As some of you may know, the lovely Jen Arnall-Culliford has been a pal for a few years now, and we’ve met her husband, the just-as-lovely (and somewhat long-suffering, if you believe his alter-ego, @VeufTricot on Twitter) Jim Arnall-Culliford a few times too. So when we heard about Jim running the London Marathon for Refuge, we offered to put them up for the weekend and help in any way we could. Both Wendy and I are only just over the river from the start (well, in global terms) and both TBk households are seasoned Marathon spectators (this year was Wendy’s 15th consecutive marathon, I have chickened out on the years when the weather was bad…).

So, Jen and Jim arrived Friday evening. Saturday morning we set off to Excel for Jim to go through the final registration bits and pick up his number and microchip. Here is Jim in the queue for his number:



and here he is with his number:



no longer Jim, but Runner 45699! Have to say, the organisation at Excel was fantastic. Super speedy, teeny tiny queues. We did a bit of wandering around the associated exhibition, and then thought we’d pop over to Greenwich so that Jim could see where he’d be starting from. We thought we’d go the scenic route, so we popped onto this:



and ‘flew’ over the Thames. Here’s Neil (Mr. TBk) and Jen in the capsule:



and here’s the view just before we set off whilst waiting for our capsule:



looking back to the Olympic Stadium and The Orbit:



and back to the ‘flight’ once we’d landed:



We wandered along the Thames Path towards Greenwich, crossing from East to West along the way:



And when we got to the top of Greenwich Park, just outside the Observatory, we saw this little sweetie:



It was the coat that made me excited to start with (so cute!) but then we noticed the claws… Never seen a dog with painted claws before. Considered painting Iman’s, briefly, but decided that having functioning fingers was more important in the general scheme of things.



Anyway, wandered over to the Start, showed Jim where he’d be then set off home. Saw this sign at the bottom of the hill, which amused me.



Got home, Neil made fresh pasta for dinner to go with the ragu I’d made the day before (requested specially by Jim) – Jim ate rather a lot of it:



(ok, perhaps not quite all of that dish full), and then it was time for bed. I’ll tell you all about the actual Marathon day tomorrow, this post has been long enough I think. Just in case you’re wondering, that hoodie Jim is wearing is going to be a pattern available from Jen fairly soon… I think she should call it ‘In da E9 Hood’…

OK we may have wittered on before about food. We both like food. A lot. Belinda has become a bit obssessed recently with breadmaking. It began several years ago at a family lunch when an Ottolenghi salad was produced which had involved soaking wheat grains for a while before cooking them and these particular grains had been soaked for rather longer than strictly necessary (due entirely to laziness) and the joke was that they’d had to be cooked as they’d started fermenting. This led onto talk of sourdough bread and the fermented leaven ‘starter’ used for that.

At some point around this time the lovely MDK ladies were asking for favourite recipes in their comments and someone mentioned a book which gave instructions on 5-minute sourdough (ish). The book was purchased. Never quite got on with it. The book was given away. The idea was pushed to the back of the brain to ferment a while longer.

The Hairy Bikers did a baking tour of Europe on TV. They went to a bakery in Sweden that made sourdough. It looked not much different from the sourdough I’d made. I was off again. The River Cottage Bread book was bought. A starter was made. Said starter was christened ‘Henning’ – Henning Wehn had been on the radio and made me laugh, and I felt my sourdough should be vaguely Germanic (no real idea why, apart from it had rye flour in). Bread was baked. It was a bit better than the 5 minute book bread, but although it tasted nice it was a bit ‘slumpy’ and didn’t really look good. And it always stuck to the flour-dusted tea towel, no matter how much flour I used for dusting.

And as we all know, I am shallow and vain and like things to look good. Things I make anyway (she says hastily, in case you’ve ever seen me skulking round Broadway Market on a Saturday morning). Plus some fruit flies got into Henning’s container and he went from ‘fermenting’ to ‘mouldy’ and was disposed of down the toilet.

And then, for my birthday last year a fab friend bought me Dan Lepard’s bread book. The starter was different. Not as liquid. There were other recipes that used a combination of fresh yeast and leaven. A new Henning was born. Well, cultured. Hackney air must be full of goodness as standing by the back door whisking a starter is just about guaranteed to bring it to life within 24 hours. Dan Lepard has acquired ‘god-like genius’ status in our house.

