Leftovers #148

Every time I feel overwhelmed, I’m amazed that something as simple as the way eggs move in a pan, the smell of burnt butter or the taste of orange colliding with bitter, cold tea can redirect my emotions to a totally different place. This is often fleeting but kept going if I stay in the kitchen long enough.

I’ve been making the most of the sun, which usually means taking a stool out to the stairwell in between meetings or popping to the gardens opposite and sitting on the closest bench to the gate. I am truly solar powered, confirmed by the way I start re-acclimatising to my face when the freckles emerge, as if my being in winter was just a stand-in for the real me, which is genuinely how I feel.

The jasmine is starting to bloom and I still miss Los Angeles. I’m watching the jasmine tremble, the tousle of vines falling down the corner of the staircase, and the scent gives me the impression that I’m walking towards Rose Avenue in Venice. I’m reading and drinking a large jar filled with matcha iced tea, hiding from the wind and imagining I’ve just come back from a hike in Griffith Park.

I’m planning on making the most of a booking-free system at the Ladies Pond today, always preferring to land in the meadows there outside of any weekend hours. I’ve prepped a deli container salad and a jar of iced tea (see below for my hyper fixation meals/drinks), which I hope won’t get too smushed in the Lime bike basket en route.

As ever, here are some things I’ve been enjoying of late!

Iced drinks at all times

I’ve taken on my friend Meg’s obsession with drinks, especially since my favourite electrolytes arrived in the post. At any given time in a day, I’ll have a Nalgene bottle full of electrolyte-soaked water and at least one other beverage. Decaf black coffee. Homemade earl grey and orange iced tea (3 tea bags, 1 tbsp honey, juice of 1 orange, in a big carafe and topped up with lukewarm water then left to steep for a few hours; pop it in the fridge and sip on it for days), a matcha spiked with maple syrup. My favourite iced tea related drinks recently have been:

• Iced tea with 25ml Mother Root, topped up with soda water

• Matcha with maple and almond milk with a splash of iced tea

• Iced tea topped up with Something & Nothing’s cucumber soda.

Good things to consume (bodily)

1. I can’t stop making this one lunch: grilled chicken thighs + crispy rice + shredded little gem + shaved fennel and radishes + toasted nuts/seeds + avocado and or cukes + green goddess dressing.

2. Even better if you marinate your thighs in 1 tbsp yoghurt, 1 tsp soy sauce, 1/2 tbsp chilli crunch and a little squeeze of lime for 24 hours in the fridge.

3. Really into this wild garlic chicken burger

4. The only cake I’m really into is one that involves olive oil and citrus, so this one might need to go on the birthday list.

5. A reminder that Soho in the spring is pure London energy. I spend a Friday night drinking crémant and eating fries at Bébé Bob then had a late dinner at Kiln, which is still as good as ever. Get a tequila and ginger, the claypot noodles, whatever salad they have and the wood fired chicken thighs.

6. I was discussing my love for breakfast burritos with North American friends the other day and so I immediately bought all the ingredients to make one and it was better than I expected. I did two scrambled eggs, some shredded cheddar, spinach and borlotti beans, crispy grilled bacon, salsa verde (see recipe at the bottom of this post), and some hash browns (from the freezer section of course).

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Good things to consume (culturally)

Not even a Lorde fanatic but the clip of her new track??? ICONIC!!!

@lorde @lorde ♬ original sound - Lorde

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• Finished a book called Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley - I’m not sure how I would rate it because whilst I wouldn’t necessarily call it “good”, I did enjoy it and finished it in almost one fell swoop. It was a little cheesy but got me on the level that anyone bonding over music does. I didn’t love the ending but I liked the movement and the pace and it made me reconnect with my own relationship to music which has waxed and waned over the past decade, especially since I stopped playing in a band and working in the industry.

• In case you missed it, I wrote about the art of repair both in and out of the kitchen.

  Kintsugi and the art of repair

• Watching Black Mirror because while I don’t think we can totally ignore AI, I am deeply troubled by our increasing reliance on it and how it only fuels our cold capitalist hearts.

• That being said I have been talking to an AI therapy app called Untold when I’ve had a moral quandary and that’s been great but realistically I should just go to a therapist… on the list of things to do when I move to Cornwall… I’m thinking of asking it whether I’ll ever feel fulfilled and just see what it says.

• Sat on the bench closest to my flat in Rosemary Gardens. Nice observations in the sun: a woman eating a sandwich walking her dog, her dog rolling around in the grass, paws up, then both of them just standing there in silence for five minutes. Five brothers and sisters holding hands as they crossed the road and playing duck duck goose in the park. A boy in a wheelchair and his parents who stopped to smile and say hello. Clairo playing in my earbuds feeling like it was summer last year.

• New Bon Iver is out and it is so surprisingly vibey?

• An archive profile by Jay McInerney from 1994 on Chloe Sévigny. I’m always so intrigued how it girls emerge (and that they are inevitably white and thing - not to take away from Chloe’s star power or talent). I like the style of this profile though as it feels like McInerney is simply observing here rather than trying to critique or formulate an opinion on her. The way she moves through the world, the way the world receives her, especially as a lifelong New Yorker.

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Songs for my friends

New playlist, inspired by a night listening to music with a friend and a bottle of sake until 5am.