Sausage, pepper and lentil casserole - recipe

I've been steadily getting more 'into' cooking lately - rather than it be a end-of-day chore I try to find some interesting and fun things to cook, especially on lazy Sundays. I have a chunky folder full of recipe clippings from magazines, and most of the things on my Christmas list are kitchen accessories! Being a vegetarian you often have to be a bit more creative with cooking so I've been using lots of pulses and seasonal vegetables lately, and I'm a big fan of herbs and spices to add flavour.

I've been photographing some of my creations for a while, mostly to remind myself what I made, and thought I'd start writing up some recipes in case anyone else wanted to try them out, too. Here's the first, a spicy lentil and sausage casserole, perfect for winter nights.

Sausage and lentil casserole

Ingredients
Serves 2 with leftovers

• 4 veggie sausages - I used 2 sundried tomato ones and 2 leek and cheese ones (you could use meat ones too, I suppose)
• Tin of puy lentils (I used Merchant Gourmet)
• Tin of plum tomatoes
• 2 sweet pointed red peppers
• 1 red onion
• 1 garlic clove
• Oregano, thyme, paprika, dried chilli flakes
• Spoonful of pesto (I used a delice from Brussels but sundried tomato pesto would be good)
• Teaspoon of wholegrain mustard

Method
Chop the onion and slice the peppers into rings. Fry in olive oil until starting to go soft, add half a teaspoon of each of the herbs and spices and a crushed garlic clove. Chop the sausages into inch chunks and add to the pan, frying until browned. Add the tomatoes, lentils and pesto and bubble away, covered, on a low heat for half an hour or so (or you could pop it into the oven, if you have a casserole dish). Stir in the mustard and serve with salad and bread.

Make Do Mend - craft workshops

Last night I went to the launch party of Make Do Mend, a new crafty workshop venture started by knitwear designer Claire and crocheter Bee. As well as those crafts, they also offer classes in sewing, jewellery, and cupcake decorating - to your own home or in a pretty venue.


The launch party was held at the beautiful 40 Winks in Stepney, a 3-storey townhouse restored and decorated by interior designer David Carter. After bubbly (or tea), nibbles and a good poke around the building, we got to try a few crafts out ourselves.



Sewing workshop; we made a big mess in the lovely drawing room as well as some corsages and peony Christmas baubles.


Festive cupcake decorating class in the cosy basement kitchen; these are the wonderful work of instructor Melen.


Here's my effort with buttercream piping.

It was a lovely evening of cosy crafting. If you want to try it out yourself, you can find out more about Make Do Mend on their blog.

Vintage vs modern infographics

Nice article in this month's Wired magazine, which takes infographics from vintage textbooks, illustrated by Roy A Gallant, and updates them with all the extra information we now know. Got to say though, despite all the scientific advances packed into the updated images, I much prefer the simpler old ones.

The effects of an earthquake tremor, then and now:


And a diagram of the Earth's atmosphere, then and now:


Read the whole feature here.

Golden half - two cities

Sorry for the all the slightly self-indulgent photography posts lately - I just spent a fortune getting tons of films developed and now they've all been sent back. Much as I love the precision and control you get from digital photography, there's nothing like the excitement of getting a roll of developed film back - especially when you might have forgotten what's on it and it brings back nice memories.

These were taken on my little Golden Half with Fuji slide film (straight processed). Some of our little August jaunt to Amsterdam and some just out and about round London.


Street art around where I work in Shoredtich


The art car boot fair on Brick Lane back in the summer


Amsterdam. Happily in this film the two photos in the same frame often matched to to create a nice diptych - for example, both these shots have flowers in.






Analog also teaches you that sometimes a ruined frame looks good too!

OM10 and Diana+ in Japan

Here are yet more Japan photos, from my old Olympus OM10 camera. It's so exciting getting old-skool films back in the post, and it brought back all the good memories of the trip looking through them.






I was a bit distraught to find 2 of my 7 films had somehow got jammed and not advanced properly between shots, so I have 24 images all multi-exposed in one frame. I'm trying to pick out all the would-be images from the jumble...




And here are a few from the Diana+. After all the precise metering and focussing of the OM10 I found Diana a bit frustratingly unpredictable and uncontrollable, but I still like these shots. I've put the prints into a little album I bought in Tokyo as a nice alternative memorial of the trip.

Lots more on Flickr.

Marina and the Diamonds photos

I blogged about Marina and the Diamonds back in June and I finally managed to see her live on Wednesday night. She's a fantastically charismatic performer with a gorgeous voice, and I reckon she'll become massive next year.

I was also excited to try taking some 'proper' gig photos - well, slightly less amateurish than my usual attempts anyway - so I got a good spot at the front (next to Marina's mum and dad!) and gave the E-P1 a go with my 50mm OM lens. I'm really happy with the results, except the lens's crop factor made them just a little too tightly-framed.









Here's a video of 'I Am Not a Robot':

Listen to Marina on her Myspace page or this handy music-streaming-box. Her album's out sometime early next year.

Make Lounge - Rubber stamping

I took my second class at the Make Lounge this weekend - a festive rubber stamping workshop led by Louise Best.


Like the first class, it was a heap of fun as well as being very informative and creative. The process was easier than I expected, using the special tools to carve our designs into the surprisingly soft rubber, then mounting the stamps onto wooden handles.


I left with four hand-made rubber stamps and the beginnings of yet another new hobby. I'm going to use the stamps to make all my gift tags and wrapping paper for Christmas.


Check out the Make Lounge's website if you fancy signing up yourself.

Fantastic Mr Fox concept art

Aww, I love this beautiful concept art for Fantastic Mr Fox and Coraline from production designer Chris Appelhans. See more Fantastic Mr Fox artworks here and the rest of his portfolio, including Coraline and Alice in Wonderland, here.




Via Drawn.ca

Edit to add: The Vanity Fair website has a fascinating look behind the scenes at the painstaking process of making the puppets, and more nice concept sketches.

Kawaii Japan goodies

Shopping in Japan - especially Tokyo - was so immense. I'm going to be paying off my credit card until next year, but how could I fail to stock up on all this cute stuff?


Sweet notebook


Mini toy camera stickers, what could be cuter?


More stickers. Can YOU understand this variation?


Notepaper that folds into a papercraft cat head. This little San-x character, Kutusita nyanko, is so cute and I haven't seen any other stuff with her on in the UK.


Stacking Russian dolls teapot, isn't it precious?


Kitty cat socks from Might Soxer, a Japan spin-off chain of Tabio.

Japan travelog

I'm back from Japan! It was - as expected - totally amazing. I'm still on comedown. It's a bit overwhelming thinking of all the things we saw and did, but luckily I wrote a daily travelog out there to remind myself. I've just cobbled it all together into a website, so click onto katiedoesjapan09.blogspot.com if you want to have a look.



I'm also slowly adding all my photos to Flickr - there are a LOT of them and I still have ten rolls of film to develop, too. I'm so happy with my E-P1, I love how all my digital photos turned out.