London Street Scenes - 300 years apart

Here is one of my favourite lists:

A London Street Scene

Young Drunkards reeling, Bayliffs dogging,

Old Strumpets plying, Mumpers progging,

Fat Dray-men squabling, Chair-men ambling,

Oyster-Whores fighting, School-Boys scrambling,

Street Porters running, Rascals battling,

Pick-pockets crowding, Coaches rattling,

News bawling, Ballad-wenches singing,

Guns roaring, and the Church-Bells ringing...

By Edward Ward, 1707

I think Oyster-Whores fighting sounds very exciting, and I have a great mental picture of Fat Dray-men squabling.

Some images, like Young Drunkards reeling and Pick-pockets crowding, are still here in London 300 years after that was written, but the rest of the piece would need some updating.

A London Street Scene

Police cars screaming, toddlers shouting,

Old cars rattling, neighbours yelling,

Teenagers blinging, foxes slinking,

Housewives sweeping, postmen flinging,

Litter blowing, buses stopping,

Nail bars preening, shop staff yawning,

Phones singing all damn morning.

By The List Writer, 2007

List season

This time of year – leading up to Christmas – sees me wallowing in lists. There are so many of them to be made.

• A present list – very important. Usually there are two lists – one with presents for G and the children on it, which I keep very secret, and one with presents for other family and friends on it which I leave lying around and then worry about losing.
• A menu plan – even more fun than the present list. This one I can happily start in October and keep amending until Christmas Eve. It involves me spending happy evenings curled up on the sofa with a pile of recipe books beside me and a helpful glass of wine by my side.
• Out of the menu plan will come a shopping list and an order list. I’ll order as much of my Christmas food as possible from the local butcher, Abel & Cole, or other fancy places rather than slog round the supermarket.
• There will also be a list of school things to do – costumes to be made, altered or borrowed for Christmas shows; presents to be made for teachers; cakes to be baked for random fundraising events and cards to be written to best friends.
• I will enjoy drawing up a things to do over the holidays list with G and the children. My first contribution to this list will be a request to go skating somewhere in London.
  
  Bring it all on! With all these lists (I haven’t quite sunk as low as creating a Christmas List of Lists – but I admit it has crossed my mind….) I am loving the seasonal stresses.

Our obsessions

All four of us at the moment have some serious obsessions going on.

• G - the usual swimming. He was up at 6am this morning in great excitement as he had a swimming lesson at Swim For Tri's endless pool in the old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane. He came home this evening with a DVD of his lesson for the rest of us to admire.
• C - the Jiggy McCue books by Michael Lawrence. He was first lured into them by the most excellent title of the first book The Killer Underpants. We've bought C several books in the series now, and as soon as he gets his hands on the next one, he is immersed - barely surfacing to eat. There was much joy today when we found the last 3 he hadn't read, all in the library - that has just saved G & I about £20 at Amazon. He'd read one by bed time.
• O - hama beads and more hama beads. I ordered some more from Bead Merrily this week as our stocks are already running low. She has switched production to decorations for the Christmas tree after a stray comment of mine. The tree will be entirely dressed in hama beads at this rate.

My current obsessions, as ever, are multiple.

• aprons - I have recently made two for me, and last night made a small scale one for O from some very cute fabric that came all the way from Japan. O was charmed and looked so very, very sweet pottering around all day in her apron, that I fear I am just a small step away from making Mother and daughter matching ones.

• nutmeg - I'll put it in anything I can, and am now even basing family meals around recipes that contain nutmeg. The smell is so heady and exhilarating, and I just love the little brown, brain-like appearance of the nutmeg once it has been grated a little.

• posh chocolate and sewing books - really, what's not to like?

Soup season

The last time I made soup for the children, O burst into tears and wailed "You've given us sauce with bits in for tea, Mummy!".
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They're not soup fans, despite me not really believing them and serving up soup fairly regularly. It never works - even when I tempt them with extras like croutons, grated cheese or tiny pasta stars - they are adamant they don't like it.




I really love soup though; as long as it is autumn or winter. I like my soup thick and starchy - not clear and delicate. I'm making loads at the moment - usually half to eat and half to stick in the freezer for when I can't be bothered to cook.

