Guardian Girl

Baigan choka

Choked-up bile

It was scary making Yotam’s baigan choka. You had to put aubergines actually ON the gas hobs. It’s easy to forget that just because hobs are in your kitchen and you switch them on and off, doesn’t mean they’re not actually real little fires. We should use them more imaginatively – maybe sing Native American songs around them, roast micropigs above them on miniature wooden spits, jump over them at Beltane.

As for the dip itself, we thought it most palatable. I bought two other aubergine dips to taste test it against and personally I put the homemade one in the middle. My boyfriend, with the generously goggled taste buds of the live-in lover, decided mine/Yotam’s was the winner.

Also yesterday evening, in the name of eating honeycomb on fireworks night, I gobbled half a bag of Crunchie Rocks on my way home and then we waved some tiny indoor sparklers around in the garden while pretending to have fun. It was fun really, just not exactly fireworks-night-level fun.

Going solo

Going loco

Conclusions:

• I would recommend that anyone with a gas hob tries cooking aubergines this way. It tastes nice, but more importantly it lets you feel primal in the kitchen, which saves much cash that previously had to be spent on black market placentas to stew up
• Unfortunately the Guardian lifestyle dictates that I now spend that £200 of freed-up placenta budget on a T-shirt, which will have to be for my boyfriend, since it would probably look rubbish worn with hips. I have a deep suspicion that this T-shirt, although wickedish printwise, is made of quite a sheer fabric, which probably isn’t going to go down too well at the unwrapping stage
• The Measure is also decreeing that I get rid of all my v-necks. This seems like a waste. Oh well, someone might want them. Someone incredibly impoverished. In taste if not resources
• On the plus side, salmon fishcakes tonight
• Back on the minus side again, I’m not even going to say anything about the fashion/photo today

Last night’s rabbit stew was bunny free because I couldn’t find the Sainsbury’s lagomorph fridge. I used a couple of bags of mixed game, waited a torturously long time for it to simmer fragrantly atop the stove (luckily, throwing verbal spears at Junior Apprentice distracted me from a whole hour of boiling time and enabled me to feel I’d earned my dinner), and then very much enjoyed eating the result. There isn’t a photo because there would be nothing with which to compare it, and besides it looked a lot like raw sewage.

Am mooching through this week’s fashion with a knitted brow and a distastefully There’s Something About Mary-ish quiff. I’m not much good at hairstyling – I have always been one of those whose hair just grows there. Every now and then I might scowl at it in the mirror or cut a fringe in with the kitchen scissors. I occasionally dye it, but only ever as the centrepiece of a thrilling social event. Dyeing your hair alone is boring as hell. I have been to hairdressers before – hell I’ve even found one I really like and who doesn’t try to make me look like Atomic Kitten, but even so the awkwardness about tips and deciding whether to conversate with the hairdresser’s face or the hairdresser’s reflection makes the whole thing seem generally not worth it.

But yeh, the outfits.

In the crowd

Off the lead

Think I still need to do a bit of work on my pouting, which is continuing to come across a bit… let’s say… umm… I can’t quite think of the right word for it, but it makes me think of zoo admission fees somehow.

For This column will change your life, I have signed up to iftt but have yet to work out how I can really use it in a useful way (also I keep not bothering to confirm my password. That’s the Blitz spirit for you). The idea of texting yourself an umbrella reminder depending when rain is forecast is very exciting – until you remember that you couldn’t give a crap if your quiff gets rained on and that you think umbrellas are, broadly speaking, for idiots who seem to be under the impression that a few drops of rain will disfigure them forever. Get OVER it. It is WATER. You stand in it every day to get clean, then you run around screeching because a drop of it touches your forehead out of context. Stupid humans except me, as usual.

For the Measure, I have moved one small step forwards by throwing away a pair of holey thigh-high socks I like to wear around the flat.

I cannot find Prada’s crocodile earrings on the internet.

I will have a fake bonfire night tonight, complete with honeycomb, since I was poorly and house-bound on Saturday night when everyone else was doing it. I have to quickly say, though, that I don’t approve of the phrase “sweet-cum-canape”. Sounds like something you get handed off a silver platter at Elton’s white tie and tiara ball.

Conclusions:

• Juniper over – now on to grilling aubergines over the hob while boyfriend hits smoke alarm with baseball bat (not exaggerating)
• Can you still buy indoor fireworks? Where? May as well let the smoke alarm have all its whippings in one go

Not like ‘Baby it’s cold outside, it’s so wintry and romantic, let’s crunch through the leaves, let’s wrap up in lambswool scarves and gasp at the fireworks.’

Like ‘Baby I’ve got a cold, I’m so weak and irritable, let’s stew in our own mucus, let’s wrap up in stinking, moth-eaten jumpers and gape at the telly.’

I will start by wincingly addressing the past three days of fashion.

On Friday I arrived home from a long day of business-tripping and met one of this blog’s most long-standing patrons, Photographer Cari, at a large shopping centre in East London.

Shirt

Shit

Will someone give this wretched beast a Lemsip?

