Ginola

Coach trip has been a guilty pleasure of students and those on duvet days for years. It reminds me of our 24 hour coach journeys to the South of France as a child. The combination of the deliciously camp host, angry Brits abroad and randomly rubbish locations they are dragged to makes for the most cringy and absorbing television. Why do these people want to stay on the coach anyway?

But I was very excited to hear that season two of the show stopped off in St Maxime in the Cote D'Azur, near where I have been on holiday recently. The coach trippers were treated to a game of football on the beach with local celebrity and vineyard owner - David Ginola. Now I haven't seen the episode in question yet, but I'm imagining the wondrous ex-footballer cum vintner stepping out of the Azure sea in an Ursula Andres style, locks flowing. I can't wait for C4 catch up to roll out it's entire archive and prove me right.

Ginola has been taking his wine production very seriously though, he won a silver award at the London International Wine fair for his Coste Brulade, which is apparently a delicate, dry rose. When David appeared on the One Show to talk about his wine the producers asked a load of Geordie women (he once played football for Newcastle you see) to rate it against standard rose plonk and they loved it too.

Popina

On my recent trip to Broadway market, I noticed - and treated myself to - a savoury tart from the Popina stall.

I knew it rang a UKTV Food bell in my head, and I remembered that Popina had featured recently in Rachel Allen Bake! the show sees her and a class baking something each week from her cookery school in Ballymaloe, Ireland. There is also a recorded insert each week where she meets an artisan baker/chocolatier etc.

Rachel met Isidora Popovic who runs Popina from a factory unit in Colliers Wood. Each tart is created by hand and has no colourings or flavourings, and all the ingredients for each of their tarts are listed on their website. They also showed the lucky individual whose job it was, among other things, to crack 6000 eggs each week by hand.

Popina tarts, brownies and pastries are on sale in Portabello market as well as a host of London farmers markets. Find out where here .

Tarra-gone

Needing to use up the masses of tarragon I acquired for the mushroom risotto and short on time and inspiration, I decided to make 30 Minute Chicken and Tarragon Pasta from the BBC Good Food website.

Oh my God, I made a mess of it. Two cloves of garlic is way too much and I didn't chop them enough at all, I was choking on chunks of raw garlic. Plus I accidentally added loads of the woody ends branches of the tarragon, which were also inedible. Utterly vile. It is sad when so many nice ingredients make a meal so disgusting. It's put me off tarragon - and possibly even pasta and garlic, for quite some time. Glad to see all the hours of food TV I watch is so useful to me in the kitchen.

Mushroom stroganoff

I spent a lovely Saturday in Broadway market, which I'll write about more in the next few posts I'm sure. I picked up a little box of "exotic mushrooms" on the way round. Not quite exotic enough to send me tripping off to casualty, as happened to my uncle last year, but still quite unrecognisable to my untrained eye.

I decided to make a mushroom stroganoff, it's always the favourite meal at my parent's local, and I thought I might be able to try and recreate it. I roughly followed this recipe from the excellent BBC Good Food website. Although I used red wine instead of sherry and sour cream instead of crème fraîche. It turned out really nice, although I should have seasoned it much more - John and Gregg would not have been impressed.

Things to do before 30...

1) Make mini quiches like these I did it! Check out the photo on the right.
2) Create a post on I Love My Postcode
3) Sort out my blog/twitter/tumblr/delicious into some sort of order
4) Update my CV
5) Make Baba Ganoush
6) Buy a DSLR and take photgraphy lessons
7) Take a pop music dance class
8) Write a short story and submit it to Hitotoki
9) Go to ATP!
10) Plant my garden with flowers and vegetables

Originially posted on The WyvernHawk...

Why hello there, may I introduce myself as the latest member to the Wyvern covern. I will be posting music and music technology bits alongside the usual games, films and television banter from Geeky Tom, Crabs, Saltdog and the Other Girl (and of course the costume drama and naughty work related nonsense from RGB).

2008 has been an excellent year for the musical underdog. The criminally underrated geniuses Elbow won the Mercury Music Prize, the much maligned Kings of Leon finally converting the entire country to their sexy country swagger; but the biggest triumph of 2008 has to be the return of Leonard Cohen. The seminal singer songwriter, now 78, only decided to tour to claw back some money after a manager swindled him out of $10 million. Yet after a fully sold out 30 date tour culminating in an incredible performance at Glastonbury, his vicious twisted love song Hallelujah now sits at the top of the charts in both the number one and number two spot. Hallelujah to that.

Even the crap music this year has been better than the crap music of other years. Duffy may be bad, but she is a homage to all things girl group sixties and northern soul – I never thought I could dislike that. Even The Ting Tings, though over exposed and irritating are something of an ode to all that is good about Blondie.

Other honorable mentions for the best moments of 2008, have got to be all things lofi and Americana – Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Deerhunter, as well as the swirly attitude of MGMT and Santogold.

So I’ll leave you with the obligatory YouTube clip. With this tip for 2009... Passion Pits. There’re just ace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0mBhSeejA4

and I think you’ll agree that hearing once is a good thing. However hearing it again and watching THIS.MAN.DANCE is even better

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kr1wh4Qexcg

Give me one moment in time

There's nothing I like more than being distracted by a beautiful website, especially one based on user submissions. I thought I had found social-network-enabled sites for all my major passions with Last.FM, Forkd, Goodreads and Flickr - however Hitotoki taps into another love of mine, the short story.

Hitotoki means a single point in time. And that is just what the site features, short stories marking a specific time, place and experience in a city. It features London, Paris, New York, Toyko, Shanghai and Washington DC. Some of the stories are sad, some silly, some little more than an observation. But each one is lovely in its own way. The latest London story is about a guerilla gig on a grey afternoon and I find the tale of that first job interview particularly evocative.