July Peels

a bouquet of sunflowers, swimming and reading; tins and on-the-go recipes

Bonjour, you. If you’re new to The Onion Papers, Peels are a round-up feature at TOP, a retrospective almanac which comes out on the first Monday of each month. Happy reading and clicking,
Margaux

In July, I swam with seals in the North Sea, saw more sheep than humans, melted at the sight of two puffins kissing on a cliff and, while cooking me a breakfast of scrambled eggs, a stranger I now call Willie told that if I was impressed by how many gannets there were up in Hermaness, aka the most northern national nature reserve in the UK, then I would have fainted back in the days. July 22nd was the hottest recorded day on Earth. How many times can we read the words ‘uncharted territory’ before we’ll see the charts for what they show? Just stop oil. Listen to scientists. We’re putting the wrong people in jail.

speaking of swimming, some Breaststrokes and novel-related news

I’m excited to be heading to the wonderful Portobello Bookshop for a swim and a read on 28th September. You can book your ticket, including a signed copy of Breaststrokes and/or The Tidal Year here.

Please, do join us. I’m on the gentle team when it comes to cold water, so we’ll take things easy. And I’ll bring my wee stove to brew coffees and teas afterwards.

This month, I was also interviewed by the brilliant Tilly of Notes and Cuttings – ‘Fragments of the everyday, a discussion about consent, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and cauliflower cheese!’ – for which you can read the transcript here. 

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bread update

After last month’s disappointments, turns out starter and baker only needed a rest. I came back from holiday and baked a fantastic loaf.

In July, I also shared a non-recipe, bread routine for the Monday annotated recipes:

#25: sourdough bread

PS. If you sent me your details and asked for a piece of my starter on the back of this newsletter, I’ll be posting them this week after a feed.

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listening, reading

In audio, it’s David Nicholls who kept me company during my travels, with You Are Here. It was funny and romantic – a relief for the mind – and it held some good, practical life advice: ‘Walk with a straight back. No one stays dry with a hunched back’. A tender, hopeful read.

Still on the fiction shelf, I read Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost. A novel of resistance and about the connections we forge, it’s one I enjoyed reading slowly. Hammad is a careful writer, generous with context and her characters, and she has crafted a moving novel about passion and hope.

This month though, I drew comfort in reading non-fiction. I was moved by Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä’s Notes from an Island, whose illustrated diaries drift along a life spent in a cabin on a windy and remote island in the Gulf of Finland. It’s a story of solitude and shifting seasons. This one had a calming effect on me, and I hugely recommend as a bedtime story.

I was grateful for Polly Atkins’ lyrical and insightful Some of us Just Fall. A combination of memoir, pathography and nature writing, Polly’s prose is honest and brave.

Another case for brilliant memoir writing, at the crossroad between inner and outer spaces, is Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun. It’s a remarkable book about gentle resilience and healing and a hymn to the landscapes that nurture us. I loved it so much.

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in the kitchen

I didn’t have access to my kitchen, or any kitchens, for most of July as I was either on the move for work or away hiking. Friends of The Onion Papers will know that I love cooking with tins and to forage, so I had great fun making most of this and my camping stove while we were away. Some no-fuss, foodie highlights, prepared on the side of hiking trails, include:

• wholegrain (from pre-cooked bags) rice, sun-dried tomatoes, tinned kippers and chickpeas salad. This one is a practical choice as one bag/tin of each ingredient will serve two, it’s easy to carry around and requires no cooking. It’s fuelling too.

• ‘Italian nachos’, or a timeless/rootless signature dish in our household as it combines our homes and our taste. In a bowl, assemble tortilla chips, pesto (sun-dried tomatoes this time but any will work), jalapeños and shredded mozzarella on top. Heat for up to two minutes in the microwave or for longer over a fire. Trust me; it tickles at the tip of the tongue, crunchy and savoury, and it pleases a sun-kissed crowd.

• For the stormy nights, pasta e fagioli all’uccelletto works magic on a battered camping stove. Throw cannellini beans, tomato sauce and leftover pasta in a pan. Cover with a lid and simmer for a while. Add canned tuna and cook for another few minutes. Mix well. This one is a real pick-me-up: mushy, nostalgic, cuddly.

• Free range eggs from roadsides, simply boiled, peeled and gulped as we walked.

• Bagels on a cliff (as they fit in most coat pockets!). Tuna and sun-dried tomatoes pesto, or tinned artichoke hearts and mustard are two favourites.

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from the onion papers

An ode to dill and to cooking with the same ingredient on repeat for the Monday annotated recipe series:

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Play Dough: touch as a collective consciousness; on Fancis Alÿs: Ricochets (at the Barbican until 1st September 2024) and a recipe for a galette with beetroot, dill and feta:

Doughs and skins have similar complexions. It isn’t rare to read adjectives such as homogeneous in both recipe books and advertisements for beauty products, setting the societal standards for either a good dough or a beautiful skin. Both hold chemical properties that make them part of a whole – a skin nature or a kind of dough – and specific factors that make each dough and skin unique. I could give you a piece of my sourdough starter, along with a note detailing my bread routine, and you would go home and set to bake a loaf of bread, and yours would taste different from mine. We could put a group of children in the same room, give them clay, and they would mould different figures and find a way to make them play together – to be individual within a group. 

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A companion, non-recipe to the above newsletter: sourdough bread, an unreliable recipe but a routine to soothe a jumpy brain:

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A Dispatch from the North Sea, and Back; an interlude newsletter, written adrift:

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looking ahead (Glasgow, GMT)

3rd August, 21:01

The hills are heathery and mossy, the kitchen table has a golden shade, sunflowers standing proudly in a vase. The grass along the canal is high, ducklings have grown independent and the city is quieter now students have gone home for the summer. Still, the temperatures have warmed and the bins outside the Kelvingrove Park are full with empty cans and pizza containers when I run past them in the morning, the sun still rising early and setting earlier. Plums colour my nails burgundy, sour and fleshy. It rained on Saturday while I was drinking white wine on a pavement with F. and a rainbow cut through the clouds. I smiled, plotting – A dry first week of August brings a harsh winter – and we’ve a busy month ahead with the Perseid meteor shower due to peek between 11th and 13th August. Aubergines look at their best, sliced lengthwise and grilled for a late dinner eaten outside. Don’t forget to smell your melons before halving them.

Margaux

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