On Saturday I broke free of my bunged-up, washed-out shackles to emerge looking like a radiant supermodel.

Street scene

Crime scene

Only kidding.

Then, on Sunday, things got even more terrifying.

Step out

Step down

If I was married to a CEO, he’d no doubt have this picture in a silver frame on his desk.

If my feet look inordinately large (although I imagine you may have averted your eyes by the time you got as far down as the hair) it’s because I am wearing size 12 DMs – they were the closest match in the house. However I fear that is the last thing about this photo I ought to be making excuses for.

And now, from muffin topped monsters to heavy-bottomed pans, it’s on to this issue’s food.

It has been a weekend of juniper. I do like juniper, but I’m not sure if I need it on my tongue three days in a row.

Chicken with rosemary and juniper

Chicken with rickets and anaemia

I love the way the colours really pop in my photos, don’t you?

Sunday dinner was delicious (ate it with roast duck breast) but by now the juniper was starting to get on my wick.

Potato and celeriac gratin with juniper

Potato and celeriac with juniper grating (harrrrrrrrr!!!!!)

Yet again my photo looks like it’s been puked out of a cat. A non-IAMS cat I should think.

As far as the Measure goes, it’s been an unsuccessful weekend, and I thank the Lord for that. I can’t summon up as much as a suggestion of a girl crush on Pixie Geldof any more than I can grow a Fu Manchu moustache. There’s not a lot I care to do about the former failure, but to address the latter I bought one of those fake moustache selection packs. I did it to show commitment, but I did it grudgingly. I know it’s Movember and all, but aren’t moustaches just so over by now? I mean, have one on your face if you like, but you don’t gotta put one on your T-shirt, your local bar, your necklace and your profile pic as well, do you?

The Henry Holland pants may potentially arrive upon my bottom courtesy of my apparent three degrees of separation from the man himself but I think that’s the only way it’s going to happen, since they don’t appear to be in the shops yet. Likewise the Carhartt/APC apron, but minus the degrees of separation scenario. Shame – an apron is one thing I could actually do with having.

Well look, this post is getting progressively boring, even for me.

Adios.

Conclusions:

• It is all to do with how you feel about your food tasting of gin. I personally do not eat potato gratin with the intention of being transported back to the precise moment on a warm summer’s night when, straddling the fence to Regents Park, I realised I had relinquished control of my bladder – and that I was crying and laughing at the same time – and that I was wailing something about a bus stop in Headington – and that I was being watched with increasing horror by someone I was trying to seduce
• No, I didn’t really do that
• I didn’t!

Walk this way

Dork this way

Dotty

Psychopathic

I just gave my workmate the fright of her life when she came round the corner and saw me standing in the corridor (my dear photographer was out of view) looking like a waxwork out of the London Dungeons a few hundred years in the future. I think she thought something inside me had finally snapped.

Where do I even start today? The hair is part mullet, part alopecia. The make-up looked OK at 10am but, three hours later, has slithered off into obscurity. If you unbuttoned my blouse you’d see a ghoulish visage glaring back at you, waxy and eyeless, its glossy pink mouth grinning with navel-hair teeth and a wobbling tongue of cellulite. I’m frightening myself… I’m clawing at myself…Get it off me!

Already bored of my new fashion-only regime. How many new things can one think of to say about one’s dim corridor lighting and thick ankles? I think tonight I’m going to have to invite Hugh back into my kitchen.

GG: Hugh? Hugh? Huuuuuugghhhhh?

HFW: (echoes) Hello? Hello? God help me! Hello?

GG: You can come back up now!

HFW: Huu… urghh.. I can’t…. climb the…. ladder – you broke my legs…. with a rolling pin…. in case…. you’d forgotten! Hell I…. I can’t even see the…. the ladder in this pitch… fucking… black, you freak…. you fucking psycho….. you bitch!

GG: It’s OK Hugh, just calm down, I’ll help you up using these ropes and you can show me how to cook chickpea pancakes – it’ll be just like the old days Hugh!

HFW: (Sounds of imminent death)

On a less repressively violent note, I have been reading Oliver Burkeman’s column and taking it very seriously.

I have carefully copied out all the quotes he mentions on to bright orange Post-it notes and stuck them to my monitor at work. Because this has made me feel like such a detestable moron, I have drawn small penises all over the Post-it notes to subtly indicate to any passing colleagues that I don’t really take all this claptrap too seriously. I’m not sure if it exactly helps matters – why would the quotes be there if I didn’t take them seriously? How does drawing pictures of genitals in the office ever help people respect you more? Why do I do it so often then? – so I might cut those penises off.

Heheh.

I’m off to Pritt Stick up some ransom letters. I will see you tomorrow, farting through a diaphanous dress while hitting the keyboard arbitrarily and hoping something funny comes out.

Conclusions:

• GO CONFIDENTLY IN THE DIRECTION OF YOUR DREAMS!
• I must also remember to use these ransom note scissors to cut the Peter Pan collars off my clothes
• Also looks like I’ll be popping off to buy a cheap crombie after work. If I buy a cheap crombie, will a tree fall somewhere in the Brazilian rainforest? It literally might, mightn’t it?

