While my life is sometimes prone to change most of the time it does just stay the same - I do my best impression of Annie Hall once a week in suede waistcoat & floral skirt, increase my worrying dependency on caffeine, make feline friends - & that's okay, especially if you're able to fill your days with all of those things that you've come to love & never tire of. While my Sainsbury's shop is, to a large extent, exempt from such a compliment, today, a rare mid-week day off, has been wiled away as such. After a languorous morning in bed with homemade granola, several mugs of tea & cartoons on my laptop, I pulled on some jeans & a handful of tote bags & headed to the couple of charity shops just down the road from my house. It's been a while since I've been able to dig out any secondhand bargains but I was lucky today in spying this linen, floral blouse, an old Monsoon label fraying from the neckline, & with a three pounds price tag. I don't think I will ever shake the habit of excitedly changing into my latest purchase as soon as I get home, musty charity shop smell be damned, & that's exactly what I did while the grill warmed for lunch.
Seeking to justify my hankering after yet another cookbook - this time Anna Jones' beautiful, functional, vegetarian 'A Modern Way to Eat' which you can see a sneak peak of riiiight here - I spent yesterday evening, having pulled my head out of one book, flipping through my beloved 'Smitten Kitchen' cookbook which, closely followed by Nigel Slater's 'Eat', was the first that I bought. Ever. Inevitably, I was fittingly smitten for the first couple of weeks that I cooked from it & then jars of Sacla pesto sneaked back into my evening routine after a long day at work & it began to gather dust under the stacks of books in my bedroom. I've recently gained a new determination, however, to not neglect my cookbooks & their infinite resources of inspiration & beauty - just last week I spent my morning making the most delicious broccoli pesto from scratch, most of it finding its way from the bowl into the spine of 'The Green Kitchen' cookbook in which I found the recipe. A whole head of broccoli, a couple of generous handfuls of hazelnuts, plenty of olive oil, garlic & black pepper, I spooned it into a jar & peddled to the park to spread it onto oatbakes for lunch & later into wholewheat fusilli for supper.
Buoyed by my renewed enthusiasm, I
thought I would look again to my culinary library for ideas for a leisurely Thursday lunch perched on my backstep. I've long thought that including recipes for salads in cookbooks was something of a cop out but I discovered last night that this prejudice was misguided having stumbled on one for a kale salad with chopped radishes (something I've never bought let alone topped & tailed), dried cherries, toasted pecans & feta cheese with a honey, mustard & olive oil dressing. With a bag of kale bigger than I realistically knew what to do with, this big bowl of varying colours, flavours & textures was exactly what I needed & will doubtless make again when lunchtime inspiration is running at a low (& there're always leftovers pecans, my ultimate weakness, to add to weekday breakfasts, hooray!)
There are, actually, a whole host of things to look forward to at the moment, for which I am grateful - managing to book some holiday off work for a European jolly with my Dad & assorted other family members next month, finding myself totally enthralled in the first of Karl Ove Knausgaard's 'My Struggle' cycle (I can't remember the last time that I was so under the sway of a book & already have the second to read soon afterwards), snapping up this beautiful bib, frilled smock dress from The White Pepper (it hangs so beautifully & has pockets so it's a double thumbs up for sure) & excitedly scribbling the start of teaching date for my masters degree in my diary. I've also struck up something of a friendship with my local Growing Communities thanks to the ever-brilliant Ava who talked about them in an eye-opening blog post on Shake, Guac & Roll (srsly, read it, you won't regret it) - but all of that can wait for my next post when I'll have more to share. For now, there's lentil curry to cook.
What've you been cooking up lately?
Are you reading anything that I'll fall similarly head-over-heels with, d'ya think?Speak soon - O. x
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