mussels on a Friday night

Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting increasingly unwilling to go out on a Friday night. In fact, I'm becoming increasingly wedded to my Friday nights in - get home, open wine, have bath, put on music, light candles, cook, talk, eat. 

Anyway, mussels were on offer in Waitrose and I made a spur of the moment decision that we should have them for our tea. This is a recipe that I have been meaning to make for ages, but the right combination of time, ingredients and inclination hadn't, until now, happened!

It's always a bit of a palaver getting them scrubbed and clean and removing the barnacles, pesky things!

R did most of the hard work - I swanned in for the creative element, haha. 

Bobby was bewildered - a hard fishy thing!

We followed this Jamie Oliver recipe. It was super easy and quick. The recipe doesn't call for white wine but we thought it would be a shame not to add some....we put a splash in just before putting the lid on the mussels.

The magic moment when you lift the lid and they are opened up! R laid the table as I added the linguine and gave everything a good mix. Then a handful of parsley and a glug of olive oil, and then spooned clattering into the dishes. 

It was completely delicious - savoury, fishy, fragrant and comforting. A soothing dinner on a Friday night. 

Food for February

My cooking and eating enthusiasm has continued into February, and I have been trying lots of new recipes. These are the ones I remembered to take pictures of. 

Fragrant squash, chickpea and coconut curry with brown rice and parathas. Loosely based on this recipe and very easy. 

Pan-fried lamb steak with crushed cannellini beans, garlic and spinach. This was very quick and a good meal for one in front of the telly (on a night when R was working late and I was on my lonesome!)

Boiled eggs, hot tea and marmite on toast for a lazy Saturday morning brunch with my sister.

A middle eastern feast to welcome R home from a work trip to Munich.

Warm aubergine and chickpea salad with yoghurt and walnut sauce, inspired by this recipe.

Turkish beetroot dip with feta and pomegranate. 

Delicious flatbreads and olives from our local TFC

Spicy chilli-laced kebabs and haloumi and a crisp, lemony salad of tomatoes, cucumber, cabbage and coriander. 

Followed by the most delicious baklava! (not homemade). 

Another lamb steak, this time with peas, fennel, lemon, thyme and feta. Very delicious. 

This weekend just gone we had friends to stay and I made patlican soslu (a turkish meze of aubergines, peppers and tomatoes with garlic) to mop up with giant flatbreads.

Followed by Yotam Ottolenghi chicken with caramelised onions and cardamom and swiss chard with tahini and pine-nuts. The chard was lovely but I was expecting a bit more from chicken. It was fragrant and comforting but perhaps a bit too gentle. 

For pudding I made rosewater and cardamom ice-cream but forgot to take a picture so you will just have to believe me. 

In other news, things have been ticking along quite nicely. I've been a bit poorly this week so have been taking it easy, sleeping lots and taking long restorative baths. We have a couple of free weekends coming up and so have some more DIY planned. And progress has been made in our study - I will post some photos soon!

2015 is here!

Hello 2015!



I know I'm a little late to the party, but things have been super busy both at work and home and this is the first chance I've had to blog!

I hope you've been having good Januarys. Wow has it been cold! I've been getting used to the new year, thinking about the months ahead, a little glimmer of Spring in the distance. I always find this time of year a bit of a struggle - dragging myself out of the Christmas fug a little painful, and the obligatory health kick, fitness kick, new start stuff a bit wearisome. I'd rather carry on hanging around in tracky bottoms and stuffing myself with turkey sandwiches and mince pies for a few more weeks, haha! 



Inevitably this time of year turns the mind to resolution making and new starts, and usually I am the same - list of goals for 2015, kick bad habits, write a novel type stuff. This year however, instead of worrying about losing weight/ getting fit/ becoming an award winning writer- type stuff, I have decided to give myself a break and not put too much pressure on. R and I tend to rush around like maniacs most of the time, with constant long lists of things that need to be done, never-ending projects and goals to work towards as well as two full time, full-on proper jobs to do! Sometimes we find ourselves feeling overwhelmed and frazzled. 2014 was particularly busy and also quite a hard year for us. Lots of change, lots of firsts, lots of expense and stress. I started 3 new jobs (ridic, I know), we bought a house that needed a lot of work doing to it, we got used to a new area, we adopted two  kitties, we learned how to do loads of stuff to the house, we made new friends, and we spent hours and hours doing DIY! Not to say that all of that wasn't amazing, and I am truly grateful that we were able to do all of it (and there are millions of people out there who lead busier and more stressful lives than us I know), but I think we sort of reached our own personal limit on how much stuff we can do all at one time!



So, if I am going to make one resolution for 2015, it will be that we try to have a quieter, less stressful and more peaceful year. That we spend more time together and do less! I will try to accept that things take time, that it doesn't matter if your house is in a state of imperfect unfinishedness, that not every single thing in your life needs to be absolutely great at all times and that it's ok if there is a massive pile of unopened post on the floor in the kitchen, or no one has dusted for about 3 months! I am hoping that, during the course of the year, we will find more of a balance (insofar as that's possible in London), and have time to enjoy more of the small stuff. That's the idea anyway.

We have been enjoying our Christmas pressiesand slowly finding new homes for our lovely new things.

I bought this rather smart tool bag for R for Xmas to encourage him to put away his tools.

I've been pottering round the house, spring cleaning after Xmas, moving things around, buying flowers to add a bit of colour to these dreary grey old days.

And as for dieting, I've decided that I honestly can't be arsed, and actually don't want to. Every year I tell myself that I will eat less, lost half a stone, be as skinny as I was in uni (yeah right). Sometimes I lose a bit of weight, sometimes I don't. But this year, I've decided that life is simply too short. Food is too amazing and for me it wins out every time over a flat stomach. At work I'm surrounded by (mainly) women talking incessantly about how naughty they've been (because they've eaten a packet of crisps), how they're doing 5/2, how they desperately want to lose weight before their wedding....we really do beat ourselves up, don't we. And apart from everything else, it's so boring. Dieting is boring, and talking about dieting is even more boring. There are so many, many other more wonderful things to think about and talk about than how many calories there are in an egg mayonnaise sandwich. 



So, as a tiny weeny personal f**k you to the diet industry and the thousands and thousands of adverts and photos and stupid articles entitled "New Year, New You" that bombard us at this time of year, I have, so far, been really enjoying eating stuff this Jan.





We've been staying in on Friday nights (frugal), making cocktails and sipping them by the fire. 



Mango bellinis, amazing:) And little crostini with prosciutto, goats cheese and sundried tomatoes. 





I have been cooking new things that I've been meaning to cook for ages, eating things that are wholesome and seasonal and totally delicious, baking more flat cakes, not feeling bad about finishing the Christmas chocolates and planning lots more meals to come! 









As a concession to health, I will be doing a bit of my seasonal swimming, but not for weight-loss reasons, bur rather for I'm-worried-if-I-continue-doing-no-exercise-I-may-die-at-40 reasons!

I guess January sparks a lot of thinking about body image and all that jazz, in a way that other times of the year don't. On the subject, I found this post by Hannah at Seeds and Stiches fascinating and inspirational, as I often do with her posts!

So happy 2015 and let's stop feeling bad and start taking it slow, happy and full:)