alternative options were few!) when the power cut out. This is not uncommon in Kenyan households but it’s not unannoying either. Now we really were challenged.

The first thing to do was make a list of people we knew nearby with ovens. The list was quite long, but when we made a few enquiries we found that not a single one of these ovens were operative! There was one family we knew with a functioning oven that lived a good distance away and eventually we resorted to asking them if we could visit (it was that or try and cook the buns in a borrowed toaster and I wanted to keep that as a very last resort). However, when I got in touch I was dismayed to find that their oven was electric and, while this meant there would be no more trouble with gas marks, it was also the case that we still couldn’t be helped until the power came back. I decided to sit it out and waited for the power. It came on at my side of town at about 5pm, dusk was at 6:30pm and I didn’t get news that light was back at the oven side of town until 7pm. I was beginning to lose my sense of humor at this point. Hot cross buns were more trouble than they were worth. Walking around after dark here is not advisable, particularly if you are a lone female with pasty white arms glowing like a beacon advertising your presence. I stomped off to my various friend’s houses to find the trays of buns I had stranded in everyone’s kitchens. Firstly to my friend with the exhausted gas oven (no luck, her house was locked) and then to Elizabeth’s house with the tray of buns in her microwave…if only I could identify her gate. I did eventually find a house that looked like hers. I would have been more confident if it were not for the rawkus female voices I could hear inside as I knocked hesitantly on the door – I’m sure that the homeowner I’d come to meet was quite a quiet lady. I felt such relief as Elizabeth opened the door and invited me in. As I was ushered into the kitchen I saw Jane, another host-mum and owner of the kitchen I had occupied earlier in the day. The ladies were having a wonderful time. Theirs were the clamorous voices I had heard on the doorstep. They were very pleased to see me and amazed me by opening the oven door to ask me if the buns were ready yet. I didn’t even know Elizabeth had a functioning oven! Actually, as it transpired, nor did she until Jane had come over and decided to use it, thereby turning it on for the first time since it had been purchased. It turned out that they had been trying to get hold of me for some time in order to ask me to help them know when the buns were done.

It seemed to me that I’d arrived at the perfect time, just as everything was looking nicely browned. I was wrong again (of course – why change a winning theme). As I ignorantly offered to prepare these two wonderful ladies the first taste, I picked up a bun, knife in hand, ready to cut it in half, and realized that only the top half was cooked. The bottom was still cold and doughy. That was unexpected.

What I hadn’t appreciated is that what we had was not an oven so much as a grill, so it was necessary to turn every bun upside-down in order to cook the bottoms too. Unorthodox but effective.

As we waited for the buns to finish, volunteers began to fill the house, joining the host mums and me. By the time the batch was ready there were 9 mouths to feed, 5 of which had never tasted this Eastertime classic before. It pleased me so much to slather my UK traditions in melted butter and share them with my Kenyan friends that I very nearly forgot the stress I’d gone through to produce it.

My host sister wants me to cook her pizza next week. I’m not sure I can cope.

Introducing English cakes to Kenya

This morning as I was snaffling my treasured Weetabix I noticed that some of our bananas were over ripe. Too much so to eat. As a result I decided to make banana bread out of them to avoid wastage. This sounds very sensible until I tell you I've never made banana bread before and my house doesn't have an oven. These 2 things combined are a challenging combination. I've also never made a proper cake in a microwave.

However, there were most of the necessary ingredients in the house, including rather surprisingly, bicarbonate of soda which was owned for medicinal purposes (and I can't imagine what that would be!). My host mum couldn't believe it when I told her that this white powder, when mixed with lemon juice, could make cakes rise. And if I'm honest I wasn't totally sure I believed it would work either, I was quite prepared to make an embarrassing mess, or even a good cake that was considered not to local tastes (they don't eat cake as we know it here). However, what eventually happened was that I made a smashing banana cake that everyone but me liked (I had poured the salt in free hand and had overdone it terribly ).

There is only one type of cake here in njoro: it is very dry and plain. I have mistaken it for a bread roll on more than one occasion. Imagine everyone's surprise then when I pulled a moist banana cake with raisins in it from the microwave, I'm not sure that mama had ever had anything like it. Georgina and I had 2 slices before dinner and then another one after when no one was looking. Mama says that we can eat it for breakfast tomorrow too, because there's no such concept as dessert here, when else would you eat a cake?!

