Cooking with F.R.I.E.N.D.S

I think I have a bit of a problem, most people before they go to sleep would read a magazine or check Twitter, or read a normal novel, but all I keep doing lately is poring over cook books, pictures of cakes and pies and soups and sauces which is not so ideal because I have to try and drop asleep with images of warm plates of food rolling around in my head.

My most recent cook book gem is the hilarious cook book based off the TV show 'Friends' I hate writing it as F.R.I.E.N.D.S but it seems to be the only way to type it without people assuming that it is a cook book about cooking in groups with a generic set of friends, no no no, every dish is based on some 'Friends' reference from the show, and they quote it along the side of the recipe to prove it!

It is such fun if you have seen every episode and really get every single reference, so for me it has made for some very light reading before I drop asleep too. The only real down side is that instead of having pictures of the dishes, it has pictures of scenes from the TV show, so that's a shame, I think.

So far I have made:

Brocolli stir fry with Lemon-Garlic sauce, which was really really good, I made my own egg fried rice to serve it with.

Mrs Gellars Simple spaghetti, it was indeed simple and tomato based, but tasty.

Mr Gellars Pasta with sun dried tomatoes, I added olives to try and differentiate it from Mrs Gellars dish above and it was a lot more smokey and interesting in flavour but generally a drier sauce.

I am really enjoying working my way through it, although I think that the sad part is that the book was produced too soon. It came out long before the series ended so there are a lot of missed opportunities for some great dishes and ingredient references in the later episodes.

Some dishes that could have been really fun to include!:

Joeys Peanut Butter Fingers - TOW Cheap Wedding Dress
Not-Rachel's Salmon au croup - TOW Rachels new dress
Rachel's Surprise Sneezers - TOW the joke
Phoebe's 5am Chinese Food - TOW Chandler gets caught
Chan-berry sauce - TOW the late thanksgiving
Jam Good, Custard Good! trifle - TOW Ross got high
Greatest Meatball Sandwich in the World - TOW the ride along
Monica's Get-a-room cake - TOW Chandler gets caught 
Fried stuff with cheese - TOW the truth about London
Chandlers #3 macaroni with cut up hot dogs - TOW Unagi


Buckets of brownie points to you if you 'got' all of my references!
I had probably more fun than I should have thinking up references and fun names for all of these!

New video: I finished a book! Matched

I have been reading the book Matched on and off for about a month.

It began as mostly on, but then I lost interest as I go into much more detail in the video:




Suggest me some fun books for the next one if you liked this video! I do want to read more this year!

50 shades of... well not a lot really

So I'm a little, well maybe a lot late on this summer read bandwagon as it's now basically winter, but what can I say? I've been busy and it wasn't until I moved away from home and everyone around me is talking about 50 shades of grey that I decided maybe there was more to it than it first seemed.

So, one poor roomates trilogy is going through it's paces like no book should, they've been passed successively down a line of seven of us and there's a motivation to keep reading as the person in the queue behind you wants you to simply hurry up so that they can read your book.

Yes, this is what really happens in a girls flat.

So I'm reading, and not a lot is happening, I keep reading and not a lot else happens... keep reading and nope... still nothing.

Some people (I live with some of these people) are infatuated with Mr Grey

I am waiting to fall in love with this mythical character and I haven't and if it hasn't happened yet I don't think it ever will.

He just seems clumsy more than mysterious

and emo more than intellectual which leads me onto another gripe with this book. There seems to be a whole lot of telling the audience that this is what this character is like, but no showing us.

We are told that Mr Grey is wonderfully intelligent and succesful and incredible, but nothing he does or says demonstrates a particularly superior intelligence, nor the skills to be successful in business. Instead we assume that he is because the author tells us that he is, and actually all he seems to do relating to work is to answer the phone coldly saying "Grey" give a one word answer, then hang up. His work seems to resemble a secretary directing calls to the appropriate departments not an entrepreneurial machine.

The realtionship, is the other part of the book that we are supposed to fall in love with, but it seems very self indulgent on Greys part, and unhealthy on Ana's behalf. It's not the kind of relationship a couple should strive for, it's laced with flaws that mean that kind of relationship would not be strong and so full of trust like the book claims, because unfortunately we are humans who have basic needs in a relationship to feel wanted, accepted like we can trust, be happy, be confident, supported and loved.

Perhaps that's the appeal, it's an impossible relationship that has got readers obsessed, something that would never work in real life, so the more that people can't have it- the more people want it?

I know, I know it sounds like I'm slandering this book to the ground, and perhaps I'm misinformed, perhaps the other two books that follow suddenly make this first book make sense, and it all clicks into place, and then the infatuation begins...maybe

But I don't know if i can bring myself to pick up the next book. I wonder if perhaps I am opposed to books that need another book to 'make sense' - a book by itself should be a stand-alone great story in it's own right.

Another part of me is sad that women have gone crazy over a book of this genre, and that we've not all read in a wave of womenkind an empowering or inspirational story that has shaped how we act and changed our thinking to kinder, happier and more loving.

So you had a bad day?

