I give you a recipe for ice-cream

This is ice-cream that does not need an ice-cream maker. It has no rubbish in it. It melts fast, but that doesn't matter.  The deliciousness/ease of making ratio is completely skewed, because it is stupidly easy to make and very very delicious (and rather elegant too, in some ways).

It is a nutty ice-cream; you could probably add other things but not too many or too much, because it is held up by air and too much other stuff would weigh it down and make it sag.

It is designed to be frozen in a loaf tin (or whatever plastic box you have hanging around), turned out and sliced when you have fancy friends round. Alternatively, you could just stick your spoon in and shove it in your gob in front of back-to-back episodes of "Real Wives of Jersey Shore".

Nut Ice-Cream

This is I think originally a Sue Lawrence recipe for Cobnut Ice-Cream.  I don't think I would know a cobnut if I fell over one in the street and it bit my ankle, but other nuts will also do, she said, so it is now a Generic Nut Ice-Cream.

2 tablespoons nuts of your choice (cobnuts, pistachios, pecans, hazelnuts probably best)
3 eggs, separated
4 tablespoons caster sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 pint double or whipping cream

1 x loaf tin/tupperware box
Clingfilm
3 x bowls
Whisk (hand or electric)
Big metal spoon

1. Take the nutty nuts. Chop them roughly. Toast them (I do it in a pan on the stove watching like a hawk). Whilst still warm, sprinkle on the brown sugar and stir it in. It will melt on the nuts. Allow to cool.  (Also nice is a big pinch of Maldon or similar.)
2. Whip the egg yolks and caster sugar together until pale and thick. 
3. In a separate bowl, whip the cream until it is also thick. 
4. Combine the cream and the egg yolk/sugar mixture (sort of fold it together but don't worry too much about keeping the air in). 
5. Stir in the cooled nuts. 
6. Whisk the egg whites until stiff
7. Fold the egg whites gently into the cream/egg/sugar/nuts mixture with a big metal spoon until all combined.
8. Pour/spoon into a loaf tin/tupperware box lined with clingfilm (let it hang over the edge) and give it at least 6 hours in the freezer.  

Very, very nice by itself, but raspberries are always nice with nuts I think.  I made it with pecans, and used maple sugar instead of brown sugar. Also added a bit of chopped crystallised ginger.  It was magical and like a dream of perfection and unicorns.

Pip pip!

NWM

P.S. I have started putting the recipes I sometimes post in a crazed style here. I will also put links to recipes I like a lot up there and update it now and then. You will like it a lot. I know it.

I am in Toronto and it is the G20

I am only just in Toronto, though, because I am at the airport on the edge of the lake. It is a magical place that you travel to by ferry; from it, you leave Toronto on a tiny aeroplane with propellers drinking wine given out by ladies in 1950s air hostess outfits. I am going home to Montreal after a week that was long and strange, spent mainly, as it was, in a room on the 41st floor in an hotel, wondering why people leave their office lights on when they go home at night.

Toronto is empty at the moment, like the City of London at 4am on a Sunday morning, because the G20 is in town (or about to be) and everyone is working from home for fear of being jumped on by the ragged protesting hordes, despite the fact that the protests aren't due to happen until tomorrow.  There are policemen everywhere moving around in great clumps, ambling through the streets in knock-off RayBans eating sandwiches and sipping from paper Tim Horton's cups, ready to protect and serve and save us from people with beavers on strings. 

But not all the policemen drink Tim Horton's coffee. Some of them are in Starbucks, particularly the one on the corner of Yonge and King.  Regular readers will be aware of my views about coffee  (broadly the same, even after all this time), but Starbucks to me is the worst of all,  because it talks in the language of coffee but makes a drink that smells of despair and things in tins.

I am in Starbuck's because there is nowhere else to get coffee-approximate substances and food, and it is early and I must eat and drink.  I have ordered something called a "triple no-fat Venti latte", aka a large cup of lukewarm skimmed milk with coffee-scented devil jizz in it, and am clutching a sandwich of inderminate content and provenance, waiting for my 'coffee' behind five policemen in matching outfits of soft above-the-knee shorts, baseball caps, Nike ankle socks and Asics trainers.  

"Triple grande no-fat vanilla iced coffee?" "Yes!", says Policeman 1, who is approximately 6ft 2 and wearing a perky cap. "Grande caramel Frappuccino?". "Yes!", says Policeman 2, who is like Policeman 1 but a bit shorter. "Venti no-fat mocha?". "Yes!", squeaks Policeman 3, who would probably not be tall enough to be a policeman in Holland. "Venti soya cappuccino, extra froth?" It is now the turn of Policeman 4, who is a lady who I think likes Policeman 1 (a man).  "Iced dark cherry mocha?". "Me!", shouts Policeman 5, who is halfway through an enormous pink cupcake. 

