15/01/15: Dishing up daily #2

Has it been collectively decided just how long the hangover from Christmas should last? Whatever the date, I've believe it should be extended. I still feel stuck in a slump as I endeavour to transition from the utter sloth of the festive period to the 'hello 2015!' that I should surely have rejoiced by now as I type this on the fifteenth of the month. I suppose I could just be being hard on myself. I have managed to plan, write & submit that 6,000 word essay I confessed to having been avoiding for several weeks on end. That deadline was only this Monday just gone - cue celebratory bottle of wine & a Sean Lock stand-up DVD that evening, oh boy - so my kitchen habits have also been seeking to plug the gap. Long afternoons indoors trying not to succumb to cabin fever while poring over Sartre has also equalled lunches of leftovers or whatever else I can scavenge from the depths of the fridge.

So first up is a dish whose colour alone should be enough to banish any lingering fatigue & it is in the form of bright beetroot humuus. During one of, ahem, fits of procrastination I bought an app for almost certainly the first time in my life - an investment from the couple behind Green Kitchen Stories. Beautifully designed, simple to use & periodically updated with new, seasonal recipes, it's been a complete revelation. Shortly after downloading it, I whipped up this batch of tahini-creamy beetroot humuus that I've since been spreading on bagels, adding to the (too frequent) cheese board & most recently stirring into leftover pasta with leaves & seeds by way of a library packed lunch. With its bulbs packed full of fibre & anti-oxidants, it's been something of a pick-me-up when that caffeine slump has hit.

It was to another fast-becoming-old-faithful that I turned for this next quick dish, A Thought For Food, a fresh chard & roasted garlic pesto. I've gotten into the habit of popping a foil-wrapped bulb of garlic in the oven whenever it's on roasting or toasting & I was lucky to have one in reserve for this pesto. Made the day ahead for the convenience of one straight from the jar, I was very keen to be able to christen my new pestle & mortar in grinding together the smokiness of the garlic cloves, the sweetness of warm almonds & huge chard leaves stripped from their stems. I've made it again since, leftovers spread on toast, & already have this more indulgent sweet potato gratin on my list to cook next - thank you Brian!

Luckily, on my more productive days of late, I was able to plan ahead with the added help of my stack of Guardian 'Cook' supplements that await sticking into my recipe scrapbook. One issue of top 10 recipes - what must've been weeks ago now - included kale & it was from that list that I nabbed this final dish, albeit adapted for the ailing savoy cabbage in my vegetable draw. It was this pearl barley stew that I simmered with shredded leaves & my favourite veggie sausages one evening that made it worth planning ahead for. The creamy, starchiness of the grain with the spice of the sausage & preserved crunch of the leaves along with lots of black pepper -a dish I'll definitely be making again.

I've got a busy few days ahead of me working at the bookshop & then being home for a few days to help with the move so it's using up the last of the chard in this chard risotto from In Vegetables We Trust tonight before another week's meals are scribbled on my train home.

What've you been dishing up lately? 

Speak soon - O. 

05/01/15: Life lately #4

So here I am again & with a lot of time between me & the last of these posts so hopefully with lots to share. I thought I would save assorted cooking & baking for another post seeing as there're a lot of new recipes that I've tried since the new year (five days in, I'd say that that was a good effort) especially given the foodie gifts that I received over Christmas time including a particularly special pestle & mortar(!) More on that later. For now, here's where I've been hanging out, what I've been thrifting & who I've been reading of late.

Hanging out

Apart from an extended stint back at the homestead of late, opposite this good looker is where you would have found me last night until, err, later than we'd both planned on really. Andrew & I didn't break with tradition in our waking up too late to make it to Chatsworth Road Market but wound our way to Clapton yesterday afternoon bundled up in hats & coats to grab some good coffee & inevitably the inimitable veggie roast at The Clapton Hart come three thirty. Yesterday was ultimately all about that porcini mushroom & chestnut roast with a pint of cider in the other hand & a copy of the Observer reviews section by way of a placemat. The university library reopened today so I like to think that this was our big send off before we're both back to the books. At least for the next few weeks it'll be over bowls of soup until I start my 20th Century American Poetry course (cmon!) & have to head home to help my Mum move house once & for all. I've always been a bit of a hermit by nature so it's not all bad. Plus, y'know, soup. 