If you ever find yourself abroad, with limited cooking utensils and the need to ingratiate yourself with your host, I would highly recommend this recipe:

Clare's Kenyan Banana bread

1.5 cups wheat flour
3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup blue band (plus some to grease)
1/3 cup milk (long life is ok)
2 eggs
2 medium sized bananas, roughly mashed
2 lemons (if making this in UK, 1 lemon will do as they're bigger)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt (do not pour freehand!)
1/2 cup raisins or currants

1. Mix ingredients in order listed above except currents. Use a larger bowl than initially expected as the mixing aerates the mixture and makes it larger. When it comes to cracking eggs, note that Kenyan eggs have tough shells and plastic mixing bowls can be hard to crack them on. Maybe tap against a wall, or knife instead. If you're in the habit of tasting the raw mixture, do not be alarmed if it tastes strongly of bicarbonate, it fades with cooking.
2. Grease a microwave proof dish. Tupperware works well. Depending on what you have available you may need to divide your mixture and bake 2. Do not worry about using your hands to grease the containers - Kenyan households don't disapprove like a British onlooker would. Tip your mixture into the tubs. Sprinkle all your currents/nuts on top (they will distribute themselves while cooking).
3. Microwave on high for 7 minutes. Use a clean knife to check if it is done (no other senses! Sometimes it looks less ready than it is). If you insert a clean knife into centre and it comes out clean, then it's ready. If not give 2 mins more and repeat.
4. Allow to cool in container for 5 minutes, it makes it much easier to turn out.

Eating jellied eels in East London

Every Londoner knows that waves of migration over the years have blessed the capital with a stunning range of culinary options, which make it a wonderful place for adventurous eaters. We have tongue singing curries from India, character filled Caribbeans, filthy posh eggs from France and even alarming Germanic-Argentinian sausages for less fortunate explorers. What we don't have much of is London's own culture that hasn't been 'borrowed' from somewhere else. It is for precisely this reason that Tim and I have long harboured an ambition to eat eels. (Pretty much the only delicacy London can call it's own - Such is the bounty of the Thames!)

Our other motivator was the amount of fuss that our housemates made when we proposed the idea. The landlord had been given them as a child and hated it (he grew up in East London so it was a right of passage) but even more shock and horror was expressed by his girlfriend who had never even seen a plate of eels but was disgusted by the very idea. This was therefore a chance to out-London them both!

We live in deep dark East London. Upton Park to be precise, which means that there are eel sellers locally. There had been a West Ham match on, it was drizzling and people were making themselves scarce, all except for those taking pictures of themselves outside the Boleyn stadium and those queuing outside the pie & eel shop. I was pretty excited but also a bit nervous about what I'd let myself in for (could there be a reason that today burritos are more popular than eels?), but as I weakly rationalised to Tim: At least eels don't have bones in. I can cope with anything as long as there are no bones. (There's few things I find more frustrating than messing about with a complicated skeletal choke hazard on my plate.)

When we got in through the door we could see the whole shop was full of customers all eating pies (not eels!) and nearly all wearing West Ham shirts.

"Whatever happens don't tell anyone I support Arsenal," whispered Tim, very quietly but quite unnecessarily. Even I know what happens to misplaced Arsenal supporters here.

The ladies at the counter were cute, they all looked like they'd been working there since West Ham won the world cup in 1966 and eels were still popular. Not one was below the retirement age. They were delighted to hear I was trying eels for the first time too and as they put down my plate,

"There you go lovie, this is yours and there's a plate for the bones"

Bones! What do eels want bones for!? I was not impressed with this prospect. My key sliver of positivity had just been deleted.

Not winning any prizes for good looks

My assessment of the eels, mash and liquor is that they're not too bad. I was told in advance that liquor would be like water, which sounded gross but turned out to be wholly untrue. Liquor is like very thick, rather good gravy and gives flavour to the whole thing (because there's so much of it!) The eels are ok, not least because they don't taste strongly (and they don't have much need of their bones so it's not like trying to faff about with a regular fish). The texture however is the key turnoff - I know jellied eels have the texture of jelly, but this is identical in practice to the texture of gelatinous fat, which I found a much harder thought to swallow. Nevertheless, at the end of the meal we'd both got clear plates and were feeling rather pleased with ourselves. Tim even said he'd eat them again (but perhaps not if pie was available as an alternative).