"What is Canada like?", asks an Englishman later that day. He is thinking of moving here with his children. It is a big question, but all I can manage is: "Nice. The policemen wear shorts and drink Frappuccinos". 

A day after I wrote this post: there's rioting on Yonge today, just where the policemen in shorts were drinking iced cherry mochas, and it's not looking good.  The policemen (and women) in shorts are probably in riot gear today. I hope everyone in Toronto is safe. 

I am in Toronto (again)

Regular readers will be aware that I am often in Toronto.  It is not bad. In fact, I like it more and more each time I come. It is definitely not as boring as everyone in Montreal thinks it is.  In fact, I like it so much I designed a whole range of clothing bearing my new Toronto: Awesome! logo as a mark of my respect.

Toronto is by a lake that often has boats on it.  There are some skyscrapers and shops and villagey bits here and there.   A lot of people live in "condos" and wear blazers, ironic ties and fashionable jeans with shoes with long square toes.  You can always get a cab and there is more than branch of Terroni, which makes very bloody nice pizza.   A lot of people talk about their "cottage". A "cottage" can be a fucking massive island with 5 houses on it and its own 100ft dock that's been in the family since 1854, or it can be a tiny shed next to a lake full of wee. Either way, a lot of people have them.

Toronto is much bigger than Montreal which is good, because Montreal can feel a bit small sometimes, but much smaller than London (England) which is good, because London (England) can feel too big sometimes (even though it has to be that big to contain all the very interesting and exciting things it contains that most cities do not).

Everyone here, without exception, says "awesome" at least 64 times a day. They also say:

"Fam", when they mean "family"
"Loop back in"
"Totally awesome"
"Who knew?"
and
"I'm so with you on that".

Some of these may be general North American things, but for some reason when said by a Canadian, they are less irritating.  Oddly, white middle class Canadian men can also say "dude" without me wanting slap them, which has something to do with the fact that a lot of Canadians are right up there with irony -  almost top of the irony charts, in fact.*   A lot of Canadians I know can be as dry as bones, and far more entertaining.

Anyway, I can't talk about why I'm in Toronto for various reasons (none of them particularly interesting), but I was supposed to be here for a night, then two, and how I am here all week in a hotel on the 41st floor getting up at 6am to phone people in London, and falling into bed at 11 to watch "Real Housewives of Orange County" (which I think might be the best programme ever made).

It is a strange hotel; it is one of the ones with a little kitchen in your room and no breadknife. I have some pineapple, some $14 ham and some really very poor $7 'handmade' strawberry jam in the fridge, and in the morning I hack at a $7 loaf of bread with a normal knife and drink my 12th cup of Tetley tea, made from a box of teabags found in a strange shop round the corner that sells Mars bars and car telephone adaptors.  It is not bad because the hotel is fancy, although it makes me cross that I have to pay $12 every day to use the fucking internet (not even wireless, mind - a stupid blue cable) in a hotel that costs $264 a night.

Still, these are my views, and they are good. (You can see the CN Tower peeking round on the right in the first one.  It is awful all those lights left on at night, so stupid, but it is pretty in its way.)

The G20 is going on soon, which means there are lots of policemen about and the odd siren (not that I can hear much on the 41st floor).  There was an earthquake today which I felt vaguely (I thought a very fat man was hurling himself against the railings that I was leaning on), and the cab driver taking me away from someone I like very much and towards a 3 hour conference call told me that the earthquake was "God warning the G20".

Anyway, I hope the G20 are OK and I hope I can get home on Friday. I miss my husband and kitchen and with any luck, there's Series 3 of Damages for me to watch with my eyes whilst dipping my tiny monkey paw in and out of a bag of Ready Salted Hula-Hoops.

Pip pip!

NWM



*As many of you will be aware, Alanis Morrissette -  once curiously described in Wikipedia as "the Canadian Debbie Gibson" - once wrote a song called "Ironic" which contained, as we all know,  no examples of irony at all. ("A Bit Annoying and/or Unfortunate" doesn't smell like a smash-hit, granted.)
I will not make the obvious joke that everyone makes, despite it being vaguely amusing.

