Meatballs for mums! Meatballs for mums! 
An unexpected gift for hungry tums.
Exceedingly moist is this morsel of meat,
Perfectly plump and ready to eat. 
Fruity and spiced and full of things nice, 
Sliced up in a sammy or served up with rice.
Glossy and warm, a sight to behold,
Just pop in your mouth hot or cold!

If your day is cloudy then be sure there …

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As Hobby napped this afternoon I wondered just how many renditions of “You Are My Sunshine,” I have sung for him this past year. I sing it to sooth my own nervous system in the absence of my baby, or when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Hobby is over one year old now and I feel a little bit like a bumble bee — busy, busy, busy, always prepping for the following hour, the following meal, the following week — a constant pile of prep work which has left me with little time to write. Although I am remedying this now that Hobby can eat solid food and skip a breastmilk snack in the day, I still find myself writing these pieces on the notes app on my phone in my car while he naps. I am so hoping for some more time to gather my thoughts but it’s proving difficult with Trevor needing to work everyday. I might need to take weekends to work on writing, and to continue Sea Wench momentum and recipe development. Besides being mum, writing is a priority! Does prepping the family meal count as time to myself? It almost does if I put headphones in and listen to an audiobook.

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Bait fish is trending, if $15 cans of sardines are anything to go by. Anchovy, herring, mackerel and their oily comrades are taking centre stage in the food-focused and environmentally-conscious landscape we live in, and unfortunately, as was also the case with peasant cuts of meat, the demand for affordable protein has driven up the cost of once penny-cheap meat and fish. Oxtail is no longer a give-away product, and short rib is now a prime cut at most butcher shops here. I once saw a cow tongue in the freezer of our local organic market for $74… Even marrow bones, knuckles and chicken backs will set you back at least $12 a pound which makes bone broth a bit of treat these days. There is no denying that these wartime options are perhaps among the healthiest for us with ample fat, connective tissue and gelatine, and that is why for a short while back there it felt like our angel grandmothers were blessing us when we could purchase such vital foods for under a fiver.

As for bait fish, they still get a bad rap as food fish among fishermen here in California. It seems most folk are only out for game or sport fish like halibut, sea bass, yellowtail and tuna, and it appears they would rather head home empty handed with bruised egos than with a pail of slippery bait fish to fry up for supper. It’s an odd thing for me to witness coming from a place where mackerel is celebrated - prized even - and yet still remains reasonably affordable and available to the masses. It is eaten widely across the UK and her neighbouring islands by monarchs and commoners alike, and is fashionably being served hot smoked or grilled on the seashore with horseradish, beetroot or sometimes gooseberries.

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As a gaze at Hobby’s face, I marvel in the wonder of it all, of him all. I trace the spider-veins on his flickering eyelids across to his long, auburn lashes. His poreless, porcelain skin and flush cheeks are a riddle to me. How did we make him? How is he so impossibly both Trevor and I, yet so indisputably his own person? I place a kiss on his small wet mouth and inhale his intoxicating scent, still milky at 1 year old, thank goodness. I weep for the day that he smells like his dinner and not milk. I rub my chin and cheeks across his head like a mad woman, feeling his silken hair tickle my nose. I am mad, disheveled and obsessed. How is his hair this long already? I fondle his earlobes; pink and downy like the skin of baby rabbits. I nibble them sometimes. This is why people paint great masterpieces or the ceilings of cathedrals. This is why they write novels and poems and love letters. I get it now. Surely babies are the eighth wonder of the world? I am as high as a hovering Hobby hawk on my son, Hobby.

Eurasian Hobby Falcon

When reflecting on my first year as a mother I can’t help but mentally regurgitate the “maiden to mother” transformation that I read over and over on these platforms. It’s a beautiful sentiment but I do find it a rather simplistic take on motherhood, and I know my experience has been more nuanced than that. I didn’t feel my maidenhood slip away as I grasped my slippery newborn son; she turned to dust after my miscarriage 2 years earlier. I was not yet a mother back then, but somehow stuck in a tortuous purgatory where I no longer carried the lightness and frivolity of a maiden, but also did not carry a child to call me mother. Perhaps it was this that made those two years feel like a never-ending twilight, where grief existed so strongly for a baby I wouldn’t carry just yet alongside a body shriveling back into maidenhood.

Alongside Hobby’s birthday, I am quietly celebrating a year of breastfeeding! What started out as something painful and stressful in those first few weeks as I wondered if he would ever latch without screaming, turned into something beautiful for us both. It is satisfying to see milk that I made from all of our nourishing meals and that glorious Californian sunshine fatten my baby up and to witness the act of nursing soothe him like nothing else ever could. It is a nervous-system reset for us both. It’s strange to think that these will be the honied memories that I’ll linger on as I age yet Hobby will not consciously remember them. How bittersweet a thought.

Breastmilk is so dankly alive, like an ancient bog; complex, full of life, bacteria, and whispers of wisdom — maternal and ancestral — and it is exactly the recipe needed to promote survival, growth and a foundation for robust health. We don’t need to mess or intervene with mother’s milk, or bog water for that matter! It is a biological and psychic connection between mother and child (milk not bog water), and impenetrable if one is able to stave off the noise from the mechanical/digital/artificial world.

I am very grateful to be able to physically breastfeed Hobby, and also to have the choice to do so. I don’t need to rush back to a job, even though the income would be very helpful in these times. With our very frugal lifestyle I am able to keep writing and stay at home with Hobby.

Motherhood and breastfeeding are fortifying for ones character, showing us what we are truly capable of and also draining; a slow, continually seepage of energy, rarely replenished but somehow topped up by an hour of sleep here and there. Drip, drip, drip, like a leaky faucet. Burrito’s help, as does caffeine and putting my effort into making nourishing food for us, but this doesn’t feel like the easy way.

Motherhood is a seemingly infinite list of juxtapositions and contradictions, which I think make this chapter of our lives [almost indescribable] but certainly complicated. The edges are both soft and hard, one-dimensional yet multi-faceted. I am frazzled and feel incapable some days yet my mind is sharp, hyper-focused and vigilant in other ways. How can one want both time alone but also not want to be more than 6 inches away from our child at any time? How do we explain to our partners that when they take our baby for a few hours like we asked them to, it feels as if they have in fact run away with a kidney or some other very important organ of ours?

When I am away from Hobby for more than 2 hours my body physically yearns for him. My breasts fill with milk and become sore, tingly and uncomfortable. My heart begins to race as the minutes pass and I come closer to being reunited with him. I am unable to think of anything else but being back with Hobby. When he is in my arms again, and after a frantic and desperate shower of kisses, we both sigh deeply, co-regulating together — the mother-baby dyad beautifully in full force.

The 2 hours to myself here and there are important and needed so that I can continue to have sufficient mental energy for mothering, but they are not the same 2 hours I had before Hobby. I may be alone for a moment but I am not off-shift and remain mentally on-call, consumed by thoughts of my baby and his well-being, and this is not because I don’t trust Trevor! The mental chatter is loud in Hobby’s absence.

Is he hungry? I hope he’s wearing a hat. Did he take a long enough nap with dad? Is someone else watching him? Is he missing me? What if he’s crying for me?

I do grieve the time I had to myself before I had a child because I was able to turn-off and check-out which felt truly restorative. It helps to see motherhood as a season, as was maidenhood, and to know that one day I can return to a place where I can tune into my craft without as much chatter. I know I’ll always be thinking of my child, but hopefully not worrying if he’s hungry or sunburned!

Everyday I am melting into the river of motherhood, letting it take my body but I often find myself fighting it — “it’“ being the flow-state — swimming against the current, grasping at the banks for slivers of maidenhood that I found gathering dust somewhere deep inside me. But all of this, the sore joints, the smell of my baby’s little milky mouth, soft bellies, his sweet babbles, bone-weary tiredness, the growth of us as partners and parents, and everything in between — are part of the magic and mystery.

This is probably not everyone’s experience but I have a feeling that I share these feelings with many of you who have had children.

So here we are today, celebrating the birth of our baby, of me as a mother, Trevor as a father and us both as parents. I didn’t think I’d feel weepy, but I do! I remember laying in bed in those early days, more tired than I ever could have imagined, my nipples cracked and burning and a very long road ahead of us. I would imagine his first birthday and how, by then, we would be out of the trenches, rested, and cruising through the days with an easy effort, and we are mostly! It seems like we teleported here. If I think about it too much I’ll have a panic attack — a bit like thinking about the magnitude of space in the wee hours of the morning under a blinking, twinkling darkness. Our sweet, very funny, bold and bright boy a whole ONE. My sun.

Virginie Demont-Breton captured motherhood exquisitely during her lifetime as a painter and a mum.

Since being home from our month long visit to England I have been tinkering in the galley figuring out what I need to conjure up to bring our weary, jet-lagged and daylight-savings afflicted bodies back to a place of vigour. Against all advice of the alternative non-vegan health community the answer for me was actually vegetables and beans! Meat or fish are usually on our plates as I don’t really function on fiber alone, but fresh, seasonal, organic and crunchy vegetables have been a welcome sight. It isn’t that we didn’t eat vegetables in England, of course we did, but not the diverse and colourful salads that put a pep in our steps that we left behind in Santa Barbara a month earlier.