What's important is that we walked into that cafe mere people and left as real Londoners.

Nervous smile before my first taste

Being ladylike is difficult

I am absolutely baffled at the way in which some people can be effortlessly ladylike ALL THE TIME! 

This story actually starts in Borough market and with a valuable lesson for any Londoners looking for somewhere nice to visit at Sunday lunchtime: Don’t go there. It’s shut. Learning this was how I ended up in a rather cute little café nearby called Le Pain Quotidien with my good friend, Charlotte. Think freshly baked bread, wooden furniture, and earl-grey-mango-iced-tea. 

We did that awkward thing that everyone tries to avoid when they go out to eat together and ordered exactly the same thing. Consequently we were both brought 2 identical baked eggs sprinkled with smoked salmon, served in little round pans alongside 2 slices of dark rye toast (and thereby taking ‘cute’ to new levels).

I always say that I learnt everything I know about appearing ladylike from Charlotte (such as how to chose shoes and store jewellery, On one occasion I even sent photo of something that I thought might be a bra to ask what it was and how to wear it!) For this reason I was shocked when she tipped her egg onto the toast in its entirety and proceeded to eat it as if it were a large slice of ham. How very unladylike!

I thought I’d take the moral high ground (for once!) and approached mine it as if it were pâté in a way that I thought my mother would have approved of. It was a very unimaginative approach - basically spreading egg on toast. However, Charlotte's method looked like such sensible, tidy and effective idea that I copied it for my second one. When she did it, it seemed very neat and practical. When I did it yolk went absolutely everywhere in just the way you’d expect if you’re silly enough to lay a baked egg on toast and bite into it. Not only did I manage to get egg on the surrounding table but also all over my face. Luckily there were napkins on hand but, to put this in perspective, it was even necessary to mop my eyebrows!

Charlotte of course remained immaculate throughout as did the area of table surrounding her. Of course she would. I don’t understand how some people can be so dignified and ladylike while the likes of I are limited by reality! Baked eggs are just the start of it. Nigella can give a potato skin sex appeal and Kate Middleton can run on sand in high heals.

I’m going to have to mull this over. In the meantime, does anyone know a sophisticated method for eating baked eggs?

Charlotte with her perfectly neat baked egg

I can't show you a picture of me with mine!

How not to tackle a Christmas dinner

This week my London housemates and I celebrated Christmas together. There’s 4 of us in total (may as well introduce my cast up front!): Me, Tim, Taz and Sally. (These are pseudonyms so even if you’ve met us in real life you’ll need to go with the flow here).

If I’m honest it got off to a slow start. Firstly I couldn’t get away from the office and then I took a detour via 2 Tesco stores to find one that wasn’t sold out of mulled wine. When I did get home at 7:30 I found that the housemates had also take the same precaution on hearing that I was struggling to source this essential item and we therefore had 3 bottles between 4 of us (and 2 more bottles of mull-less red as backup). The worrying thing is that we drank most of it!

Tim had been in charge of the shopping. He was in trouble by the time I got in because the other 2 housemates had had a chance to review his purchases. I thought he’d done a marvellous job but Taz (who has an onion allergy) wasn’t so pleased as Tim had brought home pickled onions, sage and onion stuffing and an onion marinaded turkey. After all this storming, it transpired that Taz loves stuffing and so was prepared to eat it anyway. He anticipated that his stomach would be pretty upset the next day so he’d be having a pretty uncomfortable journey home for Christmas on the train the following day (as is everyone sat near the toilet compartment) but it would be well worth it. It took 2 hours for the food to cook but at least 3 of us were more than entertained with our pickled onions and Christmas tunes. When it was it was time to dish up we had an absolute mountain of food. I was quite impressed by this but even more so to learn that one of us (Taz) can carve!

It  looked even bigger in real life...

