Category: Side Dishes and Snacks

let’s propose a toast to the thing that hurts the most

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I’d already idly bitten into it when I thought I’d better photograph it because who knows when I’d next be making actual food. If you’re wondering about the bite mark. 

In late June 2012, twitter user Horse_ebooks tweeted the following: “Everything happens so much”. Well. Currently everything is indeed happening so much – so so much! – and as such one’s thoughts turn to this tweet. By which I mean, there’s a lot going on right now in my life that needs to be processed and taken stock of and other administrative-like task words. During this time I’ve been far too busy to cook for myself, which is not something I’m particularly happy about, but such is life. I mean, I’m eating, I’m just not cooking. Till I get my act together, what else can I do but blog about what I’ve actually made myself lately? So…here’s some cinnamon and sugar on toast.

This is such a stupidly simple non-recipe that it seems almost embarrassing when written down, except I’m not embarrassed at all because it tastes so wondrous. Also I am she who ebulliently blogged about marmite and crisp sandwiches, so whatever.

cinnamon sugar toast

lots of the following: 
bread
white sugar
cinnamon
butter

Toast the bread. Mix a couple of tablespoons of sugar and a teaspoon or two of cinnamon together in a small bowl. Butter the toast wayyyy thoroughly. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the top. Also thoroughly. Eat in bed. 

food in bed: excellent life choice

To me, cinnamon is the flavour that most evokes the feeling of a warm hug. I used to eat cinnamon sugar on toast all the time as a child (and I turned out okay?) but I was recently reminded of its existence and suddenly it was the only foodstuff upon this earth that I wanted to consume. My nostalgic taste-memories did not exaggerate at me – this is such a wonderful thing to eat. The softly crunchy bread full of calming carbohydrates, the lashings of salty butter, the doughnut vibes and comforting scent of the cinnamon sugar. It’s simple, it’s perfect, it costs roughly nothing.

Well. If you were outraged at me blogging about sugar on toast, wait till you finish this sentence and get onto the next paragraph.

Because I’m about to talk about McDonalds. But, you cannot even make try to me feel bad or selling out-y about mentioning them on this blog, because frankly I don’t care, I find McDonalds food to be delightful and if you’re above eating it for no other reason than you’re above eating it then that’s super boring. I mean, truth be told, I prefer Burger King (the words “ride or die” are usually used by me in relation to it.) However, I was sent some vouchers by a lovely PR company so I could try the new Create Your Taste range at McDonalds and if there’s one thing I love, it’s being sent things by PR companies. It’s ludicrously good for the ego and it gets me stuff. Recently, not hungover but definitely physically cognisant of the previous nights’ events; I found myself in the McDonalds by the basin in Newtown. How Create Your Taste works is very simple – there are screens available and you just pick from what feels like thousands of different options to create the hamburger of your dreams.

It’s completely simple and it’s weirdly fun scrolling through the options and being like “that one!” “that one” and feeling maniacally powerful. Once you’ve submitted the final burger you want and decided whether you want to turn it into a combo with fries and a drink (the answer to that: obviously you do) they then make it for you on the spot and there you have it, your own customised burger. Which is all very well and good, but like, why should I go to this trouble? I could just get a cheeseburger and some chicken nuggets at 3am and stuff the former with the latter and be on my merry way.

delicious, juicy capitalism 

Except these burgers are SO amazingly good. I got way too overexcited at the options and combined a brioche bun and angus burger with fried mushrooms, swiss cheese, aioli, guacamole, lettuce, and grilled onion. It still tasted incredible. All the ingredients taste aggressively good quality and the sweetness of the brioche was charming. I got it to take away and ate it in bed while emotionally rewatching the final episode of The OC, and all was well.

And so that’s what I’ve made for myself recently. Sorry-not-sorry that it’s just toast and McDonalds. Because from all of this, we can conclude that whatever it is you have going on in life, carbohydrates eaten in bed are really helpful and excellent and good. And you probably are, too.
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title via: Faith No More’s Last Cup of Sorrow, a song worth wrenching myself away from listening to Epic on repeat for. 
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music lately: 

I’m really into choreography tutorial videos on youtube right now and there’s this one incredible routine to Beyonce’s incredible song 7/11 that is soooo great. So I’ve heard this song a ton lately, and yet: still sounds fresh. 

That Girl, by Maxi Priest and Shaggy – I made a spotify playlist of songs I was listening to around the year 1996 and maaaaan they hold up well. This one is smooth like a freshly shaven leg. 

Imogen Heap, Hide and Seek. It’s just…such a song.   
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next time: I promise I’ll literally cook. Promise! 

eight years later you won me over

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you say potato, I say potato, you say this is confusing without vocal cues for context

Historically speaking, more than a few auspicious things have happened on October 14: in 1964 Martin Luther King Jr received the Nobel Peace Prize; the first gay rights march was held in Washington DC in ’79; Katherine Mansfield, Usher, Ben Whishaw and the All Saints’ Shaznay all were born, and in 2007, I started this blog. I mean. Wow. I may not be on the Wikipedia page for “On This Day In History Yet”, but I stand by my Wow.

I went back and read through some blog posts from that time eight years ago and was struck by two things: firstly, I was vigorously earnest. In a way that I’m going to insist upon thinking of as endearing, for self-care purposes. Secondly, I’m kind of impressed at how hard I threw myself into this blog. In October 2007 alone I wrote 22 posts. That’s almost as many as I’ve written this entire damn year. And I was so adventurous – every single post is all like, “Well, I got home from uni so I thought I’d make three pavlovas for my flatmates” or “just marinating two kilos of pork” or “I made this steamed pudding and this loaf of bread and this tray of brownies for while we caught up on Outrageous Fortune which is basically like studying for uni since the title is a Shakespeare quote, zing!”

But here I am, many addresses, story arcs, jobs, sub-plots, identities, hair colours, recipes and one cookbook later. And this blog is still one of the most important things in my life, and it’s still going. I think that’s impressive, yeah? Much as I feel vaguely cringey occasionally looking back at my old blog posts, I mean, it’s not like I’m that amazing now at being not-cringey. If anything, it wouldn’t hurt to try and harness that fresh-faced 2007-level of energy.

But, today is not that day. Earlier this week I thought it would be cool to make myself an enormous birthday cake to be all “yay hungryandfrozen!” but instead I went to work and then went out dancing and then slept for most of the next day in an embarrassingly unproductive off-brand manner and suddenly it was several days later, so instead all you’re getting is my introspective introspection and this potato salad.

Fortunately, it’s an incredible potato salad.

For all that Nigella gets framed as someone who is wantonly extravagant (and frankly I would be too if I had her millions) if you dig around she has so many recipes that are extremely accessible to the average living-paycheck-to-paycheck human. Which is why I was able to throw myself into her cookbooks as a ludicrously broke student many years ago – although admittedly it’s because I would often buy, say, pomegranates or dried porcini while sticking bits of cardboard in the bottom of my shoes to block the holes in the soles and tying the broken shoelaces together instead of buying more – and in hindsight, I frankly don’t know why on earth buying new shoelaces seemed like such a personal sacrifice but I guess it explains something about who I am as a person.

