Weekend woes and wins

It's been hot and humid all weekend. I've got a lurgi that comes with a sore throat, headache, shakiness and mild nausea - every time I try and do anything other than sit on the lounge I end up a gasping, sweaty, can't stand unsupported mess. We've gone nowhere and done nothing except housework and I had to argue with David to convince him to watch Blade Runner with me. It's doing my head in I tell you! And my sore throat is putting paid to any serious singing practice.

On the other hand, my dog is cuddly and cute, the air-con works, my kids and husband bring me hot and cold drinks when I ask them to. I had lots of dvds to watch and all the clean clothes got folded as I sat on the lounge watching the end of season 6 of Lost. Don't ask, it was a can't look away from the train wreck thing, Adam kept having to leave the room in order to protect the TV.

The reason I was forcing David to watch Blade Runner is that he has to pick a sci-fi movie to prepare a presentation on for English. Of course all he's thinking of is "PRESENTATION  - ARRGH! Run for the hills!" I, meanwhile, am thinking "Cool! English assignments are so much better than when I was at school. Let's watch ALL THE MOVIES!" So, 10 Mum points for enthusiasm, not so many for practicalities. I think we'll watch Serenity next. What? Isn't that what kids are for, to project one's own obsessions on and live vicariously through?

I had planned to cook shepherd's pie tonight. I was lacking enthusiasm for the idea until I pulled up my recipe post from a couple of years ago, now I reckon I might be sufficiently motivated by the prospect of evoking another burst of praise from Tom:

"Smashed potato! Ooo, I LOVE smashed potato! Mum, that's just the way I remember you making shepherds pie. I LOVE your shepherds pie, it's the BEST!"

"You do know it tastes different every time I make it 'cause I don't use a recipe, don't you?"

"Yes, that's what I like best about it, you never know what you're going to get!"

I'll report back if there's a good response tonight!

Friday Fragments - chocolate strawberries edition

Hosted by Mrs4444.

I wasn't really sure I'd have much to decant after a week of daily posting for NaBloPoMo but I guess there's always a few little fragments of frivolity floating around ready to find a home in a Friday Fragments post!

On Monday we began the day with freshly baked homemade sourdough bread. Made by Adam, who got up at 6am to put the oven on, because I'm way too lazy to bake bread that has to be started something like 12 hours before you want to eat it.

He made four loaves and there are still two left in the freezer, might get one out and warm it up for breakfast tomorrow!

My order from Evans arrived this week. The two tops I bought, including the Beth Ditto heart print one, fit just fine but the Beth Ditto floral leggings are way too big. Which is a bummer because I really like them. There will be proper a Outfit of the Day post when I wear the hearts top for longer than 5 minutes and actually select a bottom half that suits it.

On Tuesday David was desperately campaigning to be allowed to buy the new game of the moment, Call of Duty Black Ops. We were stonewalling by telling him sure, he could buy it when he could pay for it. He then shifted his efforts to trying to borrow money from his siblings. Tom spotted an opportunity and made an offer to pay David to do his homework for him. Caitlin felt this was not appropriate. Hilarity ensued.

Tom was most disappointed to find his brilliant plan thwarted by his mean parents but David was happy, Caitlin agreed to lend him the money.

Here's a fun little thing that's been doing the rounds on Facebook and Twitter:

Go to Google Maps. Get Directions. Type Japan as starting point, China as ending point. Go to direction #43

And last but not least, tonight's dessert:

There is also a slab of dried cranberry and macadamia chocolate still hardening up in the fridge but it is not even slightly photogenic.

Now, off you go and check out some other fabulous Friday Fragmenter's posts!

Corn, cucumber and capsicum salad

Purely so I don't forget what I did:

Tom's birthday dinner last night was, by request from the birthday boy, nachos, and because I decided I wanted some extra veggies I grabbed these things:

1 420g can corn kernels drained
1 lebanese cucumber, diced
1/2 red capsicum, diced
olive oil, a drizzle
white wine vinegar, a splash
garlic powder
dried coriander leaves

And made this:

Corn, cucumber and capsicum salad

And it was good. I had leftovers tonight and it was still good. What's in the photo is the leftovers of the leftovers, also known as tomorrow's lunch.

Feel Good Friday

Feel Good Friday is a weekly meme hosted by The Girl Next Door Grows Up (click the button above to go visit her). This week Liz at Eternal Lizdom has stepped up to the mark to host while The Girl has a break. I've seen Liz and others post to the meme over past weeks, it's a nice warm fuzzy idea and I could do with some warm fuzziness, so I'm joining in.

