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