You wake up, what at first seems like a middle of the night, in that grainy, 1930s photograph light. It feels like little, prosecco like bubbles frothing up underneath your skin. It’s not an unpleasant feeling, more a curious sensation, a borderline experience of being intensely excited and anxious at the same time. The train of thought (gosh, you really understand the expression now) appears out of nowhere, all steam and engine and the force of modernity; helpless you are lying there allowing the thoughts to…crush, no submerse you.
It’ll be another two, three hours of this quazi-drunken binge on thoughts and champagne of pure, undiluted stress that will keep you awake, tired, annoyed and exhilarated, until you hazily drift away only to be abruptly awaken by the tweeting thing on the side table. Only an idea of a breakfast makes it worthwhile.
The melancholy of a grainy morning (by blackwell.com)
Stress.
The anxiety, self-doubt, total high and excitement of the last few months have been intense and unexpected somewhat. My Russian Revels dinners, I thank you for that. I never thought that deciding to open the doors of my humble little flat some 1.5 years ago to feed 12 people with what I originally called ‘a Russian brunchclub’ would lead to cooking up a dinner for 80 in Stratford Town hall, Tolstoy inspired feast at the famed Mari Vanna restaurant and mental futurist avant garde dinner with a theatre and costumes and a tv crew.
I am paying for the fury of excitement by a layer of stress around me, by my grumpy moods (an internet sorry to my dear Lobster) and those sleepless nights. I don’t need to say that I would have never had it any other way…
…One definite sauce of soothing comfort has of course been food. Slippery, sharp food. Umami of ‘em all.
Baltic sprats in my local Turkish shops – ultimate de-stresser.
My local little Turkish shop is a constant place of wondrous joys and unexpected finds. The other night I stumbled across a pack of small Baltic sprats for 99p. I call them sprats because that’s what they reminded me of – the tiny silvery things eaten in buckets in my homeland Estonia – even though the english translation on the pack simply said ‘Baltic herrings’. Perhaps they are the same thing but I can’t be bothered. What matters is that they take me back to the times when I breakfasted with my mother on stack of many buterbrody (open sandwiches), milky drinks and mum’s soothing gossip.
Breakfast with your parents…for me the most comforting experiences, ever really.
Most comforting of breakfasts, with a poached egg and toasted bread.
Sprats can be eaten at any time of the day, as this sprat pie I made, a great supper dish, or even as part of glamorous canapes, as Nami-Nami showed. But best for all sprats go with the fresh morning light – like this brunch I shared with my brother many months ago, of boiled eggs and a glass of ‘baked’ milk.
Yesterday, I decided to poach some eggs, toast some bread, plonk the sprat and its oily onions on top, and enjoy with a cup of hot coffee.
Bubbles started to pooff…
