Move
Moving house this weekend so a brief few-day hiatus from the usual cooking, clothing, documenting business while I lug boxes, scrub carpets and unpack twenty types of flour into the new kitchen. Here’s Friday’s outfit in the meantime.
Trench
Wench
Conclusion:
- Pretty poor I’m afraid.
Baking for instant gratification #3,766
I liked the idea of Dan Lepard’s How to Bake recipe this week, being an enthusiastic fan of cider and bread. Unfortunately though, I insist on having dinner on the table within a few hours of buying the ingredients. When it comes to food preparation, I don’t do overnighters.
Instead of trying to change my ways and learn the indubitable joys of properly risen bread from an expert, I took the decision to make this cider loaf my own way – the instant gratification way. I was willing to suffer the consequences, which turned out to be fairly minimal. Luckily I have a deep appreciation for the sort of airless, dense baked goods that wouldn’t make it past the car park of a church fête, so opening the oven door to what looked and felt like a wheaten quern stone didn’t faze me in the slightest. Liv was over and she enjoyed it too, straight from the stove with melting butter and posh raspberry jam. The best bit was the base, which I’d left stuck to the bottom of the tin when cutting the top, softer bit into slices. I managed to jemmy the base off the tin in one piece with a knife and we ate it like a giant cookie. It was pretty rad.
NB I couldn’t find pure rye flour so I used a wholemeal multigrain seeded bonanza I found down J Sains.
Cider rye
Slightly wry
I didn’t do a good job of this aesthetically speaking, but I did enjoy the eating. Bravo.
I also ought to address the matter of Topshop trophy jumpers. I am still living on cash because of a banking problem. I forgot to put money from my stash into my purse yesterday morning as I was in a rush to adorn my wrists with gold cuffs. I realised this at 5.30pm as I contemplated setting off to Topshop. No Eiffel Tower sweater. Not enormously disappointed. Ends.
And on to today’s outfit, about which I have no complaints. Miraculous!
Spring
has sprung
I guess every photo’s going to be pretty much identical for the rest of the week.
Conclusions:
- Today’s post was brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of Overlooked Tools.
Macsimum relief
Phew! Not only have I finished the last of the nude tones and suet puddings, but I get to make a terrible pun as well! A heavenly day so far, wearing relatively normal clothes, with my hair down and messy, just how I like it.
Last night I powered off to Sainsbury’s in search of 1kg of parsnips, my heart soaring not only at the prospect of eating vegetables but because I was listening to 1Faith FM’s uplifting tunes. I’m not Christian but I do like to conduct informal experiments on myself, as you may have gathered, and at the moment I’m finding out what happens to an agnostic upon listening repeatedly to Christian pop hits. I find this particularly interesting because few people seem to choose to listen to music they don’t like, so I imagine it to be relatively uncharted territory, which makes me feel like a true pioneer. Last year I spent one week listening to Placebo for 8 hours a day to see what would happen. What happened was I developed a crush on Brian Molko. Weird. I haven’t spared a thought for that dear little goblin since. Maybe I’m on my way to developing a crush on Jesus. Actually, have you seen Robert Powell in Jesus of Nazereth? Anyway, this is veering dangerously off course.
The parsnips. I followed the recipe pretty closely, boiling them in milk (interesting idea I thought), whisking up a dressing, roasting a load of veg, all that biz. It was very nice, very nice indeed. I’m getting a bit bored of saying how nice all this food is, but really – there hasn’t been a duffer for ages now. Oh, except that soapy, insipid steak pud. That was on Sunday actually.
ANYWAY, concentrate girl, what are you trying to say? Keep on track… Oh yes, Flavie was just taking my outfit snap for today and she pointed out that although I got in an almighty grump about suet week, it yielded two of my favourite meals so far, so yes. I am grateful to Hugh. Thanks Hugh.
Here are the pics.
Creamed parsnips with roasted winter veg and walnuts
I just wrote a really distasteful, uncouth caption for this and have deleted it
Super
Blooper
Not a very pretty picture but we’ve seen worse. At least it’s something I’d choose to wear. Failed on the coat-colour front but, as Flavie pointed out, I can’t be expected to own five spring macs in varying shades.