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It’s a year almost that I have not seen her:
Oh, last summer green things were greener,
Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer.
It’s surely summer, for there’s a swallow:
Come one swallow, his mate will follow,
The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken.
Oh happy swallow whose mate will follow
O’er height, o’er hollow! I’d be a swallow,
To build this weather one nest together.

The window is cracked open and the mineral-rich tang of morning is flooding the bedroom. Our usual view of the sunrise upon the Pacific ocean has temporarily been replaced by undulating hills and scraggly tree tops beneath an unshifting graphite sky. At 5:50 this morning the first songbird was finding her voice — an unconventional scale of clear notes, clipped and warbling from the hedgerow beneath the window. A flustered pheasant screeches from the copse beyond and a handful of rooks begin their inconsolable caw-caws from a leafless tree somewhere. I hear an owl bidding us all a good day with his sensible hoot, surely tired from a night of hunting mice and voles.

Within minutes a dawn chorus has begun, reaching me from the far corners of the valley sprawled like a quilt beyond the house. With every lightening shade of dawn comes “tutti”, the point when all players in an orchestra come together. The first songbird, of which I can shamefully not name, is well into her third or fourth verse now, filling the room with the sound of spring, daylight, newness and hope — a hope that winter is almost loosening it’s chokehold on England. I can count the slithers of blue sky I’ve seen this month on one hand. The monochrome landscape feels heavy and unrelenting under clouds that rarely part, and it makes me feel quite claustrophobic. It seems a softness has not only tenderised my body, but also my mind. Could I take this much rain again if I lived here? I couldn’t, I would surely perish in spirit. I will stay in California.

I welcome the wind here though, it moves things along giving us all the impression that the seasons are playing out as they are supposed to, and confirms that the calendar does indeed say March, which sounds a lot better than February to a frost-bitten ear. In the summer the wind shushes in the full, verdant tree tops and in the autumn it sends murmations of brittle leaves into the air before they gently kiss the earth.

The wind back in Santa Barbara, when anchored, is a nuisance at best, and when the March gales beginning ripping through the channel we can expect to spend a lot of money in the harbour, or time rediscovering our sea legs at anchor. The wind in California is fierce as it crusades off the mountains and rolls into the ocean at frightening speeds, or when it kicks up from the South sending wicked white-capped rollers into the bay. It is not tameable, and must be understood and wrestled with to live the way we do. You’ve no doubt heard one must “batten the hatches”, but don’t forget to double-tie your dinghy and triple-secure your laundry to the rails — a 5-knot forecasted breeze on an 85-degree day in Santa Barbara almost always means a 15 to 20-knot chop in the anchorage, and a 20+ knot prevailing wind in the channel often means 15+ knot of southerly backwind thanks to a local eddy effect. There is no winning, only preparing and managing.

We are leaving this week and I think I’m ready this time around. My face is palid and is yearning for the recharging warmth of the sun. My body is stiffer than usual and it will lead me to the foothills for a long walk amongst the sage brush and bush sunflowers. My belly is craving the crunch of in-season strawberries and snap peas which seem like a distant dream here in Sussex. The goodbye will sting, as it always does but with plans to visit again in early summer, I know we will be reunited with my dear family soon enough. Hobby has had quite the growth spurt this month and now has a ferocious appetite for non-milk related food! He’s crawling fast and summits the towering staircase at my mums house with confidence. He’s not walking yet but he is willing and almost able! He turns one next month and I look forward to planning something special and no doubt edible for him.

I’m not looking forward to returning the bland and industrial grandness of America: the strip malls, the big box stores, the XL supermarkets. A trip to Costco is the last thing I want to do when I get back. I want to steep in the quaintness of our boat and come home gently like a germinated seed pushing up through the soil to meet the day in their own time. I enjoy unpacking my newly acquired antique trinkets and art pieces, and finding space for them in a boat with no space. It is an impossible task. I want to potter around and eat a crunchy salad in the sun, and wash it down with a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. I want to go to the farmer’s market and revel in the glorious colour of it all, and then fill my sad and empty fridge with all of that nourishing goodness. But before any of that can happen we must fly for 11 hours with an 11 month old, please spare us a thought xo

Dear subscribers, thank you for your patience with the recipe part of my Substack! It’s been hard to create and test while we’ve been traveling but I assure you, I am returning Stateside with buckets of inspiration and an appetite for the best Spring has to offer. Will post something very very soon.

I write this from England with Hobby asleep next to me, hoping that his jet lag has subsided somewhat. I am tired but grateful to be back home, in my childhood bedroom listening to the wind howling in the chimney and the relentless rain patter on the bay windows. It was a last minute trip across the briny pond fueled by Hobby’s need to see his grandparents and of course my need to see them too. He’s growing like a springtime dandelion, our boy Hobbs, and I fear that if he doesn’t see them at least a few times in his first year on Earth, they might not recognise him at all next year! Soft baby features that seemed to have no edges or corners are sculpting into the face of a small boy. He has 6 teeth which make for the cheesiest of grins, sometimes bordering a grimace, and his little brown eyebrows are conjuring up all manner of expressions. He reminds me a lot of the Enid Blyton’s character Noddy.

This mid-winter trip feels very different from our usual summer holiday, where the dense green canopy that shelters and shades my favourite walk is now nothing but twigs, sparse and harsh feeling against my August memory. The evergreen holly and creeping ivy offer the only colour in an otherwise dreary landscape. I've seen a rogue primrose here and there and the early promise of daffodils on the verge. The snowdrops are nodding their ivory white heads wondering if it’ll snow again before spring has sprung. Bluebell shoots are beginning to push up through the leaf litter but it’ll be a while before we are blessed with their violet show. They say tree’s remember us, and I hope the gnarled oak behind the shed at the top of the garden, with its mossy jacket and tangled ivy scarf remembers me. I know Aldora, our cosy sailboat home remembers us — I really do feel her sigh with relief when we return home and begin filling her with the scents of cooking and the warmth of our three bodies. I miss California more this time around, it’s probably the weather.

The never-ending gray takes its toll on the folks here, turning some — although sometimes it seems like most — into grumbling, complaining curmudgeons. I didn’t notice it when I lived here as a teenager, I was probably one of the them too, but this time around it seems that all anyone can do is complain. They complain firstly about the weather, and rightly so, it is atrocious. Secondly they must mention the pot holes, the state of the roads, the incompetence of the local council and the tax payers money getting ‘“flushed down the pan.” This is all under the umbrella of the same complaint. These two complaints are almost always followed by a groan about one’s ailments; bum knee, sore back, stubborn cough and other winter afflictions. It’s all rounded off rather nicely with a comment like “well, that’s just the way it is, isn’t it?” which leaves everyone feeling completely hopeless about the current state of things. It’s contagious.

I tell you, it is grim. The Californian optimism has rubbed off on me a little, although I like to think it is dipped in a thin and crunchy layer of realism, because all of that smiling, unfaltering joy plastered across the face of Californians can sometimes seem a bit contrived, a bit Hollywood. However, Californians are chipper, despite the exorbitant cost of living and it is most certainly because we receive about 320 days of sunshine a year. There isn’t much to complain about with the warm rays of the sun on your face and endless opportunities to romp outside. The level of optimism is actually quite impressive considering, should you get in an accident or need medical care, it could well bankrupt you, and the country is being run by blubbering idiots on both sides of the political fence

Lately I’ve been thinking about tea rooms and cafés and why it’s a travesty that there aren’t more in America. I’m not talking about the minimalist, craft coffee roasters with cold, uncomfortable metal chairs and a never-ending Mac Demarco playlist, we have enough of those. I’m talking about scones, cloche-covered cakes on the counter, chalk-board menus, and cafés in interesting locations, like museums, book shops, galleries, gardens and the like.

The Brits might be fueled on Victoria sponges but Americans sure know their way around a cookie and a banana bread and I think there is plenty of room in the States for a more aggressive “tea-room” culture. A recent visit to the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden made me realise, that despite the enjoyable experience of meandering around the curated gardens, I couldn’t help but think it would be all be better with a café; a cluster of tables under a big redwood or nestled next to the gift shop where perhaps one could visit just for a cup of coffee and enjoy the birdsong and sunshine. It’s not like we don’t have the weather for such a thing in California! I find myself daydreaming about where I’d put my fictional tea room. There’s an empty antique railway carriage in the carpark of the Santa Barbara Train Station which is just begging to be filled with the low hum of conversation and the screech of milk steamers. There’s also a rather fetching lighthouse on the tip of Point Conception which I fantasize about regularly — dirty thoughts about clotted cream and carrot cakes, hot chocolates and summer ice cream, all eaten under a beacon that has seen too much.

It seems that when there is a café at a museum, or private gardens it isn’t operating with the spirit of the location. It doesn’t insist that you sit and read a book, or beckon you to stay for tea and cake, or doodle botanicals in your sketch book. Disposable cups and utensils silently hurry you on to your next errand, whilst also filling the ground with yet more rubbish. Not everything needs to be to-go, it seems like it is the default option today.

I was also saddened at the local zoo when the only food on site was served up from a hole-in-the-wall fast food spot with the usual junky offerings; cheap slippery hot dogs in putrid yellow buns and insipid, greasy burgers. Although some will argue that fast food is a culture, I don’t see it personally. It seems lazy to me, and void of creativity and passion. You don’t need to be a foodie to see that some handmade, healthy offerings would benefit everyone, but for gods sake, hire a foodie to run your on-location eatery!

