Eating frogs, NY’s resolutions and courgette and white bean soup

1. After-Christmas yoga class. It was packed!! Apparently people had been booking it on Christmas Day, which doesn’t surprise me.

2. Eating frogs aka doing tasks you don’t want to do but need to do and you finally do them it actually feels really nice. The happy pregnancy hormones help not to get to frustrated with the Italian bureaucracy.

3. The Bishop’s Wife with Cary Grant, David Niven and Loretta Young. Underestimated Christmas movie but my husband really likes it. It certainly makes a break from his plan to watch all the versions of A Christmas Carol ever made.

4. New Year’s resolutions. I actually like them. They fill me with hope and inspiration and they’re not always a total failure.

5. Courgette and White Bean Soup from In One Pot by Blanche Vaughan. Even more delicious with added lemon juice, mint and a bit of crumbled feta.

Christmas movies, Christmas food and a capon

It was all about food and movies today.

1. Little Lord Fontleroy. A British Christmas classic, massive in Italy but almost unknown here. With a super Alec Guinness and very young Patrick Stewart and Bill Nighy.

2. It’s a Wonderful Life with a weirdly sexy if not classically handsome James Stewart. I cry every time.

3. A magnificent capon from Borough Market, for which we used Nigella Lawson’s tried and tested brine.

4. Roasted Potatoes with semolina cooked in goose fat.

5. Brussels Sprouts with garlic and pancetta. I found the recipe in the New York Times I think and it’s simple and fool proof.

Sausage rolls, my own bed and meditation

I’m feeling particularly irritable tonight. It could be simple tiredness or it could be hormones. Either way I’m not feeling particularly grateful tonight. One more reason to try.

1. Home-made mini sausage rolls, well, Frankfurters rolls with two-mustards dips. The dip is courtesy of Nigella Lawson.

2. My own bed. This is an old favourite and it doesn’t get out of fashion.

3. Lentil and grain soup. Because it’s winter. Even when I make it without soffritto.

4. Meditation when you’re feeling extremely irritable. Either it calms you down or it makes you fall asleep.

5. A weight has been lifted off my shoulders. It’s horrible to say but the idea I can spend one Christmas without having to worry about anything or anyone else was very appealing.

Bread, cakes and books

1. The Crimes of Grindewald. Jude Law is an inspired choice as a young Dumbledore but the script was a bit of a mess. I can’t stand Ezra Miller. He gets on my nerves and I don’t even think he’s a good actor.

2. Bread. Seeded sourdough bread from Borough Market

3. Cake. A slice of red velvet cake from Konditor & Cook.

4. Being sociable is not a bad thing once in a while. A friend from school is in town for a couple of days. I wanted to see her but at the same time the prospect filled me with dread. In the end we had a lovely afternoon together.

5. Books. I downloaded a couple of audiobooks: Jonathan Heidt’s the Righteous Mind and Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, which I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never read.

Smoked mackerel risotto, Daryl Davis and CCTV

1. I barely got out of my pjs today. Great Sunday. I worked, though. A lot.

2. The best smoked mackerel risotto ever. Lemon makes everything better. It was exceptionally good.

3. Daryl Davis. His courage is monstrous. He sat down with a member of the KKK to talk, to try and figure out why somebody could hate him because of the colour of his skin. After years, the KKK dude renounced his ideology. Mr Davis’ documentary, Accidental Courtesy, is on Netflix. If you don’t have time, check his TEDTALK. It’s un-believable.

4. People who use ‘woke’ ironically. Honestly, until this week I hadn’t realised people use it unironically. I regret this loss of my innocence.

5. CCTV. The fact that there was actually CCTV footage to prove that the 9-year-old accused of groping a woman was in fact innocence. This stuff freaks me out. What would have happened to him if such footage didn’t exist? And that’s why you investigate claims rather than automatically believe all women. Because we’re humans and humans make mistakes.

Appliques, a book and a salad recipe

First Monday properly back and I feel surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing. Let’s see how long it lasts. For now I can’t stop yawning.

1. Iron-on applique patches. Random. Even for my standards. But when the jumpers I love get destroyed by moths, I’ll try anything to salvage them. Plus, they’re quirky. I got two hummingboards and lots of black stars.

2. Book post is the best sort of post. Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room. Look at this, straight from the Man Booker Shortlist.

3. My friend Sophie. She’s truly the best. She house- and cat-sitted the entire time we were away in spite of her very demanding job and of her allergy.

4. Gousto’s Warm Honey Mustard Gammon and Tomato Salad. Even better when it’s your husband who cooks it. I came back from yoga and ta-da! dinner was served. I’m more grateful than I can possibly say. Here’s the recipe. It’s truly delicious.

5. When you’re jet lagged but you work from home so you can take a cheeky nap in the afternoon (but you won’t tell anybody you actually got into your pj and under the covers.

