Porridge and blankets

January 13, 2010

The snow woman is limbo dancing in the garden (her structure undermined in a temporary thaw) and the skiers have returned from the Brockwell Park slopes. Welcome to 2010 and the weird world of weather. For the last two weeks we Londoners, together with the rest of the country have been grappling with the biggest freeze-up for years.

This one is maybe not as punishing as the winter of 1947 when people were using pneumatic drills to dig up frozen parsnips and 20 foot snowdrifts cut off thousands, but it is bad enough to inflict an itchy collection of chilblains upon my 15 year old‚Äö?Ñ?¥s toes. The red and swollen effects have been hastened by her unenthusiasm for sensible (ie uncool) walking boots. I explain (the without judgement style of explaining) that Top Shop pumps are probably not the best option for negociating ankle height slush, grit and skating rink pavements.

Even if the footwear advice is not exactly welcomed at least the suggestion that everyone keeps warm with hot bowls of porridge at breakfast is met with approval; not only comforting but the ideal vehicle for large amounts of dark muscovado sugar or golden syrup. I make it with roughly one cup of oats to three cups of water. Bring the ingredients to the boil in a saucepan and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until creamy. Honey, butter, cream, creme fraiche or chopped dates are other delights to eat with porridge.

The hyacinth bulbs I potted some weeks ago are throwing delicious scent around the room, and this, combined with the wood smoke from the fire gives the house the feeling of a rural oasis…….. I can almost hear the sheep bleating.

Reading in bed at night, swathed in an array of colourful wraps and blankets to keep warm, I’m told I look like an eccentric aunt. How romantic. One of my favourites is a cotton cellular example that I dyed lilac to pep up its hospital look. I’d like to add one of Donna Wilson’s takes on traditional Scottish blankets to the pile. And if I was to introduce some colour to my bedding themes, then Dorma’s new duck egg blue cotton sheets would be perfect.

I’m the first to bang on about the false economy of buying cheap gadgets. But when my iron was lost on one of the shoots a few months ago, as a stop gap I nipped down to the electrical shop and bought the cheapest one I could find. In short, a mistake highlighted when I swished, rather than sweated, through the creases with the new Phillips model that has replaced the bad buy. With the windows steamy, a cup of Earl Grey, and the afternoon play going in the background, I soon got through the stack of pre-washed tea towels to be made up into linen tablecloths, orders for which are flying out of my online shop.

Linen sheets and peppermint creams

December 17, 2009

8.00am: a fairy tale encounter with iced petals and snow flakes when I venture into the garden this morning to prod a blocked drain. A mucky distraction from the business of Christmas shopping which is something that I always intend to get done without getting stressed over, but never quite manage to pull off. It would be wise not read all those Christmas gift guides which swamp the reader with choices and possibilities that make decision making even more problematic. At least they’re not all about solid gold teapots these days, and hey, the Rolser (shopping on wheels vehicle of choice in Olhao) was even in the Eco Gift part of the Observer magazine.

The shop floors of the Nation, though, continue to be choked with over packaged Starbucks gift boxes and pile ‘em high towers of celebrity memoirs. And talking of books, real ones, I have just ordered several copies of the Little Stranger by Sarah Waters . It’s supposed to be a good eerie read – perfect for a snug holiday afternoon.

I know that all the mags are telling us to make our own presents, but it’s not quite as simple as that. You need time to create a handsewn bag for Aunt Olive or a knitted mohair scarf for your nearest and dearest. I know it’s all about the thought but setting yourself the task of homemade gifts for everyone can induce similar palpitating stress to battling through Oxford Street department stores. The way I do it is to do a bit of shop bought and a bit of homemade, and try to give appropriately. I can’t see my 20 year old wowing over a box of peppermint creams but know that if they’re prettily wrapped in tissue, will really please a girl friend or grandparent.

