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

Not long ago, we had a better-than-okay lunch at The Organic Cafe in Greenwich. It’s a funny little place, where all the tables and chairs are mismatched and very close together, but it is definitely vegetarian friendly, not stupidly priced and most importantly when doing a bit of Christmas shopping at Greenwich market: serving hot food.

I had the stuffed squash which was totally different than I imagined and yet just lovely. A butternut squash chopped in half, roasted and then filled with more roasted vegetables. I am prone to like anything that involves butternut squash, really, so it is perfectly logical for me to buy squash the next day when there are nice ones at a nice price, even though I had consumed a great deal of it not twenty-four hours earlier.

Today we finally got round to roasting that squash and assembled a different mix of vegetables to accompany it. Our verdict: theirs was prettier; this one tasted better. So I guess we’ll have to work on our presentation. We roasted an onion, a courgette and two parsnips along with the squash and added some black-eyed peas and chopped tomatoes and herbs. Hurrah for using the leftover Christmas vegetables! Once it was all put together (ish), I realised we have far too much cheese left from Christmas as well, so why not melt cheese over the top? Exactly.

I have to record for my (sometimes slightly stupid) self: this was way too much food for two people, and really could have made dinner for two plus a soup for two as the next day’s lunch. Perhaps next time I will think ahead. Perhaps.

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I could happily live in a world of breakfasts. I rarely tire of breakfast foods, was known to eat nothing but breakfast foods at college and as a little girl, I was particularly fond of reading this book aloud, replacing all the opportune words with breakfast foods. So pardon me if a lazy Saturday morning isn’t a bit of a special occasion around here.

I have played with various pancake recipes for a while now and as of today, I have definitely gotten the hint to stop messing around. After all, it’s not every day that The Boy goes out of his way to tell someone else about my pancakes. But that’s what he did, bless him.

No more tinkering dear. This one wins. With real maple syrup and a bit of clotted cream.

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I really must declare that nutmeg is the official spice of winter. Right now, I am putting nutmeg in everything. Breakfast, dinner, dessert. Nutmeg wins.

{And yes, I know it’s not technically winter for another handful of hours, but it certainly feels like winter. It’s felt like winter for a good few weeks now. So winter it is. Since I appear to be in a declaring type mood anyway.}

So far, we have been much better about planning menus and buying food than we had been before, when we lived within walking distance of the grocery store. We now live within walking distance of a brilliant fruit and veg place, where I think I have discovered the Best Sweet Potatoes in the World Ever. Which, by the way, also taste really lovely with nutmeg.

But I did leave one poor little banana lingering. Everyone has their perfect banana time. I like them when they are still a tinge green, before no brown spots have appeared. The boy likes them when they are definitely yellow…a few spots are okay. But once they have started to reach more than half brown, they must be baked into something. So there is this little window of time where any bananas that haven’t been eaten have to sit on the counter going a bit more brown to be perfect for baking. Except how many recipes call for just one of those bananas? And usually we try not to buy so many that we will have lots leftover.

So here it is. A one banana recipe. With, of course, NUTMEG. Because it is winter (or it feels like it) and everything tastes better with nutmeg. Please do not get me started on combinations like nutmeg and spinach or nutmeg and porridge or nutmeg and cherry pie. Because it is all so good.

One Banana Cupcakey-Muffin-Things
(in other words, they should be cupcakes, but we decided we didn’t want icing because we have been living on a sugar high from various other Christmas-related snacks)

Makes 6 to 8 of a decent size for dessert or breakfast.

And as requested…trying to do both metric and imperial measurement!

1 stick//125g unsalted butter
1/2cup//100g sugar
1 large egg
1 cup//60g all-purpose//plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda//bicarbonate soda
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup//120 mL prepared custard (US-style vanilla pudding will also work)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 very ripe banana

Preheat oven to 350F/180C and line cupcake tray with papers.

With an electric mixer (or a spatula and a very strong arm), beat butter until soft and creamy. Add sugar and beat until even.

Stir in egg.

Throw in all the dry ingredients, give a stir by hand, then pour the custard and vanilla over the top and mix everything up until well blended.

