It's been a while
Hi!
I hope you had a great holiday break, and of course, it seems so long ago now. Tim and I were in M&S shopping yesterday for a shirt for him for work, and they were playing Christmas songs. It felt extremely jarring to hear those in February, and as Tim quipped to shop assistant, “Christmas starts earlier every year”, to much polite chuckling.
Let’s get Spring sprung first, before we start to consider the festive season starts. As a food blogger, you are expected to post seasonal recipes some weeks in advance, so for me, I’m thinking about Easter and then salads.
But let’s have a quick recap. Christmas passed by quietly, but cheerfully, and we spent much time eating food we shouldn’t, watching trashy horror and just generally chilling.
I began dry January and have continued it onto February, but sadly I picked up a dose of flu, so I’ve been pretty poorly for much of January. If you’ve had it, I feel your pain. Four weeks in and I still have a pee-inducing cough that rattles like a squeaky gate in the breeze. Do you have any tips at all for getting over this lingering flu? I find that the tiredness is what’s making it hard for me to get motivated to do things, and in fact, I’ve started reading Atomic Habits in the hope that I might be able to pick up some tips to be a more useful human this year.
Because I haven’t cooked much, I thought I’d share with you some of the new cookbooks I’ve picked up, some were Christmas gifts, and some were books I’ve been keen to replace from my old collection.
These are affiliate linked to Amazon, but I often buy books on Ebay these days as they are cheaper and, if you’re in the UK, you can collect Nectar points too.
Mochi Magic - a small but thorough book by Kaori Becker, on how to make a variety of the Japanese rice flour sweet, mochi.
Deco Cakes - by Junko. This shows you how to make exquisitely patterned swiss rolls. I first fell in love with printed jelly rolls when I saw them on an episode of Great British Bake-Off and this book is exhaustive guide to making them (note: not vegan). It is quite hard to find these days, and Junko doesn’t seem to have much of an online presence at all. However, the recipes and simple methods are so charming.
In Praise of the Potato - Lindsey Bareham. A forgotten treasure trove of potatoes using the humble (and my favourite ingredient) potato. Here’s a link to my potato recipes on the blog.
A book I cannot praise highly enough, by one of my favourite cookbook authors is Dark Rye and Honey Cake by Regular Ysewijn of
. Her books are so beautifully researched, filled with evocative photography and unintimidating recipes. But even if you never cook from her books, they are like novels, to be treasured. What cookbooks do you recommend?Whilst I was ill, I spent some time dozing in front of the TV, and inbetween my usual true crime Youtube channels, I binged The Deuce and the first season of True Detective, both HBO shows (available on Sky and Now in the UK). I cannot recommend either highly enough (although the Deuce is strictly adults only).
Anyway, I hope that this update is not too tedious, and as part of a new Atomic Habit, I want to update you all at least once a week, and with actual recipes too, but let’s see how that goes!