I’m almost embarrassed to even post this; it’s barely a recipe. But it might inspire you to use what’s left in your fridge, and if you take nothing else away, do take this: chapattis work as amazing wraps, and are easy to keep as they freeze brilliantly but tend to have a three-month shelf life anyway.
You’ll need:
- a pack of halloumi
- chapati/roti
- houmous
- chilli jam
- salad (preferably something peppery like a watercress and rocket but anything would work)
- a griddle pan (or some sort of George Foreman, or a frying pan at a push)
I’ve found that 2/3 of a pack of halloumi will work for four wraps, if you cut it thinner and put more in, but for a more hearty wrap I would allow half a pack for two big wraps, and cut it into chunkier slabs.
Heat up your griddle pan. Seriously, these are the best so if you don’t have one, get on it. They add a little bit of colour and texture to your food, and often you don’t need any oil. When hot, put your sliced halloumi on the griddle and fry on both sides until brown, toasty, and yummy.
hubba hubba!
When browned, set aside and turn the heat right down. Pop a chapati on the pan and it’ll be warmed by the time you’ve got a plate out of the cupboard. This is absolutely the key to manipulating wraps for stuffing; warm them and they’re tasty and pliable, otherwise they’re a bit dull and they break when you try to, well, wrap them.
I even heated this one from frozen; too damn easy
Two generous tablespoons of houmous, some blobs of chilli jam- once you buy this stuff you’ll be amazed you ever lived without it, and it’s really not hot- a BIG handful of salad, and the halloumi. The chapati provides a depth of flavour that’s way better than a boring old white wrap, and it holds up well to being stuffed and held. You can really easily adapt this idea to save some calories with reduced fat houmous and halloumi, without sacrificing flavour.
construction!
One pan, easy-peasy, and really tasty.
Working from home lunch, with WallanderCategory: Life
Laura
I believe I am destined for great things, despite all evidence to the contrary!
So I have begun thinking about coats , prompted mainly by Kathryn’s post about her bargain pink purchase, and The Frugality post recently on light blue (which included a very fetching M&S coat as well). I’m a bit of a mucky pup so the thought of a pastel overcoat frightens me somewhat, and while the M&S coat wasn’t too pastel (the colour is actually ‘smokey blue’, apparently) one of the things I like most about it is the texture and structure. And texture is everywhere at the moment, especially in the new season’s outerwear.
See, Kathryn loves a faux fur too…
The form of texture that is getting me most excited is fake fur. Furry jackets have been hanging around for the last few years, usually with an animal print, both exaggerated and more realistic. But it’s really been the growing popularity of high-end fake fur brand Shrimps this past few months that has prompted a resurgence of bold, obviously-faux scarves and jackets.
Shrimps: bit rich for my blood!
M&S has a fetching, and fluffy, rust-coloured jacket at £149, which comes in up to a size 22 and avoids the pitfall of going too light with faux fur and ending up looking juvenile. Of course, if that is your bag then Whistles’ delightful Kumiko Faux Fur Coat isn’t exactly budget at £275, but the pink is kind of amazing and not too sugary.
M&S. Mmmm, rusty!Oh Whistles, I do love the colour of this coat…
I make no apology for loving ASOS and how responsive they are to trends so I was naturally a bit disappointed that they don’t have any attractive furry confections at the moment. The faster fashion brands don’t seem to have jumped in with both feet yet, and some of the faux furs on offer look as if they might sit quite lumpy on the body. Probably this offering will improve over the next month or so but at the moment the emphasis is on luxe faux fur and anything under about £100 is looking a bit, well, less than luxe. I spotted a rather yummy French Connection coat in quite a baby pink, the Polar Teddy, but again, it’s £195. Only time will tell whether we’ll see any handsome reproductions of this trend at a lower price.
Polar teddy indeed!
If you want to go budget- which in this tricky case I’m saying is under £100- then a more traditional, animal-print fur is going to be the way to go. One of the absolutely awesome things about traditional faux fur is that it’s automatically glamorous, and great over going-out wear, but also gives a grungey I-bought-this-from-a-flea-market feel too. You lose this with the coloured faux furs as the aesthetic is much more extravagant and obvious, and also kind of whimsical. But this more traditional faux fur coat in leopard from & Other Stories is selling very quickly at £95 and has a more structured, coat-like feel, but I still find it very appealing. For a more fur-like coat, this ASOS one is damn sexy.
