well, I just want to say that it happened

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One last, fast blog post at this table, in this house. 
The bowl and the spoon I get to keep though. 
Very soon I’m moving out to a new place. On Monday I made Tim and myself a roast chicken that I’d covered liberally in soft butter mixed with hoi sin sauce – it was incredibly excellent, sweet and crispy and salty. But for the final meal I alone had in this house, I felt like berries and cream. Not that there’s any actual significance to this, it really is just what I felt like. And probably for the best, imagine if I’d had a sudden craving for proper Beef Wellington or three whole pavlovas or something along those complicated lines while trying to pack everything up into tenuously tensile boxes.
cream rules everything around me 

Frozen berries, left to sit in sugar for a while, with cream poured over. It’s not a recipe, it’s not even what many would call dinner, but it is wonderful. The slowly defrosting berry juice absorbing a little into the sugar, making a gritty syrup, the cream mellowing the children’s chewable vitamin C tang of the still-cold berries as it pools pinkly around them.

This weekend Tim and I are going to have one last party at this place – which might sound bananas for a couple who have just broken up, but it seems right to get together with our friends and acknowledge everything and say farewell to this wonderful apartment where we’ve had so many amazing parties and times. Rather than vaguely fraying off into separate directions. It feels generous to put a full stop on it, to say well, this chapter might be ending, but it happened. Not saying this is what everyone should do, but it works for us.

Also we have lots of partly-drained bottles of alcohol so it’s easier to invite round lots of people to help us finish them. It’s both stoically convivial and also saves us one more decision.

“Le Portfolio De Spice Girls Femme” – while packing I found this notebook that I purchased with my own pocket money in 1998 specifically for drawing pictures of the Spice Girls in. 

Next time you see me it’ll be in my new place, where for the first time since January 2006, Tim and I will not be living together. Interesting times. I’m also looking forward to nuzzling into my new place till it feels like home. For all this talk of new chapters and stuff a lot will not change but it will be bittersweet and strange and undoubtedly tough and excellent in ways I haven’t even considered.

Oh! In case you’re like Laura, what is up but also what is going down, what’s with all this aggressively poignant talk of moving out? Kindly see my previous blog post. On that note, Julie Andrews sweeping her arms wide open upon a hill demonstrably alive with the sound of music could not convey the gratitude I feel at the utter radness of so many people after my last post. Some super lovely words have been said by both friends and strangers to Tim and I and it’s just…so kind. I mean if anyone was to be properly horrible about it then I’d know they weren’t a nice person to begin with, but it’s still monumentally heartwarming to be softly blanketed in so much niceness. Especially when I’ve been packing my stuff into boxes all week and still haven’t really finished in the slightest and it’s a bit like one of those dreams where it’s suddenly xmas day and you haven’t organised any presents or you need to catch a plane to Paris in ten minutes and you don’t know how you’re getting to the airport. Also, in the interests – for once! – of this not being one-sided, I’d like to reiterate that Tim is also going through a lot and continues to be so great, we’re gonna be best friends for life, despite being in a hugely challenging situation, and not just because he got to keep all the White Stripes vinyl, but because there’s no other way we could be.

Fresh fringe trim and tinted brows: it’s amazing how such simple things can have a great effect on…well, my selfie productivity, if nothing else.

Anyway, time for me to move (ditheringly around the flat with breathtaking inefficiency and as soon as the movers arrive realise exactly what I should have packed and how.)
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title from: Nearly Midnight, Honolulu by Neko Case. Tim and I and what felt like every friend we have went to see her in concert last night and it was one of the very, very best gigs I’ve ever been to. Her voice just makes my blood fizz in my veins…oh and also the crowd was really cool and not pushy and she started bang on time which this grumpy lazy so-and-so appreciates hugely. 
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Music lately:

Antonique Smith, Hold Up Wait A Minute (Woo Woo). This broadway babe (and also recognisable as Faith Hill in the movie Notorious) has a killer voice the size of a killer whale. This song is so snappy and sassy and I love it.

Watercolours’ new EP Portals. Hot damn it is dreamy.
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Next time: well we’ll see what I come up with once I manage to unpack my boxes of kitchen stuff, yeah? 

so……….now you know

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Hmm. Hmmmmmm.

What to do when something enormous happens, and I’m so used to living my life as publicly as I can, tweeting every vapid-but-it-feels-kinda-deep thought and blogging about every up, down, and diagonal shunt of my life. But this one needs some time, some respect, some quiet. 
But also it would be really impossible to not address it, so in compromise, I’m just gonna talk about it pretty quickly. 
Two things happened recently: One, I realised I’m gay. (…gayer than I initially thought, if you will.) 
Two, well, Tim and I are as a direct result no longer getting married. Or together. A person’s sexuality is entirely their own business, no explanations are owed to anyone, (how can you explain something that just is?) and a relationship is the business of the people in the relationship only. Seriously. But – I offer you the following bullet points.
– Tim and I were together for nearly nine years. Much as it would’ve been convenient if this had all fallen into place when I was, oh, seven years old, I would not trade Tim’s and my time together for any trinket in the world. 
– We started off as best friends, and we’re gonna end up as best friends, whether we’re ninety years old and hanging out together on a porch somewhere drinking whisky or whether we finally work out how to become vampires and live forever and avoid aging and like, just meet up occasionally until infinity. There’s obviously one hell of a journey ahead (not least, we’ve accumulated an intimidating quantity of possessions) but this will never, ever change.
– My brother summed it up the best when he txted me and said something very wonderful to the effect of “I’m sad you two had to end but I’m happy you found yourself.” Those are pretty much the emotions flying round right now, but to the power of five hundred. 
– I’m gay. The gayest. Stone cold gay. Tony award-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden. Things don’t fall into place immediately. Sometimes things are hidden so deep because you don’t want to notice them, sometimes things were there all along. It’s not black and white, it’s not a light switch, it’s…it just is. Again: no-one’s business, but I’d just like to gently point out that all of us are somewhere on a spectrum. Much as we might be taught otherwise, or indeed, have the subject studiously avoided altogether.  
Cool. Okay. Lots of change ahead. Lots of things will never change. 
I haven’t really felt like cooking for a while – truth be told, I’d felt nauseous for days, maybe weeks – but on Monday night I made Tim and I (well, we’re still living together) a roast chicken for dinner and on Tuesday morning I made us breakfast, Breakfast Apple Crumble that is. And it felt good. And then I was like “wow Laura you’re a genius with this recipe from your incredible cookbook you should really make breakfast more often”. Yep, it’s so good that it stopped me being self-deprecating for a whole minute. That’s probably the nicest thing I can say about a recipe, but to be more helpfully specific – the quickly fried, roughly chopped apples topped with toasted oats, chewy with butter and brown sugar, is an actual gift to yourself first thing in the morning. 