Within her excellent and fairly underrated book Forever Summer, I found a recipe that perfectly straddled my particular needs on a particular day: cheap enough to make on Payday Eve, and fulfilling my bid to eat a vegetable occasionally.

baked potato salad 

this is how I made Nigella Lawson’s recipe from her book Forever Summer. 

three medium-to-large floury potatoes
extra virgin olive oil
salt
sumac
flat-leaf parsley 
lemon juice

Set your oven to 200C/400F and give the potatoes a quick stab with a fork or other stabbing implement. Wrap them snugly in tinfoil and throw them in the oven for an hour or so until a sharp knife slides right into them without the slightest hint of resistance. 

Carefully unwrap the potatoes and half them lengthwise, and allow them to cool just enough that they’re not entirely resembling the surface of the sun. Use a spoon to scrape out the soft baked potato flesh from the skins, and pile it all onto a large flat plate. That is all the hard work done: now just drizzle over as much olive oil as you please, squeeze lemon juice over, scatter with salt and sumac and finally adorn it all with parsley leaves. This is nicest when it’s right at room temperature but eat it how and when you choose. 

Meanwhile, because the universe is occasionally bountiful, you can also turn the oven to grill, put grated cheese in the cavities of the remaining scraped-out potato skins, and grill them till it’s all bubblingly melted and the skins are crunchy and everything is good.  

Sumac is a spice that is similar to pomegranate and tamarind in that it imparts a fresh, punchy sourness along with gorgeous colour – so if you don’t have any on you and are unlikely to find some anytime soon, consider just blanketing this with tendrils of lemon zest. Sometimes recipes can seem almost too simple, as though you have to explain them contritely to whoever you’re serving them to in case they’re like “wait so is this just a potato on a plate or what” but simplicity of this salad is what makes it so perfect. The olive oil sinks into the crumbled, tender potato, the parsley gives a slight stab of peppery leafiness, the sumac and lemon juice subtly yet tartly liven everything up, and it really doesn’t matter how much of any particular ingredient you add. I guess this technically serves a few people but I ate the entire thing all at once; if you want more just add more ingredients, silly.

Aside from achieving eight years of being in a relationship with this blog, the only other real significant things that have happened recently are: I finally finished watching every last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Kate and became an emotional unfilled brandy snap as a result (that is; hollow and fragile and fairly outdated); and I dyed my hair bright red. My parents also visited Wellington for the first time in ages and I was able to show them around my stomping grounds (that is, work) and it was lovely to spend time with them. Unfortunately they didn’t bring the cats along on the visit, but I won’t hold it against them.

I’m a lot happier about the dye job than I let on

So I didn’t manage to get my act together to celebrate my blog’s birthday in a suitably jaunty manner, but I think it will be okay. I mean, look how far I’ve come since this photo I posted here eight years ago. I still have that plate, and for some reason that year our flat got sent a LOT of Scientology literature and pamphlets, which is what it’s sitting next to. Thanks to all of you who have been reading this though, whether for years and years or merely for regretful minutes – I appreciate every set of eyeballs, every kind email I’ve got, everyone who has lived through my life along with me. As I said in my very first blog post, “what I’ve been cooking and what I’ve been up to lately are often the same thing”. Bring on six seasons and a movie.
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title from: The Veronicas’ mercilessly sad song In Another Life. There’s actually a bit where you hear an audible sniffle (followed by me audibly breaking down)
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music lately: 

Millencolin, Penguins and Polar Bears. I heard this song for the first time in forever at Kim’s goth-themed birthday party recently and have been listening to it nonstop ever since. It contains many of my kryptonites: a gratuitously adorable song title, angst, and a lead singer who sounds like they’ve got a blocked nose. 

Roxette, She’s Got The Look. Oh my gosh, this SONG. It came on the other day when I was out dancing and I hadn’t heard it in actual years and it slays me, all that 80s-ness and minor keys and frantic-ness. 

Tom Cruise, Dead or Alive. I mean. I rewatched Rock of Ages with Kim recently and was so irritated at how hot he is in this. Also Bon Jovi is another of my many kryptonites, so. But seriously, just watch this and then deal with your feelings. 
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next time: maybe a better-late-than-never cake? 

i don’t need the cheese or the car keys boy i like you just the way you are

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*Ring of Keys from the musical Fun Home starts to play as I gaze upon my lunch*

I adore my job as a bartender (indeed, a “prestigious bartender” as my former flatmate’s TradeMe ad for her room charmingly described it) – making drinks is the funnest, I like the nonstop stream of strangers to talk to, the team is wonderful, I’m always awake all night anyway, and honestly I dig the attention – being behind the bar is kind of like being on stage. And I love being on stage. However. I really miss making dinner for myself. Scrounging through the pantry, making something out of nothing, bashing flavours and textures together, making pasta or pancakes or slow-cooked-chickpea-bla-bla-bla or some kind of elaborate salad or whatever. And then either a voice in my head or a human nearby (I forget which) was like, “what about lunch”. I mean, easier said than done; I’ll usually wake up brutally early but not see fit to exit the bed until well after noon. But as it looks like lunchtime is my only chance to make myself dinner these days, I’m willing to throw some energy into it at least once or twice a week. (The rest of the time I’m fervently rewatching The OC like some kind of hypnotised baby seal until I dazedly realise that it’s time for me to go to work and/or generally not be sedentary.)

This week I managed to get my act together and make myself a thoroughly fantastic lunch of wasabi cauliflower cheese, the sort of thing that’s usually a side dish but is very fun to eat as a meal in its entirety. In an unprecedented fit of activity, I also bleached my hair at the same time. In an even more unprecedented fit of competency, I somehow managed to not eat poison while lovingly massaging wasabi into my scalp. Everything was in its right place: not least, a small vat of cauliflower cheese inside my face.

This recipe was inspired by Katrina Meynink‘s excellent wasabi mac and cheese, and is a wondrous mix of blanketingly comforting and throat-punchingly zingy. The horseradish heat of the wasabi gets you right in the back of the nose while your lungs fill with the gloriously mellow, thick cheese sauce. The cauliflower, roasted and browned, is nuttily mild enough to carry both these elements with ease. Truth be told you could probably put melted cheese on a tree stump and it would taste good, but it’s amazing how the simple act of browning said cheese under the grill elevates this simple dish into heights so good that I’ve run out of adjectives with which to describe it all. Seriously, this is one hyperbolic paragraph. Luckily for you, what sounds like hyperbole on most people is me just being calmly sincere. You don’t even want to know what it’s like when I hulk out and actually employ hyperbole.

wasabi cauliflower cheese

a recipe by myself; serves one-ish. Two at best. If you can’t figure out how to increase it to feed more people though, then I ruefully cannot help you. 

half a head of cauliflower
40g butter
two heaped tablespoons flour
milk, around 250ml give or take
a heaped teaspoon of wasabi paste
grated cheese, around two handfuls

Set your oven to 220 C/450 F. Slice the cauliflower into florets, and then for good measure, you might as well slice up any remaining stalks and stems since it’s all still cauliflower. Throw it all into a small oven dish which will hold the lot snugly, and then put it in the oven to roast for around 20 minutes while you make the sauce. 

Stir the butter and flour together in a smallish pan over a medium heat, till the butter melts into the flour and forms a thick paste. Stir this for a bit longer, then tip in around 1/4 cup of milk, continuing to stir – this first measure will most likely hiss as it hits the hot pan and be absorbed fairly instantly into the flour-butter. Continue slowly adding milk and stirring till you have something that looks like sauce – the amount of milk may vary, but you want to end up with enough to comfortably coat the roasted cauliflower while still being quite thick. Throw in a handful of cheese and the wasabi paste and stir until the cheese has melted into it and the wasabi is thoroughly incorporated. Taste to see if it needs more of anything – some salt, more wasabi, a little more milk, whatever. 

