Highlights of the past few days.

[baratron]

OK, so what is the opposite of "highlight"? I know there's a word "lowlight", but I've only ever seen it used in hairdressing or stage management. "Lowdark" just sounds stupid. Hmmm.

The highlights:

• watching bizarre cable channels with Tim.
  
• shopping in Tesco at 1am on Saturday morning.
  
• the rather excellent Tesco green pesto.
  
• buying some purple dykey leggings and a t-shirt.
  
• getting the Bloodhound Gang album "Hooray for Boobies" and getting various silly songs from it stuck in my head.
  
• ruthlessly pruning my video game collection and taking enough old games to Computer Exchange that I was able to buy a Dreamcast.
  
• Samba de Amigo
  
• making a fake chicken pie that everyone liked, even the meat eaters.
  
• yummy food at Noodle Express in New Malden last night.
  

The low... points:

• lying in bed all day on Thursday because I was too depressed to get up.
  
• sitting on the floor crying for an hour because everyone was busy.
  
• lying in bed all day on Friday (ditto).
  
• lots of lovely nightmares.
  
• Tesco running out of pesto just when I was getting addicted to it.
  
• none of the other pestos I could find being suitable for vegetarians.
  
• not being able to sleep even when I was falling over with tiredness.
  

Comments

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

If you're an artist the opposite of highlight is shadow. Which sounds like the right word for some of yours. Hope it gets a bit brighter soon...

you don't eat dairy?

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Otherwise, I can't imagine pesto not being suitable for dairy. It's got olive oil, basil, garlic, romano or parmesan cheese, and pine nuts. And you can leave out the cheese if you have to.

http://www.pallensmith.com/features/recipes/basil-pesto.htm

I planted tons -- maybe 30 cups all together, after it would be all washed and ready -- of basil this year, but was at my sickest when I should have been harvesting, and it went to seed. But next year, I make pesto!

I do, but...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I eat dairy products, but normal cheese contains extract of dead animal. So I'll only buy cheese that is certified as being vegetarian. Of the various ready-made pesto sauces I've found, only one - the Tesco's own brand - is made with vegetarian cheese.

It's annoying that products exist which "should" be veggie, but in practice are not. The worst offender is parmesan cheese - although it does exist in a vegetarian format, for some reason hardly any manufacturers will use it - and so there are lots of ready-made pastas on the market that aren't veggie-compliant simply because of the parmesan.

I know that I could make my own pesto, but this Tesco's own brand sauce is the best one I've ever tasted. I really wouldn't know how to go about reproducing it. Just have to hope they get some more in soon.

Re: I do, but...

[inquis.livejournal.com]

I am lucky. Will is not bothered about animal products in things, so long as it has no meat. So even jelly is fine with him. I've even used Lard in cooking a few times and he hasn't complained too much.

wibble, wobble...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Actually, most dessert jellies in the UK contain pectin (which comes from apples, iirc) rather than gelatine anyway. It's only jelly sweets that tend to contain gelatine, and even then you can find veggie ones if you look hard enough (eg. in Waitrose). My biggest problem is marshmallows - I love them, but I've never seen anyone make them strictly vegetarian. Mind you, as most of the tablets I take have got gelatine in, I tend to think that the odd marshmallow isn't going to make too much difference.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I am having trouble picturing "dykey leggings". Picture?

[baratron.livejournal.com]

By dykey leggings I mean ones that look like the sort of sportswear that Mel C from the Spice Girls would wear. The first pair I picked up were absolutely perfect - purple and slightly baggy, with a white stripe down the side - but they weren't stretchy enough for me. It would seem that I have really big thighs, as I simply can't fit into non-stretchy trousers.

I did an experiment once. I was so irritated that I couldn't find trousers to fit me (in Evans! which is a "plus size" shop!) that I tried on a pair of every size in the shop. I usually take a UK size 16, or an 18 if the clothes are particularly tight. By the time I'd proven that my thighs wouldn't fit into a size 26, I felt I'd made my point. Bah.