Grizzlewick = 4

Happy birthday Mr Moo.

How much longer?/How much more?

1. Everyone should have their kids’ birthday out-sourced. I might be a leftie, but it’s clear I am still, to some extent, an evil capitalist pig/providing stimulus for the local economy*. We went to an indoor playground and then to a local café which catered awesomely for $10/head (grown ups) and $4/head (kids) – menu was replete with mushroom arancini balls, three different mini cakes, several types of filled baguette, morrocan meatballs on sticks and the like plus REAL COFFEE. I spent less money than had I catered at home. AND I didn’t have to clean up.

2. Saturday’s Spanish dinner party was quite the success. After enormous aforementioned lunch, cake in the afternoon and a cheese/biscuits calamity I made:

Tortilla (served cold) – awesome, although didn’t have the high-res quality of the truckstop version I had in northern Spain – probably because I haven’t been making it every day for thirty years.

Paella with chicken and chorizo – fiddly, but very good. However can I just warn everyone that no short-grain rice dish ever just simmers itself to victory…”leave for 30 minutes” is about the worst thing you could do. After eating the paella, my friend Red declared that “the barbecue season is over”. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds impressive.

Avocado, mango and rocket salad – kind of made this one up: four small avocadoes, mango flesh, chopped tomatoes tossed with coriander and rocket leaves and squeezed over with lemon.

Stephanie Alexander’s fudgy chocolate mousse** - you know that a dessert is a winner when you have to take a deep breath between every bite, and the whipped cream which accompanies it provides a welcome respite from the richness.

3. I chose completely appropriate wines for my Spanish dinner party. This was made somewhat easier by my dad’s mate (who has a vineyard/runs a wine appreciation course/is some kind of Frasier-style “cellar master”) being in the local cellars when I arrived. So I let him do all the work. I was so pleased with myself (and NOT EVEN DRUNK – this is what comes of making elaborate feasts) that I may have stupidly announced: “And it was only $25 a bottle – that’s not even expensive”.

4. Further to the above, I would argue that an elaborate dinner party is one way to reduce your alcohol consumption. If you have to stir paella, whip cream, peel avocadoes and squeeze lemon juice all at the same time, you’re unlikely to have time to drink. However, if you panic, you might be inclined to say “screw it all, where’s the pizza number?” and sit down with a bottle of vodka.

5. Mr Fix was forced to defend his behaviour at dinner, and used the observation “the internet is full of people who have too much to say*** and no one to listen, and they’re boring and nerds etc etc” as an excuse for getting a MySpace site. I think his logic may have been impeded by several alcoholic beverages.

6. You know you’ve spent a day with three boys aged three when you start to look yearningly at the clock at 3pm, wishing bed/wine time ever nearer. Grizzlewick and his friend Cricket were up at 6:30am and essentially didn’t stop all day. Lovely joined them at the indoor playground at 10am and they did not stop moving for NINE HOURS. It was so exhausting I didn’t really even collect any colorful anecdotes for WDTAOK.

7. All those people who thought I was strange for moving to the country should really go to my local Chinese take-away which is owned and staffed by delightful people who moved to my town from Shanghai. That must be quite the culture shock.

8. Is it wrong to insist on pronouncing paella “pie-eeya”? Too bad, I am just that kind of pretentious snob****.




* and **** Maybe I’m Paul Keating….

** If you have Stephanie’s big orange book and are inclined to make this, don’t be frightened when the chocolate won’t hold all the butter and it goes a bit lumpy – this was a much-lauded consistency when I served it up to the table.

*** While I screeched “are you talking about me? You’re talking about me, aren’t you?” in the background

While you were out....

To: Wolf and Cub*

Message taken by: Gigglewick

Fu Manchu dropped by from the late '90s. Something about "major identity fraud"?

..................................................................................................................................................

To: The staff of Alexander Downer
From: Gigglewick

The minute you are as hot as Rob Lowe, please feel free to call back with some West Wing fantasies (I assume these are ones where you crush the Bartlet White House into a small speck for being a haven of leftie filth?)

........................................................................................................................................................

To: The Raconteurs

Message taken by: Gigglewick

Joe Jackson called. He wants his song back

..........................................................................................................................................................