Remove the cauliflower from the oven, spatula the cheese sauce evenly over it, allowing it to sink into the crevices between each floret. Sprinkle over another handful of cheese, and put it back into the oven for another five minutes – at this point you can turn the oven onto grill to brown the cheese on top, although keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn. Eat. 



Obviously I’ve ranted at length about how good this is already, but just know that I intended to eat half of this and retain the leftovers for the following day; instead I went into a kind of fugue state and galloped through the lot in one sitting, sinuses stinging from the wasabi and eyes damp with the particular joy that melted cheese bestows.

Spring has sprung and it’s filling me with this weird sense of optimism – I do love a good solid wallow in icy wintery weather but damn it if the sunshine doesn’t manipulate me into feeling beatifically happy. Nevertheless it has been dark and cold for so long that I’ve forgotten what one even does in nice weather, and I have been spending (some might say squandering) almost all of the sunshiny hours on watching The OC and sighing over how truly good Sandy Cohen is and how literally perfect the character of Summer is, while knitting my way through an enormous Lenny Kravitz-inspired scarf. Thank goodness Sandy Cohen’s constant prattling on about bagels left me with such an enormous craving for them that I had to leave the house in search of them eventually, thus not entirely missing the beautiful blue-skied weather: thanks, TV! 
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title from: The Way I Are, Timbaland and Keri Hilson’s banger from 2007 that I once danced so hard to that I fell onto a bed, bounced off it onto a dresser, and broke my fall with my incisor tooth. Was miraculously fine though: ain’t nothing gonna break my stride or my teeth. 
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music lately: 

be your own PET, Damn Damn Leash. Their entire self-titled album is bratty gold, the kind of music that makes you want to go kick a letterbox or something, but this early track was the first of theirs that I ever heard and I was instantly hellaciously smitten. 
Faith No More, Epic. Ugh I can’t quit this song. It’s also gloriously bratty and I love how Mike Patton sounds kinda congested and it makes me wanna dance SO hard.  

My Bloody Valentine, the Loveless album. It’s the kind of thing you have to put headphones on and lie on the floor to listen to but gosh damn it’s lush and crunchy and dreamy and all good things. It really suits being listened to all at once but I guess if you want an entry point, When You Sleep or I Only Said are wonderful.  
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next time: if Sandy Cohen has his way, it will be some kind of bagel stuffed with bagels served upon a bed of bagels. 

i’m just a painter and i’m drawing a blank

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lady whom lunch

My dear friends got a beautiful corgi last year, and when they were first doing that thing where you train a dog how to be a nice guy instead of a tiny furry hell-monkey, she would totally resist wearing her walking harness. Like, she’d be scooting around the room happily but as soon as she got the harness on she would stand very still, stiffly refuse to relax or sit down, and just kind of look right through you. For ages. With all due respect to Percy the corgi for me turning her into an analogy; this is what my brain has been doing this whole week. I am all “I have awoken! I’ve had coffee! I’m wearing soft, comfy fabrics! Time to write!” and then I’ll open my laptop and everything pauses in my brain and I just stare at the screen for hours, blankly (admittedly taking breaks to hoon through The OC because if I’m just sitting staring anyway I may as well drink in the sweet, potable waters of nostalgia while I’m at it.) I don’t know why! I’ve done heaps of cool things lately! I’ve made this incredibly delicious recipe! I love writing! So why is there nothing but the hum of white noise every time I open my laptop? Aside from the fact that I was probably listening to a youtube video of white noise at the time, because I am obsessed with it (in fact I have graduated from mere white noise to this thing called Brown Noise which was a frequency discovered by some guy named Robert Brown, it’s the best thing ever.) 
I woke up this morning at a time most would consider brutally early, especially as I’d been at a house party last night. Since I am not blessed with the powerful ability to sleep through anything for hours and hours like some people can (directing this jealously at my gf) I decided to fill up the time by just making myself write whatever came into my head and not stopping till I’d finished this damn blog post. And here I am! Halfway through already. And I haven’t even started talking about the recipe! 

See that’s why it was so frustrating that I couldn’t make myself write this week, because this recipe I made up was so spectacular and deserves more of a showcase than me having to threaten myself with throwing my laptop into a ravine if I don’t write about it soon. So, the recipe: I recently became wise to the fact that you can make risotto but with pasta instead of rice. Curious cat that I am, I wanted to try this, and happened to have some risoni in my pantry (by which I mean my designated food drawer in the flat kitchen) but didn’t really have much else. Luckily restriction can make the most delicious things happen, and I ended up improvising based on the few ingredients I had by gently frying the uncooked risoni in garlicky butter that I then stirred miso paste into. From then all I added was water and it ended up the most lush, creamy, intensely flavoured thing ever. Seriously. Just stupid old water.

Risotto is totally the white noise of food, because it’s almost hypnotically calming to make. You just keep adding water and stirring until it’s pleasingly absorbed into the grains, and then add more and stir again, just moving your wooden spoon around and around the pan repeatedly like you’re actually a gif instead of an IRL person. Like, if ever there was a recipe that encourages you to zone out and be mellow, it’s risotto.

garlic miso butter risoni risotto

a recipe by myself. serves one. 

25g butter
three cloves of garlic
one heaped teaspoon white miso paste
half a cup of risoni pasta
water

Melt the butter in a wide saucepan. Finely but roughly chop the garlic and throw it into the pan, stirring over a medium heat until the garlic is a little golden and it smells amazing. Stir in the miso paste – it won’t amalgamate completely but this will all sort itself out soon.

Tip in the uncooked pasta, and stir it for a minute or so to cover it in the garlicky butter. Add water half a cup at a time, continuing to stir the pasta until most of the water is absorbed before you add any more. Continue in this way until the pasta has absorbed enough water to become tender. Tip onto a plate, strew over some herbs if you like. Thyme is one of my favourite herbs and I happened to have a plant that I hadn’t yet managed to kill so I used some leaves from that, and it worked perfectly. 

I love pasta, I love risotto, so putting them together is like trapping myself in a pincer movement of happiness. So if that sounds like your idea of A Good Time, perhaps consider this recipe next time you need to feed yourself. I know I will. 
Thanks for bearing with me through all that, it’s like…the more time that passes since I last wrote a blog post the more panicky I get, because this blog is the most important thing to me and I don’t want it to have the slightest hint of abandonment or even just falling off the wagon, you know? All of which results in me putting more pressure on myself to write whenever I have the time to, which isn’t that often, which is probably why my brain rebelled on me by being all “nope”. 

                   

the girl with a pearl face
PS last night’s party was themed “Between the Devil and The Deep Blue Sea” and it was a joint birthday party for my dear friends Kate and Tim. I dressed up as a pearl and covered my face in makeup. I wish it was chill to wear this kind of eye makeup all the time, it’s so fun. 

PS PS as a final attempt to convey how delicious and wonderful the risotto is, here is me licking the plate after eating it. As well as outlandish makeup, I wish it was more chill to lick the plate in social settings. The tongue is nature’s spatula! I can’t quite bring myself to finish this blog post with that line, but…at least I managed to bring myself to finish this blog post at all. 

