Dancing omelettes and thirsty gypsies.

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese god send for those who ever suffered from a hangover, but have enough common sense to know that a Big Mac is a short term cure. Of course 90% of the times, I will opt for a Big Mac as it does strike me as slightly hypocritical to be health conscious and forward thinking when your hangover is a painful proof that you are in fact neither.

It is also available at every street corner, and traveling is not something that should be taken lightly when every fibre of your body can only be described as fragile.

However if you do find yourself near Brixton Market you should definitely try Okan, a little cafe serving amazing Japanese street food.

We went to the market with L and A and were rather excrutiantly trying to fight the effects of the night before. That is how we found ourselves enjoying what is sometimes called a Japanese answer to pizza (I think this is a slight generalisation), I would say it is more of an omelette. It's a mixture of raw cabbage, spring onion, kimchi, sweetcorn, seafood or meat, or both, in an egg and tempura flour batter and basted in okonomiyaki sauce (amazing!) and Japanese mayo. I know all this doesn't sound too appealing, but believe me it is one of those mixtures that tastes like nothing else and instantly rocks your world. This is then sprinkled with a handful of dried tuna flakes which are brought to life by the heat emanating from the dish. It is an odd experience, eating food that moves, but also quite magical (is that a weird thing to say?) like eating something that has been resurrected (definitely a weird thing to say...).

Next time I'll take a video to show you how tuna does hula.

After feeling much braver and extremely nourished we decided it is only appropriate we chase it up with some cake and coffee

The cakes were magical too, they made me channel my inner Holy gypsy milkmaid when asking for more water.

Hope you had a lovely weekend!

 

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Thursday lullabies

A beautiful video:

And one of my favourite golden oldies was our Thurdsay lullaby

 

Goodnight

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Two things worth living for: snogs and snow

K woke me up this morning (it was still night time really) shouting that it is snowing. And it was, it was rather spectacular! You need to understand how much I love snow. It seems like nothing bad can happen when the world is covered in a white douvet. Since at the time of me writing this there is barely any snow left, it is England after all, I thought I can share another memory of manmade yogurt snow, which is available at the SNOG institution.

Those pictures are from a time K and I ventured out to Chelsea for an evening stroll. This is something we used to do a lot in Glasgow-go for walks and peek into people's windows and bitch about what we would or wouldn't do if this was our house. We lived in Hyndland so there was plenty of opportunity to do so. Most buildings have large bay windows in the living rooms, as well as converted basements, so walking round those streets gives you an impression of lifestyle shop displays. It is actually quite an interesting sociological study. I like to play a game in which I make up life stories of tennants occupying particular flats.

Anyway, that is what K and I were doing in Chelsea, where buildings are built in a similar way which encourages are voyaristic inclinations. After some time of wandering the streets and shouting out: "I want this sofa in my future flat" or "can we move in here please", we ended up here:

K went for a green tea snog with a super foods mix, almond silvers and white chocolate stars. He can be obsessively health conscious like that ;) My snog of choice was chocolate with almonds, white chocolate stars, brownie pieces and Mochi

Shortly after this trip we decided it's high time we get an ice cream maker to make our own frozen yoghurts. Turns out they are much easier to eat when you don't realise how much sugar goes in them...

(Snog uses agave syrup instead of sugar claiming it is healthier, but really I think it's just a marketing thing...)

As much as I like fantasising about different things I would love to have in my future house, the only thing I really need is that someone who wakes me up when it's snowing in the early hours on a Wednesday morning

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Sunscreen for Mondays

Since Mondays have this incredible power to make things seem shittier than they are, I thought that ill share a song. It reversed the Monday spell on a mundane drive from a stressful day at work one day, it came on Radio 1 and managed to convince me that world wasn't such a bad place after all. The sun was actually setting quite nicely over the Thames.

Enjoy!

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Our Household traditions

As you probably recognised already K and I are very big fans of the brunch institution. Some time ago we developed a little Sunday tradition which required a two day prep, may I add an extremely pleasant 2 day prep.

