Sheer delight
My organza jodhpurs are at the dry cleaners today so I had to make do with Primark skinny jeans. Seeing photos of myself in skinny jeans makes me think back to a time many moons ago (when I was actually a lot thinner but that’s almost irrelevant).
I was at a barbecue and I bumped into a guy I’d previously met at a party, at which I’d been wearing a miniskirt. He said: ‘Oh hi, you’re the one with the Robert Crumb legs’. I later gave him hell for this comment and he told me he’d meant it as a compliment. Instead of clipping him about the ear, I decided to believe him, since he is very much below-and-to-the-left of the mainstream in his tastes and since you may as well see the bright side of things. It’s always a good idea to find positive role models for yourself, making the most of what might otherwise be considered flaws (sod having Darcey Bussell as a hero). This way, when an old Jamaican chap shouts ‘Hey big legs!’ at you in the street, you are able to take it as a compliment. As I go about my daily business I constantly screen a playreel of stormin Russ Meyer girls, Robert Crumb drawings, Nigella serving nibbles and Marilyn wiggling around in satin in Some Like It Hot in my mind’s eye. I recommend this to any not-small lass who is vulnerable to the odd guilt pang about taking up too much space. Go girls! Anyway here’s the outfit:
Sheer delight
Sheer fright
Conclusions:
- I spent ages looking for skinny jeans that fit and Primark was the only place to come up trumps, which is a pretty dire state of affairs.
- I did try more with my pose today, can you tell? A little bit? I still look a bit haemorrhoidal don’t I.
Dip/stick
Today’s photo is a self-portrait because I couldn’t leave the house in what I was wearing. Would you take me seriously if you bumped into me around the office wearing this?
If I’d only had a coral Margaret Howell blouse, some drawstring moleskin trousers and perhaps a tiny pair of hips, I’d be looking chic today. Oh, and a pair of clear-rimmed specs. But these garms are the closest I could get and, as you can see, tracksuit bottoms (Fat Face 1999 – not really Best Dressed material) an orange top, cropped Primark shirt and fancy-dress glasses do not a professional lady make. I changed into black h-h-h-harem pants and swapped the shirt for my beloved Farhi by Nicole Farhi covering-up mannish shirt thing so I looked less like I’d soiled myself, added a big scarf to make it look like I had some kind of intention for my appearance and headed off to the bus stop flowingly. I do look like a psychodrama workshop facilitator today but that’s probably better than looking like a plain old psychodrama. Today I’d like to add an extra dimension to my snap by providing the soundtrack that was going on in my head as I looked in the mirror. For those who have spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/1Vchex0xowRj9k59RLvRfo.
Step out
Stay in
Dinner last night, on the other hand, was a steaming success. It was Hugh’s Muhamarra recipe, a very tasty affair involving walnuts, bread, olive oil, baked red peppers, chilli flakes, lime juice and caramelised onion chutney because I couldn’t find any pomegranate molasses. Once I was on Guardian Soulmates – why not, since I outsource every other decision in my life to the Guardian, let it choose me a lover as well? I met this guy and Jesus Christ was he a bore. He was even more smug than me. He was sick with the nation because it promoted cultural low-browism by celebrating Harry Potter. I unfortunately hit upon the subject of his difficult relationship with his father within ten minutes of meeting him – purely accidental – and the tense diatribe that followed was a terrifying to behold, and highly awkward to react to over a conversational pint of Strongbow. Anyway I went home after a while and shortly afterwards decided to choose my own menfolk. But the point of this story is that he harped on at great length about how amazing pomegranate molasses is, and how you can use it to add depth to any flavour, and how you can get it any Turkish shop. But I was in Sainsbury’s in my tracksuit (because I’m now running everywhere in order to maintain this experiment without growing out of the last remaining giantsize harem pants) and I couldn’t find any, so I just bought some Taste the Difference chutney instead. It’s a bit soapy to be honest. ANYWAY, the dip is stunningly delicious. You must make it. If you can’t be bothered to do the bits involving the peppers, the paste made with all the other ingredients is delicious in itself. Walnutty oily rich wonder with bread dipped in. I ate plenty of it before I added the peppers. Hugh told me to add the rest of the ingredients after the peppers but I rebelliously ignored him. I was wating for the peppers to cook so I thought I may as well get the rest ready.
Also I used my hand blender! If you’ve been reading from the start you’ll know this is a great thing as it marks my triumph over the emotional scars I earned during an egg white incident.
Here are the photies:
Muhamarra
Muhm-muhm-ahhh
I know it looks kind of like a feline production here but that’s just any ungarnished dip for you isn’t it? I added extra chilli flakes, chutney and cumin so it’s got quite a kick. It’s making me mildly perspire as I eat the remains for lunch while typing this.
Conclusions:
- I’m taking a long moment to appreciate the fact that I changed out of that heinous outfit before coming to work.
- I strongly recommend trying the dip.
- Peeling red peppers is pretty tricky even after doing the oven/plastic bag trick but the dip doesn’t appear to have suffered by having skins in it.
Sunday 16 August
Big disappointment today as I travelled all the way into town with my French Connection discount chum to buy the blouse in the Measure and found it wasn’t in the shops. What’s the blooming point telling us all how perfect the thing is if none of us can buy it? It looked like a great blouse as well, and French Connection is full of very nice stuff at the moment so it was tough not to cave in and get something. But I didn’t.
Adding to my aggravation was the fact that I was wearing a jumper on a hot day, a requirement of the between-summer-and-autumn fashion shoot this week. Here’s me dicking around in some more undergrowth. The scarf was courtesy of a friend who had it tied around her cat’s carry basket, along with a beautiful Lanvin one. Can you imagine how stylish you have to be to carry your cat around in a Lanvin-trimmed box?
