The lovely folks at MOO.com got in touch recently, asking if I’d like to share some of their printed products on here. Well, I’m already a happy Moo customer – I use their cute little Minicards to pop in with my Etsy orders – so I used the opportunity to get some of their newly-offered Luxe cards for my freelance design work, using a little monogram I made (which might feature in yet another blog redesign soon…)

They’re a sexy thick 600gsm with a textured matte finish, sandwiched with a layer of coloured stock which gives the edges a lovely pop. The great thing about Moo is you can mix and match your designs at no extra cost, so I could try out a few colour options for my cards. I’m so pleased with them, they feel great and I’m looking forward to giving them out!

Giveaway – win one of three 40-packs of postcards!

Moo.com have kindly offered up some postcard packs for me to give away too. Three people will win a set of 40 printed postcards – you can either supply your own designs or receive a mix of some of my shop designs as seen above and below. They look damn cute, eh?

How to enter

Either:

1. Leave a comment on this post telling me what you’d print on your postcards, or if you’d like my designs instead. Make sure your email address is valid so I can contact you if you win (it’s not displayed with your comment).

2. Tweet your entry, including a link to this post (http://whatkatiedoes.net/?p=6072) and my @name (@whatkatiedoes) so I can see your entry. Click the button below for a pre-written tweet! If you enter via Twitter and win I’ll contact you for an email address and your prize preference.

Tweet

You can enter both ways for two chances to win! There’s one week to get your entries in – I’ll randomly choose the 3 winners and notify them by Twitter or email on Thursday, March 1st. Good luck, and thank you MOO.com for supplying the prize.

NB. To clarify, the prize is either a set of 40 postcards with a mix of my pre-made designs on (as seen above), or equivalent credit to spend at the moo.com shop with your own postcard designs.

Kopi is a new coffee subscription service which delivers a new gourmet coffee to your door every month. They asked me to try out their January blend, and of course I was happy to oblige.

The coffee comes nicely packaged in a resealable bag alongside a beautifully-designed booklet explaining the origins and tasting notes of the month’s blend. This month’s is a Geisha tree coffee from Malawi which is supposed to have notes of jasmine, lemon and lavender.

Brewing up in the cafetière, it certainly smells good – floral and acidic.

The tasting notes suggested it goes well with chocolate, as the acidity cuts through the richness, but I had it with my Saturday breakfast. I’m no coffee expert, but the sharp lemony-ness was very clear and it had a roasted fruitiness that reminded me of Square Mile‘s signature blend. Personally I found it a little too sour – my taste is more for chocolatey caramel notes like some of Monmouth‘s blends. It gave me a pleasing jolt of morning wake-up feeling though, and I also think it’d be nice as an after-dinner drink with a square of chocolate.

Is Kopi for me? Probably not, because I have a certain ‘type’ of coffee that I know I like, and I also don’t brew an awful lot of coffee at home so wouldn’t get through the 250g bag in a month. But I loved the whole experience of getting a blend from a specific area and learning about the origins, and it’s clear that a lot of expertise and care has gone into selecting and packaging the coffee. I’d definitely recommend Kopi‘s service if you’re interested in trying lots of different high quality coffees and learning about where they all come from. Membership starts at £9/month, going down to £7 if you buy a year in advance.

When Holly namechecked the Pink Panther as an influence on her illustration work, I was immediately reminded of my childhood love of those cartoons. We had them on a bright pink VHS tape – the coolest thing ever at the time – and I recently spent a happy Sunday afternoon re-watching old episodes on YouTube.

Given the recent revival in naive, expressive illustration with a mid-century Americana slant, it’s not surprising that these stills could happily sit alongside contemporary work. The use of bright warm colour, folk typography, and the scratchy line work is particularly inspiring to me. Enjoy these grabs!

I love these guys too, Ant and Aardvark, a spinoff from the Pink Panther. Wonderful expressions and background texture.

It’s obviously a sign of getting old that my idea of a really fun Saturday night these days is having the luxury of time to spend hours making something interesting for dinner. I got a pasta machine for my birthday last month, so this week’s culinary adventure was making tortellini and ravioli from scratch. I’ve wanted to try this for ages as the veggie fillings you find in readymade ones are often limited, and I love the taste of fresh pasta.

I used a basic dough recipe from Leith’s Vegetarian Bible (I halved the recipe quantity – 225g ’00′ flour, two eggs and a drizzle of olive oil – and still had enough to make four portions) and improvised a simple mushroomy filling with shallot, garlic and spinach.

Rolling the dough and putting the shapes together was surprisingly easy though pretty time-consuming. I made ravioli by sandwiching two circles together, and tortellini by folding less filling into one circle and bending into a little shell shape. The tortellini went in the freezer for another night.

Final step, boiling the pasta briefly, holding my breath that they wouldn’t burst or disintegrate (per my failed attempt at making gnocchi a while ago), then a final quick fry in butter to add a crispy texture.

Served with cheeses I had to hand in the fridge – manchego and mozzarella – and a drizzle of truffle oil, it tasted really pretty good! I’ll definitely try this again with more adventurous fillings – thinking roasted aubergine, oven-dried tomato with veggie chorizo, and even potato for a double-carby hit.