This recipe is indeed from my cookbook, Hungry and Frozen: the cookbook. Who among us can say that they don’t like mentioning their cookbook whenever possible? (trick question, not many of us can. Because not many of us have cookbooks. I have one though! Oh man, this got obnoxious.)

Breakfast Apple Crumble

2 apples
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons rolled oats
2 tablespoons whole oats
2 tablespoons sunflower seeds
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Finely dice the apples. It can be roughly done, but the smaller the pieces the faster they’ll cook. Heat a tablespoon of the butter in a frying pan, and tip in the apple. Fry gently, stirring, for five minutes till it is softened slightly. Tip it all into a bowl, then melt the remaining butter and the brown sugar together in the same pan. Once sizzling, tip in the remaining ingredients and stir to toast everything slightly and coat in syrup. Once it’s looking browned and crisp, spatula it over the apples. 

I said it served one person in my book, but to be honest it was plenty for the two of us. Also I didn’t have sunflower seeds so used some almonds instead and it was still grand of course.

Apples and cinnamon together are like eating a hug. A hug. With cream poured over, so much the better. Ideally it would’ve been evaporated milk, which I used to have as a child poured over canned peaches for dessert, but I’m not turning my nose up at actual cream before 8am.

So that’s what’s been going on lately. While this is one hell of a situation, Tim and I have been very lucky that so many people surrounding us have been kind, generous, caring, thoughtful, amazing, and accepting without question. We’ve been able to hang out together, but we’ve also had people surrounding us individually with love and basically being giant ears for whatever we’ve got to say. People are wonderful, Tim is wonderful, I’m really not too bad myself, and I hope I can give that same level of support to someone else if it’s ever, ever needed.

Oh: I apologise if this is not the way you anticipated finding this news out. Tim and I know a lot of people. It’s hard to keep track of who knows things and who doesn’t, how far news has spread…I hate phone calls and scary one-on-ones anyway, and this blog is my home away from home, so this is probably the most personal and hey-you-yes-you way I could say this. So…now you know.
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title from: Queenie Was a Blonde, from Andrew Lippa’s 2000 off-Broadway musical The Wild Party, which was what introduced me to my idol Idina Menzel and another idol Julia Murney, many years ago. Probably worth a listen even if you don’t like musicals, it just goes to so many places from the classic 20s wah-wah opening and is such a cool expositional song. “A fascinating couple, as they go….” (should point out here that Tim joked about how maybe the title should be “my love came crumbling down” because you know, break-up plus apple crumble and I was like HA! PUN! but also um, maybe a little on-the-nose if this is your first time hearing about this news. And I say that as someone who tends to turn to jokes when things get serious. Still: good pun, though, yeah?)
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music lately:

Lana Del Rey, Once Upon a Dream. Del Rey’s cover of the song from Sleeping Beauty is just…dreamy is far too pale a word to describe how dreamy it is. Listening to it is like that feeling where you can just sense yourself falling asleep and you’re still the tiniest bit cognisant and it’s all muted and muffled and a bit sinister but lovely. Or, uh, it’s a nice song, is what I’m saying.

Guess who’s been listening to lots of Green Day? Me, obviously, this is my blog. I just love ’em. Tim and I were actually at the Milton Keynes concert that got recorded for the Bullet in a Bible album/DVD (Truly. We just happened to be in the audience that night. Who would’ve known that the blandest city in England would’ve ended up having a concert recorded live there?) so I’ll always have a thing for that. Brain Stew and Are We The Waiting/St Jimmy and p much the whole thing are really great.

Kate Nash, Mouthwash. I just get in a Kate Nash mood sometimes, like daily.
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next time: yeah nah, who knows. But for your sake hopefully something more relaxed. Well, for my sake too.

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Hi friendly people, I have some massive personal life stuff going on right now, so I’m gonna be gone for a minute. While I normally find it excruciating to do anything without telling as many people as I can about it, this one requires some time and privacy and other responsible things like that. But, I will be back blogging before you know it. In the meantime, read all my old posts or hug your loved ones or something.

Laura xx

no good deed goes unpunished, no act of charity goes unresented

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There’s this bit in the really wonderful Hyperbole and a Half book where the author, Ally Brosh, elaborates via her artwork, about how she’s kind of a bad person. Because when she does good deeds, it’s usually because then she’ll in turn appear to be, and receive the acclaim of, a good person. As opposed to doing a good deed for the sheer bountiful joy of actually being a good person. I can’t impress upon you enough just how aggressively this resonated with me. Well, the reason these cookie dough chocolate pretzel things came about is because someone – local artist Pinky Fang – did a very good deed just because she’s an excellent person. And then someone else (*waggles glasses*) was like “I should make her some really cool cookies to say thanks and then I can blog about them and I need something to blog about so this is great and I’ll look like such a nice person but also it really was nice what she did and this is my small way of sincerely saying hey, thanks.”
The deed in question that merited rad Pinky these edible trinkets: she designed the logo from the kindness of her heart and the talent of her, uh, hands I guess, for the Wounded Gazelles team, who are doing the Round the Bays race later this month and raising money for the Casper organisation. I know a lot of dear-to-me people in this team, but also wouldn’t run ever unless like, it was towards Lucy Liu in a kind of slow-motion-high-emotion scene at an airport to try to stop her leaving town. Otherwise, I do not run. Not for money, certainly not for love – a combination of remembering embarrassment and panic attacks in PE class and sports days at primary school, plus too many vexingly bouncy body parts, plus zero interest. What I can do though, is let you know that Casper is a really important organisation, and that the Wounded Gazelles have so many cool people on their team and if you want to pledge a little money, or buy a branded tshirt, tote, or singlet, why, it’s not that difficult. They’ve raised a thousand dollars so far from so many kind people. 
Also, I am a literal hero, because I made these cookies and blogged about them. Um, but really, I adore Pinky’s work (ocular proof: one of her insolent pink cat prints is on my wall) and it’s so great that she donated her skills to make the super-endearing logo for the Wounded Gazelles. Check out her shop!
Admittedly I initially was going to make some kind of fall-back chocolate chip cookie type thing, but then I thought damn it, this deserves something special. I thought: I’m going to make some Internet Cookies. The type that appears on pinterest and is named something incoherently noun-heavy, as if someone just opened up their pantry and threw darts at things and then put all of those in a recipe together. Chocolate peanut butter brownie stuffed waffles with snickers cronut frosting. Cake batter donut cake donuts cake pops. Or something. 
These, though, these cookie dough chocolate pretzel things, are quite coherent. And coherently delicious, importantly. They’re oddly not too sweet, being more about texture than merely exfoliating your lungs with three kinds of sugar. The crack of the chocolate coating, the crunch of the pretzels, the bulge of cookie dough, the roar of the crowd. 

