Guardian Girl

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”