Do you want Sugar with that?

I am inviting you all to play 'spot the Apprentice cliche' game. The rules - every time a contestant utters a cliche phrase such as "Lord Sugar, I will give you 110%" (like that is actually possible!) or "I am dynamic and I think outside the box", then you must reward yourself with shouting the word "twat" very loudly at the TV.

Seriously, did you watch it last night? It was a veritable shower of twattishness. My observations so far:

• I vow not to order sausage and mash anywhere in Portobello Road in the near future, should I run the risk on chomping down on something that consists mainly of lard, sawdust and water.
• How can someone be described as an unemployed head of communications? Surely, a job title would be defined by the fact that you need an actual job to warrant the title?
• Melissa Cohen. Gay? Discuss.
• If Stuart Baggs  is "The Brand", then why the fuck have I have never heard of him.
• Cliche alert re: the boys suggestions for team names. Synergy or Fusion. I think they just pick them from whatever shower gel or deodorant they used that morning. Maybe the girls should follow suit...mmmmm Impulse.
• What sort of name is Raleigh, although pronounced Rawley with extra plums in your mouth....

So, will I be having Sugar with my evening tea again next Wednesday night? You betcha!

Has Nigella gone to seed?

Having missed it last week, Beth and I caught up with Nigella Lawson's new programme on Virgin catch up TV.

Nigella gets her baps out...

I've missed Nigella and her saucy satin black dressing gown, shoving king prawns down her throat (shell included) like a Belgravia dwelling version of Diana from V. Those of you that are children of the 80s will hopefully get that reference.

My friend Sophie recently passed commentary on Nigella's girth, "I saw her on Jonathan Ross the other night and no amount of short denim jackets and long black skirts are going to hide the fact that she looks like she ate all the pies." Well as the saying goes, 'real women have curves' and I think her curves are just dandy. Mix that with a fabulous cleavage, liquid brown eyes with endless lashes and a mane of tumbling brunette locks, then you have quite a tasty package. Plus, she looks great for 50 and she cooks!

I think womanly curves are a bit of an anomaly on the London lesbian scene. On the rare occasions that Beth and I venture out on the scene to places like the Candy Bar, all we ever witness is a sea of tank tops and baggy combats or jeans with canvas belts and arms toned within in inch of their lives. Seriously, what is it about lesbians and tank tops?  Is there a secret rule that implies that everyone should dress like an extra from a Vietnam War film?

I wager that Nigella probably wouldn't suit a tank top. Women with a generous cleavage never do. She and I are in the same boat there. But where we may be lacking that 'temptation in a tank top' look that is so desired by gay girls globally, we certainly triumph should the occasion arise where we can wear a long evening dress with a plunging neckline. Take that, tank top temptresses! You and your sinewy arms and non-existent chests are no match for our beautiful breasts. We are women, hear us roar!

So, Nigella you can be queen of my kitchen anytime. Actually, scrap that, we'd probably fight over who wants to cook. I can just imagine it, wrestling on the kitchen floor with flour flying everywhere, clothing torn, breasts and legs akimbo....am I painting a vivid enough picture for you?

In praise of the staff canteen

I got in to work yesterday to find out that we have new caterers running the staff canteen. Most people would be concerned as to what the implications of this change will mean with regard to pricing or portion sizes, but not me. All I want to know is whether the new caterer’s menu is going to be as obscure as its predecessor.

The combinations they used to dream up were simply mystifying. It was the kind of canteen where they would have something like smoked salmon with haggis dumplings in a whisky sauce just because it was St Andrew's Day and they wanted something Scottish on the menu!

Actually I did once have haggis rissoles in a Drambuie sauce when I was in the Highlands, at the Badachro Inn. And they were lovely. Our friend Richard, who was with Beth and I at the time, has an irritational fear of haggis, in that he thinks it is simply the worst thing you can ever eat. He's never actually tasted it. It's the concept of offal that throws him, but seemingly he will shove any old sausage down his gullet, and who knows where they've been and what they consist of! One day I am going to make him a Shepherd's Pie with some haggis mixed in with the mince. I bet he won't even be able to tell.

Seemingly this culinary madness isn’t just restricted to my government department. My former boss who recently transferred to another department, sent me these two emails the other week:

“Just in case you thought it was only your canteen - Cumberland sausage ring and vegetable jambalaya. That is, they come served together as today’s ‘special’, they don’t just happen to be on the same menu.”

“In catering news, today is British Food Week. So today’s special is beef enchilada.”

What? Are we all not aware of the town of El Paso del Norte, just off the Huddersfield ring road. Best enchilada in the country apparently….

Another cause for concern was whether the same Eastern European serving attendants would be retained. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be bothered, but one of them is right tasty, which does a lot to brighten my Monday lunchtime.

Actually when I was at university, the serving wenches at my halls of residence were all drop dead gorgeous Danish au pairs. Still, it didn’t detract from the fact that the only dish the canteen ever seemed to serve was a dish of chicken legs sticking out of a range of multi-hued gravy like sauces.

Anyway, after perusing the new work canteen menu, I discovered that indeed, the mad food professor is still in residence. On tomorrow’s menu:

'Spiced chocolate & cinnamon nachos'

And I thought it was joss sticks I could smell in the canteen this morning ;)

Let them eat cake

What is about women and sweet treats? In particular chocolate and cake?