Add the banana last and blitz until the banana appears to be pretty well throughout the mix. (If you are mixing by hand, mash the banana first. If you use the electric mixer, it should be able to mash it for you!)

Fill cups 3/4 full and bake for about 18 minutes or until a chopstick comes out clean. Remove from the oven and place immediately on a cooling rack. This is a dense cake that will sink if left in the pan.

If you fancy icing, chocolate or cream cheese would be lovely. And have you checked out Chockylit’s Mother of All Icing Posts? I bet her Christmas buttercream would be fabulous on these as well. Though I think it needs nutmeg.

xlovesx

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This time last year, the boy was having very challenging taste in scarves. We picked yarn, I bought yarn and then he decided he wasn’t so keen on that yarn anyway. We picked one pattern, I started that and he decided he wasn’t keen on that either. I started again with the idea that he liked and ended up with a scarf that was twenty-seven feet long. So I started a third time and came up with something that wasn’t marvellous but it was okay. In the right light, it might even have been nice. But mostly it was okay.

Bless him, challenging taste and all, he wore the scarf and lived through the Dr Who jokes. In fact, the Dr Who jokes seemed to endear him more to the garment and he then rarely left the house without it.

Until I was out of town and got a call. The scarf had accidentally taken up residence on a train, along with other necessary items like a back-pack and an umbrella. And really, he really, really wanted me to know he hadn’t done it on purpose.

Please keep in mind that I am far easier to make fun of than the boy. He is immune. He tells me this is because between the three siblings, they teased each other enough that nothing sticks anymore. I, on the other hand, turn bright red at the smallest thing. I seriously have some days where I am just embarrassed to live, really. I am that easy to wind up. With this in mind, I have wasted not one single opportunity to tease someone about leaving his really-ugly-really-scratchy-but-handmade scarf on the train.

It must have worked. When we were in Victoria I agreed to knit him another scarf, but he had to pick the yarn. And he did finally succumb to going into a wool shop, and having learned his lesson from last year, went for something that could never become scratchy. And since then I have been knitting baby alpaca into 2×2 rib whenever I have a few minutes to sit down. It’s far more lovely (and simple) than last year’s scarf. And I am considering stitching it to the back of his coat so it doesn’t get left on any train.

So that is half of this story. The other half is that when you move, you realise you have a lot of stuff. Everyone out there will tell you to purge your belongings before you move so you have to move fewer boxes. But as we had basically a week to pack everything, and we were both working at the same time, we had a hard time with that. We mostly boxed up everything in sight, with the plan to purge as we unpacked. Which yes, is backwards. But in the end, we ended up with more to purge than we thought, as we accidentally put some boxes of recycling into the moving van and brought them with us. It was just a little freaky to open a box and think ‘But I’m sure I got rid of that!’ only to realise the box just went to the wrong place. {And no, so far we do not think we accidentally put any boxes of good stuff into the recycling. Hopefully.}

So anyway, those who helped us move and those who have been here since can tell you in no uncertain terms that we have too much stuff. And then we started to think about Christmas…and where would we put all our new stuff, and it just about made us fall over. There was this little plea from the boy that he really didn’t need me to buy him lots of stuff for Christmas.

But I really like giving people stuff at Christmas.

We talked through a gazillion options that I considered writing out there, but honestly, you are getting nearly to exhaustion point with reading this anyway. So here’s what we came up with: we will give handmade. It’s that simple. Since handmade ends up being more about time and thought than what the stack of presents looks like under the tree, this will work. And we hope the people who receive our handmade goodies will appreciate them. And in cases where we couldn’t handmake things ourselves for everyone on our list (because really, we should have started this earlier, but what else is new?) we hope we can support other people who make things by hand.

And you know what? I haven’t stood in a single Christmas shopping queue. I haven’t stressed over a sold-out item. I haven’t counted things up to see if they will look like a suitable stack of gifts. Of course, it’s a little early to know if everything will be well-received, but so far, so good. We’ve given those jars of cocoa and this stripey quilt, and they went over well. In fact, I can see the traffic jams from here of people cramming the main road that heads to shopping nearby…and while they are doing that, I’m sitting on the sofa with knitting needles, supersoft alpaca and hot chocolate. Which I think is pretty much okay. Even more than okay.

