Eating&reading 16th Nov 08: I?ve got food on my mind.

Weekly round-up of yummi-news from around london and the blogosphere. Now released every Sunday and brought to you by a London eater.

I’m cruising & dining on the thames, running circles around Maze, thinking about a burlesque show in a seedy venue and making five minute cakes in the microwave.

eating happenings here on London Eater

I go through phases. One day I wake up with a seed planted in my mind, could be an advert, could be catching a clip of john mayer on that slide guitar, could be a travel mag and then I think about it so much that I feel like I need to get out there and just immerse myself in it. Sometimes I wonder if anybody else is like that too….

…Anyway, this week I went abit obsessive with food photography. I invested in a couple of new lenses (£395 + £89 , ouch. ) and although they returned some nice results, photography is more about how you use the camera, rather than the camera doing the job for you. So I’ve been critiquing my own shots to death and I can see all these flaws in them that I just want to like make them better. Flipping through a few food mags, it just made me feel so inspired.. I want to get ‘the shot’ every single time. Snap, no , snap , no , snap , no.

See what I mean about being obsessive?

In between getting lost in the world of photography, I did manage to get four posts out this week:

Quickie wine guide part 5: Sommelier Jousting The week started off with part 5 of the quickie wine guide, with this one providing you a few tips for when you want to do abit of jousting with the sommelier when you’re out and about.
Gordon Ramsay, Jason Atherton and Maze I paid a visit to Maze with my 50mm primer and came away with a BLT sarnie in a cocktail glass and popcorn ice cream. It gave me mixed feelings…
The top ten most delicious food photography websites Food porn. If you love it, then read this.
Cruising and dining on the river thames This is why London’s great, cruising along the super scenic thames… and eating some great food, does it really get any better?

london happenings around the Smoke

How do you keep your radar up for the latest and greatest in london? If you don’t go beyond timeout, then maybe you need to check out some of these guys. Ok, I’m looking for a cool place to eat, somewhere nice to take Jennie for Christmas and a totally randomly cool thing to do because, well, I get bored.

Metrotwin this is cool, they do lists of stuff to do/places to see in London… and new york, hence the ‘twinning’ bit. I checked out this list about christmas afternoon tea and apparently the kew is transforming itself into a winter wonder land complete with ice skating rinks and all … ok that’s in my calendar for next month, any takers?
Spoonfed They have spooners. Spooners who go out and then come back to tell you what’s up and what’s hot. So I’m looking for cool and completely random … hey how about a burlesque show?  1910’s music at a ’seedy’ but ’sensational’ tea room / strip joint …. on a wednesday night ? Wow.
Trustedplaces I just came across this one a little while ago and it’s a restaurant/bar/cafe/pub review guide. Cool! Ok I want a nice place to eat out (and review) . Guys, how about Rochelle canteen? Its supposedly a converted bike shed, now fitted with glass doors and inside is divided into tables and on the otherside is an extensive kitchen? This sounds cool, you want a review?

reading happenings around the community

Healthy fast food … YES. I knew it! it exists!!! They’re offering tips on how to go healthy in burger king and McD’s! Oh admit it, you sneak off to your local kfc every now and again, read this already.
The ten best sarnies in America…. need I say more? I do? Ok let’s try fried oyster & shrimp po boy at Acme. Time for me to figure out how to split the atlantic.
No recipes I don’t know how I managed to miss this blog off my top ten food photo list , but marc deserves a mention here, the concept is very cool, his blog is cooking sans recipes because its a pro-inspiration website and just totally creative. Check out his no recipes round up here in which there’s a really delicious looking pork belly dashi recipes…very nice blog, I love it already!
Dirty kitchen secrets Hey i’m no chef, my skills in the kitchen aren’t anything to crow about, but here’s some nice red velvet cupcakes for you to try on a cold weekend.
Hungry mouse’s 5 minute cake Finally, I tried this one! But instead of using cocoa powder (i stupidly forgot to bring it into the office) I used coffee instead (in my line of work, the whole industry is run on filter coffee). If you’re going into work on monday morning and have 5 minutes in the office pantry and a microwave, and you want to distract your colleagues of the monday gloom .. then TRY THIS! It definitely works and taste abit like sponge cake. Use a few scoops of coffee powder (I used run of the mill nescafe) and LOTS of chocolate cookie chunks.

Next week is burger week

That’s right, my loosely connected series of burger posts are complete and over the course of the week, will be posting all about burgers, burgers and more burgers in london and beyond. Burger and wine. Burger lists. Burger pictures and more burgers in a sentence than you can shake a burger at it.

Ok apologies, i went abit overkill there… but come back tomorrow for that and then again in seven days for this eat&read. Till then, have a great end to the week and run out and buy John mayer’s where the light is - it’s that good.

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