The ugly shoes of hope

On Friday, I did something I never thought I'd do.

With the Husband, walking back home from lunch (I had another half day, after a 14 hour day a few days before) I stopped off at a running shop. A specialist shop that has always scared me slightly. I walked up to a member of staff and told her that, although I'd never really run before, I was going to do a couch to five k and needed a pair of trainers that would stop me getting injured. She didn't laugh at me. Instead, she carefully measured my feet, brought up a few pairs of trainers, and got me to try them on. I then ran on a treadmill (me!) while she filmed how I ran and picked the best pair for me. I bought them.*

On the next door treadmill, the Husband was doing the same.

Our trainers are now sitting, in their boxes, in the corner of the bedroom.

This is the fourth pair of trainers I have owned in my adult (ish) life. The first, bought for fifth and sixth form PE lessons that were bunked off as often as possible, lasted me a good eight years. After all, I hardly wore them, until I hit a gym phase at 24.

Then I bought myself a new pair. They were chosen as much for being the cheapest and least ugly in the shop, and the fact that they were technically a size too big never bothered me. They did me a few months of the gym, before I met the Husband and found more fun things to do in the evening.

My third pair were bought by a friend for walking in. She found them uncomfortable, and said if they fitted me I could keep them. I kept them for a year or two, although as they're still pretty uncomfortable I tend to work out barefoot at home.

This pair are different. Although they are the third most expensive pair of shoes I own and I resent how ugly they are, at that price, they are comfortable. And I chose to get them. And I'm determined to use them, to start the couch to five k, and possibly even to wear these trainers out, in time.

Now I'm not one of life's runners - when I told my mum about these trainers she was speechless. But I think I can do this. And for the first time in my life, I really, really want to try. I know it'll be hard, and that it'll take time - probably more time than the nine weeks of the programme. But I'm excited, and hopeful. And that ugly pair of shoes in the corner of the bedroom has come to symbolise that excitement and hope.

Tonight, I'm planning to put them on.




*If anyone in Edinburgh wants to do the same, I really, really recommend Footworks in Bruntsfield. They were so helpful, and spent so much time on us!

Making Jansson's temptation even more tempting

Earlier in the year I made Jansson's Temptation - an incredibly simple dish using onion, potatoes, a little cream and anchovies to make something amazing.

Last night, I revisited it, thanks to a serendipitous combination of leftovers in the fridge. Cream, leftover from a dinner party pudding, and chilli anchovies from a salad (and chilli not plain because they were all Waitrose had) joined the onions and potatoes we always keep in.

Using chilli anchovies, rather than normal, really improved the recipe. It's lovely as it is - a sweet yet savoury comfort food - but when you add chilli, the spikes of heat add a different dimension.

The recipe I based it on was the same as last time - a Waitrose one that can be found here. But as their website has been annoying for the past couple of days, and they've changed the link recently so the link that was in my previous blog post didn't work (now fixed), I'll type it out here, with "my" method - how I actually did it (or got the husband to do half of it) in the real world!
It's incredibly simple, and serves 2.

500g potatoes
50g tin of anchovies in oil - try chilli. (it's fine if you've pinched a few anchovies for something else!)
4tbsp double cream
One onion (large, ideally)

Pre heat your oven to 200C.

Peel and slice your onion. Pour the oil from the anchovy tin into a frying pan over a medium heat and fry the onions in it until soft - say five minutes.

Meanwhile peel the potatoes and cut into matchstick sizes. Or do what I do, declare life too short and use a grater or the grater attachement on your food processor. The texture won't be quite as good if you do this, but you won't have just cut 500g of potatoes into matchsticks, so, you know, swings and roundabouts.

When the onions are soft, add the potatoes and fry till soft, stirring every now and then so bits don't burn - this takes 10 or so minutes.

Meanwhile, finely chop your anchovies.

Take it all off the heat, stir through the cream and anchovies, add pepper (but you'll probably find it salty enough) and put it in a gratin dish or similar.

Bung in the oven for half an hour while you have a g&t.

It's ready when the top is brown and almost caramalised - a slightly chewing, sticky top over the gooey loveliness underneath.

I haven't taken a photograph, because frankly the end result doesn't look very good, especially if you only decide to blog it after having the first mouthful. But it tastes lovely!

Mayo success!

The first weekend after we'd got our new, bright and light kitchen to rights, I tried mayonnaise again, following the disasters outlined in this post.

I used my mixer again. And a one pint pudding basin bought at a fab new kitchen shop that's opened near my in-laws' house, which was indeed much easier than a bigger or smaller bowl.