Wheatfield
Whigfield
Not really putting my back into it there – relying too heavily on the pastry belly for balance.
And talking of which – here’s dinner. It’s a pie!
I used up a load of vaguely mouldering fruit I had left over from when I couldn’t be bothered to make fruit leather last week. The addition of vinegar to the pastry threw me a bit and the dough stank of it, but the finished product was great. Excuse the blobs of creme fraiche. I forgot to think about aesthetics for a moment.
Apricot
Money shot
Never one to do things by halves (unless they are a pastry recipe), I have an ear infection in both ears at the moment and must leave this desk now to crawl into a dark corner and feel sorry for myself, possibly aided by tonight’s veggie soup recipe and last week’s Dallas boxset. At least the Guardian can look after the poorly among us, even if it can’t consider the skint.
Conclusions:
- Ear infection necessitates brevity.
- Why Measure always so expensive/unavailable?
- Vinegar in pastry not too rank.
- Use up old fruit in pie.
- Creme fraiche not pretty.
- Nurofen.
Wednesday 12 August
Lady
...and the Tramp
On this day in history… a simple black dress, ballet pumps and an up-do. Mercy me.
Pie
Dry
Violet
Violent
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Blanching vine leaves makes all the diffference, I imagine.
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I’m getting a bit tired of the limited scope of the Sainsbury’s fresh herb selection. Isn’t everyone using them since Jamie Oliver started ripping them up and bunging them in everything? I’m sure they’d sell fine.
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Experimentation with quantities isn’t always going to work – and with dry breadcrumb topping it didn’t.
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River Island has the odd nice blouse. As always with that shop, though – stay away from naked flames.
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Can’t wait to climb into bed early of an evening with that night’s recipe and a new episode of Dallas. Does this mean I’ve become old before my time? Undoubtably.
Thursday 6 August
Hehehe, check out today’s outfit. I don’t have a fur stole to hand so I had to make do with the tiger I’ve had since I was eight or so. I thought of pinning him to my shoulder but this might have been distracting for the others in the office, so I just balanced him there for the photo and then he went back in my bag. To be honest I removed most of the accessories – bar the belt – once the shutter had closed.
I quite like what the woman in the picture is wearing but if you’re going to go mad on accessories like that, they really need either to coordinate or clash properly, or you just look like you’ve gone mad.
Coordinate
Reprobate
The jumper is FARHI by Nicole Farhi menswear and is lovely for belting cos it’s made out of very soft, draping fabric.
I got the loopy bit of the hairstyle on the wrong side of the head. Before this project began I thought I knew my left and right, but I get muddled up between cameras and mirrors or something. It’s OK, I’ll pick it up eventually.
I was extremely excited about getting home because I was making Dan Lepard’s rocky road rock cakes. Gahhhh, just look at the recipe! I’d been looking forward to this all week. My usual casual chopping style left mine looking more like Alpine goat-path cakes after a mudslide, but we know it’s what’s inside that counts. I was a bit more careful about my measurements than I have been before after Dan Lepard linked to my blog on his baking forum and a legion of po-faced bun experts came barrelling over the brow of a cyberhill brandishing rolling pins and admonishing me for using the wrong equipment and overcooking stuff. I think they were being helpful. So yes, I was more careful (more careful, not necessarily actually careful) about quantities. However because I used such big chunks of chocolate and walnuts, the dough couldn’t really be made into golf ball-sized scoops. This is where I used my initiative and made one big blobby cake in the bottom of the tin instead, which I then cut into smaller pieces after it came out of the oven. I couldn’t wait for the chocolate topping mixture to cool before I stirred in the marshmallows, which meant they melted into a marbled swirl. I’d just walked six miles in the bucketing rain, hadn’t eaten since lunch and was standing over a pan of hot, glossy, ribboning chocolate gloop to dot it with little-fluffy-cloud marshmallows. How was I supposed to wait for the thing to cool? I also tasted it liberally before it made it to the pouring stage, by which I mean I ate nearly all of it – along with the marshmallows and peanuts that didn’t go into the recipe. This meant that by the time I came to eating the rock cakes, I already felt slightly sick. But that didn’t matter because the cakes were so, so good. Eating a mouthful was like inching into a just-too-hot bath – a spreading feeling of semi-religious pleasure tinged with the slightly guilty suspicion that what you’re doing probably isn’t that good for your veins.
I put what I couldn’t eat in the freezer, but not before I had a second go at them after they’d cooled, thus making myself feel sick twice in one evening. Some people never learn.
Another great thing about these cakes was that they were easy to make, even for me, and the process was quick – except the whole palaver of getting things to this and that temperature (I hear in some places they call it ‘cooking’), which I could afford to ignore because I alone had to eat the result. Oh yeh, and also, if you make them, do put at least some salted peanuts in (I used a mixture of peanuts and walnuts) cos it makes them taste of Snickers.
I turn 30 in a few months and I might actually bake my own cake just so that I can have a whole mountain range of these. I could get in some real goats to climb around in this mountain range, as I love goats. It’d be like a budget version of the Arctic scene, complete with snow leopard, that I heard Jocelyn Wildenstein had in her house. And I could get some surgery for my birthday too, so I look more like my cat, George. My life plan is suddenly coming together.
Rock cake
Boulder cake
Conclusions:
- What a brilliant day! A tiger on the shoulder and the most enjoyable-ever chocolate cake stuff in the belly.
- The path to enlightenment isn’t a path after all, it’s a stream – of condensed milk, melted chocolate and butter.
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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