in brief, as I've been busy

Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday have all been good days. Friday sucked.

I am now 30. The crisis I was expecting to have failed to materialise, probably because I was given a bunch of cool presents, including many boooks and the creativity necklace from Made With Molecules Yay, neurotransmitters! Michael (I'm presuming mjl as it was signed "Michael" not "Mikey" - but if it was ceno I'm sorry!) got me the Poppy Z. Brite book "The Value of X", which is the first one in the series about seriously cute couple Rickey & G-Man, and I read the whole of it on the bus to Epsom, despite the fact I can't read on buses because it gives me motion sickness. (I've honestly never read a book that quickly before - I virtually inhaled it. And as soon as I finished it, I started it again.) For dinner, Richard & I went to 222, a 100% vegan restaurant in the North End Road in West Kensington, which turned out to be much easier to get to than I'd previously thought. I had an amazing stir fry with seitan (HAIL SEITAN!) and tofu cheesecake.

On Thursday I went to Brighton and went clothes shopping with artremis. We bought Hell Bunny t-shirts and I got a black gothic Lolita dress that makes me look like a rag dolly gone bad, especially with hair in bunches with big ribbons and stripey tights. (Photos will follow after I wear it at BiCon, I guess.) We also went in H&M where I tried on many clothes, but only the purple leggings fit me - apparently H&M size 14 is designed for women with much bigger shoulders and smaller breasts than me, and they didn't have a 16 in any of the tops I liked. Then we went for eat as much as you like vegetarian curry ("the food of my people" (TM)) in Bombay Aloo.

Friday bad. Fell off my tricycle going round a roundabout - it was about 70% my fault, about 20% the traffic's fault and about 10% the trike's fault. Can't be bothered to go into details, really. But I got a bruised wrist and a huge bruise and friction burn on my left leg, and my lovely grey cargo pants now have a thin patch in them where I skidded on the tarmac. Then, after I picked myself and my stuff up and got to work, some fucker stole my back light while my trike was locked up. I wasn't impressed, especially as I had to cycle home after 9pm - and yes, it's only just been the summer solstice and it's still mostly light, but you are supposed to have lights on at that time. Bastard, whoever you are.

Yesterday Ludy came up to London and we went to earwigmc's Solstice party, where I ate lots of food & met lots of people whose lj names I've forgotten. Public transport was appalling (trains not happening all over the place), but the party included a vegan chocolate fountain! And today hatter & bfo and gerwinium & meeping came over and we all went to Pizza Express and ate increasingly surreal pizzas. (Mine featured petit pois, pine kernels, Italian chargrilled vegetables and NO CHEESE.) Now we're sitting in the front room playing Guitar Hero, again/still.

chocolate tofu cheesecake/mousse thing

This recipe was borne out of my desire to make a low fat tofu cheesecake. My old recipe involved vast amounts of melted chocolate, soya cream cheese and soy cream, plus a base made of crushed digestive biscuits (graham crackers for the USians) and melted margarine. Clearly, this is something that is not good for evil gall bladders.

Anyway - so I made this as an experiment and it turned out pretty well. It got fed to several non-vegans who all oohed and ahhed about it, and it is in fact so rich that you can't eat it on its own - you have to put fruit and/or vanilla custard with it to try to "dilute" it a bit. At the moment it's 10.8% fat, and I'm thinking it would be possible to reduce that by increasing the ratio of cocoa powder: melted chocolate, and actually removing some of the chocolate altogether as it just doesn't need that much flavour. Treat this as a work in progress.

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