bottom drawer

What is it about earthquakes and Boxing Day? we all wake up woozy and contented, looking forward to finishing up the left-over food and booze, and suddenly the old whitebeard in the sky feels it necessary to remind us of our piggish self-indulgence by sending a huge natural disaster. Last year I shakily trotted off to our traditional Boxing Day events worrying about my friends in Bam; this year I worry about a very dear friend holidaying in Thailand. Maybe it is timely to remind us, at the time of our greatest consumption, of the fragility of the world we depend on to provide us with our turkeys and crackers and stocking fillers. But it's eqally strange or ironic that the first photo of the disaster I see, on the BBC website , features a South Asian boy climbing over the wreckage, wearing a (fake?) Arsenal football shirt advertising O2, a mobile phone network which no doubt advertises its 'foreign roaming' service heavily. The Arsenal won today, comfortably, but I wonde...

Back home to my parentals, the Christmas food thing really gets going. Not only do I not have to lift a finger to be fed fantastic food and delicious wine, but I also don't have to pay for it! Last night I arrived at their house exhausted from shopping and travelling, to be fed roast spatchcocked chicken with paprika and lemon, roast potatoes and homegrown 'rainbow chard', followed by green salad, delicious cheese and homemade membrillo. Then by the log fire, it was lemon verbena tea with Japanese sweets made of chestnut paste stuffed into a candied yuzu. This morning I had buckwheat pancakes with maple syrup, followed barely two hours later (thanks to my excessively lazy getting-up time) by delicate vegetable soup rendered special by home-made chicken stock , and more salad and cheese. With a tea-time snack of more sublime Japanese sweets, it was on to a dinner which began with one of the most perfect dishes one could imagine. One of the restaurants that my father is indir...

It's Christmas, again...and the routine repeats itself, with subtle variations, fromthe moment I leave my London flat to go back 'home' to my parents in the countryside. I have too many bags to carry the 15 minute walk to the station, so I get a cab. On the way, I pass two police cars that have stopped and three 'youths' thrust against the wall under a garish stret light, being questioned under the benevolent gaze of a police horse wearing red reindeer antlers. The train is really packed. My father, meeting me at the station, has a cold. I'm exhausted by last minute shopping and the travelling, and go to bed immediately after supper. Today, as is our tradition, we decorate the house, going to get our Christmas tree from the same old farm where we have the same conversation about the virtues of buying trees on Christmas Eve that I have had for as long as I can remember. We pace the field, weighing up the pros and cons of various trees and measuring their heigh...

The first 'real' meal that I have cooked since returning to the UK (for which the shopping in the previous post was in aid of) came off well and was real fun to do. The joy of cooking for a dinner party when it's not squeezed in to the hour between getting home from work and everyone arriving. Take your time, be organised, set the table, don't forget anything, change your clothes... The menu was as follows: to nibble on as a 'starter' (knowing all my friends to be perpetually late, making them all wait for the latest person before sitting down to eat is not an option), a smoked mackerel 'pate' (cheat's version), sourdough toast, grilled marinated baby squid with grilled skinned peppers and rocket. The cheating 'pate' is an instant version that I happened upon while combing the fridge one day for something tasty and instant and it's actually rather good. You shred smoked mackerel with a fork (discard the skin) and mix with a decent amount ...

There is a nightmare called trying to shop for food for a dinner party using public transport and my bare hands to carry everything. It's not possible to buy sufficient food for a three course meal for six people and carry it home at one go, unless you make soup or something that relies on a lot of the stuff that bulks it out being on tap (water) or in the store cupboard (pasta and rice). And for me, pasta and rice and soup are just too everyday to be dinner party food. So I struggle around Borough Market simultaneously over-excited at all that stuff available to buy and totally stressing out at the fact that everything will be crushed by the time I get home and why can't they give me my fish in a carrier bag with a handle not a massive clear binbag type thing tied with a big knot. I end up having to take a cab home and still I have to go back because I couldn't manage to buy wine, olive oil, pudding, and various odds and ends the first time round. How do you do it without ...

Christmas shopping is a nightmare (I know, you all know). Not only am I revolted at the amount of absolutely useless shit there is available to buy, I suffer a complete melt-down of creativity and then, when I finally get an idea, nowhere fucking sells it. The one decent present I managed to buy in Alabama for my mum was typically me in that it was too big to transport back to the UK given my suitcase size, a fact that totally passed me by from the day I bought it until the day I packed my bag. From now on, everything is being done over the internet, and all I will have to do is sit at home drinking tea and answering the doorbell. That way, I might even have time to make something for someone, for a change.