So here’s the alchemy. Flour and water turn into this ‘blob-from-outer-space’ / ‘quatermass’ living thing (I love that the jar is so clarted up and scruffy looking):





Into dough (this one has a bit of fresh yeast in as well and cooked barley grains, barley flour and honey and is proving):



into bread:



Cool, eh? Alchemy. The feeding and welfare of Henning is overtaking me. People are bored with me waving his jar (‘Man With Two Brains’-esq) in front of them and urging them to ‘look! No, LOOK! Sniff!’ (he does smell quite a bit, and it seems that only I love this). Everyone loves the bread, though. Tomorrow will be a sourdough day.

ps – I have no idea why the other books didn’t work for me as I know people who swear by them. Must be me. The only thing I have to alter from Mr. Lepard’s book is the cooking time, unusually it would seem my oven has no problem whatsoever getting hot enough to bake bread. It will never be cool enough for meringues, though, it doesn’t do cool. Just hot and hotter.

When I was thinking about this weeks mood I really wanted to do something Pink. I’m not sure why as I am not a big pink fan…anyway as I was pondering my new Elle magazine arrived and the cover was Cameron Diaz dressed head to toe in pink Dior! That was strange as I had been pondering pink so much, so it must be in the ether. Winter pink is a strange thing but is working for me this week.I also love pink winter flowering Cyclamen at this time of year, here is my daughters window box.



We found some great images, mixing old with new…



Brightens up the last week of November for me!

(that top right pic is by Paolo Roversi, isn’t it beautiful?)

Hmmm. I was going to post about the dressage at Greenwich Park that I went to see but have a slight problem. Can’t find the photos. Suspect they have been deleted from the camera in a bit of a mix up between me and OH (he always deletes photos when he downloads them all, I never do, but I do remember saying ‘oh, it’s OK, I’ve got all of those’ when perhaps I hadn’t. Oops.). Oh well, never mind. I wouldn’t have been able to remember who was who anyway.

So, instead, I give you – my lunch! Ta dah!



As you know I am capable of wittering about food (at length, it must be said) and I possess a ridiculous quantity of cookery books which is only going to get bigger following releases in the next month from Ottolenghi, Nigella and Nigel. Lunch today, however, was from Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-It-All – specifically his newest veg book, although as ever I couldn’t possibly do exactly what the recipe said. It should have been carrots, cumin seeds, chickpeas, orange zest and juice, garlic and smoked paprika. Added in are black olives and half a finely chopped onion as they were hanging around the fridge looking a bit sad. Blobbed on top is a spoonful of Total Greek yoghurt (full fat, obvs, and the only plain yoghurt worth eating). Have to say it was utterly, utterly delicious.

Should admit here that the Ottolenghi books are the ones where I do actually do what the recipe says, at least once, anyway. Might witter on about some knitting at some point, you never know…

I am very lucky. I live in a wonderful (if sometimes noisy and infuriating) part of London and our street is a proper community, an out-of-town friend claims it is just like living in Albert Square as often you can’t leave the house without having 2 or 3 chats with neighbours who, most importantly, are friends as well as neighbours.

One such friend and neighbour changed career whilst she’s been living here – from specialist oncology nurse to pâtissière. Being the sort of person she is, she is a very, very good pâtissière and has been working at The Arts Club on Dover Street in Mayfair. She is soon jetting off to Shanghai for a new stage in her life, and as a farewell lunch I was very lucky to go to the Arts Club with her and be spoiled.

After starters and mains, Chef sent out one of these each for us:



That’s lemon sorbet, topped with raspberry and lychee sorbet with a rose petal and silver leaf on the top. It may well be the prettiest and most delicious thing I have ever eaten. Seriously. I am not a big pudding / dessert fan, but that could turn me.

Then we actually ordered desserts. Whislt we were waiting for them to arrive this appeared, sent out by Chef for us.









This is a sharing plate of most of the desserts on the menu. And then this arrived:



Which is a new mango and sticky rice pudding that Chef is working on. Mangoes from Pakistan with fabulous coconut sticky rice. And then the desserts we had actually ordered arrived.



That’s a Violette. Berry sorbet, Chantilly cream and violet meringues. We did our best, but even so we couldn’t finish it all.





I could barely move. A wonderful, wonderful lunch with wonderful friends. I am so very lucky.