Todays little bit of randomness..

So today when I got off the bus from work I popped into the train station. I wanted to pick up a tattoo magazine as I have been thinking of getting a little inky for my 30th birthday which is fast approaching and magazines sift out all the garbage..... unlike the internet.

There were a few on offer but this is one I went for, mainly because there is an artical with a little man called Dadan who I know.

There he is...he works with the Ripleys at 'The Sailors Grave' in Copenhagen where I had my Japanese sleeve done. I've not read the interview yet as it's all in Danish and I need all my brain power for that.

So there I was flicking through the magazine..... when I saw this!

I know that arm.

I've never been in tattoo magazine before.

WOOOOOOOO!!!!

What we did today...and other random iphone pics.

Today has been a rather lazzzzzy day, we have been out with friends over the past two days so there has been little energy spent today. Just some surfing (the Internet sort) eating, baking and PS3 have been the order of the day!

This has been Fee's position for most of the day, she has become addicted to 'LEGO Harry Potter'. Its a huge game, so I may not be getting my PS3 back for some time.

In her defence she did make dinner and this yummy Panna cotta with strawberries.

We had some Bananas that were a little 'over ripe', so I made this...

that then turned into this 45min later....

and now looks like this!

Yummy Banana bread cake thing.

Now for some random iPhone pics:

This is Sven getting some Gas for the car on the way home, the garage was covered except for one hole....which was right over the machine where you had to pay.

Rainbow!

Fee was defiantly a Cat in her past life, just look at her snoozing in the sun beam.

We went to a very French birthday party on Friday... as you can see there was a LOT OF CHEESE! However, most of it came direct from French that very morning! Pretty cool.

"The hill's are alive with the sound of music....and zombies"

Fee had one of her now legendary Sing Star nights last night, which meant I had to find refuge from the noise at a friends house.... I did however make a fridge full of Jelly Shots for the evening.

Should be enough there to get you HAMMERED!

I even got inventive and made some two tone madness.

So while the girls were singing their little hearts out me and the guys were shooting Zombies in the face....pew pew!

Ciao Italy! Pt Quattro

Well you cant go to Italy and not talk about the food.... and we like our food! so much so that Fee called round a few places and managed to get us to a cooking course for the day. We were rather lucky as you need to book these things in advance. Score!

This was our menu for the day... many yum's to come!

This was our chef and teacher for the day.

As your can see he was a rather 'relaxed' chef, he never once used both hands.

Grabbed a pic of his list, I just liked the fact it was titled 'Lista'. Seems in Italy all you need to do is add and 'A' or an 'O' to the end of everything.

Here was our work station where we did our chopping, peeling and kneading of our hand made pasta.

Here's the whole gang, they were all from different parts of America so Fee & Me were the only Brits. See that lady in the center stirring the bowl with a really smug look on her face? She was banging on about how easy Italian food is to make and how much cooking she does......

She then proceeded to make some of the most 'fugly' misshapen ravioli's I have ever seen..... plus her husband made some the size of my first! We could not help but snigger a little. Making these is pretty much the same as making chinese style dumplings/won-tons, so Fee's looked very nice.

Mmmmm Garlic and Rosemary twice roasted potatoes.

We were there for about 5 hours with the gang learning tip and recipes. It was a fun day and I would recommend it to anybody into coking. So what did we make in the end? Well here are the fruits of our labour:

Panzanella: its a light and fresh salad made with tomatos, cucumber bread and read wine viniger. Great for summer or picnics.

Saffron Risotto: A classic risotto base infused with roasted saffron.

Walnut and Ricotta Ravioli: Hand made pasta filled with a mixture of walnut, cheese and roasted aubergine covered in a light butter and sage dressing. As you can see, we got some of the super ugly ones made by the smug super chef who was not so super.... thanks.

Pan Roasted Chicken: It had been stuffed with an olive paste and served with the twice roasted potatoes.

Panocotta: This was soooo good and so easy. Cream, Sugar, Vanilla, gyertine and strawberries...thats it.

There we are, feeling rather full and happy.

Welcome to the book club..pt2

Ok, just so you don't get bored of all these pictures of Italy (because there will be more) ill break it up a little with another installment of 'Welcome to the book club'....

Big collection of Irvine Welsh, I know Train Spotting is the classic but Filth is my favorite. Its about a detective investigating a crime but soon takes a very odd turn. Got some good Will Self in there, Great Apes was good. It's about an artist who wakes up one day and everybody (including himself) is a monkey... everything is the same but we are all monkeys. So it's really about him adjusting to this, is he mad?, was he mad to think he was a human? who knows? We also have some Huxley in there, Brave New World telling us we are all screwed.