Last night was my Christmas treat with my boyfriend (as if I hadn't been getting enough since I got back into town) at the Wolseley. Everyone knows that it's the best place opened in the last year or so, run by the guys who did the Ivy and the Caprice so well, perfect discreet service, perfect reliable food, the place to be seen, amazing huge old banking hall and Wolsely car showroom decorated with antique black and gold Chinoiserie, etc etc. All this and more: it is also extremely reasonably priced considering its cachet - one would pay similarly for a vastly inferior meal and experience in this town - and being bigger than the previous restaurants, it's also possible to get a table as one of hoi polloi. It's unshowy, sophisticated and glamourous in a perfectly discreet way, and does fabulous dry martinis. I generally have considered the food here to be immensely accomplished but not 'bowl-me-over' standard - a standard which is more than good enough given how ...

I've managed to eat sushi twice in the last two days. Yesterday was at Feng Sushi in Borough Market, which used to be a regular lunch spot of mine when I worked right above it. I was back visiting my old colleagues and partaking of our traditional spread of vegetable tempura, yellowtail sashimi, edamame, mackerel and salmon. It's all good, reliable stuff, and the staff are lovely, but what I really wanted was my quintessential London sushi experience at Kulu Kulu on Brewer Street, so today a trip down to Piccadilly gave me the perfect excuse to treat myself. One of the great things about conveyor-belt sushi is you feel absolutely happy and normal eating there on your own. Kulu Kulu is typically London in that none of the staff or chefs are actually Japanese. A mix of Vietnamese, Malay, Korean, black British and what looked today to be a Hispanic of some sort turn out fantastic, cheap, fresh sushi and the assorted other items made from the offcuts of the fish, such as tempura of...

Autumn's overabundance so wonderfully described by Keats has come late to my tummy. In brief, in chronological order (luckily due to my huge laziness and late rising, I've been on two meals a day): Full English breakfast at Story Deli - beautiful poached eggs, organic bacon, roasted tomatoes, mushrooms, sourdough toast... Hugely decadent 'I cooked this, really' dinner all bought from the Fromagerie at Highbury Barn - fantastic real pesto with de Cecco spaghetti and marinated baby artichokes stirred in, goat cheeses and dry-cured French ham, a perfect tomato salad (the nearest I got to actually cooking was slicing them up, sprinkling them with thyme, salt and pepper and olive oil), moist and caraway-flavoured brown bread. Pints of Pride, accompanied with good old English ranting (the art of passionate debate is one that America lacks). Bacon sandwiches in bed with real English tea, sandwiched with sex. Pints of Pride, accompanied with Arsenal-Portsmouth and shouts of ...

Back in London Town, nothing much has changed....five new vintage clothes shops have opened up around my flat, but apart from that everything is much the same. Pubs are very nice things. As is a Sunday spent getting up very late, going for a long walk and watching the football in a pub with friends. At the risk of sounding like an outtake from a Working Title film, I've also braved Christmas shopping in the West End, gotten really soaking wet in the rain, taken an old-fashioned Routemaster bus and worn high heels while sipping champagne. Four months of dirty jeans and muddy boots have really brought out a slightly alarming girlish side to me now I'm back in 'civilisation'. I'm also inevitably struggling with how to describe Alabama to my English friends. It's such a world apart from what they expect America to be. The usual cliches about right-wing Christians, race relations and George W come up again and again and it's hard to explain how they may be on ...

The eating continues - yesterday with a boozy lunch, evening drinks and dinner. Lunch was on the waterfront at Canary Wharf at the Gaucho Grill - always reliable, slightly decadent due to the ponyskin chairs though unextraordinary this time - but the position, with clouds scudding over the water and shafts of wonderful golden December light, more than makes up for a lack of fireworks in the kitchen. Still, my ribeye was well-chosen, tender, and cooked rare - a treat compared to the invariably well-done and pale steaks in Alabama. I lurched off, slightly tipsy, to have tea with another friend, trying to avoid offers of cake and maintaining an effort at sobriety for a few hours, before heading off to the 20th anniversary drinks at Clarke's , West London institution and still holding the flame for women in the kitchen and up front. Headed up by wonderful women, the restaurant (and now, bakery and shop) continues its great set-menu policy and produces fantastic, classic food. The gath...

