Hello! This week we’re looking forward to have Ruby Eleftheriotis sharing from Norway. Ruby is a curator and writer, with one foot in Scotland and the other in Norway. You can find her on instagram here.
As Ruby mentions, current events are weighing in different ways for us all at the moment. To get a better understanding of Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine, have a look at this list of resources, compiled by Marta Bohdanna Iwanek.
Thanks Ruby!
Pre-amble:
As February eases into March, I usually get struck with a freshness as things crack open, release, a new hope crunches through the late winter heaviness. Usually, Pancake Day is the catalyst. Given everything that is happening, it may not feel like this this time around. I only hope that my mundane ramblings about what I had to eat, could eat, might eat can be calmly grounding and escapist in this time.
Monday 28th Feb 2022
Breakfast
Frozen cinnamon buns each cooked in their own little case. Intended as a weekend treat, my mind hasn’t quite arrived into Monday and my body, in Sunday mode, wants to heat the house with warm doughy smells.
Second course: porridge. Hazily unraveling a cinnamon bun, I think about my old flatmate’s commitment to porridge, taking it very seriously and often laughing at the tiny bubbling gasps of air it would breath. Tiny volcanic eruptions of morning. Yawns. Everyone talks about their porridge preferences – chewy, gloopy, soupy, stewy. Having heard all these descriptions, I think I’ve come to realize that either everyone’s porridge terminology means different things, or that all porridge is all of the above.
Porridge this morning is served with Shona’s honey from Shona’s bees.
Recently we acquired a milk frother in the post sent by Jack’s mother. I think it is a sign of being a Real Person when people gift you kitchenware. Addicted to frothy coffees, we usually make them with 3 scoops of instant coffee (a guilty pleasure) and an extreme amount of foam. In a bout of trying to feel organized, I bought us some real coffee yesterday for our unloved cafetiere. Cafetiere frothy coffee a success, washed down with some orange juice and cod liver oil supplements.
Lunch
Breakfast slips into afternoon, and too busy island-hopping around all four kitchen chairs to find the perfect writing spot, I let myself get too hungry.
Realising the urgency of this matter, I prepared myself an emergency lunch. First the end of a cucumber while I bathe in cold fridge light looking for the next course. After follows tomatoes sliced with olive oil and salt, a slice of parmesan smeared in the residual tomato-salt-oil (chefs kiss). Not fully satisfied, I finish with the leftovers of an opened packed of tortellini (the champion of emergency lunches, break-ups and speedy post-work, pre-pub dinner fixes). Served with a lot of black pepper. Plucked three basil leaves from the dying pot in the window – these pots are destined to wilt slowly from the moment you leave the supermarket – and those three basil leaves make heart-break/endless hunger tortellini look quite special.
Dinner
Broccoli pasta – a strange but delicious recipe of garlic and chilli and broccoli melted down in a pan with veg stock to make a delicious creamy sauce. Normally I’d melt down some anchovies too, but Jack doesn’t have the same saline cravings as me so I add some white miso for that savoury salty coating.