They are also strangely easy – the dough comes together in minutes, they sandwich easily, and then all you have to do is chill them and then half-assedly dip them in chocolate. I know we don’t quite have the same tradition of eating cookie dough here in New Zealand as America does – more’s the pity – but like, it’s the same ingredients that are in actual cookies, so no need to get nervous. And more objectively, there’s no egg in the recipe. I guess putting pretzels in sweet things isn’t quite as well-known here either but we should really get used to it because it’s the best. Thanks, America!

pretzel cookie dough chocolate things 

Inspired by this recipe. However, maybe don’t actually click through if you don’t like words like “sinful” used to describe your completely non-sinful food that you’re eating because you want to eat it. 

makes many.

125g butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups or so flour
a couple of tablespoons of milk
150g dark chocolate (I’m very partial to milk chocolate, but dark is what I had.)
1 packet of pretzels

soften the butter, and beat together with the brown sugar. Tip in the flour and mix into something that looks like cookie dough – since that’s what it is – and add a little milk as you see fit to make it something that can be easily rolled into balls. Not too soft, not too not-soft, just feel your way. 

Roll a very small ball of the dough with your hands, and sandwich it between two pretzels, squashing it down a little so the dough bulges out through the pretzel holes. Continue with the rest of the dough until it’s finished (or you run out of pretzels) and chill them thoroughly in the fridge for at least half an hour. 

Melt the chocolate and dip the pretzel sandwiches so they’re halfway covered, and then chill them again till you’re ready to eat them. 

I…haven’t actually given these away yet. But I’ve only eaten one. They’re stupidly delicious and I couldn’t exactly blog about them without trying them. But your stash is intact, Pinky, I promise.

It has been a quietish time lately, I’ve either been knitting or…knitting. Or watching very sad movies, while knitting. But on Saturday night I danced my cares away in town and it was very wonderful. (Incidentally, Pinky was one of the DJs that night, sorry if I’m weirding you out by saying your name too many times in this one post, Pinky.)

While I may never ever run anywhere, I can dance for hours in the dark. (Also yeah my lipstick here is mint green, I’m not in the grips of scurvy or something.)

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title from: um, I guess I’m not quite on-theme here but any chance to be like, “hey! look at my idol Idina Menzel! And can we talk about Wicked?” so here she is singing No Good Deed in her role of Elphaba, Wicked Witch of the West. 
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music lately:

Lana del Rey, Born to Die. Sometimes I’m just in a Lana-del-Rey-singing-sad-songs-mood.

The Breeders, Saints. Ughhhhhh so cool.

Selena, Bidi Bidi Bom Bom. Jennifer Lopez was exquisite in the biopic about this tragically killed, amazing singer (I told you I’d been watching sad movies) but this song is nothing but joy.  
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Next time: I discovered that you can buy candy love hearts in 2kg quantities online so upcoming will probably be recipes like “a bowl of candy love hearts” and also “candy lovehearts, served in clenched handfuls”. 

pretty as a peach, she’s so out of reach

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Sometimes, no matter how significant it feels like it ought to be, little changes and developments can tip-toe into your life and establish themselves quietly before you even realise they’re there. By which I mean, it was after having a particularly miserable day recently, that I realised how great this was. My miserable day was caused by things that had happened that day. It had been quite a while since I’d felt really crushingly bleak for no apparent reason. Therefore, I think the medication I’m taking is helping. Since I wrote about it on here back when I started taking it, I thought I’d better, you know, clap my hands since I’m happy and I know it. Not that everything is solved or perfect, I am still reliably not-together, but bodies are such a work in progress at best, that I’m very pleased to have discovered this small but important thing about myself. So there’s that.
There’s also this. I have no idea really, how I come up with recipes so easily – perhaps it’s similar to how I can do the splits easily without ever practicing. The making-recipes part of my brain is as flexible as my hamstrings. (C’mon, being able to do the splits is kind of impressive, allow me to drop it into conversation sometimes.) This morning I woke up and thought about seasonal fruit and the idea for this recipe, which I’m calling peaches and cream, appeared quickly and fully formed. And since today was a Sunday where I’d managed to get my act together and get out of bed and deal with the crowds at the vege market, I decided to just go ahead and try making it. 

Seasonal fruit! Did you know it’s abundant and priced kindly? I really need to get to the vege market more often. 

As I said, it’s Sunday today, so what better day to make yourself pudding on, to try fend off any back-to-school blues you may be feeling, and to greet the new week with a sticky, happy smile. (Your smile might not actually be sticky, I just tend to always end up with with food on my face when I eat.) This requires some attention but not a lot of effort. Just peaches, simmered till soft, thickly covered in lemony cream. Through some mysterious augury the combination of cream and sugar heated together with lemon juice added, creates this satiny, smooth, rich, incredibly delicious substance. The method is based on this recipe I used to make all the time in my teens, back when cooking was starting to become “my thing”. So, you don’t actually have to have the peaches underneath, you could just divide the cream between a couple of ramekins (or very adorable teacups) and still be guaranteed a good time. But! Peaches! So peachy!

now you don’t see it…

now you see it. 

Heating the peaches turns up their perfumed, ray-of-sunshine sweetness, which the vanilla and lemon help bring out too, with their respective richness and tartness. I can’t overhype the cream enough, eating it is honestly like the feeling you get when you’re loitering in a fabric shop longer than your brief errand warranted, and nonchalantly but dedicatedly caressing all the rolls of satiny fabric. (Shout out to my people who do this, please be more than just me.)

peaches and cream

a recipe by myself

two large or three small ripe peaches, roughly diced
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or the seeds from a vanilla pod if you’re feeling baller

300ml bottle of cream 
1/3 cup sugar
juice from two lemons (the mean, supermarket kind, that is. If you have a generous, homegrown lemon, you’ll probably only need one.)

