Vegan Cooking

I havent blogged in a while, actually I havent blogged in bloody ages! A lot has happened since my last posts, and one of those things is that I have gone vegan.  When you stop eating animal products you start to realise how many things you cant eat. Pretty much all sweet things are ruled out, and since I love sweets this has been particularly hard for me.  So I have been thinking up new ways to a sweet fix, and I have come up with some awesome and unbelievably vegan recipes!
Heres one I came up for for a vegan caramel slice:

Vegan caramel slice

2 cans of coconut milk

¼ cup golden syrup

60g brown sugar

30g desiccated coconut or nut meal

50g self-raising flour

1-tablespoon cocoa

42 grams vegan margarine melted (I used Nuttalex)

15 grams vegan margarine

1-tablespoon golden syrup

50grams vegan chocolate (75% or over is usually vegan)

Method

Pre-heat oven to 180°C (360°F)

Condensed coconut milk

 Put the coconut milk and golden syrup in a medium pot, over a high heat. When the mixture reaches the boil put the heat on low and let it simmer for around an hour (or until condensed to the texture of condensed milk)

Base

Meanwhile, stir brown sugar, desiccated coconut, flour and cocoa in a bowl until well combined. Then add melted margarine and combine.

Put the mixture into a prepared baking tin and press down with the back of a spoon or your hands. Bake for 10-15 minutes.

Caramel

In a medium sized pot melt the margarine (15g) and golden syrup. Then add the coconut milk mixture, cook over a medium heat (constantly stirring) for 10 minutes or until thickened.

Assembly

Pour the caramel onto the base and bake for a further 10-15 minutes, a border of browned caramel should form around the edges. Then remove from oven and let cool to room temperature.

Melt the chocolate, over a double boiler or in the microwave, once melted pour over the caramel and put the whole thing into the fridge to set. After just set, around 1 hour, cut into slices and return to the fridge until fully set.

Makes 12 portions

Unfortunately it was all eaten before i even got a chance to take photos, but this recipe tasted better than most caramel slices I have had and... ITS VEGAN!

Stay tuned for more of my vegan concoctions!  

Cord, is it really back?

   Corduroy. It's back! And it's awesome.                                                                                                                              

 Things are coming in and out of fashion all the time. A lot of the time things are in or they are out. It seems at the moment everything is in, though. It seems that no matter what you ware it will be considered cool and in. Well maybe not your old runners and jeans, but you never know.
So a while ago I bought a corduroy jacket at a school fete for $4 (I also got some awesome mint condition Doc Martins for $2). I thought it was awesome and had never seen anyone wearing one before. It was surprisingly warm, it was mens so it was nice and big (how I like my jackets, well most of them) and I could wear it with skirts and dresses without looking like a douche.
Recently I have noticed more and more cord popping up all over the place, they even have corduroy shoes now!

Aaah how I love these jackets.

Everyones wearing it! Even David Beckham 

More Photography

Lately I have been thinking a lot about photography!

Helmut Newton 

F-C Gundlach

Bernice Abbott 

Ej Bellocq

Jacques-Henri Lartigue

Olive Cotton

Walker Evans 

Sandra Lara

                                                                                                                                                                             So the other day I was thinking about fashion photography, and how shit most of it is. I had a bit of a look on google but it was all pretty shit and unoriginal. Cruising through Flickr thinking, shit, shit, shit... I came across something amazing, artistic and wonderful. A spanish photographer called Sandra Lara.

Well what else can I say but 'you should check her out!'

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambiodefractal/

Byeee

Cabaret!

Im still very new at writing about movies, but I've decided to give it a go. My first movie being Cabaret. So here it goes:

Cabaret is a  1972 musical film directed by Bob Fosse,  starring Liza Minnelli , Michael York and Joel Grey. Cabaret is set in 1931 Berlin and follows the life of a cabaret dancer, Sally Bowles, at the Kit Kat Klub in Berlin. She is an overenthusiastic and optimistic character and when Brian Roberts, a young English journalist, moves into her apartment building she soon tries to seduce him. After failing she gets the impression he may be gay but soon learns that he has just had no other sexual experiences, or at least ones that ended well.  This is the start of a strange love affair, which the movie soon revolves around.

This classic movie shows some great examples of cabaret  dance (girly dancing) without having to strip down to your pasties and skimpy knickers. Whilst exploring the effects of WWII on Germany and the behaviour of the Nazis  towards other Germans. The film avoids being boring by switching from everyday life to acts at the Kit Kat Klub.
This movie is a classic and a must see, particularly if you like musicals. Personally I dont like musicals, but this is one of my favourite movies.