The Brits will put a café anywhere. The garden centres in the UK are not only a place to buy plants, but a place to eat giant wedges of savory quiche, piping hot jacket potatoes, or currant-speckled toasted tea cakes. Farm shops here are not just a place to get your eggs, they offer pots of tea, homemade sausage rolls and Scotch eggs, all with a view of the cow sheds! But perhaps the most famous cafés of all are National Trust cafés.

The National Trust was started as a not-for-profit charity in 1895 to "promote the permanent preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest". As the UK is littered with said properties, many of which require near constant and costly upkeep, it took the creation of the trust to preserve these historic castles, manors, mansions and gardens so that we might enjoy them today. The trust was gifted properties by land-owners post WW2 or through the National Land Fund, as many of the historic sites were used and abused during those challenging wartime years. The cost to restore them with historic accuracy was simply too much for most folks to manage.

The National Trust is regarded as a national treasure today and owns nearly 620,000 acres across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and over 600 miles of spectacular coastline. What started off a non-profit, shortly became a statutory corporation and now makes over £724 million of income annually through memberships, admission fees, grants, donations, cafés and gift shops.

The second building ever acquired by the National Trust was in fact in my home county of Sussex, and is the 14th century Clergy House in Alfriston village. It was purchased for a meager £10! Can you imagine?

I can’t quite express what a pleasure it is to eat a jammy scone under the turrets of a castle once owned and lived in by Henry VIII. I know I won’t have that here in the States, but a girl can dream can’t she? Yesterday we visited a 12th century priory which has been lovingly restored over the last century. On the grounds is a barn which is just as old, and inside that a warm and comfortable cafe serving tea, coffee, homemade cakes and lunch. We settled down in mismatched chairs under crooked beams and ate homemade soup with local granary bread. It is a simple pleasure!

National Trust cafés have a reputation of being reliable and comfortable and always offer up homemade lunches and cakes. Their scones are perhaps most famous, but each location will make their own treats using recipes that are particular to that area or café. A West Country Corfe Castle apple cake will be a different apple cake than one you might find in the northern counties! Sandwiches, toasties, salads, quiches and cakes can be expected alongside large pots of tea or coffee. I have noticed that margarine is being used in lieu of butter at many of the cafés however, and that saddens me. Not only is a cake made with margarine a culinary travesty, it doesn’t say much about the Trusts efforts to support British farming and produce. We make very good butter here in the UK and other than shaving a few pence off a slice of cake, it doesn’t make any sense to be cutting corners and using imported, highly industrialized, cheap seed oils in their offerings.

I have a few National Trust cake cookbooks and the little book showcasing traditional recipes is jam-packed with whole food ingredients like lard and butter. The newer book has some wonderful recipes too but the margarine should be swapped out for butter in many of them.

I was going to start this post on a darker note, but decided to finish it on some thoughts and feelings about the news and what we are confronted with everyday, even if we chose not be. Then I realized that by starting my post like this I am also exposing people to such topics without really giving them a chance to look away. So here I am, ending on that unusual dark note, hoping you will see why I wanted to write about jam sponge cake and tearooms.

I don’t pay too much attention to current affairs, mainstream news, or really any news for that matter, however the latest release of those hideous files surrounding and regarding creatures I shall not name have revealed such atrocities, that I am finding it hard to process. I don’t think the information can or should be processed, it would break us all. The evil is seeping like tar through the cracks for all to see. Raising a little one in a human-centered world that is so revoltingly corrupt and so unbelievably dark is not for the faint of heart. As a mother I am constantly tormenting myself, unable to comprehend how people, birthed from other real mothers —can be so insidious, devoid of sanity and a regard for human life. We are not supposed to be exposed to this kind of information, or thinking about what atrocious, unspeakable crimes can be committed against women and children, yet here we are, force fed it daily, every time we open our phones, or talk to a relative or a friend. I might need therapy if I read anything else from those files. I have recently installed a restricter on my phone so that I can only use social media for a few minutes a day, it has helped with anxiety a lot.

I’ve written a little about my experience with a short-lived bougt of postpartum-anxiety in the few weeks that followed Hobby’s birth and a large part of that difficult experience was the exceptionally vivid and insiduous nature of my dreams. For a about a week, as my milk came in and pregnancy hormones flooded out my body through feverish chills and cold sweats, I would fall into deep and dark dreams featuring vile monsters, murderers, freak shows, exploitation of all kinds, toothless demons, rotten meat and carcasses, pedophile rings, abuse against my pregnant self, abuse from loved ones and family, harm to my baby, slavery… It was horrific and I would panic before bed knowing I needed sleep, but that with the drawing in of the evening, it would come at a price. I awoke crying, sweating, sobbing, and reaching for my fresh and perfect baby, and would thank god that my world was safe. Hobby grounded me and tethered my body back to earth in the early hours of the morning.

Looking back on those dreams now from a place of relative calm, I wonder if perhaps birth opened up a portal where I could, for a short moment, see and feel the evil that bubbles away invisibly alongside us. That’s what it feels like as I read exerps from the newly-released files. I can’t do it anymore. I need to protect my mind. I need to take us to safety. I need to go jump in some puddles and wash my hair in the creek, rinse off the putrid stench of it all. I need to remind myself that stepping into the natural world, once again, answers all of my questions, and reassures me that there is still hope and goodness. I need to seek the safety of the forest and the foothills, our dreamy boat that smells like family dinners and the cosy corners of our friend’s homes busy with chatter and the sound of our children playing. This reminds me, everyday, that we, the good people, are separate from all that is broken and twisted. We are nature, they are not.

The seasonal membrane that hangs between winter and spring is thin here in California. It is miraculously woven from threads of dew-jewelled spiderwebs, soft puffs of catkin fluff, fresh mulberry silk and papery skeleton leaves, and billows on sweet mountain air, unveiling for a moment, a picture of what’s to come. Tightly curled blooms begin to unfold towards the sun, and the creeks swell with mineral-rich cascades of spring water. Whilst the East of this continent and my beloved England are deep in winter’s relentless clutch, mild temperatures and rain have awakened the foothills here once again. The grass is deep and the meadows are flush with nodding lilac heads of wild radish and pungent neon blossoms of mustard. The supple lily-pad leaves of peppery nasturtium blanket the shade of coastal oak, and their crimson and amber flowers peak out curiously from beneath. The trails are a tangle of chickweed, plantain and mallow and the elusive nettle is no doubt thriving in seldom-seen ditches near by. A spell has been cast on the mountains and they are vibrating with new life and an optimistic promise. The hills are indeed alive and the wild greens are at their prime for picking.

Last year I made some peppery pesto using mustard leaves, and the year before I pickled nasturtium pods to use in lieu of capers. This year the blossoms themselves have me bewitched and I thought a herbal salt would be a satisfying way to capture to essence of this fleeting season. I took a stroll in the hills yesterday and payed a visit to a favourite oak. His trunk is gnarled, knotted and hollow in places and his shade is dappled and wide, casting shadow over broad, bobbing nasturtium. He is most enchanted, and I would bet a shiny shilling that a grand old owl nests in his crooked limbs, and velveteen mice amongst his sprawling roots: a true grandfather.

I rambled home with a few handfuls of wild herbs and flowers and popped to the shop for some Celtic salt. The process is easy and barely needs a recipe, and is essentially finely chopped wild herbs and flowers layered with high-quality salt. As these jars of twinkling salt have rested on my counter I have noticed that they smell different every single day. What started off as subtle notes of radish has given way to deep, earthy sage. I am curious to see where I’ll be transported to next; perhaps an old compost heap, or an Elizabethan walled kitchen garden in mid-July. We’ll see.

I am entering week 4 of my Farmers Market $40 challenge and it’s been a huge game changer for us all, but especially for my ability to manage my time efficiently and enjoyably! Creating meal plans when I come home from the market means I know exactly what I need to prepare for our meals each morning, and I can do so while Hobby naps. Today we are having a brie and broccoli quiche with a roasted beetroot salad. I make a double batch of crust every time and freeze the other. I baked off the quiche this morning, and will assemble the salad when we come home this evening. I have put the dried beans to soak that I’ll use in a venison chili tomorrow. I might do another Farmers Market $40 post as a few people have reached out saying it’s been helpful for them!

I’ve also been making our bread exclusively since the new year. I’ve mainly been making an easy sourdough rye that requires no kneading or folding, but have also been dabbling in yeasted breads using high-quality sprouted and whole grain flours. I found Bob’s Red Mill organic whole wheat flour at Sprouts for $2.99 the other day and immediately bought 3 bags. Forget doom-scrolling, I get my dopamine fix when I find a good deal that I know will save us a bunch of money. The rye bread is our favourite with its sour nutty flavour. The last recipe I used was Gill Meller’s and it’s full of yummy little seeds, cooked pearl barley and black, irony molasses. Caraway and corridor seed and a big spoonful of sticky barley malt make this bread very delectable, although the barley malt is my own addition and not in his official recipe.

Make sure you have plenty of butter on hand for this recipe, because nothing is more heavenly than thickly sliced, cold salted butter on complex, funky, sourdough rye.

