Doing it standing up

When I was a child, there were a couple of hard and fast eating rules. As my dad always had company cars, we were never ever allowed to eat or drink in them. Not even travel sweets. This has left me with an abiding memory of bolting down a mivvi standing next to the car (boiling hot), hopping up and down on roasting tarmac while dad impatiently revved the engine.
The second rule was that my mum thought eating on the move was 'common'. Even fish and chips at the seaside were eaten not (as I am now obsessed with doing) sitting on a sea wall out of the paper but in a restaurant, with a knife and fork. I used to sneak to the chip shop to get a bag of chips with my friend Jackie and eat them at the bus stop and felt ridiculously sneaky. Even now, eating on the run feels transgressive. I frequently bolt lunch while on the train, en route to meetings or whatever, and it doesn't seem right- like I'm not concentrating enough on what I'm doing.
It's fair to say then, that street food would generally leave me cold, although I love the idea of it - as I said, I love fish and chips at the beach and necking back an oyster while strolling along the harbour in Whitstable. However, I am clearly alone in this as London is in the grip of a street food frenzy, and apologies if I am late to the party.
We've been meaning to visit Meatwagon for ages, and when it moved to New Cross we had lots of plans to go. But both Mr Glutton and I are more lazy than we are greedy and it never really happened but when they moved into the pub next door, we were excited beyond words, particularly as the pub had previously been owned by people who were exceptionally RUDE to us! The Rye celebrated their opening by hosting Eat Street - a street food festival that featured lots of London's best loved vans and as an opener, we had Big Apple Hot Dogs. Now I love hot dogs, and these were beauties. Massive, grilled, covered in ketchup, mustard and sourkrout and wrapped in a soft and tasty roll- miles away from the bland pap rolls normally on offer. I only managed one (although it was ENORMOUS) but Mr G managed two as he is very tall and so has more space for gluttony. BAHD can also be found in Old Street but follow on twitter to find them.
Next up, and hotly anticipated, was Meatwagon. Burgers. Cheese. Buns. Seriously, what's not to like. In a week, we went three times. Excellent burgers, excellent buns. Cheese. I'll say no more except that Meatwagon is using the Rye's kitchen as a development kitchen , a state of affairs of which I heartily approve. Also, fries and their rightly-famous onion rings are also on offer so, again, follow on Twitter for more info.
We've been hearing a Twitter buzz (because we are seriously at the bleeding edge of food trends) about Pitt Cue Co - a food truck underneath Hungerford Bridge offering a frankly unbeatable combination of barbeque and booze. It was raining, it was cold, but barbeque and a brilliant busker crooning Vegas-era Sinatra is enough to lift anyone's moods so I didn't even mind eating standing up, for once. I had pulled pork (tender, porky) with barbeque sauce and red cabbage coleslaw. Unfortunately they committed the unforgivable sin of putting me within 2 feet of coriander by including it in the coleslaw but the pork was incredible so I am tempted to ignore that slip. Mr G had the 'pickle back and skin' - a shot of bourbon, a shot of pickle juice and a small cup of what I assume was deep fried crackling. I selflessly took some of the crackling off his hands but thankfully he didn't need any help with the bourbon and juice. He found it interesting.
Lastly in our street food odyssey has been a bit of Mexico with Buen Provecho. It was a hot day, I love Mexican food and I couldn't be arsed to cook. Tacos (pulled pork, chicken mole) and quesadillas - spicy, packed with flavour, light.

My conclusion? There are times when you want tablecloths and waiters and times when you want pork juice running down your arm in the rain. Just make sure you have plenty of tissues.

Lots of love

GG

Alright cupcake

So, as you may have realised, I am partial to a bit of baking and actually, I'm not half bad at it. But lately, what with me being on reduced rations and GluttonBoy being off-carbs, the old mixing bowls have started to gather dust. Plus, I am also used to being the queen bee baker and have had my nose rather put out of joint lately by the arrival in the office of a quite spectacular baker. Grr.

Anyway. An office birthday always needs a cake, so out came the new Hummingbird Cake Days and off I went. It's not everyday you make a cake with sodastream syrups in - but cola cakes and lemonade cakes demanded it.

And they were delicious! The sponge was light with just a hint of soda, the icing was sweet and light and there wasn't too much of it. I wanted to sprinkle with popping candy just before serving but there seems to be a popping candy drought in south London so that plan was thwarted.

The best thing of all was the chorus of 'mmmmms' all round the office. Baking is nice, but baking for other people is the nicest of all.

The recipe (slightly altered, sorry):

take 240g flour, 80g softened butter, 1/4 tsp salt and mix in a mixer until breadcrumb-like

Mix 2 eggs with 40mls whole milk and 1tbsp sodastream cola mix. With the mixer going like blazes, drizzle the liquid in and beat until light and fluffy.

This makes 16 cupcakes for me - fill cases 3/4 full and bake at 190 for about 20 mins.

Ice when cool:

500g icing sugar

140g butter

2 tbsp syrup

20mls whole milk

Beat like fury again until light. Top with a cola bottle for full effect.

Here's a pic -

With love - GG.