Final day of the Cookery Challenge today and I will admit that my spirits were low. Yesterday’s effort didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped and I’ve been feeling unwell the last couple of days. However, those of you who followed the infamous Bus Challenge will know that I always see a task through, even those that are self-inflicted. So. Onwards.

Luckily, I consulted Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Everyday in the afternoon as I hadn’t realised my planned meal would take two and a half hours to cook. But it turned out to be super easy: minimum chopping, maximum stewing away in the oven. So, my lamb with lemon and pearl barley was really rather good:

How bloody wholesome does that look?! I served it with warm rye bread too. Om nom nom.

I ad lib-ed again today and replaced the pearl barley with a broth mixture from Tesco, which included split lentils and peas, as well as pearl barley. You know, for a bit of variety. However, it is apparent that there’s a good reason for Hugh writing the recipe to specifically include pearl barley. I’d also add slightly less lemon juice next time, I think.

So what have we learnt this week?

1. I can cook rice if I just follow simple instructions

2. I need to practice chopping and I need to man up around a sizzling pan

3. I now know a really good curry recipe, a really good marinade and a really good slow-cook casserole and thus my cooking repertoire is expanding

4. Split lentils take longer to cook than pearl barley

5. There is no supermarket in Worcester or Droitwich that sells polenta

6. I could benefit from using fewer utensils and making less of a mess

The most important lesson, though, is that I’ve enjoyed the challenge. There have been ups and downs (yes, I really have only been doing this for three days – bear with me) but it’s been satisfying to eat meals cooked by my own fair hands and I think Chris has enjoyed the break, despite his input yesterday.

My next challenge has to be to keep this up, surely…

I’ll be honest, Day Two didn’t go quite as well as Day One. The results were delicious but it was quite a trial getting there, unfortunately, and I had to call in the sous chef for some assistance (on the grounds that we’d have never eaten if I hadn’t).

The dish should have been venison with creamy beans from Jamie Oliver’s America book. However, snow prevented me from purchasing the required venison, so I used neck of lamb that I had in the fridge instead. This proved to be a worthy substitute and I am pleased by my ability to adapt. Surely a sign of an improving cook?

However, there was a lot of chopping required: onions, carrot, bacon, all into tiny cubes. I resorted to a pestle and mortar for the thyme and rosemary. Also, I’m not particularly confident in terms of cooking a piece of meat like that in a big, hot pan without cremating it or serving it raw. So I didn’t quite get the lovely pink slices of lamb like the photo in the book but it wasn’t too overcooked. The broad beans were though, as you can see in the photo below, just needed to take the pan off the heat slightly earlier.

Anyway, here’s the results:

(I’d just like to point out that the lamb isn’t burnt – it has been marinated in balsamic vinegar and it’s all caramelised and wonderful.)

Now, before I can embark on Day Three, I need to find somewhere that sells pearl barley and polenta…

Yesterday, I announced (yes, announced) my New Year Cookery Challenge, which began today. It started badly – with Waitrose failing miserably to stock most of the necessary ingredients – but, that little hiccup resolved, I’m quite pleased with the results:

This is chicken curry made from scratch, using a recipe from Sophie Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights. I deliberately started with something simple, and this really was. In fact, I intend to start making this instead of using sauces from a jar in future. The red chilli garnish was my own addition, of which I am particularly proud.

Things I learnt:

1. I need to practice chopping.

2. Cooking is much more fun when accompanied by my own choice of music (Emma Pollack, Arcade Fire and …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead today).

3. I can cook rice after all. I just need to follow the instructions on the packet more often.

Here’s to Day Two!

This afternoon, I talked to Omar about new year’s resolutions (on the phone, because he’s doing this digital cleanse thing and, other than writing him a letter, it’s the only way we can communicate for the time being, but it’s nice so I don’t really mind). I explained that it’s pointless repeating my typical resolutions – usually to stop biting my nails and to get more exercise – because I’ve resolved to do those things year after year. Despite managing to grow my nails for our wedding in May, they’re currently bitten down to the quick. And I can’t remember the last exercise I did.

Pointless.

A couple of years ago, I resolved to see more live music and (surprise, surprise) it’s one new year’s resolution I have managed to stick to. So, this year, I’m going to get a balance between the two and try to make more time to cook (I was originally planning to try to enjoy cooking but Omar pointed out that forcing myself to enjoy something would go the way of the nail biting and exercise).