Put the peaches, the tablespoon of sugar, and the water in a saucepan and stir over a decent heat, and continue till the water has evaporated and the peaches are very soft. You don’t have to turn this into jam or puree or anything, just break them down a little. The latter would probably be more sophisticated. But here we are. Divide the peaches – a couple of dessertspoons each, I find  – between two or three 125 ml ramekins or similar. Refrigerate.

In the same pan – maybe give it a quick wipe with a paper towel – bring the 300ml cream and the 1/3 cup sugar to a gentle boil, slowly, stirring constantly. Once it’s bubbling, stir for three minutes exactly, then remove from the heat. It’s science, okay? Seriously, watch your phone (or, I guess, your watch, mine tend to have stopped working and become what I call “sculptural bracelets”) and let that surprisingly long three minutes pass in full. Then, remove the cream from the heat, and stir in the lemon juice. With any luck, the cream should mysteriously yet delightfully thicken up as you do this. Divide this mixture between the two or three vessels of peach, bearing in mind that if there’s three, you’re gonna have less…and refrigerate. A couple of hours should thicken it up properly, but feel free to make it the night before.  

Make it for yourself and your significant other/s, eat it all by your significant self, or make someone pay to watch you eat the lot. If you want more, double the quantity. If you don’t have peaches, use something else. Just, um, don’t bother dusting it with icing sugar and sprinkling over lemon zest, because unless you have tons of it the zest just looks messy and the icing sugar absorbs into the surface but also looks dusty, and you’ll be all “but my food blog!” Luckily it tastes brilliant and also my teacups are cute enough to distract somewhat.

Hark! A new knitting project! It’s eventually going to be a very simple short-sleeved top. I’ve never knitted a garment or with two colours before, so it’s all very thrilling. As thrilling as an activity that involves sitting silently and barely moving can be, that is (hint: super damn thrilling.)

One month down, 2014 has already proven to be strange and fascinating and full of promise. Hopefully February will be even better. I, for one, am prepared.

(this was a conversation I had with Kate. I credit her with coining womanifest before my use of it here, and I credit myself with ordering a triple cheeseburger shortly after sending this txt.)
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title from: Jeff the Brotherhood, Leave Me Out. Their scuzzy, gloomy sound suits me.
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music lately:

Tegan and Sara, Drove Me Wild. Well, it does.

Ja Rule and Ashanti, Always On Time. I can listen to early-2000s Ja Rule/Ashanti all day (also quite a lot of J to the L-O and Ja Rule) especially this, with its dreamy, rather timeless chorus.
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next time: I don’t know why I have this next time bit! I never really know! I just want to entice you into coming back again! There, I said it. 

they’re probably drinking coffee, and smoking big cigars

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Some late nights, some perfectly nice food that I ate too fast to photograph or just didn’t care to, a couple of evenings where I didn’t feel well, some nights where I was brain-tired from work, lots of very nondescript things like that are the reason I haven’t blogged in a while. I really wanted to! So badly! If only I could freeze time for a bit so I could get everything done that I need to, then pick up where I left off. But then I’d probably end up making, say, 9pm on a Thursday or 6.30am on a Monday morning last for years, and then no-one would get anything done while I end up all Dorian Grey or something, so it’s probably good that I don’t have this power (this power that’s so improbable that I don’t even know why I’m worrying about it in the first place.)

Now that I’ve torn myself away from repeatedly watching the Beyonce videos that I’d promised myself I’d danced to once I finish this post, I probably oughta try make it good. Like a snake eating its own tail but instagramming the process and taking notes on the taste, I do love blogging so much even though it seems like I never have enough time and energy for it. (I don’t actually know if that allegory quite quite works but I cracked myself up when I thought about it, so.) So: the food. I had a dream the other night about caramel slice with coffee in it, and unlike many of my better dreams, I had a good chance of making this one true.

It tastes excellent, but I mean, it’s low-key stuff. This really is just the same caramel slice that it ever was – biscuit base, condensed milk filling – with some instant coffee added to it. I mixed the base ingredients together in the tin I was baking them in. I sort of burnt the condensed milk. I wasn’t even awake when I thought the recipe up. And yet – so delicious. With that in mind, you can definitely achieve it too.

coffee caramel slice

Did I invent this recipe? In my dreams…

  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar (pack it in, y’know?)
  • 125g melted butter
  • 1 tin condensed milk (if you can, look for the stuff that just has milk and sugar in the ingredients, not milk, sugar, and water)
  • 2 tablespoons golden syrup
  • 50g more butter
  • 2 tablespoons of instant coffee (espresso style gives the best flavour)
  • 1/2 cup white chocolate buttons or similar

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Mix together the flour, melted butter, and brown sugar and once it comes together in a kind of crumbly, damp, sandy way, press it into the base of a baking tin, the sort you might make brownies in – about 25cm square, or thereabouts. Bake it for fifteen minutes.

Once the base is out of the oven, heat the condensed milk, golden syrup, 60g butter and coffee powder together in a pan until it’s bubbling and thick – stir it lots as it heats to prevent it sticking and burning, and also remove it from the heat as soon as it bubbles. Spread it evenly across the biscuit base, and refrigerate for an hour or two. Melt the white chocolate and drizzle it over the top, refrigerate again till it’s set, and then cut into squares. Or whatever shape you like, don’t let me hold you back from your star-shaped caramel slice fantasies.

Of course caramel is wonderful on its own. But instant coffee powder – so flavourless in a cup with hot water! – blasts it with smoky caffeinated depth, making it just a little more fascinating than regular caramel already is. You still get the depth of almost-burnt sugar and the rich butteriness of uh, the butter, but it has a pleasing aggressive roasted and slightly bitter undertone. I’d like to add that until about five years ago instant coffee was all I even made myself at home if I wanted a coffee, so I’m not wanting to sound judgey. It’s just that these days the coffee I drink makes instant taste sort of watery and bleak in comparison. But I give instant espresso powder a gold star for how great it is in flavouring baking. Particularly this sticky candy-sweet confection, full of friendly sugar granules that just can’t wait to make friends with your teeth.