I'm going with the list prompt - 5 things that made you really happy this week.

1. Our Yulefest holiday

At the end of last week we went to Moss Vale for 4 nights and stayed in a big house with a pool table, tennis court, slightly inadequate heating and an open fire place that insisted on filling the house with smoke before settling down to be pretty and toast marshmallows. It was awesome! We were there with fabulous friends Ariane & Crash and Toni & Andrew, there were 8 kids between us, and I'm pretty sure I can safely say everyone had a great time. On Saturday evening there was roast turkey with stuffing, ham, baked veggies, Christmas pud with custard, fruit mince pies, white Christmas slice, a gingerbread house, vast quantities of booze and totally inadequate sleep.

I baked a gingerbread house and some extra 2D house-shaped slabs for the kids to decorate thinking it would keep them occupied for a while. Not so much. Don't get me wrong, it all got decorated, it just didn't take very long AT ALL!

Fastest gingerbread house decorators in the land

Saturday night Yulefest dinner

2. My tablet weaving, I'm quite happy with the way this latest one has turned out.

Just starting out on the ramshorn pattern.

3. Clara cuddles, they always make me happy.

4. Last night's dinner, a variation on this recipe. I added a diced capsicum, used an 800g tin of crushed tomatoes and baby spinach. It was yummy.

Garlic prawn risotto

5. The fact that when I typed the title for this post it came out as "Feel Goof Friday" :-)

Fancy a few more feel good offerings? Head on over to Liz's and check out some other FGF posts.

Friday Fragments

Hosted by Mrs4444.

Time for a Friday Fragments brain dump. Lots of little bits of dubious value thrown together to masquerade as a post. When you've read mine you might like to head on over to Half-Past Kissin' Time and see what other all the other fabulous Friday Fragmenters have on offer.

The kids have been on holidays this week so I've been sleeping in and spending way too much time lazing around at home pretending I'm on holidays too. Despite that there are a few things I have achieved this week:

*****

I cooked a birthday dinner for my now 13 year old. Tacos and chicken fajitas, it was good. But I didn't cook the cake.

Happy birthday David!

*****

I watched lots of Buffy with Caitlin, we've finished season 6 now. What? That's an achievement isn't it?

*****

I finished another length of tablet weaving, it was by far the slowest to weave of all the ones I've done up till now.

*****

I finally got around to putting my tablet weaving, necklaces, earrings and bracelets up for sale on-line - right here on my blog. I have intentions of working out how to add paypal purchasing buttons for each item, but that may take some time.

*****

I threw caution to the wind and added grated carrot and zucchini to my bolognese sauce. No one noticed and it was eaten quite happily. But I didn't like it. However, I strongly suspect I'd not have noticed either had I not known I put the veggies in there.

****

I watched the first two episodes of the new season of Dr Who. And it was good. And I don't hate the new Doctor at all. Looking forward to more!

****

Ummmm. Yep, that's about it!

Anglo-Saxon cooking spree

This little book has been sitting on the shelf in the kitchen for a while now waiting for someone to feel like embarking on a culinary adventure. Around about lunchtime today Adam declared that he was going to cook an Anglo-Saxon feast for dinner. So he did (with the odd anachronism thrown in).

The book is Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England by Mary Savelli and the blurb on the publisher's website reads thus:

These 46 easy to follow recipes will enable you to enjoy a mix of ingredients and flavours that were widely known in Anglo-Saxon England but are rarely experienced today. In addition to the recipes, there is background information about households and cooking techniques.

Adam decided against wrestling with a new bread recipe and went with the dinner rolls recipe he'd used just recently. This time I have a photo. Tom helped cook them and was therefore convinced that he should be able to eat as many as he wanted - I think he scored three in the end.

Dinner rolls, some with poppy seeds

Our main course was Bræde Sceapen Flæsc, otherwise known as Lamb Roast. The leg of lamb was placed in a baking dish with a mix of chopped carrots and onions, stock, cider, flour, ground coriander seeds and dried sage leaves poured over it. It was then covered and slow baked, resulting in tender meat in an absolutely scrumptious gravy - the fat content of which we will not be thinking about!

Roast lamb with delicious gravy of evilness

Dessert was Bæcen Æpplas (Baked Apples). Cored and peeled apples were stuffed with chopped pear and peach, breadcrumbs, cinnamon, butter and honey and baked till the filling was cooked and bubbly. They weren't particularly photogenic but they were utterly delicious.

Half-way through eating his apple Tom said "Can I have another bread roll?" to which I answered "No!" A moment later he announced in great surprise, "For some reason I'm already full!" Yeah, that would be the vast quantity of meat, baked veggies and bread rolls you'd already eaten Tom...