Have received quite a few compliments on today’s outfit. If you want to know why, don’t expect any clues from the below photo.

Old favourite

Least favourite

Next week I’d like to be wearing swathes of crispy autumn leaves crafted into red-carpet ballgowns, flashing pumpkin-head bikinis and chewing-gum balaclavas. I’d like to pose jumping into fountains, leaping off bridges into waterfalls and laughing into pensioners’ twinkling eyes on park benches. Bit of variety, none of this sitting around looking pretty lark, which is HARD.

I’m getting really tempted by returning to the whole hog again. Last night I put all the ingredients for Dan Lepard’s pasties into my supermarket basket, then returned them all to the shelves one by one, chiding myself for not being able to keep up this moderate, outfits-only approach for more than three days. Not sure how much longer I can hold off. It’s the autumnal recipes and the irresponsible spending and the all-consuming unexpectedness of it all – so damn inviting. Thing is, it invites you in, hands you a glass of sherry, compliments you on your hairdo and then whisks your coat off into the hallway and secretly wees all over it! It does, I seen it. So I don’t trust it opening that door no more.

Conclusions:

• While I was off I did actually buy Dan Lepard’s book and bake one of his cakes for my birthday. It was bloody amazing. I do miss all that. Thing is you think “well, I can still bake the odd Guardian recipe even without living the whole life.” But then unless you’ve got a blog resting on it, you just go home, eat lemon curd on toast and think you won’t be arsed after all.

Apologies for the extended pause in posts.

Let’s pretend Guardian Girl is an oil rig. When you’re at work, you are always at work, up there on that rig getting oilier and saltier and dirtier and thinking ‘what the hell am I doing here?’ as you stare out to sea and ponder the distant memory of your real life back home, where you are really you. Yet you keep telling yourself this is your one, albeit it quite odd, purpose in life at that time. Then, just as you’ve read the Safety Rules notice on the toilet door one too many times and cracked surely your last one off over your precious but faded picture of Keeley Hawes, it’s finally time to return to the homestead. Once again you can buy fresh fruit at 11pm, manage your own film-watching schedule and squeeze a real pair of nipples with overzealous relief. You don’t have to report back to the line manager every time you take a crap. It is heavenly. Once you’re off that rig, you get into the leisure vibe and you’re certainly not going back until you know it’s time.

The analogy fell apart right at the start. I don’t even know what is this compulsion to put nipples in everything. I know nothing of oil rig culture other than my probably mistaken prejudices.

It was however a good illustration of why I’m having a break from blogging at the moment. No one needs to read this kind of thing on a daily basis.

I will be back when I feel like it, maybe in a week or a year or never or whatever.

FONDIES to one and ‘all’ until then.

x Emoticon(s)

Is it because:

a) lately they seem to follow two days of solid drinking, resulting in a sense of less-than-superhumanity before one has even started compared oneself to a fashion model and trying to recreate vegetable recipes when all one really needs is a selection of things someone else has fried and put in front of you

b) can’t be bothered to write this one

c) can’t be bothered to write this one

d) can’t be bothered to write this one

e) all of the above?

Here’s the week so far.

Saturday: at Field Day, not in sheer tights. Ate a salt beef bagel for breakfast, a hot dog for lunch and a burger for dinner. By the time I got home it would’ve seemed inconsistent to eat anything that wasn’t a lump of meat between two bits of bread, so I didn’t cook a bean salad yet.

Sunday: did cook a bean salad yet, with the help of Friend Anne who was staying for the weekend and who’s a proper gourmet cook person. We had a BBQ for a bunch of mates (didn’t wear an orange velvet suit) and made a potato salad as part of it. Anne actually did that cooking programme thing where you chop and prepare the extra ingredients and store them in a small bowl while the potatoes boil! Meanwhile I ‘toasted’ a load of walnuts, resulting in a pan of half-raw, half-blackened husks looking more like charred rodent brains than something you’d eat. Tipped them on top of a pile of beans (which Anne had cooked for the right length of time [I all the time lurking in the background, cocking my head squirrel-like at these fascinating new concepts in cookery happening around me while swigging from a variety of cider bottles and trying to look capable] ) and then crumbled over a load of feta. Couldn’t be bothered to read rest of recipe by then – guests arriving, rain pouring all over BBQ, cider kicking in – so just poured on some other likely-seeming ingredients, took a quick snap before anyone could clock what I was doing and gracelessly whacked the plate down on the buffet table. Never got to taste any so can’t report on success. Suspect minimal.

French beans with feta, walnuts and mint

French beans with fetid tagnuts and dill

Cutlerial positioning clearly not a priority at the time. Apols.

Today I have a two-day hangover, a general feeling of shame and inadequacy, no desire to eat anything other than constant junk, and an awful outfit. What a crap Monday. Oh misery. Am now trying to divide day into two-hour chunks and see if that helps any. Will let you know tomorrow between 2 and 4.

On the prowl

From the bowel

Conclusions:

• As for the Measure, I’ve read it. That feels like enough of an achievement so far.