What characterises a person?

In an earlier post I wrote about how Hitler was characterised, mainly, by his moustache. It got me thinking, "What does characterise a person?"
Immediatly you start to think, 'Well thats obvious. It would be their taste in music, fashion, friends, food and maybe their hobbies.'
But is that really all?
So maybe you look a little deeper and think about their surroundings, cultural background, family history and maybe their religion. Is it all of that? Or does it come down to personality? If it is personality that has you asking the same questions, and it becomes a vicious cycle.

Ok lets see what the dictionary has to say about this... The dictionary itself seems a bit confused, with 27 different definitions, I only included 10. (This is only dictionary.com mind you)

Character
[kar-ik-ter]
–noun
1.
the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing.
2.
one such feature or trait; characteristic.
3.
moral or ethical quality: a man of fine, honorable character.
4.
qualities of honesty, courage, or the like; integrity: It takes character to face up to a bully.
5.
reputation: a stain on one's character.
6.
good repute.
7.
an account of the qualities or peculiarities of a person or thing.
8.
a person, especially with reference to behavior or personality: a suspicious character.
9.
Informal . an odd, eccentric, or unusual person.
10.
a person represented in a drama, story, etc.


Anyway getting back on track. Say you decide to look at it from the 'fashion, friends, surroundings etc' point of view, that seems simple enough, you get caught up in all the people with fake characteristics or the people that insist on plopping themselves into character categories.

Look at 'emo's' for example. When you think 'emo', you think of; Black clothes, sad depressing punk/pop music, piercings, suicidal traits and you don't even consider family/cultural history because being and 'emo' has nothing to do with that. For all you know this supposedly sad and depressed human could not be depressed at all and go back to his loving family every night.
emo (ˈiːməʊ)
— noun
a. a type of music combining traditional hard rock with personal and emotional lyrics

Bogan

Then theres 'bogans'(rednecks), probably one of the largest and most well known categories (well at least in Australia). Bogan = Loud, obnoxious, rude, uneducated, beer/vodka cruiser drinking, MacDonalds eating, Ugg boot and flannelette wearing human being who, usually, comes from a long line of 'bogans'.
You never know though, this supposed 'bogan', may come from a line of very rich and well educated people and just likes to act like a 'bogan' with his/her friends.

bo·gan

  

[boh-guhn]

–noun 

Australian term used to describe members of society that are a combination of what the Yanks call Rednecks, Jocks and Trailer Park Trash.

Now I could probably ramble on for ages, about all the different character categories. But that would just get boring. 

So heres some pictures of some celebrities and what i think characterises them:    

Lady Gaga:
Is characterised by her crazy costumes, white blonde hair and overall crazy attitude.
Gaga wouldn't be Gaga if she just wore jeans and no makeup.

Michael Jackson
Characteristics:
Pale white skin, always wearing glasses, long black hair, high pitched voice, history of a black man, pedophile (maybe?) 

Marilyn Manson
For Marilyn its all about his makeup and different eye colours.

Well thats the end of my post, byee.

Twiggy

Born Lesley Hornby, her father, William Norman, was a master carpenter and her mother, Helen Hornby, worked as a counter girl at Woolworth’s store.

The Twiggy fashion
is back people!

She attended Kilburn High School for Girls and began modelling at age 15. Her gamine teenage frame had earned her the nickname ‘Twigs’ and she was henceforth known as Twiggy.

So, as you may have guessed, this post is about Twiggy.
When I think of the 60's I think of Twiggy...
Who hasn't heard of Twiggy?
I used to think she was a house hold name. I was wrong. I know a girl who looks a lot like Twiggy, as I was scrolling through her Facebook photos (bored shitless looking at all her friends comments, 'aw your so pretty babe' etc) I had a realisation. This girl looks like Twiggy,  I thought. So the next time I saw her I told her, expecting her to know who Twiggy was straight away. Yet she didn't. What's the world coming to? Isn't Twiggy a great fashion icon? I mean, with all this 'indie' fashion...

   

Personally I love her fashion, her eyes and her hair. Twiggy took short hair and made it pretty, made it fashionable. She may have had the body of a 6 year old boy but she definitely pulled it off.

Some other models of the 60's

Cathee Dahmen

Veruschka Von Lehndorff

Penelope Tree
"Christianity, like most religions, works with fear. Sins can be confessed and you are "clean again" and can start to sin again without thinking about your old sins. We believe that people should ask themselves why they sinned. They should show some responsibility." -Twiggy