It's Saturday, again. Funny how it keeps on coming around, even though I do nothing to make it so.
But time does move on, and so does lockdown, apparently. I had my first distanced picnic last Sunday (god, it was cold and rainy, but no I didn't care until the long, painful walk home). I have decided to live this week as though it's still summer, with not a lot of proper cooking, which is a shame, as frozen pink wine is much less enticing when it's 17 degrees and the wind is blowing round my broken double glazing.
Tomato pasta with pink wine. (Veggie week) Tonight it's crab pasta with cold Viognier.
Oh well.
No, I have still not booked to get that fixed, or to get a new mattress, or to replace my dripping kitchen tap. Quite a poor use of time, really.
What I have booked is a haircut, and an exhibition. Add that to the picnic and my first takeaway (two weeks back), and I truly am ripping up the lockdown. Or am I? I don't feel so. Each of them is sitting in a little cautious island of time, and experience, and the next event isn't booked. I haven't even dashed to the hairdresser asap - it's booked for the end of the month. The exhibition will involve tube travel for the first time, but about 10.30 on a Sunday morning. I've also cancelled my final holiday booking of the year, even though it looks cautiously as if it might have been legal to go. I am the definition of wary.
I know some of you are back at work, at least part of the time, so you've had to confront this more directly than I have. Some of you are working with totally different unlockdown timetables, of course. If you're around for Confined Cocktail Hour (#ConfinedCocktails) on twitter at 7pm, or if you want to comment here, I'd love to hear your firsts. What seems important enough to step out of the comfort zone for? And what are you leaving to way, way into the future?
It's been a quiet week hereabouts, but Kate's spectacular madeleine-making efforts are well worth a read if you haven't. And Sarah's daring suggestion of disobedience to Madhur Jaffrey for a quickie biryani recipe gave me the shivers. (I'm propping my lockdown laptop up on Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cooking, which is the perfect height and I rarely use because I have learned it verbatim, but I keep expecting her to haunt me for disrespect.)
That knock on the door - that's me coming for a plate of crab linguine and some chilled Viognier - I love Viognier.
ReplyDeleteHappy to report it's as good today as it was yesterday. It's far from broiling hereabouts at the moment, but it still feels like summer eating is good.
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