Hello friends,
Happy New Year! Coco and I are thrilled to be sliding back into your inboxes, and are opening our 2023 series with a huge thank you for reading, sticking around and sharing your ideas, especially to those of you who we’ve dragged along for meals along the way.
The new year always traditionally brings with it a whole onslaught of diet culture, new year, new me and all kinds of toxic behaviours relating to food and exercise. Instagram will be full of it. Don’t get me wrong, January is always a time to reset from the gluttony of Christmas and the New Year - there’s always days we’re not sure what the date or time is, PJs are our friend, as is the wine and the chocolate. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with rebalancing, but maybe we can look at being healthy in the round, for ourselves, our bank accounts and the planet.
One of my resolutions is to be healthy - move more - properly carve out time during my work day to take Coco for a daytime walk rather than a dark one; reduce food waste and eat through my cupboards and freezer; and crucially stop spending £10 a day on Itsu or Pret when I go to the office! I’m hoping that these small steps will be habit forming rather than running at the January new year new me pressures that always fall by the wayside by February.
I’m going to be exploring a food waste section in this newsletter and will share recipes and hacks as I discover or make them.
Speaking of gluttony and fun though, Coco and I hosted New Year’s Eve in our flat, there were 10 of us and an undisclosed amount of prosecco. And, of course, in true Charlie fashion there was all the food. I’ll share some of the recipes soon, but a quick overview of the menu was:
Nibbles:
Crisps, crudites and dips
Honey & mustard sausages
Red wine & honey chorizo
Fresh baguette
Starters:
A trio of a mini pizza, sliders and chicken wings
Mains:
Lasagne, coq au vin and a sausage wreath, served with the best air fryer potatoes, greens and a salad
Desserts:
A Christmas pudding (kindly donated by my brother) and home made chocolate brownie
Midnight snacks*:
Bacon sandwiches and home made cookies
*we didn’t actually get to these, despite the party going until almost 4!
I have 0 photos of the food, amazing slightly drunken group shots and lots of Coco cuddles.
London becomes alive at Christmas, with specials popping up at every corner, including at our favourite - Borough Market. I’d seen an incredible Christmas sandwich on instagram so dragged J off to track it down, Coco in tow. We headed to The Black Pig where their turkey sandwich looked phenomenal (if you want to see it, do a quick TikTok search), unfortunately, we went late in the day on a Sunday and it wasn’t on the menu. We did, however, get a brilliant slow roasted pork one, half with cheese for him, half without for me.
We followed this up with a trip to Spitalfields the following weekend where we dove nose first into Humble Crumble. It’s such a great option for those of us with allergies/who are vegan and it’s the perfect treat for a cold, wet Sunday afternoon. One of us had an apple crumble with custard, and the other one of us had the Christmas special with berry crumble and marshmallow trees.
I will be back next week with the usual adventures and escapades!