ENOUGH

We made this soup on Sunday.

We made it again on Wednesday.

That's the definition of a keeper, right?

It has a little of everything, so little that I wondered whether it would amount to enough, the 35g of pearl barley looked particularly paltry. Yet somehow it all just comes together and becomes enough. Enough to have broth, vegetables and barley in each mouthful. Enough to just need a little bread and cheese on the side. Enough to feel sated and warmed after a grey February day.

Vegetable and Pearl Barley Soup from Canteen by Cass Titcombe, Dominic Lake and Patrick Clayton-Malone
Serves 4 (or 2-3 as a main course with bread and cheese)

1 medium onion
100g celery, leaves reserved
100g swede
100g carrots
100g leeks
25ml olive oil
1 garlic cloves, chopped
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
1 litre vegetable stock (we used chicken)
35g pearl barley
handful of shredded savoy cabbage
handful of fresh curly or flat-lead parsley, stalks discarded
salt and black pepper

Peel or trim the vegetables and cut them into roughly 1cm dice. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan and sweat the onion, celery stalks, swede, carrots and leeks for about 15 minutes without letting them brown. Add the garlic and thyme and cook for a further 5 minutes. Add the stock and salt to taste, stir and bring to the boil to cook for 10 minutes. Stir in the pearl barley and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the shredded cabbage, celery and parsley leaves. Bring back to the boil and simmer for a further 5 minutes. Season with lots of black pepper and serve hot.

LATELY

The last few weeks knocked me out. Eating a little too much, drinking a little too much, a sore throat and then a cold. It made me a little quieter and a little more tired. It also made me spend 3 days curled up on the sofa with a book, this book, and now this book. There have been lots of vegetables, mainly root vegetables, it is still February after all. Sigh. There has been soup, chicken poached with lentils, mince cooked with grated roots, vegetarian haggis (sorry Scotland) with mashed swede, celeriac and potato. There have been salads of squash, beetroot, wild rice and quinoa. On Saturday there was leftover squash with tiny pieces of fried chorizo. This all feels right for now. Hearty but healthy.

But it feels like there is some light on the horizon. At 5pm, when I leave work, it is no longer pitch black. It may still have snowed this week and last week we had a day that included rainbows, sun, hail, thunder, rain, sleet and snow but that tiny bit of light is a sign that I can start to think about Spring and Summer.

And, in that vein, I've signed up to do the Moonwalk. For the third time. Last time I felt okay afterwards so fingers crossed that this year we'll have a dry night and another beautiful 3am sunrise. Now I just need to decide how to decorate the bra, I feel like I may have peaked too soon with 2009's lovely felt watermelons with shiny black beads for seeds.

Then, a week after the Moonwalk, when my leg muscles have recovered, we will be boarding a plane (actually three planes) to go to Seattle, Portland and New York. I'm excited. Very excited. I'll probably be boring people with just how excited I am for the next four months. Sorry. I'll try to keep it to a minimum round here but feel free to start bombarding me with suggestions.

No recipe today, again, although I do recommend frying a little spicy chorizo and stirring it through some roasted squash. Instead here are just a few things for now, for these days of looking forward to Spring.

Great House by Nicole Krauss. I loved The History of Love.

Cakes

Moccasins

Zebra by Beach House. It gets stuck in my head every time I hear it.

Tree blossom, a first glimpse of early pink flowers on an otherwise grey day.

FEEDING FRIENDS

Sometimes I leave writing a post a little too long and the words I thought of, the words in my head seem to get stuck. I know what I wanted to say but getting it out becomes... tricky. It's that moment when you see someone you recognise but their name hides at the back of your mind, the times when you're in the supermarket and know there is something else, something you really need but you go up and down every aisle mentally going through the contents of your cupboards and... no, still no memory of what that elusive thing could be, it's that song, you know the one, it has that bit in it, the bit that always gets stuck in your head, no I can't remember the name but you know it...

All of this to say that I wanted there to be preamble to this, a discussion of the different ways people prepare for having friends over for food, how far ahead you issue invitations, how many courses you prepare, how long you spend in the kitchen.

And the point of the lost preamble that I now realise was probably superfluous was just this. I love feeding my friends. I love to cook food that I know people will like. I love to sit at the table and eat and chat until late at night or, more often, the early hours of the morning but for me that means inviting people over, sometimes in advance, sometimes that day. It means planning a meal so that I can drink a glass of wine and chat before we sit down. It means that starters are more usually nibbles. It means a big pot on the table with instructions to all to help themselves.

Last Saturday it meant inviting Catherine over on a whim, it meant gin and tonic, it meant Nigella's moroccan roast lamb marinaded in ras-el-hanout, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil from Forever Summer, it meant green couscous from Plenty.

FRIDAY

Just a few things that I've been liking lately...

My pinterest, do you have one?

Trembling Bells who we're going to see in Glasgow tonight.

The Long Song by Andrea Levy.

Uniqlo's boyfriend fit chinos.

Before Sunrise, I haven't seen it for years and I want to.

Little knotted earrings.

Candles that smell of mint tea and pencil shavings.

Reese's Pieces eggs, they aren't sold in the UK, I want to try them.

The memory of a litre of jellified chicken stock leftover from our poached chicken. We heated it up, added some cold shredded chicken and poured in 200g of tiny alphabet pasta to cook in the stock for four minutes. A soft soothing tea perfect for a January Monday.

SUNDAY

On Sunday we went for a walk. We grabbed the chance to be outside while the sky was blue. It was still cold and still, always, windy but it was light and after the last few months any bright days make me very happy. We walked to Holyrood Park and followed Queen's Drive up round the side of Salisbury Crags, down the steep hill to Duddingston Village and a small restorative half. Then back up the steps and up the hill to continue on our way, past the loch where the gulls were battling against the waves to stay in place as they bobbed on the water, and then down and home. Home to finally make a recipe that has been marked since the day I bought 'Kitchen'. Home to poach a chicken in water with wine, carrots, leeks, celery and herbs, to cook rice, to share a bottle of red wine, to sit at the table with the candles lit and finish the weekend.

FOUR TODAY

If blogs got birthday presents I would ask for anything from Herriott Grace but instead I'll just blow out some imaginary candles and be quietly amazed that this little space has been mine for four whole years.

AT HOME

We were impatient to find this place.

We knew what we wanted. Space for all the books and records, a secure stairway, a kitchen where we could eat. But it just didn't seem to be out there. We looked every day, multiple times a day, and when this flat popped up on gumtree, and when it looked like the flat we had been imagining we tried to not pin all of our hopes on it, we tried not to jinx it.

We got the flat, you know that part, and it is, happily and clearly, the best of all our flats. We're on number seven. There are niggles, there always are, those jaggy nails in the floorboards that just keep catching our socks no matter how many times Chris hammers them back into place, the odd draughty spot in the wall by the kitchen table, the sink in its own little room off the kitchen. But we knew what we wanted to achieve with this flat, something we had missed in London, the time to make dinner and a space where we could sit and eat at a table together. There are nights when we just want to curl up on the sofa but now it is a choice and mostly we are at the table, we chat, we listen to the radio, we missed this.

Last night I halved a butternut squash, scooped out the seeds, and roasted it with some butter, garlic, salt and pepper. When it was soft I scooped out the flesh and mashed it in a bowl with some fried bacon, gruyere and spring onion. I dolloped the mixture back into the squash shells and baked them for another 15 minutes. We ate them with baby spinach and listened to Radcliffe and Maconie on BBC Radio 2.



This place feels like home.