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.

NEW YEAR, NEW PHOTO

I hope you enjoyed the end of 2010? We had a few days in Sussex with walks, family, and an incident with a ladleful of flaming brandy. A night in London with friends, drinks, pulled pork, and pizza. A New Year's Eve with chicken tagine, my first experiments with filo pastry, and the realisation that we could see two of Edinburgh's seven sets of fireworks from our sitting room windows.

Last week I talked about waking up on the 1st ready to get out for a walk to welcome in 2011. Instead I read, ate crumpets, watched Back to the Future, and finally got dressed sometime in the afternoon. But we did manage a walk. We walked down a very closed Leith Walk, we talked about how many 1st of Januaries we had spent together and spotted cafes and restaurants we need to eat in this year. Then we headed home to watch cookery programmes and to eat; scotch pies for him, a sausage sandwich for me. And once I had eaten I opened up my new diary and filled in birthdays and wrote that small list of resolutions that I can never resist making. This time though they are smaller goals, things that make me happy, things I have been meaning to learn. I want to sign up for a crochet class, paint my nails more, bake bread, travel. I want 2011 to be a positive year, a year where we do things we love, see friends, visit some new and some favourite places.

And here, for now, one small change. I had been using the old photo for far too long so new year, new photo.

HOMEMADE

I hope I never tire of Christmas. My readiness for it and my expectation of it change slightly each year but I love it. I hope I always will.

It's the build up, the lights, the Christmas specials on TV, the carols being played by the Salvation Army. It's waking up and going downstairs to see Mum hauling a turkey into a roasting dish while singing along to 'I Saw Three Ships' on the radio. It's children telling me what Father Christmas brought for them and showing me their favourite gift so far, a pretend plastic watch that cost 50p, while my sister looks on in agony muttering about rollerblades. It's the crackers with their rubbish jokes, and playing games after dinner...

We got our tree this week and once it was decorated with coloured lights, glass baubles and silver bells I carried on with operation make Christmas presents. I'm not making them all (I'm not that skilled or that organised), there will be bright nail polish and stripy socks for my niece and Lego for my nephew. A certain one year old will be getting a small pull along dachshund (I couldn't resist, after all I want a real one so badly myself). And for the rest? For the rest there are parcels to be wrapped and, finally, and the point of all this, there are jars waiting for brown paper covers and string and labels. There is chutney maturing and dried fruit absorbing Pedro Ximenez. I made chilli jelly last night and there will be last minute cookies and festive granola.

Then there is onion marmalade.



On Sunday I peeled and processed 2kg of onions. I cooked them down and added redcurrant jelly and demerara sugar. I added cider vinegar and balsamic. I raised the heat and it bubbled until I could decant it into jars. Eight of them. Then I ran out of the door to meet seven girls for lunch worried that I smelled like onions. That evening I didn't need much to eat so I opened one of those jars and ate onion marmalade on toast with Gruyere. Four people will be getting a jar of onion marmalade for Christmas, the rest are for us and that makes me very happy indeed.

ONE

In 2004 I spent a fairly miserable year working in London and living in Sussex. I commuted for almost four hours a day and was permanently exhausted and frequently tearful. When the chance came to get back to Edinburgh I jumped at it.

It was three and a half years before London would tempt me again.

In 2004 my niece was four and my nephew had just been born and, in between the commuting and the tears, I managed to see a lot of them.

Then I moved.

Suddenly I was someone who lived a long way away and who they saw a few times a year. I saw more of them in the last couple of years but only a little more, the occasional weekend at Mum's with nine of us for Sunday lunch, Christmas, birthdays. Now, at eleven and seven, my niece is more stylish than I ever was as a child and my nephew is happy as long as he has a rugby ball in his hands.

We're going to Midhurst for Christmas this year and I can't wait, I can't wait for that moment when excited children show up and we unwrap presents and all sit around the table, I can't wait for my nephew to tell me excitedly what Father Christmas brought while he tries not to fall asleep before lunch because he was awake at 4am.

But, the point of all this...

In all the talking and deciding to move we debated pros and cons. Constantly. Fresh air in Edinburgh, good food in London, walking everywhere in Edinburgh, so much to do in London, friends in Edinburgh, friends in London. And the newest smallest member of our family in Edinburgh. We wanted this tiny girl to know us, we didn't want to be the Uncle and Aunt who live far away and who she would greet shyly, each time trying to remember who we were and trying to reconcile our appearance with tales of Uncle Chris and Aunty Gemma.

So we came back. There were a few shy greetings in the first week as she sized us up, tried to work out where we fitted in to her life but now, now she smiles, now she knows us and it makes us very happy. It was her first birthday last week. She practiced with her new walker and played with the other children and, when the time came, we sang Happy Birthday followed by Joyeux Anniversaire as is the custom in this half French family, and we cut the cake.



A proper birthday cake for a first birthday. A lemony sponge cut into a giant 1, lemon buttercream and lots of jelly tots.



I think she liked it.