A month in food, chicken pies, endings and return

  
The weather has been nothing like spring for all of March. Only now, as we edge into April, it is getting sunnier and warmer by increments, but it is still undoubtedly cold. I am responding to even a one degree change from say, 4 Celsius to 5, with gusto, rocking the (as featured in Paris Vogue for those that dare mock) socks and Birkentstocks combo and making salads most nights to balance out our steady diet of pasta, pies and paella.

The organic grocery store is an Eden of bunched leafy beauties, pinks, reds, even violets.  There is something in the name of blood oranges that compels me, cutting in to their flesh is a moment of anticipation - how red will it be? The delicate ends of fennel are making their way into a Sicilian pasta of sundried tomato paste, raisins and tuna and the feminine beauty of cerise radishes make me try even harder to like them.

Summer in Sicily

I am waking each morning wanting to be back, to open the door of our little farm house and to breathe in the fragrance of figs, green, earth and distant sea, to say good morning the skinny cats mewing at my feet for sweet milk from the cereal bowls. I want to be thinking about what to wear to the beach, where I left the sunscreen, how long we have until it gets too hot to bear, to wake and be in Sicily again.

Sicily and soup in bed

Last week Gareth was sick and off from work and I didn't have much on apart from a few nights at the restaurant. We spent the entire below-freezing week in bed, propped up on three pillows each, drinking coffee then chai, Google street-viewing our way around Sicily.