‘Soph, tell me what you want.’
I want to live with a man in a home that we share, that is filled with books and silly postcards we’ve found in weird and random places across the world.
I want to spend weekends eating nothing but very strong cheddar cheese on fresh bread, with loads of unsalted butter, and not have someone call me fat on a Sunday night.
I want to grow old gracefully, and never feel like sticking a needleful of Botox in my forehead because my husband’s started to eye up younger women.
I want a relationship like my grandparents, where my grandpa made my grandma a cup of tea every morning for fifty-five years and told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world, even though she could be crotchety, difficult and wouldn’t win the swimsuit round in Miss World.
I don’t want a man who has to ‘try to get past’ my weight. I don’t want a man who my friends think is an idiot. I don’t want a 45-year-old who acts like a 25-year-old – that’s the worst of all worlds.
Turns out I don’t really want you, James Stephens. I want a better man.
‘I wish you were built differently,’ I say.
‘I wish I was too, Soph …’
‘No, you don’t. You wish I was.’
‘What?’
‘You wish my hips were narrower, my bottom was smaller, my legs were better.’
‘I don’t know why you think that,’ he says.
‘Because you’ve said it. To my face. Twice. And you say it every time you tell me not to eat so many bar snacks.’
‘Soph, you are totally over-reacting.’
‘No, I’m not. I’ve been under-reacting for so long, you just got used to it.’
‘Listen, this place is about to close. Let’s go and get some supper and talk about this. We could see if we can get into that nice Italian round the corner …’
‘James. I’m going to stay here and eat this ice cream sundae. I’m going to enjoy every single mouthful of it. And you can sit there and watch me if you like. Or you can get in to your Maserati and tell yourself “all women are mad”. That’s your choice. But when I’ve finished, I’m going outside to get the bus back home. On my own. And that is my choice.’
And while I want him to fight for me, and tell me he’s realised he’s making a mistake, and that he wants me, fat, thin or in the middle, the truth is, he really isn’t built that way.
And for the first time I actually start to feel sorry for him.
It’s the Sunday after my final day at Fletchers, and I’ve invited Laura and Dave, Pete, and Zoe and her new girlfriend Cheryl round for tea. Will’s driving down from Sheffield especially. He’s been down a couple of times since we went to Paris. I like being around Will. A lot.
The flat is tidy. I’ve been all the way over to Columbia Road this morning and bought five bunches of orange tulips. I popped in to St John for a perfect bacon sarnie and a couple of loaves of fresh crusty bread. Then I drove into town and spent the Selfridges gift voucher from the watch James gave me, on some cases of great wine. I’ll give one to each of the guys later, and one to Maggie when I see her.
Sandwiches are made, as is a pitcher of frozen margarita. I made it with my new ice-crushing machine that I asked for as a leaving gift from work. Zoe did a great job on my collection – I also got £300 of John Lewis vouchers. It won’t stretch to a Sub-Zero fridge, but no one actually needs a Sub-Zero.
The cannolis are lined up in rows on my countertop: vanilla, chocolate, custard, and strawberries and cream.
The only thing left to do is take the final set of biscuits out of the oven and let them cool down. I’ve made six different batches. I reckon Laura will love the ones with Mint Aero pieces. And I’ve put chunks of Lion bar in a batch especially for Pete. If you can’t use your friends as guinea pigs, what can you use them for?
The oven timer goes and I put on my new extra long oven gloves (no more burns!) and take the tray out and rest it on the side.
Twenty minutes till the biscuits are ready for lift off, and the doorbell goes. My guests have arrived.
Today I woke up at 6.30am to a blue sky, went for a twenty minute run, then came home, showered and put on jeans and my favourite t-shirt. I walked to work and arrived at the office half an hour early. Maggie’s given me my own set of keys, and I let myself in, made a pot of tea in her gorgeous red Liberty teapot, and sat at my new desk!
It’s going to be a busy day. I need to finalise which versions of my new biscuits I put out to market first. I have 18 recipes that are all working well, and I want to launch with no more than a dozen.