Cheese, Save the Cat and new catsitters

Today one way or another is all about the cats.

1. Cheese and even better melted cheese. Baked Camembert or Reblochon. Sorry. I just saw a video recipe.

2. My husband is starting to cook with Gusto. A-mazing! I’m so grateful I came home from yoga and dinner was ready I could weep. He doesn’t have much confidence in the kitchen so it’s truly a joy.

3. The new kittens are very likely a boy and a girl. I just want to rub my face in their bellies. They’re doing well even though they didn’t quite enjoy the visit to the vet.

4. Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder. I can’t wait to read it. Plenty of writing wisdom. The book of awesome is going well, thank you for asking. About to hit the 20k word mark.

5. The new cat sitters. They came this morning for a meet and greet. We were very impressed. It makes such a massive difference.

Duck and Waffle, polenta chips and the craziest Saturday evening (not)

I’m not very grateful at the moment. I am and I’m not. But I’m struggling to keeps the blog up. I won’t give up though. Exercising gratitude is good for me but it doesn’t come easy right now. Still, there are things that will never fail to gladden my heart.

1. Duck and Waffle for brunch.  It was good. I don’t know whether I was expecting something more, something different but the foie gras creme brulee you see on the bottom left of the photograph didn’t rock my world. Look at the view though. The location is certainly stunning and the cocktails delicious.

2. My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent. I’m not sure it works for me or that it lives up to the hype. The buzz around this book doesn’t seem to have anything more than than the pretentious elevation of the titillating and depraved to literary quality.

3. Polenta chips. An almighty faff to make but so worth it. If you want to try, Nigella Lawson has a recipe in Nigellissima or The Guardian has useful tips on how to make them here

4. An evening spent reading. What does it say about my social life that I can’t think of anything I’d rather do with my Saturday evening?

5. The courage of my dreams. It’s not meant to be easy but you’re still meant to try because what else is there?

A comfy chair, two recipes and an outline

Today I worked and I wrote, and I feel good about the latter and I bit less about the former. But one can’t have everything.

1. A comfy working chair. Don’t underestimate the importance of a comfy ergonomic chair.

2. Kramer vs Kramer. I hadn’t see this movie in possibly thirty years. It was made the year I was born and my mother was obsessed with it. No surprise there. She was very sympathetic towards Meryl Streep character and I’m sure she wished she had gone off too. And once in a while she did but only for a few weeks. I knew the movie was really about Destin Hoffman’s character journey but I had forgotten how little she actually changes by the end. It’s possibly the only flaw I could see.

3. Pork Belly Slices. I don’t make them often, almost never, but today they were exactly what I wanted. I used this recipe from Kevin is Cooking blog.

4. Here’s another recipe I really really want to try. It’s for corn chowder from The Kitchn. Their book is amazing and it really helped when I redid my kitchen with great advice on how to structure and organize even the smallest of kitchens.

5. An outline. How do people write fiction without an outline? I couldn’t do it. I mean I don’t even know if I can do it with an outline but I certainly couldn’t without. At least this way if something isn’t working I can try and tackle something else before going back but no outline? I could be stuck forever.

By the way, today is the birthday of the Boy who Lived and look what TFL has done. Clever, no? One day when I retire I’ll re-read them all.

The purpose of memory, a cafe in Soho and London in the sun

Sometimes life goes so fast that I don’t even have the time to stop and appreciate the good fortune of living in such a beautiful city. Today’s post is very yellow in a way.

1. London in the sun. It’s so beautiful, it genuinely brings tears to my eyes. I was walking from Green Park through Piccadilly Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue to Soho. How can one not love this city?

2. Balans Cafe. When I first moved to London I got myself a job as front of house in a theatre in the West End next door to this cafe/restaurant in the heart of Soho. Open 24/7 it used to be our pit stop during breaks and any other time it took our fancy. 15 years later none of the waiters and waitresses I used to know work there but it still feels like home.

3. Flatbread with lamb, coriander and something wonderful that tasted remarkably like harissa. Very messy to eat though. Almost spoiled my lovely yellow dress from Revival Retro Boutique.

4. Memory. I’ve read that the purpose of memory is not to simply remember but to develop strategies on how to behave and face problems in the future, to learn from the past and to grow into the future. There’s so much I want to do, so much I want to accomplish that I feel paralyzed by my inability to stick to a plan. I want to conquery this deficiency. I don’t want to be told that I’m ok the way I am; I want to improve and get better and find meaning in my life. I want to make a list of all the projects I have pending and really move them forward and eventually complete them. They are threads that bother my brain.

5. Apple Crumble. Today was the first time in history I didn’t order an apple crumble that appeared on the menu. There must be something seriously wrong with me. Am I growing? Am I changing? Is it serious? I still haven’t found a better recipe than Nigella’s. An good recap of crumble techniques can be found here.