so christmas has come and gone, as everyone might have noticed.

the post-christmas/january sales are upon us and the consuming crowds are cuckoo in the head for it. lining up from 1am in the morning, round the block queues, elbowing and shoving and grabbing? not my scene.

i’ve been sitting out the sales, and in its stead have been watching American Dad, Family Guy, Wong Kar Wai films and lots of bad christmas/new year tv specials.

i’ve also been eating constantly.

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tomorrow we go to battersea to crash a probably-horrifyingly-expensive-otherwise media-types party because it will be fun to be the only ones not in the industry, and also because it will have a good range of alcohol available, amongst other things.

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the lack of snowfall has been disappointing. i was really looking forward to making snowmen again.

i forgot how it was to be awake, post-night-out, in WC1.

the bare skeletons of trees scratching against the sky, the misty-grey sky lifting barely showing some blue, the smell of the air, smelling of rain and mulching leaves and 6am.

the quiet streets, the shops closed up with chairs stacked on tables, the bags of green and blue and pink waiting for the garbage truck to pick them up, the milk float doing its rounds, the occasional fitness fanatic plodding away.

and me, saying goodbye to the hosts at the door, stepping out from the dim smoke-filled belly of the house, heels clicking rhythmically as i walk down the street, joining the early morning commuters waiting at the bus-stop, then falling asleep as my head rests on the windows of the near-empty bus, as the sun starts blazing through the chimney stacks.

right.

so i just had my last lecture and lesson of term, and i’ve never been so happy to finish term. honestly, this whole past 3 months has just been one great big SLOG. boring as hell, and totally non-intellectually challenging. argh.

anyway, i’m apparently having mock exams next week, but the score so far is PARTY/DRINKS/FUN - 2, REVISION - 0. can you tell i’m not going to score very well on the three papers we’re having next week?

but then again, our results aren’t going to count towards our final exam scores, so no harm in bombing them completely. my classmate is planning to sit there for 10 mins, then take the question paper and leave. brilliant plan, but i’m not built for leaving exams early. if i’m there, i’ll just do it whatever.

house party to attend in a few hours. i need to practice some self-control and stay away from the 20th glass of gin&tonic or the 4th bottle of wine. a hangover tomorrow is not going to do me any favours for when monday comes around.

christmas is coming! *excited* i hope it snows like it did last year.

usually, i love shopping for food.

today, i went to iceland (the supermarket, not the country) because i just wanted something to shove into the oven, ignore for 20mins, and eat. but whilst walking around the store’s too narrow aisles, its haphazard display shelves, it’s rows upon rows of too-cheap-too-be-possibly-any-good-for-me food, it’s fridges full of ‘re-shaped’ or ‘re-formed’ meat and fish and readymeals, i felt claustrophobic and sick to my stomach.

i put down the tub of yoghurt i’d picked up, and literally fled the scene.

i hate iceland.

it’s really cheap and supposedly good value for money, but the quality of the food is so poor that i’d rather eat plain rice and pork floss than have to buy my groceries from there. and the weird thing is, the fresh vegetables are more expensive than in other places, but the meat products are at rock-bottom prices.

now, either they’re seriously cutting their profits, or the meat isn’t really meat but mechanically retrieved bits of carcass, offal, skin, bone and marrow (or worse).

yuck.

this is why whenever i buy meat products like sausages, i examine the labels and ingredients list as if my life depended on it. my mom warned me against sausages and luncheon meat because of their high salt and sulphite content that supposedly lead to cancer, but i’m not bothered by cancer-causing sausages, really. i’m more concerned with avoiding eating hoof and eyeball.

and this is why i try only to buy meat-meat. and also why i often have to think twice about buying mince-meat, even though i really seriously crave meatballs or wontons or burgers. you never know what goes into the meat-grinder.

*shiver*

anyway, enough of this meat evangelism.

i’m starting to become this crazy food fascist and its scaring me. i need to stop watching television programmes and reading books by hugh fearnley-whittingstall, nigel slater, anthony bourdain et al.

despite the inarguable better-ness of fairly priced and seasonal food, they are making my bank balance look very undernourished.

* the iceland slogan is ‘that’s why mum’s gone to iceland‘. geddit?

can i just say, that i absolutely love bak kut teh, and why i don’t make it more often since those spice-packs are so readily available, i really don’t know.

i’m still waiting for my rice to finish steaming, and for my pork-ribs to get tenderer, but i’ve had some sneaky sips and ohmygod i love love love!

the ribs are the biggest i’ve bought so far EVAR - they’re longer than my 15cm ruler - and i only just about managed to manipulate them into my cast-iron pot (i figured since i didn’t have a claypot, cast-iron would be an adequate replacement). i bought these ribs from a butcher at broadway market, and it’s highly likely that these are from a much older pig than those from the supermarkets. i’m quite pleased about that - not just because i get more rib, but i just like the thought of a more developed pig.

i scoured all the fruit and veg stalls at the market, but none of them stocked watercress (i know they’re not in season, not particularly popular in england, but still, a girl could hope.). that was a terrible disappointment, and a great gaping hole in my perfect pork-rib soup dish.

so i went to the toilets in The Dove and had a good cry.

no. i didn’t. instead i walked into broadway books and bought (1) my name is red, by orhan pamuk, (2) the mandarins, by simone de beauvoir and (3) freakonomics, by steven d. levitt and stephen j. dubner. half my book tokens used up, another £20 worth of books to go!

i really like broadway market on cold and bright saturdays. i like it even more with a cup of coffee, croissants and a paper.