while baking a 7-apple crumble to salvage the near-extinction apples I bought a couple of weeks back. Peaceful times.
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5th recipe cooked out of my Greek cookbook – chicken with fresh oregano (although I had to do it with dried) – very tasty. I also made some more progress on the Whitman interlude.
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I’m still exploring the new box set I bought last week – well, with 22 CDs, odds are I’ll be exploring it for a good long while to come! – and today I listened again to the disc of Poulenc and Britten songs (composers accompanying), and had my first listen to the Khachaturian disc (composer conducting), which has the Violin Concerto on it. I heard this piece on the radio the other day and was so taken by it that I had to switch it over from clock-radio to real radio to read the track info – so I was very glad to find I already had a recording of it. I’ve also been reacquainting myself with Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird which I have loved ever since I first heard it sung by Gerald English at a composer conference in Melbourne back when I was at uni. It’s a really intriguing work, and relevant to me especially now because of the Whitman songs being similarly fragmentary and miniature.
I’ve also listened to an incredible piano piece – most definitely NOT miniature – by Carolyn Yarnell, called The Same Sky – you can hear it from a link in about the 6th paragraph down in Kyle Gann’s post ‘Aiming My File Cabinets into the Right Student’s Ears’. I’d link to it directly, except that Gann’s post also includes a chunk of very beautiful and daunting-looking score, which is worth seeing. And also because if you don’t know Gann’s work, you should get to his site and have a listen. I highly recommend, in particular, Custer and Sitting Bull, which truly shows how beautiful and emotive microtonal music can be.
And to celebrate djeli’s safe arrival home from the snow, I cooked another new recipe from my big Greek cookbook – ‘Drunken Pork’ – fantastically delicious and easy. Will have to pull this one out for guests sometime, I think!
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Experimenting with recipes from my new Greek cookbook and cooking kn the dark because the lights had blown. Felt adventurous and the results were tasty too.
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with a friend who lives in Paris – lovely random chat. Haven’t done anything like that in ages. Rest of the day was similarly relaxed – slept in, listened to music (Ravel, Faure, Elgar, etc), made big progress on djelibeybi’s hat (very nearly up to the crown shaping), made mushroom soup. And at the end of it am very nearly feeling human again. Shame I don’t have another day off – feeling very close to capable of writing some music, but I think it’d take another sleep to actually get there… when of course I’ll have to go back to work. *sigh*
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with a much-needed 4-hour nap. Also had a massage to counter the tension headache, which has been quite horrific this week, baked oatmeal scones again, did a bit of work on djeli’s new hat (I’ve passed the turn-up and am on to the hat proper now!) and received the first part of my Amazon order – Wii Fit Plus (which obviously I can’t use until the sprained ankle is sorted out) and 3 Beatles albums – Magical Mystery Tour, Revolver and A Hard Day’s Night – woo! Also had a bash at one of my new Wii games – Lego Indiana Jones – which looks like a heap of fun. A lovely, relaxing day – can’t remember the last time I had one of those!
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Our houseguests’ last day so I felt blueberry muffins might be appropriate breakfast fare.
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to take to the hard-working and lovely colleagues at work.
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Nigella Lawson spiced turkey (fabulous recipe) with allspice gravy, roast potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic, River Cottage Brussels sprouts done in garlic butter (very fine but perhaps not the best match with the spiced turkey – I think the Nigella pecan sprouts might have worked better in context), Nigella soy and sweet chilli chipolatas, followed by ris a l’amande with hot cherry sauce and the chocolate chip and cranberry biscuits I made yesterday. We also made an awesome mulled wine and a fantastic non-alcoholic drink called a Xmas Xinger, containing pomegranate juice and ginger ale (both from Nigella’s Christmas – yes, it was very much a Nigella year – I did get the book for last Christmas!). Guests seemed to be happily stuffed by the end of it, so a good result all round.
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and did a lot of preparation for Saturday night’s Christmas feast – we put the turkey in its brine, peeled and cut up the potatoes, made the rice pudding base for the ris a l’amande and wrote up a big minute-by-minute plan for getting everything to the table on time
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