- It’s sauser season, yayyy! Life is so much more seasonal here than in the UK, which in turn was way more seasonal than SA. South African food seasons are basically chocolate eggs, Christmas cake, and the rest. Here, there are strong waves of new fresh fruit and veg every couple of months, special breads for different months, game season (with everything that goes with it), fondue season… I am very much into it.
- Been finding inspiration (life, not creative) in weird places these days. Like this post about career death; there are bits I really don’t relate to, and of course it’s different when the career break/change is not exactly of my choosing, but she’s spot on about the scariness of it is all being tied up in ego and identity. And a twee tweet (heh) from a Swiss tourism agency about letting the autumn trees show us how beautiful it is to let go of dead things. OMG SO HOKEY but that’s a motivational poster I could get behind.
- Sinking deeper into my love/hate relationship with Instagram. Love: pretty pictures – both looking at, and (as I wrote here) creating. Seeing what friends are doing and making. Reading their thoughts. (I haven’t yet made any new friends on IG, though. Twitter works better for me that way.) Hate: the sameness of a lot of images, and the distance it creates. This applies especially to #creativepreneur (UGH THAT WORD) circles – there’s a very homogenous aesthetic. It’s very privileged and yes, we know it’s staged, but even that kind of careful staging would I think demand a significant investment of time and/or space. And I resent that way more is reasonable. (I know. I have issues. Weird, weird issues.) So even the posts that are meant to be reassuring and inspiring to me (we’re all in this together! #keepitreal) feel the opposite. I have absolutely enormous reservations about this crafty world and where it fits into the gig economy and capitalism generally. (Précis: we’ve all been had, guys.) But… such pretty pictures! And the challenges are fun. Join me in #ColourMyEveryDay this week, why don’t you?
- Speaking of capitalism: reading The Grapes of Wrath for the first time, and finding it way harder than I expected. Bleak? Yes, obviously, that I knew. But it’s also painfully on the nose about the structural underpinnings of inequality, how and why it keeps getting worse… this was eighty years ago (the events, not the writing) and, well, as a society, we haven’t learnt a thing.
- Fed up with my parenting failures as kids show increasing evidence of being spoilt brats, which is clearly all my fault. Even more fed up with other people commenting on it, because I KNOW, I’m on it, and I really don’t need the judgment. (Also, it really seems like Elf acts up WAY more when we’re spending lots of time with other people. I’m not sure whether this is because she thinks she can get away with it when I don’t want to make a scene/embarrass her – this is often true – or because she gets a bit wired from too much company. I suspect a bit of both.)
Nos 40, 41 & 42 of #52recipes: cheesy zucchini bread (I forgot the chives, which is unforgivable since they’re basically the only thing growing on my balcony, but delicious anyway); parmesan crusted chicken – so good! so tender! but do as I did and turn the heat way up for a couple minutes right at the end, to brown/crisp them up a bit – and these gooey chocolate puds that weren’t gooey enough (two minutes too long I guess?) but still delicious. I added a little vanilla, and two squares of white chocolate in the centre of each pud. Yum.
And DUDE. That’s 42 recipes at the end of week 42. I’m back on track.
Woolly thoughts (and fuzzy logic) 