HOME MADE PEPPERMINT CREAMS: 1 egg white 450g icing sugar, juice of half a lemon, 5 or 6 drops of peppermint flavouring, the mere driplet of green colouring (or they’ll look gruesome and lurid). Beat the egg white until fluffy, and add all the other ingredients to make a ball of green paste. Roll out to half an inch thick and cut out shapes. I like mine round, but stars and hearts would be good for christmas too. Decorate with silver balls and leave the creams to dry on greaseproof paper overnight
Christmas biscuits are also a winner, and can be thrown together in half an hour, left to cool and either eaten for tea or wrapped up as a gift. Watch me making a batch on my latest YouTube

I have in mind, a ‘present to myself’ set of Volga linen sheets. But the car needs to be fixed and what sort of parent lets their children drive off in a dodgy vehicle? This business of feeling responsible for your offspring, doesn’t diminish as they get older, quite honestly you feel even more protective towards them as they hurl themselves around the world on gap year travels and hit party nights in drink sodden University cities.

Another way of giving beautiful presents without spending a fortune is to have a rummage around charity shops for someone elses old glass. I set myself a visual style guide: no crystal glass, nothing coloured and always simple in shape. In this way it makes the hunt easier and defines the ‘look’.

Seagulls patterned like Fairisle jumpers swoop over the house in Olhao, where the ‘ room on top’ is emerging from piles of rubble and bricks. I’m not going to post the ‘works in progress’ pictures because they don’t look much fun, only to me. I will wait for a ‘before’ and ‘after’ show. Dare I say it, but it might take less time than we thought because Mr Martinho got off to a roaring start when a violent storm was forecast. It didn’t appear but, because there were more hands on the job in anticipation, the men were able to take down the old roof, and construct the building’s cement platform in just a few days. I like the way they have put all the old tiles to one side for reuse.

I’ll leave you at the end of the year, with a plate of plump aromatic lemons, as typical an element of winter, as the rickety wagons of roasting chestnuts in the twinkly Olhao cobbled streets.

Snowfall

February 9, 2009

Last week a white ‘Narnia’ descended upon London and suspended the daily grind. Snow! The headlines said ”-5C and we’re all going snowwhere”. I pulled on the layers and walked through mounds of fluffy powder. Our road had become a heavenly avenue with snowladen branches bejewelling my steps. That sound snow makes as it packs under your boots! The velvety swish of car tyres on untreated streets!
And instead of fussing about interest rates we found ourselves asking how do you roll a snowman, what have you done with the sledge, can I build an igloo in the garden?

At the park I heard whoops and cheers, as if it were a blazing day at the beach. Monday had been cancelled along with school and all of London’s buses. The entire city surrendered to delight. It’s a scene one barely witnesses in London, one of innocence, of snow in a city that doesn’t do extremes of weather. Families were out in force with young children and dogs. People slithered downhill on anything from professional snowboarding kit to an estate agent’s For Sale board (very apt in the property downturn don’t you think?). A modern day Bruegel had happened before my eyes.

It wasn’t a day for bicycles either. On the subject, this weekend I’m visiting a man in Norfolk, who, according to my friend Fiona, has a shed of secondhand models going for reasonable sums. Exciting. Maybe this time next week I’ll be pitching up at the post office and getting the thighs in trim on my own pair of wheels.

Thankfully the ice didn’t deter the shoots. Stylists, photographers and set builders are a hardy crew: one poor boy spent the morning getting bluer and bluer sawing chipboard amongst the drifts in the back garden, and the heavily laden props’ van negociated the Alpine conditions of Tulse Hill with aplomb. The Earthborn paint gang arrived with beautiful environmentally friendly rich chalky colours. I have my eyes on a soft mint green that would suit the garden shed which is need of a tart up for spring.

