not always to the swift

Marking exams...ugh.

My friend and I went to our first pilates (p'LAH-tees, not pie-LATE-ees apparently) class today. It's an 8-week course with our favourite instructor for a tenner. A nice mix in the usual work-out routine. I didn't expect it to be so tiring!

Lamb cawl for dinner - sounds exotic but is really just lamb stew ('cawl' being Welsh for 'stew'). The real highlight is Nas's home-made bread which makes any meal into comfort food. I made soda bread the other night (from The River Cottage Family Cookbook which I found in Skipton before Christmas for 1/2 price!) - it's cheater's bread, but tasty. But since it doesn't use yeast, it doesn't fill the house and heart with the right smell. Nigella Lawson writes very well about how food creates nostalgia where none should really exist. She's talking specifically about cherry pie (something distinctly American rather than British), but I think home-made bread does it for me. I adore bread and to wax philosophic about it is far too easy: bread is undeniably mysterious and amazingly simple - it also requires the kind of intimate labour that very few other foods demand. Nasser makes it with a calm assurance and tranquility that I admire. I'm sure these things transfer somehow into the food itself - yes, I loved Like Water for Chocolate - and I'm afraid that, right now, my bread would be tough and brittle no matter how long I stretched and pounded.