Back in the big smoke, the eating starts...with the first treat being lunch from Story Deli on Brick Lane - absolutely delicious Spanish tortilla, and pumpkin and roast garlic soup, which was actually only OK, too much cream for my liking. But good coffee (hooray!) and all the accoutrements of the new East End around me - skinny girls in legwarmers, Japanese boys in artful denim, rain dripping down outside. And then in the evening, back to old haunts - St John Bread and Wine , where we managed to squeeze in before the Christmas party crowds turned up for their bookings. Oh, the joy. This place is so well-known that I shouldn't have to add more, but still the fact that there weren't more of us taking in a table which we had to vacate by 8.15 must mean that someone doesn't know. We ate: grilled pilchards (perfect, just the right seasoning and sprinkle of parsley), roasted jerusalem artichoke, watercress and beautifully sweet slow-roast red onion salad, snails in bacon, flash-...

It's been all hands on deck this week to finish our foundations...finally, after all the delays. All pretty chaotic but we got it done. Many incidents involving lots of water in our holes, lots of mud that needed to be got out so we could fit our rebar cages in, still having to cut the cages down as we couldn't dig that deep by hand with post-hole-diggers, levelling sonotubes, weird bracing, tangled strings and all the other accoutrements of first time builders. Then the big moment...the concrete truck arrives... ...and the first hole is an inevitable mess, too much water left in it, sploshing cement everywhere, looks of horror from the team. But luckily things improved after some hasty pumping-out of water, which alas had the side-effect of de-levelling some of our sonotubes and tangling some rebar (prompting a lot of 'why didn't we think of that earlier' type remarks) and it was wheelbarrows and shovels all round. Finally, it was all done before sundown,...

Yesterday being the Pig Roast it was a round of typical Alabama fare - catfish and BBQ pork. If you are confused, the roasting of a pig is usually done only at the summer Pig Roast, where it is the responsibility of the second year students. After my total immersion, I think I am finally ready for a change from Southern cuisine despite its many virtues, and have started fantasising about going back to London and blowing a lot of money on food. St John...the Wolseley (where my cousin is currently cooking)...salt beef bagels...real coffee and croissants from Monmouth Coffee...free range meat from Borough Market...beautiful fish in Suffolk... The problem is that unless catfish and BBQ are done really well, it's easy to get bored. The freezing conditions yesterday meant that the outdoor catfish lunch was barely even lukewarm and cold hush puppies just ain't my cup of tea. Though, would you believe, in honour of a) the Rural Studio's English director and b) the use of newspaper...

After working late and getting up early, it was a long, cold but interesting Pig Roast day. Cars in caravan formation behind the Dually pick-up adorned with the fluttering flags of the USA, UK and Auburn University, we toured each project in turn, where the group presented on site and the visiting Jersey Devils played their traditional role as guest critics. My group presented first, luckily as by the last presentation I was on the verge of falling asleep. With only a short break for a freezing catfish lunch at Mason's Bend, we finally ended at 5pm back in Newbern, for a BBQ supper and bonfire before the main event, our party/art show at Beacon Street. This was lots of fun - I got my bluegrass-playing friends to show up, much to everyone's surprise as they mostly had no idea that I played the fiddle, and we got another bonfire going, and the whole crowd of students, tutors, devils, proud parents and random others drank and danced and chatted around the bonfire with that rel...

OK, so this is pure self-publicity but I know I've got readers out there, and so I was wondering if any of you may vaguely like reading about me and the joys of Piggly Wiggly enough to nominate me for Accidental Hedonist's Food Blogging Awards best new blog category (I'm not eligible for any of the others, being new and all that). I know it's horribly egotistical but hey, you know, why not. This whole food thing truly does keep me sane during my total immersion into the West Alabama mud. I rather like the monasticism of only being able to shop at the Pig. It keeps it all fresh and makes simple things very joyful. A well-made risotto, gnocchi, a chance encounter with something seasonal and fresh - combined with the discovery of just how weird American ideas of cooking can be - keeps me happy and alive, nose in the air, scenting out more.

