comfort food and friends (and comfort absinthe)

I've been going out like a maniac the last month or so. Dinner, lunch, coffee, vermut, debauched nights at the absinthe bar, coffee again in the morning... you name it, I was there. Mostly I just wanted to surround myself with people as much as possible. I totally burnt myself out (so much so that, arriving in the U.K. for a family holiday two days ago, I pronounced I had no intention of leaving the house at all and stayed all day on the sofa reading and eating cheese).

Since I'm also one of those people who refuses to eat breakfast until I've photographed it, ignoring that everyone around me is rolling their eyes, you get some of the food-centred highlights of the month fashion blogging forgot for me. :)

I made a Canadian pancake brunch for friends, and we ate them while drinking sparkling wine


A dinner at home with Amandine and Aga, to which Aga brought the most mouth-watering carrot cupcakes with cream cheese icing.




Spring time is calçots season in Catalonia (calçots are large sweet onions, barbequed and eaten with Romesco sauce. Accordingly, some friends and I drove to a barbeque area outside of Barcelona, where we nearly died from smoke inhalation, and comically failed at making a fire. Finally two of us decided the only solution was to make friends with the locals, so we did, and they built the fire for us, and taught us how to cook the calçots properly, and it was amazing (though I smelt like smoke and onions for a long while afterwards)...


Luckily one of our number was more accomplished at how to eat the calçots, which can definitely be messy.


Despite smelling like an arsonist, I headed out to Barcelona's famous old Absinthe bar that night, as it was/is being threatened with closure. It's currently staying open semi-illegally I believe. It's a grand old institution where I lost a reasonable portion of my youth and beauty, so it was definitely worth turning out!



blurry but realistic...



And quieter afternoons, having coffee and cake with Aga after work (another one soon I hope).




P.S. I promise I'll be back to posting regularly. Have had emotional chaos, job-leaving, flat-changing, and sister-visiting all in short order, and currently am sharing one internet-enabled computer between five people but I should be up and rolling again by the weekend.

P.P.S. Despite this post rhapsodizing on food, I currently never want to eat again. I'm in the U.K. and have eaten about a pound each of cheddar, brie and wensleydale since I arrived...