Tea! Just what the Doctor ordered.

Basically, I’m such a big nerd that I accidentally stayed up until about 4:30 yesterday morning making tea blends based on the first eight Doctors.  Thus:

The First Doctor tea starts off a classic Granddaddy assam, tempered with chestnut and cream, making a surprisingly lovable blend.

The Second Doctor tastes like a safety cling: sweet, whimsical, and a little bit sexy.  Warm and comforting chai spice and vanilla, then packs a little extra ginger punch for good measure.

The Third Doctor, velvet and aikido.  Bright, flamboyant and flirty flavours of cherry, hibiscus, and orange.

The Fourth Doctor would like to know if you’d like a jelly baby.  Raspberry, currant, and pomegranate are evocative of The One With The Scarf’s favourite sweet, foregrounded by serious business black tea.
The Fifth Doctor is precious and understated and just a little bit sassy.  A suitably beige blend of caramel and almond cream tea that pairs wonderfully with celery.
The Sixth Doctor is bold and brilliant, brash and clever secretly a big bowl of snuggles.  Bold chai spice, with undercurrents of surprisingly cuddly hazelnut and vanilla.
The Seventh Doctor is a big bowl of mystery with a special relationship to the letter R.  Dark, roasty yerba mate and rooibos are a little bit nutty, with brighter, warm notes of vanilla and honey.

The Eighth Doctor is sweet and full of love, elicits vast amounts of feels, and is prone to amnesia.  This blend of cherry and almond with a little apricot won’t actually restore your memory, but you’ll feel warm and happy, and as a bonus, you won’t turn you into Zagreus.

Dinner.

It's nearing the end of September, and I'm suffering greatly from the tail end of a doozy of a cold, that lingering unpleasantness that leaves you blowing your nose in vain and coughing endlessly for the next few weeks. Needless to say, I'm not feeling too sexy. The best solution I could come up with was to make sweet potato and coconut soup. It was a really good idea.

1 tbsp canola oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 thumb-sized piece fresh ginger, peeled and minced
2 medium sweet potatoes, chopped
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp ground coriander seed
1/4 tsp cinnamon
4 cups vegetable stock
1 400ml tin coconut milk
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

In a large soup pot, heat oil over low-medium heat. Add onions and celery, cover, and steam for 5 minutes or until they have begun to become translucent. Add garlic and ginger and cook for another minute. Add sweet potato, curry, coriander, and cinnamon, and stir, steaming for another minute or two. Add stock and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes, or until sweet potato has become soft. Whizz until smooth with an immersion blender, or whizz in batches in a blender or food processor. Add coconut milk and stir to combine, cover, and simmer 5 further minutes to warm through. Serve with a bright, autumnal salad (my favourite is mixed greens with thinly sliced apple, dried cranberry, pecans, and balsamic) and enjoy the heck out of it. Nom nom nom.   

Not Only Do I Own a Pair of Braces, I've Also Read Piaget

If the title of this post hasn't already made it abundantly clear, I've decided that I really ought to figure out how to pursue becoming a children's television presenter. I'm strange and brightly coloured, and if my one-month-old nephew is any indication, kids think I'm completely awesome. Add to that my slightly comedic-vagabond sense of personal style and the fact that I very nearly minored in psychology, some of which was developmental, and you've got a winning combination, really.

But where, you may well ask, does this all stem from? And if you are asking, my answer would be: the 1970s. Namely, a little program called Vision On, which ran from 1964 to 1976, and is undeniably groovy. Originally conceived as a program geared towards deaf children, it consequently relies very little on spoken dialogue, and only occasionally are spoken words or signs used. Instead, the show is very heavily visual, sometimes incorporating written gags, and employing live action as well as several different animated segments. And claymation.

Those of you who remember the hurricane on the east coast last summer may also remember that I spent hurricane day cooped up indoors with my girlfriend at the time, producing this animated classic:



Admittedly, however, what drew me to the awesomeness of Vision On in the first place was the fact that it starred, among others, a young (and moustachioed!) Sylvester McCoy, who would go on to become the Seventh Doctor. Just look at his little face.



If it were possible, I'd probably bingewatch every episode ever made, but at least there's 9 minutes of it on youtube:

What I Did This Weekend, With Peob Bear

Peob and I spent Saturday night and most of Sunday lunchtime putting together a gorgeous black forest trifle. Here's how it went:




















We started with a base of brownies (made with lots of really good dark chocolate and sweetened with maple syrup) baked in the wee hours the night before and left to cool until morning, then topped with half a jar of sour cherries and their juice, then topped with chilled vanilla custard cooked while we baked the brownies, then we whipped some cream and spooned generously over the other ingredients, and garnished with a sprinkling of dark chocolate. Perfection.

You can use pretty much any recipe you like for any of the components of this dish, but here are some you might find helpful:

Brownies

1 1/2 c. flour
2 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 c. maple syrup
2 squares unsweetened chocolate, chopped roughly
1/4 c. water
1/3 c. oil
2 tsp. vanilla
Preheat oven to 350, and line an 8"x8" dish with parchment paper. Sift together flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder. Combine chocolate, maple syrup, water, oil, and vanilla in a small saucepan and warm over low heat, stirring gently, until chocolate is melted. Allow to cool slightly before adding to dry ingredients, stirring to combine. Batter will be very thick. Spoon over parchment-lined dish and bake 20-25 min. Cut into squares and let cool completely before assembling trifle.

Custard

3 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 c. milk
1/2 c. heavy cream
1/2 c. plus 2 tbsp. sugar
one vanilla bean, scraped, or a good slug of vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients in a double boiler (if you don't have a double boiler, a metal bowl set over a saucepan works just as well - just be sure the width of the metal bowl allows it to sit on top without falling into the water below) and warm over simmering water on medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until custard has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Be sure not to overcook, or cook over too-high heat, or the egg will curdle. That said, don't sweat it if a few lumps form! Just give it a really good go with a whisk to smooth out the lumps and you're golden. Place in the refrigerator to cool before assembling trifle.

Whipped cream

1 c. heavy cream
sugar to taste
a little vanilla extract, if you like

This is such a no-brainer I'm not sure if it even warrants being a recipe. Using an electric hand-mixer, whip cream until it goes solid and creamy. See above for the kind of texture you're going for. Add to trifle as pictured above. And there you have it, ladies and gents, trifle!

And my world just went and got a little bit nerdier.

Those of you who have had the questionable fortune of speaking to me for more than ten minutes are probably more than aware that I have an unnaturally intense love for: a) Doctor Who; and b) knitting. As such, I'm surprised it's taken me this long to discover that Lalla Ward, who played the lovely companion Romana II for some time during Tom Baker's tenure as the Doctor, went on to write two ridiculously adorable knitting books, which I may or may not have ordered from Amazon for like four dollars today. The first, Fowl Knits, features an array of bird-themed jumpers, some of which are also modelled by fellow Doctor Who actress Louise Jameson:

I wonder what Leela would have thought of that dodo number? It's a far cry from what she was wearing in the TARDIS, to be sure:

I haven't seen anything but the cover of the second book, Beastly Knits, but the sheer whimsical kitsch of the cat jumper has convinced me that it will be worth the $4 I spent for these books on Amazon:

I do, after all, enjoy cat jumpers. Remember that time I bought this from prettysnake?
And it's basically the sexiest thing I own.