May you give presents you love, receive something that makes you smile and have a place to put all of your stuff this Christmas.

xlovesx

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Faux Christmas: noun. A day appointed for some activities normally reserved for Christmas day when some guests cannot be present on the 25th of December. Example: Since Tom and Amy are going to be cruising somewhere warm over the 25th, we opened a few presents on Faux Christmas today.

Does everyone have this from time to time? Surely yes. Even if it’s just a little something at work or the last day of school before the holidays. We’ve been drawing ours out over the whole weekend. Eight of us. Friday night we went to see Madness) at the O2, and discovered it’s eerily fast to get there and back on the 105 bus. Saturday night we had Christmas crackers, hats and table prezzies along with dinner at the pub and this morning we had Christmas brunch and a bit of presents. Like a sneak peek of the real thing, I suppose.

Once I was reminded of when Alicia made these I decided we needed to do such a thing as well, and they came out rather lovely I think. They made me smile a great deal, and I think I may need to get a few more jars to fill sometime soon. We wrote the instructions on little glassine envelopes, which we then filled with chocolate sprinkles, so everyone can have cocoa that is attractive as well as yummy. I’m sure it’s extra important.

Faux Christmas can be rather, rather lovely indeed.

xlovesx

PS: Nope, this isn’t our new place. Faux Christmas was largely held at the boy’s parents’ house. Shall I see if I can snap something in our new place soon? Like perhaps…Christmas decorations?

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Oh reliable internet access, how I miss you. Through a series of somewhat unfortunate events, we are technology-challenged in our new place for a while. Meaning we have no internet at home. Which is one of those things that sounds like no big deal…surely we have plenty to get on with in our dwindling city of cardboard boxes without wasting time by sitting in front of a screen, right? And ordinarily, I would say yes. But that’s kinda difficult when your job means you need to be online every day. Especially in December.

Suffice to say I am now at one with the internet hotspots in this part of the world. Things are getting done. And apparently our flat will join this century very, very soon. Which will be nice.

In the mean time I have been getting to grips with other sorts of technology. We have a dishwasher here, and I can’t tell you how happy this makes both of us. We both dread washing dishes, and that can make for a very dangerous situation indeed. It’s even a little two-person friendly washer. We also have a shocking bonus in a washer-dryer. Fluffy, hot towels for the first time in years! Please do not misunderstand me, as I really love England or I would never choose to live here, but the one thing that has constantly baffled me is the lack of dryers. Since space is at a premium, utility rooms are a luxury—that I understand—so washing machines end up in the kitchen. That I’m not totally sure I get, though the plumbing is there already, so I suppose it makes sense. Once you’ve ditched a kitchen cupboard for your washing machine, it’s not very convenient to ditch another for a dryer…leaving those not lucky enough to have space for a dryer to hang our washing to dry. This has proven difficult living in a flat with no garden to hang a washing line! Forgive me, but I really don’t like drying laundry in my living room. And even if we did have a garden…it does rain quite a few days of the year. So if you have never been to England, imagine yourself in a supermarket when you notice it has started to rain. Look around and you will undoubtedly see other shoppers picking up their mobile phones to call someone else at home and tell them to get the washing in, out of the rain. It is perfectly commonplace here, and yet it does seem to me a little like a comedy routine. Anyway…we can now dry things. In our kitchen. Don’t even have to swap machines or lose more cupboards. There is absolutely zero laundry in my living room right now, and that makes me gloriously happy.

Of course I have also been getting to know my new oven! It seems to be a bit more even than the last one (which had a habit of burning anything in the back right corner while leaving the front left corner totally uncooked) though it has its quirks, like not wanting to stop cooking. Ever. We’ll just have to keep eating, I suppose. It turns out that the little store with the pumpkin also had candy corn in for the autumn, so I couldn’t resist. {For Shaulean, who has been emailing me, the recipe is here. The only difference was that I left out the brandy butter—just regular cream cheese icing dusted with cinnamon.}

Once I got past the silly things like candy corn and Nutrageous bars, I started discovering other little gems, like the Ginger Curd in the top picture. For a tiny little shop, their collection of jams, curds and preserves is shocking and divine. Last year when I made these same cupcakes, the filling was inspired by just finding some ginger preserves. This year I found the ginger curd and whipped it up with some double cream, but otherwise the recipe for Gingerbread Latte cupcakes is just the same.

