Alchemic larder ingredients

I got complete suckered in by the amazing jewel-like packaging of Easy Tasty Magic – yes I fell for a range of Laura Santtini’s cooking salts/rubs I discovered in Selfridges.

It is a vision of “flavouring foods with techniques developed out of alchemic mysteries” – so basically really cooooooooool cooking salts and seasoning rubs for meat. The names help with this lust too with ‘flavors’ including Carnal Sin, International Jerk, On the Game, White Mischief, Alchemic Larder, Renaissance Stardust Venetian Stardust, Porcini Salt, Salt of the Earth and Truffle Salt.

And the ingredients sound like they are straight out of Snape’s potion cupboard too; cornflower petals, Facing Heaven chillis, larkspur, marigold, myrtle, orange blossom, peony flowers, pepperoncino chilli, Spice of Angels. Oh and the Stardusts contain a smidgeon of edible metal flakes that “spread the tinsiest bit of magic onto your food”.

So far I think you can only buy it in Selfridges – click for more information.

Cook – Yummy frozen meals

It is possible COOK have just saved my life. At the mere hint of a visitor, or worse romantic dinner, my house inexplicably descends into madness.

Even Vogue agree with me and described this awesome “cheat at cooking” company as;

“all the hearty dishes of a domestic goddess’s over without you having to chop, peel or mix.”

To be fair theses dishes come as frozen so it would hard to go wrong, unlike this fiasco from Bridget Jones (this is my life);

Cannot go on. Have just stepped in a pan of mashed potato in new kitten-heel black suede shoes from Pied-a-Terre (Pied a Potato, more like), forgetting that kitchen floor and surfaces were covered in pans of mince and mashed potato. It is already 6.30 and have to go out to Cullen’s for Grand Marnier souffle ingredients and other forgotten items. Oh my god – suddenly remembered tube of contraceptive jelly might be on side of wash basin. Must also hide storage jars with embarrassingly unhip squirrel design. And put hideous Kenyan carving gift from Woney on display.