Baked Apples

And, just because cooking three things at once wasn't enough for him, Adam also made Æpplas Syfling (Apple Butter) with honey, pepper, mint and cumin. We tried some on the bread rolls, rather nice but VERY sweet.

Apple Butter

I'm stuffed.

An afternoon at the beach

This afternoon, just after lunch, Adam decided to bake bread rolls. I do like that he's impulsive sometimes but it would be nice if he didn't so frequently decide that he can do something in x minutes when in actual fact it is going to take x minutes + 1 hour. Anyway, Tom had a great time helping to make the rolls so it was totally worth it!

The bread rolls came with us to the beach, filling the car with the scent of freshly baked bread for the 40 minute drive. I completely failed to take a photo of them because we were in a hurry to get going once they were cooked and by the time we were sitting around the picnic table with dinner laid out before us everyone was way too hungry to allow for such frivolities as blog photography.

We took both Adam's and my mum along with us and, when we arrived at Avalon beach, were able to plonk ourselves down in the shade of one of the huge pine trees that overlook the sand.

Avalon Beach

Sunscreen was applied and Tom, Caitlin and Grandma made a bee-line for the water. David had decided that being sandy and salty was over-rated and settled down to sit with Nan.

David has engaged his anti-camera device.

Adam and I wandered down to the water's edge and stood knee deep in the waves watching the kids in the water with my mum. We ended up staying there, talking about stuff, with only the occasional larger wave interrupting us, for most of an hour. It was probably the best conversation time we've had in weeks. Eventually we thought we'd better go back and be friendly to Nan and Dave. A little later Adam and Tom headed over to the ocean pool and Dave and I followed.

The ocean pool is down where the sand meets the rocks at the base of the headland.

Ha! Got him before he could engage anti-camera device!

I was planning on just walking in far enough to get the sand out of the legs of my boardies but ended up going in for a swim after all, the water was just too enticing. We swam over to the edge where the waves of the incoming tide were just beginning to slosh over the concrete wall and rested there watching the surf break on the rocks. I'd have taken some photos but my camera was in David's pocket and he'd got fed up with watching us in the pool and had buggered off back to our spot on the beach.

After all that swimming and walking over soft sand and floating in the pool Tom was exhausted.

Grandma, David and Caitlin, however, were still going strong.

Adam and his mum went off in search of dinner while the rest of us lounged about on the beach, Grandma and Tom did go back for one last surf before the food arrived. Fish and chips and prawns and, of course, the rolls. At the end of the meal, after having devoured a huge amount of food including 4 of the, admittedly small, bread rolls, Tom asked "Seeing as we've been so good, can we have ice-cream?"

So we did.

Pictorial fragments from the past week

Hosted by Mrs4444.

This week's Friday Fragments has, very conveniently, been put off till Saturday which means I didn't have to be incredibly rude and spend part of Christmas Day hiding away behind the laptop in order to participate. Of course just because I didn't have to have net time yesterday doesn't mean I stayed completely away.... I'm so addicted. Head on over to Half-Past Kissin' Time for more fragments from the festive season.

****

Our camping trip to Fingal Bay last weekend kicked off to a great start with us stuck in a traffic jam on the freeway, we took 2.5 hours to travel about 5km. I was able to get online from my phone and find out that the reason for the jam was a caravan accident, that there was a rescue helicopter on the road and that all lanes were closed. So we resigned ourselves to being late and were very grateful for cool weather, fully charged Nintendo DS's and that it wasn't us who'd managed to flip their huge caravan and have the roof of their 4WD removed (not sure if that was due to the accident or the rescuing). We arrived with just enough time up our sleeves to get the tent all set up before the light faded.

****

The next morning Tom was ready to head to the beach at 7am but, as it was still quite overcast and cool and we had shopping that needed doing, we made him wait for a while. By the time we got to the beach there was not a cloud in the sky and we were all well and truly ready to get wet. The water was crystal clear and FREEZING but that didn't stop anyone - not even me, but there are no pictures to prove that ;-)

This was about as big as the waves got.

****

On Christmas Eve we went to Adam's brother's place for lunch. I made a Greek salad and a pear, blue cheese and walnut salad, and we took some prawns along as our contributions to the meal and we sat around eating and talking while the kids played in the swimming pool. It's possible Caitlin may have been in there just a little too long.

Wrinkly fingers!

