Mark and I agree that people who claim to love autumn usually are pretentious arty posers, also probably into posing in a park reading some Dylan Thomas poetry while puffing on cigarettes. But… autumn is slowly growing in my heart this year. I stayed home today as I as feeling poorly, and Scully and I hung out watching the Gilmore Girls in bed, eating ratatouille, carving a pumpkin in the evening and roasting the seeds with whole cumin seeds for later comsuption.

Did I ever post about my love for Alain Bashung? He’s one of the very, very few French singers with whom I am absolutely in love (another one would be, uncharactically, Christophe [last fm link]… Two others, more contemporary, would be Emilie Simin and Camille). Bashung is a true poet, a dark and French version of Leonard Cohen. His lyrics are very dense and confusing, but he has been singing for 30 years or so now and is pretty much intoûchable. He unfortunaly declared having lung cancer last year, but stil, dude is in the middle of a national tour around France, sounding amazing and determined.

” Je tuerai la pianiste
Afin que l’on sache
Que la vie d’artiste
N’est pas rose, n’est pas sans tâche”

In other news, we decided to sell our tv for a few bucks (we never watch anything of interest, and only have 5 channels anyway) but no one is interested. So, if you want a free tv, holla at me.

Today was Apple Day at the Spitalfields urban farm, which is a short 10 mns walk away from my flat. Sweet. I drank sharp apple juice made with the machine above (third image) and had a great time. I also scored four free organic apples (hello, clafoutis!) and talked to this lovely lady who spinned her own wool. It’s a fascinating a painfully long craft, which I would love to learn. She got the wool for the farm as well, so everything was as local as you can get. I asked her about making coloured wools, an she said she used to make them herself using natural colorants such as beetroots, berries, currants and onions (!). Now I’m tempted to look at ebay to score one of those beautiful machines (or downsize to those).

As we were talking two young women joined us. They had been finishing some art with felt, which was looking pretty darn good. One of them expressed the desire to follow wool-spinning classes, and we asked the lady if she was up to it. She seemed keen, which would be awesome. The girl said it would be nice to learn this new skill, as she knew hot to knit, but wasn’t amazing at it by any stretch - which could describe me and my needles correctly.

With a bit of melancholy in her eyes, she then pointed out that the afternoon was really nice - there was a certain sense of community around here, which is not often the case when you live in London. Pfft, I couldn’t agree more - except our next door neighbours, I have no idea who else lives in the building. My relationship with merchants is always kept to a strict minimum (no time, no friendly faces, money to be made) and people at the gym or the yoga center always have a certain holier-than-thou glimpse in their eyes which just irks the shit out of me.

Then again, maybe I’m too difficult, grumpy or simply unlikeable.

The other day I was telling Mark that, should I one day live in the countryside and own a farm, I am not sure which - if any- animals would like to live with. Would we want hens, ducks? Pigs? A donkey (yes please)? We then wondered wether or not we would have the guts to kill the animals to eat them. Could I kill a duck with my bare hands? Mark said he would prbably handle killing chickens, but as for me, the jury’s still out. Maybe I’d become a vegetarian farmer.

Reading New holistic herbal, because I am learning about plants (not about being a hippie), Louis Theroux’s the call of the weird (come on, am I the only girl who fancies Louis?)

Listenning to Mark playing guitar, 2005 stuff, Interpol, Mars Volta

Watching True blood. New favourite series since 6 feet under/Buffy. I cannot get over my love for vampires; they are infinitely cooler than zombies no matter what you say

Saf, 152-154 Curtain Road / 4/10 (as rated by me), 3/10 (Mark)

If you know me, you know that I am very picky when it comes to vegetarian restaurants. And as it has been pointed out elsewhere with great justesse, food isn’t just fuel - it’s a whole lot of what symbolizes who you are and where you come from. And I’m from France. Raised on my grandmother’s dishes which incorporated meat or fish at least 4 or 5 times a week. When going to a vegetarian restaurant which doesn’t blow my mind right away, I’m always eager to taste something more substantial (…like, err, andouillettes).

CC via catfunt on FlickR

I had high hopes for Saf. Yes, ‘raw and experimental food’ sounded pretentious and yes, it was painfully located in the heart of Shoreditch, but I’ll give anything a try if it means that I can persuade Mark of my open-mindedness when it comes to vegetarian restaurants. He had brought me to Brighton’s Terre à terre back in 2006 and even though I had teased him at the lack of steaks, I remembered the meal fondly.

We arrived for an early dinner - around 6.20 - and asked for a table without reservation. The waitress anxiously looked at her screen before telling us only one table was available, and we had to be gone by 8.30. Excellent. We ordered starters (springrolls for me, olives and tapas for Mark) and wine, which I thought was ridiculously overpriced - even for biodynamic/organic bottles. We settled for one of the cheapest option (£18 for a much-less-than-average French Sauvignon? You joker!) and waited. And waited. And waited. The starters were long gone by the time we had our first sip - which by then not only tasted sour, but also like a big fucking let down.

But eh, whatever. On to the main course. My lovely partner had a Buddha bowl and I had the pizette, which I understand to be vegan pizza. It turned out it should have been called pizzettes, plural, since my plate looked like an accumulation of little canapés with olive paste spread on them. Which would have been excellent if, you know, the chef hadn’t poured two or three kilos of salt in the dish. I mean holy SHIT, I’m the person who always asks for more salt in restaurants (sorry!), but I couldn’t finish my plate even after two glasses of cucumbered-water.

