It's all about me.

A lot has happened in my life in the past 5 years.  Two children have been born in my family.  There has been the juggling of work and being the 'at home parent'.  There has been the usual strains that having a young family can bring; worries about money, sex, 'raising the kids right', maintaining friendships and somewhere in there finding a minute for yourselves - both as a couple and individually. 

The birth of our second child did not go as smoothly as anticipated, if one thing in life is unpredictable it is childbirth, and how a new mother may feel afterward.  As as result things were tough, I mean really tough, around our place for the better part of a year.  I doubt that things will ever really be the same as they were before, now there is a new version of normal.  I am okay with the 'new normal'.  I find myself quite changed.  I am more content to stay in, to live simply and more quietly.  Before the birth of our son I was big on socialising, being a constant host, enjoying good wine.  I still enjoy these things, but on a much smaller scale.

One thing that having children has changed is 'me time'.  I haven't always needed lots of time to myself, I am happy to be surrounded by people.  My partner is the exact opposite.  She needs time to herself, and having two small children around, and me at home to greet her each day as she comes home from work, is not her ideal way of living.  I know that there isn't too mch that can be done about this until the kids are a bit older and more independent.  I wish she would take more time for herself; go for a coffee, take a book out to the studio and shut the door for an hour or two. I know that she finds the 'new normal' more difficult than I do.  I'm sure we will find the balance.

In the meantime I have a list of 'me time' things that I would like to sink my teeth into.  No, they are not meditation and taking up yoga.  They don't really even mean I need to leave the house.  I suppose they are more like little projects that I would like to commit to.

So, here they are, and I am going to try really hard to achieve them:

1.  This blog.  I am going to try really hard to produce a blog entry once a week, or at least once a fortnight.  I think it can be done!  They might be short, but I am sure I can manage it.

2.  Learn some songs on my ukelele.  Yes, I have recently bought a uke and can strum out a few chords.  I would really like to be better at it.  Practice makes perfect!

3.  Write!  I have written a trashy romance novel (that was rejected by Mills and Boon), and I have started another one.  My aim is to have the second one finished by June next year, and to have resubmitted my original novel to some other publishing houses.  

So, me time.  Best get to it

Cookbooks

I have lots of cookbooks.

I really enjoy reading, and have quiet a collection of novels in my home.  We had book shelves especially built along two walls to house them.  One of these walls is dedicated entirely to children's books which means that some of our books are still boxed up in the shed.  I fear that one day we will be those people you see on TV with piles of books all around them and no room to sleep.  Or even worse, those people who die when a pile of books fall on them and they can't get out from under the weight of all those words.

My collection is varied.  There are trashy novels ( I have written a Mills and Boon style romance - sadly it has not been published, yet), poetry, classics, a collections of early Famous Five novels, some non-fiction, Australian works, contemporary stuff and COOKBOOKS.

I used to read a great deal.  My partner and I are both teachers and it was our love of books that was one of the attracting factors when our romance was young and tender.  We have always had piles of books on our bedside tables and could spend a whole day on holidays lost in a good read.   Now we have children.  The desire to read, and the interest in books (both new and classic) has not wained, we still read the paper on the weekends and are aware of the latest novels that we should be reading.  But what the old saying 'The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak'?  Usually by the time the children are tucked up in bed and we have finally fed ourselves and done the chores that we didn't manage to cover during the day we are just too tired to open a book, let alone try and make sense of the words swimming on the pages.  Don't get me wrong, we still read when we can.  Holidays, or long weekends, or when travelling.  But the luxury of hopping into bed at 7.30pm with a good book just because, is not a possibility at the moment.  Maybe in 10 years or so.

Kids should be surrounded by books.  The should be able to pull them from a shelf and read them whenever they like!

Cookbooks are a different kettle of fish entirely.  I have several shelves dedicated to cookbooks.  Flimsy paper ones, magazine style classics and heavy hardcover epic works.  I do not discriminate as long as the recipes are good, and they are written well.  I rather like books that explain where the recipe is from; "I first tasted this sponge at my cousin Flo's wedding...etc".  Cookbooks to me are perfect reading material for the time poor.  Each recipe is like a mini chapter.  You could spend a minute skimming over it, quickly looking at ingredients or the pictures, or you could spend hours reading up on various dishes, imagining how well they would go together, what variations you could impose on the recipe, and who you might cook it for.

