Baked Eggs

Up early again this morning (16/4) to cook a recipe. Who even am I?! This time, from Rukmini Iyer’s The Green Roasting Tin:  Baked Eggs with Beetroot, Celeriac, Dill and Feta. 

Started this at 6:21am. Finished 7:35. Should only have taken 30 mins, but first thing in the morning when I’m tired, not awake and hungry, I’m going to be slower than usual. 

First problem: I don’t have a particularly big mixing bowl. I guess I could have used an oversized Tupperware box, which I’ve done before, but again, to access it, it means rearranging my entire kitchen cupboard. A cereal bowl sufficed, but it was FULL. Next, my scales weren’t sensitive enough to measure out 180g of anything. I did a lot of guesswork. I bought sourdough for this recipe, but my fridge was also full, so kept it in a cupboard, and it went off before I could use it. The eggs themselves needed a little longer in the oven than advertised, and the ‘nest’ of the beetroot – that contains the egg – weren’t as solid as I expect they should have been. 

The egg was the best part.

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Tenerife '25 Day 8

Flew home. Much more fluid airport experience this time. 

Great holiday. Spending time with the niece and second cousins was the highlight. Getting burned to shit was the lowlight. Really should have covered up more. Factor 50 and intermittent t shirt wearing wasn’t enough. Will try again next year. Lots of others on the plane had similar twat tans, so I’m not alone in my inability to manage UV. 

I didn’t manage to do the submarine tour, snorkelling with turtles, jet skis, the monkey and parrot parks or the Viking ship cruise. 2026!

Tenerife '25 Day 7

TUESDAY 27/6 

The last full day was a boat day. We walked down to the harbour in the morning to for a boat trip, out into the Mediterranean, so see dolphins and pilot whales, some incredibly beautiful mammals. Pilot whale infants, the guide tells us, stay dependent for 15 years and tend to stay within their pod. 

 

 Which are these? Any experts? 

 

Great views of the wildlife, but I just do not have the sea legs. Thankfully my stomach settled once we were back on land, and we headed to La Cofradia for lunch and La Tasca 7 for tea.

Tenerife '25 Day 6

MONDAY 26/5 

Food in the town with the family. The House restaurant in a rustic Spanish backstreet served up garlic bread, penne arrabbiata, bacon and garlic tomatoes with chilli, and sugar and lemon crepes. Great food, shame about the African street entertainers blasting music and performing mediocre balancing acts. 

More beach.

Spinningfields Bar Crawl - Get Involved

On the blog: the last few Tenerife posts, that I’m sure are keeping you in suspense. Cough. Probably another recipe review. Plus I’ve got a few things that have happened since coming home. 

On socials: Actor William Forsythe reshared my birthday message to him over Instagram stories. Actor Richard Chaves liked my pic of us. Actor of a, uh, different kind Kat Kyle liked my pedantic grammar comment. I forgot to mention, last week Arabelle Raphael also liked this this joke in the comments of her reel. My comment got 10 thousand likes on a video. 

All is not well on the online social group scene. Not just my meetups, but it seems that there’s an issue with other groups on the site, plus groups on Discord too. Manchester Social has proven to be hugely unpopular with certain crowds, if this Reddit thread is anything to go by. 

Sadly, I got mentioned in this too. It seems in a meetup with Manchester Psychology Social group I briefly mentioned confidence building as a facet of psychology, and what I said was massively misinterpreted. Some weeks later, I got utterly lambasted for it. I apologised on the Reddit thread, although I’m still not sure what for. I can hardly even remember the conversation in question. It could, I guess, explain attendance dropping off. I did everything I could to bring people together just to share an interest, and it feels like it was thrown right back at me. Obviously, a bit of time has passed since this thread was active. I do want to run another Psychology meetup, but to where, and to do what exactly, I don’t know. 

The upshot is, you can’t please everyone. I took a break from running meetups as I had a ton of conventions to go to, plus a holiday, so I was too busy anyway, but I really just didn’t want the heat. 

But I did run a meetup to the Northern Quarter Friday for Happy Hour in Pen and Pencil, Before the start time, Get Social launched in Banyan in Spinningfields. This Meetup group is ran by the same guy who does the Manchester WeRoad meetups, and seeems to have a similar purpose: just bringing people together whether they’re travelling or local. I had a look. Pleasant enough evening, good people, still a bit of a sausage fest. 3 of us met in Pen and Pencil, which was utterly dead, so we tried a few other bars but called it early. 

The rumour on the night was that the heads at WeRoad cancelled the Manchester group because of an offensive comedy night that Manchester’s WeRoad branch apparently attended, hence the Manchester team launched GetSocial. 

