They’re just another set of human beings… you are not contractually or legally obliged to be nice to them, but in all actuality you’d better be…

I can write about this with some authority cos although I don’t have any at this time, I bloody well have had in the past.
They’re the parents of your live-in lover; what may be viewed in the eyes of 'god' as your sinlaws.
So, you‘re living in sin...
You would hope that this delicious buffet of sin lets you off the hook as far as familial duties with your other half’s family go, just leaving all the fun and sexy stuff with none of the responsibility! Waaaay! You get to avoid all the rubbish stuff like having to do paperwork if you break up (breaks-ups suck bad enough as it is without having to fill out documents).
But somehow, being as we are human beings, and therefore generally disposed towards harmony (at least most of us fairly sane, or 'can pass as sane' ones) you find yourself in situations with these people, dealing with the strain of hyper-politeness, trying not to swear, generally being on best behaviour, stifling all the best and most exciting parts of who you are and acting like you are some sort of a wholesome, mature individual who was certainly not completely off your face and naked with their son the previous night.

Part of the problem is that you subconsciously know that without that marriage contract, you're on shaky ground anyway...
Also, there's always going to be the thought that you just can't chase away that all they are thinking when the look at you is "you do nasty, dirty things with my boy"...

I remember biting my tongue when now ex-sinlaws came over for live-in lover's birthday. I slaved frantically and fearfully away cooking a roast and making a massive and impressive cake covered in icing, candles, the whole bit... Upon arrival, mother-sinlaw announced she had brought a (not previously arranged) pudding. I thanked her and said that in actual fact I had made a cake but I'm sure we could have a little of both. To which she replied in her trademark blunt way "You can have the cake tomorrow night." I sat through dinner (while every bite was scrutinised by said mother-sinlaw, all the while damning it with faint praise) then after they had left and we could barely move for gluttony, I stubbornly got the cake out and insisted on lighting the candles and singing the damn song.

All in all though, I've had a fairly easy ride with the sin-laws... If you're lucky they live in a different city. If you're even luckier, a different country. You also want to hope for sin-laws that have extremely full and busy lives themselves so there is no time or desire for meddling, with the added bonus that conversation topics are more plentiful.

That particular mother-sinlaw (of the unrequested pudding) is soon to be another girl's actual 'in-law'...
I can't help thinking I dodged a bullet there...

For most of my life I have battled the confusion, the crippling gulf of misunderstanding, and the depths frustration involved in trying to establish common ground when finding the right name to describe a sandwich which is squished between the two heated plates of a small kitchen appliance and cooked thus, until the primary sandwich filling (inevitably cheese) is dangerously and deliciously molten and ready to eat.

As a child, from as soon as I could speak I learnt that these curious type of cooked sandwiches were called 'toastie pies' and were made in a 'toastie pie machine'. It was only in my teenage years that I realised that this was some southern farmer dialect spoken only by those living in rural New Zealand, or possibly even confined to my family alone. Come to think of it, I have in fact, never come across anyone outside of my family who calls them this.

Through the years I have come by the following variations: Toasties, cheese toasties, toasted sandwich, breville, grilled cheese sandwich, and who could forget the virgin mary cheese sandwich - it sold for $28k (in fact there has been a whole range of holy cheese sandwiches, Google it.) *edit: I was clearly to lazy to put a link in here.

Then there's the priceless Australian 'Jaffle' - this sound like a conjoinulation to me but I'm pretty sure it's not. These are made in a Jaffle iron (of course) and I read somewhere that the name comes from 'Jaw Full', which is less a conjoinulation, and more just lazing talking.

But it's the Americana I'm interested in here...

"In the United States, the Toastwich is possibly the earliest toasted sandwich maker, dating back to before 1920. However, it wasn't patented until March 3, 1925 (applied for on May 26, 1924). It was invented by Charles Champion, whose other inventions include a corn-popping machine for mass-producing popcorn." [wikipedia]

And so it is that I have finally reached a point in my life where, by the power and the beauty of the conjoinulation, I will never again be misunderstood when describing that most versatile of snack foods: The Toastwich.

It’s funny how an entire nation (albeit a funny little island nation almost at the end of the world) can have a secret word that no one else seems to know about, but which is taken as completely normal and which never even crosses the mind of the people that it is infact a conjoinulation.

It’s only with four years of distance and hindsight that I come to realise how cute and dorky the word ‘Pottle’ is.
In my homeland, you buy a pottle of yoghurt for school lunches. You may even buy a pottle of margarine, and you might even find yourself buying a pottle of strawberries at some point (although possibly more correctly, a punnet - not sure, may have slightly forgotten how to speak my native kiwi).

OK, so officially, ‘pottle’ may -MAY- have nothing to do with what you get when you cross a pot and a bottle, and may have even been a type of official measurement:

‘An old English liquid measure equal to 2.0 quarts (1.9 liters).’
(So they say...)

