Category: Behind the Seams

to whom the fat rolls…

November 13, 2012.Reading time 3 minutes.

I just very randomly stumbled upon the following book title:

“Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest To Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, Or Why Pie is Not The Answer” (by Jen Lancaster)

Not only that I’m reading “On narcissism” (S.Freud) at the moment, but I was actually waiting for an opportunity to share one of my favorite pie recipes…

“To whom the fat rolls…I’m tired of books where a self-loathing heroine is teased to the point where she starves herself skinny in hopes of a fabulous new life. And I hate the message that women can’t possibly be happy until we all fit into our skinny jeans. I don’t find these stories uplifting; they make me want to hug these women and take them out for fizzy champagne drinks and cheesecake and explain to them that until they figure out their insides, their outsides don’t matter. Unfortunately, being overweight isn’t simply a societal issue that can be fixed with a dose healthy of positive self-esteem. It’s a health matter, and here on the eve of my fortieth year, I’ve learned I have to make changes so I don’t, you know, die. Because what good is finally being able to afford a pedicure if I lose a foot to adult onset diabetes?”

– Jen Lancaster

The cake in the picture above is an ordinary pound/ sponge cake with apple slices & raisins and sugar coating with caramelised walnuts on top I made a few weeks ago – it was pretty delicous.

To make a good sponge cake doesn’t really require a special recipe. I did another one (which is more typical german) for a friend – my favorite recipe. But unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures. Anyhow, here’s the recipe. For those of you that aren’t talented with yeast cake, just used ordinary sponge mixture instead of the dough used below.  Use a baking sheet instead of a cake-tin (comes in more handy with the all the topping).

Apfelkuchen mit Streuseln – Apple cake with crumbles

It’s made with leavened dough and crumbles. Yummy!

For the dough:

  • 500gr flour
  • 250ml lukewarm milk
  • 75gr unsalted butter
  • 75gr sugar
  • dried yeast for 500g flour
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 5-7 apples, sliced
  • raisins

For the crumbles:

  • 275gr flour
  • 150gr sugar
  • 175gr unsalted butter
  • 1 sachet vanilla sugar

For the topping:

  • 200gr walnuts + 150-200gr (brown) sugar for caramelising (best to prepare beforehand. Put on cake before sugar coating firms up)
  • icing sugar, lemon juice for sugar coating (just a bit for putting on the crumbles, don’t overdo, otherwise it might be too sweet)

i want to meet a guy named Art…

November 12, 2012.Reading time 4 minutes.

…I’d take him to a museum, hang him on the wall, criticize him, and leave.
– Jarod Kintz

If you live in London or you’re staying here at the moment and don’t hate going to museums too much, here are some wonderful current exhibitons that are mostly free!

I am planning to go to all of them over the next few weeks/months and I will keep you posted, if they were as good as they sound!

#1  Marilyn Monroe: A British Love Affair – It’s free!!
National Portrait Gallery – Room 33 (Trafalgar Square)
29 September 2012 – 24 March 2013

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2012/marilyn-monroe-a-british-love-affair.php

I LOVE the Portrait and the National Gallery and go there regularly. I really can’t believe that I didn’t manage to go see the beautiful Marilyn yet! (My obsession strikes once again..!)

Update: I went there last week and have to admit I was a little disappointed. I know the gallery well and expected it to be a small exhibition of max. 2 rooms, but actually this time it was only one single wall of no more than 20-30 pictures. But the pictures were beautiful (mostly magazine covers).

#2  Hollywood Costume Exhibition
Victoria and Albert Museum
20 October 2012 – 27 January 2012

“…explores the central role costume design plays in cinema storytelling. Bringing together over 100 of the most iconic movie costumes from across a century of film-making, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the clothes worn by unforgettable and beloved characters such as Dorothy Gale, Indiana Jones, Scarlett O’Hara, Jack Sparrow, Holly Golightly and Darth Vader.”

Doesn’t that sound amazing? Lord Vader, Captain Jack and Holly Golightly totally got me hooked! It’s fairly expensive (about  ₤40) and you have to book a ticket (November weekends already sold out).

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/exhibition-hollywood-costume/ 

I found a rather nice review by someone who already went and saw the exhibition.

Update: I got the tickets for that exhibition for Christmas (yay!). We spent about two hours in the 3 rooms/halls. It was amazing! I can only recommend it. The only really important movie costumes I missed there were the one from Lord of the Rings.

Highlights: Darth Vader, Jack Sparrow, the Black Swan, Anna Karenina, Holly Golightly, Sugar Cane, and many many more!

#3  Landscape Photographer Of The Year – It’s free!!
Lyttelton Foyer of the National Theatre
12 November 2012 – 12 January 2013

Just look at the pics preview. I have to go there! 

Update: I’ve been there yesterday and it was awesome. About a hundred really great pictures I all wanted to take home!

http://londonist.com/2012/11/art-preview-landscape-photographer-of-the-year-national-theatre.php

#4  Museum Of Curiosity – It’s free!
15 Bateman St, W1D 3AQ
only until Christmas!

“…This exhibition harks back to those days with taxidermied albino cobras and the heads of a two-headed calf on display. And that’s just the beginning as the surreal and disturbing artworks of well known artists such as Nancy Fouts, Tessa Farmer and Candice Tripp add to the creepy oeuvre…”

http://londonist.com/2012/11/exhibition-review-museum-of-curiosity-black-rat-projects.php?showpage=3#gallery-1

And I just stumbled upon this:

“Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering – because you can’t take it in all at once.”

