Oh My Mellow | No.18

It’s official – this month we hibernate!

Rest and recuperate in style with our January hotlist of nourishing dishes, nostalgic podcasts, cinematic streamers and the cosiest of luxury loungewear.

  

COOKING Healthy Made Simple: Delicious, Plant-Based Recipes, Ready in 30 Minutes or Less

If this is your first Veganuary, you may need all the help you can get. And no better guide than Ella Mills, she of Deliciously Ella fame. The food blogger went from cult to mainstream on the release of her debut cookbook in 2015, and this latest book is chockablock with tasty recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner made with no more than 10 ingredients at a time – and without so much as a whiff of knitted yoghurt.

PODCASTING Where It’s At: A Short History of Girlbands

Low-rise cargo pants, cropped tops and belly chains appear to be back in fashion for Millennials, but those who remember them the first time around may be interested in this eight-part BBC Sounds romp through Nineties and Noughties music and culture – guaranteed to have you dancing around the kitchen in your pyjamas. Each episode is a pacy 20-minutes or so and hosted by The Saturdays’ Mollie King; a jukebox medley of interviews and cultural commentary on The Spice Girls, TLC, All Saints, Cleopatra and Little Mix (among others). Music podcasts can so often be a dour, chin-scratching affair but this one’s as exuberant as a B*Witched dance routine.

WATCHING Expats

Nicole Kidman is hopefully much better in Amazon Prime’s Expats than she was as a wellness guru in Nine Perfect Strangers, whose vaguely Eastern European accent and Legolas-style wig were surprisingly unconvincing for such a lauded film actress. But then the source material to this handsomely-shot six-part drama is promising, it being an adaptation of Janice YK Lee’s 2016 novel, The Expatriates, which follows three American women in Hong Kong whose lives intersect after a tragedy.

MELLOWING Portal

Obviously nothing beats the physical and mental benefits of immersing ourselves in nature IRL. But  when it’s cold and wet outside – or it’s the dead of night and you just can’t switch off – bring the outdoors indoors with the beautifully designed Portal app which has scores of field recordings from across the globe, from waves gently lapping on a Thai beach to gentle storms and susurrations in the Amazon rainforest. There are ‘Sleep’, ‘Relax’ and ‘Focus’ settings, breathing exercises, and a snazzy function to mix Portal’s audio with other apps, such as podcasts or audiobooks. Zzzzz.

DRESS CODE The Robe – Navy Nomad

Baby, it’s cold outside. Which is exactly why we’re staying snuggled up inside, enveloped in elegant, 100pc organic cotton voile to keep the season’s chills from multiplying. Elongated cuffs ensure arms and hands stay warm, while two deep pockets provide Mary Poppins levels of storage. Sort of.