I make a tribute movie

Cast:

Mr Finger: The finger of the French-Canadian veterinary research histopathologist to whom I am 'married',  dislocated (and popped back) during a violent gardening accident

The Voice of Mr Finger: Me, except that is not the voice I use when for e.g. buying oranges or doing a meeting.

Mr Joe: Dear friend and medical genius, who, upon seeing the grossly disfigured digit some months after the violent gardening accident, gave an on-the-spot diagnosis and treatment programme in the Coach and Horses, Romilly Street



The finger is now nearly cured after a few months of special braces and exercises during which, as you can see,  Mr Finger's face becomes bright red with exertion.

Pip pip!

NWM

I consider having some references on LinkedIn

Readers - regular and otherwise - may well be aware of the work of LinkedIn, a strange place where people you worked with over fifteen years ago "link" to you in the hope of creating a "network" of "professionals".  

If someone wants to “add you to their network”, an email arrives in your inbox with a message along the lines of  "Long time no see! How the devil are you? What news?!". 

Because the message suggests that they do actually know you, you look on their LinkedIn profile and see that you worked at the same company fifteen years ago. From this, you deduce that you must, at some level, 'know' them, even if 'knowing' means once being in the same meeting in 1997.

It is very odd, LinkedIn, and I am still not entirely sure what to do with it.  I approach it with caution, and apply some rules:

1.  I do not do not “reach out” to people I have never met or worked with
2. I try not to link to people I think are idiots or bad at their jobs (obv. a couple of preening cockmonkeys have slipped through my non-existent twatfilter, but de-linking them, like de-friending people on Facebook, seems more effort that it's worth)
3. I do not use it for weird shit like making mildly sinister approaches to people that might be "useful"
4. I do not cock on about myself endlessly, putting down only where I have worked and what my job was.

"But why do you do it at all?", I hear you cry.  I will tell you why.  It is because, however odd I think LinkedIn is, I know what people do with it and I do not want to be contrary. I also want to satisfy their crazed curiosity. 

Yes. Here is what happens. You have a meeting with someone,  or they hear they may have to work with you. They know nothing about you. Should they take you seriously?  Is it OK to call you “Spanner” to your face?  Should they take a word of what you say seriously? How high is the chance that you know what you’re talking about?  So they rush off and look you up on LinkedIn and look at the list of what you have done and where you have worked, and from that, they place you in their own internal placement system. (If you want to know if they have looked you up LinkedIn will tell you for free: "A Senior Management Official in the Catering Industry in Exeter has viewed your profile in the last 5 days". For money, it will tell you exactly who; I do not spend money on things like that.)

Some people clearly love it because they have RECOMMENDATIONS.  To have a RECOMMENDATION, you have to ask someone to RECOMMEND you.  I am putting the word RECOMMEND in capital letters because although I can definitely see the point of having easily available references from people called Trevor who you worked with in 1986,  I could not, cannot, and will not bring myself to ask someone to RECOMMEND me because I know what they would say.

“NWM is one of the people I have ever worked with. She has a point of view on most things, and is able to do work. If you need someone to do work, you should give her a job.”

“NWM is the Prime Minster of talking to people like they are idiots.”

“She is quite amusing to be around so if you “like a laugh”, she’s your gal, although I can’t vouch for the quality of her work.”

“I worked with NWM for over 18 months. Despite her relatively senior position in the company I am not entirely sure what she did other than make cookies. She appeared to be quite good at that.”

“Likes spreadsheets”.

“I heard her say she had a sewing kit. I lost a button. She wasn’t in the office but I didn’t think she’d mind me looking in her top drawer. All I could see were 23 different jars of nail polish, some old biscuits, over 1.23m pens, some dust, a monkey in a fez, a small clay pipe, 2 miniatures of absinthe, 3 boxes of tissues and a Ziploc bag containing some dusty teabags. The rest of it was goo and despair.”

“WRITING THIS REFERENCE IS LIKE A GIFT FROM GOD NWM IS GREAT I LOVE HER A LOT INSIDE AND OUT NOT IN A SEX WAY. SHE IS REALLY GOOD AT SPREADSHEETS WITH COOKIES IN IT ALSO SHE LIKES TO SNIFF THE TIPPEX AND STICK HER TONGUE IN THE MAIN POWER SUPPLY AFTER MEETINGS WITH THAT MAN SHE DOESN'T LIKE.SOMETIMES I SEE HER LOOKING AT MY WINKIE.”


"She has 3 charts she always uses for everything but I can't lie, they usually work. Someone once tried to change one of the circles on the second chart but it all went to shit.  Can't say fairer than that really."

What would you be recommended for?