Saturday night: There was supposed to be something happening in Freight Island, although I can’t find it on Meetup. Freight weren’t letting in anyway, so we tried 186 but I was in pumps so they weren’t having me. BLVD nearby hosted a hen do of mostly Irish girls from Crewe. The DJ got everyone into what he called a ‘Congo line’ (conga?) that threaded through the bar and out into the Spinningfields Avenue. Then my friend and I shot off to Ocasa, formerly Australasia (samba music) and Lawn Club, which was pumping out cheesy pop for another hen do. Mostly women. Can’t complain. 

So what’s happening this week? 

Friday night: looks like WeRoad meetup still exists in some form in Manchester, as they return to Box bar on Deansgate, booking the upper level out. I’ll be there to see which familiar faces I can spot, and also to try to badger a few people into my own meetups. 

Speaking of which, Saturday night: Spinningfields Bar Crawl with Manchester Nightlife. I’m aiming to get to a few new places this night, including Habbibi and Shiruku. If you fancy some cocktails, smart décor, possible celeb sightings and chilled house music, pencil this in for Saturday and come meet us. 

 

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Tenerife '25 Day 5

 

My data roaming ran out at this point and Wi-Fi at Los Claveles was intermittent at best. More beach. Managed to shift the hangover. 

 

 

25/5 Sunday 

Early evening myself and my parents found the meeting point for Tenerife Stars, a stargazing tour on Mount Teide. 

Tour guide Ozzy, a trilingual and hugely passionate astronomer, took us on a coach up the mountain, and explained the history of the island beginning with the smashing of 2 tectonic plated millions of years ago, forcing the volcano upwards out of the seabed of the Mediterranean and forming what is now the third biggest volcano in the world. NASA, he tells us, calls it ‘The Gate to Heaven,’ the peak of which having risen up from inside the middle of the original volcano.

 

Eventually, the coach having wound its way through numerous high-lying rustic villages, we arrive at a vineyard with a giant wine press. 

 

 

 

 

The tables are pre-laid and we sit, meet other tour guests, and the staff serve up some exquisite pumpkin soup, chicken and Canarian potatoes (new potatoes with a generous salt coating). 

 

 

 

After an opportunity to eat and wander the grounds, we’re ushered back on the coach and we continue the climb. 

Teide, Ozzy tells us, last erupted in 1798 (Google suggests it did again in 1909.) Star Wars and Star Trek have filmed there among the alien-looking spiky rocks. Listen to them crunch underfoot. 

 

 

 

We reach twilight on the journey, and by the time we arrive at the viewing platform it’s already pitch black. It’s a clear night. There’s no moon, but the celestial hemisphere is in full view.   

 

Ozzy describes the different stars and constellations, pointing them out in the sky with a laser pen. He explains how long it would theoretically take us to get there travelling at the speed of light. A couple of large telescopes have been set up on tripods on the cobbles, and we queue to look. Through the first, a distant galaxy, millions of light years away, appears as a streak of light as we’re looking at it side-on. At the second telescope, 2 visible white dots are actually a double star – 2 balls of gas burning in proximity. A constellation through the third telescope displays as a frosted glass effect – millions of stars against the void.   

Food and hot drinks are available at this point.   

Finally there’s a photo op against the cosmos. I paid for this one.

 

What an experience. Well recommended.

Ratatouille

I’ve had my mum’s ratatouille many times, so I figured this would be a good recipe to try. From Rukmini Iyer’s The Green Roasting in, we have Oven Baked Ratatouille: Slow Cooked Courgette, Aubergine, Peppers & Tomatoes. 

Should have taken an hour and 10. Took me over 2. This was partly because I wrongly assumed I had canned chopped tomatoes in the cupboard, then had to nip to Aldi. I used ground garlic, not cloves, and regular parmesan, not vegan. No idea how easy that is to find, but it certainly wasn’t in my local. I took a guess at weights of a lot of the ingredients, which were under 100g. My manual scales weren’t going to be accurate. I also used brown breadcumbs, not white as advised. 

Again, not a favourite, but a fine dish.

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Tenerife '25 Day 4

24/5 Saturday 

 Lunch and cocktails at the resort bar.  

My mate Bini, a local DJ, moved out to Tenerife years ago and plays in the bars along the strip, so I managed to get out to see her with a couple of family members. Suffice to say, more cocktails followed. Great catchup and house music. Magic bar and Rejoyce bar later were the venues. 

Quiet bar area. It’s no Magaluf. Not that I’ve been there since 2010.