pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

Diary, excuse the gap. This holiday was a bit of a last-minute-wonder-surprise. So for the week that we knew we were going, we weren’t eating a lot. You know, it’s just after Christmas and…we’ve been eating plenty. Enough that it’s probably going we will probably notice it while skiing and snowboarding. So a week of eating mostly fresh veggies and the odd bit of toast was just fine. After all, when you go to France, you don’t want to arrive overfull. Bringing us to the subject of…

French food.
Sigh.

I have only started to appreciate French food in the last couple years. There is much of the cheese. The most fabulous cheese. Cheeses, if I stand corrected. There seems to be plenty to keep the meat-eaters happy. But little veggie me is more impressed by crepes. Yes, they are just pancakes, but they taste. better. in. France. Especially at the top of a mountain. Especially after skiing down against the wind until you can’t feel the tip of your nose from the cold. Especially filled with hot cherries and Grand Marnier. Especially then.

This trip was the first time that we stayed in a chalet rather than a hotel, as had always been under the impression that you had to book all the places in a chalet…like it would be perfect with a group of friends but pretty darn expensive when it’s just the two of us. Ha. We were wrong. (Thank you Nedley for putting us right.) So we stayed with eight other people we didn’t know…but the best part was that pretty much all of our meals were cooked for us by our chalet hosts. So kinda like a B&B that serves afternoon tea and a four-course dinner, all at the top of a mountain. A very lovely idea indeed.

One of our chalet hosts was particularly excellent in the kitchen, and it’s pretty safe to say he knows how to cook a great deal more than the average twenty-three year old guy. So diary, consider a whole week’s entries summed up by a little record of what we ate at our little chalet, courtesy of Hugh’s Kitchen:
Afternoon tea cakes: banana bread (with no nuts…yay), chocolate sponge, white chocolate and raspberry cake,
Starters: homemade hummus, salmon rolls, waldorf salad, potato & leek soup, broccoli & roquefort soup
Veggie dishes: savoury pancakes, lentil cakes, fajitas, cashew filled pastry, mediterranean vegetables
Meat dishes: duck l’orange, pork chops, salmon parcels, chicken fajitas, beef strogonoff
Desserts: Raspberry Eton mess, pears in red wine sauce, lemon mousse, chocolate pots, apple crumble
Plus one evening of Savoyard specialties: raclette, fondue and hot rocks with crepes suzette.

Recipes linked look as close as I can guess…just a way of bookmarking for a day when we are feeling nostalgic and want to cook something mountain-like!

xlovesx

Comment [7]

Snow is amazing.

Back {too} soon.

xlovesx

Comment [16]

His favourite cookbooks are from Leiths, and this one is from their vegetarian edition. They are lovely books; huge tomes filled with a gazillion recipes. The index is fabulous. I just wish they had more pretty pictures.

I have a feeling that quite a few vegetarians have this habit…making a side dish into a full meal. This one would definitely be better as a side dish, but just this once it was fine. That’s probably because I don’t really think you can go wrong with parsnips.

I’ll see if I can get The Boy to guest blog sometime before the year is out. Until then, I’ll just report now and then. Like today, when he made parsnip mash with fried onions and brussel sprouts for lunch. I have to give him credit—I never realised brussel sprouts would fry, but they did indeed. But as he actually eats meat, he probably thought it would go nicely with roast beef. I’d probably be likely to eat it with…carrots.

Comment [5]

{preface: photo does not show the special paper in question.}

Forgive me if you have heard this story in person over the last few months. It’s time for me to write it down. First, we need to set the scene. It must have been late 2000, early 2001. For those of you who weren’t around here then, scrapbooking supplies weren’t so easy to come by in merry olde England. When any scrappish girl found some supplies, she would first buy as much as she could justify, then immediately inform the few members of UKScrappers, which was then a tiny Yahoo group, so they could go buy up the rest of the goodies. From time to time, we would all go ‘crazy’ and buy a box of supplies from the states. But most of the time we would just craft with what we had and keep our eyes open for the next great find. I moved house around that time and my entire crafting stash fit in two medium sized tupperware boxes. Seriously. Yet I was scrapping any time I had five minutes to spare.

Then there was the moment I saw the special paper. It wasn’t just 12×12, which was special enough. It wasn’t just acid-free, which was special enough. It was 12×12 acid-free printed and embossed scrapbooking paper.

Oh my goodness, I about passed out in the store.

Everyone who was scrapping knew this paper at the time. It was the paper to buy. If you could find it, you must have had the gift. It only existed in a few special places, and wherever it did exist, it was priced at £2.50 a sheet.

So when I found it and it was only £2 per sheet, I looked over both shoulders to make sure there wasn’t a crowd of scrappers running in to buy up all the special paper. And then I bought ten sheets.

Ten sheets! Ten sheets at £2 a sheet when I had no idea what I was going to make with it and I really should have spent my £20 in other more practical ways. But this paper was just so cool and it was on sale, so I figured that crowd of scrappers could arrive any moment and I bought it up before anyone else could get to it.

