Home and Away

Hurrah for the weekend!  Especially hurrah for this coming weekend which will see D and I head for the beautiful Lake District to celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary.

Six years!  Yes, I know, I'm surprised too.  Of course, a year of that we spent apart so perhaps it doesn't really count (although given that we were the least separated separated couple ever I think there's probably an argument to be had either way).  But still, it's a good run and very deserving of a bit of a bash.

We're actually going to be having dinner on the day at the Lake Road Kitchen and I can't wait to report back to you on that.  The reviews have been glowing, everything I've read or seen about the food there has got me salivating - I think that we are in for a real treat.

Not only that, but we are staying at The Drunken Duck which I'm sure that I have written about before.  It's a fabulous place and also happens to serve fabulous food so I'm going to be ensuring that I save room for an excellent breakfast.  We might need to get out and do some brisk walking to work up a bit of an appetite, but given the part of the world in which we will find ourselves, that will be no particular hardship.

Closer to home, we went for a meal at one of our local gems the other week.  Zucco serves kind of Italian tapas stuff - very much in the vein of Russell Norman's Polpo chain, and we are so lucky to have it on our doorstep.  The pictures are of two of our favourite dishes - a salt cod ravioli which came strewn with sage and glistening with buttery, winey juices and a whole baby Dover sole, cooked to perfection and drenched in a gorgeous caper butter.  It's not pushing any culinary boundaries but it is the kind of food that makes you grin broadly and use your finger to wipe the plate.

Have a gorgeous weekend, folks, and I look forward to providing a full account of our adventures next week.

A somewhat reduced MPM: 20th June 2016

I have an exam tomorrow.  Over the last couple of weeks, I have been so tense that I currently have a permanently painful jaw from all the clenching.  It is remarkably difficult to relax your jaw without thinking really hard about relaxing your jaw.  Anyway, tonight and tomorrow night I am in Manchester and poor old D is left to fend for himself.  He was muttering darkly about subsisting on pimped up baked beans, the little lamb.

Then on Friday and Saturday night we are off to the country!  For my sister in law's wedding!  The name of the venue continually escapes me but I'm sure it will be a lovely occasion and perhaps by then I'll have stopped with the jaw clenching.  Plenty of champagne is bound to help.

The upshot of which is that there are just three meals to plan this week.  And one of them is a repeat from the last two weeks because we are both slightly obsessed.

Wednesday: Homecoming dinner - chicken breast and giant couscous with lemon, mint and feta.

Thursday: Poached trout with minted mayonnaise, asparagus and new potatoes.  We just can't get enough of this quintessentially British combo.

Sunday: Five spice braised beef from this recipe (already made and in the freezer), probably served with soba noodles and stir fried veg

To anyone else out there currently experiencing exam stress, either directly or via an associated teenager: I send you sympathy, solidarity and a plea for jaw relaxing exercises.  To everyone else: have a great week you jammy, jammy bastards.

Happy Valentine's Day

I read this poem at our wedding. Every word still holds.

Invisible Kisses, by Lemm Sissay

If there was ever one
Whom when you were sleeping
Would wipe your tears
When in dreams you were weeping;
Who would offer you time
When others demand;
Whose love lay more infinite
Than grains of sand.

If there was ever one
Who when you achieve
Was there before the dream
And even then believed;
Who would clear the air
When it's full of loss;
Who would count love
Before the cost.

If there was ever one
Who can offer you this and more;
Who in keyless rooms
Can open doors;
Who in open doors
Can see open fields
And in open fields
See harvests yield.

Then see only my face
In the reflection of these tides
Through the clear water
Beyond the river side.
All I can send is love
In all that this is
A poem and a necklace
Of invisible kisses.

Happy new year!

I have spent the majority of my Christmas break in hibernation. Quite, quite literally – there have been days where I have barely left the confines of my bedroom except to fetch a fresh cup of tea, and have been mostly nose down in one of my new books or my shiny new Kindle (which I love, love, love!) It has been absolutely blissful and has meant I have started January feeling incredibly peaceful and content.

