The Sugar Bar

On campus, we have a limited choice of greasy, boring places to eat. I’m not really complaining since there’s a place we usually stop by on Mondays after our lecture for yummy jackpots, aka jacket potatoes or pots. Whatever weird combo you fancy (eg. tuna and cheese, sweet thai chicken and beetroot, etc.) they are more than willing to cater to your odds and ends for a jackpot topping. In terms of healthy eating, we’ve even got a little healthy snack bar under the University Centre that offers gluten free soup, salads, a range of vegan and organic sandwiches, drinks, fresh fruit and a range of rice & corn crisps and snacks. Thing is, to get your money’s worth, you’d order a Salad & Protein which offers you 5 salad choices and 1 protein from £2.45. Your choice of protein can be anything from feta cheese & sundried tomatoes to a chicken breast to shrimp to marinated chicken breast to poached salmon. If you’re the type who can’t go without a salad dressing, the lady behind the salad counter is more than happy to squirt a ridiculous amount of mayo, vinaigrette, soy sauce and other weird sorts of liquids on your salad. Fresh salad, tasty, generous portions, affordable.

Sounds good so far, don’t you think? The downside of this is the long queues, the slow service, the lack-lustre expressions of the salad people. You’d think healthy eating could be made more ‘healthy’ with healthy, chirpy people offering the food. No. You’ve got druggee-types, grumpy types, dazed types, clueless types. Honestly! Also, if you happen to go into the snack bar with a 10 pound note, about 90% of the time you’ll have the salad lady fretting about chatting with her mate about not having enough change, etc. etc. It can get très annoying if you’re a pretty impatient-from-hunger type of person.

It’s cold. I’m hungry. Don’t piss me off. Now, give me my food dammit.

So anyhow, ranting done. I have realized that the saying ‘If you wanna get it right, do it yourself’ rings true. Salads are dead easy. Salads are quick to make. Prepare a massive bowl in the morning and you’ve got a satisfying lunch to bring with you to work, to a picnic – it’s great! You can throw anything in it so use up that almost-rotting vegetable at the back of the fridge quick! This said, why am I getting frustrated in a healthy snack bar when I can whip up something even better for less, minus the frustration and the queueing?

Diva has been silly. From now on, I’ll be taking a packed lunch with me to university. Probably will start getting up early and bento it up as well. Oh, I’m getting little eager shivers just thinking about how the others will watch and envy my adorable little lunch sets. Haha!

Clementine Salad Bowl with Wild Crayfish Tails, Fresh Basil, Raisins & Walnuts
Ingredients

1 serving your favourite mix of salad leaves
1/3 cup wild crayfish tails, ready to eat
5 large fresh basil leaves, roughly shredded and broken up
2 tbs raisins
2 tbs walnuts
drizzle on your favourite vinaigrette, or some lemon/orange juice

Salads are easy. Put it all in a large bowl. Mix together. Drizzle on your dressing. You don’t need much dressing for this as sweet clementines make up for all the flavour! Now toss wildly. Serve.

I’ve served mine in a lousy glass casserole dish out in the cold on ice or melting snow…Eccentric huh?

Just last week, we went to see the new Underworld film – The Rise of the Lycans. The boys and I are avid fans of the film and of Kate Beckinsale. Violence, vampire action, good soundtrack and a fine woman – no one can resist that, now can they! Although she doesn’t appear in this one, the prequel, we were still pretty excited about it simply by association. I enjoyed this one thoroughly since I really liked the Lycan dude anyway, even in the previous film. The army of werewolves in the film, however, somehow brought ideas of creating an army of my very own. What did I think up?

Mating Anna’s black persian cat Mortie with my cocker spaniel Fifi. That sounds like the most horrid, sick thing to do. Please don’t be offended but Anna and I pissed ourselves chatting about this and decided a cat and a spaniel will create an army of, not Lycans, but Spatz! How cool does that sound? Someone’s gonna say ‘Maybe to a stoner’. Chances are, he’s right but man, do I think my little army of Spatz will be great fun to have around. Nonetheless, this really just stays in my head. I’m really not that into inter-breeding of animal species.