Had a look at the jumpers recommended in The Measure this week and wasn’t angry, just disappointed. Couldn’t see any swan jumpers on the Topshop website, which is a shame as I thought that sounded quite good. I could do with a new jumper but can only afford one, so it was a toss up between Topshop’s Eiffel Tower one – sort of nice-ish I guess – or Oasis’ blue shoe design – absolutely hideous. I will not be purchasing this foul garment, particularly not at more than £50. Might stroll over to Toppers after work and treat myself to a new knit before baking rye bread. But I reserve the right to decide not to.
Conclusions:
- The parsnip recipe is another one I would recommend people to actually try at home. The end result really is tasty and I don’t usually like parsnips much.
- Favourite baby-Jesus-related lyric so far: “I love your baby blues / your golden curlicues”
Bye bye basin
I boiled the last in the suet pudding series last night, and savoured every bite. Served as suggested with double cream, it was a) sublime and b) a step towards morbid obesity that I would prefer not to have taken. Tonight it’s roast veg (and more lemon pud out of the fridge), tomorrow a rye loaf, and then I get a couple of days off to eat spinach leaves and contemplate my retreating navel.
It’s so boring going on about stodge and calories all the time – I’m yawning as I type – but it’d be a pointless experiment if I didn’t honestly share my concerns. And I think most people would be vaguely concerned about their health on their fourth consecutive day of suet eating. I am sorry though. I’d love to be able to transcend such drossful subject matter and, once I’m back in my trainers next week (when the broken foot is officially allowed to get some proper exercise again), I hope to set aside my Supersize Me cholesterol fears and chill the hell out.
There’s no photo of the lemon pudding but it is etched forever into the window frames of my mind, for it was truly one of the best desserts I’ve ever made.
Moving on, here’s a photo of me hunched in a loo.
Life's a peach
You can guess this one
Conclusions:
- American football player in drag
- Tara Palmer-Tomkinson three weeks after being fished out of a canal
- Office girl on opium
- All of the above
Also, you probably didn’t even (care to) notice but instead of wearing a small, white watch I don’t have, I wrapped my headphones around my wrist instead, creating an attractive yet functional accessory for the modern woman. And also, I quite like the way my terrible magazine photography makes the model look like a Victorian ancestor (although certainly not one of mine).
Now, enough with the parentheses: I’m off to Sainsbury’s.
Game on, game off
Oh GOD, when will nude shades go out of fashion? They’ve been on trend for long enough now – it must be at least a month or two since I first had to clothe myself in unsightly pastels. It’s high time we went back to black, please.
I’m determined to pull myself out of my fit of ill humour today but it’s not easy. Last night’s pudding was far less successful than saturday’s leek and bacon delight because I underseasoned it, undercooked it and overwashed the saucepan with this horrid ‘pink petals’ washing up liquid that makes all my food taste of a scene out of Bambi. Yeuch. I think it’s actually got under the skin of the pan.
After a late dinner of suet with a dripping garnish and a side dish of cream, I went to bed early and lay awake until 4am worrying about beige clothes.
Today I feel tired, grouchy and corpulent, so backcombing my hair into a sort of sub-Sarah Ferguson up-do, covering my eyelids in purple shadow and pulling on a crumpled sack of a skirt from the bottom of my wardrobe wasn’t quite the morning routine I’d hoped for. Mind you just putting ‘morning’ and ‘routine’ into the same sentence is something of an achievement for me so I’ll cheer up a bit at this juncture. There.
I’ve got it pretty close with the t-shirt, which is an old favourite my ex screen-printed for his former band, but funnily enough I don’t wear it that often these days and I noticed on the train to work – sadly too late to change – that it smells of the Jorvik Viking Centre. I haven’t been to the Jorvik Viking Centre but I spent much of my childhood in the Oxford Story, and everyone is always banging on about how they smell the same. ‘Blah blah, Jorvik bloody blah blah Oxford Story’ every bloody day. So boring. We get the point!
Hue beauty
Warren Beatty (?)
Conclusions:
- Not feeling it AT ALL this issue. Request black shift dresses and salads.
- Measure: hoop earrings are deemed quite wonderful this week, which is fine by me as I have many pairs of right big’uns and wear them all the time. At least I used to, before I started doing this Guardian Girl jape. Have you noticed they rarely put earrings on the models in the Guardian? In fact there’s often no jewellery at all, aside from a few gold cuffs lately.
