By ‘the Internet’ I mean, of course, people on the Internet. Not the Internet itself. That would be weird.
Anyway, this is my Personas result:
I like it. Slightly surprised domestic isn’t a larger chunk given how many people find their way here searching for icing…
Not so long ago, I wrote about what I thought of as “Disney for Good” and how I thought that there’s a whole exciting room for engaging Disney folk in work for non-profits beyond VoluntEARS – community outreach, if you will.
And here it is. The new 2010 promotion: Give A Day, Get a Disney Day. Give a day to help a participating organisation, get a free day in a Disney park.
I knew they’d have something up their sleeves. I’m glad this was it.
I’m nervously tracking my parents on a flight to Greece; I hate flying and so does my mother, but family reasons have forced her onto a plane. The plane tracker has lost sight of the aircraft because they don’t pick up data over the sea (they must be between Italy and Athens right now) which is making me uncomfortable.
Usually I’d distract myself baking but I can’t fill the house with yummy smells because Ash will return from shul soon to begin his Yom Kippur fast. So it would be a bit mean. Instead, I’ll finally catch up on a post I meant to write an age ago.
Yesterday was the wedding of my oldest and closest friend in the world. The girl I used to make forts under the duvet with, whose shoulder I cried on when lesser men than my husband broke my heart, who celebrated the good times with me (and cake). She looked beautiful and the day went without a hitch; we took some photos in a gloriously dry and sunny Hyde Park which I really look forward to seeing. But some weeks ago, before all this matrimonial celebration, was her hen do. Following on from mine, for which I requested an old-fashioned tea party, my friend Lizzie took the helm to create a themed party for the then bride-to-be, Em.
The theme chosen was suitably Disney (we’re friends for a reason); as you might have guessed from the photos, it was The Little Mermaid
The Theme and Decorations
Lizzie worked relentlessly and tirelessly for around two months before the day. I won’t give away exactly how she did everything as it’s not my work, but the photos in the post should give you a great idea of the fantastic attention to detail she demonstrates. Every inch of the party area was lovingly converted into an under sea grotto, with characters from the film, sandcastles, seaweed, balloons, bubbles, shells and even a treasure chest helping to set the scene. The walls were hung with underwater and sandy bottom cloths, which made for a particularly fun treasure hunt, for which Lizzie wrote a pirate-themed set of clues. To complete the beside-the-seaside feel, the entertainment was a classic Punch and Judy show!
The Baking
The only part of all this wonderment I asked – and was allowed – to get in on was the baking action, and I was duly granted this task. Knowing Em loves chocolate, I dipped into Nigella’s classic How to be a Domestic Goddess and fished out the recipe for the supremely rich, muscovado-sugar packed Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake. I then personalised it by whacking on some chocolate ganache and crushed pistachios (picture and recipe for ganache below as it’s one of my own / my mum’s). Alongside this was the more exciting part, using my brand new Wilton tin in the shape of cross-sections of mini wedding cakes!
Given that they really ought to have white frosting, I revisiting Rachel Allen’s red velvet cake, and then festooned the finished and iced cakes with red rose petals. I did have a shot at sugar-frosting another set of petals myself, but it went horribly wrong so I resorted a sprinkle of the fresh sort at the last minute. I also wanted to get a lot fancier with the frosting, piping finer details on and making it look sharper and more elaborate, but those plans fell by the wayside. In fairness to myself, I’d never done it before and was baking both these cakes, cooling and frosting them and knocking off a set of cookies all on the same evening after work…
The cookies, by the way, were Levana Kirschenbaum’s kosher chocolate chip cookies – recipe online -, which were made vegan by substituting a heaped dessert-spoonful of vanilla (plain will do) soya yogurt per egg at Lizzie’s suggestion. It makes the dough much more crumbly, but if you persevere they will come out beautifully light, moist and chewy. Ash isn’t prone to exaggeration for all his love for me and he said he’d “pay for them”, so they must have been nice… Oh, and it goes without saying that the chocolate chips should all be plain and lactose free for vegan chums. Excuse the slightly fuzzy photo; I was shattered by then!