Every adult should have Harry Potter: The complete works, I'm sure you all know what the deal is with these books. Got me some Verne in there, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic and still one of my fav's. Even have Yann Martel's Life of Pi in there, not got round to reading this yet but I do like Pi...Yum!

As you can tell, this is the boy's section of book shelf. Got Frank Miller's Sin City books, its a great collection of stories all set in Basin city. The film recreated some of the storys very well but I still recommend you go out and get the rest. Batman Hush by Loeb, Lee and Williams is probably one of the best Batman storys around. Lots of mystry and double crossing all mixed in with most of the best know charecters results in a great book. Got the three The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books by Allan Moore & Kevin O'neill. The first is by far the best of the three blending great characters from famous literature with a great story.... and avoid the film at all costs.

Ciao Italy! Pt Tre

8th August, thats our wedding anniversery and the whole reason we went on this nice little trip to Italy. Unfortunately the 8th was a Sunday and we found out nothing would be open, so we decided to go and have a nice picnic in the Tuscan country side.

We figured it would be easy to find a nice spot but it was a lot harder than we imagened. All the land is of course farm land or vineyards.... so that would be tresspassing. However as we were driving around Fee spotted a 'For sale' sign at an old farm house, so we parked up, grab our blanket and went for a picnic.

There it is, the drive way was very long... it took us about 10min to walk to the house.

I would say this is a cute old well, but after watching *'The Ring' we all know wells are not cute.

It was a very big farm house and you could see lots of work had been done to it over the years. I don't know how long it had been standing empty for.

A very rare pic of me in the sun.... I had factor 50 sunblock on (its made for goths) so don't worry I didn't get a tan.

Our little picnic, we had some nice bread, cheese, ham, olives and a small bottle of wine. Plus, it was all local...Yum!

Theses Mrs Groves looking pretty as always..... I had obviously told one of my very funny jokes at this point.

It wasn't fancy but we had a nice time.

We kindly asked a passing Grasshopper to take a nice pic of us.

After our yummy lunch we lazed around and enjoyed the peace and quite. Once our food had settled we went exploring to see what we could find.

Another rare picture of me..... this time smiling..... well kind of.

Fee skipping off into the sunset.

Seems local farmers still use the farm house but just for storage.

Inside was rather creepy so we stayed out.

We had a super cool day on our little adventure and our picnic really filled us up. So much so that this was our dinner:

...

*the Japanese original, not the American 'we only re-made it because Americans wont watch foreign films' re-make.

Ciao Italy! Pt Due

After Florence the next 'must see place' is Pisa....and to marvel at it's badly built tower. So we jumped into the car and zoomed down there, we parked on the edge of town and walked in as we guessed it would be super busy in town. To our surprise we found a rather cool little park on the way there...

You would be forgiven for thinking this was a photo of Southern California.

"Where the hell is New Kids On The Block?"

Soaking up the rays in California.... I mean Italy.... Honest.

So we walked though some small streets and simply followed all the crowds of German, Dutch, French and American tourists going to the way to the tower....

"Looks fine to me... what's all the fuss about?"

"Ooooohh... now I see it"

Never hire an Italian builder simply because his gorgeous.

There was A LOT of this going on..... I cant stand this kind of thing.*

Fee made a new friend..... looked kind of dangerous to me.

Captured this guy buzzing around, his wings were super fast like a Humming Bird's.

So after seeing Italy's monument to 'shoddy building work' we got some food and headed home. Don't get me wrong, the tower and the area around it is beautiful but sadly Pisa is a real tourist trap with people selling fake watches and all sorts of tat everywhere. Go there, have a quick look at the tower then move on.... that's our advice.

For the next day we got bored of the city's and hit the country roads to find some cute towns and some wine. Apparently red wine is popular over here... who knew?!

This was my view for a large part of the trip.

There's our little Fiat Panda or 'red Cat' as we called him. Red Cat is what Pandas (real ones not the car) are called in Chinese.... go figure.

Yum yum, we had some tasty wine and picked up a good bottle to bring home.

Pretty water feature at the vineyard.

Mrs Groves pondering on the big questions in life, like "how much red wine can I drink AND still drive?"

I have no idea what the hell those things are?

*Fee and me took loads of pic with people doing the silly 'i'm holding up the tower pose!' that i'll do a post just for that.