But this past weekend, on the crowning day of my five workless days, I put together a mushroom and stilton wellington from this Good Food recipe. I’ll let you click the original link, but, as a teaser, I will say that this wellington is comprised of spinach, a single flat field mushroom, and two slices of stilton – all wrapped in all-butter pastry. The non-veg version of this beast would involve some enormous cut of meat. I think I saw a venison suggestion in there somewhere – oh my, Omnivores. Oh my! 

Try to imagine them on a beautiful block of sustainably grown oak, with maybe some flower petals and an air of whimsy. Not out of focus on top of my washing machine. 

When you’re consuming something wrapped in all butter pastry and cheese, there’s really no reason not to pile your plate high with new potatoes soaked in butter, two Yorkshire puddings and some steamed broccoli. Is there. No. There isn’t. GO BIG OR GO HOME, I SAY. 

So I did.

The hardest part of this whole process was figuring out how to get the pastry wrapped around its contents without it falling to pieces. But I will say this: even in the most wrecked example of the four, with puncture wounds and everything, the cheese and other delicious juices stayed pretty much where they should. No huge oven mess. Just a little bit of goop to scrape off with a fork and stuff in your mouth while you wait for everything else to finish cooking. 

While laying almost entirely flat on the sofa and consuming not one but two wellingtons each, we watched Bull Durham on iPlayer and groaned at how our stomachs hurt. Harold told me tonight that while playing his little baseball video game on his phone today, he said aloud, “Show me that weak ass shit, meat” (a la Crash Davis, of course) as the pixelated pitcher did his worst. Having a slowly Americanized British husband is kind of majestic. I hope he mutters that at the team from Croydon when he’s up to bat for the Richmond Dukes this spring. (I know he will.)

Next weekend: vegetarian shepherd’s pie and Betty Blue, categorized by LoveFilm as French erotica. Even better for lines to be muttered at British baseball pitchers, I’m sure.                                            

This is a photo of Brand New Me with my grandma Barbara. We share a birthday, February 15th. She had just turned 60 in this picture. We have turned out to be perilously similar, according to my mother. And if I glare at my mom just right, she feels as though grandma is scolding her. That’s power right there.

I cheekily took three days off work to celebrate my own existence, and Harold did too. (Glad he likes me so much.) We spent my birthday (a Wednesday) pottering around Ealing. He made me an avocado and egg burrito for breakfast before we wound our way up to Ealing Broadway for a thoroughly disappointing lunch at Tuk Cho. After that really great first impression before Christmas, I don’t think we’re going to be going back. Sorry, dudes. (What is with Britain and bitter thai curries? Upsetting.)

Harold bought me a few more horrible and gaudy £4 rings that make me feel like everyone’s crazy aunt who wishes she was on Dynasty. (I like this.)

We then just decamped to the Grove for Blue Moon (me) and Bulleit bourbon (him). I checked my blackberry like a nosy loon. He scowled. Then we had a much more satisfying feast at the New Inn, where I had a Chimay Blue and an enormous plate of penne arrabiatta with just enough garlic bread to make me a proper glutton. It was nice doing the tiniest of birthday pub crawls, just because we’ve really gotten out of the habit. It’s true that that overindulgence does feel better when it’s not something you’re doing every Saturday. What else is there to do in Ealing but amble from pub to pub, I ask you? A lot, we have found out in the last few months thanks to Harold’s puritanical New Year’s resolutions. (Well done, Husband.)

At any rate,

I don’t have any particularly wise twenty seven year old thoughts. I don’t really mind getting older. As my dad says, it’s better to have a birthday than not. (He says it better than that, I swear.)

I’ve had a really great life so far, with pretty outrageous overall luck. Awesome family, a great education, a body that stays pretty healthy no matter what awful things I do it, a cool, hot, smart foreign husband who is kind to animals, nice cats who enjoy the odd cuddle, a good career, and a third decade which has so far been full of surprising adventures. Yes.. yes, this was all very well planned.

And so in parting, and as I kick off the schlep to 28, I offer you this image.

Here I am, a little bit older, looking kind of not so sure about being wedged between my grandfathers.

And then this one too:

Older still, someone I recognise a bit more.

Pale and groping around in the sea.

Happy birthday, Self. You’re doing pretty well.

I just think that, “I would like to be healthier and refocus my life on wellness instead of how much I love red wine and chips with mayonnaise and sitting on my behind after work” is a much more body and friend positive message. (Although, it doesn’t initially sound very fun.)

I did what a massive portion of the population did this month. I got a gym membership, at The Gym Group. It’s possible that this has been open for an age, but I hadn’t laid eyes upon it until a couple of weekends ago, just where Northfields Ave meets Uxbridge Road. The Gym Group is pretty budget – £16.99 a month and pay as you go, hello. The machines aren’t plugged in, there is no pool, no sauna, and you might have a kickboxing class going on right behind you while you run on the treadmill. But I probably didn’t need any of that extra stuff anyway.

