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. 

12/12/14: Dishing up daily #1

I, like almost everyone else I know, am dosing up. Supping at a honey & lemon while considering a purchase of vitamin C & zinc tablets (the latest in a line of 'if you want to avoid getting ill you should...') As the lurgy inevitably closes in & essay planning reaches - excuse the pun - fever pitch, I still try to take comfort in cooking snug, wintry dishes that also contribute to the armour of my immune system. I've been taking full advantage of the weather having finally taken a colder turn (although I am wearing all of my clothes now so I'd rather it didn't get any colder) to cook up plenty of soups, stews & pies. Too many afternoons spent rattling a Heinz tin to retrieve the last cubed carrot, I recently decided that there was really no excuse for me not to have attempted to make soup from scratch.

Not only would I have the knowledge of every pinch that went into it but the ritual of my biggest pot blipping away for an hour or so on the hob appealed to me - roughly chopping root vegetables, crumbling stock cubes into boiling water & buttering bread to dunk into the puréed pulses, all while I could sit happily reading at the kitchen table. Lately I've tried the earthy celeriac & apple soup from my much-loved 'A Modern Way To Eat' by Anna Jones - initially just a little worried that I'd made an oversized batch of apple sauce ('the problem being...?' I hear you cry), I actually found the that sweetness of the apples balanced the liquorice undertones of the not-exactly-glamorous celeriac, topped off with an indulgent splash of brown butter & a handful of toasted hazelnuts. Mostly due to my mother's completely unfounded hatred of most root vegetables, I'd never tried celeriac before but it's certainly something I'd happily cook again, shredded into mash or made into soup.

Once all of the leftovers had been eaten up, I set about making a second batch of soup, this time from a recipe on one of my more recent discoveries in terms of food blogs, a delectably deep curried butternut squash soup from 'A Thought for Food'. I'm always looking for new ways of using butternut squash that isn't my usual polenta-crusted wedges served with veggie burritos & or folded into a split lentil dhaal like this favourite from Lisa of 'That's Food Darling'. Chopped & simmered in a generous selection of spices, the simplicity of the recipe surprised me in its depth of flavour: sweet, creamy & warming all at once. Topped with a dollop of tangy creme fraiche & a scattering of roasted seeds really made it for me not only on the day but also the two following.

 Spurred on by celeriac (not a phrase I thought I'd use all too often), it was more root vegetable recipes that I was seeking for the rest of the week which lead me to this recipe from, yes, Anna Jones & to the domination of my fridge by the three punnets of mushrooms, bundles of carrots, parsnips & swede that this pie called for. I spent almost three hours peeling, chopping & grating, boiling, blanching & baking but suffice to say that it was a labour of love. This rosti is essentially red onions, chestnut mushrooms, carrots & swede simmered in the creme fraiche I managed to resist spooning into my soup, white wine, wholegrain honeyed mustard & an amazing vegetarian alternative to Lea & Perrins' that Ava of 'Guac & Roll'  put me onto by the name of Mushroom Gravy. Praise be! This unsuspecting sauce is already making its way into toppings for cheese on toast & chilli non carne shortly & it something of a revelation for me. All of this was crowned with a crisp, thatched topping of grated parsnips that looked good & tasted even better.

I was so pleased with this last helping (no doubt evidenced in my continual 'it's alright this, isn't it?' nudges directed towards my boyfriend, ahem hem) that I'm considering making it for the Christmas dinner that I have in London before heading home. I've decided on lots of roasted vegetables & vegetarian stuffing of some description but my confidence has wavered in the face of researching nut roast recipes & Laura from 'Kitsunetsuki Kitchen' has presented a game-changer in the form of her mustard mash & veggie sausages combination. So many decisions to be made..!

Until then, I've still got a lot of Camus criticism to be reading & so I'll be sticking to stews & microwavable leftovers (hello tonight's dinner) until the foreseeable future - I've keen to try this healing looking curried yellow split pea soup from 'Sprouted Kitchen', Yotam Ottlolenghi's new take on the most festive of vegetables in his brussel sprout risotto(!) & Ava's stuffed sweet potatoes, all ideal hibernation food while it's not looking especially tempting outside.

On that note, I think my hot water bottle is due a refill & time for another serving of that mushroom & parnsip rosti pie.

What've you been dishing up lately? Any nut roast recipes you'd like to share?

