SIX

I couldn't let this day go past without a post. It's six years since I started this blog. Six years which have included two big moves, a few new jobs, travel to Paris, Santorini, Chicago, Toronto, Seattle, New York (and New York, and New York, and New York) and more. There have been snow days and beach days, birthdays, and of course, best of all, our wedding day.

For the last two Sundays I've made a list. Partly a shopping list; fruit, milk, things for our sandwiches during the week, and partly what we'll be making for dinner. Trying to plan up to Wednesday, trying to avoid the daily what's in the fridge, what do we want, falling back on the same mix of meals. Last week that meant trying Nigella's orzo with peas and pancetta on Monday and remembering to make double rice with our curry on Tuesday so that we could have fried rice for dinner on Wednesday. If there's one food related habit I want to stick this year then this is it. Such a small thing to plan for a few days, such a relief to go to work, come home and know that there is a plan.

I had planned to make lamb shanks tonight. Planned to settle them down with carrots and parsnips in the oven. Planned to sauté some greens, pour some wine, sit down with candles at the table for a comforting meal fit for a day that started with snow (it hasn't stuck but there should be more to come). I had thought about baking some of the cookies that have been living in the freezer since Christmas Eve, or maybe the sherry cake that Jess wrote about at the end of November. We were going to sit up trying to catch The Golden Globes, or at least some of the red carpet. We fell at the first hurdle. We should have gone to the butcher yesterday, should have known better than to expect Tesco to have the lamb we needed. We stood in the aisles trying to come up with alternatives, they all felt like a poor second-prize to the meal we wanted. The bolognese in the freezer, the cauliflower curry we eat almost weekly, sausage and mash... We decided to have a complete rethink, we decided on homemade pizza. A tomato sauce with garlic and thyme, mozzarella, shredded brussels sprouts, pancetta. I'm drinking a Campari and soda while the dough rests, Chris is having a gin and tonic while he organises music on the laptop, I'm trying to decide whether to bake or whether we'll have some of the brown bread ice-cream leftover from Christmas. Maybe we'll just have a cup of tea, dig into the party sized bag of pretzel m&ms that Mum bought us back from the States in October, and curl up to watch the red carpet.

Here's to six and here's to you, thank you for following along. 

19TH DECEMBER

Tonight, my book group is coming over for festive drinks and dinner before we talk about our December book so I'm heading home to roll puff pastry, melt chocolate and pour prosecco cocktails. I'm hoping to have a bit of pre-Christmas baking to share before the end of the week but until then...

CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE: FOR KIDS

Clockwise from top left: a treehouse for them to decorate themselves, a stacking dog puzzle, crayon rocks for little fingers, a chocolate Father Christmas, a kit for a kid obsessed with bugs, a woodpecker call, building blocks (that adults will love too), the prettiest tutu, chocolate coins for their stocking, little fox slippers, and a Mr Benn DVD to introduce them to one of your childhood favourites.

CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE: FOR FOOD LOVERS

Clockwise from top left: a mango wood bread board, a new bread knife, and some London honeycomb for the breakfast table, a small jug and glasses (and, perhaps, a bottle of red wine to go with), a book and gift card for a favourite restaurant, glass containers for the fridge because they would love to get rid of the plastic, 'Canal House Cooks Every Day', a voucher for a butchery class, a small horn salt bowl and a pot of fleur de sel, a linen tea towel (because sometimes the simple things are the most loved), a little something from Ottolenghi, a candle that smells of Moroccan mint tea, a classic mixing bowl, and a bundt tin for cakes that look impressive but take no effort at all.

NIGEL'S CHRISTMAS CAKE

Have you made your Christmas cake yet?

Do you make a Christmas cake?

Do you even like Christmas cake?

I didn't. I would pick off the marzipan and the icing, leaving the slice of cake for someone else to pick at (usually my sister who wasn't bothered about the icing, quite handy really). But at some point, it was 2005 or 2006, when we were staying in Edinburgh for the year, heading over to Chris's parents' house for the day, I decided to make the cake from The Kitchen Diaries. When Nigel Slater writes about cooking for Christmas I immediately want to hang fairy lights, curl up and give myself over to the season. His new book has the same effect, the December chapter calling out to me, cementing its position as a book to be given December residency on the worktop. Two Nigels, Nigella, Delia, Sarah, and a few Christmas specials to keep them company. In 2006, or was it 2005, the cake was baked and fed with brandy for a few weeks, marzipanned, and covered with rough snowy icing. I bought holly shaped candles and took (no, lugged, it may only be 20cm but it is H.E.A.V.Y) the cake as my Christmas offering.

