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last sunday of the term = last sunday lunch that we’re hosting. twas my recipes this time round. did a hawaiianish marinade comprising pineapple juice, sesame oil, soy sauce, mint, mustard, honey. i didn’t get a picture of the chicken though cos i forgot but i did get a photo of the big hit of the day:

i’ve made this cake before, but using dark muscovado sugar instead of light. i must say i like the dark one better. ella was in charge of the cake this time round and i did the frosting while she decorated it with walnut halves and chopped caramelized ginger.

after the food, ella, becca, chris, alex and i trooped to the black bull to catch the euro final. am really glad spain won. after the dutch crashed out i told alex to put money on spain winning it and villa getting golden boot, but he didn’t listen to me haha. after so many years of underachievement, i think it’s about time spain won something big. and it’s icing on the cake (HA HA HA see above picture) that torres scored the winning goal too :) 

Hummingbird Cake (adapted from Butter Sugar Flour)

250g self-raising flour, sifted

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

250g brown sugar

50g dessicated coconut

50g walnuts, finely chopped

440g can crushed pineapple, well drained

2 very ripe bananas, mashed

2 eggs

200ml vegetable oil

Cream Cheese Icing & Decorations

100g cream cheese, at room temperature

50g unsalted butter, softened

225g icing sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 walnut halves (or as many as you like really)

1.5 tablespoon chopped caramelized ginger

 

Preheat the oven to 170C. Grease and line a 22cm (9 inch) cake pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour and cinnamon. Add the sugar, coconut, walnuts, pineapple, banana, eggs and oil and give it a good mix.

Spread the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for until skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. 

Allow the cake to stand in the tin for 5 minutes. Invert onto a cooling rack and let it cool completely.

For the icing, combine the cream cheese, butter, icing and vanilla extract in a bowl. Using a hand-held mixer, beat until smooth. Spread on top of the cooled cake.

Press walnut halves onto the frosting in any arrangement you like (we placed them round the circumference of the cake) and sprinkle chopped ginger in the centre. 

alex was showing me a blog entry by this lady with whom he was erm acquainted with a while back. it was a pretty nostalgic entry, musing about how she misses him and how she knows it’s true love because she loves him for who he is and not for his many achievements. i’m pretty sure it’s written about alex because the Uni of Chicago (where they did their undergrad studies) is mentioned. or perhaps i’m wrong. shrugs.

anyway, i don’t want to come across as possessive or anything, but i think this lady has got the concept of love all muddled up. i have been in a situation like that before, pining for a person that clearly doesn’t feel the same way. at that point my silly little heart thought it was love, because isn’t that what love should be? bittersweet, heartstring-tugging, a little painful, gut-wrenching.. you know the cliches. as time went by, i gradually learnt that i too had completely misconstrued love. i’d tried to rationalise something that was too big for me, i’d underestimated its sheer meaning and power.

love, i realised, isn’t just simply holding on to memories, hoping to immortalise the tiny moments. love is, and most certainly has to be, mutual. you can’t simply lasso the other party and tug hard, hoping that eventually after all your mammoth efforts he/she will eventually be drawn closer to you. it just simply doesn’t work that way. if only one party is doing all the lassoing, it isn’t love. i’m sorry for being so incredibly harsh. it isn’t anything to do with the ‘omg she’s pining for my guy hands off you little skank’ kind of thing, i swear. 

having said that, i don’t want to come across as spiteful by gushing about alex and i, but judging by how we’ve spent almost every single day of the past 3 months together (even if i live in york and he in london - it just means a lot of commuting and extremely expensive train tickets), i realise that my previous notions of love have been completely flung out the window. she’s got it wrong, i told myself. i know for sure that i, we, have got it right. 

1. *lonely* by Chi
2. whispers & secrets by futureancient
3. ヤサシイクウキ by (ku)nihito
4. digitallacedress by danske

i’ve always wanted to post a few flickr favourites but never got round to doing it. but this is what the end of term does to you. you feel in a way reborn, refreshed, revived. yet since i’ll be in york for another week, in a completely different way it doesn’t feel like the end of term. shirin left for london today for her fashion drawing course at central saint martins. (not before dumping about 4778167278682 boxes and paperbags at my place cos she didn’t want to pay for summer storage) i’m a little gutted that my lifedrawing course was cancelled, else i’d be in london now too, doing what i love. 

indiana jones ended its run yesterday, so we caught the edge of love instead. it was, as alex put it, strange. i thought sienna miller and kiera knightley had oodles of chemistry though, and i really enjoyed looking at the little trinkets in their welsh home, complete with the lovely vintagey tea dresses worn by the two female leads. (with wellies too - very glastonbury!) plus it was set in ww2 and movies set in war always get to me somehow. perhaps its due to the nature of my job, but watching old filmreels of air raids and hearing the blaring sirens in these films never fails to send through me a tiny little jolt of electricity.

this post shall now end here, in a strange hanging place. i may or may not add to it but we’ll see.