Self-love and steel pans

Today, I had my end-of-year steel pan recital at University. I hadn't really left myself enough time to prepare (as we had a lot of written work to hand in that took time away from practice), so despite working on my pieces as hard as I could, I made some fairly obvious mistakes in the first set. This brought my mood down considerably and affected the rest of the performance, so by the time I left, I was pretty upset with myself.

I don't have the best self-esteem ever. A lot of the time I feel unhappy with how I look, how well I perform at Uni (both in playing and also in written work), I worry a lot about how employable I'll be when I finish, how good a girlfriend/daughter/friend/flatmate/bandmate/whatever I am. So I was all set to hate myself for doing badly today, but when I got into the house and went to sit on my bed, I found this:

For context, that's me at the front, aged about three, and my big brother Dan assaulting some small boy in the background, aged about five. I have no idea how my parents managed to get this photo, but it's hilarious. 

My dad digitized loads of our old family snaps recently, and I printed a bunch of them off to put in frames around my flat - this one is probably my favourite. 

But what I found when I looked at it, was that I couldn't hate myself in this context - that girl isn't perfect with her little pot belly and her chubby legs, but I don't think about that. I think about how cute she is with her crazy blonde hair and her little blue swimming costume with bows on it. I wouldn't be angry with her if she made a few mistakes in a performance, I would comfort her. I certainly wouldn't go on about it constantly to make her feel bad. So why should I do it to myself now? Not so much has changed...

Also for your viewing pleasure, this

This (that's compost that I'm eating)(another parental camera moment of hilarity)

 And this

Can't hate them either...

Weekend fun

Just a few bits and pieces from over the weekend...

 Will and I went to the Tyneside cinema's 76th anniversary celebrations. The Tyneside is this awesome independent cinema which has recently been refurbished to it's former art-deco glory. They have three different screens and a couple of different bars (serving cocktails that are named after each of the screens! The Classic, The Roxy and The Electra), not to mention a great cafe and digital lounge which hosts all sorts of interesting stuff. Last year, for the 75th anniversary, the Tyneside showed 75 straight hours of classic films (across the three screens) and sold each ticket for 75p each! It was so popular, that they did it again this year, so Will and I got in on the action! We saw:
A Clockwork Orange (or rather, Will did, as I forgot that I had to go to work)
The Princess Bride
Goodfellas
Fargo
We were also going to see Audition (scary Japanese horror) at 5.50am, but we wussed out and went for extra sleep instead.

 

My Dad and his neighbors were having one of their bi-annual street parties on Sunday, so we went down for that to eat and be merry.   

 Saxophone quartets and space hoppers, people. It doesn't get much better than this...

 

Such a nice weekend. Only have to push through to Wednesday now, and then I'm done with Uni for the summer! Woop woop!

Favourite things

New series of posts - various people's favourite things for your viewing pleasure! First up, we have...

Dan

 Age: 23

Film graduate/office bitch

Favourite...

Book:

 Dogme uncut by Jack Stevenson. The book outlines the film manifesto created by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg in which post production features such as dubbing, lighting and sound were prohibited and everything that was shot on set remained.

Film:

Shame, directed by Steve McQueen. Follows the life of a somewhat ordinary yuppie living in New York who secretly harbours a harrowing sex addiction. This subsequently affects his relationships with family and friends; features a great performance from Michael Fassbender.

Breakfast:

 

Work in the morning = fruit 'n' fibre with chopped banana. No work = full English; scrambled egg, mushrooms, beans, sausages, black pudding etc.

Song/artist:

Chase + Status - awesome dub-step artists who have mixed it with the best.

Drink:

Drink of choice when out - Mojito. Pure class.

Internet time-waster:

Reddit. Custom built web-sharing amazingness. You can choose what subject you're interested in and explore away on one website.

Piece of clothing:

Chinos, either on a night out, or for just general larking about, they are the dog's bollocks.

Board Game:

Exploration. 

Awesome game from the 1960s in which you have the option to do either diving, sailing, archeology or mountaineering, buying the equipment you need and then going off to find artifacts and winning money for bringing them home. The objective is to be the player with the most money at the end of the game.

Sleeping position:

 On my front. Just like a baby.

Best things in life:

Are free!

  

 

In which Rosie hosts a brithday dinner, consumes large amounts of garlic and goes out for cocktails

As a birthday present for my mum, I made her a voucher that said "One meal of your choice cooked for you by TEAM AWESOME (aka Rosie and Will), and she decided to cash in it yesterday with a request for Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic.