Gill Meller’s Sourdough Rye

with caraway, coriander and molasses

You will need:

• 250g active rye starter

• 350g light rye flour, plus extra for dusting

• 125g cooked pearl barley

• 1 tbsp molasses

• 2–3 tsp coriander seeds

• 2–3 tsp caraway seeds

• 1–2 tbsp sunflower seeds

• 1–2 tbsp linseeds/flax seeds

• 10g fine sea salt

• Oil, for greasing

• About 200ml water

How to:

Use a mortar and pestle to roughly grind the coriander seeds. Pour the rye starter into a large bowl and add all the remaining ingredients, except the oil, with about 200ml water. Use a wooden spoon or your hands to bring everything together into a loose dough. Grease a 1kg loaf tin with oil and dust with rye flour. Using wet hands, shape the dough to fit loosely in the tin and smooth the surface. Scatter more rye flour over the top and sides to help prevent sticking and give a lovely finish.

Place the tin in a clean plastic bag and leave in a warm spot for 4–8 hours until the dough rises to fill the tin. Heat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6. Bake on the middle shelf for 25 minutes, then reduce to 180°C/350°F/gas 4 and bake another 20 minutes, until dark, risen and hollow-sounding when tapped. Turn out onto a rack and cool for at least 1 hour before slicing. The loaf keeps beautifully for a week, even up to 10 days.

Hobby and I do a lot of grocery shopping, exponentially more than I did before he was born. I’m not really buying more, but going more. Sometimes because the fridge is bare, but mostly because we need something to do. Hobby loves sitting in the shopping trollies, waving at shoppers, pointing at the oversized ceiling fans whirring above and dutifully looking after any items that I allow him to have in his germ-ridden throne. He isn’t crawling yet, and at almost 10 months old his wake windows are long! Once we’ve played in a park, or had coffee with a friend, dipped his little puffy feet into the fluffy sand at the shore or checked on our secret mushroom spots there isn’t much else I can think of: grocery store it is!

All of this shopping around means I do find some spectacular deals — like $0.99 first cold-press olive oil at Sprouts last week. I was truly gobsmacked — but I’m never satisfied with the fresh produce; limp, almost rotten or so incredibly under-ripe that you wonder if it will ever ripen at all. Trader Joe’s is a repeat offender. But above all else it just doesn’t feel right for ones spirit to buy or eat seasonal and non-seasonal produce that is grown in another country just so that we might satisfy our strange need for ghostly anaemic strawberries in the middle of January. I can tell you now that they are not worth the $6 you are paying for them. Don’t even get me started on insipid, watery tomatoes at this time of year… what’s the point? That’s not to say that I don’t eat shipped-in food, of course I do, and so did our Tudor ancestors thanks to the seamen that set sail for unknown lands. I can smell the nutmeg, urine and grog just thinking about it.

So now we are on week two of spending $40 at the farmers market and I still have veg left over from last weeks shop. Not only that but the produce is staying fresh a lot longer. On a cost-for-cost comparison I think that the farmers market is actually cheaper than our local small-chain organic store. The veg is also much larger, I’m talking carrots the size of leeks, and the bunches of greens are generous compared to the flaccid kale scraps pathetically secured into sad little bundles at the store. I think winter squash and fruit are more costly at the farmers market but the difference in quality makes it worth the extra buck or two. Have you ever tasted a local, in-season tangerine? It is joy and is electric with an entire season of UV light codes that dance on your tongue — a discussion, in juice, between you and the winter sun.

Also only taking $40 to market makes it very easy to spend only… $40! That’s perfect math for my hyper-focused mum-brain.

So with my $40 bounty I thought I’d create a meal plan for the week, share what I whipped up and how many portions it made. The goal is always leftovers because the elation and relief experienced upon discovering lunch in the fridge the following day is close second to meeting my fresh baby. I joke.

So what did I procure at the market? A whole lot, that’s what! And what am I going to make with it all? I’ll show you, share some recipes and we’ll see just how far I can make these veggies go with the addition of fish and meat from our freezer and grains and pulses from the pantry. I have some fresh ginger, apples, avocado and citrus kicking around so they’ll make an appearance at some point.

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Christmas Day is behind us, and with it the rush to make and bake as much as possible, I can finally exhale and begin to settle into the remaining straggles of this festive season. For me that means more routine meal plans to make life a little simpler and in a week or so, when we’ve consumed the last slither of impossibly moist Christmas cake, I’ll begin to think about baking again — rye, some nice seeded sandwich bread and some sprouted spelt muffins will do nicely.

Winter’s first storm finally paid us a visit — an overdue one might I add — after months of fair and unseasonably calm weather. It hit us like a freight train in the evening hours of the 23rd, slamming 40 knots+ of southerlies into the side of our boat, which we had the foresight to bring into the harbor. With the gale came torrential rain which swelled our creeks, flooded the streets, and pummeled the boat for 3 days straight. It was magnificent and just what one needed to bolster the holiday spirit in the absence of snow or a steadfast belief in Father Christmas. We held a Christmas party for our anchorage community the night the storm rolled in and it was the most cosy affair. As the wind roared in the rigging, and threatened to unfurl loose sails, we crammed into Aldora’s candle lit cockpit with steaming bowls of tomato and bacon soup and shared tales of dodgy motors, the quirky characters that lurk around the harbor and our common dislike of authority. It’s a wholesome feeling having those that share this lifestyle with us under one roof, safe from the storm and basking in our communal experience. Anchor-outs united! A toast to holding anchors, secure moorings and reliable motors!

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Santa Barbara and uni have a historic relationship, and it is a well-known and celebrated place to buy and eat urchin thanks to the pristine and accessible Channel Islands. Santa Barbara urchin are plump and feast on acres of healthy kelp at the islands which makes their “gonads” or roe ever-so-sweet, and truly reminiscent of watermelon. The book Bluewater Gold Rush: The Odyssey of a California Sea Urchin Diver by Tom Kendrick explains the connection wonderfully and I highly recommend this read if you are interested! Uni sells for a pretty penny and a majority of it gets exported to Asia, but the little that is kept local is mostly sold to restaurants.

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Instagram is feeling more hopeless these days, and I know this feeling is resonating with many of you across the platform. from homesteading account has touched on this subject recently as she’s noticing that her posts and stories reach a mere 100 people out of her 80,000+ followers. I’ve recognised this same pattern on my own platform and really only get engagement of any kind if I play the algorithm game — post a selfie, which I very seldom do, follow some god-awful Instagram trend that was no doubt snatched from the demonic claws of TikTok, or if I exploit my baby’s beautiful face and identity. I have considered the latter, which feels weird to admit, and have posted side profiles of Hobby but there is a festering pit of doubt in my stomach when I consider sharing him fully and publicly with Instagram. Call it intuition maybe, who knows? But that’s just the thing, who knows? Who knows what the consequences are of sharing my un-consenting child’s face on Instagram? Who will it reach? How will his identity by used and saved? It’s not worth it for a few more click-throughs to my store or some extra subscribers over here.

I really do enjoy using Instagram for the purpose of engaging and socialising with the many wonderful crafters, farmers, homesteaders, herbalists, chefs and mums that I have befriended on the platform, I am inspired every single day by the people I follow and find it encouraging me to be more creative off of the app. But the days of using the platform to run a business feel like they have slipped by, in the same way that low-rise jeans and crop tops have. I feel like an old lady who missed the cool-kid bus and watched it drive off to the big city. The bus stank of desperation, vanity, and hopelessness, but a part of me wanted to be on it because just a dash of that sauce might really help my business out.

What dance does Instagram want us to do to be seen? What sort of mindless content will please the algorithms so that I might make a sale or two? I don’t want to use “trending audio” over a video of me making mince pies. I want to use olde English Christmas carols. I don’t want to say “comment WHATEVER and I’ll send you the link” just so I can create engagement. I am not a circus monkey or wanting to perform for the algorithm. I don’t like games. I don’t want to conform to TikTok-created trends so that I’ll show up on the “explore page”. I just want to share 18th-century artwork or a recipe for a hearty venison pie. A frustrating thing is that most of my 10,000+ followers want to see that too, that’s why we follow each other but by not engaging with Instagram’s unspoken rules-for-popularity I have in-fact sunk to the sidelines alongside all of my peers that indeed choose to stay true to their own taste and values.

I have seen a dramatic fall in sales this holiday which is disheartening as Etsy and Substack are my main forms of income as a full-time mum. I used to do the market circuits here but don’t have the mental or physical capacity to take that on with an 8-month old at the moment. I hope to return to that mode of business in a year or two, where maybe Hobby can sit on my lap and engage with customers, no doubt winning them over with his dimpled smile.

I think this all ends with either Instagram reconsidering their flawed use of algorithms, allowing the metaphorical space to be fair game, which I highly doubt, or ideally it ends off the app — perhaps over here on long-form platforms like Substack but hopefully a return to in-person interactions, markets, trades and pen pals.