I don’t cook very often; I’m lucky enough to be married to a man who enjoys cooking and is naturally very good at it. I tend to tell people that I don’t enjoy it but that’s not really true. I’m just not particularly confident, so things go wrong or it takes an age to make the simplest dish, and I can’t be bothered with faffing about in the kitchen when there are so many other demands on my time. When I remove these factors, for example when I spend a Sunday afternoon baking a cake (I’m good at baking because it requires the precise following of a recipe), I really enjoy it.

I’m going to mark the beginning of a year in which I intend to make more time to cook by trying something new. For Christmas, Chris and I got three different cookery books as gifts (although I don’t cook, I adore reading cookery books). And I have three more days at home before I return to work. So, for each of those three days off, I’m going to take the time to cook a meal from one of those three books. And Chris is going to guess which book it came from.

Starting tomorrow…

December has been a busy month, so I haven’t blogged much. Here’s some highlights:

• Athlete gig, with RJ at the Anson Rooms in Bristol (a venue that I love because it’s like going to a school disco and I half expect boys and girls to line up either side of the room and pick dance partners…).
• Home to Fair Oak for curry, beers and a good old catch up with my mum and step-dad.
• Lovely lunch with Ally, who makes the best fishcakes in the whole wide world, and a spontaneous meet up with Jon, who I haven’t seen for nearly ten years. That was a little bit crazy but really lovely. You should check out his wonderful band, The Great Sojourn.
• Mini break in Oxford: drinking wine out of mugs in our hotel room, Christmas shopping, running in the rain, eating moules, frites, French onion soup, yaki soba and ebi gyoza, travelling on buses, wondering round the colleges and taking it all in at the new Ashmolean museum.
• Dinner and Seth Lakeman gig in Cheltenham with Leigh and Katy. Really impressive performer, loved Kitty Jay played live by Seth alone.
• Partnership team Christmas dinner at Chesters – yummy Mexican food, bit too much wine, but nice company. And we were joined by Chris and Omar, who was visiting for the weekend, too.
• Leigh & Richard’s Christmas Open House – lots of delicious homemade vegan/veggie food, mulled wine, jasmine tea, good conversation and laughing with some lovely Worcester people.
• An early Christmas present in the shape of Tony Hawk Ride for the PS3. It hasn’t had great reviews from ’serious’ gamers but it’s really fun. Pretty sure I missed my calling…
• Christmas at my sister’s house in Hertfordshire: Human Twister (not as good as Human Buckaroo), a remarkable number of bottles of wine, the best roast potatoes I’ve ever eaten, posh porridge, lots of quality family time (loooong chat with my favourite big brother!). Ultimately, a Christmas run by my awesome 10 year old nephew, so all presents were open by 9am.
• Second Christmas at my in-laws in Gloucester: brilliant homemade gingerbread men place settings, some really lovely presents (a new cafetiere!!), Trivial Pursuit, Chris’s ever-so-slightly dubious cocktails and delicious plum pickle and pigs in blankets.

Phew.

Today, my standard Sunday – lazy morning in bed, listening to BH and The Archers omnibus, before rising, reading, husband playing GTA4, drinking freshly filtered coffee, reading the Sunday papers, and the mundane laundry, dishwasher loading, putting out the bins.

Today, made all the better for two wonderful weekends preceding it. Last weekend, spent in Royston at my sister-in-law’s with great company, good food and a spellbinding visit to Ely Cathedral. The building is incredible, particularly its majestic nave and the feat of engineering that forms its centrepiece, the Octagon lantern. We climbed the 165 spiral steps to the roof of the lantern, stared down into the cathedral from its dizzying height and listened to the beautiful, soaring choir practice for evensong.

This weekend bought pleasures of a different kind, but just as great. A lovely couple of days spent with Omar, who writes about it better than I could on his own blog (here). I miss spending time with him. But when he lived nearer, I don’t think I appreciated the things that he writes about.

And yesterday, Chris and I were faced with another, dull day in Worcester and decided to drive to Bristol and spend the rest of the day there instead. We shopped, buying nothing, in Cabot Circus. As shopping centres go, I don’t know if I like it. There are elements that are great, like the domed glass roof, the natural ventilation, the open spaces intended for nothing but sitting and watching the world go by. But I’m not sure that I’d want to shop there regularly, I don’t think it has a great retail offer, if I’m honest. That said, the car park is an awesome example of how it could and should be done (evidence, if you ever need it, that I should get out more).

