Why Are All My Worst Hangovers on Friday?
Maybe it’s because the weekend seems to be within reach, so the idea of slightly overdoing it on Thursday doesn’t seem so bad. Maybe it’s because you don’t get the chance to sleep it off like you do on Saturday or Sunday. Or maybe it’s because feeling a bit shit seems so much worse when you have a deadline and a hell of a lot to accomplish in order to meet it. That, in fact, is probably it.
Mrs. Toad made cheesecake yesterday. Considering that she is the World’s Least Domesticated Woman (TM) this is something of a turn up for the books. Mind, it was for something work related (although I got one out of it myself – mwah hah haaa!) so this morning she was swearing at it and wondering aloud why the fuck she’d bothered when she could have just bought something. It was, after all, just for work.
I love cooking, actually, but I never bake. Mrs. Toad does, but only once in a blue moon. She baked brownies when we did the Meursault Toad Session, and they were fucking lovely, so maybe I have her to thank for getting them signed to Song, by Toad Records. But for such a pair of foodies, we don’t really bake – or do deserts at all, for some reason.
I mean, I do have a sweet tooth. I munch my way through all sorts of biscuits at work – which they provide for us in pretty much limitless quantites for free. At first this seems like a good idea, until you realise that in the fight between self-control and biscuits, the biscuits always win. And I drink enough beer, I don’t need another arch-enemy in the fight against impending obesity.
But yes, deserts are not really my thing. We tend to have cheese if we have anything after a meal. I would have sorbet, but a sorbet is supposed to be icy, not creamy, and served in a portion no larger than that which would fit inside an egg-cup, and so many places treat it like a serving of ice-cream these days I am becoming somewhat disillusioned with the stuff.
So if you can bear that sort of banal, tedious whine of distress, please take the opportunity to de-lurk this Friday and chip in with your Friday Five. The hardcore group of commenters on this site shifts over time, but it would always be nice to meet some new people. Almost a thousand people read this site every day – who are you all? Are you nice? Hopefully not especially.
I like the sound of Lovvers tonight, at Sneaky Pete’s. That, after recording the Funkcast for tomorrow. Yes, you heard me, the Funkcast. Don’t miss it!
1. Favourite kind of cake.
2. What was the last thing you baked, if anything.
3. After a meal – cheese, sorbet, or ‘desert’?
4. What don’t restaurants do like they oughta anymore?
5. Last really domesticated thing you did.
M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – Do More, Eat Less
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Riff-Raff – Sweet as Pie (Billy Bragg’s band before he was just Billy Bragg)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Howe Gelb – Cake Baked in the Sand
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Hey! Elastica – Eat Your Heart Out (Thanks to JC for this one)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
1. any kind. cake is cake, after all!
2. many, many cakes for a festival our friends in York were having in their back garden the other weekend. VERY briefly, I became sick of cake..
3. cheese (despite the above)
4. give you the table for the whole chuffing evening
5. cleaned the bathroom for impending house guest. Unfortunately I forgot to remove the “freedon for Palestine” sticker from the fridge and she’s Israeli. Could make for interesting dinner table chit-chat later..
Ooh, I don’t think I’ve been first before. Not unless it’s to the cake trolley..
1) The one and only time my wife did drugs she made space cake we out rowed the Olympic 4 man crew. Certainly the funniest cake ever and a personal favourite.
2)Apple Crumble – but made the schoolboy error of not enough crumble
3)Nope…. that’s wine space
4)Prawn Cocktails in silly glasses
5)Unless carrying all the camping gear (for 6 people) counts then I’m guilty of being lazy toad (non intended) of a bloke.
oh and I think the Thursday thing is to do with speed of drinking. You think you need to finish drinking earlier because you have work tomorrow so you drink faster..THEN the drink takes over and you think sod work and keep drinking but your total is WAY above normal…hangover.
1. Chocolate cake with ganache and black cherries, just like mother used to make. Or carrot cake with cream cheese icing.