- More pudding tonight. It’s painful the amount of suet I’ve ingested over a three-day period. Psychically painful. However that leek pudding was probably the tastiest thing I’ve cooked for the project so far, and it was pretty easy.
- I really am going to stop complaining now.
Weekend
Sad to say a slightly morose wash has tinted this weekend, for no very good reason but that these things happen occasionally. Nothing has gone wrong, but I did feel a little lurch of the soul upon seeing the suet pudding recipes. It’s just the way it goes. On one page, a willowy blonde draped with finely woven pastel sports attire. On the next, 1001 great things to do with lard. It hardly seems fair.
Appropriately enough this week’s model’s expression happens to translate seamlessly into a sulk when I attempt it.
Last night Elin of the Crazy Mouse, her man Ed and Best Liv came over for roast beef with leek pudding. My gosh it were good. I forgave Hugh for the high stodge factor the moment that suet melted upon my petulant lips. A finer taste and texture I have rarely revelled in. NB have been reading Herodotus so excuse the narrative tone – it is Sunday, the day of self-indulgence. Also, don’t hate me – next to Herodotus on my shelves are the autobiographies of Jason Donovan and Kerry Katona.
I am at this very moment preparing beef pudding, although with a disappointing lack of kidneys due to a monumental Sainsburys oversight. I’m also drinking the red wine that hasn’t gone into the pudding filling, and listening to old Love records, so signing off quick before the wistful anecdotes come out to play. Please find below the photographic depiction of two outfits and a pudding, with no captions until I return to full desktop computer functionality tomorrow.
Have a grey day
Have a black mood
Leek pudding
Bleak pudding
In the pink
On the blink
Conclusions:
• This isn’t a conclusion but a footnote. I make the rules on this blog so pipe down. On Friday, instead of cooking Yotam’s fine recipes, I went to the first Department S gig in 20 years. It was well good. I beseech you to find a Youtube clip of them performing Is Vic There? on TOTP and marvel at their coolness. Byesie bye x
• Actually one more thing: The Measure. My hair needs growing, not cutting, in order to incorporate a Brett Anderson fringe. Also Natwest continues its ploy to make my life miserable and difficult by blocking my card without prior warning this week. For this reason I’m surviving off a stash of cash and find the idea of buying a sequined jacket from Whistles to be not very sensible. Over and out.
Week-end
Same pose today but with different actors. Flavie very kindly wore the required outfit to work and in fact, to my shame, did a better job than me of matching the model.
We both felt it necessary to wear tights though. All these bare legs are most perturbing and totally inappropriate for the weather. I understand the need for fashion to be a season or two ahead of good sense but must a weekly magazine really follow suit?
This season
Last season
I was supposed to bake a pear tart last night but instead I prioritised the opportunity to go for dinner with my bruv and his lovely lady Ella.
Instead of a recipe photo, a riveting tale (please feel free not to read it – I just wanted to exorcise the memory):
I took a short-cut through Regents Park to get to Soho, assuming it would be full of joggers, dog walkers, lovers and no doubt rollerbladers. In fact I was the only person in that damn park, other than one gloomy figure who loomed out of the dusk a few hundred yards ahead at one point. All I could hear was distant traffic, and all I could see was a dark, dark path and the occasional satanic form of a tree or sculpture silhouetted against the pale night sky. It was terrifying – so much so that I turned off my music and pressed the “Girlfriend” icon on my iPhone that serves as a hotline to Best Liv. Luckily she answered and I instructed her to phone the police immediately if I got cut off. I felt momentarily safer. But when I finally got to the other side of the park my heart stopped, for I was locked in.
There are times in every girl’s life when she thinks to herself: “This is just STUPID, why am I here? If anything happens to me now, my parents are going to be at least as angry that I put myself in such a situation as they will be sad that their daughter is now in small pieces.” As I scrambled through the undergrowth around the pitch-black perimeter of the park, alone and palpitating of heart, I was silently planning, writing and naturally sub-editing the article reporting my demise. The fence was tall and covered with unnecessarily brutal spearheads (Camden Council: why?). To cut a long and pretty boring story slightly shorter, I had to hoist up my frock, ram my half-broken foot into a gap between two spears, haul myself up so I was pretty much standing on the fence, and pivot over the top without impaling myself. But my foot got stuck at the crucial moment and I only just managed to wrench it out of the gap before landing on the other side. Not being very good at physics I’m not sure what would have happened if my foot had remained stuck, but it might well have involved cracking bones, caved-in faces and unnatural angles. I landed rib-rattlingly on my good foot, noticed a couple walking along the road towards me, brushed myself off and sauntered away in the manner of a cat who has just committed a grave act of foolishness in front of its human family. I was shaking a bit, and late to meet my brother.