Thrifting

London is undoubtedly a haven for vintage lovers, I'd be the first to admit, but sometimes it's good to flex your thrifting muscles outside of town. Going home for Christmas provided me with the perfect excuse to do just that & I made a date with my Grandy to pay a belated visit to one of our favourite vintage emporiums in St. Albans, Fleetville. After a pot of tea & half a toasted teacake each, it was a couple of hours of rummaging through carpet bags,mismatched earrings & terrible, terrible 80s vinyl (I live in hope of a Pixies album lurking amongst it all but not yet!) I emerged with this beautiful bottle green button-up dress with dainty lace collar, a reliable ex-M&S number that fits like a glove. I

also lucked out on a lovely flannel skirt in a colourful checked pattern (left below) that sits perfectly on my waist & has already been worn with a thick turtleneck & cable knit jumper. The other similar pattern shown is that of a brighter hued dress that my Grandy has had hanging in her wardrobe for a number of years - a worn in, loosely sleeved shirt dress that I adore worn with a belt & ankle boots seeing as it sits in the middle of my calves. Thank you, G!

Reading

Unfortunately, as I might've mentioned here & have definitely moaned on about on Twitter, I've got an essay to be writing (not avoiding, Olivia) so the books that I've been reading have corresponded with that i.e dense literary criticism & not especially festive 'The Plague' by Albert Camus. I did, however, remember the battered copy of Jeanette Winterson's memoir 'Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?' that I left at home & absent-mindedly picked up by way of bathtime reading. What a wonder it was & particularly poignant for providing a sense of perspective on neurotic family members(!) I found that she wrote with such clarity on the agony of growing up & finding your voice as an artist, her fragile negotiation of the two evidently testament to the strength of her spirit. I have read shamefully little else of what she's written ('Written On The Body' was a set text of mine but fell in the middle of portfolio assembling madness) but would love to having been introduced over Christmas. Otherwise, it's been a case of a handful of Lydia Davis' short stories having received the collected edition that is a real joy to own & the entries in my new Frankie diary - my third consecutive one & they just keep getting more lovely. I've also been reading about what's to look forward to this coming literary year & have fittingly bookmarked Kim Gordon's much-anticipated memoir coming out in February & a reissue of Lydia Davis' only novel in March along with the forth volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's 'My Struggle' series (yepp, still pushing it on anyone who'll listen & even a few that won't)

Watching & listening
Staying with the theme of quarter-life angst, it's to the boxset of Lena Dunham's 'Girls' that I've turned in recent days. I've also read her collection of essays of late, 'Not That Kind Of Girl', & it made me reassured that, even amongst the critics, there is a young, creative woman being heard & valued. All hail.
Elsewhere I've been very, very belatedly listening to a lot of Sonic Youth loudly (sorry-not-sorry fellow house mates) & wishing that I had Kim Gordon's kick-ass scream &, err, legs.
All hail.

What've you been doing lately?
Kicking your heels?
Let me know!
Speak soon - O.

01/01/15: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year & beyond

Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noel! Happy New Year! Auld Lang Syne! etc. etc. I have always held traditions & rituals close to my heart & especially at this time of year when both are in abundant supply - Christmas cannot pass without terrible television & eating all of the cheese. Unfortunately I find it very difficult to write without being able to, err, write which has been the case of late & particularly in the last couple of weeks (hello typing-with-one-hand over here) An RSI injury that pre-dates this blog & my undergraduate degree decided to resurface just lately, be it due to the excess of sanity-saving scribbling in my notebook or the mountains of sprouts that I've had to peel & score over the last fortnight, my left wrist has swollen massively & left me crucially unable to either write or unscrew a jar of capers. Both I & my doctors, albeit secretly, suspected it's down to my 'gifted' left-handedness but it's been an occasional agony for the worst part of five years & despite two steroid injections into the tendon in my wrist, my relationship with Deep Freeze is going strong. The pain is worse than ever this time around, often keeping me awake & always having me frustrated, inevitably at a time when I'm in need of the eternal confidante of my notebook more than ever.

Christmas was alright. Certain traditions weren't upheld, others have changed entirely, the child within me who often surfaces in my mum's presence wasn't best pleased at this, to say the least I sense that home for me has changed quite irrevocably for me & that's something that I won't be able to settle with myself for a long while. I know that I should take the opportunity as an incentive to make more of a life for myself, independently, in London as I've been attempting or at least pretending to do for going on six years now. This last couple of weeks have been lonely & exhausting & recur to me in a montage of crawling into bed with my little sister at ten o'clock & staring at the chipped bathroom ceiling of my childhood home that will only be ours for another three weeks. Perhaps I could take a positive from this, given a better mood than this one.

Take this as an out-of-office for another week or so while I try to get a doctor's appointment & convince myself that such intense pain in my writing hand isn't my body's attempt to make me shut up but to get it to speak a little louder.

I'll be back soon enough having written that 6,000 word essay that has been looming with a round-up of mine & aforementioned sister's festive bakes, recent reads & a clearer view of the horizon.

Speak soon - O.