wind­ing down the longest month

This ever­last­ing month of Jan­u­ary!  It feels so much longer than oth­er months, a month to get through, full of solv­ing innu­mer­able small prob­lems, a month that, at the end, leaves me feel­ing a bit as if I’m just one month old­er with­out much to show for it.

It’s a month in which you mea­sure how windy it is, in your tall met­al home, by feel­ing the bed jig­gle under you, or watch­ing the water jig­gle in your drink­ing glass, or lis­ten­ing to the build­ing squeak and creak.

The build­ing real­ly sways back and forth.  And the rain just keeps com­ing down.

Nat­u­ral­ly, after Christ­mas, Jan­u­ary is also spent unsub­scrib­ing from all the places from which I bought Christ­mas presents, who now bom­bard me dai­ly with spe­cial offers I just can­not live with­out.  Except that I can.

I bet you know exact­ly what I mean.

The best thing to do is to bun­dle up and get out of the house, see what secrets my new neigh­bor­hood can give up, to keep me cheer­ful.  It does­n’t get much bet­ter than com­ing upon a kit­ty in South­wark Cathe­dral, liv­ing in a Nativ­i­ty scene.

He came for­ward to be petted.

It turns out he’s famous!  Doorkins Mag­ni­fi­cat, res­i­dent kit­ty.  The Cathe­dral shop sells all sorts of mer­chan­dise with his lit­tle face on it.  And he has his own Face­book page, nat­u­ral­ly.

And because the human world is end­less­ly cre­ative, and British cul­ture is end­less­ly tol­er­ant, there is space on the Mil­len­ni­um Bridge for an artist to crouch in the bit­ter wind, turn­ing dis­card­ed chew­ing gum into works of art.  Four hun­dred of them, as it turns out.  After John saw him work­ing one day, I ven­tured out with my cam­era to cause a bot­tle­neck in the steady stream of pedes­tri­an tourists, and cap­ture the magic.

Would­n’t it be won­der­ful to live with such an atti­tude that ordi­nary annoy­ances like chew­ing gum clut­ter­ing up a pris­tine bridge only present you with an opportunity?

Because no two pieces of gum get stepped on in quite the same way, the vari­eties of imagery are infinite.

The fun of it is in look­ing down, in the spir­it of dis­cov­ery, when every­one else around you is gap­ing at St Paul’s Cathe­dral.  Although I do plen­ty of that, too.  It is so beau­ti­ful, in any weather.

Cook­ing some­thing is always cheer­ing, espe­cial­ly turn­ing an old favorite on its head and com­ing up with some­thing slight­ly dif­fer­ent.  I give you: cod cakes (although they need a snazz­i­er name, clear­ly).  This is the dish for you when you’ve wrapped your head around crab cakes for din­ner, but there’s no crab at the mar­ket.  I fol­lowed my own quite per­fect recipe, bor­rowed from my broth­er-in-law, only with roast­ed and flaked cod fil­lets instead of white crab meat.

I’m not sure I could tell the dif­fer­ence between crab and cod in this recipe, although a side-by-side com­par­i­son would be inter­est­ing.  And cod is so much cheap­er, and so much eas­i­er to find.  Some Sriracha spicy mayo on the side is absolute­ly nec­es­sary, although my friend Bri­anne thinks that hol­landaise would hit the spot, too.  Next time.

These lit­tle cakes were so pleas­ing!  There were two left for lunch today, which was very sat­is­fy­ing.  But don’t suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tion to heat them up in the microwave, oh NO.  You need to put them in the oven, or a toast­er oven, to retain the crunch­i­ness of the bread crumbs.  Delicious.

There is always the joy of friend­ship to bright­en my mood, too: a gor­geous sashi­mi lunch at the local gem Tonkot­su with Dalia, a cost­ly but inspir­ing trip to Perse­phone Books with Beth, the Bat­tersea Antiques Fair with Sue.  Each one of these after­noons teach­es me some­thing and reminds me how much I depend on my friends for com­fort, wis­dom and sheer good fun.

Of course, the fool-proof anti­dote to a gloomy day is a pair of sun­ny twins.  I hopped on the train to return to Barnes one after­noon, and my fab­u­lous tod­dler friends.  Claire is so love­ly to share them with me, now and then.  I have nev­er met hap­pi­er chil­dren.  Just look at this face.  Oh, Angus.

There is noth­ing nicer than a bit of a cud­dle with Freddie.

The sheer ego boost of hav­ing two lit­tle peo­ple burst into delight­ed laugh­ter at the sight of me com­ing  down the side­walk toward them!  I’d like to make every­one that hap­py.  Maybe that should be my goal — to treat every­one as I treat Angus and Fred­die.  With sheer enjoyment.

A nice, long chat with Eliz­a­beth, so com­mon­place when I lived in Barnes, but now such a treat, was my reward for troop­ing through the rainy, rainy afternoon.

And I’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with a tru­ly fab­u­lous ingre­di­ent — beef bone mar­row.  Just look at these Fred Flint­stone delights, fresh from Bor­ough Mar­ket.

Some mar­row bones will be cut by the butch­er across the bone, essen­tial­ly pro­vid­ing a tube of mar­row inside.  But my butch­er but them this way, length­wise, which makes har­vest­ing the mar­row very sim­ple.  Just roast them, salt­ed and pep­pered and maybe with a lit­tle rose­mary, very hot, around 220C/450F, for not much more than 15 min­utes or so, until the mar­row is soft and jel­ly-like, but not melt­ing out of the bones and impos­si­ble to gath­er up.

Unless you want to be just dead sim­ple and eat the mar­row on toast with a pars­ley sal­ad, as one does at the icon­ic St John Restau­rant (and there’s noth­ing wrong with that), you’ll want to make dumplings of the mar­row.  Noth­ing could be sim­pler.  Whizz up the mar­row up in your food proces­sor or with a whisk, till foamy.  Then stir in a beat­en egg and as much Panko bread­crumbs as it takes to make a dough.  I was amazed at how quick­ly the mar­row stiff­ened up, mak­ing a nice stur­dy dough.  Then poach them in broth, just till they pop up to the surface.

A sprin­kling of pars­ley is love­ly here.

Of course, if you like you could make beef broth from the emp­ty bones, and I did, lat­er on.  But I want­ed my dumplings straight­away, and they tast­ed  love­ly in a lit­tle home­made chick­en broth.  I wor­ried that they would be heavy, because the dough was quite heavy.  But oh my, they were lighter than air.  Per­fect for a grey, damp evening.  And you’ll be fash­ion­able, because there is noth­ing trendi­er than so-called “bone broth” these days.

Final­ly, a sun­ny day came.  Today, in fact.  I rushed for my cam­era.  Keechie…

Tacy…

Even cranky Hermione seemed cheerful.

Tonight will see us on a long walk to a pri­vate social club near Buck­ing­ham Palace, to cel­e­brate a dear friend’s 60th anniver­sary of emi­gra­tion, Fri­day a meet­ing of my Book Club (real­ly just pure indul­gence in time with friends), and Sat­ur­day a ring­ing out­ing with my love­ly Barnes ringers.  And then final­ly, it will be Feb­ru­ary, to my delight.