Song of the Week

Happy thanksgiving! We are having a rather non-traditional dinner today - Turkey chili and treacle tart! We did make up for it by having the proper thanksgiving meal upstairs with our landlords and their friends last night - my first proper thanksgiving - which was lovely.
I'll tell you all about today's dinner soon, but in the mean time, here is the song of the week for this week!
This week's song is "Cat in the Hallway" by Tiny Ruins, from her debut album Some Were Meant For Sea. I bought her album after hearing "Old as the Hills" on the radio a few weeks ago, and I am besotted with it.
Tiny Ruins, aka Hollie Fullbrook is a musician and songwriter from Aukland, New Zealand.
I've heard that Hollie was recently involved in a motorcycle accident in Zanzibar and has had to cancel her tour dates, so here's wishing her a speedy and complete recovery :)

Song of the Week

Well, my computer is finally fixed, and just in time too, since I have a lot of work to do on it at the moment!
For this week, I have chosen a song which I must have listened to on average at least three times a week since I first heard it.  As well as being amazing to just sit down and listen to, it is perfect for playing when doing homework or trying to go to sleep. It is chilled and relaxing, but with an interesting complexity that you can tune into if you so choose.
The song is "Child Song", by The Cinematic Orchestra, from their 2007 album Ma Fleur. If you like this at all, I urge you to seek out some more of their music, they really are great. You'll probably have heard at least one song before.

Song of the Week

I am having quite a lot of problems with my computer at the moment, and I am taking it to the repair place tomorrow, for the second time in two weeks. Since I don't know when I'm going to get it back, I thought I would post the song of the week today, then I will be back with a new recipe when my computer is (hopefully) fixed!

This week's song of the week is "Bubble" by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins. I bought their album, Diamond Mine back at the beginning of June and I haven't stopped listening to it since.  It is just stunning. They were nominated for the Mercury Music Prize this year, but were pipped to the post by PJ Harvey.

Take a listen, and enjoy the beautiful video :)

Lorra Lolly Lentils

It's starting to feel a little autumnal here in Vancouver, and by that I mean it's raining. Standing at the bus stop in the rain is not a particularly heartening experience, so I like to have something warm, tasty and filling waiting for me at home. Today's recipe fits that description perfectly.
The dish I went for was Tarka Dal, following Anjum Anand's recipe. We have Anjum's book I Love Curry back home, and the dishes in that were delicious, so I had high hopes. I was not disappointed. This dal is warming, moreish and as a bonus, healthy! I served it with this zucchini rice, minus the cheese!
You can find the recipe here.

In other news, do you know how hard it is to make daal look nice when it's dark and you just want to devour it?

I'm Back! ...Sort of...

So, I'm back at school. Third year, I can't quite believe it! I'm all settled in to a new flat, have five new courses to wrap my head around (including Swedish - hej alla!), and hopefully I am ready to get back into the swing of blogging!
There are going to be some changes around here for now, since I have yet to figure out just how to balance my workload. For one, I am going to go from Artist of the Week to Song of the Week. There are a few reasons for this, but one big one is that I'm worried that I will run out of artists of whom I own an extensive back catalogue! Secondly, I have decided that this semester is going to be about improving my cooking skills, and that means following other people's recipes. I will still do my own recipes occasionally, but more often than not, I will be showing you my results from using other people's recipes.
I hope to have something new up soon, but in the mean time here are a couple of the cooking adventures I've had since I last saw you:

Cooking *live* shrimp

moments later, one jumped across the room.

Cocktails with The Hungry Undergrad!