That was 3 days ago now and I haven’t yet recovered. I haven’t eaten a proper meal in 3 days! I’m not sure what’s wrong with me! I love food! I’m never not hungry. I usually eat on principle, just to exercise my right to do so three times a day. I went into work the following day feeling rough, and thought it might be a hangover. But no hangover lasts this long, not at my age, and not after a Thursday night. I’ll admit we did get a little tipsy, but we overcooked most of the wine to the point where it had no alcohol left in it. Even at the end of the night no one was drunk (although I did get to the point where some words got a bit muddled and I asked repeatedly if there would be icing on our mulled wine. I meant Yule log and was infuriated that no one could answer me!) My next theory was that I had food poisoning. This was backed up by a message from Tim in the morning telling us that he’d had to make an emergency stop off the train to go be ill. For a while I gleefully thought I’d found my solution (at least I wasn’t hungover, that would be unprofessional) and then I realised that I didn’t feel ill, just totally unable to eat. At some point that afternoon I felt a bit peckish so I got a bunch of grapes, had one, and then found this lone grape had done the job. Maybe its old age – maybe this is how all old people feel after eating a meal the size of a small chest of drawers!! But surely if that were the case one of them would have mentioned it.

Last night at about 9:30pm I thought I might be hungry again and so made a little light supper. As I did so I drank a glass of water. I shouldn’t have. It filled me right up. THIS IS RIDICULOUS!

The thing is, if I'm feeling funny, I can't wait to hear how Taz's train journey went!!

Merry Christmas!

This is how Russians celebrate Christmas in Monaco. Apparently

First off I'd better explain the reason for the sudden drop in the quality of picture - my phone smashed today when I dropped it on the ground and the protective cover flew off. I feel a bit nervous about using it in case I get shards of glass in my fingers (it's not a clean break at all) but did risk it in order to photograph this doodle. As you can see, even the camera is not happy!

This is to be my first Chirstmassy post, inspired a couple of weekends ago when I was in Monaco with a team of 7 other Brits for a sailing competition (it isn't half as glamorous as it sounds but you’ll have to take my word for it). One of the highlights of the event was being able to explore the city in the evening. In particular, at the centre of town there is currently a fantastic Russian Christmas market, which we liked.

So many Russian dolls

All in all I'd say that Russian markets don’t feel that different to German ones only there are Russian dolls everywhere and very few tourists. It’s hard to be sure if the dolls are there due to the Russian influence or because that is what the Monegasques think defines Russia. What is for sure though is that the wicked tartiflette (basically potato, bacon and cheese cooked together and then grilled with yet more slabs of thick cheese melted generously on top) which we all had for dinner was almost certainly very French, although I expect it will soon be adapted as the national dish of Scotland. At least the for the cosmopolitan folk. It was gorgeous in a slightly guilt ridden way.

The star of the fair was the ice go carting. After walking the same streets as the F1 drivers during the day we were keen to get behind the wheel ourselves. It was an experience that did not disappoint. Just like when you drive on icy roads, the go karts have no grip on the track. The really fun thing about it is the way in which you spin out at corners. If you’re particularly unlucky you’ll find you’re than in everyone else’s way, maybe facing the direction of ongoing traffic (which is slightly more alarming because then you can see how much of a nuisance you’re being!). There is nothing to be done at a time like this but laugh. I think my helmet may have muffled me as I spent about 50% of my time laughing. I eventually worked out that the trick to a faster lap time is to drive slower and spin off at fewer corners. This is a bit of a boring lesson, so once it was established I returned to practice my my 'tail spin'. I’m happy to say I never did learn to get this under control and so it remained fun.

Ice Go Karting

After a few mulled wines on the trackside (because that’s probably a classic Russian tradition) we were ready to find a party and so followed some music we could hear playing to a marquee (I was by now clutching a chocolate coated banana, (another great Russian Christmas classic, probably) not because I was hungry but because I wanted to find out what it tasted like. It was delicious but I found it very difficult to eat because my teammates were so amused by its phallic appearance that I was only prepared to put it in my mouth when no one was looking, which wasn't very often since there were 8 of us in the team.) Anyway, as I was tantalised by this wretched banana that I couldn't eat, the rest of the team were intent on experiencing the Monacan night life. As mentioned, we had followed the sound of music to a big marquee. We trouped inside (me still clutching my banana) and were somewhat aghast to find a bingo hall with 4 middle aged people line dancing on stage wearing cowboy hats. It’s a very foolish looking person that can’t find a party in Monaco! With this top of mind we very quickly set out to leave the Russian market and all those Russian bingo-playing line dancers, to find a proper night club in the good old town (with very little banana left - what a good distraction!). 