****

Christmas lunch was at my Mum's place and we were very happy that my 99 year old Grandma was able to join us. It was quite an effort for her to be there but she was glad to be there and, as I told her, it's such a wonderful thing for the kids to know their Great Grandma and be able to share special occasions with her. As we sat around the table after the meal Caitlin ran off and grabbed her new sketchbook and Derwent pencils and drew a portrait of Great Grandma which she then gave to her to take home. I think it was a bit of a hit.

Caitlin with Great Grandma

****

Caitlin scored big on the art front for Christmas, as well at the set of 72 Derwent watercolour pencils, she got a desk easel with paints, brushes, a palate and a couple of canvases, they seem to have gone down well.

Caitlin painting a dragon

****

One of Tom's presents was a drawing kit with a book on how to draw mythological creatures, this has been a huge success with Adam and Caitlin getting in on the act as well. This one is a collaborative effort between Tom and Daddy.

Dragon by Tom (with some help from Dad)

****

Today we have eschewed all the traditional Boxing day pursuits of movie going, sales shopping, cricket or Sydney to Hobart yacht race watching and have spent the day lazing around doing nothing much. Adam did get a bit energetic for a while though and whipped up a loaf of Ginger Beer Bread using the Spiced Ginger Loaf recipe from our bread machine's instruction book and using Lord Nelson Old Admiral beer in place of water. It was pretty damn good.

Bread, cheese, ham and pickles. Perfect.

Chorizo and smoked chicken risotto

I've been meaning to make a risotto that involved chorizo for quite some time so when Adam announced this morning that he'd really like risotto for dinner I decided tonight would be the night. Not having a recipe that quite hit the mark I decided to experiment and wandered about Woolworths popping anything that seemed like a good idea into my trolley.

As I began cooking tonight, Tom asked my Mum if she was staying for dinner - she'd been helping out with the kids' homework as she often does on a Monday afternoon, because she is made of all kinds of awesome. I warned her that I was inventing and said that of course she was welcome to stay and yes, I was sure there'd be plenty of food (mostly because I was pretty sure the kids wouldn't eat much). I was right about Caitlin not eating and Dave wasn't overly thrilled, but Mum had seconds and Tom asked for thirds!

1/4 cup dry white wine
1.5L chicken stock - use a low salt stock, I use Massel's salt reduced chicken style stock cubes
2 chorizo sausages sliced
2 cups sliced mushrooms
1 tablespoon olive oil
25g butter
1 leek, white part only, finely sliced
2 heaped teaspoons minced garlic
2 cups arborio rice
1 smoked chicken breast, skinned and sliced
1/4 cup marinated roasted red capsicum, rinsed and diced
a few handfuls of baby spinach

1. Heat the stock and wine in a saucepan and keep it at a low simmer.


2. In a large non-stick pan cook the chorizo until it begins to brown, drain the fat then add the mushrooms, once the mushrooms are cooked remove both from pan and set aside.


3. Add oil, butter, leek and garlic to pan and cook until transparent. Stir in the rice until well coated.


4. Add the stock 1/2 cup at a time stirring constantly over a medium heat, each time waiting until all the liquid is absorbed before adding the next 1/2 cup. About half-way through drain and reserve any juices from the mushrooms and add the juices to the pan. Once all the stock has been added taste test the rice, if it's still a little on the firm side add hot water in small amounts and continue stirring until the rice is cooked through.


5. Add the mushroom and chorizo mix, the diced capsicum, sliced smoked chicken breast and spinach. Stir gently until the spinach has wilted. Serves 6 people as long as 2 of them think you are poisoning them.
   

Soup!

When the weather turns cooler and the fridge is full of veggies that really need to be eaten what else is there to do but cook soup? So out came the big pot for the stove, and the crockpot too, and I got to chopping veggies.

Vegetable and barley soup

For this one I used 4 onions, 4 teaspoons of minced garlic, half a bunch of celery - cooked in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil for a few minutes - then 4 parsnips, 4 carrots, a swede, 800g can of crushed tomatoes, 2.5L of beef style veggie stock (Massel cubes), a sploosh or two of soy sauce, 3-4 bay leaves and 1 cup of barley - simmered till the barley was tender - then I added 3 zucchinis and some mushrooms.

Pumpkin soup

The pumpkin soup has 3 onions, 1/4 head of cauliflower, a whole butternut pumpkin, 2L of chicken style veggie stock and a generous sprinkling of black pepper and nutmeg all chucked into the crockpot and cooked on high for 6 hours before attacking it with a stab mixer. I know it has turned out right when the spoon stands up in it!

It's been one of those days

It took me about an hour tonight to offload to Adam all my angst about today. Poor man.