2. Some rather dodgy ginger biscuits that go rock hard after about fifteen minutes. But that’s okay, because I usually eat them all within ten, while they’re still soft and hot.
3. Usually a mug of tea or coffee. Desserts very occaisionally. What’s all this poncing about with cheese in aid of?
4. I don’t go to restaurants often enough to say really. The tango?
5. The dishes, last night.
Now I think Monday hangovers are the worst. You know you shouldn’t have got smashed Sunday night, but you do. And then its a whole 5 days before you can rally recover with sleep.
Umm errrrr:-
1. Chocolate birthday cake. Yes mine.
2. Baked white chocolate and lemon cheesecake. I’m a domestic goddess.
3.Depends on the meal. Dessert at a restaurant, or cheese at someone’s house to talk away the hours with a bottle of port before passing out in an arm chair.
4. I don’t think I’m old enough to reminisce on the good ‘ole days. Country pubs should always let you bring the dog in though. A pint is a great way to end a dog walk.
5. I just did a butchery course. Does that count? Not domesticated in the feminine sense, but certainly kitchen orientated.
1. Mars bar cake
2. Chocolate slice
3. Usually ‘desert’. I like the use of the quotation marks here. Are we questioning the integrity of the ‘desert’? Do we not believe that is in in fact ‘desert’?
4. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the term ‘restaurant’ is bandied about in a very loose fashion these days. ‘Restaurant’ implies fine dining. McDonalds is not a ‘restaurant’.
5. Cooked beef strog for dinner. Mmmmm
1. Really rich fruit cake is nice with a slice of good vintage cheddar. Or probably something moist and crumbly made frin a muffin-recipe.
2. I like making bread and pizzas, I have a pizza stone for my oven. Oh and I have a great recipe for a chocolate-chili cake with courgette in.
3. Cheese usually, unless there’s something really inspirational on the dessert menu. Sorbet’s not dessert.
4. I miss that little chutney-mary thing they used to at Berni inns in the 1980s. You’d have a little pot of tomato relish, a bright yellow corn relish and a lurid green cucmber relish. They all tasted like jam.
5. My domestic habits are driven by neccesity, they’re not a hobby.
1) Birthday Cake ala my mum
2) Bananananananana loaf with pecans in.
3) Desert followed by coffee and remorse.
4) Knickerbockerblazeofglory
5) Potted some jam. It was too thick for the funnel. Had to use a ladel. Seriously. NO F**KING JOKE.
Talking about the Thursday thing, Sophie from Honeytrap took me to some late night booze-den on a back street in Dalston last night.
My train left London at 8am and I got back to the hotel around 4:30ish.
I have just slept the length of England.
1. Chocolate, carrot, Victoria sponge, or cheese – the creamy kind, not the baked kind.
2. I made Flapjacks a while back which were nice actually – but I made them too big so they were a meal in themselves.
3. If I am not stuffed then cheese, if I am totally stuffed, I can usually still manage a dessert. If I am on a big night out then neither, can’t drink on a full stomach.
4. High teas! I think this might just be a small town tradition, but on a Sunday when you go for a pub meal you get toast and tea with it and cakes, usually scones and meringues, afterwards. Genius! They don’t seem to do them anymore.
5. About 1994 judging by the state of my flat this morning. And I have a hangover, so it is unlikely that it will improve greatly tonight!
Cogstar, I left Toad cracking open a fresh beer at 3.15am so if it was an early night he was after, it had gone tits up at that point!
Please please correct that typo I did on “necessity”!
Oh and kudos on the butchery course, Tim. Nicely done, sir. Is that an intended profession for you or was it just on a whim?
I like the idea that it might be on a whim..
1. Emily Tracer Trails made a particularly fine lemon drizzle cake which sticks in the memory. But the winner has to be my mum’s fruit cake – if my stomach would allow I could scarf a whole one of those in one sitting.
2. A successful pumpkin pie and a far less successful gingerbread on the same day, about three years ago.
3. Sorbet. Icy, really tart lemon or blackberry sorbet.
4. Amen on the table all night thing. Mrs. Toad and I pride ourselves on our ability to be first in and last out of restaurants most of the time.