2011 was a good year for me in retrospect – although like the curate’s egg in reverse, it had its moments. I got married, which was lovely, despite the moments of stress and anxiety in the run up to the big day; I love being a wife and catch myself grinning down at my left hand even now. I stumbled, more by luck than judgement, into a new role at work which gives me a massive amount of job satisfaction and, yes, even enjoyment. It’s on secondment at the moment but will hopefully become permanent within the next couple of months so I'm tentatively feeling as if, professionally, things have started to come together. The downside of that was quite a lot of time away from home which I found difficult at first – I’m a homebody who thrives on routine and safety nets. And, looking back, I can see that outside of work and the W, my home life was a little stultified this year. I fell out of my gym habit, I didn’t do as much creative writing as I intended and missed quite a lot of my writing group’s monthly meetings. Having said that, I have kept up with this blog, albeit it has sometimes meandered quite a long way from its original purpose – but I guess that is the nature of blogs, they represent our very selves, complete with all our contradictions and falterings and what nots.

It was not a stellar year for weight loss. I tend to throw away records in fits of pique, or “fresh starts”, so I’m not sure what I weighed at this time last year but it sure as hell wasn’t significantly different to what I weigh now. That is frustrating. I am not going to waste time or emotional energy bemoaning the fact that another year has passed and I’m still a long way from where I want to be. The question I need to ask is: what now?

The first answer is – I keep trying. I want to be slimmer and fitter for both health and aesthetic reasons. As I mentioned here, I need to to rediscover the me who loves lipstick and high heels and that me wants to be at the very most a size 12 and probably (given my frame) smaller.

The second answer is – I address why I keep failing. It is not the plan I follow (if anything, WW’s new innovations have made it even more flexible and easy to use), it is not for lack of support. I have a platform here to work through those tangled emotions that keep getting in the way of success and I need to use it. So, expect the odd navel gazing post this year, and bear with.

The third answer is – I get fitter. I talked about my love hate relationship with exercise a bit here, and I am determined to get back into a decent routine this year if it kills me. Which it just might.

So my friends – here is to a fabulous (as opposed to flabulous) 2012 – to all of you out there in the ether, let’s make it a good one!

Wedding Cupcakes

I couldn't resist sharing these with you - just when you thought all the wedding stuff was over and done with!

These are our wedding cupcakes - and aren't they pretty?  The cerise gerbera daisies on top match the bridal flowers exactly, and, although you might not be able to see exactly from these photographs, the frosting was sprinkled with edible glitter.  Very kitsch, very adorable.

We made up our mind a long time ago that we preferred individual cakes to one big one.  Aside from anything else, both of us have something of a morbid fear of posed photos and we knew that if we had a full on wedding cake someone would try and get a picture of us cutting it.  These fitted the bill exactly - and we invested in some clear individual cake boxes so that people could take them away and marvel at their beauty in the comfort of their own home. 

And what is especially, especially nice was that our lovely friend and former colleague E made them for us entirely free of charge, even though she wasn't actually at the wedding.  Weddings are expensive things, and as the planning progresses you become inordinately grateful for any little savings it is possible to make; this was a major saving and not a whit of compromise was required for which I am incredibly grateful.

Peggy Sue got married…

And apparently I did too.

What a very lovely day it was too, thanks in no small part to my amazing parents (who not only paid but were a constant quiet, reassuring presence) and our lovely guests (who ate, drank and were merry alongside us). I think people were worried that I wasn’t having a good time since I passed a large proportion of the evening wandering around with a slightly dazed expression; and it is a surreal experience to find yourself amidst a crowd of well wishers wearing a white dress. I think my very favourite moment was when D, in a typically succinct speech, thanked the guests for coming and asked them to drink a toast to…his wife. His wife – it took a moment for it to sink in that he was talking about me!

It was just what I’d imagined. Quiet, intimate, simple. The ceremony itself passed very quickly, as everyone said it would. Our voices were mainly steady as we said our vows despite D’s best attempts to get me to corpse when he had my eye. Contrary to prior reports the weather held so we were able to drink champagne on the terrace afterwards while my baby nephew crawled in pale pools of sunshine on the lawn and the storm clouds scudded over and settled, glowering, in the far distance.