Speak soon - O.

03/12/14: Three days in Brighton & three years together!

Phew. 03/12/14. Almost struggling to believe what I've typed up there ^ is accurate & I hope that I'm not the only one on whom that has snuck up. As much as I love Christmas (a lot,by the way!) I feel that I am chasing my tail at the, err, tail end of the year trying to fit a lot into the festive season that won't wait until new year i.e present buying, meeting up with friends as well as essay planning & helping my Mum prepare to move house, at long last. Before the c-word, however, Andrew & I here at 'The Beet Generation' always have another celebration to look forward to during this season which is our anniversary. This time around it has been three whole years(!) & having not had the chance for a holiday together in a long while, we promised that we would endeavour to make the most of the occasion this year & get away for a few days. Just shy of the county of my birth, less than two hours from London & with the faded romance of a seaside town, we soon settled on Brighton & booked a couple of nights at Snooze in Kemptown. This darling little B&B was recommended to me by a friend & it couldn't have been a better hideaway with the most beautiful bedroom, friendly staff, big veggie breakfasts & just ten minutes from the bustle of the lanes nearby. 

Trudging through the rain from the train station on the Sunday afternoon, the two of us were all too happy to hole ourselves up in our mustard yellow room for most of the afternoon, jumping on the bed & picnicking on the carpet before resolving to walk along the seafront before dinner. Despite the persistent rain, we were both still enchanted by the sight of the string lights of the pier leading out to sea & walked the length of the parade until our ears were numb & we resolved to head to one of the pubs that I'd scouted out in advance - The Constant Service up in Hanover. It was a small establishment strung with fairy lights, playing motown on vinyl & with plenty on draught to keep us entertained so we bundled up on a sofa for a very contented couple of hours. Grumbling stomachs reminded us of the need for dinner & we ambled back to Kemptown at about eight o'clock for a couple of bean burgers at The Thomas Kemp before half-drunkenly falling into our (very comfortable) bed come midnight.  

The two of us were doubtless relieved to wake up to bright, sunny skies on Monday morning as it was our only full day in Brighton & we were up at half past eight to make the most of the day (& the inclusive, delicious breakfast) The seafront was significantly more serene at eleven o'clock & we strolled the length of the beach skimming stones & snapping photographs of the big wheel & even bigger seagulls of which I am deathly afraid. Neither of us could resist the pull of the pier so as soon as we judged our breakfasts to be sufficiently digested, it was onto the dance mats & grabber machines (so many ten pences lost that day) to try & fail to win me a teddy bear. Luckily I'm just fine with the one I've got (hi Ted!) Stocking up on postcards & the mandatory sticks of rock, we ambled up to the West Pier & in search of Small Batch Coffee, instead we stumbled upon Idyea where we stopped for a lunch of candied beetroot & sweetcorn fritters (no mention of the moment when I dropped my iPhone straight into my root mash while trying to Instagram it, please Andrew) Luckily we knew that nothing could curb our appetite for the highlight of the day which was our dinner reservation at The Chilli Pickle - a couple of swift mulled ciders between the hotel & the restaurant later, we tucked into deep-fried cauliflower florets, garlic naan, masala dosa, pureed spinach & peas, mushroom rice & more chutneys than I can name. All full of flavour, texture & evidently love, we ate with relish & came away full of awe &, err, curry.

Alas the rain returned on our last day in the seaside town but that did give us an excuse to hop between various shops, from To Be Worn Again where I bought Andrew a psychedelic patterned vintage shirt by way of anniversary present, Immediate where Andrew bought a suede, zipped up cardigan, The Flour Pot Bakery where I bought a small, seeded loaf of sourdough by way of souvenir (my only purchase, how telling!), Resident where Andrew finally tracked down Nirvana's 'In Utero' remastered & the legendary Snoopers' Paradise where we spent hours rummaging & deciding on our poses for the inevitable photobooth photos that were to follow. It was with heavy hearts that we made our wound our way back to the station at seven o'clock that evening & clambered onto an exceedingly slow train to London but we were both grateful for the opportunity to take a couple of days outside of the everyday when being together & appreciative of one another can get a little lost under other things. I hope that the both of keep a tight hold of that sense of serenity on the seafront as we go into a new year. 
So happy anniversary, lover & here's to the rest of 'em.

How do you like Brighton?

I'll be back soon with an update as to what I've been dishing up lately (other than mince pies!)