Social media aside this really is the time to be jolly. For me, gift making and giving are the best parts about December. Back home the faint promise of snow would be lingering on all of our minds, even though it seldom snows this side of the year. After some playful bartering with Mother Winter, we usually settle on a hard and sparkly frost in the absence of the white stuff, and marvel at the bejeweled spider webs and frost-bitten grass on dark December dawns. There is a 0% chance of snow here in California so my jolly’s come from elsewhere like baking and collecting wild bay and berries for the holiday table. I listen to Christmas music — yes, even the awful stuff — but adore the Kings College Christmas hymns the most, where I am instantly transported to a musty, damp stone church that smells of earth and old bibles. It’s a special smell that you only know if you’ve spent time in 500 year old churches, but I imagine comparable to eau de parfum: Old Library and Ancient Tome.

I’ve still yet to figure out how and when I’ll find time to start and finish the gift ideas that I have for loved ones as it turns out having an 8-month old baby is full on! Who would have thought? I’ve been making up a different cookie every morning while I sip on my first heavenly cup of coffee this week and freezing the dough so I can assemble Christmas cookie boxes later in the month. I’ve made:

• German Lebkuchen

• Cardamom and Lingonberry Thumbprints

• Fiery Triple-Ginger Gingerbread

Next up is rye shortbread which I’ll be topping with a date and chestnut caramel and dipping in dark Belgian chocolate, and a dark chocolate and orange shortbread biscuit. I sourced some vintage biscuit tins at estate sales and have been collecting charming tissue and ribbons to put together cookie boxes as gifts.

Im trying to make the Christmas cake this moring if Hobby is happy to play by himself for a while. I’ll be sharing a recipe later this week for some compound butters for gifting!

It’s 3 in the afternoon and it feels like 6 thanks to the plight of daylight savings. It hasn’t bothered me this much since I was a uniform-clad lass, going to and from school in a bleak and driving darkness. Now I have a baby I find the concept of daylight savings rather unfair, and I’m certain there are millions of mother’s out there with spiraling nap-deprived infants sharing my despair. Just as I had Hobby’s “schedule” figured out we were plunged into days of pre-dawn rises and I’m definitely not organized enough to have intentionally shifted his naps in the fortnight leading up to it.

With the evenings drawing in earlier and the pumpkins finally succumbing to a rotten fate, it’s starting to feel somewhat festive around here. I’m feeling quite giddy with the approach of Christmas — and all of her accompanying jollies — being a mere month away. I know this very joy brings dread to many, but I get wonderfully lost in the merriment of it all; the baking, the eating, the wrapping, sharing and making of gifts, the cheer and warm tidings. I do however get homesick. I yearn for all of the comforts of my childhood home, for icy breath on frigid walks and for the smell of coal fires and woodsmoke. There’s a silence I miss too. Not the silence itself but the way it muffles the frost-bitten world around me. The song of my welly boots sloshing in fresh puddles or the fat robin chorusing in the skeletal oak above are vivid and vivacious in the wet and dampening quiet of a rural pastoral winter. I dream of glossy dark brown acorns crunching beneath my feet and the long race to the woods for chestnuts before the greedy squirrels gobble them all up. I can smell the earthy musk of the birch boletes when I close my eyes.

I, of course, cannot physically bottle these visceral memories of home, but I can and absolutely will be making Christmas in California about as traditional as I can albeit in a mostly edible way, for I cannot go and pick the holly berries or walk to the 600 year old church for carols. As I begin to metaphorically sit my buttocks into the plush and velveteen seat of winter I’ve been thinking about what it is that I do to bring yuletide comfort to our home and our bellies. I adore living out here on our boat on the Pacific Ocean but as I’ve written many times before, I do not culturally identify with California or America. Perhaps I will as time goes by and we start introducing Hobby to the joys of the holidays here, but England, and especially England at Christmas is very dear to me.

Around this time I begin to fill my winter pantry and I feel a lot like a little mouse storing seeds for the cold months ahead. I don’t stock it all at once because that would be ever-so-expensive in this economy but I get a start on it and come December I hope to have it all in order so I can cook and bake festive fare on a whim.

The Christmas Pantry

The Aldora Christmas pantry looks awfully similar to a medieval pantry, minus the swans and spit-roasted door mice. I’m not a fan of squeezing all of Christmas into the short month of December. There is simply too much to eat, prepare and enjoy in just 31 days. I love November for filling the freezer, and January for slowly enjoy festive food without the pressure that December brings. Christmas comestibles in England seem to be mostly made of raisins, currants and their indistinguishable cousin, the sultana. I honestly do not know the difference, except that currants seem to be smaller than rabbit droppings. Mincemeat filling for mince pies, Christmas cake and Christmas pudding all contain literal pounds of them, so these shriveled grapes are the most important additions to restock when considering my winter baking needs.

As well as raisins, figs, prunes for stuffing a bird, dates, candied ginger and citrus peel, I stock up on a variety of nuts for baking and stuffing. Pecans are traditional here in States and I do love them, but I adore hazelnuts, walnuts and chestnuts in addition. My spice cupboard stays stocked all year around but many British Christmas recipes will include nutmeg, mace, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, ginger and dark and woody herbs. Molasses and dark brown sugar are essential for soft-baked gingerbread.

Apples, pears, fresh cranberries and citrus are always on my counter for baking and eating with tangy slivers of cheese.

Port, sherry, brandy and stout deserve a place in the liquor cabinet for soaking the mounds of raisins and the weekly feeding of the hungry Christmas cake, and the freezer should be stocked with beef suet for puddings and pies! This year I am excited to have a bag of venison suet from Trevor’s latest hunt, and I plan to use it for my mincemeat.

Of course I shall keep all of my baking essentials stocked; organic flour, almond flour, various organic sugars, vanilla and plenty of eggs and butter.

Soup season compliments raisin season wonderfully, so I always make sure to have broth of various carcasses, hard winter veg (parsnip, suede, celeriac, winter squash, potatoes) and the mirepoix base for most winter stews and soups. I love pearled barley, lentils and wild rice for adding bulk to soups and have my new favourite 100% rye sourdough on repeat for thick slices of cold salted butter.

The Tradition of Traditional Traditions

We have forgone the celebrations of Thanksgiving in England, for obvious reasons so I think Christmas really begins on the affectionately named stir-it-up Sunday, which is a glorious and nationally celebrated day in late November dedicated to the making of the Christmas pudding. On the last Sunday before advent it is culturally advised to prepare your pudding so that it may have time to mature and bathe in the tipples of liquor you’ll be feeding it. The name “stir-it-up-sunday” originates from the Book of Common Prayer‘s where it says, “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people”. In the Victoria era family members would take turns to stir the pudding and make a wish. It is on this day that I would think it appropriate to obtain a Christmas tree.

The American tradition of Black Friday has fully infiltrated an otherwise calm and casual late November in the UK and now the days following Thanksgiving are a frenzy of advertisement and consumerism, even in a nation that does not celebrate Thanksgiving. It’s quite odd but an example of the “global village” and the Americanisation of Britain. I don’t have a problem with America at all but I love that American culture is in America. It’s one of the things that makes it exciting for people to visit the States, or to live here! Young adults in Britain are spelling and using American slang conversationally now which only concerns me on the topic of the loss of culture and tradition. Preservation is important, and the loss of regional accent and dialect saddens me. Soon it will be forgotten and we’ll all just adapt. If you are a teenager in Britain reading this, go visit your gran and soak in her lovely accent what ever it might be, and listen for her own known version of slang. It’s there and it’s bright and it’s glorious, and is a little wrinkly window into the adaptation of dialect.

I don’t always make a Christmas pudding but I will this year after a brave attempt last December resulted in something truly scrumptious. I don’t have the time or means to steam a pudding for 4+ hours as is recommended so I pressure cook mine and it turns out really well. Pudding, in the English sense, is not a custard-like dessert as you might get in the States, but is a steamed sponge traditionally enriched with beef suet.

A Christmas cake is usually donning the table as well. This isn’t a light affair; this is a hot date with a rich and dense cake, heavy with dried fruit and aggressively cocooned in marzipan and fondant icing. It is absolutely delicious and was actually the cake my parents chose for their wedding! I make one every year but I skip the icing, choosing to make some homemade marzipan decorations instead. The cake recipe I follow is not traditional and involves an overnight ferment and an entire bottle of hard dry cider. It keeps very well, and stays moist if basted periodically with liquor or sherry.

As far as savoury culinary traditions go, there is of course the feast itself, which we’ll cover shortly, but there are also sausage rolls… perhaps the most universally eaten pastry in the UK. There are endless variations of the sausage roll, but sausage meat and puff pastry are the mainstays. Herby, highly-seasoned sausage meat is encased in flakey, all-butter puff pastry and baked until golden brown. I like to make a double batch of rough puff when I have a moment and throw them in the freezer for venison pies and the long-awaited sausage rolls! These are a favourite of Trevors!

The pièce de résistance is of course Christmas dinner, a feast that does not require an appetiser, a starter or an amuse-bouche, although some people do insist on a serving a cocktail glass of prawns in Marie rose sauce before the main event. Christmas dinner is more than a Sunday roast — a grossly elevated version if you will. Roast beef is as traditional as ham or goose and you will find any of these on the Christmas table come the 25th. The roast potatoes are arguably more scrutinised — privately or outwardly — by guests than the meat. The goal is a tater that is fluffy on the inside and supremely crunchy on the outside. To achieve this cut your peeled potatoes at jagged angles (not just any potatoes, but that is a discussion for a potato post, we simply do not have time to get into that today), and parboil them. Once they are tender on the outside they must be drained and then shaken vigorously in the pot with the lid on a few times to mush up the edges. These slightly roughed up spuds get tossed into a roasting pan of smoking hot fat. What fat I hear you ask? Duck, goose and beef will yield fantastic results! Just don’t use vegetable oil. Turn the potatoes gently to coat them in the fat and then roast in a hot oven. Turn every 20 minutes to ensure all sides are crispy.