I don’t have any particularly life-changing news to report to you from the time when I last blogged till now, but I am excited about one thing: my friend Tash has opened a second branch of her Holland Road Yarn Company right in town (Wellington right-in-town that is, apologies if you don’t live here) and it’s so lovely and full of beautiful yarn and I already have two new projects lined up to knit and I can occupy myself for a good, oh, twenty minutes by just doing laps of the shop and patting the balls of wool and deciding which ones are my favourite colours.

Oh and I got my sideburns shaved off, having hyped it up to many people beforehand as some kind of “Laura’s summer of rebellious hair and expressing one’s self through stuff” thing, and it turned out so ridiculously subtle and imperceptible that I’m a little red-faced. And now there’s slightly more of my face to get red.

What’s that? Just playing the world’s smallest violin for the world’s smallest buzzcut. (Also: I never understood that “world’s smallest violin” joke until very recently, but it was used at least once in Baby-sitters Club books so I always liked to imagine I could just drop it casually into conversation like I knew what I was talking about. I also feel this way about the phrases “false economy” and “load-bearing wall”.) (Oh and I like my haircut.)

title from: Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues. Voice like thunder, face like thunder, legs like thunder, oh wait sorry I’m describing thunder by mistake. Uh, but for real I love this song and Johnny Cash and his deep voice.

music lately:

Haim, The Wire. Yes. I, too, adore this song.

Laura Marling, Master Hunter. Aggressively dreamy.

Uzo Aduba, By My Side. This wonderful actor from Orange Is The New Black, well she was also on Broadway in Godspell, being incredible while singing this sad, weird song.

next time: I won’t make you wait so long. I’m pretty sure I say this a lot, to be fair. But I always mean it!

 

and after that, we can ketchup like tomato

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Nothing makes me feel like I’m smugly going to avoid scurvy (she says, having only eaten pizza, Nerds, and beer all day) than eating a vegetable one time. Despite my wayward ways, I do actually love vegetables not simply because they keep me more or less alive, but because they’re delicious and abundant and almost all of them taste incredible when they have heat applied to them followed by lots of olive oil. 
I’m one week in back at work, and without casting aspersions on my work ethic (why cast aspersions when you can be frank: my work ethic is usually in the category of “reluctant yet non-existent, at best”) it should be obvious enough that I’d much rather be on holiday. Who among us can say, etc etc. However, as with the chocolate brownies last week, I’m doing my best to improve upon last year’s trend of bleak lunches, month in and out. From days of pot noodles, to seemingly endless bowls of plain couscous with butter and salt, to microwaved cheese sandwich (we’re not allowed a toaster in the work kitchen. Oh, I know) I’ve decided I deserve better. By “better” I guess I mean “not having scurvy” but it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry, or something. 

Simple though the concept is, I’m not always good at remembering to make a large enough dinner to allow for lunch leftovers the following day. That’s where this Ottolenghi recipe for Mejadra, from his book Jerusalem, is useful – it uses such unstressfully-priced ingredients as lentils, rice, and onions, it’s all cooked in one pan, and it makes a metric butt-ton. I hear you, that those ingredients aren’t the first to spring to mind as examples of “whoa, alluring”, but there’s something in the crunchy-crisp fried onions, and the spices which find their way into the earthy lentils and rice, that is really rather wonderful.  

I’m just going to link to Ottolenghi’s recipe for Mejadra rather than write it out in full, because…oh, I’m very lazy. That’s it, really. I told you my work ethic was found wanting.

I shall, however, heroically type out another Ottolenghi recipe that I made to go with the Mejadra – this is properly simple, both of ingredients list and execution, and while it doesn’t sound like much it’s super excellent. Fried slices of tomato, bursting at the seams with sweet ripeness, a little garlic and chili for, well, the flavour of garlic and chili, and plenty of soft, buttery olive oil…when we have tomatoes at such peak being-in-season-ness, there’s not a lot that needs to be done to them. When they’re at their most prolific, I kinda like to eat them like apples. For now, this fast recipe can help bolster up anything from toast, to scrambled eggs, to…to rice and lentils and onions.

fried tomatoes with garlic

from Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Jerusalem.

three garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 a small hot chilli, finely sliced (I just used some sriracha as I was lacking a small hot chilli, or indeed a chilli of any size)
two tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
three large, ripe, firm tomatoes
two tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Mix the garlic, chilli, and parsley together in a small bowl, and set aside. Top and tail the tomatoes and slice thickly vertically – about 1.5cm thick, but like, whatever. Heat the olive oil in a pan and then fry the tomato slices, turning over after a minute or two. I used an enamel roasting dish that can be used on a stove top, but I suppose it’s better the more surface area you have. It’s just that my saucepan was being used for the Mejadra, and…enamel is cute. Add the garlic mixture, fry a little longer, and then serve. 

It’s the sort of thing that you could – and in fact probably already have – come up with yourself quite easily, but nevertheless, sometimes it’s pleasingly comforting to be told what to do when cooking.  

And straightforward as it is, this recipe is pretty spectacular. All sweet and spicy and rich, yet very simple and plain and unfancy.

And very fitting on a table full of potluck brunch. I’m trying something called luxterity (luxe + austerity) this year, where there’s more care with spending (necessarily so) but in as elegant/dramatic/sybaritic a manner as we can manage (also necessarily so, because I like those things.) Having friends over for brunch saves a lot of money, is super fun, and there’s nothing like an air of “pants are barely required because I’m in my own damn house” to add a frisson to your morning repast.

That’s about it, really. This week has been very long yet very fast. Full of hangings-out (out-hangings?) and knitting (a hat) and reading (The Character of Rain/Amelie Nothomb; Are You My Mother?/Alison Bechdel) and watching (Pretty Little Liars and Practical Magic and all the new Beyonce videos again and again) and eating (endless Mejadra – that recipe really makes a lot; plus as many seasonal berries as I can find) and small but joyful things like that.

Also, I got a new beanie that I adore.

This isn’t going to make my knitted hat any less fun of a project, for one thing, I intend to put a pom pom on top of that one. Wellington’s weather has been monumentally horrible lately, so weird as it sounds to be thinking about warm hats in the middle of summer, that’s what we’re dealing with. I couldn’t care less. As long as tomatoes continue being cheap for a while longer…so if nothing else, I can pre-load on vitamins to cover me during my next inevitable stretch of candy and sodium chloride.
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title from:  Mariah Carey, More Than Just Friends. Even when it’s not the mid-nineties any more, Mariah still rules my heart and ears. 
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music lately

City Oh Sigh, Still Let Me In. Dreamy, too dreamy.