It usually started with a Saturday visit to Kingston Market, K and I made friends with people at few of the stands, especially one from a farm in West Sussex-we rely on them for our supply of eggs, most amazing little apples as well as oyster mushrooms and wild garlic when in season. They are a bunch of American hippies who settled on British soil and live of picking apples and chasing hens. It's always good to make friends with your suppliers-that is how you get freebies thrown in for good measure. Another good market tip is to go there at the end of the trading day, the chances are you will leave with an abundance of fruit and veg spending a 10th of what you would in a supermarket. Just the other week Kenny came back with a bag of about 2.5 kg of little plum tomatoes for a pound. They were the juiciest and sweetest things ever and we were eating them in every possible form for the next week (the funny thing is that I hate tomatoes, unless they are with mozzarella and the ratio of mozzarella to tomato has to be just right, turns out it is the quality of the tomatoes my taste buds have the biggest problem with).

Close up of our market hunted goodness

Another stand were you can find us at the Kingston Market, is the bread stand. This is for two reasons: only there you can find proper gluten free bread that isnt offensive in the taste category (I can't fully stomach the german sliced dark dark rye bread, even though both K and my parents always insist on buying it). Rye sourdough is our bread of choice chased up by the slightly noughty indulgent fudge brownies (flower content is really quite small in them-we inquired).

Then we usually spend the rest of Saturday on lazying about, watching tv shows and reading. And then comes on Sunday.

We start of with a glass of water, vitamins and a ginger and lemon tea, which is then chased up by the most delicious and heartwarming poison of all-the Irish coffee. We are usually quite generous on the Irish part of the brew, setting us well into a Sunday mood of dreamy chill outs. We don't skimp out on the double cream either... If there is any left in the tub after we had our way with it, K will proceed with smothering it with icing sugar and inhaling within seconds. We stay very health conscious though...it's usually followed by a mint tea ;)

A start to brunch...

The brunch itself, god I love poached eggs....and butter, heaps of butter

This is usually followed by a walk or an afternoon nap. Irish coffee Sunday brunch isn't the only thing we love doing to make Sundays more indulgent (making things more indulgent is my favourite past time, probably the reason why I love butter so much), often we alternate with brunch outings but more on that next week...

Hope you had a lovely weekend.

 

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I ♥ Brighton

It is getting considerably colder which makes me want to take out my lush winter fur coat and go there:

Winter is my favourite season. You get to wear layers, nice boots and cosy scarfs. You tend to look rosy and crisp. One of the things I was looking forward to when we were moving to London last February is how amazing the Christmas period is going to be. Unfortunately I still have to wait a good while before I get to enjoy that, and skating is most definitely not on the cards for me this year. Therefore I thought I will reminiscent a little and share with you a memory of a happier time, when I wasn't a peg leg and my dreams of a fairytale Christmas were a solid plan rather than a reminder of my self inflicted misery.



The following is one of mine and K's favourite things to do. When all gets to much, we are in a mood for and adventure or need to add colour to our grim days, we go for drives. We get into a car and think of a place to go to. Sometimes we use the sat nav, sometimes we just drive in a direction, sometimes the direction is as vague as East. This summer we went Brighton way and fell in love. It reminded us of Glasgow with its atmosphere, crazy people and architecture. It reminded me of my hometown, both Brighton and Sopot being sea resorts with debouchery on their mind and donut stands on every corner. So we went there a lot.

Here is some of our memories:

Brighton turns you into a brighter person...

Burned pier in a stormy weather

Our new pal, more curious then scared chilling in September sun

Everything saturated in sweet tackiness. Here K and I gambling and enjoying a ride on a massive hammer with spectacular views.

K and I, M and J seen through a Donut world and flowers from a bingo parlour.

It is common knowledge that where there is gambling, fun fairs and breeze love tends to bloom.

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Back to work, Swarovski jelly fish and sleepy eyes

I went back, or rather hopped back to work today. I am going to be extremely fit after another two weeks in the cast, at least the right side of me anyway...


One of the companies we work with is Swarovski lighting, when I got home today I noticed that the Design Museum tweeted a video about guest designers thinking about Swarovski crystals in new creative ways.

Personally I always thought of the brand as situated on the corner or spectacular and tacky street. I'm just not sure about all those figurines...however Swarovski lighting is a completely different ball game and their cooperations with artists, architects and designers tend to be rather spectacular.

Artists and designers were asked to rethink a chandelier and this is what they came up with

 

And here is the video:

Digital Crystal and the Commissioning Process from Design Museum on Vimeo.

And now it's time for bath and bed....I'll be dreaming of Tuesday which is closer to Wednesday, which means its almost Friday....

 

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