The Ganache Recipe
This is – perhaps frustratingly – a very imprecise recipe, for which I apologise. Growing up with a Greek mother I got taught to make a lot of things “with the eye” and this is one of them. It’s annoying, I know. You need:
A block of butter
Caster sugar
Cocoa
Milk
Melt some butter in a reasonably thick-bottomed pan. For the loaf cake I used about a quarter to a third of a 250g block. To this I added two heaped tablespoons of cocoa plus the same amount of sugar. Stir constantly and swiftly and then start dribbling in a little milk at a time until the chocolate reaches a shiny, almost oily texture that drips from the spoon but isn’t runny. Taste a little (hot butter can burn, though, so be careful) and balance out the flavours as you prefer; the cake being very sweet I wanted a little cocoa bitterness to come through. While it’s still warm, pour over a completely cooled cake. It’s a little uncontrollable which is why it particularly suited this cake which tends to sink in the middle.
Before it had completely set I bashed the life out of some pistachios in a plastic bag with my rolling pin and sprinkled them on top.
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I scuttled to the wilds of Teddington (South West London) for the Institute of Direct Marketing’s Complete Digital Marketing course. While the IDM offers some of the few respected qualifications for marketing in Europe, this particular course was not a qualification but an intensive, ambitiously comprehensive introduction to the foundations of digital marketing.
Of course, I am already a digital marketer, having been doing it for a year. But I had no marketing background and a lot of the time knew what I was doing and that it worked, I just didn’t know why. And I didn’t have an entirely confident grip of what I should be testing and how. This course aimed to begin to address this, and now I’m thoroughly set on doing the Certificate in Digital Marketing qualification as soon as I can find out whether there’s anything left in the training budget (if not, I’ll work out a way to do it privately).
The CDMC (as I shall henceforth refer to it) is three days covering the tools in the digital marketer’s arsenal – email, mobile, display / banner ads, etc – as well as the techniques they can use to keep honing their methods, always aiming at best practice.
Some of it is covered at breakneck speed, and it was unfortunate that email marketing and constructing a solid digital campaign plan were rushed through at the end (with a session on online-offline integration not being covered at all). Search Engine Marketing (SEO + PPC, basically) was covered in just two hours with some very crowded slides. But then I understand that the IDM is up against it; any longer than three days and it feels like too much effort, yet there’s so much more to cover every year. I did wonder if it would be worth cutting down the initial introductory segment, or having one extra optional day to cover the areas that get missed.
The course tutors are generally excellent, field leaders who have worked with the IDM for years and know their onions. Though there was a slight lack of interactivity, bar one useful card-sorting exercise with Tobias Misera of user experience specialists Foviance, discussion was encouraged. Main course tutor David Hughes of Non-Line Marketing is engaging, interesting and invites any question or challenge.
The best session was probably a toss-up between one focussing on the importance of testing (David Hughes) and a rather complementary session from Matthew Tod of Logan Tod on web analytics. The latter really did serve to open my eyes about just what I’m tracking and why I’m tracking it.
The weakest session was probably one from Eric Mugnier of Inside Mobile who, to be scrupulously fair, had not been the original speaker and had to fill in at the last moment for his MD. Mobile’s been the future for, oh, the last ten years, and although Eric convincingly argued for its eventual dominance, he also ended up assuming a level of understanding about the mobile marketing arena that most of the course attendees (myself included) didn’t have. That said, it was a worthwhile two hours, even if I was left believing that there’s still a way to go before we as an organisation will find a really effective use for mobile marketing.
The most useful thing I learned was a good sense of how to implement a constantly moving, rolling series of tests and improvements. I hope to be able to put that into practise soon!
In the end, despite some hasty sessions and content compromises that had to be made to fit the format, this was still a very useful way to spend three days away from my inbox. The facilities of the IDM are comfortable and more than fit for purpose. The comprehensive set of slides that are given as both paper copies to annotate and later sent as electronic copies are very useful. The booking process for the course, which costs roughly £1,400 is swift with judiciously timed follow-ups by post, email and text (as well they might be, given the source, eh?).
In short, if you’re new to digital marketing or don’t have a formal background in it, this is an excellent choice.