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title from: Fall Out Boy, Don’t You Know Who I Think I Am? Party like it’s 2006.
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music lately:

Ummm, more Fall Out Boy, I’ve Got All This Ringing In My Ears And None On My Fingers is such a tune.

Haim, Don’t Save Me. We danced to this last night, I love it so much, I could listen to it endlessly.
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next time: Well, I refuse to have as much trouble as I had with this one. I refuse!

i’m not sick but i’m not well, and it’s a sin to live so well

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there is a Maori proverb: the kumara does not speak of its own sweetness. I love this proverb, but I do not resemble it, let’s face it.

After all my deep-lunging insistence in my last blog post that I want to be quadruply productive, the final week of July was a monumental write-off, as I was dramatically burdened with the literal flu. All I could do was lie in bed all flushed of cheek and starry of eye like some breathily consumptive side character from an LM Montgomery novel who gets struck down with illness as a cosmic punishment for being too “high-spirited”. Honestly it was absolute agony, I couldn’t even fill the time by watching movies or TV on my darling laptop because looking at screens cruelly made me feel queasy, and aside from hallucinating my way through several shifts at work all I did was sleep or doze fretfully while cursing this good-for-nothing flesh vessel of a body that had failed me so spectacularly and turned me into actual garbage. (I couldn’t even watch Pretty Little Liars. It was wretched, I can tell you.)

Needless to say I didn’t do any cooking. It’s 100% possible that I would’ve got better sooner if I hadn’t expended thousands of watts of energy on being angry and frustrated at how much time I was wasting by being sick – there has never been a more petulant and frowny invalid than I! – but here I finally am, maybe not entirely perfectly better but so improved and ready to exist again.

the blogger never stops speaking of their own sweetness

After spending that week living like my brain had been unceremoniously thrown into a ravine with me left behind to flail helplessly, I also felt like I’d forgotten what it was like to just up and make myself food like it was no big deal. I was, as such, writhing around indecisively being all “what shall I cooooook” yesterday when my flatmate and dear friend Charlotte mentioned that she’d made kumara chips with major success the night before. This suggestion inspired me to make something similar, and my brain finally made itself useful and presented me with the idea of roasting kumara and then covering it with some kind of feta-studded crumble.

It was an absolute, rapturous success – roastily sweet kumara with the crunch of lightly toasted walnuts and breadcrumbs roughly torn from a bread roll, bulgingly soft, tangy feta, and rich fragrant thyme. And not just to eat, but to look at, with the bright-white feta against the sunset orange of the kumara and jaunty pinpoints of herbal green. A damn masterpiece all round, and to make it even more endearing, it’s incredibly easy and fast to make.

roasted kumara with feta, walnuts, thyme and breadcrumbs

a recipe by myself

one good-sized orange kumara
olive oil
salt
about 100g soft feta
about half a cup fresh breadcrumbs (I just tore a bread roll into tiny/not so tiny pieces) 
a third of a cup of walnuts
about one tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves
one tablespoon pumpkin seeds

Set your oven to 200 C. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Slice the kumara fairly finely into slices of about half a centimetre – accuracy and uniformity is not particularly important here. Lay them on the baking tray and drizzle over some olive oil, using a pastry brush to spread it out evenly. Sprinkle over a little salt and roast them – I put the tray pretty close to the top of the oven – for fifteen to twenty minutes, turning over once halfway through, till they’re tender. 

While the kumara is in the oven, combine the breadcrumbs, thyme leaves, walnuts and pumpkin seeds in a small bowl, then crumble in the feta and gently mix it all together. Sprinkle this evenly over the kumara and return to the oven for another five to ten minutes just to toast the bread and soften the feta a little. Eat. 

If you don’t live within reach of a kumara, those gourd-shaped orange butternut squashes would be perfect instead, and you could always leave out the feta to make this completely vegan. 
I did do one other thing last week: I spatula’d myself out of bed long enough to go get a haircut, my first since I chopped my long hair off last year. It was nothing dramatic, just cleaning up the layers a bit so I didn’t look quite so much like I’d brushed my hair with a cheese grater; and I do believe the results are very cute.
Everything else, all my plans I’d had for Doing Things and Being Productive and Aggressively Achieving had to be put off, but on the upside I did insist on learning absolutely nothing from the experience about letting things go and putting one’s own wellbeing before one’s own expectations of, uh, one. 
Included in my plans for the upcoming unspecified period of time is reading The Sex Myth by Rachel Hills. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of it, but unfortunate enough for that to coincide with me being all busy and sick, but it’s nice to know it’s there, at least. Look at that sprightly cover art! Oh man I want to write another book. 
But let us be irritatingly positive and upbeat: I did feed myself, and it was wonderful. Go me. And if you’re feeling ill or been sick too in this bleak midwinter, my sincerest, like, so sincere it almost sounds like I’m making fun of you, sympathies. Get well soon! 
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title from: Harvey Danger, Flagpole Sitta. This song absolutely encapsulates for me that back-in-my-day thing of hearing a song on the radio and having to wait weeks to hear it again and having no idea what it was called or even what the lyrics were, in fact not even having heard it enough to satisfactorily hum it to yourself in your own head. It wasn’t until late 2000 that I learned what its name was and who wrote it, on some kind of song lyrics forum: yes, I’m kinda elderly. Also this song remains completely brilliant, if you don’t feel like springing about the room and singing lustily along with the chorus then I’m not sure we can be friends. (Also: I only just noticed how funny it is that they rhyme “well” with “well” in the chorus. How daring!) 
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music lately:

I remain on such a Faith No More kick and am playing the very heck out of their Live in London album on youtube; We Care A Lot is still so so so good. 
Demi Lovato, Cool For The Summer. I am so pro-Lovato, and love how we get all these summer bangers right in the middle of winter when they’re most needed. 
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next time: I refuse to be sick again, okay? I just refuse. So hopefully you’ll be hearing from me sooner rather than later. 

you want it all but you can’t have it, it’s in your face but you can’t grab it

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My highly wonderful girlfriend recently linked me to a story online that she thought I’d relate to – an interview with Canadian writer Fariha Roisin – and while reading it I was nodding so emphatically in agreement that I probably kicked off some kind of Butterfly Effect. I mean, look at this:

“I really struggle with the idea of productivity. I hate the fact that I value myself on my own creative produce, and I enact so much frustration and hate onto myself when I can’t, or won’t (due to emotional blockages, etc) create. Recently I’ve felt a great big void in the center of my being. I want to let myself have days off, but I don’t necessarily think I deserve them.”

It’s oddly calming to read Roisin articulate that storminess just as I would. Like I said in my last blog post, I’m trying to manage my expectations of myself (which are, some might say, a little ludicrously high) in relation to the actual time available to achieve them all, and not getting a particularly satisfactory outcome.

All of this dark-eye-circled self-centredness has really only increased because I have a lot of projects happening where the time to do them seems just out of reach, but I’m not sure if it’s the lack of time or if it’s just me, you know? And as I blurted on twitter the other day, I really want to make a food show web series, the sort that you watch and think “oh yeah that will definitely end up on TV at some stage”, and I want it to be hilarious and excellent and different and not simply pleasant and straightforward like 99% of the existing food-related content out there. The world does not need another pleasant cooking show, but I feel like one that’s fun and stupid and properly funny and irreverent without being too laboured and studied is…well, just as unnecessary in the greater scheme of things, but still, I want it to happen and that’s reason enough for me. And I don’t know how to do this and whenever I’ve had time to think about it, I’ve had to sleep, because there’s only so many hours in the day. Part of me wonders if I’m letting myself use my busy schedule as an excuse to not have to actually do anything, and part of me is literally asleep right now as I write this, so.