The food was absolutely out of this world, just as expected, and, thoughtfully, my brother and sister in law contacted the Star in advance and asked for a signed copy of the wedding breakfast menu that they had framed for us as a memento. I still had a stomach full of butterflies by the time we came to sit down, so I must admit I did not do Andrew Pern’s glorious dinner full justice – but the guests, for the most part, absolutely raved.

I don't know if anyone took a photograph of the room in which we held both the ceremony and the dinner - this one comes from the website, and you just have to imagine it minus the large round table!

It’s a little hard to process how I feel at the moment. D and I have been together seven and a half years, living together for most of that time; I was not expecting this wedding to mark any sort of seismic change in our relationship and nor has it. But I find myself possessed of a curious new, quiet determination: the determination to be the best wife that I can be to him.

I’m afraid I’ll probably disappoint you a bit on the picture front – I don’t really have any at the moment. We both decided not to have a professional photographer – we’re not very photo-ey people and the idea of having to stand around with rictus grins and various different combinations of people for an hour didn’t appeal. I believe my sister in law appointed herself unofficial picture taker for the day and is putting something together. In the meantime I can show you…

My dress was a copy of this picture:

Very Jane Austen!

And my shoes were possibly the prettiest things that I had ever seen (and the most expensive things I had ever worn on my feet):

So there you have it.  Maybe more photos to follow, but, as D has told me (quite sternly) this is a food blog not a wedding blog - so time to get back into the kitchen and get cooking.  Which I fully intend to do with the help of my brand new...

Well come on - every wife should have one!

Alternative vows

I’m in a reflective mood at the moment. It’s only natural I suppose, what with a wedding coming up.

Like most girls, when I got engaged I assumed that I would drift up the aisle as a lissom size 8. Well, maybe a 10, I have boobs. I had two and a bityears before the wedding plenty of time to lose the weight I need to lose and then some.

I don’t know why it didn’t happen. Well, it started to happen and then there was a backwards slide and then it started to happen again and another backwards slide…the point is, with all the forwarding and backwarding I’ve kind of ended up where I started.

It’s a question of motivation – it must be. But as D said to me the other week, with barely concealed frustration, what is more motivating than your wedding?

I suppose I was waiting for the magic switch to flick in my head. You know the one, where it suddenly all becomes easy. Where resisting high calorie food and wine (er, and cider and gin and…) no longer causes me to so much as blink. The one where I no longer turn to food and drink for solace when life goes a bit pearshaped. The one where cheese on toast isn’t the panacea to all ills. The one where exercise becomes enjoyable. The one where I suddenly become the person who says, “I really don’t like fatty foods anymore – and I get grumpy when I don’t go to the gym five times a week.”

Turns out there is no magic switch, not even one marked "Wedding". For me it will always be an effort of will – and I will NEVER be the person who stops liking cheese. But, (and this is the kicker) I have every tool that I need to make it happen close at hand and I’ve wilfully ignored them for the last two and a half years. Or, if not totally ignored them, let them lie fallow for long periods.

But I can’t change that now. And despite the fact that they have not seen me achieve any meaningful shrinkage, those same years have been good for the most part. I am finally enjoying my job, and feeling confident professionally. I am coping with my anxiety issues. I am (and apologies for the cliché) more at peace with myself than I was in my early twenties – despite the fact that I am bigger. I think that represents a degree of personal growth (of the spiritual rather than the literal kind!)

I wonder how sad I am that I will not be the slender bride I assumed I would be? You see, the closer I get to the big day, the more I realise that it is not about the wedding it is about the marriage. It’s not about the bride, it’s about the wife. The wedding is one day, and yes, I hope it is a glorious, happy day, but I’m doing it because I want to be Mrs D more than anything else in the world. I want to make him proud of me. I know at the moment he wishes I was thinner. Well, I can’t be a slim bride, but I can be a slim wife. And I will be.

Post in search of a title

You may have noticed a lack of posting lately. So pull up a pew and let’s get you updated.