For several weeks I kept it on the top of my paper stack, ready to become a masterpiece. I put every photo in my collection next to it, and each time I went for something else because that photo just wasn’t special enough for the special paper. The special paper demanded something…amazing.

Weeks turned into months. I still didn’t find the photo that would special enough for the special paper. Much less ten special photos. Since I had ten sheets of the stuff. Since I bought it like it was going out of fashion.

Trouble is, it was. So out of fashion. That was 2001. This is 2008. I still have ten sheets of that special paper. I still don’t have any photos special enough for the special paper. Because now that paper is ugly. A special level of ugly. {I will not show you the paper because I wish to protect its innocence.}

Now those ten sheets of paper serve as a reminder for me: use the stash while you still like it! Otherwise you will realise that you really should have put that £20 toward your student loan at the time and not ten sheets of paper that you would take through several house moves, clinging to it for no other reason than “I spent £20 on this and I sure as heck ain’t gonna throw it away”.

Now aside from those ten special sheets, I have found new homes for many sheets of paper recently. I’m not quite sure why I had so much paper stacked up that I didn’t like and was never going to use, but I did. It felt wonderful to free it up for people who would appreciate it. But old stash doesn’t always mean ugly stash, so I also have a rather large stack of papers and embellishments that are not the latest and greatest, but I still love them. And I don’t want to get to the stage where I don’t love them before I use them. So this is my new routine.

I splurged on the Designing With calendar this year. Haven’t had one in ages and just decided it would be a treat. Every morning when I get up, I’ve got an instructional manual on doing a quick page for myself, just by looking at the new calendar page and following the directions. The process helps with the fact that I am not a morning person by forcing me to just get going with the cutting and the sticking. And to shake it up to fit my needs a little more, I have to start with the big old stack of old stash. So day by day, I get pages that are just for me and I use up the supplies I spent my hard-earned pennies on, so I will never again have the guilt of the stack of special paper.

That’s all. It’s not rocket science. And the pages I’ve made so far aren’t the most fabulous works of art in the world. They are not my sit-down-and-journal-for-half-an-hour routine. They are simple and quick, which is what I need in the morning. They are a mix of old stash (and my stash has levels of old) and new stash that will stretch to more than one layout. Because the thing that annoys me most about my supplies is that just because I use it doesn’t mean I get the space back. You buy a sheet of stickers and use up even half or three-quarters of the sheet…it’s still there and it’s still the same size! Books of rub-on letters…they never get any smaller. You can get to the point where you can’t spell anything because you’ve run out of vowels and you’ll still keep the whole book because it might come in handy for a mixed-up title. But I have to draw the line somewhere. These rub-on letters that I used on this page were so crackly from being carted back and forth to crops in the bottom of a tote bag. It’s use ‘em or lose ‘em time, and I know I’ll feel a lot better if it’s the former.

So there we go. It’s not particular a resolution, but a new little bit of routine…and a little more routine and a little less special paper probably won’t hurt.

xlovesx

Comment [38]

Sometimes it really comes down to the fifty-fifty split. This is one of those times.

It’s been so cold that when I ventured out for vegetables in the village today, I couldn’t move my fingers for a good fifteen minutes after being back in the warm. Soup suddenly seemed a lovely idea.

This was easy as could be but earned one thumb up, one thumb down. One small butternut squash (see? obsessed.) roasted in the oven for twenty minutes, then cooled, peeled and chopped. Four carrots chopped and boiled. Two onions chopped and fried. Then the whole lot thrown into a saucepan with chopped tomatoes and some vegetable stock, herbs and ginger and simmered until soft and soup-like.

Thing is, they are all quite sweet vegetables. And while I thought the sweetness was just fine with fresh brown bread, not everyone agreed. I tried explaining that it was dinner and dessert in one, but apparently that isn’t a desired trait.

Oh well. Moved to the lunch menu where I think sweet vegetables are just fine. Handy for cutting down on chocolate after Christmas. And very warm on days like these.

Comment [3]

Something new for 2008. A few things. Like the giant red blossoms on this plant that we have kept alive for exactly one year today. {Seriously, this is no small accomplishment as far as I am concerned. Acrylic paint does not make me a green thumb.} And some pretty branches instead of polka dots. But never fear: there is still pink.

There’s a funny little addition over at the side…one a few little projects I am hoping to work on throughout 2008…Kitchen Diaries. It’s separated off from the main page because the diary will be its own little story, and I want it just so, all in one place. I won’t explain too much here, since there is a lengthy explanation to start the diary anyway, but just know the main page won’t turn into a food blog. If you like the idea of following along, then lovely. If not, you can ignore it and we will all be blissfully happy about the situation.

There are a few other little projects that will grow day by day. One involves the Autumn Leaves calendar and a great deal of aging scrapbook supplies. I think I’ll tell you a little more about that one tomorrow.

