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.

I really want to write about the whole Jezebel ‘thinking and drinking’ fiasco, because the whole thing got me livid and torn in more ways than one. But I’m not ready to articulate why I find it so appalling just yet. My patience is also wearing thin when it comes to those flash-debates, and these days I uncharacteristically tend to come to the conclusion that people should get a life - after all, it’s just online drama.

—–

I recently remembered something quite odd. When interning in Canada I worked with three lovely but very different women, one of whom had started at the same time as me. She was about five years older and was quite brilliant, but for some reason I was afraid she thought of me as a bit dull. Perhaps my age, perhaps the non-flueng English, who knows. I am not sure about the details, but one day she came to the office telling me she had read my blog.

“It kind of changed my perception of you”, she said. “I did not know you were intersted in so many things, it makes me see you in a different light.”

And that, my friends, is serious food for thought. Did the fact that I was writing on the interwebs in 2003 made me somehow more interesting? Was I more articulate blogging rather than in real life? Did I not have any conversational skills, or struck her as an introvert? Who the fuck knows - and the same questions remain, even though I would say my close friends always liked me better than they liked my blog (hint: they never cared enough to read it).

—–

Mais, passons… Here’s yet another recipe to cheer up our horrible gloomy rainy summer evenings.

Spinach, bacon and nutmeg-filled filo pastry.

Ingredients (serves 2)

- A medium bag of spinach

- A quarter nutmeg, grated

- 4 slices of bacon, trimmed

- 3 cloves of garlic, cut in small pieces

- 2 sheets of small filo pastry for each serving

- 1/2 cup of riccotta

- cherry tomatoes to taste

And now to the cooking:

Fry the garlic cloves in a bit of olive oil , add spinach with 1/4 cup of water, and wait for the spinach to reduce. In a seperate pan, fry some bacon cut in tiny pieces and garlic. When the spinach is ready, drain the water and add the nutmeg, followed by the bacon - fry for another minute in low heat.

Take two filo pastry sheets and place them perpendicularly. Place some the spinach mixture in the middle, add a spoonful of ricotta and two halves of one cherry tomatoes. Carefully fold the pastry and fry in two teaspoon of olive oil, 2 minutes on each side, medium heat. Add salt + pepper if necessary, and enjoy.