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…….

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!!

Ho Ho.....hum

The halls are decked.....with giant, tissue oh-so-on-trend paper balls......

the pies are baked.....

the cards are made....4 years at art college not wasted...... the tree is in.....

the chili jam.... homemade gift of choice....is done.

I've drunk mulled wine, sang carols, done the requisite charitable work, I've stuck cloves in an orange

and been wolf-whistled by a pack of Santas, but still, I'm not feeling it. Nope, nada, nothing, zilch.....the Christmas tree lights are on, but the festive spirit's not home........

Top tip: from Dickens....Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.....

We need to talk about Nigel......

….. Nigel Slater that is. I’ve been watching his show, Friday evenings on BBC1, his Kitchen Diaries. And I’m getting a bit obsessed. Ever since I read in his book: Real Food, that the best thing to do with a cold sausage is to eat it while wondering what to cook, I have been very fond of Nigel. I love his inventive recipies and top tips of what to do with leftovers and odd things uncooked, lurking in the fridge of the fruit bowl. I made his courgettes with pesto and am addicted: ribbons of courgette made with a peeler and tossed with homemade pesto that takes a few minutes to make. And his butternut squash soup where he turns the peel into oily chips, flavoured with rosemary and sea salt, is utterly delicious and eaten daily now. 

I added a lone green chili to one batch and drizzled it with chilli oil, some chopped chorizo to another and chunks of lemony, sauted courgette to another.

I want to eat all the dishes he makes, especially the chocolate and beetroot cake, a slice of which I enjoyed in Teacle & Co. in Hove. I can only watch the show if I’m actually eating otherwise he sends me starving hungy, scurrying to the kitchen for double portions of everything. He made a big pot of the soup and suggested the leftovers be used to make a squash risotto. So far I’ve never had any leftovers……..

Top tip: never watch a cookery show when hungry, that way lies madness.

Putting the freshness back.....

In an effort to improve my lot ……. and my home….. I have embarked on a house-cleaning program. By anyone’s standards, my cleaning abilities are not good and rarely put to the test: the Hoover fights back and my wipe always turns into a smear. When I was more gainfully employed I occasionally gave myself the luxury gift of a cleaner; a random 4 hours now and then to wrangle the dust-bunnies and unleash the Mr. Muscle. I have friends who employ cleaners so I usually sub-let one of theirs.

But now I have neither the money nor the justification for such luxuries. I hate cleaning so much I sometimes just paint over the dirt instead, as I have recently done with my hall because I found some un-used paint under the sink. However, I am not in a position to paint every room right now and so I broke the work-to-do, down into bite size jobs; one a day. Feeling rather pleased having ticked off bathroom window, my home now filled with the sweet scent of polish, I decided to reward myself with a cup of coffee. I used the coffee pot I was given by my now defunct employer, one of those Italian silver ones that screws together and sits on the hob. After awhile I began to wonder why it was taking so long. And what the smell was. Steam was emanating from the pot but no coffee was bubbling up. And something was definitely burning. Then I realised I had loaded it with coffee but forgotten the water. I tried to manoeuvre it from the gas but the black plastic handle fell off having melted. In an effort to stop the pot toppling over I burnt the tips of seven of my ten fingers, then had to wrestle it to the sink with a smouldering tea towel. I unscrewed it wearing oven-mitts and released the coffee grounds, turned to glowing embers. I’d made a mini-brazier. My home is now filled instead with the acrid scent of burnt coffee and plastic.

Top tip: forget the cleaning, go out for a coffee.