Speak soon - O.

20/11/14: Homeward bound

Home comforts have rarely been more welcome than when I was their grateful recipient for the first few days at the beginning of this week. Following a particularly croaky Sunday lunch with lots of family that I've not seen for a long while - alongside plenty of red wine, vegetable lasagne & flowers bought for the host at an uncharacteristically quiet Columbia Road en route - I accompanied the Bedfordshire contingent of our clan back home for a couple of days. Rolling into bed early that night with an almighty sore throat & the beginnings of a head cold, I nonetheless had a good feeling about the ability of home as a healer. The next morning meant a warm croissant in the bath with Beckett (the reading I have been grudgingly undertaking for university with very mediocre results i.e 40 pages of a mandatory 140) followed by a bracing couple of hours zipped & tucked into my old wax jacket & scarf walking dogs in the woods not far from home. It was over to my Gran's house for brew after lunch then back to the homestead to settle by the fire for the evening & catch up on newspaper supplements while my Mum got on with her Christmas knitting in earnest ('tis almost the season) 

Tuesday was much of the same, honey granola eaten while perched on the edge of the bath waiting for it to fill & then a walk up into the town for a viewing of a cottage that my Mum has since bought(!) Mum has been trying to sell our house for a long while & just when she'd resigned herself to giving up again until the spring, everything fell into place. The new house is going to be much smaller than the one that most of us have inhabited for the last eleven years but change is good as is the pretty little courtyard garden, low ceilings (hello '70s futon in my room) & the fire being moved to the kitchen so we can keep warm while the kettle boils. For now it's a case of making the most of our very last Christmas in our current house & taking stock of the multitude of memories that have been made there. The afternoon was predictably spent secondhand shopping where I was lustily eyeing various homewares from wicker magazine racks to mid-century mirrors but was recurrently reminded of our bedroom here being at full capacity to say the least. I was already back in London by the time that offers were accepted & confirmed but our family had an anticipatory toast to the news alongside my favourite 'proper chilli' from Anna Jones' 'A Modern Way To Eat' that I had promised to make for my Mum for a long while. I was glad to have chosen a one-pot dish for the evening as its preparation was simple & stress free & I was so glad that my Mum - who has never knowingly eaten quinoa, bulgur wheat, black-eyed beans or puy lentils - sung its praises throughout the meal & beyond. 

I've been back in London for a couple of days, coughing & spluttering my way through aforementioned Beckett lecture, making a note of upcoming festive plans (work Christmas party is a'callin') & mostly feeling better. Oh & then there's the research for mine & Andrew's three year anniversary trip to Brighton this upcoming weekend...! We've not been away together for a little while so we can't wait to check into our B&B on Sunday & eat our way through the reams of vegetarian/vegan restaurants I've made a note of.  I'll of course be back to blog it for you soon but...

Have you any tips of your own for the seaside town? 

Have you been similarly snottily afflicted of late? 

Speak soon - O. 

13/11/14: Woollen wayfaring & my first belated blanket

It had been a busy week this one just gone. I was undertaking the most ambitious & productive reading week since my studies began which meant five days of work experience at a newspaper followed by a weekend of working at the bookshop. Looking ahead to a seven day week, perhaps I should have anticipated my being slumped against a Northern Line tube carriage just a touch tearful come Sunday morning. It still felt good to have made the most of the time & actually prove that I'm not as habitually lazy as I had come to fear that I, err, was. One of the best things about busy weeks is also the not-so-busy weeks that often follow, when the focus of my frequent to-do lists shifts from dashes to Tesco Metro for milk on the way home & topping up my Oyster card to replying to long emails from friends & completing long-lost projects such as this.

Crochet isn't something that I've talked a lot about on this little blog (& I understand that it doesn't correlate exactly with the books & broccoli manifesto that I put forward since the name change) but I feel as if it's earned its place. Unlike some of my crafty friends, crochet isn't something that I've inherited as part of a family tradition, far from it in fact as I, modern gal that I am, taught myself from a series of YouTube videos, building up a tester swatch of stitches that I still hold dear. Although it seems a while ago now, I suspect that I took up my hook while looking for distractions from university work but it's a hobby that has really stuck. 