Will’s been amazing. He knows so much about so many things. He’s been helping me out on packaging, distribution, and how to extend the softness of the biscuits
without compromising taste or texture. My biscuits will have a good life – at least four days – and I think they’ll do well as gifts if I can get the branding and the name right. So far I’ve been through Bliss-cuits, Biscuits Deluxe, Choco-maniacs and The Little Venice Biscuit Boutique; I don’t like any of those enough. I’m toying with naming them after my grandma and putting an illustration of her hand holding a wooden spoon on the packaging. I think she’d approve.
On the cannolis, I need to find a way of making the strawberries and cream version 20% cheaper, and fast. If I can launch with such a classic British flavour while it’s still summer, I know I can get great PR. Plus, I really want to try layering dark chocolate on the inside of the custard cannoli, but that’ll have to wait till tomorrow.
Maggie can only afford to pay me half of what I was on at Fletchers, but I’ll take home 80% of the profit on all my products and if things go well, she’ll make me a partner in a year or two. Who knows, in five years maybe I’ll be able to buy my own Maserati.
You know what? I’d much rather walk.
Turns out time’s a decent healer. One year on, and it gets easier every day. James is now just a series of small scars: stretch marks. They’ll fade but they’ll never disappear. I’m learning to like them. They’re a part of me – a reminder that I’ve grown.
I thank the universe for giving me such patient, generous friends who have stood by me through thick and thin. That’s what Pete used to call James and me in the dark days, ‘thick and thin’.
I love my new job.
I’ve been off the happy pills for three months. I’ve gone from rock bottom to rock steady in the last year. It hurt like hell. I never thought it would pass, but it has.
I run for twenty minutes, three mornings a week. If I do this, I can eat whatever I like within reason (just not apricots). I never look at calories, I never weigh myself. I never want to go for that run, but I’m always glad
afterwards – not for what it does for my thighs, but for what it does for my head.
If Will’s down at mine for the weekend, he’ll tell me to have a lie-in, not be so ridiculous, and that I’m perfect just the way I am.
If I’m at his place in Sheffield, I’ll sit up in bed and pretend I’m about to put on my trainers. Me, go running in a city built on seven hills? Never.
Nonetheless, he’ll race to the kitchen and start frying some bacon: works every time. Will’s a clever man.
And he’s a grown-up. And he’s funny and sexy and hard-working and generous. Above all, he is kind.
And that is what I want.
I saw James tonight in Soho. He didn’t see me. I was with Pete on my way to get a burrito and as we walked past The Crown, there he was with Rob, standing outside, drinking a pint, chatting up a couple of girls. The girls were giggling at something Rob had said, and I could sense Rob was about to swoop in for the kill.
James was wearing the blue shirt he wore on our second date, and he was smiling his beautiful smile.
I remembered how happy I used to feel, waking up to that smile.
And for the longest moment my heart paused.
But my legs kept on moving.
If you like cooking, you might like to try some of the recipes for food mentioned in Pear-Shaped.
Compost Cookies
The most exciting to make, in that they are different every time, are Compost Cookies. The recipe can be found in
Momofuku Milkbar
by Christina Tosi, which is available on Amazon USA and is worth the wait/extra cost for postage. On my blog, stellanewmansblog.blogspot.com, you’ll find a few tips on how to minimise the chances of messing up the recipe (I’ve made these cookies four times with varying results: always delicious but sometimes too flat.) In the book you’ll also find the recipe for Crack Pie, which is only slightly better for you than Crack Without The Pie, but more socially acceptable.
Orange and Almond Cake
Claudia Roden is a brilliant, inspiring and influential writer and
The Book of Jewish Food
is one of my top ten cookbooks
of all time. You will never be bored with a chicken if you own this book. Her Orange and Almond cake recipe (Sophie cooks it for Maggie Bainbridge in her original job interview) can be found here, and also in her
Book of Middle Eastern Food.
Ottolenghi’s Chargrilled Broccoli with Chilli and Garlic; and Apple and Sultana Cake
Both these recipes can be found in
Ottolenghi
, the first of his books, which will have you dribbling over the pages.
The broccoli, as the book rightly points out, is a ‘destination’ dish – people go there especially to eat it. I’ve made it at home and it is labour intensive but entirely satisfying and worth the effort.