* I should point out that I quite like Wolf and Cub.

By popular demand: Indonesian Spiced Eggs

I hope you all realise that this blog post is going to blow my secret identity with a few people.

Anyway, here is the fabulous ISE recipe, shared with me by Mr Fix's mum.

I was skeptical about it - but believe me it is a taste sensation.

I would probably eat it every meal if I could


Ingredients

6 large eggs
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tsp fresh ginger, crushed
2 tsp vegetable oil
2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp lemon grass powder*
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp blachan (dried shrimp paste)
2 tsp Tomato paste
1 tbs dark brown sugar
2 tbs sambal oelek or hot chilli sauce
185 ml coconut milk
salt and pepper
fresh coriander (garnish)

Method

Place eggs in a saucepan of cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer for eight minutes, then remove from heat and cool under running cold water

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat the oil and saute the onion, garlic and ginger until very well coloured

Add the spices, blachan and tomato paste and cook briefly

Add the sugar, sambal and coconut milk. Simmer for 15 minutes on a moderate heat, stirring frequently until the sauce is thick and aromatic

Add salt and pepper to taste

Cut the eggs in half (lengthways) and heat gently in the sauce before serving. Garnish with coriander.


Serving suggestions: This is ace, ace ace with chicken satays, a pilaf and broccoli with oyster sauce. It's also good on its own with plain rice.

It has become one of the most common "special occasion" requests at my dinner table.

If I haven't gained "the people's ovation and fame forever" for this sharing of "secret sauces", I will be mightily disappointed.




* as previously noted, fresh lemongrass will do, but it's not as good.

Gareth Gareth tell me more...

I don’t know how many of you current readers read my somewhat soppy paean to Bobby Kennedy early in my blogging days.

I’ve recently seen Keating! for the second time. It was bloody brilliant, as I had expected it would be. Mike McLeish is sparkling as Keating, and the supporting cast was whip-snappingly good.

However, I had a lightning bolt moment on the way home which went something like this:

“Who would have thought that Keating is the Whitlam of our generation?”

I certainly didn’t hit on this until last Thursday. And when I saw that same show for the first time, it certainly escaped me. It was only last Thursday, at 10:37pm, that I saw the parallels for sadly unreconstructed lefties of my generation. Okay, so he wasn’t perfect (note to my generational forebears, neither was Whitlam….just saying) and he wasn’t always as left as we would have liked him to be, but for crying out loud, consider the alternative!

For me Keating, as a political phenomenon, has the same sadness attached to him as Kennedy (sans assassination, of course). It has been a constant horror to me that everything he began has been almost systematically undone by Howard. It’s clear they hate each other, but how much of what Howard has sought to achieve has been driven by his anti-Keating agenda?

I know some one who interviewed Keating a few years ago (unusual, he is quite the media recluse). This person came away from the meeting desolately depressed. She said to me “It’s just such a huge, huge loss to the nation. I sat there, and I couldn’t believe that we had let him go. Why did we do that?”

I think that part of the answer lies in Howard’s success. Keating certainly had us on a trajectory that required many people to step way outside their comfort zones in order to take a punt on the country being a better place to live. I’m sure not all were convinced by his vision.

But there are things that have been moved so far off the agenda now under the “reign” of Howard that in fact, perhaps their time has passed. In 1995, a treaty with our Indigenous brothers and sisters (achieved in so many other post-colonial nations) seemed a real possibility. I think the word “treaty” may have well been outlawed in this country, unless it is being sung by Tim Finn in a Yothu Yindi song, and even then we’ll pretend it has no political ramifications, just a kickin’ bassline and a white-hot organ sample.

The prospect of a republic also wanes – it will be an age before another leader tries that one.

Keating was moving us towards an engagement in our own region that made sense. He saw the possibilities for Australia as an independent nation which under Howard’s watch has merely shifted from being UK reliant to being US reliant.


Without Keating there would have been no Triple J – and the fact that we had to rely on Howard’s kids to talk him out of axing JJJ (I’m sure being kicked to death by teenage contemporaries is a good motivator) tells you all you need to know about the differences in the two men. And in case you’re wondering, I’m not arguing that Keating was cooler than Howard. In fact I’m arguing that Keating was cooler, smarter, more progressive, more uniting and generally better*.