And I also took Pikz' advice (thank you!) in the comments to that blog and added dijon mustard to the yolks at the start. Because I was going to be using half of any successful result for a lemon mayo, I substituted lemon juice for her suggested red wine vinegar.

When I asked my mother-in-law for any tips on mayonnaise, she said she'd only made it once or twice, but dug out her Jane Grigson recipe book.

This recipe included three different methods for fixing curdled mayo, from the extra egg yolk, to mustard if you're out of eggs, to a bit of hot water.

It also included quantities for both large and medium eggs - I always use medium - and suggested 150ml olive oil to 2 medium or one large. And a tsp of Dijon mustard as well as a tsp of lemon juice or wine vinegar.

I substituted half the olive oil for ground nut oil and used this first - no point using the expensive stuff till it looks likely to work.

The second I started whisking the eggs, mustard and vinegar together in the smaller bowl I knew it was likely to work. It gave a much larger quantity which could absorb the oil more easily - and wasn't spread out too much, as it is in a bigger bowl.

I added the oil very slowly indeed - drops moved on to small globs, but I never built up the courage or the coordination for a slow trickle.

But it worked! And took less than five minutes.

I let down just over half of the mayo (4 tbsps) with the juice of two lemons to make a sauce for roast bacon-wrapped rosemary hake and asparagus, which I made on Saturday night for dinner guests.

The remainder (about 3 tbsps) I used on Sunday to accompany poached chicken, boiled spring greens and butternut squash wedges. I chopped a small bunch of chives and two tbsps of capers and stirred it through. And then, after it was all served up, I licked the spoon. It was just too good not to!

Kitchen!

So, finally, pictures of the kitchen.

The backstory, if you've missed it, was that we were planning on ripping out our kitchen and starting again, but then the husband lost his job and we reconsidered, and decided to spend much less on buying new storage baskets, fixing broken cabinets, getting an electrician in to fix certain lights and replace others, and painting the doors, walls and tiles.

We'd done everything bar the painting in the previous few weeks, so, after watching bits of the royal wedding despite ourselves, we got to it with the rest of the long weekend.

We started with the walls with one coat emulsion in 'vanilla', and then did the tiles with special tile paint which only came in three colours - we went for the blue one. Then the units were painted with white gloss paint desired for the purpose, which we can still smell, a week later. The Husband spray painted all the handles black.

We split the painting work over two days - long drying times between coats for the tile and cabinet paints made this the most practical way of doing it. On top of this, there was probably half a day's work scraping out sealant and cleaning down before, and a similar amount putting the sealant back in and attempting to remove paint from where it had splashed after things had dried.

Then the paint needed a couple of days to harden before it could be exposed to moisture/steam, which meant cooking was severely limited for a couple of days more.

Most of the paint was easy enough to work with - the gloss on the cabinets being particularly satisfying. The tile paint, however, was evil - so thick it was impossible not to leave brush strokes, and yet still prone to dribble. The finish looks great from a distance, but if you're painting tiles, I'd suggest only doing it if you absolutely hate the tiles you have, like we did.
The handles look a bit retro but were in too bad a state to be left as they were, and we didn't want to spend the extra money on new ones.

All in all, I'd say we spent about £450 - £150 on paint and brushes, £180 on the electrician, and the rest on the storage baskets. We'd have spent at least six times that on a new kitchen, and I have to say, I'm pretty pleased with the result.

There's one more exciting part of the kitchen project to come, when a new bin arrives in a couple of weeks. However, that's probably too boring to blog about!

A summer work packed lunch

 

A few weeks ago, I stopped posting weekly soup recipes, because I'd stopped making soup for packed lunches at work.

But what have I been eating in the meantime? Now, I'll admit that, having spent more days not working in April than working, thanks to a magical combination of bank holidays and birthday annual leave, I've not had to be quite as organised as usual. And there have been one or two weeks where I've just nipped out to the Co-op near work or even to Pret if I was feeling flush.

However, most of the time it's been salads, based around beans or grains, with lots of veg, and a little bit of cheese, or tuna, to perk it up.

This is one of my favourites - bulgar wheat salad. Very loosely based on tabbouleh. Even more so at the moment, when my new parsley plant is looking too fragile to plunder and I'm not putting any in!

These quantities serve 4, or two people for two days. I'll admit that if we're having something like this I'll boil double quantities of wheat on Sunday, get it cold as quickly as possible, save half, and make up four portions. To me, the veg is ok when chopped for up to two days, the bulgar wheat for four, which is why I do it that way. But follow your nose and your own standards when it comes to how long you think food lasts for!