But! I did achieve potatoes! Take that, The Passage of Time! It also happens to be the one single thing I’ve cooked in the time since the caramel slice in my last blog post, so thank goodness it’s monumentally incredibly delicious.

Say what you will about microwaves, but I realised recently if you briefly zap potatoes in one, you can then fry or roast them with extreme haste, and have yourself some kind of carbohydrate-rich dish in significantly less time than it would normally take! And that time always feels endless when you’re waiting for potatoes. With this recipe you can have a lusciously wonderful dish of crisply fried potatoes in a not-overly unbearable time. It’s not exactly instant, but it’s instant-er than you’re gonna get otherwise.

I made this up the other day as a pre-work snack, just based on ingredients I had to hand, and it’s really as quite-fast as I claim. The time it took for the potato pieces to sizzle into golden crispness was just the right amount of time to go look for my camera’s SD card, be entirely unable to find it in the nourishing vegetable soup of possessions that is my bedroom, also realise I couldn’t find the bowl I wanted to photograph the potatoes in, declare everything to be literal garbage and I, the luckless raccoon atop it all, then pull myself together and decide to find a different bowl and to use my phone to take photos instead.

Importantly, it tastes incredible.

quite fast garlic and parmesan potatoes

a recipe by myself

three medium-sized floury potatoes, or potatoes that are labelled suitable for frying/roasting
30g butter, or more to taste (obviously I added more) 
a teaspoon or so of olive oil (it stops the butter from burning) 
four fat cloves of garlic, or thereabouts
parmesan cheese for grating over 

Stab the potatoes a couple of times with a fork, and then throw them in the microwave – no need to even put them on a plate or anything, but I guess you can – and cook on high for about three minutes. 

Meanwhile, peel the garlic cloves and very roughly chop them – you’re looking for good-sized bits here, not crushed garlic – and put them into a wide saucepan along with the butter and oil. Place the pan on a medium heat, stirring occasionally while the butter melts and the garlic starts to gently sizzle.

Remove the potatoes from the microwave – you might want oven mitts or tongs for this – and very roughly chop them into smallish pieces. If the edges get roughed up and some bits get a little crushed, so much the better. Turn up the heat on the butter and tip in the potatoes, stirring around so they’re all evenly sitting in the pan. Let them fry until wonderfully golden, stirring occasionally so all surface areas are against the heat of the pan. This will take about ten minutes. 

Once you’re satisfied with the done-ness of the potatoes, tip them onto a plate or bowl and grate over as much parmesan as you see fit. 

Stickily rich garlic, golden crunchy potatoes which are fluffily tender inside, barely melting sharp parmesan, blanketed as thickly as you can be bothered grating it – this is both comforting and beautiful. The quantities of ingredients listed are a little vague, because you can make this as garlicky and buttery and parmesan-y as you please really, and because apparently I like to overexplain things. What I’m saying is, trust yourself and what you want, but what I’ve given you here is a good starting point.

I ate the entire bowlful and licked the plate (some might say that’s an uncouth habit but I say the tongue is nature’s spatula) and was utterly pleased with myself, which, given my aforementioned tendency towards sternly growling at myself all the time, was…nice. Of course you can have these as part of a table of brunch food or to accompany steak or a roasted thing or whatever you want, but eaten on their own they’re pretty perfect.

Speaking of what is and isn’t perfect, I leave you – and myself- with these wise words from Fariha Roisin:
I’m learning to not have conditions attached to myself. I’m unbuckling the belt and loosening the idea tied up to what it means to be a person, or what it means to be me. 
 
title from: Epic, a song by Faith No More that I may have listened to roughly twelve thousand times in the last few days. This live version is amaaaazing. I just love this song so much. I am okay with this. I am not okay with how great the song is though. How dare it!
 
music lately: 

Sick, an EP from Allison Stone. She is wonderful and it is wonderful, okay?

Shades, I’ll Be Around. This is from…1996? And still goes off.
 
next time: hopefully I will cook something in the next like, six months – whatever it is, it’s all yours. 

you think it’s easy, when you don’t know better

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*Kanye voice* what she order, fish filet?

So it has come to this: ya girl has been a combination of too busy, overcommitted, otherwise engaged, and pretty much any synonym for busy that you can think of, to even think of cooking. I haven’t blogged for over a week, which, considering my insistence on overachieving, means that I may as well just delete the whole blog and throw my laptop in a river because I have clearly failed and everything is pointless. However, instead of that mildly hyperbolic behaviour, I’ve decided to just accept the past week as a write-off, and write on the few things I did make myself this week, even though those things are: fish finger butties and marmite-and-chip sandwiches.

I’m not trying to pretend like I invented either of these concepts, or that you need a recipe for them, or that they’re high art as far as food goes, but – both were really, really delicious and made me happy, and even if they’re embarrassingly easy and simple, to be honest that’s good enough for me to blog about. Especially since I have zero other options, but still. Also stupid as it may seem for me to be telling you how to put prepackaged stuff in bread; I feel like if nothing else this blog post can serve as a reminder that these concepts exist. I mean, it had been forever since I’d had a marmite-and-chip sandwich and having revived that combination for myself I am now wanting them at least daily.

I think in some countries fish fingers are called fish sticks, either way they honestly sound terrible

The inspiration for the fish finger butties (ps, buttie is another word for sandwich, and you could just call it that but the word buttie just sounds more celebratory) came when my amazing girlfriend and I needed some sustenance after striding around the zoo in the bracing cold and beholding cute animals. It went like this: we were in the supermarket, she pointed at fish fingers and was all, “we could make sandwiches out of these maybe” and I squawked “you genius!” in total wonderment, because I have a very low bar for being impressed and in awe, to be honest. (I was then like “better get this pack of forty fish fingers just to be on the safe side.”)

Whether you prefer to use mayo or butter – and I actually prefer mayo here – the bread has to be the softest, whitest, and thickest you can find. The fewer minerals and vitamins and general health-giving content the better. Similarly, if you can find those fish fingers that are crumbed and have maybe 4% actual fish content in the ingredients, you’re on to a winner.

With the marmite-and-chip sandwiches, the chips in question are the crisps that come in a packet, not fries (I don’t know why we have such confusing language around potato products, it’s very troubling!) and obviously you can use whatever sodium-delivery-spread you like – Vegemite, Promite, English Marmite. I grew up on Marmite and adore it, whereas Vegemite to me tastes like salty dirt and misery. Many of you probably feel the reverse. Whatever, as long as the chips are crinkle cut and the plain salted flavour, you’re all good. I ate marmite sandwiches roughly a billion times when I was a kid, but a marmite and chip sandwich – and I have no idea who first came up with the idea – was such an exciting upgrade. And there’s nothing like casually eating the food that was thrilling to you as a kid, when you’re an adult who can do what they want when they want.

marmite and chips on white bread: you can clearly see how I got my book deal and I should definitely get another

So, the reason either of these sandwiches are worth your time is the magical, transcendently good textural contrast between soft, soft white bread and crunchy filling. It’s as simple as that. Bursts of crispness, salty savouriness, and comfortingly pillowy blandness.

fish finger butty

four fish fingers (three for the sandwich, one for snacking on) 
mayonaise 
two slices of the thickest, softest white bread you can find

Bake or fry the fish fingers till crisp and golden. My cunning trick is to put them in the sandwich press, but do whatever is most convenient for you.