We went for a very, very fabulous Malaysian dinner (Melati, Peter Street, highly recommended) and I rejected the late-night pear tart idea. I don’t like pears that much, the supermarkets were shut and what the heck, I always try to have two nights a week off cooking so I can maintain a balanced social life.
Conclusions:
- Up with tights.
- Down with spearheads.
- Is that somehow a sinister combination? Oh dear, sorry.
- PS My oven glove arrived. It looks more grandmother’s quilted gardening gilet than Chanel’s quilted handbag, and John Lewis failed to include my specially composed gift card to myself. Granted they might have spotted that the name of the sender matched that of the recipient, but that’s none of their business. I paid for the oven glove, now hand over the card, JL.
Fondue
I took the fondue ingredients to Liv’s last night and shamelessly capitalised on a photo opportunity with her 18-month old flatmate Delphi.
A young Fearnley-Whittingstall
A young Delphi
Classic fondue
Classic fondon't
Tasted very good. Sainsbury’s doesn’t stock kirsch so I bought one of their ready-made fondue sachet things from the cheese chiller and added a load of wine, gruyere, emmental and some flour to the mix. Tasty and wonderful but, as other flatmate (and mother of Delphi) Holly pointed out, if you’re going to eat fondue it helps to precede it with a day of alpine activities. Otherwise you just sort of sit at your desk all day and then melt a kilo of cheese with some booze, dip handfuls of bread into it, cram them in until you can fit no more down the gullet and crawl away to collapse into a carb coma spectacular. That’s exactly what I did last night, which explains why I woke up in Liv’s room this morning with no Guardian-matching outfit to change into for the day.
I re-borrowed Harriet’s kipper-infused outfit from the other week and put yesterday’s white shirt on top of it for the photo only. It produces a pretty unsightly effect when worn in this way. The poses from today and tomorrow require the cooperation of other models, so in this post I would like to introduce the lovely Gabrielle, who happened to be wearing an appropriately hued pullover today. Tomorrow Photographe Flavie will be making an appearance on the other side of the lens. She has been briefed on her outfit for the day. Sometimes I do pity those on the periphery of this cursèd project.
Blazer trail
Jacket in
Conclusions:
- Fondue actually makes a quick weekday supper as you can just melt it up and eat it out of the saucepan.
- Wouldn’t recommend having it every evening though.
- Liv would like to point out that although I described yesterday’s mushroom recipe as ‘delicious’, she actually thought it was disgusting and spat it out while I wasn’t looking. When I think about it, I loved the fresh mushroom bit but did avoid the rehydrated porcini as I found them too strong. I was supposed to use ceps. Maybe that was the problem.
- I’m not entirely certain that Hugh F-W is actually making fondue in the above photo, but I can’t work out what else it would be. I don’t suppose it matters too much.
Towelling it on
Best Liv came over last night to help throw away some of my pathologically hoarded possessions (this sort of thing is why I call her Best Liv [I also call her Little Wrenny Bolokov, but that’s another story]). As some sort of recompense I force fed her a few mountain ranges of chorizo carbonara and many rivers of cold custard that were left over from Sunday’s cake-a-thon. I also made the mushroom part of Hugh’s polenta feast and we had a little taste of that (delicious) before I decided to palm the rest of all this food off on whichever pals come over for fondue tonight.
We then got to work sorting through my infinite boxes of tat, some representative examples of which included a collection of small shreds of plywood, a startling number of ribbons I have no recollection of ever receiving, a tiny bag containing a button and a 1p coin, an umbrella cover stuffed with a pedometer and a hairband, and a very disturbing veterinary receipt from last year when one of my beloved cats had kidney failure and I had to make the heartbreaking decision to have her put down:
“PRODUCT/SERVICE: EUTHANASIA CAT ONLY
QUANTITY: ONE
PRICE: £28.13 inc VAT”
It’s not exactly soothing, is it.
Also, what do they mean by “cat only”?