Anyway, we ate Vietnamese at Tampopo, which is like Wagamama but with slightly more uptight waiting staff (I should clarify that I like how uptight and eager to please they are. The staff in Wagamama are too trendy-verging-on-irritating) and a range of Asian dishes. I can recommend the Pho Xao Bo.

And we saw Up (in 2D, thank you very much) at the Showcase De Lux (nice cinema, absurdly comfortable seats, the fact that there are doormen is awfully pretentious).  I didn’t love the film quite as much as this review in the Telegraph did and not nearly as much as I love Wall-E but I did think that the first ten minutes are just wonderful. That an animated film aimed squarely at children can handle loss, grief and regret in a silent montage and move grown adults to tears is astonishing. I’d watch the film again purely for those opening scenes, but also for the witty, creative closing credits.

And the Where the Wild Things Are trailer…oh, so much happiness and brilliance in one, short space of time. I simply can’t wait.

After all that, back to my standard Sunday and the ironing mountain that has been growing whilst I’ve been having such a lovely time.

Surprising the intern by decorating his desk with balloons and party poppers for his 21st birthday, even though you’ve only ever passed the time of day with him in the kitchen, just because he’s new and shy and doesn’t really know anyone.

On a lighter note, I’ve still not blogged about Banksy. Which is just plain lazy because Omar did it ages ago.

In general, I enjoyed the exhibition, which is a blessing considering I stood in this queue with that black cloud overhead for almost two hours to see it.

Like Omar, I enjoyed the social commentary pieces downstairs the most. Although, I do tend to find that Banksy irritates me by being a little lazy sometimes. Admittedly, the Houses of Parliament, full of apes, was technically more than I could ever achieve but it just feels like sloppy, sixth-form satire. There’s nothing big nor clever about saying that MPs are a bunch of monkeys.

That said, the installation exchanging a nest of fledgling birds for tweeting CCTV cameras made me smile and I enjoyed these exhibits that displayed a sense of humour alongside the scathing social commentary the most.

The exhibition forces you to explore the whole of the museum – a fantastic marketing ploy – and I really like the audacity of the idea that a traditional civic museum can be infiltrated by a graffiti artist. But, in practice, the Banksy exhibition is no more than a stunt (he didn’t break in to the place, the museum is raking in the visitors) and that awareness nagged at me as I browsed the display cabinets for evidence of Banksy’s interference.

But I really enjoyed the fact that, on a couple of occasions, Omar and I couldn’t tell whether or not an exhibit had been put there by Banksy or if it was a genuine exhibit.

Definitely worth a visit – it’s unlikely to come around again any time soon and certainly not as successfully. It’s just not as ground breaking as it thinks it is… But I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with that.

This week (so far) I have mostly been:
Dithering about whether or not to get the HTC Magic,
Worrying about a friend and the fact that I’ve been too preoccupied to notice,
Trying to figure out why my flickr account has lost all my photos (because my account expired whilst I was away),
Quite productive at work, less productive at home,
Going to bed really late (I blame FarCry2 and the new TV),
Reading The Kite Runner and crying,
Eating fresh strawberries and raspberries,
Listening to The Captain and the Hourglass and Calm on repeat (you’ll all hate the latter, I know).

Other friends and colleagues that I know who have married promised sheer restlessness and distraction on return from honeymoon, a sense of anti-climax after the months of planning for the big day. I know what they mean.  On the one hand, I have this wonderful sense of freedom now that both the wedding and my degree are over. For the first time in three years, I don’t have to do anything at all when I get home from work…so, in fact, I can do anything. But then, I seem to be spending most of my time wondering what to do next. It’s exciting because there are so many possibilities – Chris and I have plenty of plans – but I feel a little like I’m in a state of inertia. Lots of prospects, no impetus to actually embark upon any of them.

I had a dream last night that I was sleeping rough, next to the Glover’s Needle in Worcester (the spire, not the pub), and a man asked me why I was sleeping there when I had a perfectly good house to sleep in and I told him that I just needed to do the next thing. I have always been unable to stand still but I suppose with fewer distractions the feeling is more acute. I can never just enjoy the quiet time.  I envy the fact that Chris can (although, with him, it’s fair to say that the PlayStation3 helps).

Anyway, I liked Psychoville. It was a little bit mental in the way that A League of Gentlemen was when you first saw it but stopped being after you got used to the characters. But with Dawn French in it as well, which could only ever be a good thing.