Good news. Garden experts predict the freezing weather will encourage an explosion of colour as the blanket of snow has put back the flowering of daffodils, crocuses, and snowdrops. For the past decade, spring flowers have come up early meaning the impact of the traditional spring bloom has been barely noticeable. Particularly pleasing to know, is that garden pests like aphids and white fly which survived the milder winters of the past few years are also expected to have been decimated in greater numbers.

Log fires, thermal leggings, and ginger and lemon tea are keeping me warm, plus the blue and white check blankets I bought over a decade ago from Welsh manufacturer Melin Tregwynt. Lux soap flakes and a quick spin on the wool cycle have maintained their fluffiness. It is also of no little importance, too, that the blankets are of top notch quality.

When fingers are swollen, after throwing snowballs while wearing under-performing woolly gloves, it’s time for tomato soup.

1litre stock ( I use a cube of dried organic vegetable stock if there’s no chicken stock in freezer or fridge)
2x 500g cans tinned tomatoes
l tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 onions
4 cloves garlic
4 teaspoons of dried oregano or
three or four sprigs of fresh and chopped
salt and pepper to taste
cr?®me fraiche to stir in

Peel and chop the onions and garlic and sweat for 10 minutes or so in pan with the olive oil and oregano,
Add the tinned tomatoes, puree ,and stock and simmer gently for 15 minutes,
Pulverise in a mixer or with a hand blender.
Add salt and pepper.
Serves 4-6

Iced gems

January 14, 2009

Just a few lines: I’ve been working on a presentation, tidying up after the teenage occupation over Christmas, and getting organised for a short trip to Olhao. In other words multi-tasking operations are in full swing. Not without rising levels of stress. I get so agitated when the server goes down or I can’t find my black felt tip.

A stint in the garden always clears the head, even if there are piles of dead matter that I didn’t quite get rid off before the big freeze began. Iced sugar plums come to mind as I cut the very last rose buds to put on the table. For the last month I have been delaying, but I must not put off the pruning any longer even for the sight of these pink gems.

It is grim to learn that Waterford Wedgwood has gone into administration – even though it looks as if there is a buyer for the 250 year old company. This isn’t just another casualty of the recession ( the long ailing Woolworths chain was hardly a great blow ) it is the erosion of a three hundred year old Potteries craft tradition. I have a great fondness for white Wedgwood porcelain plates, which not look beautiful but feel pleasing to handle. Let’s hope the new buyers can re-energise this great English name.

In anticipation of some grilled Olhao fishes I think I shall make some smoked salmon on bread. I could live on the combination of smoked salmon (try to use wild) cream cheese and a proper bread like sourdough. What makes it complete though is black pepper and good squeezes of lemon juice. This my family’s default treat for parties, picnics and weekend feasts.

Looking ahead

January 1, 2009

The new year feels like a fresh start as I walk through silvery streets in the early hours to meet daughter number two off the free New Year’s Eve night bus.

The garden is preserved in ice like frozen aspic. And the late rose I snip before breakfast, in thermal socks and clogs, is a frosted powder puff of petals. The earth is hard, but I’m not unhappy the squirrels find it challenging to dig up the tulip bulbs. I will be generous though and put out nuts and seeds for the undeserving beasts.

I don’t compile lists of new year’s resolutions because there are too many elements of my life that could do with fine tuning and better application. I am going to settle for just one: a bicycle. It will keep me fit and get me from A to B in a slow and carbon friendly way.

The bike must be the sit up and beg variety, even though it’s more the maiden aunt going out for a sedate pedal-look, rather than the groovy young thing on fast and smart alloy wheels. I’m going the secondhand route, but if I had the funds, I’d be on a spanking new Pashley Princess, complete with gold lined mudguards, ding-dong bell, leather sprung saddle, skirt guards and a wicker basket.

Dodging the sales crowds, and ten deep queues outside Yves st Laurent, on a trip into town the other day, it seems that Londoners are heeding mayor Boris Johnson’s declaration that it is our patriotic duty to keep shopping throughout the recession. I’m not so sure if it means yet another designer handbag. Even if it’s 75% off, what’s the point when there are already three more clogging up the wardrobe?