Here are my favourite soups:

• Delia's curried parsnip and apple soup. It comes out a startling bright yellow colour and has the most beautiful sweet and sour flavour.
• Minestrone - if I ever have a savoy cabbage in my veg box I use some of it to make minestrone as I love seeing the beautiful frilly leaves in the soup.
• Corn chowder - thick, creamy and slightly sweet (in a good way).
• Anna's roast vegetable soup.
• Lentil and bacon soup (Pret do a very good version if I ever get too lazy to take in my own)
• Homemade tomato soup - with grated cheese put in the bowl before pouring the soup on top, as they do in America.
• Sweet potato and rosemary soup - my very own invention and one of my favourite ever soups.

Sweet potato & rosemary soup

• 1 red onion
• 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into chunks
• 2 large carrots, peeled and chopped into chunks
• a big handful of fresh rosemary, chopped very finely
• 750ml or more chicken or vegetable stock

Chop the red onion finely and put it into a large saucepan with a good slug of olive oil and the chopped rosemary. Cook very gently for 10 minutes or so until the onion is softened. Add the chunks of carrot and sweet potato and continue to cook for another minute or so before adding the stock.

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Bubble gently for about 20 minutes or until the carrot and sweet potato are soft. Blend, adding more water as necessary because the sweet potato is very thickening. Serve with plain,wholemeal buttered rolls.

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Vegetables

My weekly vegetable box arrived yesterday. Here is what it contained:

• red cabbage
• pointed cabbage
• broccoli
• sweet potatoes
• potatoes
• onions
• carrots
• bananas
• clementines
• apples (tiny and very sweet and crunchy)

Opening the veg box and unpacking everything is one of my favourite parts of the week. I love Abel & Cole for having such a flexible system. Too many bananas? Just temporarily add them to your 'Do Not Include' list for a week or two and any bananas will be replaced with something else. Massively dislike celariac? Put it on the 'Do Not Include' list permanently. You can also order extras in season. At the moment I am getting a bag of cooking apples each week too.

Picking up all that fresh smelling, crunchy looking fruit and veg and wrapping it carefully up to store for the week ahead is a calming thing to do after a long day at work. As I put each thing away I enjoy thinking about what I am going to make with it. Here are my ideas for this week's box:

• Braised red cabbage. Its got to be braised red cabbage, and its got to be the classic Delia Smith recipe . I'll serve it with herby sausages and jacket potatoes.
• Sweet potato, bacon and rosemary soup. A recipe I made up a few years ago and loved so much that I actually wrote it down.
• Banana and white chocolate muffins. There are various recipes including one in the new Nigella Express book. I've been making too many banana milkshakes recently and need to do something different with bananas.
• The broccoli needs to accompany a casserole of some sort. Possibly lamb. Maybe I'll roast the carrots to go with it as well.
• Steamed green cabbage with crispy bacon and a spoonful of creme fraiche stirred in at the end. A ten minute after work supper that is really tasty.
• Apple crumble. Stewed apples. Apple Charlotte. Or maybe, as a special treat for C who is a little obsessed with maple syrup at the moment, pan fried apple slices with maple syrup and vanilla ice cream.
• The clementines will last no more than a couple of days as they are snatched out of the bowl and eaten on the way past or stuffed into school bags or work bags for break times.

Sunday supper - the rules

When you've had a full-on Sunday lunch with the family, you probably want a light, easy Sunday supper for two. But you also want something a little special - that feels like a treat - because tomorrow it is work and school again.

Here are my rules for Sunday supper:

• Start with toast and then find something tasty to go on it. Tonight we had egg mayonnaise and parma ham, but other good toppings are farmhouse pate with gherkins, welsh rabbit, tomatoes and basil, goats cheese, slices of avocado, ham....
• Pour yourself a couple of glasses of something relaxing. Leftover cabernet sauvignon for us tonight.
• Put everything on a pretty tray, find nice plates and dishes and arrange it all so that it looks like you are making an effort.
• Pudding should be cake if you have any. Or leftover crumble from the Sunday lunch.
• Eat in the front room, off your laps, whilst watching Antiques Roadshow and flicking through the weekend papers.

It finishes off your weekend perfectly.

Little, nice things

This morning I thought I could benefit from some more little, nice things in my life. This is what I found:

• I bought myself a bunch of freesias when I went shopping this morning, and put them in my prettiest vase.
  
  

• I also bought a bar of chocolate when I was in the supermarket, and when I got home, before I even started the unpacking, I sat down to eat a piece (or two...) as I drank coffee from my favourite mug.