Joan Jett, Roadrunner. The original by the Modern Lovers is one of my very, very favourite songs. But hurrah for good covers, like this boisterous one by the babein’ Jett.
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next time: I may have a hat that says “witch” but I don’t know everything. You’ll find out when I do.

it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day

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I am back! With some really ordinary brownies. I did look thoughtfully into the middle distance for a while over the idea of making something that really said “it’s a new year!” in a jazz-handsy kind of way, but I didn’t really have it in me, and also wanted brownies. In the same way that every person is the lead character in their own story that they’re living – if that makes sense? – January is still just another month that happens to have danced around to the front. I guess what I’m saying is…brownies! They’re not surprising, but they are excellent.

That said, I enjoyed having the opportunity to reflect upon 2013 and think about what I want to achieve in 2014 (besides just being like “whoaaaaa it’s 2014 the movie Practical Magic is sixteen years old”) and to gather together my intentions and so on. Without loading too much pressure on myself, since no-one needs that. More just things like…I want to pay attention to the phases of the moon, and read even more books written by women this year, and cook more proactively than reactively, and learn lots of new words and their meanings…and on a more specific level, I would also like this year to bring Lorde-levels of spectacular fame and success for my cookbook and me, for my wedding at the end of June to be fun and not financially whimper-making, and – sigh – to be way tidier. So, a little bit of pressure, I guess.

Despite my complete underselling of these brownies (great food blogging, Laura) they are of course delicious and are going to help me beat the back-to-school blues when I take them for lunch with me to work every day. This is something I’ve done before, but never quite sustain it for very long – hopefully this year I can be more (as I said above) proactive rather than reactive in the kitchen.

What better way to start the year than under the velvety influence of my queen Nigella Lawson, whose cookbook Kitchen is where this recipe comes from. She charmingly calls them Everyday Brownies, which, given that the 75g cocoa she specifies is nearly a cupful, says a lot about the quality of her days. But like all brownies should be, they are reassuringly easy to make, taste brilliant, keep for ages, and will probably help embiggen your day somewhat should you be eating them on your lunch break too.

Everyday Brownies

(or just Brownies, for the rest of us) (I know, I’m going on like she’s living at the level of Marie Antoinette, it’s just 75g cocoa really is a lot.) (Though to be fair her other brownie recipe has 300g chocolate and six eggs so comparatively, this is rather austere.) (I’ll stop talking now.)

From Nigella Lawson’s book Kitchen.

  • 150g unsalted butter
  • 300g brown sugar
  • 75g cocoa powder, sifted
  • 150g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • pinch of salt
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • approx 150g milk chocolate, chopped into small chunks (or similar – whatever!)

Preheat the oven to 190C, and line a 25cmx25cm (or thereabouts) baking dish with baking paper.

Melt the butter, and stir in the sugar. Sift in the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda and salt – cocoa tends to be lumpy, and baking soda is no fun to get a mouthful of, so sifting really is useful here. Add the eggs, vanilla, and chocolate, then stir, and scrape into your baking tin and bake for approximately 20-25 minutes. It depends on what you’re into, but brownies tend to be better when they’re a bit undercooked, so don’t worry if everything’s wobbly on top when you take it out of the oven.

These are wonderful – unstressful to make, perfuming the house delightfully, and achieving that perfect balance between the crisp exterior and the barely-contained mouth-rush of satiny chocolate batter within. I used some white chocolate buttons and chunks of Whittakers milk chocolate which made for a caramelly, melting contrast to the stridenly cocoa-y brownie around it. But use what you have – chocolate chips, dark chocolate, anything. These are such good, dependable, quietly lovely brownies that damn it, they really should be for every day. Thanks, Nigella (not for these brownies, I just wanted to thank her for existing.)

A cat deigned to have a selfie with me! (The Laura Vincent Story.)

I hope that the 13 changing to a 14 has seen good times for you all. I had a really nice xmas at home with my family (including – one of whom is pictured above – the two truculent cats who eventually acknowledged my presence after an enormous loss of dignity on my behalf), and read, and knitted, and that was about it really. Then, camping. I’ve been camping at this one place with my family since I was six months old (am still about as useful at helping to put up the tents now as I was back then) and it was a joy to be there again for a few days. A freezing, rained-upon, mosquito-bitten joy. I did, however, manage to read The Luminaries in 48 hours, and it was worth every last mosquito bite to be able to do that.

This place is so tightly knitted and purled into my life that it seems like the most beautiful land on earth.

But, it’s nice to be back here nestling back into this blog. I plan to resurrect my I Should Tell You interviews, which fell by the wayside as I worked on launching my cookbook, and of course there’s my aim to be mondo-successful in a low-key, unpressurised kind of way. I got so many messages around the 25th of December from people telling me that they’d given my cookbook as a present, that they’d received it, or that they were making recipes from it – every single time I read one of the messages it made my little heart wiggle with happiness. So it may be just another day of just another month, but I’m looking forward to making every second of it as excellent as possible. (Even the bits that aren’t my brownie-filled lunch break when I’m back at work next week.)

Oh! One more thing: I’ve had fun contributing to Radio New Zealand’s Summer Nights programme. I completely love public speaking, so it was super cool to be broadcasting live to air on Monday when I was last there – if you want to listen to them there are audios available at Radio New Zealand’s website. Presuming you’ve made it to here while reading this, it’s not implausible that you could handle more?
 

title from: Nina Simone, Feeling Good. While up at home I saw her performance at Montreux in 1976 played on TV, she was sublime. I love her so much.

music lately:

St Vincent, Cheerleader. Annie Clark of St Vincent is such a dreamboat and I love how this song is so stormy and dreamy. Also, rather cool name she’s chosen to perform under, hey?

Speaking of dreamy, I danced to Beyonce’s euphoric song XO on New Year’s Eve and it was…um. Dreamy. Guess I should’ve put “diversity of adjectives” on my xmas wish list.

next time: no idea but I’ve done the groceries so it will be more than just an instagram of marmite on toast or a handful of chocolate buttons. Promise.

