Tuesday 14 December 2010

Leaving On A Jet Plane

Today I fly to China! Which means, no baking for TWO AND A HALF WEEKS! No melting 70% dark chocolate in short bursts in the microwave, no licking of the mixing spoon clean afterwards, no dropping of the cake mix on the way upstairs to use my neighbours oven (not that I’ve er, ever done this)…

However, this does open up a whole new blogging opportunity to me. What do they eat in China? Chicken’s feet, pigs tongue, rotted duck egg, oh and smelly tofu – a favourite! I shall try my best to be the weird obnoxious foreigner at the dinner table in restaurants and take lots of photos of the meal. I would say I’ll also go round the food markets and wade around in fish slime and take photos too, but this will be heavily dictated by what my family want to do – my grasp of the Chinese language isn’t fluent enough for me to venture on escapades alone and not get mugged/ thrown fish at.

Hey, could happen.

Then, hopefully I might write something vaguely interesting about it (think the food speaks for itself), and post it up (I’m going to ignore the boring part where we eat loads of rice). But you won’t hear from me for a while, as the Great Firewall of China also blocks Blogger, so you will have to be graced by these posts upon my delightful return :)

So that’s it for now! I’ve got two photos to show you; presents from the UK to friends and family back home:

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We’re trying to fatten up our family, whilst giving them type II diabetes, obviously. And judging by those Burberry perfumes, we think that they smell, too.

Anndd some delights from China (this photo was taken in on a trip to Beijing in 2007):

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Regrettably I didn’t try any. I really should have, because, you know, at least these maggots were cooked. And dead.

Lesson learned today: always be prepared for mugging or spontaneous fish throwing. Always.

Thursday 2 December 2010

Chocolate and Chestnut Cupcakes

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Timer rings, are you listening?
In the gyp room, hobs are glistening,
A wonderful sight, we’re happy tonight,
Baking in a winter wonderland.