Happy New Year! How was Christmas? Is 2025 treating you well so far? I hope so.
(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipe or Cultural Fun.
I had a nice time. Three successive family Christmas celebrations in Cambridge, Wakefield and London followed by a quiet (but still staying up to midnight) NYE.
They were only minorly muted by the accompanying parade of seasonal colds. If you have also caught every bug in town then may I recommend the aloe vera version of Vaseline’s Lip Therapy? Not an ad, it just worked wonders on the scaly skin round my poor, red, over-blown nose.
So here I am, in the boring but calming clarity of Dry Jan. I wasn’t going to do a newsletter this week but I missed you guys and I also thought that if any of you were also Dry Janning you might like to try making some non-alcoholic drinks.
I have a couple of veg-based kvass recipes for you I also heartily recommend James Read’s pineapple tepache which is delicious and usually ready in just a few days.
My main focus this year is to Stop Procrastinating.
I think this is a resolution I’ve made many, many times over the years. Here is a version from Volume III of my teenage diary* written just after midnight on January 1st 1995: “Resolution 2) I will get my priorities right and not waste so much time being unproductive.” Here it is again the next year: “Work properly. This includes getting down to it [I assume I mean homework here, I would have been doing my A Levels] when I get in and not leaving things to the last minute.”
Like all badly made resolutions these are full of good intention but vague and without practical steps to achieve them. This year what I mean when I say it is specific: I will stop leaving things on the upstairs landing that need to go in the loft. And I will schedule times in the day to check my email so I stop "doing email” as a way to convince myself I am being productive.
Hopefully these will help me achieve the result I really want which is not to fritter away my time and spend it doing more things that feel meaningful.
Namely:
Growing things. I have been doing 10 minutes of gardening every morning for a couple of years now and love it. It slipped during December but I’m back at it now. It feels good to see some daylight as early as possible and it stops the garden becoming a daunting mess. I slashed a lot of brambles the other day and felt pretty heroic.
Making stuff. Pots and pictures mainly but I have a few minor sewing projects I’d like to tackle too. I am going to schedule in time to go to the pottery studio rather than just hoping I can fit it in after everything else. I did Wendy McNaughton’s 30 Days of Drawing last January and it was so great. I’m doing it again this year and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s just 10 minutes a day but the exercises build into a really inspiring way of seeing the world.
The first eight days of drawing for 10 minutes a day...
Getting strong. I want to raise my exercise effort to above it’s current level of “basic minimum”. I asked my street WhatsApp group if anyone wanted to join me for a regular run/workout in Finsbury Park and got a few enthusiastic responses. So hopefully a little bit of accountability will be the push I need and also help me to get to know my neighbours! My first goal is to be able to do a pull-up.
Finsbury Park on Tuesday morning. Not such a hardship.
Have you decided on any changes? I’d love to know what.
* Yes, I Roman numeralised my adolescent angst. What of it?
Kvass
There are generally two types of things that people are talking about when they mention kvass. The first is a fermented bread drink which is popular all over Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe and the second is a lacto-fermented drink, most famously made with beetroot.
I have never made my own version of bread-based kvass but have tried a couple of versions from the local Polski Sklep. It’s nice. Not as much like beer as you think it’s going to be. I’m not sure how else to describe it. Carbonated liquid rye bread? Malty cola? But I can tell that the mass-produced versions lack something. Olga Koch on the Off Menu podcast added kvass to her bread course and her enthusiasm made me determined to produce my own. I will report back…
But today we’re making vegetable kvass. It is basically a lacto-fermented brine pickle but the end product is the brine rather than the pickled veg itself.
Beetroot kvass is often used as a base for borscht but it’s a really delicious drink too.
I sometimes drink the brine from beetroot pickles, often diluting with sparkling water, but brine fermented for drinking is done quicker and with a lower salt percentage so is lighter and more refreshing.
Recipe: Beetroot Kvass
Makes approximately 500ml. I don’t have many large bottles at the moment but scale up it you like. This is adapted from Olia Hercules’ book Summer Kitchen which is wonderful. It’s not all ferments but has a great chapter on them among many other lovely things and her writing is so evocative.
Ingredients
4g sea salt
1tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp honey
10g ginger, grated
1tsp rye flour (or rye sourdough starter)
500ml lukewarm water, filtered if possible
200g beetroot, peeled and diced
Method
Grind the salt and spices. Use a pestle and mortar or spice grinder to grind the salt with the spices. Put it in a 750ml/1l jar.
Make a paste and dilute it to create a brine. Add add the honey, ginger, rye and a little of the water to the salt and spices. Mix to an even paste then add the rest of the water to dilute.