I had gigantic hopes for the deserts - my favourite part of any meal - so Mark and I ordered two ‘chocolate’-based deserts. They arrived completely frozen, and we had to beat them up with spoons to tenderize them. The vegan chocolate, which would have made the cheesecake moist in theory, tasted like solid liquorice mixed with grape powder.

Did I mention the service? Following the wine accident, the service was nice enough? Except that we were served by 4 different waiters asking us the same questions over and over again. We coughed in disbelief and with exorbited eyes when the bill came (£72! Seventy-flippin’-two pounds!) and walked away sorely disappointed.

The best part? The Guardian published a very mitigated review, which doesn’t appear on the restaurant’s website. The Independent’s does though, but sadly the sub-editors misspelled the restaurant’s name in their headline (’Safa‘). So it’s only fair that Saf’s website then misspells ‘The Independant‘. Lolz.

Needless to say I’m still waiting for tips for excellent and affordable vegetarian/vegan restaurants in London. Fire away.

Today I spent two hours picking blackberries in the forest. And I made jam with them. Very satisfied.

Whoa - nothing like stepping out of your building in the rain at 3 in the afternoon to realise that your flat’s entrance and half of your street has been turned into a crime scene overnight. Forensic people walking around dressed in astronauts, two blood-soaked sweatshirts on the pavement and the whole perimeter blocked.

‘Serious stabbing’, said the policeman. ‘Please give your name and address to leave and enter the scene. Did you hear anything last night?’.

Oh, great.

Yesterday I headed to Kew Gardens to meet with Raphael, Marie-Pierre and Odette to spend an afternoon looking at odd exotic plants, eating Victorian sponge (very much liked by the little bird pictured below who pestered me for more) and climbing on the tree-top ladder. I am cultivating a growing interest in gardening, and I really want to sign up for this course, but given that my free space is a balcony and tiny terrasse, it’s probably not going to work.

The area around Kew Gardens’ tube station is unbelievably beautiful (think Gilmore Girls setting, complete with little books and flowers shop, French wine store and bakeries), but such cuteness filled my with rage. I mean, fuck, Bethnal Green is painfully ugly/smelly/dirty and yet everywhere I go during the weekends (Hampstead, Epping, Bermondsey, Belsize park, Primrose Hill - you name it) people seem to live in Victorian houses with huge gardens and quiet streets. How did that happen? How yeah, maybe it’s because nobody can afford a council estate house until they’re 50 nowadays and I have to live near dusty hipsterland with cheap rent instead. Fuck that.

I keep on thinking of my mother who kept on telling me, when I was a lone teenager glued to the interwebz all day, that one day I would regret not hanging out in our lovely garden in Tours an awful lot more. Mom 1, Jess 0 + crying.

Bitterness aside,

In french we call this ‘une bouture’ but I am not sure of the English equivalent. It’s surely one of the most amazing experiment done with gardening: take a stem, wrap it in mousse and plastic to conserve the moisture and leave it to grow, turning into another branches which can be later transplanted.

My obsession with benches continues. Someone get me one somewhere nice when I am no more, please.

Oh and plants, gardens, cakes, jam making and homesteading?  I guess that’s what they call being old, and yet I haven’t hit 25. Clearly there’s something wrong with this picture, because everytime someone says”festival” or “clubbing” I cringe. Give me white wine and a quite space instead please. I guess London will do that to you.

Is there such a thing as Sunday depression? For as long as I can remember I have always been feeling down, bored and vaguely blue on Sundays. The excitement of having days off is gone, the weather is always gray if not worst, I don’t watch to TV anymore (if at all, really) and the only thing which could potentially warm my heart is a book. With loads of caffeine.Today would be good as any to start breaking this tradition, and I decided to get busy instead. I made a free-form nectarine and apricot pie with almond and two cans of raspberry+apricot jam. If the happiness subsides, I might finish that blog entry about Jezebel and slip under my new bed sheets (something to put on my ‘10 things to make me happy list’) with a boyfriend, a cat and The Wire. I would love to start a sewing project but for now I am too intimidated by awesome sites such as this one.

Free-form nectarine, almond and raspberry pie

Ingredients

- 340g shortcrust pastry (you can make it or buy it if you are lazy, like I did today)

- 3/4 teaspoon ground ginder

- 2 tablespoons ground almonds

- 2 nectarines, 3 apricots, handful of raspberries

- 1 egg white

- 3 tablespoons soft sugar, 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar

- 1 tablespoon of raspberry jam (I used my handmade strawberry-rhubarb one)

Roll the pastry to a 30 cm diameter and set aside. In a bowl, mix the fruits cut in pieces, ginger and sugar. Take the pastry and make a circle of 8 cm of diameter in the middle using the jam, and add the ground almonds on top. Add the fruits n top of the mix and fold the pastry over, as pictured. Sprinkle some sugar on top, and brush the pastry with the egg white. Add almond flakes on top if you feel like it.

Bake in the oven @ 250 degrees for 35 minutes, serve hot or cold.

Wanstead park in Epping: the best London discovery we’ve made in a long time - except of course when we got lost and had to walk an hour between highways, Presbyterian churches and depressing nursing homes.

Yes, I suppose there was something quite nice in biking home after work under the absolute pouring rain, Patrick Wolf’s Stars blasting away in my headphones. Next: trying out my new sewing machine.