Ridiculously easy and delicious smoked salmon samphire pasta

I discovered this by accident the other day, in one of my "throw everything in a pan and cook it" experiments. This meal is so obscenely delicious, it almost shouldn't be allowed. It's also one of the easiest things you'll ever make. And you will make it. Because it is amazing.

You will need:
Pasta (I like fusilli, but any shape will do)
Smoked salmon (that's lox, to my American readers)
Broccoli
Broad beans or peas (optional)
Samphire (Americans, I believe this is known as Salicornia. Try and get fresh, pickled will not be the same)
A lemon
Butter

Put your pasta on to boil, with a pinch of salt (don't add too much, there's a lot of salt coming). While it's starting to cook, chop up the broccoli into small pieces. Chunk up the stalk into cubes - it's good stuff!

When the pasta is about 5 minutes from being cooked, throw your broccoli and broad beans or peas into the water with it.

Shred the smoked salmon into generous pieces, and smother with lemon juice and black pepper. Rinse the samphire well.

When the pasta, broccoli and beans are done, drain off the water and return them to the pan. Add a serious chunk of butter (I'm talking a chunk the size of an egg, here. A large egg...) and stir it around to melt and coat the pasta and veg with goodness. Stir in the samphire to warm through. Add the rest of the juice of your lemon. Avoid the temptation to add salt - samphire can be extremely salty, and the salmon will also add to the flavour.

Serve up in bowls, and then throw the smoked salmon on the top (or you could stir it in to get that hot smoked salmon finish - equally delicious). Add more lemon and pepper to taste. Devour. Wonder how you ever functioned before.

Any leftovers are wonderful as cold salad, aided by a good squeeze of mayonnaise.

Enjoy!

Night songs, PLUS MEC: new lip balm!

Sometimes at night in Washington, a pack of coyotes (pronounced "ky-oats", which mystifies me and every other English person I know) might wander near the house and shout at each other for a while. One night we heard them singing back at the train as it shuddered by, sounding its horn.

Cowboy loves their songs. Before now, he has poked me in the ribs while I'm sleeping just to say "Hey, you hear that? Cool, ain't it?"

It is rather cool.

Lately, here in the sleepy English village, there's been another night song to listen to, right around the time the last of the real light is leaving the sky: a peacock.

He's been here since last summer. He struts around the village sometimes, and has been seen perched on our garden wall. He's magnificent, but I feel a little bit sorry for him. Nobody knows where he came from. People have asked around to see if anybody is missing a peacock, but nobody has claimed him. He has no other peacock friends. Poor guy. When he sings at night, the crows that live in the big trees scold him.

It's a hard life.

In other news, I discovered a new lip balm. At £10 for a tube, I thought I had probably lost my mind, but it's worth it. A little goes a long, long way.

Lanolips is 100% lanolin (so not good if you have an allergy to lanolin), and has no fragrance. There is a lemon flavour on offer, as well as several varieties with some colour in them. I'm attempting to hold back.

Only a tiny amount is needed to cover lips in a sumptuous sheen of goodness. The finish isn't sticky, just gloriously moisturising. I find myself rationing it. It made me aware of how often I have to reapply other lip balms by comparison. A winner, on all fronts.

I think we should just ignore the fact that I bought 7 tubes of Chicken Poop in WA... I'm not ready to admit that I have a problem.

Buckaroo Country Photography

For a while now, I have been following a page on Facebook called Buckaroo Country. It was owned and run by Mary Williams Hyde, and she showcased her stunning photography from around the Great Basin (and beyond) as she travelled to brandings, ranch rodeos, roping competitions, cattle gatherings, and more.

She has the most wonderful eye for the horse and the horseman. The buckaroo tradition is not to be confused with cowboying - and although I call him Cowboy, he's more of a buckaroo. Cowboys are focused on cows. The buckaroo's world and work is about his horse. Mary captures this life so well.

As I am just learning about this life and the traditions carried along by the fine horsemen and women, Mary's Facebook page was a total delight.

Then one day, posts appeared that were clearly not posted by Mary. They appeared all day, at regular intervals, with sensationalist and attention-grabbing headlines. Mary's page had been hacked and taken over. In just a few days, her following of over half a million people was destroyed.

Mary fought back, and set up another page. Her following is smaller, but devoted. She still shares her photographs with us, freely and generously. Take a moment to see her work, and support this wonderful artist.

Click here for Mary's new and spam-free Facebook page. Be a good egg and press "like" while you're there ;)

Click here for Mary's website, where you can purchase prints, books, subscribe to her eMagazine, and support her journey.

Review: Soulindha

A little while before Christmas, I came across a pin on Pinterest's popular page for a striking leather bag. It sang out at the bohemian in me, and dating a cowboy has given me a fresh appreciation for quality leather goods.

Image from Soulindha on Etsy

I loved the style, and have been looking for a good handbag for a while. My days of buying a £40 "leather" bag from Aldo or Next are long gone - the bags available on the high street are too bland for my taste, and I prefer the strap across the body to something that needs to be tucked under my arm.

There was just one problem with this bag. The colour.

I wanted red. Not just any old red, I wanted scarlet (or "harlot scarlet" as I like to call it). I wanted brash, bright, attention-seeking red.

Etsy being the kind of marketplace where you can make absurd requests like that, I went ahead and messaged the seller directly, to ask if a custom made bag in red was possible.