A party such as that which followed deserves a blog post in it's own right. In fact, the whole trip probably deserves a series of posts in it's own right. I will therefore endeavour to bring you the stories of this trip to Monaco in it's entirety before the new year (potentially even upgrading the picture quality at some point) using #ClareInMonaco to tie it all together. 

Passive aggression like I've never seen it before

There comes a time when the girls have to leave the office, go get pizzas and  let off some steam. It's for the good of our health and stops things getting bottled up. It's fair to say that morale is pretty low in the office at the moment - we've put our hearts and souls in and now there's nothing left. What interested me was the extent to which this was beginning to show in ridiculously trivial ways, none more so than Jade, (the type of  hard working person who was probably top of every class at school). She was about to go into a [somewhat tyrannical] management meeting and so, in a kind of advance retaliation she resolved to eat as much garlic as she could. Pizza express were only too happy to oblige. We had garlic bread, garlic oil and garlic butter on our dough balls - it was great!

As anticipated, what wasn't so great was the management meeting itself. It alarmed me to hear that both of them had spent the meeting crying! Jade, because she'd been been criticised for an hour. And Martha (the boss), in case her unborn child grew up to be like Jade!

The garlic was fine, but now everyone's crying, this is getting ridiculous.

Argentinian cuisine : proceed with caution

After work I went to see Bill at an Argentinian restaurant called Moo on brick lane. I don't think I've ever had Argentinian food before so I was quite excited. I ordered something off the menu called Salachichi* or something like that, reassured by my trusty mantra that it's always a good sign when you can't pronounce what you're ordering, it means you're expanding your food repertoire. I was vaguely expecting something classically Argentinian that was to come with guacamole (which now I come to think about it, should have made me suspicious, but didn't). What then arrived was a VERY large sausage! It looked distinctly German (an unexpected cultural influence to be sure). The type of low grade knockwurst that could be vegetarian and you wouldn't know. I'd also misjudged the sides and ended up with both chips and mash. I can no longer remember what part of ordering unknown items off menus is sensible!

*Turns out it's called a 'Salchicha' - I looked this up in case any aficionados judged me!

The Mysterious Dorothy

When Tim (my housemate & honorary brother) and I went to ‘Dorothy’s Caribbean’ we did joke that the restaurant might be the front for some kind of shady operation because it has opaque windows. This offhand comment suddenly seemed more likely when we got inside and found that the owners of the establishment had no idea how a restaurant was supposed to work! As we walked in, the good lady herself was sat on the wrong side of the bar watching TV. It was far from obvious that we could buy food, but upon asking we were told that indeed today was the first time in 3 weeks that Dorothy was serving food, owing to the fact that the roof had been leaking. Then we learnt (unwillingly) about the history of her roof and the cultural heritage of her landlord. Tim tried to steer the conversation back on track by asking what our options were but she totally missed the point - apparently one option was a solicitor but she felt it was a bit expensive. After this, I tried again and asked (very unambiguously) what was on the menu. She looked a bit confused but offered us jerk chicken. We agreed. She then took the initiative to ask if we wanted a small portion. I asked how small is small, to which she responded by holding up a large box saying it was large. It’s tough to know how to proceed from here but somehow we did eventually get the boxes full of food. As she gave them to us she asked if we wanted them heated up. WTF who goes to a take away for cold food?! To speed the process up we said we’d do it ourselves at home and asked her how long to heat it up for. Of course she didn't know. We laughed to ourselves as we walked down the street. It was almost as though no one had ever ordered food there before. She didn't know what to do. Definitely this was the operating front for a drugs cartel. We stopped laughing when we got home and put the thing in the microwave and the possibility of food poisoning occurred to us. We re-cooked that chicken so well. Nervously giggling once more at the absent aesthetics as we dished up. But then we had a change of heart when we tasted it. Dorothy actually knew her stuff after all! It was a huge plate of very spicy Caribbean goodness and highly evident that Dorothy was a great cook. We even agreed we’d be happy to go back.


Then again, if I was going to get my mum to front my drugs cartel, I'd probably make sure she could cook too.

