i should tell you: Eva Prowse

Well hello there, and welcome to the sixth (what!) edition of I Should Tell You, where I briefly interview musicians who are both cool and will answer my emails, about food. Same three questions every time, but what will the answers be? Therein lie the mild thrills. So far I've been lucky enough to talk to Anna Coddington, Tourettes, Flip Grater, Dear Time's Waste, and Jan Hellriegel. This week...well.

This week there was a total kerfuffle, which I guess I could blame on tiredness except I feel I should stop talking about how tired I am because it's like, we're all tired Laura, stop trying to replace your lack of zany personality with talking about your lack of sleep (NB: am so zany.) I usually post this on a Friday, and was planning an interview with Jeremy Toy of She's So Rad, but totally forgot, and then they've got some delicious news which meant I'd be better off posting their interview next week anyway, so I brought next week's interview with Eva Prowse forward a week. At which point I feel like I should link to a picture of Jesus with his thumbs up saying "cool story, bro".

Instead, a picture of Eva Prowse! Wait, did I just imply she was better than Jesus? We'll never find out, because I'm so not going there. Even though - nah, actually not going there. Will inevitably offend.

Apart from being friendly and obliging about me moving round her interview suddenly, what else can I tell you about Eva Prowse? Well, I love her music. Her album, the excellently titled I Can't Keep Secrets, was released in 2010, filled with pretty, folky songs sung in a self-assured, gorgeous voice. You can listen to, and purchase, the entire album on Bandcamp, but if you're looking for just one to start with, the lead single Youngest Child is instantly charming. Eva Prowse has been living in London for a while but is back and working on an album to be released later this year. And she has also been absorbed into the Fly My Pretties family, which is pretty fancy.

Also fancy: Eva drinking a coconut in South East Asia.

Thanks Eva! The interview will start...now.

Where's somewhere you've eaten that you kinda like to brag about or drop into conversation? 

Currently that'd be Vietnam - just the whole country really - although we did have some delicious vegetarian Pho (traditional Vietnamese noodle soup) at a place called 'Pho Real'... 

Everywhere we ate the food was delicious and cheap - we mainly ate with the locals sitting on tiny plastic chairs on the side of the road. Noodles of any kind are always a winner for me, and the street vendors would sell an array of deep fried delights that I probably ate too many of. 

The bonus brag here would be that even though I ate a lot of food off the streets/local street vendors and had ice in my beers, I never once got a sicky tummy situation on the whole trip (I was in SE Asia for a month)! 

What do you fix for yourself, or where do you go to eat, when it's just you on your own?

For cooking it'd be anything that's a one-pot wonder, i.e. one pot to cook/make, same pot to eat. A vegetarian something or whatever with lots of chilli, spices, and salt.

Failing to cook (often the case) then it'd have to be toast - the best food platform of all time, with cucumber, tomato, avocado, and/or vegemite on top.

Oh and cereal for those hungry in between times...or anytime really...

What's one of your favourite food memories from your childhood?

Fairy Bread - it was so pretty, had a magical name, and was full of refined carbs and food colouring - perfect.

When I was living in London last year, I told my workmate all about fairy bread (and other NZ whitebread party treats e.g. asparagus rolls) - she'd never heard of it, no one had over there had in fact. So when it was my last day of work, she made it for my leaving do. Only a handful of workmates tried it, and they all thought it was just weird and the texture was uncomfortable. I thought it tasted like a blissful memory, so I basically polished off the plate and was on some crazy sugar trip for my last few hours of work. 

I've just now realised that reading this interview a couple of weeks ago when Eva sent it to me was probably-definitely what influenced my subconscious to want Fairy Bread myself last week. So, double thanks, Eva! Also, thanks to Jeremy Toy from She's So Rad for being understanding about my forgetfulness. His interview will be next week, hooray!