5. Fuck, I haven’t even opened my post for the last two weeks. Erm, I did fold some laundry two weeks ago I think.
Oh definitely a whim (actually a birthday present from my parents). It was a great fun few days. Quite pleased I didn’t lose a finger at a few points though.
The idea that someone might do a butchery course on a whim leaves me a bit worried. Thanks a lot, CSI.
oooo planned hangover, I’m off to see SLF at The Playhouse up your way in October, guaranteed hangover with the pal I’m attending with.
Are you planning a T family trip to the event? I’d say hello and buy you’re team T a drink. Unless of course you turned up with your 1000 mates per day, in which case I’d be in the Mosh Pit with the kids.
1. chocolate cake for sure.
2. i don’t really do much baking. perhaps the last thing i baked was a birthday cake for my pal david’s girlfriends birthday. to clear things up, it was his idea and i just helped. i’m not some weirdo who just cooks cakes randomly for friends partners.
3. don’t do desert just coffee, preferably and irish one.
4. i really don’t know. don’t eat out enough to have an opinion on that one.
5. got up and changed by son’s nappy with a smug sense of delight that i chose not to go back to neil and fi’s place with mr toad, shonagh and phil. judging by the comments above it was a very, very good decision. changing a nappy tired is one thing but tired and with a hangover a whole new world of pain.
Oh it’s The Picturehouse, which I’ve heard is smaller and much cooler.
1. Apple pie
2. Apple pie
3. Apple pie. Followed by coffee and a sturdy whisky.
4. Apple pie
5. Made apple pie
1. Probably a cheesecake, but none of that baked stuff, I want sloppy cream-cheese and condensed milk goodness.
2. I baked a carrot cake a few years ago that were lovely.
3. Vienetta
4. All you can eat ice-cream machines. When I was 8 I stuck a fork in the middle to make a proper mountain of ice cream, I felt sick for hours. Served me right.
5. Cleaned? Oh yeah. Repotted the herbs. Like a sandal wearing nobhead. I’m starting to wonder about the smell of mould in my hall. I can’t find the source. Should I worry?? Meh, i just run through without breathing now.
1.Gooseberry and ginger.
2. A tattie, or a pie or something. I don’t think that’s baking in the true sense of the word. Unusual, as when I was a youngster I really fancied being a baker.
3. Espresso.
4. They don’t seem to make me feel like a pleb anymore.
5. Washed the windows.
I like baked cheesecake, it seems to be getting an undeserved bad rap on here.
Although I do prefer the unbaked kind.
Is baked cheesecake just a regular cheesecake that’s been put in the oven?
Nah, can’t be.
Let’s all go for drinks with Cogstar!
I love cheesecake. Baked, fried, shaken, stirred.
Ian, that really is just cheating.
Yeah, I think it was after four before I hit the sheets last night. But Tim may be right about Monday hangovers actually. You aren’t even going to get the chance to drink those ones away.
I think Ian’s answers are perfectly logical responses to each question. The man likes a pie.
If you’re not impressed with the answers, perhaps you should look to the question-master. Huh? Huh?
Everyone else seemed to manage, even you.
And you may not consider sorbet to be a desert, but after a good meal and before my coffee and half dozen cognacs I find little more pleasant.
Cogstar – SLF? I’m more than up for a pint, but who are you on about at the Picturehouse?
1. Home made fruit cake. About 10 years ago, when I lived in Edinburgh, my grandmother baked a fruitcake for my birthday and mailed it all the way from Tasmania (small fortune in postage). That goes down as my single favourite cake of all time and is unlikely to be surpassed in this lifetime.
2. Apple & rhubarb crumble: 50% apple & rhubarb, 50% crumble, the way it should be.
3. All good. I often find myself leaning towards dessert (what’s with all this ‘desert’ nonsense?) if it sounds like something interesting. Mainly since I rarely ever eat dessert unless out at a restaurant.