The next year I was in Sussex with Nigel's cake and Nigella's chocolate Christmas cake, and, every year since I have taken that same cake, Nigel's that is, loaded with dried figs, apricots, prunes, cranberries, raisins, sultanas, currants, candied peel, glacé cherries, and hazelnuts, to Sussex. To be sliced into at some point, usually on Boxing Day, usually after lunch when we have all eaten turkey sandwiches with bread sauce, cranberry sauce, and stuffing, usually with a cup of tea before flopping onto a sofa to watch a film (or four, as on one memorable Boxing Day where a morning walk was followed by an afternoon and evening, just me and my parents, each of us lying on a sofa, watching film after film, only stirring to make cups of tea or turkey sandwiches, occasionally finding the energy to dip into a tin of Roses).

We're staying in Edinburgh this Christmas and I'm heading to Sussex for a few days the week before. I made the cake last weekend, it's sitting wrapped in baking parchment and foil, ready to be fed with calvados. I'll leave it with Mum but I think I'll make an extra mini cake just for us.

If you haven't made your Christmas cake yet can I suggest Nigel's? Over the years the page has been splashed with brandy, had ticks placed against ingredients, been smeared with sugary, buttery fingers. But isn't that a sign of a truly great recipe?

CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE: FOR HER

Clockwise from top left: the memoir of a remarkable woman, a dark green suede pouch, tiny wishbone earrings, softly coloured flannel pyjamas, the salted caramels that she loves, an arrow ring, something to keep on her bedside table, an oversized scarf and new mittens, a plaited cuff, a treatment with her favourite products, pistachio nails and red lips, an agate slice for a coaster, decoration, or just because.

SWEET POTATO POUND CAKE

A few years ago (actually I just looked it up it was over four years ago, when we had only been in London for a couple of months and we were getting use to the flat we had rented in Stoke Newington - it feels simultaneously like way less than four years ago and like a lifetime ago) I found this recipe and we proceeded to make it regularly for a couple of months before it was replaced with some other weeknight staple. Maybe this, or this. I really don't remember. Baked sweet potatoes were forgotten for a while, consigned to the drawer marked 'stuff we used to make for dinner' along with pasta and pesto.

But they recently made a reappearance; baked, split, filled with feta, olive oil, spring onions, and sumac. They have gone right back to being an easy fallback; all of the ingredients available at the tiny terrible supermarket across the road, nothing requiring forward planning, or really any thought at all. Something to eat with mounds of green salad dressed with a tiny bit of olive oil and some sea salt. Easy, reliable, delicious.

On Friday, when Chris was heading out to a friend's to eat hot dogs and drink beers with seven other guys and I had dithered about whether to buy a steak, or fish and chips, or a curry, or make an omelette, before realising that I just couldn't be bothered, I ran across the road, picked up sweet potatoes and feta. Decision made and done. But, when I put those potatoes on the baking sheet (always remember the baking sheet, and something to cover the baking sheet, caramelised sweet potato goo is messy and surprisingly resilient stuff) I decided to bake the whole bag, eat one or two and use the rest to finally make the sweet potato pound cake that I pinned this time last year and that I have been meaning to make since Molly first posted it  over three years ago.

It took me until Monday to actually start baking. On Saturday, after a lunch of croque madame and fries in Leith, we jumped on a  bus into town to meet friends who were up from London. A quick drink turned into we should eat, turned into noodles, turned into one last drink, turned into closing time, turned into a painful Sunday morning leading up to a three year old's birthday party, turned into a pretty pathetic Sunday night (albeit one with a very good soup). Baking was not on the cards. So, on Monday, after yoga, I got home turned the oven on and finally started.

I didn't make the glaze (partly because I didn't have the buttermilk, partly because, with my new habit of sending us to work most days with a slice of cake, I thought that extra hit of butter and sugar may be best avoided) so just left the cake to cool on the rack until the next morning. It's a good one, moist with a pleasurable heft and a hint of spice from the nutmeg. I'll try not to wait so long to make it again.