Work was busy but good, though I was 2 cups of coffee short by the time I was heading back to pick the kids up from school. This may have had a detrimental effect on the rest of my afternoon.

The kids were fighting before we'd left the school grounds (Again. Have I mentioned their tendency to do this?) - can't blame the lack of coffee for that - and things pretty much went downhill from there. We had homework angst, hyper screeching silliness, repetitive quoting of movies (we're talking the one line over and over again here, they just say it back and forth between themselves), yelling over the top of each other, and of Grandma and me (I think Mum being here this arvo probably saved my sanity) and groans and grumbles over being asked to help clean up the house.

Then I started cooking dinner.

"What are we having?"

"It's a frittata." I say, as I chop up onions, red and green capsicum and left-over pork, ginger and shallot sausages.

"Eww! Egg with sausages! Gross!" This from the child that had sausages, bacon and eggs for breakfast at the cafe on Saturday morning. (Also, he was the only one who actually ate the frittata.)

Yeah, I'm a sucker for punishment. Nothing like scare the kids cooking to top off an awesomely bad day.

Let's just say the dog ate well.

(So did Adam and I, it was a good frittata.)

After dinner the kids apparently decided it would be fun to engage in a bout of shrieking at each other in the hallway accompanied by the slamming of doors. At this point, on the verge of completely losing my cool, I picked up my keys and purse and left the house. Didn't even tell them I was going. I passed Adam on his way home a block from our place which made me feel a little better about buggering off like that. I came back with a maccas cappuccino a few minutes later, Adam headed off to sword fighting with David and Tom and Caitlin stayed very quiet for the rest of the evening.

And I'm not even telling you about the fun phone calls I had to deal with. *sigh*

Interview time

I've been a little slow with this one! Back at the end of January Liz at Eternal Lizdom invited her readers to request an interview from her, which I duly did. Shortly afterwards, her questions arrived in my inbox and I opened a draft post, began to write, got stuck and it's been sitting there ever since. Today I determined to finish - and here it is.

This is one of those pass-it-on meme type things so if you want me to interview you, leave a comment and say “Interview me!” and I'll send you 5 questions to answer. Liz also invited her readers to ask their own questions of her, that seems fun too so if there's anything you want to know about me, ask away!

Now, on to the interview:

1. What's in your fridge? What do you have to always have in your kitchen? Brave enough to share a picture of your fridge or pantry?

I like having a well stocked fridge and pantry so the answer to both of the first two parts of this is usually much the same. These are things that are in my fridge pretty much all the time: milk, cheeses (low fat slices, fetta, brie, smoked cheddar, edam), ham, salami, devon, butter, margarine, eggs, bacon, pickles (dill, sweet mustard, onions), mustards (dijon, wholegrain, american), kalamata olives, capers, anchovies, juices (breakfast, lemon, lime), salad dressings (balsamic, coleslaw), sauces (soy, fish, oyster, sweet & sour, worcestershire, tartare, cocktail, tomato, BBQ) mayonnaise, spreads (jams, lemon curd, lime marmalade), minced garlic, chili paste, wasabi, carrots, tomatoes, baby spinach, cos lettuce, shallots, cucumber, broccoli, mushrooms, lemons, grapes, apples, low fat sour cream, yoghurt.

Here's a photo of my fridge post-party after yesterday's BBQ, the bottle of Coke makes me cringe, I hate the stuff, but the containers full of left-overs will make meals today nice and easy.

My pantry I hate, it's a horrible design with half the shelving tucked into the corner on the left and accessible only by people with extra long arms and x-ray vision.



The oven used to be above the bench beside the pantry, when I got a new one it wouldn't fit in the same spot so Adam built these shelves for me to sit in the now empty space. My pantry shelves go right back to the wall behind the spice rack.

2. What's your parenting philosophy? Do you wish there was something you'd done differently? What concerns do you have as you move forward in your parenting journey?

I don't know that I've ever tried to articulate what I do as a parent in terms of a philosophy. I've just done what felt right, what worked. I listen to them to find out what they need. I've always explained why when I'm asking something of them. I'm honest and open with them, if I'm grumpy and impatient I'll tell them I know I'm over-reacting to things and that I'm sorry (but that they'd better bloody well cut it out or my head will explode!) I tell them I love them all the time. I make a conscious effort to notice and say thank you when they do good things. I tell them how proud I am when they make an honest effort at something.

The one thing I wish we'd done differently was not to have bought so many gorram toys. We indulged them because we could and we paid for it. Kids who think they are entitled to stuff are not pleasant creatures. I had to do some pretty heavy-handed deprogramming on that front when David was about 6. Even now they have a habit of assuming that pretty much anything is theirs for the asking and then being terribly put out when we don't deliver. I'm often heard exclaiming "Which part of "NO" are you having trouble understanding?!" (Actually I exaggerate, they're not too bad now.)