4. I can’t say I’ve really noticed a decline in restaurant standards. The only time I ate somewhere posh enough to have multiple seatings on the one evening, I had such a miserable time thanks to the supercilious sneers on the faces of the maitre d’ and all the wait staff that I vowed never to go anywhere with that high an opinion of itself.
5. Probably hung out washing or something similarly mundane. For greater peaks of domesticity, vacuumed the top of the skirting boards (dust accumulated there, y’know).
Weirdo.
Matthew SLF = Stiff Little Fingers, some rowdy types from way back when. They plug the guitars in and have that feedback nonsense too….oh yeah but they are bloody brilliant live still.
And yup Edinburgh Picture House it is too.
http://www.mamagroup.co.uk/picturehouse/
but halfway down between quite a lot of rubbish there they are. We may have to settle for lay jugs of Gin and Tonic with ice if everyone turns up as I can smuggle the gin in easily enough.
Oh right, never heard their name abbreviated like that before.
1. Rosie from the lab’s Malteser cake. If heaven was malty, this is what it would taste like.
2. Banana bread with some seriously munting old bananas.
3. There is ALWAYS rooms for dessert. There’s a proper medical basis for that and everything.
4. It years since I had a really good, none microwaved veg Sunday lunch that I didn’t make myself.
5. Scrubbed the kitchen floor on hands and knees to make Olga happy. It was a foolish move – Olga is never happy. There is always more cleaning to be done.
Olga? Your dominatrix?
Where can you get a decent, old-fashioned Sunday roast in Edinburgh, then?
If only dealing with her were that pleasurable. She gives me the shivers for entirely the wrong reasons.
cloisters does a fabulous sunday roast. and followed by the best sticky toffee pudding i have tasted in my life. best sunday dinner ive had in edinburgh in eight long years.
Are you some sort of lost woman, trapped in sexual slavery somewhere in Dundee? I had no idea the readership was quite so glamorous. I read about you in the News of the World just the other day, right next to that fetching picture of Hailie from Northampton.
Ahem.
Becky said the M-word..
Where’s Cloisters then, that sounds good.
its on brougham street on the way to the meadows from tollcross. its definately one to try. you can either get roast beef or a whole baby chicken?!
Something tells me my midget companion is going to like this.
And the first Toad vinyl has arrived!
i always meant to ask how did the first ever toad hall gig go?
Fucking lovely! There will definitely be more though, because it was really nice. I am tempted to do the Maxwell Panther album launch that way, and there are bound to be other opportunities.
1. I used to be a total chocolatey-fudgey guy but I like a good cheesecake. Although I once made a “Death By Chocolate” cake from a Mary Berry recipe book and I’m pretty sure it was the best cake that has ever been
2. I made a Key Lime Pie a couple of weeks ago… although you make it cold and let it set so there’s actually no baking involved… does that count?
3. Desert. On the rare occasion we have cheese I feel well privilaged though
4. er… McDonalds should bring back the Chicken Premiere
5. I actually ironed my work shirts in advance, and not just minutes before I have to leave. I was impressed with that one
1) Lemon Cake! Wonderful wonderful citrusy goodness.
2) I’m not sure I ever have. Similar relationship to the Toad house (makes sense I suppose), where I cook and she bakes.
3) I prefer cheese myself. Smelly, salty strong cheese.
4) My favourite restaurant just changed it’s name from Tangerino, to Tangerino Chukka Bar and Chop House. They now have a TV and description at the bottom of the menu as to what ‘rare’ ‘medium’ and ‘well done’ mean. The feeling was akin, I assume, to being dumped by you wife.
5) Last night at about midnight I spent a hour in the shower hosing my dogs down in hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dishwashing fluid. They encountered their first skunk and being guard dogs by nature picked a fight they could only lose. This may not sound domesticated to the English readers but if you can find me a corn fed American, I can show you a man who has washed skunk off his dogs while they whimper. Then washed his house. All of it.
Ravie, not to minimise your culinary achivements, but I hate Key Lime pie with a rabid, all-consuming passion.