We were up so late sorting out my rubbish that Liv stayed over and was able to take my photo this morning. I was standing, perplexed, in front of her holding a grey double-breasted blazer in one hand and a brown leather jacket in the other, trying to work out which one was more similar to today’s required outfit, when she glanced over my shoulder and remarked that it was a shame I couldn’t wear the peach-coloured towel hanging on the back of my door, since it perfectly matched the model’s jacket. And hence, I bring you today’s pic. Looking outside I decided it was probably a bit chilly to go out in a towel so I plumped for both the jackets at once. What with the orange plimsolls being the closest non-heeled thing I own to the model’s gold shoes, I look a bit clownish today, but I’m well used to that by now.
The blazer
The towel
Conclusions:
- Happy tonight’s dinner is the last energy-rich recipe for 10 I have to cook, for obvious reasons related to waistbands.
- I am now seeing my collection of c.1970s hand-me-down towels through new eyes.
- William Eggleston exhibition looks well worth a visit but the opening hours tally not with my work duties.
- A trip to NY to use the subway is not on the financial agenda.
- Acne interiors: if you have bad skin, you don’t want to fill your house with Acne sofas any more than you want to walk around in Acne jeans, looking for all the world like you’re wearing your medical diagnosis proudly upon your denims. In fact, don’t tell anyone but it took me a year to get over moving to Hackney for the same reason.
- What?!! It’s not my fault. Spots make you very self-conscious.
Blazers #1
Blazers I can do but the rest of the garments in this shoot are totally under-represented in my wardrobe. I’m going to be in the same pair of black jeans all week because my other trouser options keep falling apart.
I need the Measure to recommend me some decent strides, please. Preferably ones that won’t make me look too much like Sandi Toksvig.
What?
Clot
Photographer Cari just emailed to congratulate me on my improved posing skills after seeing yesterday’s effort but I think she might retract her blandishments on seeing the above.
The old broken foot is still preventing me from wearing heels and I’m getting mighty fed up with it now. The growing-out fringe continues to produce curtains. When oh when will it be long enough to tuck behind me lug’oles?
Food update: last night I went home alone and cooked chorizo carbonara for 10. I don’t know what to say about it. A surreal evening spent hovering over a vast cauldron of calories feeling very much like I was doing the wrong thing, mostly because I have yet to work out what I’m going to do with it all. It’s so filling I could only eat one bowl, although I might possibly have revisited the vat on my way for a night-time wee.
I have a recently developed a pretty embarrassing habit of listening to new-age sound effects as I drift off to sleep. Last night’s was supposed to be a campfire crackling with a few crickets chirping nearby or something. But all I could hear was frying chorizo, haunting me with its oily fumes. I had to switch over to “medium cicadas with owl near creek”.
Measure update: yesterday I pulled my socks up and got going on the kitchen linens front. I am soon to be the proud owner of a Chanel-style John Lewis oven glove. I already have two very nice oven gloves and could really have done with the apron but the Labour and Wait website is out of stock. Blooming Guardian readers have sucked them dry it would seem. What a shame. The best thing about online shopping is that you often get to send yourself a free gift card with a personalised message. If you enjoy, as I do, fabricating long and convoluted jokes purely for your own amusement, I recommend this.
As for some of the other items on this week’s list, I’ve been a mild Yeasayer fan for several years now so no action was required on that front. Tanlines provided the soundtrack for Saturday night’s bollito misto feast and got the thumbs up from Phoebe and I. I didn’t buy any though – if I’m going to spend money on music I’m going to go and buy a record, and I feel a bit embarrassed about going up to the counter with an album that’s in the Guardian that week. Is that ridiculous? Coming from a girl who walks around with a stuffed toy pinned to her shoulder because it was in the Guardian that week, probably.
Vocab update: thanks to Abby for teaching me the word ‘blandishments’ when we were 15. I knew it’d come in useful one day.
Conclusions:
- Nothing left to conclude.
I've always found it funny when people write letters to the Guardian's Weekend magazine complaining that the recipe ingredients are too middle class and the fashion only looks good on thin people. After all, it's just a magazine. Or is it? I decided to follow its recipes, fashion and lifestyle advice as closely as possible, to see if the aspirations promoted therein can really be achieved by the average reader who is not especially wealthy, not necessarily model thin and is obliged to work regular office hours. This blog has no affiliation whatsoever with the Guardian but I link to the Weekend magazine website for the purposes of illustration. 
Guardian Girl 
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