I don’t wish Keating back on the political stage. But I do wish he had been given the chance to enact his agenda, which despite what his detractors may have you believe, was aimed at uniting the country despite the political fall-out, not polarising communities using hate and fear to ensure a longer term of office.


* There are those who would argue that winning the 1996 election makes Howard “smarter”. But the same people will tell you that Jeff Kennett is “smarter” than Steve Bracks, which if it were true would make the first a lie. I’m willing to give you one, but not both. If you want my respect for your reasoned argument, you’re going to need some consistency.

Well there's love on the menu/you don't know what you're missing

I often claim that I am not a housewife, or at least that I am not a very good one. I do my best, but I am often paralysed by rage that there has not been some kind of nanobot invented to clean my house. Stupid patriarchy in the scientific world - it's all impotence cures and no miracle household cleaner...and I mean an actual CLEANER, not just a product to allegedly make it easier [here endeth rant - or does it?].

The one thing I do like to do is cook. And given that I have a dishwasher, I don’t even mind cleaning up afterwards, most of the time.

Anyway, on the weekend I indulged my urge to cook. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my mother’s fantastically green thumb has produced a bumper harvest this year, and thanks to she and the delightful folk at the local fruit-and-veg I concocted the following...

1. Enormous vat of vegetable soup. I did this before I checked how much room was in the freezer. Guess what I’m eating for every meal this week? Making vegetable soup always reminds me of being pregnant, as while in “extreme nesting mode” (two days before Grizzlewick’s birth, but I wasn’t to know that at the time) I struggled five blocks to the local fruit and veg and home with about 10 kgs of vegies and no trolley: hey, I was only 8 months 27 days pregnant, and as several people reminded me…some women work through their entire pregnancy, give birth in the fields and then keep on harvesting rice/coffee/microprocessors*

2. Homemade roast beetroot dip. It’s awesome. I made Mr Fix go out and buy dry biscuits at 7pm last night so I could eat it. When he took a little while coming home from the supermarket I just started eating it with a spoon.

3. Oven-dried tomatoes….require patience. Stephanie Alexander’s book claims they take 10 hours, I had mine going for the best part of two days. They taste nothing like the ones from the deli**, they are much, much better, and make you feel all smug inside, a bit like Martha Stewart.

4. Chocolate cake. To be fair to Grizzlewick, he did most of the work here. I just measured some stuff out while he patiently stirred the thing into oblivion and then covered himself in the lickings from the bowl. It was actually an excellent cake.

5. “Simple” banana cake as per Stephanie Alexander’s bible. It is simple, probably, when you’re not trying to measure all the ingredients for a chocolate cake at the same time. Also, I am the only person to eat any of this so far, as chocolate cake is the preference when it is available to Mr Fix and Grizzlewick. Interesting to see what they’ll choose tonight when there are no other options.

6. Dried herbs***. Well, they’re not so much made, as started. I have been studiously collecting bottle shop paper bags (no, really, I have) to place the herbs in while they dry (thyme, curry, lemongrass). I know all those television cooks claim that dried herbs are evil. I don’t agree, and considering my local providore’s steadfast refusal to stock lemongrass powder (which I now can’t find in Melbourne either), I have no choice.


Things I have learnt about cooking this weekend

1. Ha ha ha ha Grizzlewick you ate vegetable soup (pureed and mixed into cous cous)****

2. Cakes cooked with butter taste better than those cooked with margarine
Chocolate trumps banana (which is why that 90kg life size son-of-god was made out of couverture, not tropical fruit)

3. I can crack eggs one-handed. It’s only a matter of time before I have my own cable show

4. Telling stories about cooking requires a lot of footnotes*****


I am currently planning a stupidly extravagant dinner for the “grown ups” on the weekend of Grizzlewick’s birthday. Although I am not known to browse the internet looking for home-improvement/cooking/entertaining ideas like one of my friends (who is infinitely more stylish, suave and sophisticated than me, which has only the most marginal relationship to her browsing and more to do with her innate superbness) I am already in paroxysms of excitement about the feast to come. We won’t be retiring between courses to compliment the chef Roman-style, however I do plan for it to be at least four courses (depending on how Iron Chef I am feeling) of awesomeness.

