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

Don’t you hate it when one bad experience ruins something for far too long? At some undetermined meal, an undetermined number of years ago, I tried a risotto and it was terrible. Really, really terrible.

For many years, I had the phrase ‘Oh no, I don’t really like risotto’ in my vocabulary. In a very polite tone, mind you. But I was quite convinced that I didn’t like risotto.

Then at some point last year, The Boy had the day off while I was at work, and he decided to cook something he had never cooked before. I came home to a house that smelled lovely, promptly got excited for dinner and then realised it was…risotto. And became terribly nervous.

Obviously I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings, but after all, ‘I don’t really like risotto’. What’s a girl to do?

This is what: eat the flipping risotto and learn that you do like risotto after all. You just had the bad experience of eating a rubbish one in a restaurant that really should have been sent back to the kitchen, but being a risotto novice, you didn’t know this, and instead have spent upwards of five years of your life going around thinking you don’t like risotto when really: YOU DO.

Now we make risotto a couple times a month, just to remind me of my stupidity.

We are quite fond of one from the veggie Leith’s book made with courgettes and cheese, but I found myself with sweet potatoes and no cheese and this worked just fine. I am of the camp that you can do no wrong with sweet potatoes. I would eat them for all five of my five-a-day if it was allowed. But The Boy is rather paranoid about them currently, having read an article like this, and also, he thinks they are really too sweet for most dishes. But he ate this and didn’t complain. And more importantly, didn’t die. Which means I think I will make it again sometime, so I better write this one down.

Sweet Potato Risotto
(serves two people who are going to eat more than they really should, or more than two who know that there will still be food in the world tomorrow.)
3/4 cup (before cooking) risotto rice
1 cup white wine
4 to 5 cups very hot vegetable stock (no, I do not make stock. Unless boiling water + OXO cube = ‘making’ stock. It works just fine.)
3 sweet potatoes
salt, pepper, oregano and coriander
olive oil

*Wash the sweet potatoes and bake them until soft. Set aside to cool.

*Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan. Throw in the rice and mix around in the pan until covered with oil. Keep on medium heat until the grains start to become transparent (a minute or two). Reduce the heat.

*Start to add the liquid. Add 1/2 cup wine and 1/2 cup stock and keep slowly stirring. Set the temperature to just barely simmering.

*Then there is this lovely process of adding more liquid and stirring more. All very slowly. Like ‘bring a good book to read’ slowly. Or ‘practice your pirouettes on the kitchen floor’ slowly. If you just sit and stare at it, it may get a bit boring. Never fear. Just add little by little, stir it so it doesn’t stick and whenever it starts to get too thick, add more liquid.

*Once pretty much all the liquid is absorbed, add the salt, pepper, oregano and coriander. Keep stirring.

*Chop the cooled sweet potato into bite-sized pieces and throw into the saucepan. If the risotto is looking too thick or the rice isn’t soft enough to eat yet, keep adding more stock.

*That’s it. Put in bowls and eat. Try to come up with a good retort to ‘They are called sweet potatoes because they should be for dessert’, but fail miserably.

(Can totally be made without the wine—but seems to need more stock and a while longer to break down without it.)

Comment [14]

For the nine years I have lived in England, I have constantly been mystified by the sheer prestige of shopping at Waitrose. We seem to have a pyramid of the grocers in this country. I remember a professor (who, ironically, was British) discussing how in a town of not-that-many, Wal-Mart was the great leveller. Everyone in that town had to go into Wal-Mart now and then because it was virtually impossible to get some things elsewhere, as the town wasn’t big enough to support a giant Wal-Mart as well as smaller shops dedicated to each section of Wal-Mart’s wares. _I know this has long happened in so many towns, but unless you visit this place you will never quite grasp the wrongness in proportion of the supergiantmassive Wal-Mart to the town. All I can say is the CEO of Wal-Mart lived there once, and he decided to go back and leave his mark._ Anyway, this professor, in a voice that we all thought was terribly posh but now I know…wasn’t…said that if the Queen herself had lived there, she inevitably would have had to go to Wal-Mart, and if someone had declared themselves homeless in that town, they also would have had to go to Wal-Mart, and that both of these events would probably have several pages of coverage in the local newspaper.

From what I’ve seen here though, we don’t have that great leveller. And for a few years now, we’ve even had Wal-Mart (in the guise of Asda, which Wal-Mart owns). But there’s always been this pyramid of who goes where…not so much a leveller at all. When I first lived here I was a student and as a foreign student I wasn’t allowed to have a job, so I was basically more broke than I had ever been in my life. There were several places within walking distance to buy groceries, but most of the students went to Safeway. If someone had send me a card with some spending money, I might go to Sainsbury’s, as they had food I still missed from home, but it really was a special treat. A few years later I discovered the glory of the Marks & Spencer Food Hall, and I might as well have taken out a loan just to eat. I was convinced that there was no better food in the world and that everyone I saw shopping in there was leading a life of amazement and decorum. (Yes, it amazes me now that I was so obsessed by people’s shopping habits. Perhaps I missed my vocation in some level of grocery marketing research.) But after M&S, everything just hit a plateau. Surely there was nowhere to go from there.

It was only after that that I started hearing about Waitrose. Never having been near one, I was convinced that they would be exceedingly posh stores with everything organically grown and ethically packaged and everyone who shops there would happily pay ten times the price of anywhere else because it would really be so good as to be worth it. This was partly because the people I knew who did live near Waitrose shops were all spectacular people with spectacular lives and despite the professor telling me the Queen would shop at Wal-Mart, I didn’t believe that these spectacular people bought their groceries at anywhere less than…spectacular.

So the other day I went on a little journey to a fabric wholesalers in search of twenty metres of something that would make fabulous curtains, all at a price that would be lovely. When I found the wholesalers (where I did find some lovely fabrics at ridiculous prices), it was in true bargain-basement fashion, where a building has been gutted and the fabric has been thrown in, without worrying about increasing the overheads of the business with things like finishing touches. Just fine for what it is. But next door—as in sharing a car park – there was a….Waitrose.

Now clearly I had saved enough on my fabric that I could buy just one meal’s shopping at this store that promised to be nothing short of amazing.

But really? It looked just like the Safeway where I bought my bargains as a student in Brighton. Though the employees did offer a lovely level of chit-chat, there was no spectacular! spectacular! to be seen.

There were, however, blueberries on offer. And carrot and hummus sandwiches and raspberry lemonade. So yes, there are some lovely, lovely things. But I didn’t see anyone resembling the Queen. She must have gone to Wal-Mart after all.

And why record my silly obsession with the status of British grocery chains when I could tell you about this lovely blueberry buttermilk cake from Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros? Because everyone else has been making it too. So you can read about it here and here and here, just for starters. It is lovely, and indeed like a fluffy giant vanilla pancake with blueberries. I do believe you could even serve it to the Queen. Although I served it to two of my bridesmaids, which was just as good.

xlovesx

PS: Yes, I am saving Fortnum & Mason for a day that will need to be very, very special. I might need a new dress for such an occasion!

Comment [8]

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]