So anyway. Someone turned 21 yesterday (actually 3 people I know share the same birthday on 27th Jan) and Kid Diva did her duty and baked the birthday cake. The last time I made carrot cake for a friend’s birthday was years ago and it didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it to. Melting in the summer heat, it was greasy, squishy and simply pathetic. This time, I truly believe I have outdone myself all thanks to Ina Garten’s recipe. This woman is a godsend! The cake was orgasmically good – dreamily moist and the flavours were fantastic. Considering I had hardly any of my bakeware from home, no sieve to sift the flour or icing sugar, ancient scruffy-looking cake tins and a shitty garbage of an oven, this cake turned out a hit. The birthday boy was grinning from ear to ear and it wasn’t strange to spot our party-goers dipping their fingers as discretely as possible into the cream cheese frosting between gulps of vodka.

The whole evening was as posh as student life can get. The recent credit crunch, however, prevented us from making a pleasant trip out into the country for a relaxed pub lunch as Sam would have wished it. Instead, we organized a nice little dinner, table cloths and all. Redecorated the kitchen, lit some candles, whacked on some posh jazz music and placed a green sign on the door that read ‘Bistro Gamper’. The whole thing was Anna’s brainchild and kudos to her. She did an amazing job preparing the pork, potatoes and vegetables, and a to-die-for redcurrant and cider gravy which I’ve already nicked the recipe of. I’ll never forget the taste of that gravy and I’m eager to give it a go myself. In fact, there’s some left in the fridge. I could possibly drink the whole bowl of it. It is that mindblowing!

Stuffed, about to pop, and feeling slightly woozy from too much food and champagne, we braved on towards pudding and the birthday song. My family’s quite the group of conservative eaters. At family meals, I’m always the only one gasping and moaning away if something tastes great. It takes quite a bit to stop me from banging on about how good it is. Last night, however, I am very pleased to say the whole table was gasping and moaning away to no end. What a fan-fucking-tastic experience that was! I am so relieved and glad that the cake was a success, thrilled that it tasted like sex and delighted that our dearest Sam is 21 and lovin’ it.

I have altered Ina Garten’s recipe just slightly – adding more spices and substituting half the amount of vegetable oil for applesauce. This was recommended by a lot people who had attempted the recipe and thought I might as well try it their way. Can honestly say this cake wasn’t greasy like the one I made years ago. It was wonderful – perfectly moist and the flavour was well balanced. I might’ve reduced the amount of icing sugar in the frosting as well. I rather enjoy tasting more butter and cream cheese then just sweetness. Come the summer, I will be making this again. It’s so beaten my infamous Guinness Chocolate Cake.

I’ve noticed a trend though. I happen to make the best cakes on days where I know I’m going to get absolutely battered that evening. I suppose alcohol doesn’t just give you a head rush huh?

Carrot Cake
Adapted from Ina Garten
Ingredients

For the cake:
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup vegetable oil
3 extra-large free range eggs
2/3 cup Bramley applesauce
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2cups + 1 tbs flour, divided
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 pound carrots, grated
1/2 cup crushed pineapple

For the frosting:
300g cream cheese
1 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup icing sugar, sifted

For the decoration:
anything you fancy really OR
strips of carrot, peeled with a peeler lengthwise
some red chard leaves

Preheat oven to 180d Celsius.
Butter and flour 2 8″ round cake pans.

Beat sugar, oil and eggs together until light yellow. Add vanilla. In another bowl, sift together 2 1/2 cups flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Toss the raisin and walnuts with 1 tbs flour. Fold in the carrots and pineapple. Add to the batter and mix well.

Divide the batter equally between the 2 pans. Bake for 55 – 60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool completely in the pans set over a wire rack.

For the frosting:
Beat hte butter til light in colour. Add the cream cheese and beat. Add the vanilla. Beat till just incorporated. Add the icing sugar and mix til smooth.

Assemble cake and decorate as you like it!