Garments

All About Eve (1950)

Such a whip-smart movie. Great lines and great clothes. What a shame that Eve is built to a hate figure for being a ruthless and ambitious striver while Margot gets love and redemption by giving up a great new part and putting her energy into being a wife. And Karen seems to take back a husband who was about to marry Eve - no questions asked! Hmmm.


     


And while Eve gets professional success and fame and Hollywood, by the end of the film she seems to have lost the ability be charming, or feel that she no longer needs to use it and seems on the road to being a diva-ish drunk, failing to recognise her new little helper and a mini-Eve, trying on her clothes and her awards

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 My favourite scene is Eve and Karen in the lady's room, when Eve suddenly turns from little mouse into a villainess. All while wearing an amazing scalloped dress.


 


 There is a great guide to the costumes in this film at Pale Writer.

The Birthday Party

 What I wore to my birthday party at Village East this year. One of the many highlights of the night was stumbling to the bar to sheepishly ask for Jagerbombs and coming back with their house shot, Purple Haze, instead. It is some sort of grapefruit and golden rum concoction which tasted as though it might plausibly be good for you.

  The headband is from Crown and Glory (highly and hugely recommended) and I looked at this photo a lot while getting ready. A girl has to have aspirations.

Blonde inspiration

Inspiration for me now I'm newly blonde... (including Stella's Wardrobe and NioTilFem)

Outfit

A recent one. Top from River Island, Skirt from French Connection.

Thrifting

 Vintage shot glasses and lots of them. For when I set up that bar I'm always talking about.

Home cooking

As part of my mission to eat healthier, my latest "enthusiasm" is taking my cooking more seriously. Instead of winging it or just eating king prawns or avocado for dinner (yeah.) I've been buying cooking books, oils that aren't olive based, cuts of meat that require more than 2minutes frying on each side... I even gave the slow cooker we got for Christmas a maiden voyage!I thought it was a bit complicated and erm... post WW2, but it is actually a lot less hassle than my usual cooking methods. Here is is in action with 24 hours stewed lamb ready for a post work dinner chez moi on Friday:

I would also like to point out that I made that humus (in the foreground) manually. As in, I don't have a blender. It was done with a fork. Yup. Like our forefathers would have done. One of the things that brought on this mad cooking jag is Rachel Khoo's Little Paris Kitchen show on the BBC. I don't know if it is because she is from Croydon like me, or that she has a tiny kitchen like me or that she upped stick to train as a pastry chef in Paris (she IS Sabrina!) but her show and book are very inspiring.

 

 Above is one of her Croque Madam muffins that I made this morning. There is a cookbook worthy post on these at the Eat, Little Bird website, whose very talented owner seems to be cooking her way through the book.

 I have also been enjoying geeking out and learning more about the actual process of cooking. I want to know WHY we do things not just blindly follow the recipe. How will I become a south London Heston Blumenthal if I don't know what is going on at a molecular level?! Luckily I managed to find this Sunday Times Cook's Companion book in a charity shop for next to nothing. It is a bible for anyone who wants to know what self raising flour actually contains, why kidney beans can poison you if you don't boil them etc etc. It also has some great chapters on the history of national cuisine. Apparently British cooking is traditionally dull because English produce was good enough that we got spoilt and never developed a cunning range of seasonings and preparations to make it taste better.
 

 

 In the past week I've cooked fresh fish in two different sauces, steak, lamb ragu, a Ken Hom stir fry, lemon and cardomom shortbread and ... some flapjacks. Ironically, my healthy eating drive will probably see me gaining weight!

Chez moi

X-Ray Spex

Weekend

Marie Colvin

Her break came in 1986, when she was in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, as America launched its biggest aerial attack since Vietnam. Filing copy while scrambling to avoid the explosions, she set a pattern that would last the rest of her career.
It was while there she was summoned to meet the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, and over the next quarter of a century she frequently met him, as well as many other political leaders and despots. But a peculiar effect of her beguiling character and her journalistic talent was that tyrants were charmed by her, and sought her out, even as she eviscerated them in print. Last year she published an account of her encounters with the late Libyan leader over 25 years. It was entitled “Mad Dog and Me”. The Daily Telegraph

Casual Friday

Valentine's Day trip to London Zoo

Happy Valentine's!

Going to the Book Club at Old Street

Martha Argerich

"She is a compact woman, with surprisingly small hands and an enormous mane of long black hair. Her beauty dwells in her large eyes, which are at once sad and sly, and in her smile, which has been compared more than once to the Mona Lisa’s. Musicians have a history of falling in love with her and coming away crushed by the force of her personality. It is said that one of her amours would labor for hours over a difficult score, only to watch Argerich, a person of nocturnal habits, slouch downstairs in the middle of the afternoon, rub her eyes, and sight-read the music effortlessly."

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Deal - The Black Douglas Coffee House

The Eggs Benedict is highly recommended.

blackdouglas.co.uk