& Other Stories, knocking it out of the park as usualASOS magic..
In general, paying a few extra pounds will mean a more ‘realistic’, better quality faux fur, but if this is a piece that you’ll enjoy a few times but don’t really want to invest in, a fair option seems to be the Tesco Florence & Fred coat currently overpowering billboards everywhere. It’s only £39, although the range of sizes is pretty disappointing; perhaps the advertising is working.
The reasonably-priced F&F job
For now, I’ll be sticking with my ASOS faux fur, which is beautifully shaggy but also fine and a less obvious animal print. I invested a reasonable sum in it (around £70, I think) and it’s got long-term appeal. It even has an element of (relative) realism to it, and the fur isn’t too stiff. In fact it”s very easy to wrap up in!
my shaggy dog story!
But I may well add a Helen Moore-style fur scarf to my existing jackets as a transitional piece; it’ll take my jackets into autumn and make my Whistles winter coats ultra-cosy. In fact, I will probably have ordered this ASOS racoon collar by the time I’ve posted this article! Yummy.
I want this Helen Moore bad…But I will make do with this delightful ASOS bit of racoon!
Too many times recently I’ve found myself in one of two quandaries: either I want to put smart footwear on and the weather forecast puts me off, or I want something comfortable to wear but I know I look scruffy in most of my trainers. Seemed to me like a pair of smart ankle boots would be the answer, but they needed to be leather to withstand the rain, and as I work in a very casual office, they also needed to be versatile.
And I’m an old woman so they needed to be comfortable too. ASOS is often a go-to for me for reasonably priced leather boots but I wasn’t taken with anything, and they all felt a bit pricey. And then I stumbled across these Lolly Dawson leather boots from Clarks! And I bought them! And man, I am in love.
I just think these look ACE
Firstly the leather is great, so they look classy straightaway. And they’re lovely and low on the ankle, which keeps them looking dainty and makes them way more likely to suit being put with skirts and dresses, as well as jeans. But I think the thing I’m most excited about is the sole: it looks like a fine, classic boot sole, but those clever sods at Clarks have made it rubber and padded, so pounding the pavements without having to resort to sneakers or DMs is easy.
These boots instantly smarten up my jeans so that adding a shirt, silk tee, or blazer makes me look ‘finished’, but equally they could go with a casual tee-shirt or sweatshirt, plenty of which I plan to wear this autumn and winter. I realise that a chelsea boot is not exactly a ground-breaking choice, but for under sixty quid these are a great, quality basic to go into cooler weather with. And the taupe suede is pretty sexy too…
It’s no exaggeration to say that her email made me shiver. I walked out to buy some lunch afterwards, mainly because I wanted to walk somewhere, and I obviously couldn’t think of anything except what she’s going through. I wanted to smoke a lot of cigarettes and drink; not something comforting, like wine, but something that hurts as it goes down. I felt angry, and sad, and lucky, and really tired.
The friend is a person I’ve known a long time but have probably only seen once in the last ten years. I won’t say any more than that but we’ve known each other on and off for a long time. I’ll call her H. H read an article I’d written for an Essex-centred website, which I’ll link to elsewhere, that was sort of snarky, sort of political, and dealt with issues of class, via Jamie Oliver. She told me that I was able to give a voice to a group, and that she admired that. And then she said there was something she’d like to discuss with me, and ‘see my slant on it’. And then she emailed me about domestic violence.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately; it’s on my mind in general and it’s always been a subject I’ve been drawn to, for various reasons. But high-profile stories like those of Janay Rice and Christy Mack put this firmly back in front of me, and prompt a cultural dialogue that gives me hope but is also utterly depressing. The fact is, this happens too often for you not to know, not to work with, not be related to, women going through this right now. Living with violence and in fear every day.
H played down her own abuse to begin with, framing the email in terms of witnessing an episode that looked like abuse and asking why, in quite a small community, nobody seemed to care. H sees this woman on a regular basis, and she bears all the hallmarks of someone beaten down by life. It’s quite characteristically female to play down your own worries and fears until you’ve justified them by declaring that it happens to other people, it’s not that you’re trying to get help for yourself.
