A year of Poverty, Painting and Food: Twelve years in catering over, my aim is to paint full time. Stu, my other half, is stuck as a chef feeding the x-thousand over an Edinburgh winter. His cooking tips and budgeting are propelling us through the year on a tenner a day, while I paint.. No comparison to Pablo's talent; I have just named my blog after the Paris studio where he suffered the twin purgatory of poverty and artistic ambition on the cusp.. I am emerging!

Saturday, 22 May 2010

Hotty day

Shopping list pretty straightforward today; cat chix and fruit for Stu; thought I'd get that out the way early as Tesco would doubtless descend into horrors as the day progressed. It was a full on scorchio day today and being on a backshift made me eager to make the most of the time I had... I really did think of all the waiters and waitresses out there wiping the outside tables and practising their sunny smiles, I really did... and god it felt good. Twelve years waiting tables gives me the divine right to sit in the sun and smile to myself whenever humanly possible. Never fear, I will not forget my roots, nor shall I abuse the waiters in my turn, but I will enjoy my freedom.
Anyway, dinner today is a bit of a bore in a way as its a super fave - curry night! Still plenty of permutations to be had and corners cut, however, and I did this one early to save piddling about at nine tonight when I could be getting out the potato prints! Did have to cross a particularly wobbly bridge however, not a fave- dissecting chicken legs. However many times I see Stu do it I still bodge the whole thing and end up with a massacre and horrible fatty things all up my arms. Yum yum. Still, managed to keep cats clear by various diversion tactics and even got the old pot out and put the massacre in to make stock while I curried.
One onion, pinched from Stu's mum, (who I took to the airport today bound for Essex), some garlic and cubed up sweet potato fried slooowly but surely and non stickily - a hint - let the food cook, don't keep shoogling it all the time or it will end up mashed and not cooked. By the same token, let the sucker alone too long and you have stickio. Add a couple of spoons of curry paste and cook until the fragrance of the spices is revealed; then in with the chicken, cook further and in with the coconut milk. Open freezer, turn away, remove cat, find Waitrose bean and pea mix and chuck in a good handful or two, let it simmer and yer off. I think a curry always tastes better if left ignored all day and reheated (properly!) at night, but it might just be me...
The other food note of the day was my uber purchase of two chickens and a pack of mince for £8.22, which will probably last us most of the week; add that to the £1.50 pack of chicken mince I procured today and we are laughin. My chicken stock is simmering and alll is good in the world - I AM the small calm centre of the universe.
Painting was by nature brief today, but battled successfully with the colour green for the first time in a long while. Working on the next of my blatantly commercial pictures for the Leith show at Ritchie Collins Gallery, which will see me paint 'live' for the second time this year. I am just getting my head around the fine balance between painting something that other people will want to buy and not selling my soul. So far this has merely meant pulling the plug on some of my stranger ideas and putting 'The Boatman' on a back burner. He is a little too sinister for a family show, although he had gradually mutated in by sketch book from an altogether scary and dirty man to a more oriental, Japanese wood block kind of guy. Ve shall see.
Lady I'm on at the moment in her green dress is another subject that I doodle with often, but have yet to paint; the widow at the window awaiting her love returning from sea. Watching 'The Perfect Storm', listening to Kate Rusby, visiting the fishing ports of Fife - it always comes from somewhere!
Potato printing tomorrow on the patterny bits; these ones are quite watery and so I cut them yesterday with the aim of letting them dry out on the newspaper; should be good to go in the morning... (Aldi's swiss muesli 99p, my fave by far.)

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