Foodie Jigsaw Puzzle and Be Vigilant

I took these photos ...walking in Lyme Regis.... a few weeks ago.

I'm not entirely sure I haven't posted them on this blog before. I'm not going to look back and check...but it's the sort of thing I forget sometimes. I've done it in my head - like writing an email  - but I haven't actually done it in reality. But I'm convinced I have. I'd go to the stake on it, my mother used to say. Sometimes she was right.

Till the last minute I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to cook for the lovely people on Saturday night. Apart from the Spicy Red Cabbage and Apple. And roast potatoes. So I sort of made it up as I went along mixing and matching all the wonderful veggies from the market....like a foodie jigsaw puzzle...always looking for an edge piece or fitting in a missing texture or colour or flavour to bring it all together.

In the end the I roasted quarter moon slices of butternut squash and flat rectangles of huge carrots... flash-fried meaty field mushrooms with garlic and rosemary....steamed long French beans and sauted them with toasted walnuts and chopped parsley.... tossed broccoli spears, crinkly Neroli cabbage and wilted ruby chard with black pepper, sea salt and a grassy green olive oil.....

I baked an upside down red onion, roasted tomato and fennel tart with a crumbly oat, almond and coconut oil pastry....made sweetcorn, feta cheese and spring onion pancakes spiked with red chilli and cumin seeds and served a boat of roasted red pepper sauce to accompany it all. Plus the red cabbage with cranberries. 

And the small-crisp-on-the-outside-and-floury-soft-on-the-inside roast potatoes.  For me they were really the star of the show and everything else was the  accompaniment.

But the lovely people seemed to enjoy the whole jigsaw.

Today 

 Julia Cameron : Life Lesson 55 

Edgy one, your anxiety shadows your days.

You face the future with feelings of apprehension.

What is called for is a gentle discipline.

When your thoughts run to the negative rein them in.

Focus on the moment.

Ask yourself, "Am I not OK?"

Take yourself in hand.

Breathe deeply.

Feel your anxiety slip away.

Be vigilant concerning your dark moods.

Allow a sense of optimism to wash over you.

 She is right about the gentle discipline and being vigilant.

My dark moods have been hurting me. 

My self confidence is rock bottom today.

 So I feel nourished and healed in the company of three gorgeous women as we sit round a table  dipping into big platters of fresh and zingy Lebanese food.

They remind me that what feels like a space of nothing ahead of me is already a fertile ground,  still unploughed, which I couldn't imagine this time last year, two days before Robin's funeral.

 When I was only held together with the string of my fragile will and the all embracing care and strength of my loved ones.