Firstly, since this is primarily a blog about food and Weight Watching what’s been going on there? Not much, is the answer. I spent quite a lot of August away from home working: I’ve recently been seconded part-time onto a team who write and deliver analyst training. It’s tremendous fun and I love the work but it does mean a lot of travelling. As I wrote here, my weight has remained steady, even drifted down a little, but there has not been a lot of cooking going on. In fact, my cooking mojo seems to have wandered off. I cooked myself a bowl of pasta pesto the other night, which was delicious, but does suggest a slight regression back to student days. It’ll be cereal for dinner next.

Of course, the big event for September is, well, my wedding. Just over two weeks to go. The dress is being collected on Friday, the shiny new ring is in D’s safekeeping, the shoes (oh, the shoes!) are so beautiful that I keep taking them out of the box to stroke. The wedding breakfast menu is, I flatter myself, awesome. We’ve had all the guests’ choices in now – and it turns out a surprising number of our family and friends are full on carnivores judging by the popularity of the black pudding and foie gras starter.

It has not been without its stress. I look back on that naïve girl who, two and a bit years ago, blithely assumed that it was actually possible to organise a wedding without having any arguments or unpleasantness and laugh. A hollow laugh it is too. You see, people tell you it is your day but what they mean is – it’s your day for as long as your wishes coincide with mine. One family member is boycotting because we decided not to invite her teenage children (who, quite frankly, couldn’t give two hoots about traipsing all the way up to Yorkshire to go to the wedding of a cousin that they’ve seen a mere handful of times in the last ten years). But she (and my parents) are of the generation who still cling to the Sacred Cow of Family. Frankly, I am more disappointed about the close friends who won’t be attending because of the limited numbers held by the venue. Close friends, incidentally, who still came to my hen do and still showered me with love and support despite the fact they hadn’t been invited, never once uttering a word of reproach.

Anyway. Think that’s got you all caught up. I’ll try and actually cook something over the weekend so I could post about, you know, food. Failing that – anyone for Special K?

I survived

So, the hen night. Despite requesting a discreet, classy affair I nevertheless found myself walking through Central London in a pink tutu with matching sequinned cowboy hat on Saturday afternoon. I did what any girl of my generation would do in such a situation and channelled Carrie Bradshaw for all that I was worth.

It was a fabulous afternoon that started with afternoon tea and champagne and ended, via a cocktail master class, in a piratical themed burlesque club. I probably drank a fortnight’s worth of points, but if you could earn activity points for laughing it may well have balanced out. My beautiful girls did me proud.

Having abandoned D for the night, it was only fair that we have a little celebration of our own when I returned (slightly bloodshot, but unbowed) to Yorkshire. And so it is I bring to your attention a second York institution in as many weeks, Le Langhe.

We were first introduced to Le Langhe, which is a delicatessen and importer of Italian food, when they ran an evening at the York Food Festival a few years ago. The produce that they sell is simply exquisite, even if the owners, a husband and wife team, are a little scary. Don’t let that put you off. In a time where a lot of small businesses have been struggling, Le Langhe has actually expanded; moving from a tiny city centre shop to a much larger establishment set a little walk out of town. Not only do they sell fantastic meats, cheeses and breads, they also serve up coffee and light meals in an adjoining café restaurant space. They have a fiercely loyal following among the people of York, some of whom make a weekly pilgrimage there.

D’s haul provided a stupendous Sunday night carpet picnic: olives and sundried tomatoes, slick with oil, ham cured in Barolo wine, braesola, a sharp, fruity cheese which had been aged in Chianti and an unctuous Gorgonzola, ciabatta and foccacia to be dunked in olive oil and balsamic vinegar and finally a luscious fig and almond tart.  We washed it all down with Prosecco. 

Olives!

Gorgonzola!



Bread!

And there we go – a weekend full of laughter and friends and amazing food and far more vodka than is good for one liver.  Normal (WW) service had better resume shortly...

Au naturel

Whether you are looking to lose weight, or maintain your already svelte figure or keep yourself and your family healthy, everyone has to exercise a certain level of control over what they eat.