Generously spread mayo on both pieces of bread, lay the fish fingers across one slice and top with the other slice, eat the remaining fish finger so you don’t fade away between now and eating your sandwich, and then eat your sandwich. 


marmite and chip sandwich

a packet of ready salted chips, ideally crinkle cut
plenty of soft butter
marmite
two slices of white bread, as soft and thick as you can find

Spread both pieces of bread thickly with butter and then thinly with marmite. Pile up potato chips evenly on top of one slice, then gently top with the other slice. Eat. 

 

                       *Peter in Jesus Christ Superstar voice* I think you’ve made your point now
It’s kind of hard to photograph these sandwiches in a way that makes them look majorly alluring, I feel like sticking one next to a vase of flowers was not my best work, I guess I’m also pointing this out so that you know that I know. Like I said, I haven’t cooked a thing this week and so this is what I’m working with. But honestly, I’m so convinced of the excellence of both these combinations that I’m not even bashful about having blogged about them now, because if you didn’t know about them, you’ve been missing out on a world of deliciousness. I’m not saying I’m a hero, I’m just saying…nope that actually is what I’m saying.

 

befriending everyone’s dogs and cats is time-consuming okay

So just what have I been doing with myself if not devoting myself to blogging? Working; partying; helping a friend choreograph a tap dance routine for a drag competition; going on cute outings with people from work; loitering with birthday pals; seeing a friend’s band perform; recovering from watching Pretty Little Liars; taking up lots of time being amazed at how time has gone so fast and it’s July already; dancing wildly; working; berating myself for having achieved nothing this month; that sort of thing. Ya girl is determined to get cooking again though, what with it being my favourite pastime and incredibly dear to my heart and all.

title from: The White Stripes, Hardest Button To Button. I love these guys so much, that is all.

music lately: 

Carly Rae Jepsen, Emotion. TUNE. Pop music that is really upbeat but sounds kinda sad is my kryptonite.

Chelsea Jade, Lowbrow. This honey just keeps making songs that are amazing. It’s amazing.

Nicki Minaj, Anaconda. Every time I listen to this or watch the video it just gets more and more spectacular and excellent, tbh.

next time: literal recipes, I promise

we should hash it out like a couple of grownups

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hashtag hash
I come to you buried under three layers of exhaustion: firstly I ate a lot of macaroni cheese for dinner and with every passing second the carbs are lulling me into a dopey stupor (well the only pasta I had was risoni and then I was like is this macaroni risoni or macarisoni and then I was like Laura quit being insufferable and eat your pasta. Once you’ve instagrammed it.) Secondly I had a useless night’s sleep last night. And reason the third, I am in the process of leaving my current job and starting another and there is some overlap of schedules and as a result of all these things I am less human and more a tired baby penguin, fluffy and confused and keen to get around by lying down and zooming on my stomach instead of having to stand up.  
(The changing of the jobs is all very jolly by the way, I’m grateful to the first job for teaching me a lot and delighted by the opportunity of the new job, which is also a bartender role. I realise I’m being cagey about what these places are called, but if you have an issue with that then that’s kinda weird.)
So it’s with all these floaty, veil-like layers of tiredness, that I can’t promise that this post is going to be my best work. Just kidding, all my blog posts are amazing. But uh, this one might sound a little strained as my eyes increasingly struggle to remember what their one job is.
oh look, the same thing from a slightly different angle. 

It wasn’t on my agenda to blog about this – I made it up on the spot and it seemed too simple and insubstantial. Then I told myself, that what is essentially a two-ingredient dish, which uses those specific ingredients because that’s all I had in the house and couldn’t afford to run out and buy more, could still be something that other people might want to have in their own lives on purpose.

And well you might, because it’s decidedly delicious.

 spot the can of golden pash in the background: very on-brand. Speaking of brands the hot sauce that I have is called Secret Aardvark and it comes from Portland, Oregon, and I just want to say Secret Aardvark again. 
I made this for my girlfriend and myself the morning after a friend’s beautiful engagement party, where there was wild dancing and cat-patting and wine-drinking and cake-eating and a general mood of lovely happiness. But yeah, let’s not bury the lede: there was so much dancing and wine drinking. I was determined to use only ingredients I had in the house to make something brunchily cool yet bolstering and reviving. Miraculously I had some eggs, which I scrambled, y’know, satisfactorily. This potato and corn hash was a bit of a revelation though, and so I’m sharing the recipe with you here. Quantities can be upped easily, just make sure your pan is big enough and your heart is true. (I’m so tired, okay.)

smoky potato and corn hash

a recipe by me

two decent sized potatoes (kind of the size of a decent-sized tomato, or a small avocado? No smaller than that but feel free to go wayyyy bigger)
about three tablespoons of olive oil 
roughly 20g butter
one cup frozen corn kernels
salt, to taste
liquid smoke 

Finely dice the potatoes into roughly 1/2 cm cubes/rectangles/any four sided shape you can approach a likeness of. Heat the oil in a wide frying pan and once it’s proper hot, tip in the potatoes and spread them out evenly. Allow them to fry for about ten or fifteen minutes, stirring and turning very occasionally – the longer you leave the potatoes in one place the more golden and crisp they get. At this point, add the butter and let it sizzle for a little longer, then tip in the corn and stir. Again, the less you stir the better, so that the corn gets a little bit scorched, but you don’t want it to get burnt. Basically, use your eyes, see what needs moving around and what needs more time on the heat.

Finally, sprinkle over a few drops of liquid smoke – you don’t need much – and stir it in, then add as much salt as your merrily brined wee heart desires, and divide between two plates. 

hot sauce hand model (also you can see in the foreground where we both spilled juice from a truculent and entirely uncooperative tetra-pak)

This would be so good with some chopped up herbs, or diced onion fried with the potato, or some parmesan grated over, or some turmeric and cumin, but on its own it was quite perfect. The potato is cut into minute pieces which cook quickly in the sputtering oil and become darkly golden and crisp in that way that makes you feel weepily grateful depending on what else is going on in your life. The corn is sweet and juicy and slightly browned in places and just wonderfully corn-like (I really like how corn-like corn is.) Liquid smoke has saved me from blandness many a time, but if you don’t have it – and it’s not necessarily that easy to get hold of – you’ll lose some of that standing-near-a-barbecue vibe, but it will still be so good. Just add more butter and salt and keep on truckin’.

what are you trying to hide, parsley sprig?  

Look, I just love brunch so much, it’s such a kind meal – you get to sleep in, you get to eat so many rich foods, you get to feel fancy, you get the rest of the day still to do things. Making it for yourself is charming in its own way that going out for it can’t replicate (especially if you are cooking for someone else) and while you have to do the dishes at least you can eat while wearing severely ancient trackpants and an insouciantly draped blanket.

I sold my last cookbook today, which was a strange feeling. I’m so determined to write another one, and soon, but also looking at this cookbook, which was written, tested and photographed in its entirety in just three months, I’m very proud of myself. On a wearily capitalistic note, it’s also a shame because I was making money from selling them and now I’m not, but I still have a good feeling that I’ll be a zillionaire or even a mere billionaire pretty soon. I’d just be so good at being rich!