* The same people would then rail at me for not resting more.

** The deli at our local supermarket now sells what it calls 98 per cent fat free semi-dried tomatoes. I don’t know how you do that for something that is soaked in oil. I had that conversation and also the “well, I don’t eat them very much, so I suppose it doesn’t matter – what do they taste like” etc conversation with the increasingly-shade-of-a-semi-dried tomato teenager working behind the counter. I don’t think he’s used to deconstructing the deli department as it relates to my consumption of food. He’ll learn. Or he’ll quit working there. Whatevs.

*** Not that kind of dried herbs.

**** There’s probably something deeply wrong with the way I like to point-and-laugh at my son. I don’t do it to his face though. Promise.

***** No really, it does.

Run run run run run/gypsy death and you

So last night I had this awesome dream.

It's short on detail, but I have to wonder, high on significance?????

I was running along the street (not completely unheard of) with virtually no effort at all.

It was one of the most enjoyable dreams I have ever had - I just kept running and running and I wasn't puffed, no sore legs, just the enjoyment of running.

I can't remember, but wonder if that's what running was like as a kid - as opposed to the hard slog it seems to be these days.

Anyone out there with a penchant for dream analysis should feel free to analyse my subconscious - it's not something I bother doing all that often and it could probably do with some attention....

Things that should be illegal

People I barely know presenting me with “fun size” mars bars at 9am.
I know it’s Easter and everything, but really – is this necessary? Now it is sitting on my computer daring me to eat it.

The use of the word “booty” in any circumstance other than in reference to an item of child’s clothing.
But to save confusion, let’s erase it from the lexicon altogether, we can always refer to those things that go on babies’ feet as “socks”.

All this talk about secularism and whether or not Muslim communities can cope with it.
I know, it’s my own fault for watching ‘Difference of Opinion’. But why is it that we question only one faith’s capacity to live in a secular society? And why are we so hell-bent on claiming that we are secular? Anyone who’s taken more than a couple of minutes to read our legislative records can tell you that there are more than a few mentions of God in there…how can we say to people: “Oh, you need to observe your faith less strenuously, but just ignore all the references to MY God in the Constitution/Parliamentary processes/etc”. For the record, I don’t have a problem with Christianity, as regular readers will well know. I have a problem with hypocrisy.

Ex-boyfriends only “appearing” in my immediate vicinity when I look like Haggis McBaggis.
When I have been for a long walk on the beach with no hair-tie, wearing tracksuit pants chasing small children all over the place, without coffee…this is not the time for you to blithely appear at my café table wanting an update on my life (NB it’s going very well thank you – the fact that I look like a half-crazed loon should not cause you to reflect in any way on my peace and prosperity. NO, REALLY)

People beeping their horn at me on the street when I’m out for my 6am walk.
The big disadvantage for me is that now that it’s light when I begin my walk, people can see me*/recognise me. The problem is that I can’t see them**, so when they drive past in a car I don’t recognise and beep/wave, I have no choice other than to look vaguely perplexed and wonder if it’s:
a) actually some one who knows me (ideal – at least I might find out who it is at some point)
b) Some one who has mistaken me for some one else (not totally unreasonable)
c) Oversexed young men who will beep their horn at the sight of anything with long hair (including, but not limited to, say, Slash***)

Letting your dog poo on my front lawn.
Oh wait, that IS illegal. One of the issues in this particular instance is that I suspect that the individual in question is some one I will be working with (albeit in a tangential way). I’m not suggesting that makes it less appropriate for him to let his dog poo on my lawn, oh dammit, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting. Although it could be embarrassing for him when we finally meet and I say “Oh, HI! You have that cute golden retriever! The one that seems to be befouling my lawn, INSIDE THE FENCE, every couple of days. Yes! I’ve seen you waiting patiently while it does its business. Nice to meet you!!!” Of course, I won’t do this.

“Your body is a wonderland” by John Mayer.
What does he mean? Full of mad hatters? Accessed only by falling through a hollow tree? Over-priced entertainment for a family of four? Infested with screeching children hyped up on sugar and queasy from amusement rides? I hate this song. I hate that it appears to have no other lyrics than the endless droning of “your body is a wonderland”. I hate that it gets played endlessly at my workplace.


