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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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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