One last thing, before I leave you, and frankly I can’t believe I made it this far, but of course I did because I am good at pushing myself to write when I’m 90% asleep, and anyway: I thought it would be kinda dinky and fun to put all the songs I’ve listed in the music lately section at the bottom of the blog onto a Spotify playlist. So far I have one for this year, one for the back end of last year, and one that I’m going to put Christmas songs in. My username is Laura Vincent if you want in – sometimes I couldn’t find the specific song (damn you Taylor Swift, release your iron grip and let the people listen to you on Spotify) so I’d try to get the next best thing, but it’s more or less everything I’ve been recommending. It’s…not coherent, but it’s cute! Like me.

bye
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title from: so hash is an interesting dish to find a title for…this one is from Drake and Jhene Aiko’s dreamy dreamy song From Time. Oh Drake, trust you to come through for me. 
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music lately: 
Fiona Apple, Every Single Night. This song is bewitching.
De La Soul with Redman, Oooh. I haven’t heard this in so long and it makes me so happy, how compelling is that melody! (very compelling.)
Rilo Kiley, I Never. This song is so beautiful, and sounds like it’s from another time, maybe the sixties? I don’t know. But I love how it gets so swoony and bigger and bigger the further it goes along.
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Next time: I’ll have done the groceries and have more to play with, don’t worry

soy un perdador

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tofu is made of soy, and soy is Spanish for I AM, as in “I am being so deep right now.”  

Right, well I intended for this blog post to be about the meal I cooked on Valentine’s Day, but what transpired was this: I had an elaborate dinner planned, then my reason for the season came down with a brutal case of tonsilitis, and then I mysteriously also ended up with a sore throat myself, and so postponed said elaborate dinner to instead make us the world’s most nourishing broth which I then took terrible photos of, so the whole thing was a flop, really. (That is, it was a very pleasant evening, mutual ailments aside, and the soup was also very pleasant, it was a flop only in terms of being bloggable. Let me be clear lest I sound more obnoxious than usual!)

With that option unavailable to write about, it took me a while to get my act together, but to paraphrase Beyonce the god, I woke up like this: craving tofu. And so I made myself this rather incredibly good tofu and cucumber salad for lunch today and now here we are!

those flowers were just sitting there on the table when I walked in but nevertheless I’m gonna assert that coordinating your flowers to your lunch is a clear sign of success in life

I know tofu gets regularly maligned for being flavourless or unfun or the epitome of dull vegetarian eating, but in the words of Harvey Danger, if you’re bored then you’re boring. Let the record state that I think tofu is amazing. Fresh, chilled tofu is an actual joy, all cashew-mild and milky of flavour with a softly firm (yes, both those things) protein-rich texture and the world’s most absorbent surface for whatever flavour you should choose to throw at it. Also deep-fried tofu is a revelation, but so is everything – I mean, probably even deep-fried socks would be palatable, so that’s not necessarily an impressive fact.

This recipe mostly came out of my head, although it’s inspired by a bunch of different things I’ve had at restaurants over the years. It’s so cold and crisp and refreshing and even though the dressing is all salty and oily and sour, somehow the cool juicy cucumber and dense cubes of tofu keep everything very mellow and calm. Both sesame and miso paste have this mysterious, magical savoury taste which help spruce up the ingredients that frankly do need some sprucing, and it’s all just very satisfying and nourishing and good. You could leave out the spring onion (by the way I think they’re called green onions in America, for my readers in that neck of the woods) but the flavour is so gentle and a million miles removed from actual raw onion.

tofu, cucumber and spring onion salad with sesame miso dressing

a recipe by myself. I know using olive oil in the dressing is a bit out of place with the rest of the ingredients but it’s all I had and honestly it tasted amazing so…yeah. 

100g firm tofu
half a cucumber
one spring onion
one tablespoon rice vinegar
one tablespoon soy sauce
one or two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
two heaped teaspoons white miso paste
a pinch of caster sugar
one tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

Make sure your tofu and cucumber are well-chilled. Dice them both into small squares, about 1.5cm but, y’know, this is not a time for measurement accuracy. Just something smallish and squareish. Finely slice the spring onion, reserving some of the green for garnish.

In a bowl, whisk together the vinegar, soy, olive oil, miso, and most of the sesame seeds until it comes together as a smooth dressing. Tip in the tofu, cucumber, and spring onion, stir to cover, then transfer to whatever bowl you’re going to be eating it from (if it’s a different bowl, that is) and garnish with the remaining sesame seeds and green spring onion slices. 

this serves one, but if you can’t work out how to increase it to feed more then…actually I cannot judge, my maths is hopeless, but seriously, it’s pretty easy to increase the properties to feed more people here.  

my new flat is a bit cute, yeah?

The other thing to note about tofu is that it’s aggressively filling. So even though this salad may not look like much, it is indeed…much. We’ve just ticked over into March here so it’s officially autumn, but Wellington is so whimsically changeable as far as weather goes and today I’m disgustingly overheated so this was a perfect meal for the temperature my body is currently burdened with, however I feel like this salad would be perfect any time alongside roast chicken and rice; to take to some kind of potluck thing, or with noodles that you’ve maybe also sprinkled with soy sauce and sesame oil. On its own though: a perfect little meal. 
I just realised this is pretty much my first blog post that include photos of my new flat, which is fitting, since I moved in just under a month ago and yet still am not entirely unpacked. I’ve decided to see the glass half full and congratulate myself on being amazing at progressing very slowly and being incredibly disorganised. My new room is so dreamy though, and will only get dreamier as I firmly take myself by the hand and make myself continue to tidy it up and unpack fully. 
fairy light grotto (they’re solar powered so hopefully I get to actually enjoy them, oh Wellington weather you’re easy to poke fun at! But really. I hope I get to enjoy them.)

make up n stuff nook! Also there’s nothing like the haunted eyes of Judy Garland greeting you as you wake up, if that’s wrong I don’t want to be right.

But really, it’s now March 2015, holy wow. From February last year to February last month it was basically nonstop turbulent difficult times, and even though I’m very much in this quagmire of “what the heck am I doing with my writing and am I making my own opportunities and why won’t endless flailing about wanting to write another cookbook afford me the ability to do just that” I am also feeling rather cloyingly serene and delightful about many things in life right, so watch out. Ya girl is quite happy. I mean, look how rapturous I’m getting about tofu.
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title from: Beck’s shufflingly and charmingly dour song Loser. Check me out, making truly awful Spanish puns all over the place. Obvs Beyonce shoulda won that Grammy but this is a damn nice song and the opening guitar riffs are truly excellent. Nice work, Beck. 
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music lately: 
Let Me Be Him, Hot Chip. The chorus (or whatever it is, this song just kind of drifts) is so uplifting and pretty and dreamy and full of “Oh-ohhh” bits and it’s just a lovely, lovely thing to listen to. Definite mood upswing stuff.
Eternal Flame, Joan As Policewoman. I’ve loved this song for years and years but have been listening to it over and over lately, it flickers like a candle and swoons and sways and the lyrics are so, so excellent. I love how soft and whispery and then deep and rich her voice goes. Oh yeah and also this is not a cover of the Bangles song which was later covered by Atomic Kitten, they just share a title, ya know?
The Killing Moon, Echo and the Bunnymen. Love a bit of tremolo, I do. 
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next time: I’ve made two batches of this Nigella coffee ice cream but I keep eating it all before I can take photos of it. If this trajectory is anything to go by though, there will probably be at least one more outing of the recipe in my near future so maybe that’s what I’ll blog about next! 