 

 What a great request! Also one of my favorite gifts I have ever given - participatory presents are totally the way to go.

 I had forgotten how amazing tarragon smells... mmm

What a gorgeous meal - definitely making that one again. As we're drawing to a close on exam season - thank goodness - we decided to go and see 'Dark Shadows' and get a couple of drinks this evening. Despite normally being a big fan of Burton/Depp/Elfman/Bonham-Carter silliness, the film was pretty disappointing - we sort of lost track of who's side we were supposed to be on and it generally felt as though there were too many balls in the air...
However, the cocktails which followed (at Popolo's - possibly a dateland post to follow) were marvelous! 

I'm a massive sucker for quirky drinks glasses, so I was utterly delighted by this - it had a name which was something to do with jam and tasted amazing...

 

Breakfast time

 A selection of my breakfasts from over the past couple of weeks...

 Cinnamon roll and rooibosch tea

 Classic boiled egg and toast soldiers 

 Leeks and eggs with potato and onion tart

Brie with bread and strawberry jam  

Pancakes with bacon and maple syrup or "baple" as I dubbed it recently

Health, wealth and happiness Thursday: baked sweet potato

Today's offering is baked sweet potato with peanut butter hummus and salad - the most expensive part of this was the hummus, but a lot of the ingredients may already be waiting in your cupboard; to make this, all I had to buy was chickpeas and yoghurt, and I was ready to go. The recipe is from Kitchen by Nigella Lawson - available here. 

It makes tons as well, Will and I were eating it with bread and crackers for days afterwards.

I always shove a few metal skewers through potatoes when baking them to speed the process up a little - I gave this one about an hour and it was done to perfection...

Pretty things

Some of my current wish-list for your viewing pleasure... There's a bit of a theme with kitchen-wares at the moment

 Sources: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven

Dateland: Stateside diner

Happy weekend to all! As a celebration of our essay hand-in (just one step closer to being done, only three more recordings, one more portfolio hand-in and four more recitals then we're done!), Will and I went on a lunch-date to Stateside diner on Pink Lane.
It's this little back-alley, but well worth finding, as it has lots of cool places on it such as the Forth hotel, the Town Wall, and lots of awesome little shops. Stateside is one of those 50s American-style diners which are super popular with the teenage crowd, and they have the most wonderful milkshakes, (also alcoholic milkshakes and alcoholic soda floats), so we don't mind being the oldies in the corner!

I had a look through the jukebox for this song but sadly, they didn't have it. Lots of other awesome songs though! Not enough songs nowadays have an excellent saxophone solo, or a really casual key change. "Yeah, we just modulated. What of it?"

Reese's peanut-butter milk shakes

We ended up having quite the debate about who was prettier - Elvis or James Dean. Elvis is definitely prettier, but James Dean wins in terms of rugged manliness...

   Date rundown:
Location: Stateside Diner
Occasion: Essay hand-in celebration
Food: Chicken Burger with curly fries, BBQ burger with Cajun fries, peanut-butter milkshakes
High point: When we realized that a LOT of the songs on the jukebox sounded as if they were being sung by Kermit the frog

Health, wealth and Happiness Thursday - Roast tomato soup

It's been a while since I've done one of these, and I know it's soup again, but that's because soup is all shades of amazing and I really really like it. Might go on a bit of a soup rampage.

But anyway, I got and then altered this recipe from the New Covent Garden Soup Company Book, as I didn't have any fennel...

You will need
About 4lb tomatoes (I got mine in a couple of big bags at the market for 50p each)
4 onions
4 sticks celery
4 cloves garlic, crushed
3 bay leaves
some fresh rosemary and thyme
half a de-seeded chilli, chopped
150ml vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
plus
Nice bread
Various delicious cheeses

 
  Chop tomatoes, onions and celery, then lay the tomatoes cut-side up on a baking tray and grill until soft and beginning to darken at the edges. Preheat the oven to 190C. 

Heat oil in a pan, then add garlic, chilli and herbs. Cook for two minutes, then add the onions and celery. Cook for a further two minutes, then pour everything in this pan into a roasting tray and roast for 30 minutes.

Once cooked, put everything back into your original pan, and puree or blend - I tend to use a stick blender because I find it easiest and results in less washing up, but you could also use a food processor- then reheat and add the salt, sugar and lemon juice. Serve with tasty bread and cheese - baguette and chevre dipped into the soup was delicious!

  The cost worked out at about £1.50 per portion (serves 4-6), it was full of vegetables and was utterly delicious - health wealth and happiness test passed!



Will and I were helping his brother Anis do some recording today also...