 

one more dawn, one more day, one day more

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I don’t know who even has time to read blogs at the moment (indeed, I hardly have time to write this) with Christmas insisting on being closer and closer every minute. And it’s not just Christmas – there are other festive high days and holy days, people have birthdays, people have work, things still need to happen. So I’ll keep this as succinct as I can manage, which for me means a quick nine paragraph dissertation on my feelings followed by another six paragraphs on my feelings for today’s recipe, followed by an essay on why a particular song I’ve been listening to this week accurately and devastatingly reflects all this. Brevity! It’s the soul of wit. Or the lowest form of wit? Whatever, I guess it’s too late to carry on pretending I’m gonna provide it for you, but I honestly am trying, for what it’s worth. 
So, I’ve mentioned a few times on here about my steady diet of two-minute noodles, microwaved pies, and microwaved marmite and cheese sandwiches as I grew up. But, after getting out a thrillingly American cookbook from the library at the age of, oh, nine or so, I was struck by a rather chic and unusual sandiwich combination: apple and cheese, which it turned out, I loved. So, if I really felt like putting in some effort, like making myself a baller snack, like putting the glam in glamwich (which also puts the glam in sandwich. Portmanteaux! Talk about classy) youthful me would forego the marmite and instead make an apple and cheese microwaved sandwich. I know. You can see how I got a cookbook deal.
(PS: I’ve never actually said the word “glamwich” before and my christmas gift to you is that I’m never going to say it again.)

Nigella, that moon of my life, has an excellently fast recipe in her book Kitchen for something she calls Crustless Pizza. It’s kind of a cross between a yorkshire pudding and cheese on toast, hence its enormous appeal to me. While the original recipe of Nigella’s is perfectly brilliant, I suspected that an apple and cheese variation, spattered with mouth-heating mustard so you know for sure it’s not pudding, would be…equally brilliant.

Apple and cheese together have this bizarrely pleasing salty-sweet, crunchy-melting symbiosis, which isn’t so odd really. I mean, fruit appears in all forms on cheeseboards, and there’s something lovely about the clean, crisp, delicate freshness of the apple slices subverted by the golden, buttery, bubbling cheese. Oh wait, I was supposed to be succinct. It’s just really good, okay?

apple, cheese and mustard pie

Adapted from a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s important book Kitchen. Serves two. Or four, I guess, but I am terribly whiny and reluctant about sharing anything with melted cheese on it. 

1 cup flour
1 egg
1 cup milk
pinch salt
150g cheese, something cheddar-esque, grated
1 apple, I liked Granny Smith here
Dijon mustard

This is very simple. Set your oven to 200 C. Butter a 21cm pie plate or similarly shaped dish. Mix together the flour, egg, milk, salt, and about half the grated cheese. Bake for ten minutes. Meanwhile, slice the apple thinly. Remove the pie from the oven, arrange the apple slices howsoever you please on top, and sprinkle over the remaining cheese. Bake for another ten or so minutes, then drizzle over the mustard. Slice into four, and use a spatula or something to wiggle the slices out – they’ve never stuck once for me, so hopefully they don’t for you either.

And that’s it, really. It would be quite nice with a kind of peppery, crunchy salad of rocket and stuff like that, but there’s no need to play up the sophisticated side of this. It’s just as good eaten with your hands while staring glaze-eyed into space because you’re very tired and just want to deliver carbs to the outstretched, clasping hands of your blood cells with zero distraction.

So, Christmas, huh? It has arrived. Considering it’s Christmas Eve today, I really shouldn’t be too surprised about this. Were I much more flush with cash than I currently am, I would shower myself with the following gifts:

Vogue Knitting magazine
A deposit on another tattoo
At least one really pretty, out-of-my-reach sundress from twenty-seven names
A copy of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Nigella’s book Nigellisima
A supermarket pallet of San Pellegrino Limonata (when I get famous, this is going to be on all my riders. It’s tooth-zappingly lemony and my best friend while mildly hungover. But also I like to drink it other times.)
A bottle of Campari
An intense hand and nail cream
Candles, for lighting and feeling deep and purposeful (and flatteringly lit)
More Devon Smith artwork
A meadowlark trinket of some kind. So out of my reach currently that I’m not even at the stage of choosing one or two to sigh over.
A landlord who will let me have a pet cat. (I don’t know quite how, but I figure being rich makes everything simple.)
A pet cat.

What about you?

Whether or not you celebrate Christmas (even “celebrate” might be a little too enthusiastic, occasionally my mood is more like… “accept stoically” or “admit defeat in the face of”) I of course hope that times are good and people are nice and social situations are fairly stress-free and that your tables are laden with good food. Because stuff like that should be for life, not just for Christmas. (Like a pet cat. Hmph.) I’m flying home today to my parents’ house, and I can’t wait to see them, and the rest of my family, and the cats, who are of course family, but oh man I should really stop talking about cats. I’m planning on knitting myself a beanie, reading books, and taking lots of selfies with the cats.

Also, uh, I suppose it behooves me one last time to remind you that my cookbook Hungry and Frozen is super amazing and makes a majorly excellent present idea. Also if you already have it, there’s a fairly simple Christmas Cake recipe in there which you can make quite last minute and still feel good about.

May the rest of your December be dreamy.
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title from: facing the season with bared teeth and dizzyingly contrapuntal arrangement, One Day More from Les Miserables. The version I’ve linked to is the 25th anniversary concert. Featuring the bafflingly handsome Ramin Karimloo as Enjolras (look him up on Google images if you’re so inclined, I thoroughly recommend it.) I also like Key and Peele’s highly apt take on it. 
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Music lately:

I know I’ve linked to it twelve million times, but this is the only time of year I watch Turkey Lurkey Time from Promises Promises, and marvel at Donna McKechnie’s loose-limbed perfection and the sublimely bonkers choreography leading to a rather shivers-making ending.

Speaking of people worth looking up on google images to marvel at, Zooey Deschanel’s band She and Him made a thoroughly endearing Christmas album. As if Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree wasn’t already massively endearing to begin with, too.

