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Monday 31 December 2012

Auld Lang Syne

stokescroft

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Beauty from Ashes...

Mark and I spent Friday in one of my favourite places to be - Stokes Croft in Bristol - drinking coffee and red wine and eating cake at Boston Tea Party and the Canteen.

CeesNooteboom

I popped into the Amnesty Bookshop on the way down and picked up some Cees Nooteboom for 75p, so spent the afternoon flitting between that and The Fire Gospel by Michel Faber. When I finished The Fire Gospel I drank some more wine, contemplated what was in 2012, and what may be in 2013.

Auld Lang Syne

2012 was an odd year of ups and downs. I passed my Legal Practice Course with a mega-Distinction, despite spending most of January thinking I'd failed the interviewing module. Mark finished writing his book, despite it nearly giving him a nervous breakdown (it is now under review pending publication). We redecorated our living room, did a lot of gardening, and both developed a deep love for Benedict Cumberbatch (Parade's End...Parade's End! Oh my!).

The major flaw in the year was my 3 months of unemployment. It was a truly demoralising, soul-crushing experience, not to mention financially a bit horrifying as having not been resident in the UK for long enough in the last few years, I was not entitled to the pittance that is jobseekers' allowance. Gutted. I spent the whole time avoiding meeting people I already knew, in case they asked how the jobseeking was going. I also spent the whole time avoiding meeting any new people, in case they asked me what I did and I would have to admit to having no job, at which point I am pretty sure any last remaining threads of optimism and self-esteem would have snivelled out through my ear and promptly left the country.

Of course, being offered my job was a highlight of the year - not only was it the perfect job for me but in my dream law firm as well! Life definitely got a lot better, and the last few months have been fun, with trips to Cambridge, Oxford, London and even a day at the Thermae Spa in Bath for my mummy's 60th birthday a few weeks ago! I'm looking forward to more of this in 2013!

Hogmanay

I don't really do anything on New Year's Eve anymore. After 3 fun-filled NYEs in Sydney, out and about in the balmy night air with fireworks and friends and full-service public transport running all night, I don't really want to spend a night being overcharged for everything in an otherwise regular venue, before waiting for hours in the freezing cold to pay £6758688676 for a taxi home. I'll be at home in Nottingham, with a nice bottle of wine and, hopefully, some good food. I'll probably be in bed at five past midnight. So...Happy New Year and I'll see you on the other side!

Sunday 30 December 2012

Spoiled

Fellows family Christmas tree!
Our Christmas Tree in Bristol


Christmas continues...

After spending Christmas Day with Mark's family on the farm, we have come over to my family in Bristol for a few days, which means a second Christmas!

My parents bought me a new camera, which is pretty much the best present ever! It's a Canon Powershot A4000 IS and it's so tiny! My previous Canon Powershot I have had since early 2007, and while it was a great camera, it's no longer much use as the autofocus broke about a year ago. As a result, whenever you want to take a photo you have to spend ages zooming in and out to try and get it to focus! I still have my Canon EOS 30D DSLR, but that is a big serious camera and isn't really practical for carrying round all the time. So a new little point-and-shoot was definitely in order.

So I've been testing out this new camera photographing my presents! I am so lucky to have been given so many lovely things! My camera was really a delayed birthday present - I was meant to get it back in June (!) but it all got a bit mixed up, so I got a few more Christmas things from the parentals too, as well as from Mark, my sister Becca, and Mark's family.

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I got two owls! The larger one is a cushion from my mummy, the smaller is a doorstop from Mark's parents.

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I already have an Ampelmann tea mug (see here). But now I have an AMPELMANN CAPPUCCINO MUG TOO! From the Ampelmann Ostalgia shop in Berlin, via parents.

presents3

Smellies! Soap & Glory Smoothie Star from Mark, Body Shop ginger sparkle bath crystals and hand cream from Bec, Sanctuary Spa set and Body Shop soaps from parents.

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Tea towel from the Natural History Museum via Bec, 2013 diary from Bec, and cute purse from my aunt and uncle who also put a bit of cash in it :D

presents4

Books and DVDs - I bought The Crimson Petal & The White for Mark and I, Parade's End DVD and Twenty Thousand Streets book and DVD were from my parents to both of us, and Winnie the Pooh in Latin and the letters of Arthur Conan Doyle from Mark's parents.