Add the beetroot and leave to ferment. Add the beetroot to the liquid and seal the jar. Leave it for a few days, tasting regularly. It should become slightly frothy and fizzy and sour – a little like kombucha.
Strain and chill. When you like the sourness and fizziness, strain through a muslin in a sieve, transfer to a bottle and keep in the fridge.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
You can drink your kvass as a refreshing drink. I like it slightly diluted with sparkling water. Or add it to soups and stews. It’s considered a crucial ingredient in borscht.
It’s important to grind the spices because the process is quite short. You won;t get much flavour from them if you leave them whole.
I’m not sure why but adding the rye flour or sourdough starter stops the kvass going through a syrupy stage which is common in beetroot ferments.
If you want, you can leave the strained and sealed kvass at room temperature for another day to increase carbonation.
Recipe: Carrot, Ginger & Orange Kvass
Here’s a variation. My friend Rachel has also successfully made parsnip kvass.
Ingredients
4g sea salt
1tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp honey
10g ginger, grated
1 orange, zest only
500ml lukewarm water, filtered if possible
200g carrot, grated
Method
Grind the salt and spices. Use a pestle and mortar or spice grinder to grind the salt with the spices. Put it in a 750ml/1l jar.
Make a paste and dilute to create a brine. Add add the honey, ginger, and a little of the water to the salt and spices. Mix to an even paste then add the rest of the water to dilute. Peel strips of the orange zest with a veg peeler and add them to the jar.
Add the carrot and leave to ferment. Add the carrot to the liquid and seal the jar. Leave it for a few days, tasting regularly. It should become slightly frothy and fizzy and sour.
Strain and chill. When you like the sourness and fizziness, strain through a muslin in a sieve, transfer to a bottle and keep in the fridge.
Cultural Fun
I went to see We Live In Time the other day and really enjoyed it. This Florence Pugh/Andrew Garfield drama is a sort of weepy romcom, the relationship between an ambitious chef called Almut and Tobias, an IT guy for Weetabix.
The com is nicely done - slightly Richard Cutis-y in style but far less mannered - but the laughs mean more in the context of Almut’s cancer diagnosis.
As for the rom, the characters felt completely real in their flaws and their chemistry (I liked both performances but Florence Pugh is just luminous). The non-linear structure gave context and the effect of layered memory to the developing story.
The title and the film’s central theme is something I seem to be thinking about a lot lately. I’ve referenced Oliver Burkeman’s anti-productivity book 4000 Weeks several times previously as the ideas had a big impact. Burkeman introduced me to Heidegger’s idea that we don’t “have time” - instead we “are time”.
And then I watched My Old Ass (currently on Prime Video) in which a teenage girl takes a psychedelic mushroom trip and meets her 39-year-old self. It’s very sweet and quite profound too. About the selfishness and bravery of youth vs the experienced compassion but potential cowardice of middle age. The older version is played by Aubrey Plaza who has the line: “the only thing you can’t get back is time”.
So. Yes. This stuff is on my mind right now. Hence the resolutions…
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum was good this year. A relative return to form in my very non-expert opinion. I don’t know much about wildlife photography but I know what I like. And this year it was these two stoats, one jumping, one climbing, and some gorgeous, semi-abstract kelp.
Two stoats by Jose Manuel Grandío and Larry Taylor
Kelp and tubesnout eggs by Sage Ono
My sister-in-law Frin gave me these super-cute patches for Christmas. They’re from Bel’s Art World and so lovely I thought I would share in case any other kimchi-enthusiasts or microbe wranglers wanted some.
We finally got round to visiting the London Mithraeum, the remains of a mysterious Roman temple in the middle of the City of London, built in the 3rd century AD and discovered during an archeological dig 1954.
The ruins were apparently moved and reassembled nearby as an open air display (although I worked in the area for years and never knew about them). When Bloomberg built their new offices in 2010 they decided to return the temple to its original location.
It’s a free exhibition and definitely worth a look if you’re in the area. But I was frustrated as, before you go into the temple itself, information is displayed on touch pads. So you have to hover behind people reading over their shoulders and waiting your turn. What’s wrong with a good old display board? No whizzy technology but everyone can see it at the same time. Grumble, grumble.
To be fair, not much is actually known about Mithras a Persian god adopted as a cult-figure by Roman soldiers and merchants. So when you get your chance to look at the touch screens they don’t actually tell you a whole load.
Also most of the artefacts found here are in the Museum of London which is currently closed until next year. So you can look at a small model of the “taurectony” - a deeply symbolic scene of Mithras killing a bull - but you can’t see the real thing until 2026.
Still, as I say, worth a look.
Bye! See you next week!
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Love the sound of the carrot kvass, thanks Clare!