H wants us to write together, and she’s now started to be more open about the history of her relationship. She doesn’t give herself permission to define it as ‘high-level’ domestic violence but it sounds as if she knows now, finally, that it is. I think the floodgates have opened, and I don’t even know whether we will end up writing together; I think our voices could be distinct and complementary, but maybe now she just needs a friend? Hearing her describe how people she has confided in have given suggestions then disappeared is almost as fucking awful as reading descriptions of the control, the rages, and the injury. It lends itself to the hyperbolic but I’m trying to avoid that: it’s scary enough without excess adjectives. The photos of the damage after a rage make me feel sick and then I feel really guilty that I have reacted that way. What right do I have to feel uncomfortable?
You think you know how you would react to violence in the home. I have always told myself how I would react, and there would be no forgiveness; and I know that the truth is that I tell myself that, repeat it, reconfirm it, because I have to believe it. When I’m strong, I do believe it, but when I’m feeling weak, or less than, or I look at M’s face and feel the love I have for him as something physical, I wonder.
M has nightmare time-keeping. I have no doubt that this fact provides my lady family members with not a little glee, as I’m not exactly known for my slavish devotion to arriving on time. I’m what I would call a solid ten-minuter: I’m almost always 5-10 minutes late, usually through underestimating how long something (a shower, the walk to the station) will take me. And even when I haven’t assumed I can blow-dry my hair in a minute and a half, I factor in no wriggle room so if a tube doesn’t come immediately I am, yet again, running late. I’m rarely so late you could be annoyed with me, but I’m like sand under the fingernail, irritating you.
So what better punishment than to love deeply a man who procrastinates himself into constant lateness? I am very uptight about travelling when it involves something that can’t be changed, like a flight, a funeral, a pre-booked train. I am happiest when I can get to the airport two and a half to three hours before the flight, so that I can relax and have breakfast, and feel smug. It’s true that I haven’t yet flown with M, and I’m sure that’ll be a post all of its own… For now, I mainly have his every-day lateness to deal with.
The man is awesome in a million ways and moaning about lateness is dull for everyone, so I will just sum it up by saying that he struggles to get going- and lord knows, so do I- but he completely ignores the fact that time is getting on and just says “in a minute”. We can end up leaving hours after we originally agreed to. I am still trying to tackle this and the furthest I’ve got is to tell myself that there’s no deadline. Except when there is.
His other timekeeping skill is saying he’ll be done in a certain amount of time and then it being absolutely nowhere near. Case in point, two weeks ago: he said he’d be done in 30 minutes: we ended up meeting an hour and a half later. I don’t mind that it took that long! It can’t be helped! But not having that information, or an update, stops me from being able to make an informed decision. If it’s 30 minutes, I’ll work late; an hour and a half and I’ll go to Westfield for the shops, or a glass of champagne and a read. And that is too, too frustrating.
I enjoy a glass of fizz. Regularly!
But this has led to a major- and healthy-revelation to me. Communication is all-important but when all is said and done, the only person’s behaviour you can affect is your own. It’s a big thing for me to realise because it’s so counter-intuitive for me. If someone (ok, M) is late and not that great at communicating how late he will be, then the natural reaction is either to get passive aggressive and annoyed, or to take that person at their word and be caught out sitting and waiting and feeling like you’ve missed out. I’ve chosen in the past not to go for that glass of champagne because I don’t want to keep him waiting, and then been disappointed and hurt that he’s not there when he said he would be, and I still didn’t get the champagne. I’m not negating my own feelings, and it would be nice if he could estimate and stay in touch a little bit better.
But if I want the champagne I should have the champagne; if I don’t I only have, to some extent, myself to blame. It’s not unfair to take care of yourself and it avoids the petty gripes and niggles a little. Communication is important but it’s a hard-to-swallow truth that you can only affect your own actions (and reactions). It would be passive aggressive to think “right, I’m buggering off then”, but thinking it would be nice to do something with the waiting time, and knowing that it’s not unreasonable to please yourself in that situation, is very freeing. I tend to worry that if M arrives exactly when he says he will, that it would be awful to not be instantly available. But that just adds to the potential reservoir of resentment. When push comes to shove, if I’m having champagne when M arrives, he really won’t begrudge the fifteen minutes it takes for me to finish it. And I won’t begrudge the time I’ve spent waiting, and pleasing myself. But I still don’t know how to solve the politics of procrastination.