Ben, suddenly Our stupid cat’s occasional hairballs seem like very small beer indeed. And please tell more about the explanation of rare, medium, etc.. As in, why the fuck? And how did they justify having to explain it and… well, what the fuck did they even write?
At least it deflected attention away from the ridiculous and utterly pointless name change?
1. Carrot.
2. Myself.
3. desert and port. I could drink a bottle in a sitting. And it falls surprising low on my hangover scale.
4. Give really good service.
5. Did all the laundry last night while the wife was @ happy hour. Yes, I am a fool.
Rare = Red in the middle. Medium Rare = Pink line in the middle. I assume the next line reads ‘If you are still confused please alert your server so we provide you with plastic cutlery…
Have you ever smelt skunk by the way? Their sent is a sulfuric oil.
There are always more restaurants.
Good service in the ‘be informative and helpful and above all brief when called upon but basically fuck off and leave me alone’ style?
Ben, I lived in Cape Cod, remember. So I’ve never had a close encounter exactly, but so many of them got hit on the road that I know just what they smell like, albeit from a healthy and very welcome distance.
Something tells me that what they would describe as rare and what I would describe as rare might not entirely coincide.
That’s a bad hangover
Well, I’ve developed the habit of being very specific when I order meat. You really have to be.
So I say something to the effect of can you cook it as little as you feel responsible cooking it. Or less. there is no level of cook that will induce me to say “this is too rare”.
1. Tricky one as I like lots of cakes. H makes great vegan choclate cake. There is alos a cafe in a working water mill in Blair Atholl that does the best Victoria Sponge.
2. I don’t bake very often but have made the odd flapjacks and choclate cake. I tend to cook more than I bake.
3. It should be desert but I generally fail to reach this stage have gourged on the main meal.
4. cakes
5. helped tidy the house before running away to Banff for the week.
I was very amused to see that iarescientist was the first to get her 5 in today just when the subject was cake. very funny
Good service in the ‘please show up at my table sometime soon instead of leaving me to fuck off’ style.
Do we have half the Edinburgh Uni post-docs reading this blog or something?
1. Custard Slice – is that a cake or a pastry? The ones my mother used to make were fucking delicious. I’ve not eaten them for years. mainly because she’s dead & I can’t make them the same way.
2. I did a mean potato.
3. I am generally far too full for ‘afters’, but I have recently noticed myself salivating over the ice creams moreso than anything else.
4. (good)service has already been mentioned, & I rarely go to restaurants (such as they describe themselves as) because in the UK (good)service is viewed in the same squinty fashion as washing your hands after taking a drunken piss. So, I’ll say Value For Money. UK restaurants have NEVER had it. Taking an American, for example, out for a meal is embarrassing (the meal to finance ratio, not because they are American).
5. I (+ TWoTH) tidied the house before Shenandoah Davis turned up to stay for a few days, during which time she sat in on a show & recorded an excellent 14 song session — 6 of which, + her lovely interview, can be heard this Saturday @ 8am ET / 1pm BST on http://www.WOXY.com
SPAM!!!
1. Chocolate chocolate chocolate chocolate, with chocolate icing
2. homemade mac ‘n cheese? it’s been ages!
3. you really only get the “desert” option here, and they’re usually huge and way too sweet, alas
4. keep their goddamned fingers off the rim of my water glass. I mean honestly, I did the job, I had some sense. Think about it. Hold the damn glass by the stem or middle at very least. Barbarians!
5. M.Chutney – tho her level of domesticity is debatable
I love to bake and used to do everything, from pot roasts to homemade bread, but haven’t done it in ages and ages…. damn blogging!
And I’m totally with you on the sorbet thing, why the fuck are portions so huge?
DC that really is fucking spam. Apart from the fact that I was listening to the latest one today at work, and very much enjoying it. So maybe not, then. I just finished recording the Funkcast for tomorrow – indie kids beware!
Tart – well precisely, it’s supposed to be a delicious little palette cleanser. Which is why, despite Dylan’s moaning, I love a tiny, very sharp sorbet inbetween the main course and the coffee descending into a dozen cognacs part of the evening. It’s sort of like the boundary.