The last one starts with the photo above. I’ve always tried to take a picture every day but I’ve never actually put a label to the activity, so I’m not sure how many days I have missed…and I am not going to trawl through my hard drive to find out. I’m just going to start for 2008 and see how long I go until I mess up and miss a day. So far, 1 for 1 is just fine.

2007 was definitely unlike any other year for me. May 2008 be kind, generous and peaceful to us all.

xlovesx

PS: Yes, there are few little creases to iron out on the site in the next day or so. If you run into something that doesn’t look quite right, just consider it a non-millennium bug or a special feature of sorts. It’ll get fixed.

Comment [18]

This book changed my life over the past year.

I bought it as a gift for The Boy last Christmas. Somewhere along the line he had come to own one of Nigel Slater’s earlier books, Appetite and it was that book that introduced us to what is certainly our favourite meal. I will no doubt write about it later in the year, probably more than once, but suffice to say it is a meal that is impeccably simple and yet never out of place served to guests. That recipe got us both thinking.

See, when I met The Boy we inevitably got into the discussion of how I came to live in my little suburban flat, and I mentioned something flippantly about choosing it because it had a nicer kitchen than the other places in the neighbourhood. And that’s truth: I remember telling the estate agent that I was pretty much choosing on kitchen alone, as everything else was so cardboard-box-similar. So this made The Boy assume something: that I could cook.

In 2004, I could not cook. I could heat things up.

The shameful thing was that I honestly didn’t know there was a difference. At that point, I was perfectly convinced that things in boxes from M&S, heated correctly and served with impeccable presentation on my carefully chosen Ikea plates counted as cooking.

I had a lot to learn.

The Boy was not a masterchef. He was able to point out that my definition of cooking was wrong, and he had a bit more luck with following a recipe than I did at the time. So somewhere along the line, we started attempting a bit more cooking and a bit less heating things up. We messed up a lot along the way. But with heating things up (or indeed, take-away) as a back-up, it turned out to be not-so-scary. We started to find our little comfort zones. For all the fun I’ve been having with cupcake recipes over the last few years, The Boy has been doing the same with pastas and recently risotto. (I will declare from the beginning that we have very little hope of ever being a low-carb household, and we’ve decided it’s best to admit it and work with it. So pasta, cupcakes and a brisk walk around the park it is then.) But back to the book.

So I gave The Boy this book last Christmas because he was such a Nigel Slater fan. No extra special logic there. But it turned out that I was the one who would fall in love with this particular book. It is what it says: a diary rather than a traditional cookbook. A year’s worth of entries documenting what one well-known food journalist grows, buys, cooks and eats in real life. So a narrative format, with recipes thrown in here and there. And some gorgeous photos added in for good measure. (Another aside: the only way this book would be more amazing would be if it became a joint venture with Nick Bantock in a culinary Griffin & Sabine. But I digress.)

I tried my best to read the entries in season, though I could have thoroughly enjoyed reading it all in one weekend, like a brand new Harry Potter. By reading them in time with the calendar, I learned far more about what was in season, what was just about to be out of season and how herbs and spices do have a sort of seasonality about them. All sorts of good things to learn, little pieces of stories to amuse and recipes to top it all off.

I guess I just like everything to have a story, even my cookbooks.

Now back in my days of heating things up, I had a lot to learn. I still do. So much. But I have learned some basics, and more importantly, I have learned that I can really love cooking. It’s rarely a chore to me now. I still mess things up, but not as often as at the beginning. And yes, I know it’s schmaltzy, but I love that this is something we both enjoy. {It helps that we are both also big fans of eating.} We have learned enough that we are able to step away from cookbooks just a little. Even when we make something simple, we get excited when we put something together ourselves and it works. Look at us, we are the easily amused couple who get excited about dinner.

At least we are admitting it.

So thank you, Mr Slater, for Appetite and Kitchen Diaries and for so much inspiration. I hope you don’t mind that I’m totally stealing your idea and keeping my own personal kitchen diary for 2008. (If everything quickly disappears from the website, you’ll know that he did mind, I guess!) In my case, I am not keeping this because I am an expert and will share my ideas with the masses.

I’m keeping my kitchen diaries because it’s a life experience I want to record. I’m sharing it here because some of my friends share this newfound love of the kitchen, and if we help each other along the way, I think that would be brilliant. Someday it would even be nice to have them over for dinner.

Here’s to actual cooking this year. Cheers.

Comment [7]

Hoping you have had a very lovely Christmas week. Ours has been low-key, handmade and indeed very lovely. {For family and friends back home who are curious, we have started to put some pictures together for you. We will add a few more…it has taken us long enough, I know!}

This last week the internet has been all sorts of slow while people are out there having lives instead of blogging, you know. We are all clicking and seeing nothing new, and then we wonder what exciting things that person must be doing that they haven’t updated in so many days! Or at least I like to think it’s not just me with that mindset.

I do, however, promise there will be definite changes around here as of sometime tomorrow. First of the year being a good time for changes, you know. In fact, the first few months of the year are going to hold some very big {and very happy} changes around here. May January be lovely to us all!

xlovesx

Comment [5]