Last night's Christmas party fare offered some perfect examples of American cooking which to me is utterly incomprehensible but to others is, well, a really good idea. Take the shrimp dip, for instance. Apparently this contained lemon Jell-O , as well as two tins of shrimp, tomato sauce, lemon juice, and mayonnaise. I mean, who actually thinks to put Jell-O in a dip? but everyone raved about how good it tasted and what a clever idea, I would have never guessed it had Jell-O in it, my goodness I'm doing that next time. I couldn't bring myself to even taste it after hearing the ingredient list. Shrimp should not be in tins. And sandwiches with jam and ham? I don't understand, I'm sorry.

Time proceeds scarily fast towards the end of the semester. Last night we had our Christmas party, or rather one of the two parties we are having, the other being the end-of-semester pig roast. Last night was our one lecturer dressed up as Santa giving out our 'secret Santa' presents (he usually teaches History and Materials & Methods), soft drinks only of course (unless you bring your own), sausage rolls and crisps (sorry, chips) and general seasonal cheer. It's been mild and we were sitting out on the porch of the Spencer House all evening. Today I got well and truly muddy on site. We had to shovel away all the dirt that came out of our foundation holes when we drilled them. And as there was a lot of rain last night, the pure clay of the soil was now impossible to shovel and unbelievably heavy. We actually realised it was easier not to use the shovels at all and just use our hands. And with several inches of clay stuck to all sides of our boots, it was the true Hal...

Another week begins. We managed to persuade (with a little leaning from our tutor) the rest of the group that it really was a good idea to move our house to the least swampy part of the site, so most of the team spent the day putting up new batter boards and strings, while I worked in studio drawing through some design options for a couple of things. It's amazing how long a day can feel when you start out on site at 8am - by the afternoon I was convinced it was Tuesday. This evening Carol and I continued with our preparations for the informal art show and party we're holding at Beacon Street on Saturday after the end-of-term reviews and Pig Roast. Painting, climbing up and down ladders and making things interspersed with drinking wine and chatting - as it should be. It's a good thing that the Rural Studio doesn't really have a late-night work culture - more of an early start ethic - as otherwise, the idea that we could do this in our evenings would be out of the ques...

This week's exciting new food is a freezer-full of deermeat that I have been given by Susan, who works at GB's Mercatile Store in Newbern after I asked her why it was impossible to buy venison here although everyone hunts all the time. She gave me two bags of stew meat, a roast, ribs and ground meat for burgers, and wouldn't let me pay for any of it. Apparently she's already got a deer and a half in her freezer, and expects to have a couple more before the end of the season. So tonight I made a casserole with some of the stew meat, onions, carrots, mushrooms and plenty of red wine. It was good, although it could have done with a little more stewing, but we got impatient to eat. I couldn't find any juniper in the Pig or Fullers, which would have been my automatic choice of seasoning, so I put in a couple of bay leaves and a couple of cloves to try and achieve some of the same effect. The cloves were actually a pretty good choice, surprisingly. WIth some cayenne peppe...

OK, so I'm not even going to pretend that this is a late entry for Wine Blogging Wednesday , but on one of those random loops through Google I fonud the following link to my lovely father writing on Riesling which was last WBW's theme. And in another shameless plug, I'm going to recommend to you all his fantastic book A Pike in the Basement , recently republished in a beautiful new edition by Eland Books (seems to be only available in this edition in the UK Amazon but here's a link to the US site with used copies of the original available. It's a fantastic Christmas present for anyone interested in food, travel or wine - and because he never sold very many copies, it's unlikely that you'll be duplicating anyone else's present. He writes about travelling worldwide, from sheep farms in Australia to Las Vegas to the Turkey-Iran border, eating and drinking and getting into scrapes along the way. Each chapter ends with a recipe and a recommended wine, and i...

This to me is a typically American meal. Not that it was badly cooked or anything, but a casserole with pasta as an accompaniment? especially as the casserole had potatoes in it? It's all wrong, call me traditional. Plus, a beef casserole (or stew, as it was presented to me) should not contain red peppers and green beans along with carrots and potatoes - it's mixed messages. A red pepper and beef stew, with paprika and other Spanish-North African type spices, would be really good. Likewise a northern European root veg and beef hotpot. Green beans (french beans) should never be in a casserole but would be a really nice side vegetable. Plus the whole blue cheese as salad ingredient thing. Luckily my host had thoughtfully set the different salad ingredients in different bowls so I could choose to have it sans the blue cheese. The really good thing at this meal were the candied pecan nuts (also supposedly a salad ingredient). I asked for the recipe. Sauted in butter with brown suga...