I think it’s the small luxuries, that cheer you up in hard times. Indeed, recent sales figures from the world’s big cosmetic companies, L’oreal, Beiersdof and Shiseido, confirm the so-called lipstick effect has returned with consumers increasing their spending on cosmetics even while economising on everything else.

Barry M, No52, lip paint (shocking pink) and a good read are favourite pick-me-ups. I am gripped by Wendy Moore’s Wedlock an intricately researched tale about the terrible marriage made by the Countess of Strathmore. It lives up to the blurb on the jacket ‘how Georgian Britain’s worst husband met his match’ with bloody duels, great hairstyles, abduction, deception and betrayal in every paragraph.

The Maurice Sendak inspired drawing is fabulous in An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton who encourages children and adults to follow their dreams of rocket powered unicorns, and magic watermelon boats rather than mobiles and matching sets of silverware.

There is pear and ginger cake for pudding:

CAKE
125g softened butter
125g caster sugar
125g self raising flour
2 large eggs
4 tbsps ginger syrup
4 knobs preserved ginger, chopped
9-16 inch cake tin

SYRUP
90g butter
90g sugar
2 tbsps ginger syrup
4 large pears
juice 1 lemon

1 Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the syrup and sugar. Beat until creamy and a pale toffee colour. Pour into the cake tin lined with grease proof paper.

2 Peel, core and slice the pears, turning them in the lemon juice. Arrange the slices around the base of the tin .

3 Pour all of the cake ingredients, except the ginger, into a mixer and whizz until smooth. Add the chopped ginger and spread the mixture over the pear slices.

4 Bake at 190C for 45 minutes (approximate, as this will depend upon your oven). If the top browns reduce the heat. A skewer plunged into the middle will emerge clean if the sponge is ready.

Remove from the heat and cool on a rack. Serve with lashings of cream , creme fraiche, or ice cream.

Simple details

December 18, 2008

It’s a week before the big day and there’s masses to do. I’m metaphorically chasing my tail. What a production it is: travel plans, the lemon and sage stuffing my dad likes, last minute shopping, and so on. But I treasure my Blue Peter moments, making a festive herb wreath , and painting simple designs for cards. Even though it requires time and effort, it’s a kind of Crafty stand off with all that is crass and commercial about christmas.

These are some of my favourite elements for a simple christmas: a blazing log fire; an aromatic Norwegian spruce tree, homemade heart or star shaped biscuits; white tissue, brown paper, and garden twine for wrapping presents; homemade cards with potato cuts or watercolours; as many flickering candles as I have holders for, plus jam jars for tea lights; bowls of hyacinths, amaryllis or white narcissi, natural scent and colour which lasts for ages; mounds of clementines,orbs of orange that taste as good as they look; and ice cold Spanish cava (Sainsbury’s vintage is on special offer) to kick start christmas morning.

The sweet taste of oranges

December 10, 2008

Typing in six layers, including a substantial wool coat, isn’t a peach as sudden movements are restricted (leaping to stop the dog swiping my chocolate biscuit, for example ) but it’s good to feel so wrapped up and cossetted. I suppose I’m being frightfully eco and saving on heating bills by being my own living radiator. But we have to go a lot further in this hot-bath-and-shower-addicted household to make a decent dent in costs. I swoon with motherly pride at the 17 seventeen year old’s top notes, soaring upwards from the shower, but accompanied by fifteen minutes of steaming and pelting water sounds makes it a pricey performance. I’m wondering where to find an automatic shower time-out like the ones in the gym, where just as you start to feel properly soaked, it cuts out. Curmudgeonly? I hope it’s not some sort of lingering vibe from the grumpy old man persona that comedian Jack Dee plays in Lead Balloon, the series filmed in our house last summer.