I'm looking forward to watching them grow up (a lot!) and as we approach the teen years I'm conscious of the need to keep communication lines open and of the potential difficulties that come with negotiating the transition from authority figure to friend. I hope that I've established a strong enough foundation of trust and respect between us that when the hormones kick in it doesn't get too horrific! But mostly I just plan on taking things as they come.

3. I know you love to read. What 5 books have had the greatest impact on your life?

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien - I read The Hobbit when I was 8 years old and we were living in the US for a few months. It led me to read The Lord of the Rings as soon as we got back to Australia and my Dad could dig out his old copy - a single volume paperback edition. I took 3 months to read TLOTR and it was the beginning of my love for SF&F. (As I sit in the lounge room with my laptop the kids have the Return of the King DVD on, I keep getting distracted and watching the movie instead of writing.)

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut - my first encounter with serious hard sci-fi, this was lent to me by my year 7 English teacher.

The Bible - does that seem an odd pick for an atheist? I grew up as a member of the Uniting Church (an organisation for which I stil have a great deal of respect), my understanding of human nature, my ethics and my morality have as a foundation things I learned from reading and discussing the Bible as a child and teenager. It would be dishonest of me to leave this complicated, beautiful, terrible, very human book off this list.

One day, possibly when I was still in primary school, maybe early high school, I picked up a book from my parents' shelves, the title of which I don't even remember. It was a history of and comparison of religions. Learning about the history of religions and the huge variety (and also the sameness) of religious thought across time and cultures was both fascinating and enlightening.

I'm going to have to stop at 4 because I can't pick out any other single book as having had a notably significant impact for me. Everything I read teaches me something, that's one of the things I love about it.

4. What is your Aussie impression of the US? If you could have a 5 minute, private conversation with President Obama, what would you tell him? What do you want Americans to know about Australia?

Oh my. This one's a bit tricky. See, my last in person experience of the US, back in 1985 was as a miserable 14 year old who had been dragged away from her first boyfriend to come and live in Boulder, Colorado for 5 months while her father was on sabbatical and working at NCAR and the HAO. I hated it. My favourite shows were not on TV, and we had no money to spare so we didn't have cable. I felt out of place at school because the subjects everyone else was doing didn't match up well with the Australian curriculum and I ended up with a very peculiar timetable which had me spending time with and befriending people who were up to 3 years older than me. On the up side one one of those older friends saved my sanity by turning out to be a D&D playing, sci-fi reading geek and thus a veritable soul-mate. Plus, she lent me all her Alan Dean Foster books to read - thanks Kris, I wish I'd managed to keep in touch with you back in the days of snail-mail.

Erm, I'm rambling.

I don't see the US as a monolithic entity that it would be reasonable to make any blanket statements about. I feel resentment at the ubiquitous American cultural influence on Australia but I have a passionate love of certain American TV shows. I hated the way the Howard government sucked up to the Bush government but I know that Australia does benefit in certain ways from a close diplomatic relationship with the US (there are some big disadvantages too unfortunately). I'm disturbed by the level of hatred shown by some sections of the US population to other human beings but I know there are people just as bad here in Australia (and everywhere else) and that there are many Americans who fight every day for an end to such prejudices.

If I was to be in a position to speak privately to Obama I think I'd be hard pressed to think of anything to say beyond "Good luck, watch your back and please, please, please bite the bullet and get universal health care happening for the US!"

What do I want Americans to know about Australia? Hmm, let's see...I know! You know all those stories about Australia's dangerous, deadly wildlife? They're ALL TRUE! Especially the one about drop bears. Also, Vegemite is the most delicious thing ever and you must try it one day.

5. Why do you blog? What got you started? What do you get out of it?

For me blogging is a creative outlet, a way of participating in a community and a way to record things that I don't want to forget.

Way back in my teens I was a pretty regular diarist (note to self: you really should dig those old diaries out and get rid of at least some of them - yes, I've still got them) but I hadn't done any journaling for years. I didn't keep a pregnancy diary, I never filled in those Baby Books I was given when the kids were born and I was an absolutely chronic at forgetting to bring the camera when we went out somewhere.