On a side note, why on earth is it so difficult to get leeks here? Last night when I was preparing the fish stew one of the friends I had over looked at my leeks (brought back from Atlanta) and sighed as deeply as if I had just started chopping up a truffle.

Last night I was definitely glad to have food in the freezer. My mammoth fish-cooking day after going to Atlanta paid off, with a pot of fish stew in the freezer ready to heat up for myself and friends after a very long day's work. With the addition of some fresh leeks and good nutty brown rice, it warmed us up well against the cold that is both inside and outside my house. Simple fish stew seems to be something that no-one knows or thinks to make very much, despite the fact that its economy and ease would make it one of the most useful recipes. Basically the usual base of onions, garlic and some ginger, a little chilli, saffron if you have it, add the fish when the onions are softened, add lots of tomatoes, maybe a finely chopped red pepper (both skinned if you can be bothered), water or stock to cover, some leeks, season and simmer. Nothing very precise or difficult about all that. Any old fish will really do (I used cod cheeks and salmon offcuts) and it's a very satisfying s...

Every day on site brings unexpected new developments. Yesterday, the truck that we got in to dig the holes for our foundations became almost fatally sunk in the mud around the site we'd chosen for the house. It may be that we choose to change the site of the house as a result, moving it as close as possible to the hard standing and driveway, so that concrete trucks/diggers/our cars don't turn into permanent installations in Elizabeth's front yard (a teammate's car also got stuck last night just after we'd managed to dig/winch the big truck out). It's really quite extraordinary how soft the soil is, and it's definitely going to get even less fun as the winter gets wetter. But of course the debate about moving the site is a major headache, with the team split. Today, however, was another ridiculously beautiful, clear, mild day, from the morning when we drove to site through mist rising like smoke from the catfish ponds, to the opening ceremony in Perry Lake...

Candied yams are a new thing to me. Sitting in a barbeque house in Tuscaloosa among some prize specimens of Americans with bellies larger than the tables they were seated at, I finally had a chance to give them a go. They're pretty good - cinnamon-scented, sweet but pleasingly not too soft. They'd make a really good dessert with some sheep's yogurt to lighten the dish up and mix with the syrupy juices.

Every week the Rural Studio provides us with a communal meal generally followed by a lecture or other event, at which everyone ritually complains about the quality of the food. Although I would never claim that it had any great culinary merits, the food that is cooked up by a local woman is rarely truly inedible and I do find the complaints about it slightly unjustified. It's filling, home-cooked and free and to my omnivorous mouth this makes it perfectly acceptable, especially compared to the institutional food I used to get in England (hall food at college, school dinners) which was wholly disgusting in every way, and generally totally processed. Given my food-related scruples I do find it strange that on this one I'm one of the only people who quite happily fills my plate and scoffs it down. The only thing I can't manage is the horrible American 'salad' that generally also gets served - iceberg lettuce, those weird pre-peeled carrots that look like orange bullets...

We are progressing on site slowly but surely. As in, no actual bits of building yet but very meticulously set out batter boards and strings. Digging holes for foundations tomorrow, after which there really is no turning back. Meanwhile half the team has been researching every possible sort of anchor bolt/holddown for our foundations, as well as organising a septic system and various other indoor jobs. The foundations were today's subject of lengthy debate due to a ninth-hour loss of confidence among some team members. The soil around here is fundamentally a bog despite how pretty it may look - soggy, a high water table, sticky and generally liable to shift and sink. Not particularly good for any kind of foundation apart from 18ft piles going down to the bedrock, which certainly aren't within our budget. Luckily, after going round the houses again and consulting everyone else's opinion (all the tutors, fellow students, a local contractor, Johnny Parker, the internet) and con...

Well, today we finally made our first marks on our site! The first part of the process: setting out the footprint of the building with stakes and string. No glamorous ceremony, though, just three of us and a very long tape-measure. I was reminded of Chuck Palahniuk's book 'Diary' which I read on the plane to New York, and its description of the rituals and superstitions of housebuilding, reminiscent of what I had previously learnt about ancient Mesopotamia and also Japan. Would the lack of ritual bring bad luck to this building? It certainly felt strangely mundane - no audience, no blessing, no mayor laying the foundation stone. It's an important and exciting thing, building a dwelling, even if it is a small and cheap one.