Meanwhile, I’m making up the beds with all the blankets I can lay my hands on including the special no-dog-and-cat-allowed velvet ribbon- edged one. This reminds me that adding a trim to something like a plain tea towel or cushion cover is a simple way to customise a Christmas present. And on this subject, my head is spinning. You’d think that being a stylist and professional shopper, I would be resistant to the frisson of panic induced by the beguiling and glossy gift lists in the magazines. Well, I’m not.
I am pleased though with my more humble DIY Christmas hamper idea: small wooden crates, which clementines come in, lined with tissue and filled with goodies like homemade membrillo; a bar of Green and Black’s chocolate; a packet of frilly white parrot tulip bulbs; or a good read, perhaps Francois Sagan’s classic coming of age Bonjour,Tristesse, for one of the teenagers, or Zoe Heller’s, The Believers. I shan’t forget some gorgeous Christmas delicious scents too, like the intoxicating sweetness of a pot of paperwhite narcissi, or for complete indulgence, a tuberose candle from Diptyque.

AROMATIC ORANGES
Oranges remind me of Christmas in Andalucia: the bulging nets of ‘navelinas’ (they’re the ones without pips) sold at the roadside on the way out of Seville, and the sweet heady blossomed air floating in the half-opened car window as we swept by neat sunlit orange groves. I learned that a tree can fruit and flower at the same time, and that an unwaxed orange is so much more appealing than the artificially shined and waxed ones in Tesco. I also learned how to carefully slice the peel off with a perfectly sharp little knife, cut the orange into wafer thin discs, and chill in the fridge with a little lemon juice, a tablespoon or two of cointreau and a few fresh mint leaves.

At Christmas lunch and the meals to come we continue to enjoy the clean fresh taste of sliced oranges, against the stodge factor of the pudding and mince pies.

Frost and hot pies

December 1, 2008

An icing sugar layer of frost on the last roses looks fairy-like but, bother, the plunge in temperatures has sent the boiler into decline. A great unbeliever in the general obsession with insuring everything, I have to say that boiler insurance is probably the most worthwhile considering the machine has conked out at least 10 times, just as a shoot with mothers and babies or a frail relative arrives.

It’s a relief then to sign the paper detailing the extremely expensive new part, knowing that because it’s covered we’re not going to be on soup rations. I can’t see the point though, of insuring every small appliance like an iron, or a kettle: sometimes you have to take the risk of things failing. It’s a question of working out what you can live without. I know I’d rather go around in creased attire than live without hot water.

WINTER GREENS

It’s time for some festive greenery, and I’ve been stocking up on white hyacinth bulbs, bedded down with moss from a friend’s lawn- she’s delighted I’m digging it up as she’s one of those picky gardeners who fret if the grass doesn’t look like the Centre Court at Wimbledon.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

What’s even more weird about the weird economic situation is that suddenly we’re being encouraged to spend, and knockdown offers for cameras, bicycles, and computers are plastered across the newspapers and the net. With three acquisitive teenagers breathing down my neck, I’m not sure I approve, but we’ve all got to do our bit to keep the economy moving. I’m aiming to find presents from young designers and craftsmen, like Katrin Moye’s Fifties-style jugs inspired by her dad’s blue and white striped shirt.

THE HOME FIRE IS BURNING

The logs were dumped in two vast cubic metre sacks in the middle of the garden path. It was urgent to clear the way for the day’s booking, but the only strong arms around to wheelbarrow 40 loads were my rather puny ones. It was quite fun, actually, like being a Tulse hill version of Laura from The Little House on the Prairie, as I stacked a vast pile outside the back door. No need to go off to the gym now.

MINCE PIES

l’ve made a batch of mince pies. They’re extremely useful to feed up visiting children and adults. I make sweet pastry and use my friend Emma’s mincemeat but when it’s all used up, make do with ready made pastry and mincemeat in jars from Waitrose, which is rather good.