Yep, it’s like the long deep kiss you take between your wife and your lover
Couldn’t resist, it’s friday, come’on!
Filthy hussy that you are.
But I picked up a lovely yellow 7″ last night that I think you’ll like.
I’ll send it along with whatever else you ask for in return for that White Heath, darlin <3
1. chocolate
2. chocolate sponge or was it a potato?
3. nothing
4. cant think at the moment. don’t really ponder on this kind of thing really, but i think the older i get the less i worry about having to complain over bad service. just don’t keep me waiting for ages!
5. Ironing, washing, hoovering, dishes, changing the beds. Loads……. all badly….. apparently.
Sorry that was lacking in imagination. Trying to write while heading south in the van to green man and kept losing reception so that’s why my 5 aren’t particularly good. In other news, all the hordes of soulless cunts trying get to v festival clogged up the m6 making us all very late for green man. A big and very public thank you to tom for screeching up to the back of the stage in true starsky and hutch style and depositing jamie a mere 10mins before we were due on. Legend, sir. Legend.
You make it sound like every time you order sorbet I immideiately hurtle round to the restaurant and stand next to your table moaning at you until you’ve finished.
Matthew, Cloisters is just around the block from me, it is very good. Don’t eat meat but hear from those who do that it’s very good for the roast. Give us a shout.
As for the Friday 5…
1. Fruit cake. Has to be sugar free.
2. Quiche/flan, whatever you wanna call it.
3. Cheese.
4. No gripes on this, the Bombay bicycle Club around the corner from us is great, as is the Frehcn restuarant which we go to occasionally. The less said about Cafe Rouge in Edinburgh the better. Actually…to all those who waiter or waitress, I really don’t mind if you write my order down. I couldn’t remember it all, and the fact that IT CAME WITH DRESSING WHICH I SEPCIFICALLY ASKED IT NOT TO HAVE suggests you have as many problems in that field as I do.
5. I am about to start a massive clean-up as the in-laws are about to arrive tomorrow.
DC that really is fucking spam. Apart from the fact that I was listening to the latest one today at work, and very much enjoying it. So maybe not, then.
Yes, last week’s playlist was particularly sexy. Let me know when your SD session/cast is ready to roll & I’ll link.
I have Honeytrap to sort first, so it may be a while. I’ll let you know as soon as.
Know what you mean… have 4 sessions/interviews to edit/clear incl. Celebrity Chimp (sob) & Mumford & Sons (that’ll be about 2 weeks I believe, & it’s cracking).
Is the Chimp one okay? Tom seemed to have his doubts about whether or not it might be usable.
The Chimp one is excellent. It’s very satisfying. The interview is a fucking hoot. I have to re-work my whole idea for the show around it, obviously lamenting the loss of the band, but it’ll go out as nature intended with very few edits (save for pregnant pauses & swearing).
1. Banoffi Pie
2. Bara Brith
3. Dessert
4. Waitresses on rollerskates
5. Cleaned my trainers
Late to the party; been away, but it’s about cakes and stuff so I must reply!
1. Toss-up between my mum’s home made sponge cake with fresh strawberries and an indecent amount of whipped cream in the middle, and a praliney moussey affair i can get from the wee bakery up the road. Or my sister-in-sin’s lemon drizzle, or my mate’s chocolate roulade, or the chocolate tartufo from the Sicilian bakery – dammit, it’s cake, right? They’re all good. Except coffee cake, which is an abomination.
2. Game pie. It rocked. Last sweet thing – probably some pastry puff things filled with chantilly cream and raspberries.
3. Dessert. Always. Two bloody s’s, Matthew – shame on you!
4. Change the CD on their background muzak. Or better still, bin it.
5. The other day, when I still had my pinny on from cooking dinner and was carrying a basket of newly washed clothes, Mr Coriander said “Get you, all domestic like a proper housewife”. I’ve threatened to get some curlers for my hair and wear a headscarf over the top, to complete the look.