150g bulgar wheat

Stock cube/powder

Four tomatoes

Half a cucumber

Half an onion diced very finely, or four spring onions, or a large bunch of chives

Juice and zest of a lemon

Tsp mustard

20 or so black olives, pitted and halved

100g of cheese - feta, goats, or halloumi you cook while the wheat is boiling are all lovely (I know this quantity might sound mean, but actually, it's plenty)

Cook the bulgar wheat as per packet instructions, only substituting water with stock made up with the cube or powder.

Cool it down as quickly as you can - I find spooning it out in thin layers in the flattish Tupperware I use for packed lunches helps this.

While it's cooling, dice your veg and divide them, the olives and the lemon zest evenly between the four containers. 

Finely dice or crumble your cheese, and split it evenly between the containers.

In a jam jar or similar, combine lemon juice and mustard. Put the lid on and shake, or mix in a more sedate fashion with a spoon.

Split this between the containers, and use a fork to mix up the ingredients and fluff up the bulgar wheat. 

I keep mine in the fridge at home, and on my desk once I get to work, and have never yet given myself food poisoning!

A simple, special lunchtime salad

I can hardly call this one a recipe - it's more an idea, based on happening to have some rather lovely food in the fridge.

After the asparagus shopping spree I mentioned yesterday, I still had a couple of bunches in the fridge on Bank Holiday Monday.

And so when lunchtime came, I decided to use them in a warm salad at lunchtime. I also had parma ham left from wrapping salmon fillets a few days before. When the Husband went out to the shops for a breakfast baguette, I asked him to pick up goats' cheese as well, and with that, the contents of the fridge, and some leftover baguette, a lunch was born.

Asparagus and hot goats' cheese salad
Ingredients (for two for a main meal)
Bunch or two of asparagus
One head little gem lettuce, or whatever nice lettuce you have lurking in your fridge
Quarter of baguette, split lengthways
100g goats' cheese
4 ish slices of parma ham if you have it in or particularly fancy it, and eat the stuff (very optional!)
Wedge of lemon each

Boil a kettle and warm the grill while you prep the asparagus and spread the goats' cheese on the baguette pieces.
Cook the asparagus however you like to - I put it in boiling water in a covered pan for five minutes off the heat.
Pop your posh cheese on toast under the grill and keep an eye on it as it can turn quickly - I tend to find it takes about five minutes to go melty and slightly brown and lovely.
Wash your lettuce, tear into bite size chunks and put on the bottom of the plate.
Add your drained asparagus when ready, and your goats' cheese on toast and parma ham, if using.
Put a wedge of lemon on the side of the plate and serve!
I don't think this needs a dressing - the cheese and ham are rich enough without the extra oil - so I squeeze lemon juice over instead.

Asparagus and summertime

Asparagus always heralds summer for me, and in the few short weeks where British asparagus is in the shops - delicious, and cheap, for so short a time - I eat it by the bucketload - starters, in salads, as a side vegetable.

I had my first asparagus of the year at my in-laws' at Easter - my mother-in-law grows her own in the back garden, and they served it lightly grilled, with a squeeze of lime. Delicious.

But it was only when I saw it for sale in my local supermarket, and put several bunches in my basket, that it did me my annual favour and reminded me that the time had come to buy my Dad's birthday present. When we were kids, my Mum would always cook him asparagus for the starter of his birthday meal - consumed after my little brother and I had been chased up to bed. I remember hanging over the banisters, as Robert Palmer or Sade played on the hifi, wondering what was going on.

The problem with my most recent shopping basket full of asparagus was that I bought it just after we'd finished painting the kitchen. Having spent 48 hours cooped up in a windowless room with paint fumes, I had no intention of ruining it by making the room all steamy before it was properly dried - but I didn't want to grill the asparagus either, I wanted the clean, fresh taste at first.

I seriously contemplated trying to boil it in the kettle, which had been relocated in the spare room. But instead I settled for putting it in a pan, covering it in boiling water, putting the lid on and leaving it for five minutes. The result was lovely - cooked, but fresh and still with a slight crunch.

I served it very simply - as a starter, with a squeeze of lemon on top, and sprinkling of salt. Delicious.

As for the kitchen? It's done, and we're back in now - I'll post pictures next week when I've got it tidy again! But the weekend covered in paint meant I didn't get time to schedule any blogs in advance - sorry for the silence.