2009: oysters and ideas

JANUARY (photo by Mora McLagan)

I began 2009 with an incredible pot luck feast at mine, where friends shucked oysters, cooked slow-roast pork, brought delicious salads and baked melting chocolate fondants. I served up vanilla icecream and raspberry sorbet and then spent much of the month being ridiculously pleased by my new ice-cream maker. My friend Jess went back to live in the bountiful fish paradise that is New Zealand. I was suitably saddened by her departure and blogged rather uninspiringly about hairy vegetables. On the first day back at work I had an appraisal, which went something like this:

Boss: So, how are you getting on? Are you happy with your job. It all seems to be going rather well doesn’t it?

Me: [too hungover and infused with January blues to lie, and having been there for three and a half years without a squeak of discontentment] Actually, I’m not happy. I feel a bit uninspired by it all.

Boss: [looking rather shocked] Oh! Oh dear. Um, well, what can we do to rectify that…

Me: [hopefully] Maybe I could be here less…

So, I began my heavenly four-day week. Which, even though it meant squishing rather more than four days work into four days and several editorial all-nighters, was just great. It gave me a chance to work on my blog and just have a lot more fun.

FEBRUARY

I went surfing in Fuertaventura, a strange place full of moonscapes and OAP nudists. Surfing was something I learnt how to do in 2008. 2009 saw me becoming increasingly bad at and cross with it. I discovered that surfing in freezing cold wind over craggy rocks is not as fun as surfing in the sun on a perfect beach, even if it does look like vanilla icecream.

February was also the month of snow-ball fights and Lebanese food in west London, cooking over an open fire in Wiltshire and perfect pizza at Al Parco by Parliament Hill.

I also went to Bompas & Parr’s scratch ‘n sniff screening of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover. I’d become a massive fan of their innovative food design a couple of months before, when they’d sent me a recipe for glow-in-the-dark gin and tonic jelly that made all my friends fall down drunk at Christmas dinner.

I managed to bag a job as Camden Editor for YourLocal London website, which took me out and about, chatting to local businesses, reviewing restaurants, bands, plays, searching for lost pets and exploring Camden’s pop-up shops, wildlife and vineyards… Suddenly that four-day week was more like a six-day week, but a lot more interesting.

It was also in February that I went to Horton Jupiter’s Secret Ingredient and Ms Marmite Lover’s Underground Restaurant and was truly bitten by the idea of cooking for strangers…