I’ve gone a couple of times now, and I’m really trying to make this a big lifestyle change. I grew up as a pretty active kid – horseback riding, playing softball, walking everywhere. But university in the woods gives a lady a pooch. And then a job spent largely at a desk makes that pooch bigger.

Like most people, I have a fantasy about being effortlessly athletic, running marathons like it ain’t no thang. That probably won’t happen. (Horses and crouching behind home plate for years wrecked my youthful knees). But I’m hoping to live the life of a non-slug, and I’m working on getting healthier. This old grey mare ain’t gettin’ any younger.  It would be nice to stay alive long enough to see how this silly thing turns out, right?

In the meantime, I have more energy, and I’m eating better just so I don’t feel like crapola when I go to work out. (Read: no more wine on school nights. And not really on weekend nights either.)

I’ll keep you posted, but I won’t be telling you how much I weigh. Unless it’s in cheese-related units of measurement. I still like cheese.

This is the bare minimum number of bikes that tend to populate our kitchen. A Bianchi, an Identiti fixie and a Brompton. (Come and rob me. I DARE YOU. I HAVE A FAT GINGER BODYGUARD.)

I am hereby designating this a Celebratory House Post.

We got word today that our landlord would like to renew our tenancy at the same rate. This news led me to spring from my seat on the District Line at 8 a.m., grinning widely, and calling Harold. This was no mean psychological feat – everyone likes a seat at rush hour, amiright? But this was too exciting.

I love our little flat. It has exposed brick, pine floorboards, a big windowy kitchen with a farmhouse dining table, our own private patio and a communal, south-facing garden. I can hear my single windchime (yes I am a hippie) from my bed at night, and there is a nice, big flowerbed for me to dig into.

Being able to stay in the same place, in a flat that I am mostly obsessed with, is a huge treat. I went through a phase of moving once a year every year for about… eight years. A lot of these moves were either transatlantic or at least crossed the border into another country, or to another major city. To stay put on an extended lease is strangely exciting. It makes me want to finally hang our art rather than leaving it leaning against the walls in anticipation of another move. It makes me relax into the idea that I can fully plan our garden from this month, and enjoy it into 2013. Basically, it makes me want to send our landlord a big pathetic thank you note from a squirrelly nomad. (That’s me, by the way. The squirrelly nomad.)

So, here’s to another year in our lovely home which is actually someone else’s lovely home.

I look forward to a repeat of this sight, from my 2010 garden planning extravaganza in our last house. Except double the cats, double the fun.

Party on, seed nerds.

I mean, like, 9/365.

Or something.

There’s a reason I refused to go on stage at my dance recital, age five.

I thought that this would turn out to be a serious faff, to be honest. (My plea after the fact was going to be, “but it was all Harold’s ideeea!”) But happily, it wound up being one of the easiest recipes I’ve made lately. I remember, as a kid, I thought that chicken pot pie was the Epitome of comfort food – warm, rich, amazing. And the basic filling of this pie mimics all of those flavours, but without the  bird.

The original recipe that we consulted called for a pumpkin, frozen vegetables and chicken, among other things. We don’t really do frozen vegetables (or chicken), and we’d bought two squash, so it was a nice discovery that I was able to completely improvise my filling with the exception of the guidelines for the roux and the stock. This probably means that anybody can therefore take the template and fill it with whatever happens to be in their own cupboard. (Or whatever strikes your fancy.)

Our pot pie filling was made up of an onion, four garlic cloves, a nice chunk of ginger root, four diced carrots, and some of the meat from the inside of the squash bowls themselves.  You could probably use whatever you wanted, to be honest, and that makes this another one of those good “I need to use this potato/kale/onion/parsnip” recipes. (I tend to buy way too many vegetables and then have to scramble to use them before they go off, so I traffic in these babies.)

Good news: carving the insides out of the squash was pretty easy. After cutting off the tops and making the initial cuts into the squash flesh, you could generally scoop the insides out with a spoon, and use incisions along the inner walls of the squash to make it easier for the spoon the further you go along.

I made this for the two of us.

So, without further ado,

Lazy Girl’s Squash Pot Pie

Step one: carve out the insides of your squash and bake at 375F/190C/gas mark 7 for about twenty minutes. Make sure you keep the meat from the inside of the squash – and some seeds, too, if you want to try growing your own in the spring for squash pot pie galore in

Step two: chop up all the delightful veg you want to fill your pie with.

Step three: melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a pan and add four tablespoons of flour. Or, if you’re like me, forget to add the flour and add your veg filling to the butter first instead. Then add the flour and mix it all together into a roux that does, in fact, look as though it should be stuffed in a squash.

Step four: add 2 cups of vegetable stock and let it all simmer down to a nice, gravy-like thickness.

Step five: pour your filling into the semi-baked squash.