I had forgotten how pretty these look when they first come out of the oven.

The constant routine changes seem to have affected my ability to write about just one thing, so while I’m here, I’ll throw out these things that are blog posts in the back of my head:

*If you fancy a scrapping retreat in the spring, Karen Russell and I will be teaching at Scrap Fever and there is an early booking discount if you book by the 15th of December. So…you could put it on your Christmas list and hint a lot in the next day or two? So, so excited about that weekend.

*Issue two of You Can Craft is out now in the UK, and it has tons of tons of supplies with each issue. Perfect Christmas prezzie for someone you want to get crafting. Even if it is just so they will come over and craft with you. Which is perfectly fine. When you get this issue, see if you can spot the pillows from my living room!

*The girls who are journaling their Christmas are ohmygosh fabulous. Check out some of their work here for much red and green inspiration.

*Thank you to all the girls who cropped with me the last two weekends—in Enfield and Ipswich. It has been a fabulous end to the year for workshops!!

And now I better get back home and get to work on that ongoing project, as we have our first visitors this Friday!

xlovesx

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We are moved in but as normal there are a few things taking longer than we would like. Like say, the internet.

We love our new place but as normal have had a few surprises. Like say, we are allergic to the carpet.

We have finished rebuilding pretty much everything that needed to be rebuilt but we have lost a few things along the way. Like say, the screwdriver.

However, while we are cleaning, painting and generally finding out what fits where, I am writing lots of witty and endearing blog posts in my head. Let’s pretend that I actually blogged them and then we’ll all feel better. If that doesn’t make you feel better, I’ll add that we have just made some oatmeal cookies and you are welcome to have one.

And if that doesn’t make you feel better, I would suggest you not stand in the room with the carpet.

Soon I will return to this lovely little blog with photos of things like cookies and papercrafts but definitely not of whatever is in that carpet. I promise. {And yes, we are writing to the landlord to ask if we can just rip it out and go with the lovely floorboards that are underneath.}

xlovesx

PS: Please be kind and check out Pencillines this week, where those lovely girls asked me to force a sketch upon them and then they made such pretty things. Yay for buttons and paper and all things that are not carpet. Achoo!

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I received Apples for Jam for my 29th birthday, and at 30 I am ashamed of how little I have cooked from it. It’s true that I have cooked relatively little from most of my cookbooks, but I really think this book is a masterpiece. Tessa Kiros has arranged a book of family recipes by colour, and yet when you get to the pink chapter, it’s not a case of everything being sickly sweet desserts with pink icing. After all, some vegetables are pink too.

I fell in love with this book in the store for its weight and the look of it all. It’s typeset in my favourite font…American Typewriter…and I had never considered it for lengthy text like a full book, but in this book it creates this playful, contemporary and feminine look that is balanced by gorgeous full page pictures. With all the family content, it could make you clucky to have little ones running about, but I am still happy to have this and just as likely to reach for it for dinner party ideas, so children aren’t a requirement.

Today we had just two apples left – one green, one red – and they wouldn’t last another day. The red one in particular didn’t feel like it would taste nice on its own, so I searched for an apple recipe from this book and found such a simple idea that I did want to smack my head for turning to a book. Cut the apples in half, cover with brown sugar, cinnamon and a few oats, then fill the bottom of the bowl with water and stick them in the oven. Check on them every now and then to pour the juice back over the top. The book suggests serving them with ice cream, but we had vanilla custard and it was just as nice. I can’t eat ice cream as much in the winter, as I never, ever warm up. Maybe in July. And then I get cold again by September.

As they bake, the good insides pull away from the skins, which I didn’t eat. The green apple was far nicer than the red. And I liked the coziness of these a bit more than the boy like them. But then again, he doesn’t spend the vast majority of the year trying anything to get warm.

xlovesx

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