Partially inspired by one of Rachel Allen’s programmes I was half-watching, I had a yen to experiment with some pastry as I’ve never really made it before. I thought I’d start with the simplest, which is short crust.
The principle with short crust is that fat should be half the weight of the starch in the mixture. So if you use 200g of (plain) flour, then you need 100g of fat. And for every 200g of flour you need roughly half a beaten egg. I use, at my mother’s suggestion, though Nigella concurs, a mixture of Stork margarine / butter and vegetable shortening (I use Trex but Crisco is much of a muchness). You could use entirely the latter for vegan pastry, but you’d probably have to be even more restrained with the egg as Trex is more damp than butter.
For 30 of these (using two silicon tarlet tins of 15 each), I used 300g of plain, 00 flour, 75g of Stork and 75g of Trex. The fat and flour go into a food processor and are quickly pulsed to make damp sand (or rubbed together with fingers if you’re without electrical aid). I guessed at pre-heating the oven fortuitously accurately. For little pats of pastry like these, around 150 degrees Celsius is fine.
For sweet pastry you can add one tablespoon of icing (confectioner’s) sugar, or a teaspoon of fructose for diabetic-friendly cakes. For savoury, a teaspoon of salt will do nicely. Or you could add nothing at all – I’ve forgetfully done that before and it still makes for lovely, buttery pastry.
A little of the beaten egg is poured in at a time and it’s pulsed / combined until it just combines; the pastry shouldn’t be too damp. I found I used just over one, but it will vary so best to just add a little at a time.
Once you can just about bring it together, wrap it up tight in clingfilm and pop it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. In dire straits, Ms. Allen says the freezer for 15 will do. It makes it far more workable.
Roll it out between two sheets of clingfilm and use a cookie cutter just wider than the tarlet cases. Stamp out your shapes and pop them into the tartlet tins, pushing down gently to form a dip. Then drop around half a teaspoon’s worth of the jam of your choice into the dip – a no-sugar-added version if necessary. Don’t be tempted to overfill – some of the ones in the picture are slightly too generous and it upsets the nice pastry to sweetness ratio if you overdo it. The jam heats up and becomes rather runny, spreading to become a fetching jewel in the middle. I also used lemon curd which tastes wonderful but needs a lot longer to set after heating.
Eight to ten minutes is ample; the pastry might still look quite pale but it will be quite a dry texture already, and firm up more as it cools.
Half an hour to cool… and then a yummy tea time. Very simple, very quick, generally made from storecupboard ingredients and pleasing to everyone from kids (who can easily help to make them) to grannies. Love it.
I’ve just had my hair cut, so I thought I’d get Ashley to take a few photos of me that I can use for this footlin’ bloggin’ thing. Here are my favourites:
I thought Snaffle was very obliging in the second shot considering he usually doesn’t sit still for more than three seconds together and generally doesn’t like me. But he seems to like the smell of my mineral foundation and even licked my chin. Kitten breath is not as cute as it sounds…
Originally uttered in a faintly pejorative tone, a ‘Bluestocking’ was an 18th century literary luminary, an educated, intellectual woman. In
Bluestockings – The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education, Jane Robinson reclaims the term and uses it to pull together an extraordinary tale of misogyny, determination, ambition and the quest for knowledge more than a century later.
In 1869, Emily Davis made history by creating a college for the first female undergraduates in England, in a house outside Cambridge. The lecturers were whoever could be persuaded to help out; the five students were not to actually be awarded degrees at the end of their courses. It would take two world wars before Cambridge allowed its female graduates to qualify, becoming the last university in England to do so – although it was the first English university to tolerate female students, after a fashion.
So what happened between 1869 and 1948?
Sam Mendes’ sweet road trip movie, Away We Go, achieved something few other films have managed this year: a screaming belly laugh and actual tears of amusement, all with the simple expedient of some childish behaviour with a baby stroller.