I don't know what you think, but Beth and I have a theory that a craving for sweet treats means that you don't have enough female loving in your life. Think about it, straight women seem to go doo lally over a slab of chocolate, whereas straight men seem more focused on things like pizza.

I tested this once with a group of my Sapphic sisters by initiating a discussion about our particular food cravings. What came out of this was that we all observed that heterosexual women were forever bringing in cakes, donuts and chocolate to work, but at the end of the day we agreed that we would all probably prefer a nice bit of pork pie! Is this because like straight men, we are the receivers of some female lovin', which provides us with the emotional sustenance that straight women (and many gay men, just watch my friend Richard devour a packet of chocolate digestives) seem to get from chocolate and cake?

However, someone who bucks this trend is my friend Hannah. When she and her husband got married this year they had a three tiered cake consisting entirely of.........pork pie!

Although, I have been getting into my baking of late and I have the Great British Bake Off to thank for that. Did you watch it? It was fabulous and it had our hilarious Sapphic sister, Sue Perkins, as host along with her comedy partner, Mel Giedroyc. The right person also won in the end, Edd Kimber, a lovely boy who bakes. Check out his blog.

Anyway, as we speak and contrary to my lack of interest in sweet things, I have some cranberry and raspberry muffins in the oven with a nice crunchy pecan topping. I am very particular about muffins. They have to be actual muffins and not overgrown fairy cakes. This means that they need to be made with less sugar and a nice rustic flour. Actually, one particular bug bear for me at the moment are cup cakes. I mean what is the fucking point? They're not sold on the taste, but rather how pretty they look. Look if I want to taste something pretty, then I'll seek out Cheryl Cole, not a cup cake!

On a final note, I'm attending an afternoon tea party on Saturday which is ironically being hosted by lesbians. However, one of them is a heavily pregnant lesbian, so she can be excused for her sweet cravings as she obviously needs emotional nourishment. The question is, what cake do I bake to take along? All suggestions welcome.

Gå som katten kring het gröt

Loosely translated, the above title says 'walk like a cat around hot porridge', which is a Swedish figure of speech for 'beating around the bush'. See, you didn't know I was a cunning linguist did you?

Beating around the bush, i.e. talking around the issue, but not really getting to the point is a bit like blogging. You talk and talk, but what point are you actually making? Does there need to be a point? Well my discussion point today is neither bushes, cats or hot porridge, but Sweden.

I love the country and spent a very happy study year living there back in the mid-90s. I also love the food and in fact I pulled together a favourite dish last night, Toast Skagen,  an elegant combination of shrimp and other ingredients on a small piece of sautéd bread. Jamie Oliver does a great version.

Sweden has been on my mind of late because, as per the rest of the world, I have just read Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. I just love the way he wrote, going in to intricate detail about who did what, what they ate, what road they took, what they bought. Nora Ephron wrote a wonderfully humorous piece for the New Yorker magazine, which is a pastiche of Larsson's writing style.

Does the Sweden depicted in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo reflect the Sweden I remember? Yes and no. I don't remember any bisexual, cyber-punk, multi-tattooed riot grrrls, but I did do my food shopping at Konsum. Actually I could write a whole book about my experiences on the rather limited gay scene in Linköping, the small university town I lived in. Here I was, young, fresh faced, newly out, taking my first steps into Joy, Linköping's only gay bar. Knowing that Swedish women were quite beautiful, I had high hopes for a feast of feminine fantasy made flesh. Imagine my horror to discover that every rough woman in Sweden had convened in Joy that night and for some reason they all seemed to share the same leather waistcoat. Actually, so did the women in Telia, the place where you went as a new resident to set up your phone line. As my friend Julian said at the time, "you don't have to be a lesbian to work at Telia...but it helps!"

Well the evening wore on and I settled myself in the company of the gay boys. Then I received a tap on shoulder, and there stood one of the many waistcoated women. "Dansa med mig, dansa till Nordman". Basically she was asking me for a slow dance to what was Sweden's equivalent of Phil Collins (the singer whose music would play in my version of hell). Well I had to oblige and my fate was better than my friend Anna, who had been the target of a waterfall of vomit from a waistcoated one...from the top of a spiral staircase.So I had my dance, which was ok and then made a hasty retreat.

The other thing that amused me about Joy was that the same song was always played at the end of the night, 'This is it' by Melba Moore. Suffice to say the line "this time I know it's for real" never did ring true for me during my forays onto the Swedish gay scene. I certainly made up for it when I got back to London ;)

On a final note, did I partake of the wonderful Swedish cuisine when I lived there? In short, the answer is no. I didn't have a pot to piss in money wise and the money I did have went on beer. The following outlines the food I did eat:

• Pasta, made with cheese and tomato ketchup
• Packet noodles with tinned sweetcorn and cucumber
• Potato chips and dips
• Goument rulle - basically a piece of flat bread filled with mashed potato, fried onions, sliced beef and burger sauce.
• Hot dogs
• Kebabs with an unknown, but delicious purple sauce
• Pizza and pickled cabbage salad -yes together!
• Herring
• Semla - a cream bun filled with an almond paste

How I was only nine stone when I lived there and even thinner when I left I have no idea!