Post 30: Walk Along the Seine! 92 to go!

Kat doodles about life and recommends, where to go in Paris:

Here I am back again with my map ready to tell you what happened next. I spent the morning planning what to see and what to follow according to the list on Guardian web mentioned in my last post. I tried to figure out how to fit everything in with my two friends I came to visit. Plan sorted and around lunchtime I finally left home. Being so lucky with the sunny weather I decided to take the day steady. Just to enjoy the French atmosphere by looking at things, smelling the spring in the air and soaking up the culture instead of full on sightseeing.

Post 28: From London to Paris! 94 to go!

Kat doodles about life:

So here it is, I am off to Paris today. Obviously it would not be me without drama and even with plenty of time to leave to get the afternoon bus to London and evening Eurostar train to Paris. At the end I still had to take the taxi to get to the centre and push the driver little bit as he arrived 20 minutes later. He actually did manage to catch the bus on its way to Bristol and I just about made it. Although I left my house keys at home, so not a great start. My return time will be 2am.

Post 15: You Are Only 29?/ You Are 29 Already?! 107 to go!

Kat doodles about life and ranting over age:

Last year my birthday was a total disaster. I have spent the whole entire weekend pretty much in tears and I wish I had not taken time off from work. It was the first time in my life that I would wake up in the morning and clearly remember what has happened even I purposely tried to get myself so drunk and forget.

 In about a month or so I will be 29 years of age. What does this mean? It means that I am now starting to suffer with the idea of I only have a year left of my ‘late twenties’, when I am technically free to be myself as much as I can without being judged, because I am still in that late twenties bracket. Of course it is lot less crazy(?) and now more grown up behaviour than in my early twenties, when I did not give a toss about anything and just did as I liked. (Has that really changed?)

I know the word ‘early’ always seems to evoke something better, fresh or younger, but when it comes to an age, late twenties always sounds better than early thirties, do you not think so? And right now I can hear readers in their forties and fifties shouting: “Wait until you get to our age. You are still so young!” I hear what you say, but there is a peer pressure, pressure of social media and pressure from your family floating about. As soon as you step over that mark of 30 you are expected to have a decent job and qualifications, long term partner, applying for a mortgage, child on the way.

Once I met a guy for a brief moment, who made a judgemental comment, that I should make it within my field within three years of graduation. From his experience working in a recruitment agency, he said, he would call me something as ‘written off’ and would not bother looking at my cv further. I was gobsmacked and have not had much to say. Himself, late thirties, was between jobs telling me about this business he wants to start plus this and the other. I met him about a year later at the gig. It was kind of awkward, because after extremely overpolite small talk, I asked him how is his business. And there it was, he muttered: ‘Let’s not talk about work!’ and quickly changed the subject. I could not help wondering and actually enjoying the fact that it would have been embarassing for him to admit there is no business and he still has not quite made it even himself after giving me that big lecture.

If you are thinking that I am suffering some kind birthday crisis, yep, you are exactly right. I am nearly 29, still single, pretty penyless with no full time career going only with bags full of exciting stories and adventures to tell. Everyone around me seems to popping out children or being in sort of long term relationship progressing further. Just to put a cherry on top of the cake one of my  family members had an open discussion with other people online and in between lines labeled me as ‘one of those old mothers to be’. Great! Cannot make me feel any better.

Now where is the wine?! Yes, actually, I will have one or two or more, because I can! I make my own work timetable, so I decide if I party on Monday night, or Saturday night. I decide if I come home at 8am, which I actually did last week. I decide if I want other person I have some sort of relationship with to rule my life or if I let the social media make me feel upset about the social pressure of ‘already/not yet’. I may not have have clothes with the right label or latest hair cut, who cares, I have done things in my life money cannot buy. No one can undertand how it feels sleeping on top of the mountain inside a half open cave watching storms and lightning in the far. Or when you walk for three hours to get home with burning candle making sure it is still going as a part of a certain religious celebration. Or when inner desire for everything strange or unknown opens for you the most beautiful places and people out there.