One of my favourite cookbooks is Maggie Beer's 'Maggie's Harvest'.  Not only are the recipes delicious and manageable (in most cases), the book is a joy to read in a tactile sense.  The cover is padded fabric with a quince tree and pheasants embroidered on it.  The paper is heavy and creamy.  It is lovely to flick through these pages reading about Maggie's food adventures, her family food loves, and of course the recipes!  Maggie has recipes for fabulous terrines and all kinds of wonderful seafood and gamey kinds of things.  Mmmmmm.

Mrs Beeton!  The original guide to cookery and household maintenance.  This is an edition from some time in the 40s or 50s.  There was no way I could afford one of the earliest editions, which if complete sell for thousands and thousands!

A few years ago I bought my partner a copy of Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book for a birthday present.  It is gold!  The recipes are rather dated, or outright weird, but the book is magnificent.  Apparently lots of it is Mrs Beeton stealing recipes and ideas from other writers at the time, but we can forgive her the plagiarism as it seems that her book is the only one to really have stood the test of time.  The copy I bought has some amazing coloured plates inside, as well as a rather fetching image of a dead rabbit on the spine.



I've included a couple of shots of the plates.  I love the one which shows all the different cuts of pork.  And who doesn't love a good picture of CHEESE!







One of my greatest food pleasures is not in the eating, but in the thinking about!  I enjoy putting together imaginary dinner parties in my head.  I usually go with a theme (Persian for example) and think of the dishes I would cook, the wine to accompany, who to invite and how to serve it up.  I have had a wonderful Persian inspired dinner party in the past.

The Persian Dinner Party Menu (Ideas inspired by Greg and Lucy Malouf's series of books about Middle Eastern food - a whole other post will be devoted to these books alone)

Entree: gorgeous bourdon blanc sausages with a Persian 'twist' (pistachios in the chicken mousse), served with a capsicum and onion jam and a rocket salad with home made dukkah on top.

Main:  Quail  deboned and stuffed with vine leaves, marinated in olive oil, verjuice, chopped vine leaves and garlic.  Panfry the little sucker, and once golden wrap in katafi pastry and finished off in the oven.  I served it on a buttery rice with yoghurt dressing and saffron oil.

Dessert:  Rhubarb and rosewater topped with vanilla yoghurt, chopped pistachios (love the vibrant green colour) and Persian fairy floss.

DELICIOUS! 

Cooking with kids.

Cooking with the kids is always an exciting event (for them anyway).  My little girl LOVES cooking.  Baking in particular is her favourite activity, I suspect it has something to do with licking the bowl.  She can also stretch to cooking pizza and pasta dishes.  She likes picking the vegetables and herbs from our own garden, chopping them with her own knife and watching them change as they are heated or whizzed up in the blender.  There are plenty of cooking with kids cookbooks out there.  We have Stephanie Alexander's.  She is such an advocate for children growing their own produce and then cooking it.  Her Kitchen Garden program  is a huge hit and is implemented in many schools around where I live.  I have been to a couple of the conferences when we were setting up a kitchen garden at the school where I work.  Stephanie is a quiet woman, but spoke so passionately about this project.  I am happy to support her by buying her books and using them with my class and my own children.

Well, cookbooks.  There are magnificent things and I love them.  Even for the non-cooks there is a cookbook you could surely appreciate.  Even if it was purely for its kitsch value!

A great op shop find.  Terrible recipes though.

A good day

Yesterday I had an appointment that my partner needed to come too as well. It was a short appointment, and for reasons that are not important at the moment.  What was important about it was that it was at a silly time which meant my partner needed to take the WHOLE DAY off work.  When you are home with two kids this kind of event is worth writing about!