Sleater-Kinney, One Beat. It’s not allllll carols round here.
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Next time: I might be reunited with this blog before the year is out, and then it really just depends on what I can excavate from my fridge….

cry into your christmas cake, don’t know what else to do

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When I was a child, and Christmas inched towards me in the distance like an achingly slow-moving but manifestly mighty steam-roller, I loved the season, hard. Now that I’m older and busier, Christmas emerges with a hiss through the cracks and fissures in the pavement like a sinister steam – suddenly everywhere without warning, and prone to fogging up one’s glasses and making one’s fringe get sweaty. My feelings about Christmas these days are more than just “I’m sweaty” – I love it. I do. I do! I’m not just convincing myself here, honest. I love the sparkle and hustle and bustle and food, all the food, and there’s little more gratifying (to me and me alone) than lustily singing the alto descant to Joy To The World or Hark the Herald Angels Sing, to fill me with pine-needle scented exuberance. 




But: it’s also stressful. I mean, money. Where’s that stuff hiding lately? How does one go about getting really rich without much effort? Why is so much effort required to get rich and even then it’s not guaranteed? Answer me that, Santa! Also just the sense of wanting to spend lovely, important time with family but then that being high-stakes and needing to go just right, and also trying to get everything done while still working and feeling tired-er and tired-er with every day that passes. But then sniffing a christmas tree, or running your hands idly through a plush, cool pile of tinsel, or staying up late to bake something really special for someone just as special, and Christmas specials of TV shows and Mariah Carey and candy canes… 

So yeah: Christmas. I have now made the ground-breaking observation that it is happening and stirs up some feelings across the spectrum of what feelings feel like.

Even though buzzfeed and pinterest have rendered trying to list anything slightly superfluous, still I heedlessly present my annual round-up of anything I’ve ever made on this blog that might make a decent-enough edible gift for someone. Give the gift of food, yo. People want things – or at least, I want things, ever so badly – but people LOVE food. And you know it’s going to get used, not consigned to a Shelf of Guilt because you visit quite a lot and will absolutely know if your gift is not on display. 

Also – sorry if you’re getting sick of seeing Christmas everywhere and you don’t participate in it for any number of reasons. It’ll soon be over. And also you can make these things at any time, not just during this particularly pervasive and dominating seasonal landmark. 

Things In Jars. 

Note: We may have reached Peak Mason Jar Awareness but there’s no reason why you can’t ignore this, because…jars are cute! And you can’t put a price on that. 

Orange Confit (This is just slices of orange in syrup, but is surprisingly applicable to a variety of cake surfaces. And pretty. And cheap.) (vg, gf)
Cranberry Sauce (Impossibly easy.) (vg, gf)
Bacon Jam (Best made at the last minute, because it needs refrigerating) (gf)
Cashew Butter (vg, gf)
Red Chilli Nahm Jim (gf)
Cranberry (or any-berry) Curd (some effort involved, so make sure you’re awake, but very, very pretty.) (gf)
Rhubarb-Fig Jam (gf)
Salted Caramel Sauce (gf, has a vegan variant) (also: don’t even try fighting it, salted caramel is not going anywhere.) 
Apple Cinnamon Granola (vg)
Marinated Tamarillos (vg, gf)
Taco Pickles (vg, gf)
Pickled Blueberries


Baked Stuff: the classic choice. Or: The Person Who Actually Likes Doing Baking’s choice. 
Look, my Christmas Cake is amazing. It just is: deal with my lack of coyness. Make it on the day, it’ll still be great. 
Christmas-Spiced Chocolate Cake (Also a good xmas-day pudding) (gf)
Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake (y’know, wrap it in brown paper and tie with string, ba-da-bing, ba-da-cute.)
Vegan Chocolate Cake (It’s good! It’s easy!) (vg)
Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
Also, if you click on the link to the Orange Confit above, you’ll see a recipe for the easiest, fastest fruitcake loaf. It makes an excellent present, for the sort of person who’d like to receive fruitcake. And ’tis dairy free.

Novelty! Novelty? Novelty! 


If all you have energy to do is melt some stuff and sprinkle some other stuff over it, the bulk of this list is for you, oh head-pat-needing-friend.
Moonshine Biffs (like homemade Milk Bottles!) (gf)
Raw Vegan Chocolate Cookie Dough Truffles Candy (vg, gf)
Lolly Cake
Peppermint Schnapps (vg, gf) (Pictured above)
Candy Cane Chocolate Bark (No effort, vegan – well, I think candy canes are vegan – gluten free, amazingly delicious, just store it carefully so it doesn’t melt)
White Chocolate Coco Pops Slice 
And there you have it. If nothing else, a prompt to lose a pleasurably hungry hour or two on something like Pinterest, looking up endless variations on The One Cookie That Will Affirm Your Belief In Humanity or something. 
It has been a dreamy and mellow weekend – pizza eating and head-pats; wedding dress shopping and quietly reading in a cafe and swooning; watching Pretty Little Liars and drinking beer (more swooning here); book group and snacks and knitting. 
Many, many, thrice many candy canes. I love them so much and they only come into season in December! So if I’m fixing to eat five in one sitting, no-one’s going to stop me. 

Oh yeah, that’s right, more wedding dress shopping. I found the one. The two, in fact. Which sounds diva-ish, to which I say, don’t use diva as a negative term to devalue powerful women, and also that the two dresses together cost half the price of some other dresses I tried on, and also they’re both intensely beautiful and I really like the idea of having a dramatic costume change halfway through the ceremony. 
And for one fervent blogger, christmas came early this year: I got to hang out with this hund friend! Called Bruce! With a very soft, fluffy head and a huggably squat body. Like me!
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Title via: Rilo Kiley, Xmas Cake. Putting the aaaagh into fa-la-la-la-la.
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Music lately:

Sheep Dog and Wolf, Egospect. Blimmin’ rad, is my indepth description of it for you.
Janine and the Mixtape, Hold Me (acoustic). Could this babe be any more talented or amazing? Possibly, I mean that kind of thing in terms of measurability to – anyway. Here she is singing an acoustic version of a dreamy song that I already loved, somehow making it more gentle and delicate and yet saltily searing. 
Um, also Beyonce did the staggeringly amazing move of dropping an entire album with a video for each song in the middle of the night without any fanfare. Do yourself a favour and try to find them – they’re brilliant. ***Flawless and Grown Woman are pretty much perfection, but it’s impossible this early to choose favourites: it’s just the most excellent, saucy, in charge R’n’B I’ve heard since Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange. (Not that he was thaaaat saucy.) I am just so inspired by her control and confidence and complete difference-from-everything-else in releasing her album like this. Makes me want to write an even better cookbook. And also dance lots. 
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Next time: I made an apple and cheese pie, but who knows, eh? Christmas! What a time. Be as nice to yourselves as you can muster.