When I started Weight Watchers (again) back in Feb '06 I got involved with the forums. WW, in their wisdom, has very limited forums - no pics, peculiar defaults for the display and sorting of topics and threads etc - so many people were keeping a blog to document their "weight loss journey" and I hopped right on board. When I look back over the first, say, 18 months or so of my blog I'm sometimes tempted to do some pruning. There's a lot of stuff in there that irritates or saddens me now but there's also a bunch of kinda cool stuff too and my past is part of who I am today so I baulk at getting rid of it.

By now I'm thoroughly hooked on the journaling aspect of blogging, I'm now prone to responding to events by reaching for my camera and thinking "I have to blog this!" (I'm not always quick enough with the camera though.) I have visions of the kids, or indeed myself, reading this stuff years from now (to which end I may use this one day). I love being part of the blogging community. I love the laughter, learning, challenges to think, companionship, the chance to commune with like minded people, the discovery of common ground in diversity.

And I get a huge kick out of the fact that there are people out there who have never met me and actually want to read what I write.

Yeah, time to 'fess up, it's all about the ego boost folks. So leave comments dammit!

Food and love (Part 1)

Some time ago Liz posted a piece titled Love You With Food, it ends with these lines:

There is a legacy of love and food and cooking in my family. I'm so glad to be part of it and so glad it doesn't end with me.

I wish I could say the same thing about my family. It's not that there was any lack of love, or indeed of good food, in my childhood - far from it! But somewhere along the way food became a problem instead of an uncomplicated celebration and the legacy I inherited could be better described as a fraught relationship, with food often being both the focus of special times and at the same time an enemy to be controlled and guarded against.

It's hard for me to write about this without feeling that I'm being too harsh about the choices my mum made when I was a kid and as reached my late teens. I know she was doing the best she could as a mother and many of her choices are ones I have made too. My dad played his part in shaping my relationship with food too, and mum's for that matter, but he wasn't ever much involved in the shopping and cooking side of things, he comes into play more on the emotional side and with 20/20 hindsight we now know that much of what he did was down to him being bipolar (he was diagnosed about 5 years ago).

So I'm going to talk about my good food memories first.

Liz writes about the foods her mom cooked for holiday meals, dishes that were loved by particular family members -

"something that my mother [had] made for that person. Ryan's Stove Top. Jason's Roasted Potatoes and Carrots. Jeff's Angel Food Cake. Ted's Chocolate Cream. Martha's Cheesecake."

My mum did cook special things for us, I'm told I requested veal casserole, which featured regularly at our family table, for dinner on my 3rd birthday and I remember boiled fruit cakes being made, also for birthdays. What I don't remember much of is Mum cooking anything just for the fun of it, I don't think she really liked cooking very much, so most of my good memories of food and Mum are of once off type experiences. Except for when we were camping, there were lots of camping trips and something about an open fire seemed to demand frivolous fare - damper cooked in the coals, twist bread toasted on sticks over the open fire, marshmallows all singed and gooey, jaffles made in a proper jaffle iron with their edges burnt black and filled with hot baked beans and melted cheese. Good times.

Grandma (Mum's mum) and Nana (Dads' mum) both had special things they would make for when we came to visit. Grandma did the Christmas cake every year, there were always homemade scones (apparently she used to win prizes for her scones) and slices for afternoon tea, and baked dinners at Grandma's house were often followed by a baked fruit crumble. Nana used to make a fabulously sherry drenched trifle which I famously loved so much that when I was very young I was discovered after the meal with the empty trifle dish spooning the remaining sherry out of the bottom of the dish and exclaiming "Lovely gravy!" She also made rock cakes, I think I have her recipe for them somewhere but I've never made them, must do that one day, they were good and we'd get to take home the left-over ones with us when it was time to leave. Nan's Christmas specialty was hot brandy sauce which she would nurse over "a bead of gas" for hours on end, used to drive my dad nuts. We might mock but it was awesome with Christmas pudding. My brother makes it now, he's less precious about the slow heating, it tastes about the same but it tends to separate a little and I don't remember Nan's doing that.

When I was first going out with Adam and he started coming over to our place for dinner my friends all asked him if he'd survived the ultimate culinary test. Had my mother fed him the dreaded Chicken and Broccoli*? Of course the answer was yes, it was one of my mum's staple feeding of guests dishes, I loved it but I gather it caused much trauma to my friends over the years.

Oh, here's another one! Each year we would go to the Royal Easter Show, almost always on the Thursday before Good Friday. Mum and Dad would come and pick us up from school at lunchtime and we'd spend the afternoon and evening at the show, coming home after the fireworks display. The food that was available at the show back then was truly awful, overpriced and almost exclusively deep-fried, pretty much my mother's worst nightmare in food terms, so Mum would try and take food with us so we wouldn't have to buy dinner there. One year she made Cornish Pasties, they were awesome, I have the most vivid memory of unwrapping them from their foil packages, dolloping tomato sauce on them and savouring every bite. As far as I can recall this was the only time Mum ever made them.