I'm ready to start a culinary revolution

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This evening I stayed extremely late at work. This is not because I was actually working. Granted I did have meetings until 7.30pm but then our charming receptionist had sorted me food, so I took it up to my desk and found that Rachel was still in the office. She was the only one there. I think we may have spent the next two hours ranting at length about the world (and that was before work started!) I did learn something great though. At the time I was totally failing to eat spiralized courgette (the difficulty being that each thread is a minimum of 10km long. It is therefore significantly less dainty to eat than spaghetti) Rachel commented that she uses scissors at home. Horay for office stationary! So I gave it a go, with a fork in one hand and scissors in the other I could cut tendrils short right before putting them in my mouth and this new method worked rather well. If anything I would class it as an 'extreme success' having made the whole process much more dignified, or so I thought, until I realised that this was not what Rachel had meant to recommend at all. She was surveying the (possibly barbaric) scene with an air of horrified politeness (imagine watching someone eat spaghetti with a pair of scissors!) All she'd meant to say was that it ought to be chopped before serving. Nevertheless, at this point I was so thrilled with my own efficiency that I carried on regardless (well, if she is going to be polite about it...) But it made me think - we should introduce scissors to the standard cutlery set! Just think how it would revolutionise noodles, stake and unwieldy burgers if people could eat them with scissors.

Needoo Curry House

This evening after work we were supposed to go to the increasingly famous curry place Tayyabs. It's in the 'up and coming' backstreets of Whitechappel. They feel pretty rough but I suppose that this must be what brick lane was like before it 'up and came'. However, I spoiled all of our plans by not managing to leave work on time. It was 7pm before I got away and by the time I arrived, Tayyabs, which by now has a reputation for itself, was full, with queuers loitering between the tables. As such we went to the spin off restaurant around the corner. Needoo was apparently founded by a rogue waiter after an altercation at Tayyabs. From the outside it looked so seedy that we nearly didn't go in but it was by now so late that we were hungry enough to risk it. All in all I'm glad we did. There were no people queuing in awkward places, the service was exceptionally fast and there was giant cutlery mounted on the wall which amused me. If anything the food was actually too authentic as Sam and Joe struggled with the spice. All the dishes were said to be 'medium' so there was no way out for the faint hearted, unless you are preprepared order from the less authentic 'chicken tikka masala' section of the menu, which no one was. We speculated that even the mint sauce had a kick to it and had to call in emergency yoghurt. I personally quite liked it but must admit that the level of spice did stop me from comparing the 4 dishes we'd ordered as they all tasted of 'robust heat' to me. In a nice way. Sam disagreed, but then he had begun an affliction of wild heat-induced hiccups.

Posh kebabs?!

I was so tired by the time I left work this evening that I couldn't decide what to do about food. I even texted mum to tell her this, which is a reflection of the extent to which I totally wasn't functioning! (This also made me worry (briefly) about the content of the emails that I'd been sending before leaving the office!) Anyway, I ended up going to get a 'posh Kebab' at a shop called Chifafa. This is something I've been meaning to try for a while - There is everything intriguing about an oxymoronic concept like that. The problem is that I was then too worn out to develop a comprehensive opinion on the matter! The 'medium' level of spice was significantly more lively than it was mediocre and I'm not sure if I can ever feel indulged while eating meat wrapped in bread - it's not really that far removed from a glorified sandwich. On the other hand it was significantly better than the kebabs I was served in Istanbul at the weekend; the meat was properly BBQ-ed and it wasn't served out of a polystyrene tray but a foil wrap (like any self respecting burrito). No one could accuse it of being a greasy late night option for desperadoes (not least because the shop shuts at 9pm).  This synopsis seems to have covered everything but taste. The problem is that I like eating, most things taste good to me and this was no exception. Certainly it was good enough to go back another day. In my wretchedly tired state I then slipped into some sort of philosophical stupor. Can a kebab ever be up-market? Is it really enough to put good quality ingredients in or is it by nature a squalid supper. Then, even if it is posh, is it ever any good?! I never did answer these questions, I think they may be the basis of hardcore philosophy. The next time someone tries to draw me in on politics or God I'm going to ask them if they think a kebab can ever be posh. That'll stump them!