The morning began with the usual craziness.  Baby waking, needing a feed to be dressed, etc.  Breakfast needed to be made for the four year old (she is quite particular!) and we needed to shower and dress.  This job is SO much easier with us both home.  It was a playgroup day, so a friend dropped her daughter in at around 9 for me to take her to playgroup with my little one.  It is a good arrangement as she drops mine home at the end.  I piled all the kids into the Cargobike and took off for playgroup.  The best bit of this was once the four year old was happily ensconced at play I headed off to meet my partner for a coffee...well, tea.  The quiet!  Oh, the blessed quiet!  Yes, we still had our 9 month old son with us, but he can’t speak yet, and while he burbles away, he doesn’t feel the need to make constant noise, as our daughter does.  We sat at a café and talked to each other.  Grown ups.  Lovely.

Off we went to our appointment, then home again.

There was some work done in the afternoon before our daughter was dropped off, but with both of us home it was completed quickly which meant that when she did get home we had TIME to do things together as a family.  Novel idea really.

And what should be on the agenda for the afternoon?  Cooking of course!  We have a modest garden which used to be a well-tended vegetable garden.  Since the arrival of the children the tending has kind of fallen by the wayside.  We would lovingly plant the vegetables, but would not have the time to tie them up, or fertilise them.  So, our vegetable garden has become an herb wonderland.  There are still a few low maintenance vegies in there, but mostly delicious herbs which require little more than the sun, rain and the occasional trim.  Our neighbours often pop in to grab a handful of mint, or parsley, or comment on the different foliage which pokes through the fence.

Pesto was on the menu for dinner and that our daughter was going to make it!

We have a variety of presto recipes up our sleeves (rocket and basil is a good one - especially served with sweet potato gnocchi, as is parsley and almond) and just yesterday my friend at 'My Wholefood Romance" wrote about Kale pesto! Today we decided to make straight up traditional basil pesto, loosely following Stephanie Alexander’s recipe.   

Stephanie's cookbook, ‘The CooksCompanion’, is a bible in our home.  We have the first edition and I am coveting the latest version which I hear has around 100 new pages of foodie goodness.  Her recipes are not all fool proof.  Sometimes we have been really disappointed with the result, especially when something has taken a whole day to prepare.  This book does however, have a terrific basics section.  How to make pastry, how to make pasta, how to make…you name it!  It is always the first point of reference before we cook something or come across an unusual ingredient. Even if we don’t always follow the recipe, we often use it as a starting point.

Anyway, Stephanie’s recipe is simple:

1 tightly packed cup of basil leaves

½ cup olive oil

2 cloves of garlic

2 tablespoons grated   Parmesan cheese

In a food processor, whizz up the basil, garlic, salt and garlic (I usually use about 2/3 of a clove rather than two whole cloves, I find that much raw garlic  bit overpowering and I want to taste my own fresh basil rather than have my head blown off!).  You could do this in a mortar and pestle if you like, or could just chop and chop and chop!

Add the olive oil bit by bit, you may not need it all.

Once you have the consistency that you like stir in the Parmesan to taste.  (We always add more than suggested, yum!).

We had a particularly good dried pasta from the Mediterranean Wholesaler, but if you have time homemade it best.  (I usually make it with 1 egg for every 100grams of flour, and olive oil on my hands for kneading).

After cooking the pasta as the packet suggested we stirred some of the cooking water with the pesto (this stops the cheese clumping when you mix it with hot pasta) and stirred it through, topping it off with smoked salmon and Murray salt flakes.  DELICIOUS!

Our daughter loved it.  Just by spending the time with us doing something meaningful was an instant mood improver.  I work from home, so often things are rushed and quality time with my daughter is sometimes cut short.  This, sadly, results in her being less ‘chipper’ and more prone to tantrums or tears.  Not surprising really, that hanging out with your kids and engaging with them means they are happier.  Anyway, she picked the basil leaves, washed and spun them (salad spinners are magic to little kids), measured the olive oil, was in charge of the food processor and stirred in the cheese.  She chopped up the salmon and helped plate up.  Then she ate her dinner, with no complaints!  

Next time we are going to try coriander and peanut pesto...apparently great with noodles and as a marinade.  Our daughter is loving tending her peanut bush at the moment, and in about 10 weeks we should have a decent crop to experiment with.

Cooking with kids takes time and patience, but is such a terrific way to help children understand where food comes from and get them interested in trying different things.  It is also a terrific way to get a job done while spending time with your children…as well as teaching them a few things along the way.