#kai Impulse purchase. Abiding regret.

Wordle 1,873 3/6 ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜ ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Not a bad start to the day: Wordle in three and a personal best in Codecracker.

#kai Variations on a theme … more beluga lentils, fennel, leeks and red cabbage. This time with the addition of rocket, currants, almonds and preserved lemon. Topped with panfried lemonfish and roasted lemon slices. This was so, so good!

#kai Also of note today: pear and black tahini on Vogel’s for breakfast, and roast tomatoes with creamy cannellini beans and leeks for lunch.

#kai And there we have it: the last of the duck, served with lentils, braised leeks and fennel, roasted red cabbage, a small handful of cranberries and almonds, and a few slices of fresh pear. It looks very brown and sludgy, but it tastes of Christmas.

#kai Punchy little buggers.

#kai Because a whole duck goes a long way when there’s just two you. And it’s not the same as last night’s salad: today’s edition includes golden and red beets, more oca, more rocket, avocado, celeriac and kūmara, as well as almonds and, since we have no pomegranate, a handful of Chilean guavas.

#kai Dinner: salad of roast duck, yam (oca), kūmara, celeriac, rocket, and avocado, dressed with hemp oil, lemon, chilli crisp and mixed seeds. Really rather good.

#kai Mu-u-um! She’s doing things with toast again! Cottage cheese, golden beet slices, basil pesto and sunflower seeds.

#mokai An elder of the neighbourhood seemed to think I was the right person to ask for dinner.

🧶🇳🇿oh, and two more: recreations of hats I made in 2020/21 and lost within a matter of weeks.

#kai A salad of rocket, pear, blue cheese and tamari almonds in a mustardy vinaigrette.

🧶🇳🇿Two more recent knits …

🧶🇳🇿A few knits … little bits of warmth and softness against the winter chill.

Finished Ingrid Horrocks’ All Her Lives. (Thoroughly recommend!) Demolished an eminently forgettable Japanese crime novel. Started The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin.

#kai. And she’s back on that toast nonsense again: cottage cheese, chioggia beets, basil pesto and sunflower seeds on toasted Vogel’s. Rather good. Will play again, perhaps with a whipped feta.

#kai. Dinner in green: following @swampy-kiwi.bsky.social’s examplewith Hetty Lui McKinnon’s chargrilled broccoli salad – with the accidental inclusion of black beans rather than chickpeas and perhaps rather more spinach than prescribed. Still very good, but.

#kai. Fabulous salad from the lovely folk at Newday in Newtown. Mesclun, olives, pickled onions, cucumber pickles, fresh walnuts, zataar, red pesto and dilly chicken salad.

#kai Dinner: shiitake and almond pilaf with baby spinach, peas and smoked kingfish and a generous squeeze of lemon. Tangy, fishy, spicy, warming.

#kai Simplicity does it: roasted cauliflower, kūmara, buttercup and celeriac served with spinach, avocado, halloumi, tahini, lemon and chilli crisp.

#kai a rather good dinner of kimchi fried rice with shiitake, spinach and gochujang, sprinkled with black sesame seeds and nori.

#kai Today’s me is enormously grateful to Sunday’s me who had the presence of mind to prepare a generous batch of roast kūmara, parsnip, celeriac, onion and cauliflower. Tonight’s serving was tossed with spinach, air-fried tofu, and the most perfect avocado. Chilli crisp and lemon juice to finish.

One page into this, and I’ve already chuckled twice. Hurrah for escapist literature. #pukapuka

Finished The Beauty of Humanity. Movement – will be looking for more by Camilla Gibb – and Lauren Richie’s Mila and the Bone Man.

A lot of work reading/editing, but I also managed to make time to catch up with The Beauty of Humanity Movement ( which is actually by Camilla Gibb, not (not) whatever I said it was!), and to read a short story from an exquisite edition of Tail of the Taniwha by Courtney Sina Meredith.

And what I did with quarter of it: Vogels, avo, kimchi, tahini and mixed seeds

#kai Some avocado!

#kai Hugh F-W’s seeded black rice with leeks, edamame, avocado and prawns, finished with black sesame and preserved lemon.

#kai two small bits of tuna, soba, brown button mushrooms, ‘super slaw’, spinach and black sesame, all seasoned with soy, Kaitaia Fire, black Sriracha, garlic and ginger. Whipped up in no time at all.

Spending time with the Lost Children Archive. www.theguardian.com/books/2019/m...