I read this great quote once that said "Don't let a bad day make you think you have a bad life"

Another influence for me has beena  book by Katie Piper titled 'Beautiful'
Since the day I began reading it  any time I feel as though I'm having a bad day, I remember the most horrendous day of this ladies life and suddenly nothing seems like it's so bad after all. Katie's story is similar to reading a personal diary that documents her life from naive beginnings right through to the mile stones in her recovery, it's very raw and gripping and until the point of a horrendous acid attack that melts away the face that was making her a name in the land of glitz and glamour television. The reader is plagued with the sense that everything is going to end 'tomorrow' but you keep reading to find out when 'tomorrow' is.
The part of the story that has imprinted in my mind even more vivdly than the acid attack itself, is her description of the nightmares that followed. They are described in a way that made it feel as though the nightmares were being woven into reality and coming to life around me, I was completely visually absorbed into Katie's world at that time.

Many memoirs adopt a type of victim approach, an element of seeking out sympathy and I believe this is what sets Katie Pipers story apart. Adament from the start that she would not be seen as a victim, this experience was just adding another layer to her character and a development of her personality. As a whole it was wonderfully refreshing and not just 'another tragic story'.
There is something that everyone could learn from Katie's story. She reminds me that a bad day isn't so bad afterall.

So you've had a bad day?        

What I am reading (or trying to) for Summer 2012

The only time that I really get a chance to read properly and consistently at all but I'm looking foward to getting my teeth stuck in, so here is my ambitious list!
If you've read any of these and you think they're a waste of reading time or were the best thing you ever read then let me know
or.. If you think something is truly lacking from my list- tell me tell me!

The five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom, people have told me great things about it!

Can we still be friends by Alexandra Shulman (editor of British Vogue) It sounds a little autbiographal in terms of story but I'm looking foward to it

They Gypsy Dressmaker by Thelma Madine (dress maker from the tv show My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding) That show is my guilty pleasure, so reading an autobiography based on the show is just an extension of that!

The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman - This was made into the most incredible movie, I didn't put it on my 'Saturday night Movies' blog post because it's pretty bleak, and I don't want anyone to be put off by me saying that it is a war movie, because we all immediately think that war movies must mean khaki coloured dust. This is much more a personal account of a Jewish man set in World War II and how he's treated and how the tables turn.

The Sea on Our Skin by Madeleine Tobert- Unfortauntely this is a classic case of judging a book buy it's cover, the cover is so fun and tropical, and I wanted something a little light hearted!

 So there you have it, maybe this isn't an ambitious list for you, but for 3 months-ish it's quite ambitious for me but I can't wait to get started! If any of them are close to life changing you bet your bottom dollar I'll do a post on it at a leter date!

I get to live my librarian dream!

I downloaded Good Reads on a complete whim and turned out having the best time although maybe a slight waste of time!

The app had this great feature where if you scan the barcodes on the books that you own, it identifies them and puts them in your 'virtual book shelf'

Then you get to catagorise them in sections like 'to-read' 'have read' and ones that you especially feel like you want to talk about you write a review on!

I got a little carried away with the scanning- it was just so much fun! I always thought the scanning of the books at the library looked like the very best part of the job so I went a little cray-cray
Here's what the fancy tool looks like

If you like the sound of GoodReads then I suggest you get an account, it's like social networking for books, and I'm not even a that big reader, I just do a little when I can and have the chance.

So here's my account: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9834819-alexia

And if you get the chance... I say get the app, it's much more fun than visiting the website- and by that I mean the fun scan-beep feature

Hey...am I doing 'it' right?

When I think of scrapbooking I think of little old ladies crouching over a table of war time photographs and musty magazine cut outs. Which maybe isn't such a kind perspective
But when I came across a bundle of just 'stuff' I had no idea what to do with it all. It included so many train tickets that I couldnt even count, cute little messages from friends, snippets and treasured photographs.

I wanted to combine them all together in a fun way than just sticking the photographs in a photo album and putting the knick knacks in a dusty shoe box.

And the solution was...scrapbooking!

I don't know if I'm 'doing it' right I wikipedia'd 'scrapbooking' to see if what I considered scrapbooking was the actual definition and quite frankly I'm still not sure!
But from what I gathered it is basically, a mish-mash of collages, little embellishments and snippets on a page and two approaches can be taken

1.A neat pristine and rather expensive looking approach with clean and concise scrap books

2.Or the 'Alexia' approach where I basically cut up everything in sight and purpously tear pictures to give them a breezy rough edge to cover up my horrible cutting and slap it all down on the page where I think it looks good

For now, I'm quite happy with my approach! And the scrap book cost the grand ol' price of £3-ish which is cheaper than a photo album and much more fun!

So there you have it, perhaps I am a convert and I join in scrapbooking alongside the war time grannies from my head.

Recipe for a bath

Some people might be thinking, a recipe for a bath? What do you need other than to just add water...?

Well! I'm here to show you how we bathe over here, because if you're going to dedicate some time to a bath you may aswell do it properly.
All you need is:

Hair band and hair ties to keep your hair out of the water (unless you want to wash it in the bath of course)

A face mask- I'm using Cupcake by Lush- it smells of chocolate and mud, but mostly mud!

A bath bomb/bubble bath- today I used 'So white Bath Ballistic' by Lush - it's fizzleness is not that great but it's soo moisturising, it's like bathing in milk!

A candle- one of my favourite scents -Chocolate Orange from http://www.bombcosmetics.co.uk/

A bottle of water - I always get so darn thisty in the bath!

Usually I bring a book too but I had a little headache this morning and just wanted to close my eyes in the bath.

So this is how my bath window ledge looked today:

Don't you feel like you learned a little something about bathing? haha!

Are you a bath person, or are you more of a showerer?

Side note: I filmed a little tip/trick today about travelling with makeup which will be up next week too!