meemalee

I cannot stop watching this truly beautiful video (found via @robmanuel at b3ta ). How wonderful is this kid? Some of Curtis's gems: "I want my bacon. I got to tell you something. Bacon is good for me". "She's the queen, and we're the sorry people". "Joy, I have been nice to you, but now I'm coming to the edge". "She's gonna try to stop me but she can't run in those little high heels". I wish UK's Wife Swap was this good. Talking of bacon and America, I just found out that we can now get the almghty US invention Baconnaise over here. I'm getting me some, cos bacon is good for me.

So I was looking for somewhere to have breakfast near London Bridge. Brindisa, Roast, the Table and more sounded tempting, but none of them opened till past ten. In the end, hubby and I plumped for Côte Brasserie in Hay's Galleria, as I'd heard good things about them, though obviously their steak skills wouldn't necessarily have any bearing on their breakfast abilities. Côte is right on the river, so we sat near the door for a waterfront view. Every table was adorned with a pot of Bonne Maman preserve , but this was about as useful as the flower that would normally be there as the jars were very much unopened and I think they'd flinch if you popped that safety seal. Seconds after we sat down however, they gave us three dishes of strawberry, blackcurrant and apricot jams, as well a lovely stoneware bottle of filtered water and some bottles of Heinz ketchup and HP sauce. My pomegranate juice tasted odd though - too astringent and also with a melon aftertaste and I hate m...

Limping through Holborn today (I had an unfortunate skipping accident), who should I pass but Gregg the Grocer aka Gregg Wallace of TV's Masterchef. If I'd been a bit more on the ball, I would have yelled " Puddingface !" at him; as it is, I just grinned inanely. He was too busy smiling smugly to himself to notice me anyway. Perhaps he was fondly recalling today's episode of MasterChef: The Professionals. For tonight Mr Wallace unleashed the following corker: " There is mistakes throughout your cooking ". I was giggling so much that I almost missed Michel Roux Jnr denouncing the crack in a chocolate roulade as a " Chasm " as in Chas'n'Dave (who incidentally split up today ). Happy days.

Here's a quick and dirty one. One of my little pleasures in life is to suck the marrow out of a bone. Osso bucco , lamb shanks, even chicken bones all have chunks of wobbly, meaty goodness to release for my delectation and , as far as I'm concerned , it's as delicious as foie gras without the guilt. I'd noticed that Selfridges had some sliced veal bones in its Food Hall, so I schlepped over to pick up a kilo, as well as some chicken hearts and gizzards. To be honest, it gave me a bit of a thrill to be walking around chi-chi Selfridges carrying what my Fallout- playing husband would call a " gorebag ". Anyway, I also got me a loaf of sourdough and a bunch of parsley to construct a celebrated Fergus Henderson recipe - and a death row meal for Anthony Bourdain no less. Here's my take - serves a greedy two. Note that you'll need a long thin implement to extract the marrow if the bones haven't been sliced vertically (espresso spoons work well - can...

The other day, my husband and I went to a preview screening of my new film All Tomorrow's Parties . I say "my film", of course what I actually mean is a film to which I've been lucky enough to contribute. This is how it describes itself: "ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES - THE FILM FEATURING: Belle And Sebastian / Sonic Youth / Battles / Portishead / Daniel Johnston / David Cross / Animal Collective / The Boredoms / Mogwai / Slint / The Dirty Three / The Gossip / GZA / Iggy Pop / A Hawk And A Hacksaw / Saul Williams / Shellac / Patti Smith / John Cooper Clark / The Mars Volta ... Coming November 2009 from Warp Films [who made This is England ], produced by Luke Morris / Warp X In an out-of-season holiday camp on the coast of England, alternative music festival All Tomorrow’s Parties serves up a heady combination of alternative music, crazy golf and chalet-living; all curated by a single band or artist. This post-punk DIY bricolage uses material generated by the...

That there in the foreground, my friends, is a Potato Tornado and the only tenuous connection this post has to food. Last month my husband forced me to make a day trip to what may be the most ridiculous thing this world has ever seen - a life-sized Gundam in Shiokaze Park, Japan . Look at me for I surely rock Gundam , for those who are unaware, were the precursors to Transformers , but unlike those Western upstarts, Gundam were not robots with feelings ( and lips ), but rather huge vehicular suits for Gundam pilots to steer. Since their humble beginnings as an anime series , there have been countless iterations in all types of media such as movies, manga, novels and video games, and this year sees the 30th Anniversary of Gundam , culminating in the construction of a 18 metre, 1/1 scale, life-size statue of the iconic Gundam model RX-78-2 . Massive hand to grasp you Fay Wray style The site chosen for this awesome monument to Gundam was North Shiokaze Park in Odaiba , Tokyo. We arrived...

Maguro (tuna) carpaccio A good man is hard to find. Good sushi is even harder. At least that seems the case in this fair land of Albion. Supermarket and takeaway interpretations are the rankest imagineable ( just ask Richard Vines and Jun Tanaka ) and restaurant versions are often no better. But Japan invented sushi, so you'd expect that their stuff would knock the socks of anything we'd come up with. Surprisingly though, the sushi I had for breakfast at Tsukiji market , the sushi world's El Dorado , was a bit of a let-down and also left me feeling a tad ropey. In the end, the best sushi I've ever had was at a tiny kaiten-zushi bar in Ueno, Tokyo. I've no idea what it was called, but as every plate cost 126 yen, to me it's the 126 Yen Sushi Bar ( edited on July 2014: apparently it's called Oedo and it's now 130 Yen! ). The first time we ate there the exchange rate was 220 yen to the pound, meaning each plate cost a measly 57p, but even with the ec...