Some things are simply not for everyone. And may be I am one of those people, who knows. We never know,what life has written for us. I may end up at the age of 45 still single flat sharing with my best male friend, drinking wine, listening to jazz. Or I might be having a baby by the time I am 30. (I hope not).  Whatever happens, happens for a reason.  Knowing myself, it certainly will be interesting as do not follow the usual brief of life. Now rant about age and social pressure is over.

And if you are wondering what I am doing for my birthday this year?! Well then, I am off to London to see a theatre show and party until dawn and dusk in a rhythm of jungle and drum’ n’ base making it memorable(?) for sure!

Back soon Kat  xx

Post 14: The Best Spaghetti Bolognese I Ever Had! REALLY! 108 to go!

Kat doodles about life and cooks:

As you may remember I have mentioned that one of the next lessons with my student-chef will be practical and we will be cooking the recipe for Spaghetti Bolognese according to the recipe he was solving as a quiz.  So on Thursday I made to it to his house and we got started. Apparently he was looking forward to it. For anyone, who is up for trying this recipe, I have taken the original from BBC Good Food website. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will tell you what we have changed or added. As soon as we started cooking and I was making him to tell me the right orders in English, he soon took the “make it up as you go along” approach. He does this for living, so he knows what he is doing, I thought.

Instead of 500g of minced beef we went for 700g and with the streaky bacon, not sure where he got it, but it looked beautiful like from the real butcher and not from the supermarket. It was just well thick and long. And definitely plenty. As he is still not very familiar with some of the items or supermarket aisles since he has been here only few months, he was trying to convince me that the local shop does not stock tins of plums tomatoes, so he replaced it with two good quality jars of pasta sauce with basil. We used about half of the punnet of cherry tomatoes to give it that little extra taste. When it comes to all the other ingredients we used extra celery sticks to make up the amount to feed everyone for dinner time, instead of one, we used two glasses of wine (and the rest for us) and instead of beef stock cube, real made chicken stock was used. I think probably around 1.5 litres. We managed to grate in the whole triangle of parmesan cheese and we skipped using the bay leaves. Everything was left to simmer and we got on with the rest of the lesson.

By the end I was proper hungry and when he served the sauce with freshly made pasta, I can tell you I was in food heaven. It was really nice to share the result of mutual effort. In the past I was lucky that my two previous boyfriends shared my passion for cooking, so we would either share the time cooking together or I would get surprised by them having cooked some lovely meals for me. ‘Love goes through the stomache’ as we say in Czech, it is certainly true in my case. So if you are man trying to seduce me, here is it the way. I am not a big fan of Spaghetti Bolognese as I was not really lucky to have them in places where a lot of herbs and spices are allowed, so usually it would taste really bland and mine are full of extra different things. However after having one bowl cooked according to this recipe, I am sure I could fit another one in without a doubt. After this amazing feast, I fancied more, so I thought, why don’t we extend the lesson and make a dessert.

I had a selection of Valentine’s recipes ready for him just in case he would need to prepare something for work, but they all needed good few hours of work, so I suddenly thought of a recent recipe LearnerMother posted and it was Banana and Blueberry pancakes. She shared it originally from the blog A Girl Called Jack and it is so simple anyone can do it in literally no time. So we popped in again to the shop (I showed him where the tins of plum tomatoes are) and got more ingredients like blueberries and bananas. Not sure how much is in the recipe for the blueberries, but we used the whole punnet again, and the same approach of ‘making it as you go’ when getting the right mixture, so probably more than the recipe is stating. Finally making about 10 mini pancakes. All finished with maple syrup and icing sugar on top. As soon as other members of his family arrived all the food was literally flying off the plate. We all then had a wonderful evening full of fun chatting about life, so I cannot wait to have another lesson like this.

I am sorry there are no pictures, we ate it too quickly before I realized I should have taken a photo.

Back soon Kat xx