...but I like to think of it more as a type of ‘reverse conjoinulation’, or ‘unjoinulation’, whereby when new types of different sized storage vessels came into use they unjoinulated the word ‘pottle’ and thus created 2 new things to stick stuff in: the ‘pot’ and the ‘bottle’.

One thing I love about conjoinulations is how very descriptive and self explanatory they are, and the whole recycling two old concepts into something nu and snazzy.

Actually, one other thing I like about conjoinulations is when they're so obscure that a fully long-winded explanation is needed to disclose the subtleties of the concept. But that's another day altogether.

I got a text from NYC. Someone, who shall remain nameless, clearly doing exactly what we do when WE go on holiday together - eating and drinking - had just spied 'Cidertini' (hmm - that sounds kinda good - metropolitan chic meets West Country tractor driver) and a 'Chaiaccino' (hippy festie meets starbucks office drone possibly?).

Clearly I am none of the above, or people that know me would never let me forget that I'd written about such types (do such types exist?) as if they were some sort novelty...
Actually... strangely enough, on second thoughts, maybe I do have a little bit of each in me. (Except the starbucks bit.)

So, my good friend has this problem - if she's not eating, she's hungry, and if she's hungry, she's angry.

Basically, she's an angry foodie.

Sure, you're thinking - we all get a little cranky when we haven't eaten for a while, but this is different... she actually has to carry little energy-giving snacks about her person at all times in order to control her moods.
It can be a little frightening.

So, when she's hungry, she's angry... she calls it being 'Hangry'.

Further to last Sunday’s 'relaxing after a drunken night out' post, I thought I’d mention another favourite weekend activity, spectacularly coined by my mates (Cheers M and L) and known (henceforth) as ‘Growsing’ (rhymes with browsing, and is a combination of Grazing and Browsing).

This delightful activity, quite conducive to hung over Saturdays or Sundays is best achieved in a marketplace – it was coined at Borough Market, LDN – but a country farmers market would also be perfect (I’ve spent a pleasant Sunday growsing my way round Winchester market).
All you need is somewhere with nice things to look (browsing) at and plenty of free samples to eat (grazing).

There's just something indescribably wonderful about the first meal taken after a fantastic night out.

The later the better, in my opinion, which is why it is an endless frustration to me that so many places in this country stop serving breakfast at 12 (or before!), I mean, just because it's the first meal of the day, still doesn't mean you necessarily have to 'break your fast' before midday.

That, I believe, is why Brunch was invented.
To me, brunch doesn't denote the type of food that is eaten, or that it is eaten in the mealtime no man's land between the official breakfasting hours and the official lunching hours.
I like to think of it as breakfast eaten at a more lunchy (or later)-type o'clock.

Thank goodness someone thought to conjoinulate the two meals - I adore breakfast food, so at least it extends my breakfast time time a little. It's pretty upsetting when someone tell me I'm not allowed to eat eggs bene, french toast or kransky after a certain time of the day.

There's nothing better after a night out, stumbling home in ridiculous shoes with blisters the size of the Wales and just a few coins left jangling, lonely in the bottom of my purse, collapsing into a deep and dreamless, mind erasing sleep then waking, much, MUCH later (could be any time between 11am and 7pm depending on the scale of the previous nights activities), floating with a soft fog of vagueness around my head to a comfortable cafe for fine food and coffee to regain my robustness.

Please...more all day breakfast.

This post is the beginning of a beautiful discovery of foodulations - I sense I am only scratching the surface, but there are so many conjoinulated food words...I guess companies love conjoinulations because they are so darn catchy, and who has room for all the extra syllables involved in putting two whole words on packaging?
Smoosh 'em together, and voila!
Here are some favourites:

Spam - Apparantly it's Spiced Ham..Who knew? Never eaten the shit myself, but I always assumed it meant something more along the lines of... I dunno...'spoiled ham'... Oh hell, I guess 'spiced ham' makes sense (the name, not the product itself).

Facon - While we're on dodgy meat products - it's that Fake Bacon flavour you get. Sometimes it even comes in a meat-like consistancy - or in a paste! - like in those dreadful sandwich shops in London. Oh - there's Ficken too. Don't make me explain that one.

Smint - You are familiar with those 'small mints' I assume?
Imagine the slogan without conjoinulations - "No small mint; No kiss!"

Banoffie Pie - You get the banana's, then the toffee stuff, slap it on a pie base for body, add inordinate amounts of cream - 'Banoffie Pie'.

Nespresso - As I understand, this is some sort of shitty instant coffee (Nescafe), masquerading as some sort of posh coffee (Espresso). Aiming above it's station you might say...I believe there are some sort of pod type devices involved? Don't get it really, but I can live with that.

More will be added when I think of them. Or find that little scrap of paper with scrawled notes on it.