Have been following the Fuggirl's coverage of the Half Blood Prince premiere red carpets and just HAD to post up a photo of Emma Watson at the New York premiere because she looked absolutely STUNNING.



HELLO Hermione. Dress, shoes, hair, makeup all so cute & sexy AND age appropriate. Lucky that she's so gorgeous, I'm sure her career will go quite well despite the fact that her acting range consists of three facial expressions.

While I was hunting for a good picture of Emma, I also came across this photo:



And I thought "Who is THAT? Is it... is that Ginny Weasley!? WOW!" I've always given poor Bonnie Wright a bit of a hard time for not being quite "pretty enough" to  be a satisfying romantic lead opposite Harry Potter but she did well here! Okay, she looks about 20 years older than she actually is, but she's really chanelling Julianne Moore's sexy red-hair, red-lipstick look here and that's not a bad thing! I am now cool with the fact that you're the future Mrs Pottor.

One last thing... someone who scrubs up surprisingly well:


It's NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM!!!!! AKA Matthew Lewis - he looks like a young Clive Owen! That is, before he opens his mouth to reveal some serious dental issues that the producers have clearly not allowed him to fix in order to attain that genuinely goofy 'Neville' look, but not bad, not bad at all!

If I were feeling a little more self-conscious I wouldn't dare to write a blog about my readership - but I'm feeling a bit flamboyantly narcissistic right now, probably from all those endorphins after my pilates workout, and I will blatantly acknlowedge that I do check my 'footprints' occasionally and DO care about how many visits I've gotten (DON'T PRETEND YOU DON'T DO IT TOO!) I've noticed that the number of people who visit this blog has dwindled DRASTICALLY - and I'm not sure why. Is it Twitter? Is it the new colour scheme? Has everyone grown out of my self-obsessed ranting? Have I become less interesting? Have I gained weight? What is it?

Actually, if I had more than three readers, I probably wouldn't have the guts to write out ridicule-inviting blogs like this. Yes yes its ridiculous to want decent readership when the material is so sparse, dull and inane but we are all allowed our irrational and delusional desires aren't we? And my irrational and delusional desire is for people to find my blog FASCINATING. Not just readable, or vaguely interesting, FASCINATING. Okay I think I'm taking this a bit too far but I'm not going to back-track. If this blog has any endearing quality, it has to be honesty.

Ugh more and more in social situations I realise exactly how self-conscious I am, and therefore how much I make an unnatural effort to be funny, interesting, insightful, interestED, etc. I've realised this because most of the people around me are just naturally one or more of the above. Behind everything I do or say is some sort of forced effort - omg STORY OF MY LIFE. If I acted 'natural', I would just sit back, say nothing and make a sarcastic remark every now and then. Unless I'm tralking about Masterchef or what I'm eating for lunch - thats a different story.

SEGUE! (wow, it took me about 10 minutes on google to find out how that was spelt - Segway? Segueway?) My friend at work sent me this magnificant recipe for macarons today and I go really excited about trying it out. I recently ate my very first french macaron at Adriano Zumbo's patisserie in Balmain. It had passionfruit meringues, with a hazlenut cream AND surprise burst of passionfruit cream in the middle. It was seriously one of the most amazing things I've ever tasted in my life. You have to be ready for a big wave of sweetness though. Anyway I had made a plan to make these macarons on Friday night but as I read the recipe I realised this was impossible. I lack three essential tools: a) a food processor (will a blender suffice?) b) a proper sifter and c) a piping bag. Saddened. I would go out and buy all these things if I weren't so strapped for cash right now because of imminent overseas travels.

Thought I would post up the recipe anyway, it's from Gourmet Traveller.




  METHOD

1	Process icing sugar and almond meal in a food processor until finely ground, triple-sift into a large bowl and set aside. Whisk 90gm eggwhite in an electric mixer until soft peaks form (1-2 minutes). Add caster sugar, a tablespoon at a time, whisking continuously until incorporated and mixture is thick and glossy (2-3 minutes), then add food colouring. Stir in almond mixture in batches until incorporated and mixture slowly slides down sides of bowl when bowl is tilted. Add remaining eggwhite to loosen mixture, spoon into a piping bag with a 1cm plain nozzle, pipe 3cm-diameter rounds of mixture onto heavy baking-paper-lined oven trays, stand until a crust begins to form (4-5 hours).
2	Preheat oven to 140C. Bake macarons until firm but not coloured, swapping trays halfway through cooking (10-12 minutes), set aside, cool completely on trays.
3	Meanwhile, for white chocolate and raspberry ganache, bring cream just to the boil in a small saucepan. Remove from heat, add chocolate, stand until melted (5 minutes), stir until smooth and glossy. Refrigerate until firm yet still pliable (45 minutes-1 hour) then stir until smooth. Add raspberries, stir to form a ripple effect, then spoon a teaspoon of ganache onto half the macarons. Sandwich with remaining macarons and refrigerate until set. Macarons will keep for 1-2 days refrigerated in an airtight container.