Boil a Kettle, Chop an Onion: Veggie Carbonara with cherry tomato sauce

This is a recipe that crystallised last night, and the landlady and i hugely enjoyed it. as a carne, i always loved the simplicity of carbonara and would smother it in ketchup; this recipe turns that junk food into something a bit more artsy, but still remaining a pure comfort.

you will need:
for the spag:
smoked tofu
equivelent weight of mushrooms
wholewheat spaggheti
spinach
eggs, milk
fresh ground black pepper
veggie parmesan (for example)
salt to taste (OBV)

for the sauce:
olive oil and butter
1 red onion
2-3 cloves garlic
1 chilli-pepper
about 20 cherry tomatoes on the vine
balsamic vineger
tomato puree


boil two kettles full of water for the pasta and stick in a big pan on the stove. chop the onion, garlic, tomatoes (they only need halving), and pepper.
dice up the tofu and mushrooms quite thinly and fry them off in olive oil in a large sturdy pan, until the tofu has coloured and the mushrooms have reduced. then set these aside for later.

melt some butter and EVOO together, and soften the garlic and onion for a few minutes. then add the tomatoes and pepper, adding puree and balsamic when these have had a chance to bite for a bit. leave topless, bubbling away and silking up on a low light.

stick the spag in the water, cook as usual (you know, stirring frequently and all that - whatever you do to cook pasta). there's a lot of stirring and not much else for about 10 minutes here - however long it take for your sauce to take care of itself.

when the pasta's done, drain it off and stick back in the pan on a minimal heat. add the eggs and some milk, and the mushrooms and tofu, and stir it all together, maybe sticking a bit of salt in. add the spinach and stir until all the egg is cooked and all the ingredients are mixed up nice. slodge into a bowl, plop a bit of the tomato sauce on top, and grind shitloads of black pepper and enough old smelly cheese on as you like. enjoy with a hearty red or an old tom, and some youtube vidds of professor brian cox.

cake - comfort eagle

We are building a religion
We are building it bigger
We are widening the corridors
And adding more lanes

We are building a religion
A limited edition
We are now accepting callers
For these pendant key chains

To resist it is useless
It is useless to resist it
His cigarette is burning
But he never seems to ash

He is grooming his poodle
He is living comfort eagle
You can meet at his location
But you'd better come with cash

Now his hat is on backwards
He can show you his tatoos
He is in the music business
He is calling you "DUDE!"

Now today is tomorrow
And tomorrow today
And yesterday is weaving in and out

And the fluffy white lines
That the airplane leaves behind
Are drifting right in front
Of the waning of the moon

He is handling the money
He's serving the food
He knows about your party
He is calling you "DUDE!"

Now do you believe
In the one big sign
The doublewide shine
On the bootheels of your prime

Doesn't matter if you're skinny
Doesn't matter if you're fat
You can dress up like a sultan
In your onion head hat

We are building a religion
We are making a brand
We're the only ones to turn to
When your castles turn to sand

Take a bite of this apple
Mr. corporate events
Take a walk through the jungle
Of cardboard shanties and tents

Some people drink Pepsi
Some people drink Coke
The wacky morning DJ
Says democracy's a joke

He says now do you believe
In the one big song
He's now accepting callers
Who would like to sing along

He says, do you believe
In the one true edge
By fastening your safety belts
And stepping towards the ledge

He is handling the money
He is serving the food
He is now accepting callers
He is calling me "DUDE!"

Do you believe
In the one big sign
The doublewide shine
On the bootheels of your prime

There's no need to ask directions
If you ever lose your mind
We're behind you
We're behind you
And let us please remind you
We can send a car to find you
If you ever lose your way

We are building a religion

We are building it bigger

We are building

A religion

A limited

Edition

We are now accepting callers...
For these beautiful...
Pendant keychains
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think these lyrics are just amazing. The confusion between brand, the music business, and religion, tele-shopping, radio phone-ins, and democracy, it's like the whole bad world wrapped up - warped up - in one song. it's the cross-pollination, the pattern-recognition, that is the best of humanity - over a boss-core rock (almost metal) leitmotif. it's 3 minutes 40 of pop genius.

tonight's entertainment was brought to you by:

Hounds of Love (cd bonus tracks)

so i find hounds of love in the landlady's record collection, which i am excited about, and put it. a few familiar singles in, and i'm loving it - just mad enough, just 80s enough, hanging together lovely. as the album goes on, i find it gets madder and madder, goes all folksy and then starts repeating songs. it goes on too long and i get bored of it.

 

because it's the cd. there's at least three sides worth of vinyl here - the original album, plus bonus tracks. it's bad enough having those two sides of vinyl on the same cd - but having bonus tracks on the same disc just made the music keep going until i was sick of it.

 

Pink Floyd (what's left of them) just won an injunction against EMI to stop them selling tracks from their albums individually; they wanted each work to be available as a whole, not as fragments to pick and choose.

 

please, record companies: include a bonus disc for remixes and b-sides. leave the album as it was meant to be. it's precious.

buzz test

have i set this up right?

cd shop family trees

i was just looking up fopp on wikipedia, wondering if they still had their store in edinburgh (for some reason) after they went into administration.

i was reminded that their troubles began when they over-extended and bought music zone, which was another local start-up that had gone national. i didn't realise they bought music zone because mz had gone into administration themselves.

what really surprised me is that music zone had gone into admin after over-extending and buying MVC (remember them?), who had been created by ex-our price staff who left when woolworths bought them. our price was of course a virgin media company. our price got rebranded as v-shops, selling all kinds of virgin media, with an insane way of ordering cds over instore-internet terminals. why would you leave the house to buy cds online?

our price was sold to an autralian company and rebranded (for 8 million) as 'sanity'. they sank without a trace.

The virgin megastores then became zavvi in an incredibly poorly-timed management buyout, that left the zavvis all over the country re-opening as bargain sportswear outlets.

HMV tidied up by not 'selling out', accusing their prospective buyer of undervaluing them, then cherry-picking prime fopp and zavvi branches that didn't compete with their own stores. they're also expanding into live music venues.

I mean, i just wanna buy some borking cds.
what was that thing about extreme environments leading to low biodiversity?
what was that thing about the world being a massive buffet?