Alongside the meat and potatoes you will undoubtedly find yourself looking at mounds of steamed and boiled vegetables; cabbage, carrots, peas, Brussels sprouts, swede. To counter balance the wetness of said veg, honey-roasted parsnips might be served, or a roasted variation of carrots or Brussels sprouts if you are lucky. Cauliflower cheese, stuffing (with or without the bird), braised red cabbage, pigs in blankets, and Yorkshire puddings are all to be expected on the plate, however Yorkshire puddings are controversial in the absence of red meat… ask your nan. The gravy absolutely must be homemade using good stock and pan drippings. If it must be thickened a little roux can be used, although I like egg yolks for the job. Gravy granules have no place in a homemade gravy. A large dollop of redcurrant or hedgerow jelly adds a really delicious sweetness, and a splash or port or sherry rounds it off nicely.

All of this is eaten as a late lunch, before it’s dark outside, followed by Christmas pudding and brandy butter, perhaps even a cheese course and following that… sausage rolls and After Eight mints come 9pm.

Traditional Mincemeat

I just made my Christmas mincemeat today, which i’ll be filling buttery shortcrust pastry shells with for traditional mince pies. It has historically been made with beef or venison in addition to fruit but a the fruit-only version is almost always how it’s made in modern day England. Trevor’s last deer was quite fatty and we saved all of the fat we could from in anticipation of making venison suet. It feels like a little salute to the tudors who might be wondering where all the venison is in their Christmas pie! I use a version of Delia Smith’s recipe. I’ve made it before and love how she uses beef suet, which is traditional and I love that she cooks it first. I find it easier to use a mincemeat that has been cooked already, versus many traditional recipes that combine raw ingredients in jars. The smell from the baking pan of brandy-soaked raisins, spice and brown sugar is magnificent and I can’t help but hum carols when I smell it.

You will need:

• 1 lb of sweet apples, diced small

• 20 oz. of raisins

• 8 oz. of currants

• 1 tsp allspice

• 1 tsp cinnamon

• 1/2 tsp grated fresh nutmeg

• 8 oz. of beef suet

• 12 oz. soft dark brown sugar

• 8 oz. of candied peel (very hard to find in the States, I made my own but you could use dried orange slices if you can find them at TJ’s or the like and cut them up small)

• Juice and zest of two lemons

• Juice and zest of two oranges

• Pinch of salt

• 12 tbsp Brandy

Combine all ingredients, except half of the brandy, in a large bowl. Cover and set aside for 24 hours at room temp. Preheat oven to 250 f. and pour mincemeat into a roast/baking dish. Cover with foil and bake for 3 hours. Remove from the oven and stir every 30 minutes as it cools to mix in the fat. It will look like a lot of fat but it combines beautifully as it cools. Once cool, stir in the brandy and pack into sterilised jars. Top with rounds of wax paper and seal. Keep in a cool dark cupboard indefinitely.

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The water is glacier clear and the moon will be nowt but a slither of silver hanging low over the island making for ideal diving conditions. I admire my husband and his fellow seamen who look forward to navigating the open sea at night by flashlight. I am most certainly not made of that kind of hardiness. Sure, I could dive in and thrust my cautious hands into black underwater crevices and tickle the bellies of snatching eels but it would not be my pleasure. I’ll keep the boat warm, the tea pot full, feed the hungry divers and happily admire Trevor and his watery ways.

I don’t beat myself up over this but I have in the past. There was a time where I just wished I was one of those gnarly women throwing themselves off towering cliffs in the sparkling blue below, swimming fearlessly through majestic caves or even just a woman that surfed! I explained this to a friend once and she took my hand and said ‘you ARE one of those women! You live on a boat and sail all over the place!’ I guess that part is true but it doesn’t feel gnarly to me because I’m often afraid or at least anxious doing this. I get my thrills by just being a mother if I’m honest. Postpartum intrusive thoughts are no joke and would scare the daylights out of anyone. Imagine if a piece of Elon’s space debris fell out of the sky and landed on Hobby’s head? What if someone threw a TV off of the side of the pier while we are puttering under it? You get the picture. Terrifying stuff! I push myself as a mother and an artist daily but it’s not the same as abseiling down Half Dome or rowing across the Atlantic is it?

I like to think Trevor and I have created a balanced home and a symbiotic relationship together, somewhat unintentionally but perhaps naturally slipping into traditional gender roles that mere mention of would have me cancelled in moments here in California. My role as a stay-at-home mum, cook and nurturer is my choice and it is a blessing that, with the help of Trevor and his family, I am also able to pursue my hobbies and small business as well. I feel very fulfilled and purposeful. My worth is in my creations of the human and material kind, as a wife and of course co-tender to our beautiful home here upon the sea. Creating a safe and inviting home for Hobby, where affection has no bounds, the galley smells like nourishing food, and the cabin is lit by a flickering candle is what I’m meant to be doing right now. And now I can add cooking lobster to the list.

I was laying in bed the other night mentally conjuring future Sea Wench recipes and was pondering upon what do with a chicken in our freezer. All offerings from this chicken will be divine even if it’s just a humble soup but I wanted to do something else with it. It will be 4 meals for us at least, and two of them will be soup or broth based. I thought a savory, very chickeny rice pudding could be delicious and comforting after diving for lobster, and would sustain us nutritionally as well. I made it yesterday and it was sublime! I simply removed the spices and sweetener from my beloved yolky rice pudding recipe and replaced with savory herbs and some salt. I switched out a few cups of milk for some homemade stock and then added all of the roasty, toasty supremely umami schmaltzy bits from the roasting pan. I served it up with some buttered leeks, slices of tender roast chicken and crispy sage and chicken skin. It was a winner winner chicken dinner, and we still have plenty of broth and meat for a third and even fourth meal. God bless the chicken and all of her offerings.

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Super Savoury Schmaltzy Chicken Rice Pudding

Serves 4

You will need:

• 4.5 cups of whole milk

• 2 cups of homemade chicken stock

• 1/2 white onion, sliced into rounds (makes it easier to remove later)

• 1 bay leaf

• Sprigs of fresh sage, thyme and rosemary

• Pinch of nutmeg or mace

• 1.5 cups of arborio rice

• I cup of roasty, toasty schmaltzy chicken pan drippings**

• 3 egg yolks

• 1/2 cup of cream

• Squeeze of lemon

• Salt and pepper

** I roasted my chicken with all of the usual suspects: butter, herbs, lemon etc and once cooked I removed the chicken from the pan and added a splash of water to loosen the delicious umami chicken bits. The result was a jar of deeply savoury flavour paste! I made broth with the bones once I had pulled all of the meat from the bird.

How to:

In a large pot add the milk, broth, rice, onion and herbs. Add a generous pinch of salt. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat immediately to a gentle simmer. Stir often to prevent scalding and the boiling over of the milk. When the rice begins to simmer stir in the chicken pan drippings. Cook for 20-25 minutes or until rice is tender. Remove from the heat, add a squeeze of lemon and season to taste. Use a fork to remove the onion.

Beat 3 egg yolks with 1/2 cup of the hot rice pudding in a separate bowl. This tempers the yolks and brings them to a similar temperature to the rice pudding. Add this back to the pot of pudding and stir well. This thickens the pudding, but it will also thicken a lot as it cools. Stir in the half cup of heavy cream and allow to cool to room temp. Stir again before refrigerating and loosen it up with some more broth as it will probably be quite thick at this point. Serve on it’s own, or along side some roasted chicken and buttered leeks for a complete meal.

The night and I are well acquainted these days, her static silence and the sound of my baby nursing are a song I know and love. It’s something I’ve grown familiar with as do most new mothers. As I bid adieu to dusk and welcome the encompassing blanket of nightfall, I settle in like a little sleepy pusscat in front of a hearth, a far cry from the early days with Hobby.

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Artwork by Lucy Harwood

Autumn crept in as we said our farewells, her ferocious wind trembling the turning leaves, and her driving rain colliding with my tear-streamed face. The car windows steamed up as I looked back through the droplets at mum, gently sobbing in the rain waving goodbye to the three of us. The last kiss of English summer can be seen on my babie’s rosy cheeks and in the vegetable patch, where the remaining runner beans hang on for dear life as gusts unpeel their tendrils from the stakes and the damsons surrender themselves to the worms in the grass below.

As always we said another bittersweet goodbye to my other home, to my dear family, to cups of tea in the kitchen and buttered fruit cake. We shared another see-you-later to windfall apples, those fabled blackberries and the smell of mum’s washing. It’ll be there next time, and that’s a comforting certainty. If I think about it too much I will weep, and I don’t want to weep just yet. We’ve got so much to look forward to across the pond.