The first Christmas since I took it up I perhaps predictably crocheted woollen scarves for everyone, family and friends alike, as my confidence grew. Soon I was fast making my way through the pattern index of numerous creative bloggers & pledged my allegiance to Ravelry, through which I was able to find patterns to make things like this amazing crochet turban (it's so cosy) Soon enough I was making crochet collars, triangle bunting & floral coasters in numerous hues & with varying chunkiness, likely enough to stock, say, an Etsy shop. I put a lot of time & heart into my short-lived Etsy venture 'SewKitschCrochet' but alas sales weren't spectacular & my time was increasingly taken up with other things (like the university work that I had been, ahem, avoiding) I hung up my crochet hook for a while but not before my Grandy had lodged one last order. She wanted a crochet blanket comprised of the larger squares that I'd tried out & shown her (this brilliant pattern here, if you're curious!) My Grandy promised that she would be the one to put them together (the least fun of any crafty project, I think fellow crocheters will agree) & I said I'd do it, happy to receive a bag full of  wool & something to keep in mind over the coming weeks.

Well, weeks soon turned into months turned into I-don't-know-how-long. There was an initial burst of enthusiasm as I got to grips with the pattern but that soon waned as I wasn't used to the sheer repetitiveness of making something on such a scale. 21 white, 21 blue. The blanket was mostly forgotten about although it occasionally cropped up in a family joke e.g 'Liv'll probably have finished that blanket before she tidies up that bedroom, ha ha ha'. When I went back to university recently & found myself uncharacteristically organised with my course reading, crochet seemed like a great way to fill the gap again. I worried that I would've lost the stitches, that I would encounter the same boredom. Thankfully, not so. Determined to finish it before Christmas as the best of surprises for my Grandy, I diligently picked up my hook again a month or so ago & watched as the tally of the squares went up & up. 21 white, 21 blue - ta dah! Here she is & ahead of schedule too.

I've always thought that there are many ways to chart progress - updating your CV with work experience, for example or endlessly photographing your dinners, of which I'm also guilty - but there's something special about wool. You can hold it in your hands, up to the light that it stencils, feel the stitches beneath your fingers, see where you've tiredly woven in the ends, where the edges are wonky. This blanket is by no means perfect. The squares are different sizes - large, loving, loose stitches & tiny, taut ones - some are lop-sided, others evidently earlier than others. That's the best thing about this blanket. It holds within it the last two years of my creative life & will soon go onto my Grandy's bed, at long last.

Now to keep it wrapped up until Christmas...!

Do you crochet? What've you been crafting lately?

Speak soon - O.

02/11/14: 'The Beet Generation' begins!

I think we're likely all full of contradictions if we're being honest. I've always been meticulously organised yet hopelessly forgetful, full of love for my family yet prone to my brother's provocation, spontaneously impulsive yet frustratingly indecisive. The latest development on this little blog of mine particularly concerns the last of this trio. It was while peeling beetroots in the kitchen one evening after work (for this particularly tasty Greek dip for a dinner party, if you must know!) that I joked off-handedly to Andrew that it was a wonder that no one had started a blog called 'The Beet Generation'. We're continually bandying puns between us, cool couple that we are, but I felt as if this particular turn of phrase might have something in it. Full of enthusiasm for a whole-hearted rebrand, I soon discovered that Blogger had other ideas, or rather that the person who had already nabbed the URL didn't because it lead me to a site that hadn't had a post for years. Hum. I abandoned the idea for a while before it came back to me this afternoon with a more determined intention for this blog to represent what I really wanted to write about (& an altogether funkier URL to boot...!)

I didn't have a particular idea of what I wanted this blog to be about when I started it & I can't say that that has changed much. I only ever wanted somewhere to document my day-to-day life, to even take a step away from it to hold certain moments in my hands a while, & hopefully reach out to a community that I was already invested in from the scores of brilliant blogs that make up my bookmarked pages. As it happens, this place has also become one where I can express my interests in books & cookery as worthwhile ways to spend my time & since I do spend so much of it propped up against my oven with a book in hand, I thought that I should do the same here.

So hello & welcome to 'The Beet Generation' where I hope you'll come to read about poetry & puy lentils, Ginsberg & guacamole, Burroughs &, well, beets as well as, well, what's going on with me & with you too. 

For now, I've got a butternut squash roasting & the Sunday papers to get through.

Check back for what's been served up on my table (or, more often, duvet) lately & more news of that unavoidable reading list, reading week or no reading week.

Speak soon - O.