Take two of my very closest friends. They have absolutely enviable figures – perfectly proportioned, slender, healthy. Not too skinny, but certainly no inches to pinch (as an aside – these are the two nymphs that for some reason I chose as my bridesmaids. And then chose them beautiful, flattering dresses. No, I’m not sure why either.) They are both what people might refer to as “naturally slim”; they do not diet, they eat cake and drink wine and while they exercise (A enjoys walking while R is a keen hockey player) it is by no means a daily occurrence for them.

But I’ve observed them closely. And while they’ve neither of them counted a point or a calorie in their life both of them are naturally able to regulate their eating. I believe that it is instinctive or, if not, then a lifetime of practice has made it almost so.

I remember having a conversation once with R when she confessed to a “binge” – over the course of an afternoon she’d eaten an entire (largish) bag of yoghurt covered raisins. I nodded, and sympathised, but later reflected that “binge” in my world meant something very different. She probably ate little, if any, tea that night. I don’t think I would have done the same in the circumstances.

It makes me wonder if “naturally slim” does not mean (as I have jealously but deludedly maintained to myself for years) a naturally speedy metabolism, but a natural ability to ingest as many calories as the body needs, and adjust all the peaks and troughs of consumption over a period of time, so as to not end up with a surplus that then settles as a layer of podge.

Of course, we all know exceptions to this rule – but I bet they’re fewer and further between than perennial dieters would like to think. The reality is that in general, the larger you are (assuming you’ve not reached the stage where you are rendered immobile) the higher your metabolism because your body has to work that much harder to transport you around from place to place.

I wonder if the fact that I had already had a taste of calorie counting before I hit my teens has permanently robbed me, and others like me, of the ability to achieve that natural balance? Or whether, like a good sense of smell, or an ear for music, it is simply something one is born with?  OR whether it is something that one can learn (or re-learn) with a bit of time and care?  I know that I am guilty of not always listening to my body but perhaps, if I'm really, really quiet, I might start to hear a wise little voice telling me exactly what I need to do.

A non food related post about weddings

Yesterday I mentioned that my wedding is a mere four months away. And it has become increasingly apparent to me that I do not have a long term career as a wedding planner, or indeed, any sort of planner. Despite having two years, yes, TWO YEARS to organise the thing, I’m still woefully under prepared.

The problem is, you see, that we booked the venue within a couple of months of getting engaged, without looking at anywhere else. The Star Inn at Harome is one of my favourite places to stay in the world and we have been going for my birthday every year for the past….oooh, six or seven years. When I found out that they hold weddings there, I didn’t need to see anywhere else. I love the setting, plus I knew that the meal would be absolutely top notch (if you happen to watch Great British Menu you will have seen the chef proprietor, Andrew Pern, get voted through to the final as the North East representative.) So that was all booked and sorted ages ago. And at the beginning of the year I stirred myself to arrange a registrar as well (I thought it might be a good idea), and took my bridesmaids shopping for dresses (top tip: if you’re buying high street for bridesmaids, hit the January sales. We got two absolutely gorgeous Monsoon dresses for something ridiculous like £40 apiece). And then I sort of…stopped. People would ask “How’re the wedding plans going?” and I would wave a hand airily and say, “All under control.”

The thing that most people are curious about is The Dress. And, funnily enough, that has been one of the least important aspects for me all along. As a girl who has battled with her weight since a very tender age indeed, I have never taken very much pleasure in clothes shopping (regardless, it has to be said, of whether I’ve been going through one of my rare slender phases or not). Changing rooms are, as far as I am concerned, Hell on Earth whatever size you are. The idea of going into one of those very posh wedding shops and trying on a range of sample sized gowns – which, let’s face it, were bound to be so ridiculously tiny that I’d end up with some poor woman desperately trying to squidge some delicate little bodice around my comedy boobs - was not one that appealed.

I thought I’d be quite happy to just pick something up, off the hanger, nearer the time. And then I made the mistake of Googling images in an idle moment. And I saw The Dress. It was so beautiful and so perfect and so exactly the kind of thing I wanted – even though I hadn’t even known what I’d wanted until then, that everything else just looked plain wrong. Fortunately, I think I have found a dressmaker who thinks she can recreate The Dress, and in time for September, and for an amount that will just about squeeze onto my credit card. So I guess that one more thing ticked off my non-existent list (which I really should get around to making…)