Breakfast
Saturday sees the clouds come back, the condensation dripping down the window like it never left. Cinnamon buns in the oven, two each. Pot of coffee, frothy milk and creamy porridge. Blueberries stain the edge of the bowl with purple tide marks. Watched Power of the Dog last night, and come breakfast I’m still digesting its violent stillness and textural pastoral. I like films where nothing much happens, where we aren’t taken far beyond the walls of the domestic sphere, where things slowly come to the boil. There is a kitchen with wallpaper and candles as wall lights, and I find the idea of soft, delicate furnishing in the kitchen both confusing and comforting. All the information about the outside world, all the conversation that steals away from the embroiled family tension, happens in the kitchen. It becomes a place of narrative relief. I sit with this as time ticks into afternoon and I turn the heater beside me on and off intermittently.
Lunch
Headed to the charity shop to acquire 2 forks, 2 knives and a glass salad bowl ahead of our first dinner party tomorrow night. There’s some good kitchenware at the charity shop, including a plate with ‘pizza' on it, and a 1920s style glass serving plate, adorned with gold edges and grooves hollowed out of it - reserved for oysters. I think it’s the most opulent thing I’ve seen and I want it. I walk home with forks and knives in my coat pocket and the salad bowl collecting rain water under my arm.
All the shops close on a Sunday, so menu planning happens today. I’m thinking about aubergine parmigiana - a comforting crowd-pleaser with significant time in the oven for cleaning up onion peels, garlic skin and spilt tomato sauce. It strikes the balance between putting effort and love into a dish, and creating a Sunday evening, family dinner sort of atmosphere. It feels significant to have people over for dinner.
I eat courgettes sliced into half-moons, tossed into a baking tray with chickpeas, paprika, olive oil, salt, an eager amount of chilli flakes and lemon. Crumble feta on top so it goes crispy and melty in the oven. Went back for seconds. I paired it with a leftover cold coffee topped up with oat milk and ice cubes. The sun slithers out.
Dinner
1 glass of red wine at an exhibition opening. I haven’t had red wine (or any wine) here yet. You have to go to a government licensed shop to buy it - before 2pm on a Saturday, and I reject that out of stubbornness. The chickpeas do not soak up the wine and I feel a little bit tipsy. Walking home in the sun, I realise it’s the first sunny evening in a long time. We stop at the supermarket and buy a strange collection of items. We made a booking for 8pm at a pizza place we walked by. The place had handwritten menus with only 5 options for pizza, which to me is a very good sign. Crunching on black pepper crisps and leftover chickpeas while dying Jack’s hair orange, and we share a can of non-alcoholic shandy. Think about buying more big oranges. It’s 6.31pm and the mountain is gathering snow clouds.
Ruby Eleftheriotis is a curator and writer, with one foot in Scotland and the other in Norway. You can find her on instagram here.
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.