A separate portion of this process is your pie crust. Pie crust is really easy. Just mix 1 cup flour, 3 tbsp butter and about 6 tablespoons of cold water. Roll it up, pop it in the fridge for awhile. Roll it out after it’s chilled for a bit and cut out circles that will fit over the openings of your squash. Set the crust over the top of each pie, and cut a little vent into the top. Lacquer with a beaten egg.

Bake these puppies at 350F/180C/gas mark 4 until the crust turns a golden brown. And looks like something you’d want to eat. This took about twenty five minutes in our case.

I sautéed some brussel sprouts with lemon and parmesan to go along with our pies, which emerged from the oven looking like this:

And it tasted great.

I win.

My camera recognises this cabbage as a flower.

I agree, Camera.

This is the haul that should get us through this week and into next.

Two butternut squash, two acorn squash, a kilo of braeburn apples,  red and white onions, cauliflower, chantenay carrots, celery, the above pictured beastly and bodacious cabbage…

So far, I’m planning another sweet and spicy stew, a cauliflower curry type situation, acorn squash pot pies…

What are you making this week?

Voila:

As with every cheesegasm, the occasion called for some outdoor cheese photography.

Also real cheese.

The cats were particularly into the goat cheese.

The Highland Blue smells like sheep, according to Harold. He meant this in a good way. Welsh sheep. Although I suspect Highland Blue might be from Scottish sheep.

He then made all kinds of somewhat lewd analogies for his feelings towards the Five Mile Town Goats Log. Suffice it to say, this was the favourite. The mega favourite. I might be sleeping on the couch.

He didn’t try the Caerphilly, so jury’s still out. This may be because I pointed out that it’s not vegetarian – and he is a greater purist than I.

The rosemary and sea salt crackers that came with the whole package were the best part, and the green tomato chutney really did the trick. Our last cheesegasm was accompanied by beetroot and horseradish chutney, which was definitely more sweet than bitter. I liked it; Harold was a bit meh. Green tomato may be the way to go in the future.

It’s nice to have Cheddar Deli march out these little taster bags – it gives us a good opportunity to try out different cheeses, chutneys, the works, without over-thinking it.

Hey mom, I’m getting grandma’s eyelids already.

On Wednesday night, we finally got our scrabbly little fingers on the bookshelf that I ordered from John Lewis. The marriage of two extremely pretentious minds meant the marriage of two enormous, extremely pretentious book collections.

Combining wedding money and Christmas money, I am demonstrating to the universe just how boring and practical I have become. This bookshelf has improved my life tenfold. Having spent the last eight months of our existence surrounded by piles and piles of books that just couldn’t make it onto the four measly shelves we already had, I have finally achieved something closer to my feng shui’ed organisational zen place.  IT IS ALL SHELVED. We no longer have five (count ‘em: five) piles of books on top of our dresser. We no longer have the other bookshelf double stacked. Oh my god. Am I really writing this much about a bookshelf. YES I AM. Holy hell! Organisation! WHEEE!

So for today’s 365 project shot, I wanted to show you the new love of my life. Kisso blisso, bookshelf.

It means that the rest of our books can now exist in quiet, be-fairy-lit calm.

So fresh and so cleeeean.

I feel calmer already.

I’m feeling pretty smug about the above, questionably photographed stew (which was incidentally our dinner tonight! Ha! 3/365!) How much would we benefit from having some sweet hot pink or blue serving ware? I know Harold agrees. Particularly about the hot pink. Anyway, I’m feeling pretty smug because this was my finest improvised meal so far. And I made enough for four lunches and one dinner. The dinner version had to also include some cereal bread from our new French bakery, Pauline, on Northfields Ave, and some grated cheddar.  Because it’s tasty and I had spent the day eating bananas.

The stew has a base of garlic, ginger, shallots and mushrooms sauteed in butter with cinnamon, curry and cayenne pepper. Lots of cayenne pepper. Then I added some chopped tomatoes, four carrots, five skin-on potatoes, two parsnips, one leek, and a silly amount of vegetable stock to boil down.

It occurred to me after I had used cube veg stock that I could have used all my vegetable clippings to make my OWN stock. I smell a project on the horizon, wheeheee.

The best bit about this was definitely combination of cinnamon and cayenne pepper – the broth managed to taste simultaneously spicy and sweet. It had actual TASTE DIMENSIONS, guys. And I didn’t rip this off Simon Ritter. (Though maybe a little inspired by Ottolenghi’s two potato vindaloo..)

And I’ll still never understood what possessed a human to remove the skin from a potato. Skin-on potatoes are one of the best things to happen to a potato product. Skin-on mash? Yes. Skin-on chips? Yes. Skin-on boiled potatoes in a stew? Triple win.

My goal is to send the pair of us off to work most mornings with a tupper wared lunch and, on nights like tonight when we are going to spend three (count ‘em THREE) hours building a book shelf, have a couple of tupperwares of pre-made but home-made dinners to dig into. This stew, into which I emptied the contents of my fridge, was really perfect. Good job, Stew.