— Audrey Hepburn

for whom the bell tolls

September 22, 2012.Reading time 3 minutes.

“The alarm in the morning? Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent version in Shubert’s seventh symphony. And I’ve rigged it up so that at exactly 7:30 every morning it falls from the ceiling onto my face.”

  — Stephen Fry

 Are you one of those people that not only have a really hard time getting out of bed in the morning but hardly even hear the alarm?

I am. In my half awake hallucinatory condition I keep snoozing and snoozing, somtimes for hours. I like setting my alarm way too early, because I hate the feeling of waking up late and having to rush out of bed. Milan Kundera described it perfectly:

“…people don’t respect the morning. An alarm clock violently wakes them up, shatters their sleep like the blow of an ax, and they immediately surrender themselves to deadly haste. Can you tell me what kind of day can follow a beginning of such violence? What happens to people whose alarm clock daily gives them a small electric shock? Each day they become more used to violence and less used to pleasure.”

— Milan Kundera, Farewell Waltz

There’s nothing better than waking up early noticing you’ve got twenty more minutes of sleep, dozing in and out of consciousness. But the more I snooze, the more I become completely ignorant towards the alarm. Sooner or later my deep sleep phase kicks in and the damage is done.

That’s why I started setting two different alarms. The first one is the nice one. The second one’s the cruel one. The final call. My last chance of getting the tube, of not missing certain office hours, of being on time. I’ve become quite an expert on the subject of picking alarm sounds. And I’ll share some of the secrets in confidence:

Don’t pick your favorite song. You like it too much to turn it off.

Don’t pick your least favorite song. Do you really want to wake up with Nana Mouskouri stuck in your head?

But do pick something that almost gives you a heart attack.

                                                                                                                                       Here’s a peek at my personal alarm sound favorites:

Edith Piaf – Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.  It worked in Inception. And it works for me.

The Chronicles of Narnia OST – To Aslan’s Camp. Don’t try if you’re fifty or older.

John Willams – Star Wars Main Theme. Such a good thing to wake up to!

Lion King OST – Circle of Life

And last but not least the 20th Century Fox Intro.

                                                                                                                                            The list is still growing and open for suggestions!

the name of the rose

September 19, 2012.Reading time 4 minutes.

“How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man!”

– Umberto Eco, “The Name of the Rose”

Nothing’s better than having a good book, a good coffee and a nice place to read! For book and coffee junkies like me, Queen Mary’s Garden (in Regent’s Park) is the perfect place to hang on a sunny and warm September afternoon.

After exploring the somewhat strange names of all the different roses I finally settled down next to “Chandos Beauty”, which actually smelled reeeaaally good. Although I have to read a lot of original S. Freud books for my studies at the moment, I picked an international bestseller novel my best friend gave it to me on my last birthday. And it’s definitely “This week’s book pick”:

 The Map of Time – by Félix J. Palma

I just started reading, so I am not even half way through the book, but it’s so well-written that I can only recommend it to anyone who likes those science fiction books, that are based on actual historical facts and stories. The story takes place in London in the 1890’s and since I just moved here, it is interesting to read what the different London boroughs used to be like. It’s a Must Read for everyone that loves Time Travel stories (which reminds me of another really good book: Audrey Niffenberger – The Time Taveller’s Wife!!).

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Was ist besser als ein gutes Buch, ein guter Kaffee und ein gemütlicher Platz zum Lesen?

Als Buch- und Kaffeejunkie habe ich im Regent’s Park den perfekten Leseplatz ausfindig gemacht.

Im Inner Circle des Parks befindet sich der Queen Mary’s Garden. Auf den ersten Blick wirkt alles furchtbar spießig und als ich über den sorgfältig getrimmten Rasen schlich, um mir die kuriosen Rosennamen anzusehen, ging ich fest davon aus jeden Moment von einem Parkwächter auf den Weg zurückgescheucht zu werden. Aber das ist das Gute an englischen Gärten – sie dürfen hier scheinbar auch als solche genutzt werden. Nachdem ich eine Weile zwischen „Ingrid Bergman“, „Westminster Pink“, „Song and Dance“ und „Molly McGredy“ gelustwandelt bin, habe ich mich irgendwann für „Chandos Beauty“ entschieden, um es mir bequem zu machen. Für einen späten Nachmittag im September (in London!) war es erstaunlich heiß und sonnig und wenn man so zwischen all den gutriechenden Büschen sitzt, erinnert nur ab und zu ein dicker Airbus im Heathrow-Landeanflug daran, dass man in einer Großstadt wohnt.

Nachdem ich nun schon einen der besten Leseorte in London verraten habe, möchte ich euch das Buch nicht vorenthalten, dass ich im Moment lese. Eigentlich muss ich gerade sehr viel S. Freud für die Uni lesen, in den Park habe ich allerdings einen Roman von Félix J. Palma mitgenommen, den mir meine beste Freundin erst vor Kurzem geschenkt hat. Deswegen bin ich auch noch nicht weit vorangekommen, jedoch weit genug, um das Buch wärmstens empfehlen zu können:

„Die Landkarte der Zeit“ ist definitiv mein Buch der Woche und nicht nur aufgrund der Tatsache, dass es in London spielt, interessant zu lesen. Es ist mehr oder weniger ein historischer Sci-Fi Roman, mit genau der richtigen Mischung aus Fiktion und tatsächlichen historischen Begebenheiten.

Da ich Zeitreisen-Bücher mag (Audrey Niffenberger – Die Frau des Zeitreisenden!!! – für die Romantiker unter euch), ist dieses Buch jedenfalls genau das Richtige.