• I changed everybody's sheets, put on crisp, new pillowcases and smoothed down the duvets exactly as I like them.
• I enjoyed the surreal sight of two police horses walking down our road. Very bizarre - I have no idea what they were doing strolling down a sunny, residential street. The policewomen who were riding were enjoying a good old gossip as well!
  
  

• When the children came home from school they decided they wanted to do some paintings, and I was left with armfuls of bright primary-coloured firework pictures, brightening up my kitchen.

• I went fabric shopping - on Etsy and in IKEA. The IKEA prints at the moment are mostly very large, so I ordered some tiny, sweet, patterned, Japanese fabrics from Etsy to balance things out a bit.
• I cooked mushroom and spinach pilaf for tea and ate it on my lap whilst lounging on the the sofa and watching rubbish tv.

What a great day!

Comfort food

I really hate mashed potato.

This surprises so many people. When I say that it is the food I hate most in the world, most people suddenly feel sorry for me.
"Oh, but mashed potato is the ultimate comfort food!" they will say, "how can you not like it? its so rich and comforting."

The texture just doesn't do it for me. And I am still scarred by my school dinner experiences with luke-warm mashed potato that had black lumps in it - that we were forced to eat with luke warm tinned plum tomatoes tipped over the top! Even writing that makes me shudder.

But there is plenty of classic comfort food that I do love, and I am cooking rather a lot of it now that the clocks have gone back and the central heating has been switched on again. I made this glorious-looking toad in the hole last week, from Nigel Slater's recipe in Real Food. Greedily, the four of us devoured this entire dish at one sitting - the children asked for thirds!

Other favourite autumn and winter comfort foods:

• any kind of risotto
• jacket potatoes, with leeks in a white sauce poured over the top
• cauliflower cheese
• chocolate cake
• any kind of crumble
• lamb curry
• minestrone soup
• porridge

Tonight I made a butternut squash and goats cheese risotto. Comfort food that is also gorgeously, and appropriately bright orange. Here is my recipe.

Butternut squash and goats' cheese risotto

• 1 small butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded and chopped into bite sized chunks
• 1 small onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 small goats' cheese
• 850ml chicken stock (or even better, 100ml white wine plus 750ml stock)
• 200g risotto rice
• generous pinch of thyme
• pinch of black pepper

Pour a slug of olive oil into a large heavy pan and put over a medium heat. Add the onion and cook for a couple of minutes until the onion is starting to soften. Add the chopped squash and give everything a good stir. Cook for a further two minutes until the squash becomes even more vivid and starts to soften around the edges. Tip in the rice, pepper and thyme and stir once again so that the rice is thoroughly coated in the oil.

Add the stock, a little at a time, stirring all the while. Add more stock whenever it looks dry. After about 20 minutes stirring start checking the rice for 'doneness'. It should be chewy but not chalky.

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When the rice is done, remove the pan from the heat, crumble over the goats cheese and give everythig a final stir before serving.

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I haven't photoshopped the picture of the toad at the top - the hens are just laying eggs with bright yellow yolks at the moment!

Photography

A sentence on the Pea Soup blog yesterday really resonated with me. Suse was saying that how after two years of blogging she was starting to "look at things from a photographer's perspective". I think I might be just starting to do this a little too.

My favourite things to photograph:

• flowers
• trees
• blue sky
• food
• fabric
• shadows
• my home

The photography part of blogging is now one of the most enjoyable parts for me. I carry my camera everywhere and am getting less shy about whipping it out of my handbag and taking some photos when I see something funny, beautiful or interesting. I think I am also getting better at composing and taking photos. I have got to the stage now where I want to find out what all those strange settings on the camera's sub-menus are all about.


I am starting to learn some dos and don'ts about photography too:

• you can have too many photographs of geraniums after all
• light is very important
• don't bother getting children to pose for you - you get better pictures when they don't know they are being photographed.
• ask before you photograph a market stall or a shop display.
• there are resources online to make photography more fun and more creative.
  

My favourite online photography resources are:

• flickr - an online photo store where you can display and share your pictures.
• Moo - a print shop where you can make gorgeous stickers and cards from your photos. I have ordered a couple of sticker books from them and am completely in love with their products.
• Photobox - top quality photo printing and next day delivery. Awesome.
  

But the biggest lesson I have learnt from photographing everything I possibly could over the past six months is just how difficult it is to not nag people into looking at your pictures. I am now the online equivalent of one of those tedious people who foists photograph albums full of baby pictures and photos of their building works on you when you go round for dinner.

Here are some I took yesterday - feel free to go and admire yet more on flickr!