As an examination of drifting thirtysomethings, unsure if they’re ‘fuckups’ or not, encountering a stream of stereotypical families as they careen across North America looking for a place to call home, it doesn’t exactly tread new ground. But Mendes’ great strength, here as in American Beauty, is not an original story but an original retelling
Read the rest of the review at BitchBuzz
Also, something I didn’t mention in the BB review but should have done is the great soundtrack. It’s not groundbreaking stuff, musically, but the Nick Drake-inspired drifting wandering-man-with-a-guitar tracks suit the movie brilliantly and are the excellent side of easy listening. Mostly courtesy of a US-based Scot, Alexi Murdoch.
Well, I’m better. Stones have been whipped out (and man were there a LOT of them… as you can see from this grim picture tweeted from my hospital bed), stitches healed and removed and I am once again fit for human company. I checked with the doctor and exercise is fine so I’m back in the gym trying not to kill my admittedly pathetic but at least existing daily half hour workout habit.
It’s half an hour because I’m too unfit to do more than thirty minutes of cardio in one go, not because I don’t have time. But at least I’m going before work and being all virtuous. And then eating my bodyweight in chocolate and butter.
Anyway, other things that are not health-related have happened, and they were more fun. Here are three fun things:
– We saw Sam Mendes’ new film, Away We Go, for free, and it was ace. I have zipped a review over to Cate at BitchBuzz and will post when it’s actually on the site, with some extra thoughts that I had that were too waffly for the review.
– We went to a Susie Perring exhibition. I own one of her goldfish prints and would happily snaffle up her entire back catalogue. It’s on the When I Win The Lottery list, right after getting myself a green card and having a holiday at the Grand Floridian.
– I started baking again! Rachel Allen’s Sweet Potato and Pecan Loaf (except I used walnuts, not pecans) and it’s the richest, moistest, most wonderful use for a vegetable ever. And it was thrifty – I had three sweet potatoes that had seen slightly better days but that were still usable that went into it. I finished off the loaf experimentation with Nigella Lawson’s Banana Bread, full of sticky, rum-soaked raisins that are just gorgeous. The alcohol burns off, so they’re safe for kids. I’ve frozen most of that as Ash doesn’t do bananas and even I can’t finish it all alone.
To follow: posts about The Hen Do, with pictures, jam tarts, with recipe and stuff. Just as soon as I get round to it. Promise.
Remember a few posts ago, before it all went gallbladder-shaped, that I promised to link to a travel post on Bruges I was writing for BitchBuzz? Well here it is. I’m beginning to form a similar post on Rome in my head at the moment, and being Greek I have plenty to say about visiting Athens. In a funny way, I’ve only learned to appreciate Athens as a tourist in the last few years; as a child it was a procession of relatives’ houses, syrupy preserved fruit and the odd smell of lavender and mothballs… but that’s for the memoir I’m a little too young to write.
I’ve received a copy of Jane Robinson’s Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education to review for The F Word, too. Luckily I have an awful lot of reading time on my hands, being more of less pinned to the sofa. I’m alternating between the above and Robert Löhr’s excellent Secrets of the Chess Machine, sent to me by a thoughtful friend.
Although I’m getting up to walk around as much as possible and trying to get strong very quickly, public transport is still an issue when the slightest carrying weight or jostle to the side causes a wave of pain through my torso. Frankly, even lying still can do it sometimes, and though movement is not so difficult now, sitting up in a chair for long periods tends to make the upper two incision sites pull, throb and itch. I’m blogging lying down, having felt I ought to do something for Dogs Trust. I miss my job! At least the bloody awful pain in the shoulder has stopped; it’s caused, somewhat improbably, by left over CO2 in the system after the operation (you’re inflated with it during the procedure) and is totally excruciating. I’ve now weaned myself off the painkillers because I’m really precious about medication; I simply won’t take anything I don’t desperately need. I never touched the codeine I was given and took the paracetamol until Sunday – since Monday morning, I’m drug-free. And sore. And missing the swimming and jogging I’d recently finally convinced my wobbly bits that they could do.
So the above paragraph should explain the baking hiatus. I won’t be able to cope with standing and hefting baking trays for a few more days. I’ll be back in the saddle – work and baking – on the 1st of September, although I hold out some hope I’ll be able to go in on Friday if things improve faster…
MOKUSKA 