Friday 18 January 2013

Blonde ambition.......

I’ve been thinking, it must be quite nice when you’re old and grey, to be blonde. Now, I do realise I’m in the lucky position of being a bit old but not having any grey hair …….. well about 5 around the temples at the last count. My father’s hair was practically black until the day he died …..some kind of legacy from the Spanish Armada that washed up on the Dorset coast so I’m told…… and there is barely a fistful of grey hair on my Mum’s head or amongst her sisters, so I don’t think it’s likely to happen any day soon. However, I met a brilliant woman who is in her 60s and wears her thick, wavy hair long and in 50 shades of blonde. She dresses in white and cream and lives in a white and cream house with blonde wood floorboards. And looks fabulous. Everywhere is clean and sweet scented. And clean. Very clean. It’s like being in a White Company advert.
 
I was blonde once. It took five hours to strip my hair of its natural colour, with chemicals that are probably illegal now. Halfway through the procedure my hair had turned neon orange, I looked like the man who fell to earth, there was no turning back. Eventually, I materialised from the salon with my bleached blonde mop. Being of an olive complexion with very dark eyebrows it was definitely a look. What can I say …. I was young. As it grew out I often wore a faux-fur, Davy Crockett style hat with a tail…… it was the 80s…… you couldn’t tell where the salt ‘n’ pepper hat finished and my salt ‘n’ pepper hair started.

“Darling, coffee?” my elderly blonde friend asks in her husky voice, reaching for white mugs kept in a cream cupboard, big blue eyes peeping out from beneath her long, stripy-blonde fringe. Perhaps I don’t want to be blonde when I get older, perhaps I just want to be her.

Top tip:go Caribbean in the snow with Lindt dark chocolate with coconut.....Bounty grows up.



Friday 11 January 2013

Spice Girl......


OK……… traditionally this is a frugal time of year. I don’t much like January and I really don’t like February. I just want to stay in, stay warm, stay on the sofa and watch movies. And eat delicious food. However, with money and my jeans now too tight to mention, filling the fridge is not an option and a take away is out of the question. So, imagine my delight when I discovered Legend In His On Lunchtime’s recipe for Vegetable Pakoras with minted yogurt. http://thecookinyourkitchen.blogspot.com/2012/12/tis-season-to-empty-fridge.html
And as luck would have it, for Christmas I was given a whole bunch of spices a friend had brought back from his trip to Kerala.
I followed the instructions and grated a selection of things at the bottom of the fridge……… in my case carrot, cabbage, celeriac and onion….. mixed them with the spices and chickpea flour (also known as Gram flour if you have trouble finding it) and unbelievably they worked! 
So easy and so delicious, I made them three days running……. So much for the post Christmas diet.

Top tip: to combat cold weather, spice it up in the kitchen…….

Thursday 3 January 2013

Brought to book........

I hope you all had a happy Christmas or at least got through it in one piece. I spent most of it on the sofa with Rupert Everett. Having enjoyed his first biography, Red Carpets And Other Banana Skins, I'd requested his second, Vanished Years, from Santa this year. As it was a presi it was perfectly acceptable to read continuously through meals and movies, thus avoiding all opportunities for fighting and fretting. It helped that it was very funny and poignant and most enjoyable.

Having made read Dickens one of my New Year resolutions last year, and having successfully enjoyed Great Expectations, this year I've decided to extend my literary pursuits to George Eliot. No, I've never read him, or her, but when I checked my library....... the shelf of books that circumnavigates my hallway........ I discovered I had copies of Mill On The Floss, Middlemarch and Silas Marner, I'm spoilt for choice it would seem. So it's back to the sofa for 2013......Happy New Year!!

Top tip: festive food goes on sale now....go fill the freezer!!