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

Mary Oliver

Between the green pastures of England and the blue waters of California we’ll be slipping between time zones preparing to drop back onto our floating home with our 4 month old who is now somehow already a 5.5 month old. I have a list of food projects and recipes to test as long as my arm and I hope to find some time to paint. I’ll be making some preserves for cheeses this autumn, and trying to master the art of 100% sourdough rye bread. I’ll be making a divine bulgar wheat salad that I ate at Sabzi in Falmouth which was crammed with sour barberries and a melange of fresh herbs. And (finally) I hope to make lardy cake which has been on my list for over a year now. I’m intimidated by yeast and sourdough alike but I will not be defeated!

For the next few weeks you’ll find us on Catalina Island enjoying the warm water, catching our fish suppers, and reminding Hobby of his other life at sea. I’m looking forward to being back in the galley and will be nibbling on some very feral Stilton to remind me of home. This goodbye dance is always hard but always beautiful; a jarring reminder that love is all there is. It’s often said that love and grief are one of a kind, and that sentiment rings very true when in the sticky embrace of an inevitable farewell. Memories are made and our lives feel rich and fruitful. I wouldn’t change a thing.

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We’re back on Aldora now after another episode of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and just brought her north from Esendada, Mexico where she hibernated while we were in England, to Oceanside, and now we are anchored in sheltered waters behind the breakwater in Dana Point. A month of our absence left Aldora with some dirt behind her ears and I spent the afternoon deep cleaning, dusting and changing the bedding. She’s back to her usual homely self and now we have the satisfying task of packing her with food for the following weeks.

I don’t enjoy going into a big shop without a resemblance of a meal plan, however I also like remain flexible and open to surprise dinners, group meals, and catch-of-the-day suppers. For me that means whole food ingredients that can be used in multiple meals and flavour directions. I’ll fill the freezer with frozen fruit, frozen spinach, peas and edamame and some ground beef and chicken. The fridge will be crammed with a lot of eggs to sustain us and my baking needs, dairy, and as much fresh vegetables as will fit. For the pantry I like to stock canned and dried beans, lentils, different types of rice and grains and coconut milk. We aren’t very big snackers so we don’t buy many snacky fast foods but I do like to bake, so you can be sure to find a slice of something to butter come 4pm when the kettle is whistling her song.

My loose meal plan looks something like this:

• Chicken Korma - A recipe that is a combination of two separate recipes. It involves deeply caramelized onions fried in masses of ghee and soaked cashews blended into a luscious savory cream which is stirred into the curry at the end to thicken. The flavours are unbeatable. As always we’ll serve with homemade peach chutney, buttery rice and maybe some homemade yogurt flatbreads.

• Bulgar wheat salad, pickled beetroot and walnut hummus and tender herbaceous meatballs - The salad is something I ate in England and it’s fantastic. Dill, mint, parsley and cilantro are tossed into tender bulgar wheat with edamame, lemon, pomegranate molasses and sour barberries. I’m planning to boil and then pickle beets in honey and balsamic before blending into a hot pink hummus with toasted walnuts, lemon and some tahini. The meatballs are a staple around here and are fragrant and spicy. Breadcrumbs and egg keep them deliciously tender.

• Bean and beef burgers with bone marrow-roasted sweet potatoes, homemade buns and chipotle mayo - These will be two separate meals but I like to have a vegetarian option to fall back on for when we run out of meat, which will likely happen. I plan to make the buns myself, wish me luck! I keep bone marrow frozen to add quick flavour and nutrients to meat-free meals. I call this “un-vegetarianising” vegetarian recipes.

• Fish tacos - We always sail with fixings for fish tacos! Cabbage keeps for a very long time and will be shredded into a slaw. We will either beer-batter and deep fry the fish Baja style or grill it depending on the catch. We’ll serve with a citrusy creme and some lardy refried beans. I plan to make the tortillas with a press we purchased in Mazatlan, Mexico on our trip last spring.

• Root vegetable lasagne - My favourite winter varieties of squash are back in season and I can’t wait to roast them up into a luscious lasagne. I’ll layer with spinach and homemade basil or sun-dried tomato pesto before topping with lots of cheese. This will be a deeply comforting meal after a long day of snorkeling and fishing!

• Ploughmans - This is an English cold summer supper centered around some generous wedges of cheese, soft granary bread, pickled onions, chutney, coleslaw and sometimes a Scotch egg or pork pie. I will serve with homemade chutney, pickled beetroot and hopefully a homemade Scotch egg, which is a soft-boiled egg surrounded by sausage meat, dipped in breadcrumbs and then fried.

• Quiche - Quiche is a superfood! Fat, protein and carbs and perfect for any meal. I adore making quiches, thanks to a killer pastry recipe that does not let me down. I’ll fill with whatever needs using in the fridge, but probably a combination of vegetables and cheese. A sneaky sausage may make his debut, we’ll see…

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• Jacket potato and homemade coronation chicken - Trevor has been on a coronation chicken bender while we were in England so I plan to make it for him. It’s a cold curried chicken salad, usually mayonnaise based but I like to cut mine with a little yogurt. Some crunchy veg like celery may be included and if you are feeling very controversial perhaps a scattering of raisins. Gasp! We’ll pile this into very well-buttered baked potatoes.

Stay tuned for some very fun fishy recipes and some recipes from that old farmers wives cook book I found! Please consider becoming a paid subscriber for full access to Sea Wench recipes ands archives! For less than the cost of posh latte you can be a part of Sea Wench!

It’s the hedgerows, it’s always been the hedgerows. The very thing that pulls me back to my England while I’m Stateside. The thing that infiltrates my wandering mind as I push a jumbo shopping trolley around Costco, wondering how a hotdog can only be a dollar something? What’s even in that thing? Surely not meat. How I long to be strolling alongside a hedge, inspecting her juicy offerings as I’m witnessing the California wilderness become brittle and brown under the relentless sun.

It’s the sharp thorns of the bramble entangled with climbing towers of honeysuckle and the plump scarlet rose hips that tempt me. It’s wild hops and Dolly Mixtures entwined in a seasonal samba, and the majestic Alexanders bobbing their lacey heads in the breeze. It’s the dark shiny leaves of holly poking through it all, reminding us that winter is inevitable and soon enough we’ll be pulling on our wellies searching for their festive berries and boughs. It’s the way that the native wilderness and our ancient agricultural history have made a truce and a home for birds, mice and insects alike in the hedges.

To say I miss it all is an understatement; the hedgerows are me. I don’t make the rules. A walk “down the lane” and an old fashioned chinwag with the briar is first on my agenda when back home. I must sample the blackberries and touch the soft heads of the nettle. I must put my head deep into the dense greenery and inhale the damp and earthy scents. You can keep your posh fragrance subscriptions, I’ll have a spritz of decaying leaf litter and fermented crabapple with underlying notes of wild sloes and slimy toad instead.

Our visit this year coincided magnificently with a record-breaking crop of blackberries in Sussex. The lanes and footpaths are heaving with jammy fruits begging to be preserved into jams, jellies and bubbling crumbles. But mostly they are perfect for plopping right into ones mouth. Will it be syrupy sweet and warm from the sun or refreshingly tart? Oh, the mystery! What joy! At last something we cannot Google.

Alongside the brambles you can find the friendly red berries of hawthorne, the sour fruits of native crabapples and sloes, and if you’re lucky deep purple damsons. All of these, with some sugar and time can be made into a wonderful hedgerow jelly, which is undisputedly late summer in a jar. The sloes and damsons, when suspended in gin until winter, turn into a decadent and somewhat medicinal elixir for warming the frost-bitten cockles of your heart come January. We have picked more than our share of blackberries this month, which I made into a sticky jam and pumped, with vanilla custard, into homemade lard-fried doughnuts. They are as good at they sound!

I picked up a little cookbook here at a second-hand National Trust book shop which I’ve been reading cover to cover like a novel, and it’s a real page turner! It’s a collection of hundreds of recipes submitted by Farmers Weekly housewives and let me tell you, these ladies know their way around a kitchen and a slaughtered pig. Do not mess with or underestimate these knife-wielding, tripe-cleaning, pudding-making old Betty’s. The perms are deceiving; these wenches are the sole bearers of ancestral culinary wisdom and carry the beacon of responsibility for preserving the traditional recipes of this nation. Like native dialect, historic recipes are likely to become extinct if we do not remain interested and engaged with the culinary ways of our collective past. I take my role in this seriously and it’s the epitome of Sea Wench and this blog.

We are thoroughly enjoying our first trip back to England with a 5 month old Hobby in tow. He’s grown so much in the few weeks that we’ve been here, probably thanks to all of the socialising and tree-bathing he’s been doing. He’s now an expert on cathedrals, cows, caravans and Cornish fishing boats and his little mind is expanding at an exponential rate. In the 3 weeks we’ve been here he’s learnt to sit independently and is making a lot of noise!

Trevor has spent good chunk of our time here shaping surfboards in the West country through our good friend Rob at Roma Surf Shop in Falmouth. He’s been working long days trying to finish up orders which left Hobby and I with a lot of time to explore, nap and play. In my free time here I find myself pondering about my homes, and what it is that draws me to each of them. When I’m back in California I find myself longing for the history and culture of England. Unlike American and Native American history, I can claim and bask in the history of England because it is mine. I can lay and nap with my baby on a sacred Bronze Age monument and welcome the feelings of deep connection without feeling like an imposter. I can sink my toes into ancient ruins and imagine my ancestors making fire and sharpening arrows. This, I have realised is very important to me.