fallin’ madly in love with the pop

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pop, pop, pop that thing
Kinda considered opening with an apology for both (a) popcorn being barely a recipe and (b) not having blogged for a lil while now, but have you considered this: Popcorn? It’s so great! Also I’ve been really busy and have only just had time to sit down and blog and even then I don’t actually have time to sit down and blog which is why I’m propped up in bed at 6am trying to make this happen. If you’re after an apology, I’m sorry, really truly sorry, but it’s not going to happen. 
Mate, what a week though. I flew up to Auckland last Sunday to go to the Laneway music festival the following day, staying with my little brother in the spare room in his impressively central apartment (seriously, I was like, I cannot reciprocate this generosity. I have a patch of floor in the hallway for you, at best.) I caught up with some friends on Sunday night, filling an hour or so wait for a table at the Federal Deli with a drink at the casino across the road – I’d never been to one before and it was kinda weird, I couldn’t tell whether I was going to be sucked into a new life sitting at a slot machine or if George Clooney was going to leap out from behind a croupier to impel me to commit a heist – in the end all that happened was I drank a house pinot gris. The company was rad though and it was fun being all Out And About In Auckland which I generally get to do about one and a half times per year. 
bright lights big city
Laneway though! As soon as I got there I was hit with feelings of wait, I don’t like crowds unless they’re in front of me and I have a microphone and carte blanche to ad-lib; I immediately fry in the sun like a kernel of popcorn over a skillet; I am cranky and short and what am I doing here…Fortunately the universe smiled benevolently and it was to be a singularly perfect day full of good fortune and friendly vibes and beautiful gal pals and incredible music. Let me just briefly say, FKA Twigs separating every molecule of her body while she danced and St Vincent snarling and yelping while dancing with brittle angularity and Angel Olsen and Courtney Barnett and Jungle and heck, even Belle and Sebastian, whose audience we were adjacent to while waiting for FKA Twigs. I’m only really a fan of one or two of their songs but they were so affable and we were so full of anticipation that it was all wonderful, in a very ‘getting there is part of the journey’ kind of way.
good current snacks in front of evidence of good previous snacks 

I’m not even there yet, there being the point where I ate this popcorn. Because the day following Laneway, I went and stayed with my parents for a few days, which, having not been home since September, it would’ve been way remiss of me not to do. I had a very good time hanging with Roger the cat, who had had an operation on his leg and needed constant head pats; seeing family that it had Been Too Long since I’d last seen; being with Dad on his birthday for the first time in ages and getting to make him a birthday cake; picking up some treasures from the Waiuku op shop; watching well made British period dramas with Mum, running into wonderful ex-teachers of mine, and all those other being-home type activities.

And then I came back to Wellington and Kate and Jason and I threw a truly excellent housewarming party (okay, they own the house and I just parasitically lodge there! But it was also something of a ‘bye Laura’ party since I’m moving around the corner soon.) There was dancing, there was glamorous rum punch, there was raucousness, there was gazing at the (truculently hidden by clouds, but still) stars on a blanket on the lawn; there were so many glorious friends there and amazing snacks and ugh, I just love having parties so much. The next day there was an abundance of $5 Pizza Hut pizza (I typed in Pizza Hug by mistake into Google and could’ve almost cried with how appropriate that was and also I was a bit hungover) and coffee and Broad City and sluggishly snuggling.

gonna talk about how amazing this popcorn is, any second now 

So finally, this brings me to this popcorn. Getting there is part of the journey! Instead of, you know, feeding myself on a regular basis with a variety of produce, I tend to go through brief flurries of obsession with a particular foodstuff, followed by a long period of completely forgetting about it. Popcorn is one such foodstuff. For a while I was eating it nonstop, and then suddenly I was a person who went eleven months in possession of three tupperware containers of popcorn kernels and also a half-filled plastic bag of kernels held closed with a twist-tie.

The other day out of nowhere, with absolutely no cool story or provenance, it just happened, I said unto Kate: “I bet fried sage popcorn would be really good”. And then yesterday, I made myself some. And it was amazing. See, aren’t you glad I did all this gallivanting around the country with activities, otherwise this tiny paragraph is all that the blog post would’ve been! I…can also see how that might be preferable to some. If it is, I’m not sure why you’re persisting with my writing though, because this is fairly standard behaviour for me. I can be succinct when I’m dead! But also right now, because this recipe could not be more succinct. A small reward for you after all this rambling, I guess.

corny

crispy fried sage popcorn

a recipe by myself. 

a handful – around half a cup – of freshly plucked sage leaves
20g butter
one tablespoon olive oil
a third of a cup of popcorn kernels

Melt the butter in a heavy-based frying pan. Add the sage leaves in a single layer and let them cook in the sizzling butter, till they darken and curl at the edges a little. Remove from the heat while you make the popcorn. Place the olive oil and popcorn kernels in a large saucepan, and put the lid on top. Let it sit over a low heat, till the corn starts to pop – keep an eye on it, shaking the pan occasionally, till as much as possible has popped. Remove from the heat (it might continue to pop for a little longer) and spatula the sage leaves and butter into said popcorn, stirring gently to disperse the crisp leaves throughout. This serves two as a snack. 

So this is magnificently delicious, people. Crisp, buttery sage leaves with their resinously herbal flavour and wafer-thin crunch work perfectly with the puffy, porous, pleasingly alliterative popcorn. The flavour of the sage works its way into the butter, and it’s just a salty, textural, vaguely sophisticated yet childish-party-food-like joy to eat. I can’t recommend fried sage leaves enough, frankly. Just fry a pile of them and eat them unadorned on their own, you’re still in for a good time. 

PS my hair is now lavender and silver-grey! I feel like it’s my favourite incarnation yet.

I look perturbed, but it’s only because I’m trying to come to grips with how bowl-cut my hair has become. I’m talking large practical mixing bowl here. I can’t afford a trim, okay! But will continue to distract myself and us all from this with strange colours. 

PS once more, I can’t believe I forgot to mention this in the last blog post, since I love being interviewed so much – I’m in the February issue of Next magazine! I was interviewed as part of a story about teenage ambition and where you actually ended up and how you feel about your life (it’s more positive than it might sound), and it was so fun to participate in. And Angelina Jolie is on the cover! Highly decent company to be keeping.

This is my last week in this adorable house with my adorable friends Kate and Jason and Ariel the cat – I’m not actually quite sure when I am moving as I won’t get my roster for this week until today, but can rest unassured that it’s gonna happen soon. My approach to packing could charitably be described as “limp”, but I’m sure it’ll alllll come together. I mean, considering it’ll be my fifth address in less than a year, I should really know how to move house by now.
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title from: Oh Land, Heavy Eyes. I am suuuuch an Oh Land fan. 
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music lately:

Marina and the Diamonds’ brand new track, I’m a Ruin. I love this woman, she just keeps on doing her.

Drake and Nicki Minaj, Make Me Proud. OH, DRAKE. Of course I will. I love when these two work together, and also Nicki Minaj talking about how great her life is going is highly inspiring stuff.

Courtney Barnett, Pickles From The Jar. It’s laconically exuberant and I love it. She was so great at Laneway.

Dawn Richard, Tide: The Paradox Effect. Juuuust listen. (If you have feelings about FKA Twigs you’ll probably enjoy this, to employ some lazy shorthand to make you more likely to juuuust listen.)
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next time: maybe something in my new kitchen? Wooooo!