Rawia was very prompt to reply, and very helpful. I could indeed have the harlot scarlet of my dreams, she would source some immediately and let me know what she could find in the ostrich leather for a contrasting colour on the top flap.

By golly, did she deliver. For just a little extra cash to cover the costs of the custom build, here's what she produced...

Image from Soulindha on Etsy

The colour was to die for. The ostrich panel is a glorious burnt orange that looks superb against the outrageous red. The leather is thick and soft and will age beautifully with use.

What I loved most was the craftsmanship. This bag is sturdy as anything. The seams are all secure and neat, there wasn't a single thread out of place. The bag is lined with canvas, and the inside pocket is finished off with a strip of red leather across the top edge. All of the hardware is high quality brass.

Every rivet is perfectly lined up. The braiding on the front panel is tight, neat and strong. I could wear this bag all over the mountains on horseback and it would hold up wonderfully.

Image from Soulindha on Etsy

It holds everything that I need: purse, keys, phone, excessive amount of lip balm, tissues, pens, paper, random receipts, gum... It comes with detachable straps that will hold a coat or jumper or blanket or whatever else you need to roll up and keep out of the way, as well as a strap to anchor the bag to your thigh. I wish I made more use of this strap, as I often find my bag around my head when I bend down in the supermarket.

The shoulder strap is completely adjustable, and can be changed to wear around your waist like a holster, short on the shoulder, or long across the body.

This bag has been designed and made with such care. The love of its maker pours out of it. Rawia's other creations on her shop are similarly beautiful, and very high quality. She made my bag very quickly and it was shipped in good packaging to protect it on the long journey from Australia. I could not have been more delighted when I opened the parcel.

Everywhere I go, I get compliments about it. I enjoy the smugness for a moment.

Doing business with Rawia was a real pleasure. It's refreshing to encounter people who trade on a more personal level, far from the corporate and bulk buying worlds of Amazon and eBay. This bag will last me for many years to come, and I have already made plans to use some of Rawia's other creations as gifts for good friends in the future.

Visit Rawia's Etsy shop, Soulindha, and see what you find. She offers this design in several other, more neutral colours, as well as many other designs of bag. Well worth a look, and certainly worth the investment.

On climbing back on.

"Get straight back on!" my instructor would shrill, marching over to wherever I was picking myself up out of the dirt. "Up you get! Get back on!"

That's the first rule that I remember learning about horses, apart from never using a mane comb on the tail. If you come off, get straight back on.

It's decent enough advice, and intended to stop setbacks from sticking long enough to become issues and obstacles. See that crappy thing that just happened? You can get over it and move on and still have a great time, and that crappy thing becomes a great big nothing.

It's been a strange time in life lately, and I fell off this blog. I fell off normal life. I fell into being somebody else for a little while, and realised it was no fun. Worst of all, I climbed off my horse. I climbed off, voluntarily, intentionally. Even though I landed on my feet like a regular dismount, I might as well have thrown myself face first into the dirt. My demons cackled with glee.

See these crappy things that happened? They're huge and terrible and your life is over and you'll never be happy again. You are a great big nothing.

It spiralled. I watched myself behave in a way that I hated. I listened to myself say things to Cowboy that were unfathomably horrible. I felt myself sliding like a poisoned body into a murky swamp, completely apathetic to stop it from happening.

It wasn't quite what I wanted, given that I was making plans for my whole future at the time, and a murky swamp wasn't what I really had in mind.

Shut up, the demons said. What you want doesn't matter. You'll never get it. You're going to fail at everything you ever do, you'll lose everything you've ever had, and you'll never have anything again.

And then I finally saw the sunshine. I saw this Sunshine:



I sat in the saddle in tears, about to climb off again (throw myself metaphorically face first in the metaphorical dirt). I had a violent meltdown. I was on the verge of quitting - quitting everything. I'd just go back to bed and never get up again.

Cowboy gripped my knee as I went to dismount, holding me still. He was unusually forceful. He almost shook me.

"Stay on the horse," he said. I fought him feebly for a moment. He said it again, slower, more urgently. "Stay. On. The horse."

"I can't," I protested, sobbing. "I'm just not in the right mood." I'll never be in the right mood again. Everything is worthless and useless and my life is already over.

"She doesn't care," he said. "Go ride." He let go of us, and chased Sunshine off into the middle of the arena.

I sat there as she walked about, looking for a spot where she might be allowed to stop. I didn't even pick up the reins. I watched her look back at me first with one brown eye, and then the other. She listened to me as I tried to catch my breath between the tears. She heaved a big sigh, and stepped onwards across the sand.

I finally came out of the haze. I emerged, squinting, from the toxic fog where the demons muttered at me, and I noticed the way she moved beneath me. I noticed her gentle, deliberate footfalls, and her patient breath. When we finally stopped, I felt her big heart pumping.

We had a big breakthrough that day. I say "we" did. I mean me. She has life all figured out already. I needed to hear it from her. She turned her head a little, looked up at me on her back. I like to think she was saying "Hey, human, what's the big deal? I've got this."

She became a safe place. That's an amusing notion, given that just a few weeks earlier I had been frightened to be on her back. Now, I will climb on her fresh from the field, and we put the world to rights.

Except now I am back in England, thousands of miles from her, and looking into the fog once more. In searching for another safe place, I'm climbing back on to the blog. Let's ride.