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And the culinary gifts! Mark's gift to me was a MAGIMIX!!!!! It has grater, slicer, blender, dough hook, ahhh! He also bought the super knife, for both of us. My parents bought us the two books - Nigel Slater and Nigellissima - the pestle and mortar, and measuring spoons (fulfilling a request as on my current measuring spoons, the measurements have rubbed off so you can't tell what they are!). The funky veg kit is from Mark's brother and his family - it's a growing kit with seeds for purple carrots, purple sprouts, multi-coloured chard, yellow courgettes and tiger tomatoes. I can't wait til the spring to get planting them!

Not pictured here are a lovely jacket and the perfume 'Chance' by Chanel, both from Mark, some chocolatey bits, a little recipe book and a lovely address/anniversaries book from Mark's grandma, and an awesome sparkly collar/necklace from Bec.

Moving on...

Tomorrow we are loading up the car and journeying back home to Nottingham, the Christmas break is over and normality will soon return. I have to go to work on New Year's Eve, but I don't mind that. And then we will be into 2013, but more on that another time! I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas.

Saturday 29 December 2012

Vegetarian Christmas Dinner

Mark and I are both vegetarians (well, pescetarians (fish-eating veggies), but that usually results in blank looks), which is always a bit of a pain at Christmas. Or rather, not a pain for us so much as for everyone else.

During our years in Sydney, Christmas dinner was an easier affair. In the heat of summer, the Australian Christmas feast includes as much fish and salads as heavy hunks of meat - with heaps of oysters and prawns, and tuna and salmon steaks flung on the barbeque amongst the sausages.

Back in the UK of course meat is the undisputed centrepiece. And so, wherever we go for Christmas, we are always met with the question: "what are you two going to eat on Christmas day?" It feels awkward. Extra effort has to be made to accommodate your 'difficult' dietary requirements. So, this year, we offered to cook the whole Christmas dinner ourselves: vegetarian style.

A preconception-challenging, tradition-upheaving, Christmas dinner revolution!

After some research and a few practice runs, we settled on a pie as our centrepiece. This pie to be precise - a triple layered feast of spinach, ricotta, pearl barley, mushroom, chestnut and butternut squash.

After the run-through revealed that the timings given in the recipe were overly optimistic (40 minutes preparation time was more like 4 hours), we made the pie on Christmas eve and kept it in the fridge overnight. It looked like this:

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We put it in the oven at 11am on Christmas day, and by 2pm it looked like this:

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Layers!

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And here it is as part of the full spread: we did all the usual roastie trimmings, with sprouts and peas too.

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For pud, we baked pears (again, the day before) in a mix of white wine, brandy and apple juice, seasoned with cinnamon and cloves. We thickened up the juice with arrowroot to make a syrup. It made a nice alternative to Christmas pudding, which I can NEVER eat after a big roast dinner and I am astounded by anyone who claims they can.

Of course, it wouldn't be Christmas without a bit of Christmas pudding. We didn't make a pudding, but we made a compote of stewed fruit in Marsala for the same effect. Delicious!

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Anyone got any other good alternative Christmas dinner ideas?

Wednesday 26 December 2012

Merry Christmas !!!

I thought I'd take some time out from my supremely lazy Boxing Day schedule of eating and lazing to come online and wish everyone a happy Christmas in retrospect! I hope everyone had a lovely day full of cheer and warmth.

We are down on Mark's family's farm in Cambridgeshire enjoying a bit of a break, although it has turned out to be a busy few days in their own right, with shopping trips and much baking. We even cooked a vegetarian Christmas dinner for the family, which went rather well if I may say so myself, and I will bring you more about that shortly!

The Big Smoke

I finished work last Thursday, so on Friday we took ourselves into London for the day. We began with my now traditional stop-off at the British Library - I love arriving into King's Cross/St Pan because the Library has brilliant coffee and always has something worth looking at on display. This time around, they had Jack Kerouac's manuscript scroll, which he later turned into On the Road.

Now I am not really a beat-fan, and I must admit that On the Road is one of the only books I have ever tried to read that I just had to give up on without finishing. I just couldn't get it. But that aside, the scroll was pretty cool and interesting in it's own right. And the Library's coffee was excellent as always.

The rest of the day was spent lunching at Koya in Soho, which was tasty, followed by a lengthy trip round Liberty Department Store!

Liberty_Christmas


I had never been before but oh my! I loved it! Next year I will do all my shopping there! My sister, Becca, came to meet us and we had a good look round, and even did some big-name celeb spotting! My provincial-self was far too excited but Bec was all "oh you see famous people all the time in London". Haha.

We spent the afternoon ambling in Camden, before dinner at Pizza East in Kentish Town, and then back to Camden for a quick red wine in the Hawley Arms (no celebs) before the late train home...

...with a little souvenir in tow!

LibertyBauble