Just a quickie to say my Food poster is now available in a lovely Heinz-tomato-soup red. Mmm, I feel warmer just looking at it. Pick one up here!

Hilton Hotels just got in touch (you know, as you do) to let me know that last year they formed a merger with 8 Mint Hotels, and are rebranding 8 Mint’s properties under Hilton’s DoubleTree and Garden Inn groups. The hotels in question include the DoubleTree London Westminster and Tower of London, Glasgow, Bristol, Birmingham and Amsterdam; and Garden Inn Leeds and Manchester. The Doubletree Tower Bridge caught my eye for its rather dashing mid-century inspired rooms, and check that restaurant with a view…

The hotel’s in a great spot, in the shadow of Tower Bridge and a short walk from the foody treats of Borough Market and Maltby Street. There’s also Bermondsey Village just to the south which I’ve been meaning to visit for ages – it has a Friday antiques market plus a Saturday Farmers’ Market. Eating-wise there’s wonderful tapas institution Brindisa and its founder’s own new venture José, and The Rake is great for craft beers.

If you happen to have friends visiting or are planning a trip to the capital yourself, it’d be a great base to explore from. More details here.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post from Hilton Hotels

I think it’s always fun to see people’s work in progress, so I took this screencast while I doodled an owl in Illustrator the other night. It’s speeded up 20x! Here’s the finished chappy:

I’m not a cold weather lover, but a thick dusting of pretty snow definitely takes the edge off, hmm? Especially on a Sunday when there’s no need to go anywhere except a walk around the village for a coffee and to snap some photos.

It’s the first time Yoni’s seen snow since he’s been going outside, so it was pretty fun seeing his reaction. He had a nose around but has spent most of the day curled up inside – sensible kitty.

I ditched my old desk (it found a new home thanks to Gumtree) which was much too big for the room, and instead made my own with an Unto This Last custom-cut top and Ikea base unit and legs. I also got some rather sleek Ikea plan-chest type drawers to store all my prints for my shop.

My big wall o’ kitsch has expanded somewhat. I finally splurged on some String shelves (they’re on sale at Haus) to house my little camera collection. I was pleased to find that this DIY newb was able to install them quite easily in less than an hour. They’re even straight (thanks iPhone spirit level app), and feel pretty solid – good investment.

In the future I might replace the day bed with a more space-efficient one – it holds a ton of stuff in the drawers underneath but it’s really bulky. Having said that, now that the room is organised better I love just hanging out in here with the cat watching TV on my iMac. It’s also the warmest room in the house right now!

The crochet blanket is one of Yoni’s favourite nap spots

The next house jobs/purchases include replacing some light sockets, repainting the bathroom, a new bed and bedside tables, and getting the garden sorted out in time for warm weather. We’re doing a skill swap with a garden designer – website in exchange for garden design – and I’m really excited to have a lovely outdoor space for this summer. Is anyone else doing any new year home improvements?

I’m kind of a Masterchef fangirl – in fact, I love any cookery show on TV – so when Handpicked Media extended an invite to a cookery demo night with last year’s champ Tim Anderson I jumped at it. I loved Tim’s cooking on the show – a modern fusion-y take on Japanese – and was pleased to see the menu for the night was of the same ilk.

The event was sponsored by Oral B, for whom Tim is a new ambassador, and throughout the night they highlighted the kind of damage that everyday foods can do to your teeth – not just the sugary treats you might expect, but acidic foods, from tomatoes to tea, can erode away enamel and leave your teeth sensitive, stained and generally unhappy. But back to the food for a sec…

Tim demonstrated both of the dishes for us, then we had a go recreating them in teams of two. First up, sashimi (or tofu for the veggies) with various seaweeds, a passion fruit foam, and dashi granita. Despite looking super fancy, this dish was really easy to put together – the main ingredient needs no cooking and the foam is simply whizzed with a stick blender to give it texture. The eating was a lovely blend of temperatures and textures, and the sweet foam really lifted the tofu.

The main dish was tea-marinated egg on a crispy leek nest with chana puree – most definitely the kind of thing that’d jump out at me on a restaurant menu. Despite looking exquisite and complex it was again really quite simple and cooked almost in real-time (apart from the egg, which needs 24 hours to soak up the chai tea broth). I’d definitely cook it at home again; the flavours and textures were fantastic. If you’d like to try it too, the recipe’s at the bottom of this blog post!

These crispy leeks would make an awesome accompaniment to loads of dishes, I reckon

While we ate, one of Oral B’s scientists, Adam, told us about their new toothpaste, Pro-expert, which addresses the problems food can cause to your tooth enamel by creating an effective barrier as you brush. I’m generally skeptical of such claims (and I don’t think these ads that smack of pseudo-science do any favours) but Adam really knew his stuff, and I came away quite convinced that it’s worth investing in a good toothpaste. I’ve been using the sample tube we were given and I swear my teeth feel cleaner already. You get a free sample too right here.

One of Tim’s next projects is running a cookery tour holiday to Japan, yours for just £5k. Hey Handpicked, I’d happily go to this too in the name of blog-journalism, k? CALL ME!