The cake is called Apple and Olive Oil Cake with Maple Icing in the book – and to tell you the truth I’ve never made it, as I’m lazy and just buy it from his shop.
Custard
I have not referenced a recipe for custard, largely due to the existence of M&S Thick and Creamy Custard – my custard of choice.
*
Made with creamy Channel Island milk and Madagascan bourbon vanilla, it is entirely thick, pale,
luscious and vanilla-y, and scattered with little black dots of vanilla, like stars. I do think life’s too short to make your own custard when custard like this exists. I usually eat it cold, straight from the pot, or cold with a hot crumble.
In the event of an apocalypse, my greatest ‘DOH!’ moment wouldn’t be that I’d neglected to learn how to start a fire, divine water, or build a basic shelter. I’d regret never having become self-sufficient in the art of replicating this custard.
Toast and cream cheese
I have no idea what avocado on cream cheese on toast tastes like. All I can vouch for is that if you like 1980s-style fruit cheesecakes, you will probably like jam on cream cheese on toast. My personal favourites are raspberry, then strawberry, then apricot jam, spread on toast that already has full fat Philadelphia on it. (Not all three jams at once, that is merely my order of preference.)
I do not believe in lesser fat versions of Philadelphia. I have, in my time, been content enough with Philadelphia Light, but when you return to the mother ship of full fat, you will realise they are ultimately incomparable, and if you’re going to eat cream cheese, you might as well eat real cream cheese.
Much like Sophie, I believe that an average brownie is worse than none at all.
I’m not convinced by any of the commercial British brownie brands-and trust me, I’ve done some research … The best brownie I’ve eaten in the UK is in a pub in London called The Old White Bear in Hampstead (unlike Sophie I did not eat it with my fists.) It is intensely squidgy, dark and rich – neither cakey nor floury, with no distractions. It is entirely to the point, and is served warm with something good on the side – crème fraiche or ice cream.
Ottolenghi’s are good, in that they’re insanely rich – BUT – they contain nuts, and I am one of those people who considers finding a nut in a brownie almost akin to finding a tooth in a brownie: in the words of Ned Flanders, wrong-diddly-ong.
In New York, there is a fabulous brownie brand called ‘Fat Witch’ – which has a very cute illustration of, yes, a fat witch, on the label. I love this brand, partly because I
have been called a witch on several occasions in my life – mostly not as a compliment – but I took it as such regardless. And also because it is a brave and brilliant move to use the word ‘fat’ on a brownie, rather than, say, ‘skinny’. Fat Witch – I salute you.
Fat Witch do lots of varieties of brownie. I like the classic, but also the Caramel Witch too. Americans generally tend to like things pretty sweet, but Fat Witch doesn’t over-sugar.
But the best brownies are, I think, home-made. On my blog you will see some postings about my experiments in brownie-making. I favour Nigella and Nigel Slater’s approach, but there are so many opposing schools of thought on what a brownie ‘should’ be, it’s worse than some religions.
I dream of running a brownie business one day. Writing is a solitary and often lonely endeavour. I imagine that making and selling brownies, while equally labour-intensive, would suit me quite well. Do me a favour: google ‘Stella Newman’ and ‘brownies’ about once a year, for the next five years. If I ever do manage to build my brownie empire – a) then you will know about it, and b) if you still have a copy of this book, you will be entitled to a free deluxe brownie of your choice!
The following is an overview of some places I like to eat in my two favourite cities, London and New York. I’ve listed specific dishes but it doesn’t mean I don’t like other things on the menu – it just means I’m a creature of habit/on a limited word count.
LONDON
The London food scene seems to be getting better and better all the time. From farmer’s markets to Michelin superstars, Londoners have more choice than ever of gastronomic delights.
At heart I am all about the cheap eat. While I’d never say no to a meal at Le Gavroche (set lunch = excellent value considering the quality of the food, plus it includes half a bottle of beautiful wine) – I am never happier than when I’m eating something delicious that costs a tenner or less. Simple things done well –
that
is a t-shirt I’d wear, along with Team Aniston, and one with a picture of Alec
Baldwin’s face on it. I love Alec Baldwin so bad it hurts, but more of that in my second novel.