2009 - The Simple Life

I don't know about you, but simplicity is not something that I manage to experience very often in the way I live my life. I came across this poster from Ready Made and it made me think. The dynamo lights on the bike in the drawing are almost the same as those on my Dutch bike. They never need batteries and I am always able to cycle home in the dark, even if I have forgotten my LED lights. Maybe living simply is about removing the need to remember so many things, like bike lights, and just getting on with living. If there were more room in my head for the importan things in life, perhaps I would be happier. I'll give it a go and let you know how I get on.

Christmas

Christmas came and went this year in a frenzied blur. I was out of the country until mid-December and didn't feel remotely Christmasy at all, even after mulled wine and minced pies the last week in December. The lack of Christmas cheer made me feel sad, I used to love Christmas - the magical promise of life in twinkly lights against the darkness. Maybe next year will be different. It's hard to feel Christmasy walking along the top of the Andes in 18 degree sunshine in December, or while filling in a tax return at the kitchen table, or while the house is full of builders' dust and the Christmas tree is coating in a fine grey powder and the lights are only half visible. Next year there will be baking and trees and cinnamon muffins and presents and lights, lots of lights, and I will try to stop to take it all in.

Red onion & goats' cheese tart

This is really easy and totally yummy... if your hands are cold enough to make pastry, then go for it, but if you can't be bothered to get flour everywhere then jus-rol is good enough I think!

1 roll puff pastry
3 large red onions, sliced
3 tbsps good balsamic vinegar
3 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
big knob of butter
150g soft goats cheese
1 egg, beaten with a dollop of cream
Two springs of fresh rosemary (optional)

Put the vinegar, oil, butter and onions into a thick-bottomed frying pan and leave on a low heat for half an hour. Stir every so often. The onions should caramalise and look a bit sticky... don't worry if some have a tinge of black around the edges. While they are cooking, prepare the pastry...

Roll out the pastry and then score a border around the edge about an inch from each side. Then prick the rest of it with a fork and bake at 200C for 10 minutes. Take it out and act all surprised that it has swelled up like a balloon and hit the top of the oven (optional). Bash down the pastry in the middle gently with a fish slice. Brush the edges with the egg/cream mixture and then put the rest in the middle of the pastry square.

When the onions are ready put them into the centre of the tart and spread over evenly. Then break up the goats' cheese and dollop it all over. If you are using the rosemary break it up and sprinkle on top of the tart before seasoning with salt and pepper and baking in the oven at the same temperature for another 25 minutes or so.

It's great as a starter with some mild leaves and a basic dressing.

I did actually get around to making one of these over Christmas, but the photos didn't come out, so you'll have to take my word for it that it looks and tastes delicious.

An attempt to not be like the town mouse

When I was a child one of my favourite books was The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, which is based on one of Aesop's Fables. In the story the two mice are cousins and they go to visit each other in the town and country respectively. Each struggles to understand the way the other lives his life - the town mouse turns up his nose at the country mouse's simple food, and the country mouse is scared to be in a big house with the 'music' of barking dogs accompanying quince jelly at dinner. My childhood version of the story ends with the mice resolving their difficulties, understanding each other and living happily ever after, but Aesop's is (unsurprisingly) less cheery - the country mouse runs out of his cousin's town house shouting, 'Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear', and that is the end of that.

As I arrived at a cold, damp station platform today I could see mist blowing through the darkness alongside the train. The night sky was so much darker than I remembered, there is dark in the city and dark in the country, and they are so different as to be almost unrelated. As we sped through windy lanes towards my parents' house the trees stood black against the pink-black sky, and I thought I had come to the end of the earth. I'm a city girl and the country always shocks me at first. A pine cone splutters to light in the fireplace and the fusty smell of woodsmoke engulfs the air around us, I reach for a glass of port and try to relax, I'm not doing a good job of it so far, but unlike the country mouse I hope to settle in and not run out in fear, shouting 'Get me to the city!' I can try anyway.

The Modern Restaurant, New York - A Lesson In Perspective

On a trip to NYC earlier this month we were lucky enough to have dinner at The Modern, one of the restaurants at the Museum of Modern Art. Everything about it basks in glorious modern design, jst as the museum does, without being overdone. The chef, Gabriel Kreuther, is 'Alsatian-born' (I didn't realise one could be), and the food is 'French-American', which makes sense of the carbonara with escargots... I loved everything about it, we ate the Bar Room, the informal side of the restaurant with square leather seating and precariously small tables on which to balance crisp Sauvignon Blanc.

Inspired by the Bauhaus movement, the building design is elegant enough to raise an eyebrow, yet understated as not to overpower. It took a good half an hour for me to notice that the ceiling in each side of the restaurant was a different height. Not only that, but the furnishings were perfectly in scale to the height of the ceiling in each room - higher chair backs, tables and tablewear in the taller restaurant side. The Bauhaus was a serious influence, a lesson in perspective over wine and escargot was a welcome break from the frenzied, freezing streets outside.

Sometimes

Sometimes I wonder if I'm strong enough; if I have enough faith, will, truth, love to do the things that I believe in. To get on a plane to Asia and never come back. To make my home in a land of tones, where words are sounds and incomprehension reigns. I wonder if I'd make it. If my heart would bear the excitement; my eyes the standing out, my ears the strange sounds... Yet I am not at home here, now. This city, this ordinariness, bacon and eggs and toast and coffee on a crisp winter morning, the loneliness. Sometimes I wonder...