Phew. Good to know that my general buddha-like state of radiating contentment and calm hasn’t impinged on my ability to hate things.


* Is anyone else seeing a pattern here? I seem to enter the public arena looking completely disheveled on a regular basis. Perhaps I have no call to be instructing others to avert their eyes, I should just make more of an effort? But why did I move to the country if not to escape the need to do a “just stepped off the catwalk” outfit every time I left my house???

** I’ve been thinking lately that I might actually need glasses. Ptcha! The internet would probably help me diagnose these things, but I can’t read the screen properly.

*** What the hell happened to him anyway?

Started howling/made no sense

I am, as some have observed, “keen as mustard”. I am an avid joiner and doer (despite how it may seem here, where I spend the rest of my time hanging it on other people).

One of the dangers of being a doer, however, is that you end up a teensy bit over-extended, or else at home kicking yourself senseless for the kinds of things you have agreed to do (with sample script: “I can’t believe I agreed to paint blackboards/participate in market research/door-knock/sell raffle tickets/bungee jump/etc”).

It would be good if some one could stop me from doing some of the things outlined below. A well-timed warning would be heartily appreciated.

Things that seem like a stupid idea to everyone except the person doing them

1. Buying five acres

I know I am not a farmer. I know it. And five acres is too big to mow and too small to indulge in any Clancy of the Overflow/early 1980s Sigrid Thornton style fantasies I might have. Also five acres pretty much ensures you’re not living “in town”, and where the hell will I get my “chinos” (the drink, not the pants).

2. Half-marathons

One of the things that’s happened since I moved (and it is now more than three months – where did the time go, etc) is that I fancy myself* much fitter. Now, that’s as may be, but I suspect that my ability to complete aforementioned half-marathon would be slim to non-existent. Some one please stop me.

3. Atrocious performances at open mic nights

Oh ho ho. As I am currently trying to teach myself to play the kinds of songs only idiots teach themselves on acoustic guitar**, I sometimes idly toy with the idea of public performance. This may require more of the talking down that previous two options, as it might well be fuelled by alcohol and costs me nothing except a bucket of sweat, embarrassment and several days of a panic-stricken digestive system.

(Seemingly stupid) things I want to do for which no opposition will be brooked

1. Start a local/regular event in arts/culture field

I have this all planned out – just need a venue. Mr Fix is somewhat sceptical, but he will be won over by my infinite charm/shrewd business planning. Best I can tell, it doesn’t even need funding from external sources. Oh, but it does need punters I suppose.

2. Have a vegie garden of reasonable size/variety

It’s fair to say that this isn’t going well – all my carrot seedlings were zapped by the last hot day we had. What’s more, the cats keep digging up my freshly raked/planted garden beds – and then they like to clamber over Mr Fix*** while he sleeps, leaving muddy little tracks all over the white sheets. Am not a housewife/refuse to fix. At least my basil plants are living well in the kitchen window. Have been spurred on to ever greater aspirations by my mother’s ace tomatoes which have been turned into several months worth of passata. She is quite the green thumb. Where her thumb is “woodlands”, mine’s probably more a neon highlighter shade of green.

3. Travel overseas with a small child

Grizzlewick doesn’t know it yet, but he and Mr Fix are accompanying me on an overseas holiday. Probably Vietnam I think at this stage, although there is the distinct possibility If not the distinct bank account) to suggest that Europe may be a possibility depending on my sister’s movements. I want to do some more overseas travel, and I’d like to do it before Grizzlewick starts school in a few short years. I have been told this is ill-advised. Frankly, I don’t care.



* More than usual.

** For reference: idiots like to teach themselves things in 3/4 time, requiring 15 capos**** and the manual dexterity of an octopus/orangutan hybrid only made possible by recent changes to stem-cell research legislation (if Tony Abbott is to be believed).

*** If you’re wondering where I am at this point, I am generally up and about making coffee/exercising/cursing 774

**** I realise there are NO songs that require 15 capos – although if Gillette made guitars this would probably be the case.