When we were living in the US, in Boulder, Colorado, my mum perfected the high altitude pavlova. I gather her first attempt as per cooking in Sydney was not a success but pretty soon she had it down to a fine art and the Aussie dessert (yeah yeah, I know, shut up you Kiwis and let us cling to our illusions :P) was shared far and wide. Or, you know, with anyone who came to dinner or at any "bring a plate" function. I seem to remember there was some re-adjustment required on returning to Sydney, Mum being unable to remember what she used to do before the high altitude tweaks were made.

I'm actually really reaching for good memories here. I know there must have been many, many wonderful meals and a great deal of my mother's love for the family poured into providing for us. It kind of scares and saddens me that the not so wonderful stuff has overshadowed the good stuff so much. In fact, I'm getting a bit depressed thinking about it, don't know when I'll ever get around to writing Part 2....


*BBQ chook cut up, placed in a casserole dish with a layer of steamed broccoli on top. Then pour over a can of cream of mushroom soup mixed with some milk, thyme, lemon juice and maybe extra mushrooms, sprinkle with grated cheese and bake till hot and bubbly with the cheese nicely browned. Serve over rice and glare at any child that dares protest (my sister wasn't a fan and nor are my kids sadly).

Pork and beans?

Hmph! I wanted to embed the Weezer vid but You Tube has embedding disabled for it. Oh well, you all know it anyway don't you? Moving along....

I was going to take it easy on the culinary front this evening and whip up some couscous with onion, capsicum, peas and corn to serve with grilled pork loin medallions...and then discovered I didn't have any couscous.

Oh bugger.

So I had to improvise and it ended up turning into another Nanny Ogg type cooking adventure, here's what I came up with:

Mim's Pork and Beans (as christened by Tom, Adam wanted to call it "Weezer")

some butter
1 brown onion, diced
1/2 small red capsicum, diced
2 heaped tspn minced garlic
a splosh of olive oil
600g diced pork loin
a bit of water
800g can diced tomatoes
1 Massel chicken stock cube
4 shakes of dried chili flakes
2 bay leaves
a few shakes of ground cumin seeds
a few shakes of ground cardamom
a couple of shakes of dried thyme
a couple of shakes of ground allspice
freshly ground black pepper
a couple of shloshes of Worcestershire sauce
420g can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

Melt butter in large saucepan and cook onion, capsicum and garlic for a few minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.
Add olive oil to pan and brown pork.
Add water to deglaze the pan (the pork can stay in there while you do this).
Add onion and capsicum mix and tinned tomatoes. Start rummaging through the spice rack grabbing this and that, reading the "what this is good with" blurb, realise you have no idea what this dish really is (chili? casserole? something else entirely?) and end up throwing in a semi-random collection of herbs and spices.
Add stock cube and Worcestershire sauce.
Be suddenly afflicted with a Weezer earworm and decide to throw in a can of beans.
Simmer until pork is tender the cries of hunger from the family who were expecting to wait about 10 minutes for dinner become too much to bear.

Tom got very excited while I was cooking this, I think he was fascinated by the process of inventing a recipe, he was watching everything I put in and then running to the other end of the house to give updates to the others. He kept telling me how great a cook I am and how much he loves me. It certainly made cooking the meal into something special instead of an inconvenient chore (I was tired and not really looking forward to tackling the kitchen).

We served it up over rice, Adam made Weezer jokes, Dave told me it looked yum and I held my breath as Caitlin tasted it.

"Yum, this is good Mum, you should make it for Grandma or Grandy or Nana."

And then I fell off my chair in shock.

It did need longer cooking, the meat wasn't as tender as I'd have liked, I reckon it'd be pretty good in a crockpot with the beans added towards the end of the cooking time. The spices were fairly mild, if I didn't have to accommodate the kids I'd bump up the chili. Definitely worth doing again sometime.

Gingerbread House - Aussie style

Here it is, a definitively Australian gingerbread house, inspired by Megan, baked by me and decorated by my kids - with a little help from me and my Mum (ok, I confess, the kids got bored and Mum and I finished the job, the lolly encrusted sides are totally Grandma's fault).

Give me a home among the gumtrees

With lots of plum trees
A sheep or two,

a kangaroo

A clothesline out the back

Verandah out the front

And an old rocking chair

There's an outdoor dunny and a water tank (though it's a little on the small side).

We've even left the front door open for Santa, can't get much more Aussie than that!