Adventure Rocket Ship

... All I need to be happy is water, sugar, fruit, old jam jars and a sharp knife.

Snack? Um. Tosti kaas en ham. It always reminds me of the good bits of Euro hacker culture: "Hey, guys. Let's write some cool open-souce code, then drink beer and listen to Humppa. But first, tosti kaas!" There was a set of people from some domain registry or other giving them away at HAR2009. It wasn't the local equivalent of a kebab van, because that was the mob the other side of the nl.net guys boshing out chips and mayo.

Sarnie? Variable. This month it's the hot roast baguette from Thyme in Bath. Basically a hand-portable roast lunch, it's a complete bargain at three quid.

Starter? Lamb something-or-other from the station curry house in Whitby. That and a pint of lager means that I've survived the drive north w/o wanting to murder anyone, the bags and the car have been stashed out of the way and now I don't have to be in charge of much of anything for the next few days. It's all about slumping into the weekend.

Soup? Chicken noodle from a Jewish deli on Clarke St. in Chicago. It came in a tureen and was accompanied by about a third of a cow's worth of salt beef sarnie. I was sitting in a red vinyl booth and the vase of ice-water was refilled regularly. The experience was a compressed lump of real Americana. There were no 'Philips Petroleum' signs on the wall, and at no point did anyone express a wish that I had a nice day, which made it all the more real.

Meat? Dead cow. Singed, but not much more than that. God I am such a bloke.

Meal? Oh, right. There was this random balti place in Digbeth, more or less opposite where the Mercat used to be. We were early for either a Libitina or Rosetta gig. I'd found somewhere only slightly scary to park the Volvo, and it looked like it was going to be beer and crisps or something terrible from a burger van the far side of the market. Or the rough-looking curry house. Strangely, they were dead busy, even at six in the evening. However, they were good enough to squeeze us in, and then provide the single best curry that I have eaten in my entire life. You could taste everything. It was all the things that the colour supplements tell us a balti should be, all at once. Sublime. The car was where I left it after the gig, too.

Fast food? It's a toss-up between a large doner from the Roses Kebab House, Highgate, (nothing else has come close since) or a kebab pizza from the shop opposite the Elsinore. If you're going to go for w0rng, go big and go fast before your arteries have had a chance to react. It's the only way.

Pudding? Steamed apple as cooked by Ma. Which is probably a little too traditional. This would be my caring face.

Restaurant? I don't think I have a favourite one. Wait, there was a place in Glasgow, somewhere around where Sauchiehall Street slides into Kelvinside. I had spent the thick end of the last year failing to cope with panic attacks, and we'd beetled off to Glasgow for the weekend on one of those cheap rail travel deals they used to have when the railways were only a bit fucked, rather than utterly so. Anyway. I discovered I could remember how to unwind enough to enjoy food for food rather than a cardboard-tasting thing that stopped one from falling in a heap. Halfway through one meal or other there, I worked out that my best bet was to just walk away from the job I had, because the alternative was spontaneous combustion.

Cooking? I consider no-one expiring afterwards a success. If some of the precursor materials came from my own garden, so much the better.

Breakfast? A full english. There was a dodgy-looking caff opposite the Kentish Town Forum. Formica tables, cockney geezer in charge, usually filled with proper working people from the depot that took up the triangular space between the railway line and our post-warehouse Nathan Barley battery farm. Once a week, one table would be filled by a mob of self-conscious techies pretending they had proper jobs rather than fucking around with other people's money. Full English, Toast, Mug of Tea. Three quid. I will not find the like again.

Vice? Sometimes I eat all the raspberries.

Healthy? Mostly I eat all the raspberries. If I ever go back to a pick-your-own place, the staff are best advised to weigh me as I arrive and again as I leave, then charge me for the difference.

Drink? Extra Bastard Tea from Collona & Smalls of Bath.

Cake, right? How hard could that be?

Answer 1: ow my bloody forearm. Next time I'm using the hand-mixer. To mix my hands so the other forearm gets a taste of it.

Answer 2: topology's a bit wrong, but given it's comparable with similar items that have come from that stove, further experimentation is likely.

For this disturbing display of, um, something-or-other, you can blame nalsa's Idiot's Guide. Although it tangentially makes sense of how two of my great aunts cooked, which was some weird (from the outside, knowing nothing about the process but having looked at the manuals and the telly programmes, which were all about precise amounts) jazz method of throwing stuff together in handfuls and having startling cake come out of the other side.

I don't recall the last time I was party to a Sunday lunch of that size or scope. Stupefying. Yes.