Along with this, I’ve had some other more light-hearted realisations:

• Coffee is superior with glutinous glugs of thick, double cream. Half and half simply will not do any more

• Sausage rolls might be better than Cornish pasties… We can discuss this later

• The fact that haggis is illegal in the USA is the real crime

• It is British culture that I miss. It is the glue that binds an entire nation. It’s more than cups of tea, but it’s also definitely tea. It’s pub culture and butcher shops, and the fact an entire nation eats the same dinners. It feels like an Island and I miss that quaintness. I haven’t found quaint in California yet. But it’s also what bored me to death as an 18 year old in the UK wishing I was traveling the world. I miss culture and America feels void of that as a resident immigrant who can’t call it her own. It’s complicated

• Pigeon tastes like fillet steak

• On-farm milk vending machines are very special

  

Anyway, I will be making a handful of the most intriguing recipes from my new-to-me book and some recipes inspired by some delicious things we have eaten on this trip. These include a tomato pie, candied tomatoes, blackcurrant leaf cream, hedgerow jelly, honey pickled beetroot, a sourdough rye, a wonderful bulgar wheat salad and some very interesting skin care products like elderflower-lard face cream!

I'm not ready to give up on summer yet, and in California autumn is our peak season for warmth and late summer produce, so expect to see a celebration of summer veg and fruit for a little bit longer!

For now I will leave you with a blackberry and custard doughnut recipe! It may be filled with what ever you please, but seasonal fruit jams make it very special indeed.

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Blackberry and Vanilla Custard Doughnuts

Makes 10

You will need:

• 2¼ teaspoons active dry yeast

• ¾ cup warm water

• ¼ cup sugar

• ½ cup buttermilk, room temperature

• 1 large egg, room temperature

• 2 tablespoons melted butter, cooled

• 3½ cups flour

• Pinch of salt

• Lard for deep frying

• 2 cups of blackberries

• 1/2 cup of sugar

• 2 cups of whole milk

• 3 egg yolks

• 2 tbsp sugar

• 2 tbsp of corn starch

• 1/2 tsp vanilla paste

• Sugar for dusting

How to:

In a large bowl add the yeast, warm water and sugar. Stir to combine and let sit for 10 minutes. It will be ready to use when it is frothy. If it didn’t froth, try again with fresher yeast. Old yeast is less active.

To the bowl add the buttermilk, egg and melted butter. Whisk to combine and then gently fold in the flour and salt. Knead until smooth and shiny, about 2-3 minutes. Pop the dough back in the bowl and cover with a damp tea towel or plastic bag. Allow to rise in a warm area for an hour or until doubled in size.

On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough about 3/4 inch thick. Use a 3 inch cookie cutter to cut the dough into rounds. You can gently roll up the scraps and repeat the process until it is used up. Allow the doughnuts to double in size for a second time, this may take anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour. If your kitchen is warm this might happen quite quickly so keep an eye on them!

You will not want these to over prove. If they collapse once handled they are over proved and you may reshape them and allow to rise one more time. The result will not be a tender but they will work just fine.

While the doughnuts are proving you can make your jam and custard. For the jam simply add the fruit and 1/2 cup of sugar to a pan and bring to a boil, stirring often. Cook until the jam is nicely thickened, bearing in mind that it will thicken a little more once cool. The sugar is necessary to set the jam.

For the custard heat the milk gently in a heavy-bottomed pan. In a separate bowl whisk the egg yolks with the sugar and corn starch until smooth. Slowly pour in about half of the warm milk, whisking constantly to prevent the egg from scrambling. Once you have tempered the egg yolk mixture you may add it to the remaining milk in the pan and continue whisking over moderate heat until it is thick and the cornstarch has cooked out, about 2 minutes. Stir in the vanilla paste. Stir often as it cools to prevent a skin from forming or lay some parchment over the custard.

To fry the doughnuts heat lard in a large, heavy bottom pan. You will be deep frying these so you will want at least 2 1/2 inches of melted lard in your pan. Heat until shimmering and then turn the heat down a little. Gently plop in the doughnuts and fry until golden on one side and then carefully flip them to cook the other side. Once cooked, remove from the oil and drop into a bowl of sugar to dust them. Let them cool before filling.

To fill the doughnut you will need a piping bag (wash between uses or acquire two for the custard and the jam). Slot a knife into the side of each donut and gently wiggle it to create a cavity. Pipe in the jam, and then pipe in some custard and stop piping once the doughnut seems swollen and full to the brim! If you over-fill the doughnut may split. Alternatively you can fill some doughnuts with jam, and others with custard to make life a little easier.

Then eat them all!

We just entered four months with sweet baby Hobby, a truly seasoned seaman at this point. Dinghy rides are no longer tormenting him, his life vest finally fits his ever-growing body and he is, as always, continuously entertained by all of the shapes and sounds of a life on the water. He’s blowing raspberries as his main form of communication and finds fart noises the most amusing. Hobby has also finally looked skyward as we putter under the pier on our daily commute and can see the light between the pylons. It’s a magical world for a tiny child just starting a new life on Earth.

We are developing a bit more of a routine with him as well. Before becoming parents we were convinced we’d have a kid that would not need a routine and would just nap wherever and whenever, but I've been learning that babies are predictable and actually communicate their needs quite clearly with us if we are paying attention. It was after a week of Hobby taking early morning naps that I started to consider that maybe he actually wants to nap on a more predictable schedule. This is probably so obvious to folks that already have kids, but no one gives you an instruction manual when your baby is placed into your arms, you have to figure these things out for yourselves!

What a day in the life of a boat-raised baby looks a little bit like for us

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Thank you to everyone who subscribes for your patience with my slower-than-usual postings as I navigate these first months of motherhood. I feel like we’re really in a groove now and I hope to be posting more content regularly!

Hobby is the most fun as we approach 4 months with him. He’s alert, calm and fascinated by it all. I wonder how being raised at sea will shape him? Whether the movement of the boat will assist or hinder his first steps or whether the sounds of the shore will be a lullaby he’ll remember as he navigates adulthood? He’s filling out nicely thanks to his all-you-can-eat supply of cream-top breastmilk and my steady diet of (mostly) nourishing fats and food. Although he is made of approximately fifty percent Rori’s ice cream, I am certain of this.

I’ve been spending my days cooking for us all and getting my Etsy business back up and swinging. I managed to launch 4 new stickers which I chipped away at during Hobby’s naps and am feeling very proud to be accomplishing these small feats while engaged in the full-time work of parenthood. I never got the swing of “nap when baby naps,” there was just always other things to take care of.

Trevor just got back from a fill-the-freezer fishing trip where he and his father caught 4 huge halibut! We love halibut for its meatiness and versatility and are already dreaming up new ways we can eat it this summer. He also hooked some rockfish (Vermillion, Copper and Lingcod) which make wonderful fish and chips, so we were pretty happy about that. I can’t wait to make Rock fish Bahjis again, they are the perfect delight to dip into my Peach Chutney.

We spent the afternoon filleting and vacuum sealing everything, and it was definitely challenging with Hobby on my hip. I took advantage of his naps and ran warp speed around the boat trying to get as much done as possible. I also made a cauldron of apricot and vanilla jam using some fruit from Trevor’s mum’s trees so I definitely had my hands full and mind well and truly engaged. We packaged the halibut up in neat 2-portion packs and ended up with a generous pile of tail trim. We’ve been wanting to make a fish burger for a while now and I decided the trim would just right for the job.

I ground the trim up with some simple seasoning, egg, mayonnaise and breadcrumbs. I kept the seasonings traditional as I like it when the fish flavour really stands out. More often than not it seems that chefs throw the entire spice cupboard at fish and it all ends up tasting the same. I shaped the patties, chilled them and then egged and breaded them before frying in lard. We served the burgers in a brioche bun with lashings of homemade tartar sauce and shredded lettuce on the 4th of July. They were really delicious! We will try them with rockfish next and I will report back.

Halibut Burgers

Makes 8 (easily halved!)

You will need;

• 2lb of halibut trim

• 4 tbsp mayonaise

• 2 eggs

• 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs (+ more for coating)

• Juice of a lemon

• 1 tsp of lemon zest

• 2 tbsp of fresh dill

• 2 tbsp fresh parsley

• Salt and pepper

• Optional add-ins: Capers, fresh green onion, fresh chili

• 1 egg

• Lard for frying

• Tartar sauce for serving

• Buns

• Lettuce/tomato/avocado/pickles

How to:

Remove as much of the sinew from the tail pieces the fish. This will look like long white lines in the semi-opaque tail meat. I use a knife to scrape it off. It’s not a bit deal if there is some left as I find that the blender blades actually capture a lot of it.

Put the trim in a food processor and pulse until mostly smooth. I did this in batches and would need to stop it periodically to remove the very tough stringy sinew from the blades. Throw the sinew away! Empty the fish into a large bowl and add the rest of the burger ingredients. Use your hands to combine it well and then shape into 4” patties (about 1/2” thick). Lay them on parchment on a baking sheet and refrigerate for at least an hour but up to a day. When it’s time to cook them, remove them from the fridge, dip them in a beaten egg and then the breadcrumbs and shallow fry until golden brown. Serve in a toasted bun with a metric ton of tartar sauce and your other favourite burger accompaniments.