…it is not impossible to f*ck up mashed potato.
Category: cooking and food
a public service announcement
Here’s a short list of things to not do the first day off the lounge after a bout of food poisoning, which set in about an hour after you made a public swipe at Parkinson via your online personal journal:
- make telephone contact with dog breeders;
- agree on the spot to the quote the roof window fellow offers you, even though he is a truly lovely and genuine chap who rocks up exactly when he says he is going to, speaks to you in a respectful way, and says such reassuring things as oh, yeah, we can do that, this will be a simple job, wish they were all this simple and you could do it that way, but it’s much cheaper to do it my way;
- turn the television on again – one full day of daytime television is enough for anyone who has passed their mid-twenties;
- take children – one of whom (and yes, thanks for asking, the Grumpy/Obstinate One) is slightly under the weather, but has spent a whole day at combined pre-school/childcare anyway because you’re in a mad flap and really couldn’t afford to spend two days on the couch – to the market to stock up on fruit because obviously eighteen apples and six pears purchased on Saturday isn’t enough fruit for what seem to be two rather small boys;
- re-read ‘work’ done in notebooks while in a poisoned stupor;
- answer phone, particularly if there is a chance the person on the other end will be potential client expecting an intelligent discussion with you;
- have a coffee to prove you are recovered.
Instead, take your partner’s advice and spend another day on the couch, although substituting DVDs for the television overload.
Also, you know how people tell you that should not reheat reheated takeaway. Yeah, well, you shouldn’t.
Meltdown
Flicking through one of my many lists of things To Do – this one divided into Big, Medium, Little, then further into Long (term), Medium, Short – I realise that the deadline for the ABC Fiction Awards is looming. June 29.
I have something I was vaguely intending to enter. It needs a lot more work. Like a lot. But in some ways, I was thinking of giving this particular work this One Last Chance. You know, One Final Push, before I think to myself ‘well, it’s had a good life…it didn’t get published, but that’s life in the big city…NEXT’. And I feel like if I don’t give it One Last Chance then I’ll never be able to move on to the next thing. Which I have to do, because I told someone I would, and they gave me something in exchange. Do you see what I mean?
But June 29. That’s not far away. Is it?
So I have written a plan of what I would need to do. I have used a clean printout and my lamy lead pencil (it’s red). It Can’t Be Done. Not with Everything Else. There’re the obvious things – an important gig next week that I want to write some new material for (I think that is how you use the word gig, though to be honest, it does not come easily off my tongue); a small number of book reviews; an article which is already overdue; an article whose deadline looms; the Big Comedy Piece I am determined to write; the application for something I really want to do; the new novel which I am Determined I Will Begin. And then, there’re other things – the replacement computer I must buy before this one just refuses to start even after I plug and unplug it six times; the move of rooms so that I am no longer trying to work in the middle of the boys’ racing circuit; my determination that my contact with my friends Will Be Maintained. There’s cooking of course, and getting the boys safely home after school. And there are Other Things. Enormous wake-me-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night but not mine to blog about things. You know. You’ve got them, I’m sure.
And then, there’s the vegetable drawer which, no matter how many times I clean it, still has liquid in the bottom. Only last week, I cleaned it out, used the edgey veges for stock, converted the stock into soup, which was spooned into containers which were transferred to the freezer. How awesome is that? But wait, there’s more – we went away for the weekend, and because the freezer was so full it seems not to have closed properly and so we returned to a half-thawed freezer and potentially-botulistic soup – oh, it broke my heart, no matter that the ice had formed a beautiful winter wonderland.
Is it any wonder the mister returned home one evening to find me on the recognisable edge of a torrent of tears?
How I said, waving somewhat melodramatically at the vegetable drawer which seems to be filled with liquid mould again am I supposed to create? There was only a slight pause before I began – somewhat melodramatically again – I’m a failure at my job…all I have to do is keep the mould out and LOOK just LOOK.
I’m sure that you can see there was no room for rational discussion here. No amount of no one’s worth should be judged by the state of their vegetable drawer was going to work.
So, he did the only thing he could do. He scraped the cucumber – or was it zucchini – off the bottom of the drawer and then, when I sat down to work on the manuscript, he went into the bathroom and scrubbed the grout with an old toothbrush he had saved for just such a time.
And how do I repay this kindness? A few days later – when PlaySchool is on and I could be addressing the puzzle of the chapter which I know will work, I just have to work out how – I blog.
that’s that then
all of the Christmas chocolates are gone
Without a dishwasher, the memory of Christmas lingers a little longer than it otherwise would
Ice cream can’t go wrong.
Anyone want some ham? A game of badminton? Cricket? Connect four? A chapter of Captain Underpants?
First ball* in half an hour.
*Cricket reference
teh christmas bombe part one
Some years ago, when FirstCat was about to turn one, and SecondCat was perhaps a few weeks away from being conceived, I said to my mother-in-law can I help with anything? It is the kind of question to which you expect the answer to be: hmmm, not really, oh, well, since you asked, could you peel the carrots and grate the potatoes then pop down to the shops because I forgot to get the cream.
Instead, she said: make this.
She handed me one of those magazines which sits in the drawers of such women, never quite forgotten, but barely remembered. It was a Christmas Bombe. Charged with this responsibility – which weighed heavily on the shoulders of one for whom fruit salad is not simple – I should perhaps have drunk one less bottle of sparkling red on Christmas Day.
Nonetheless, the bombe went down a treat, and there’s nothing like a bit of adulation to make you try something again. So, here we go, this time without a recipe and with children old enough to want to help.
To make a Christmas bombe parte one
You must start early, because the ice cream needs to be really, really hard by Christmas Day. Go to the shops and buy the ice cream. Go to the post office first to buy the Christmas stamps, because yesterday when you went they had run out of Christmas stamps. At the supermarket, stand in front of the freezer thinking to self, now I’m sure I had two flavours last time, vanilla and chocolate, but how did that work, did I just mix them together, that seems a bit strange. Buy two litres of the best vanilla available at local supermarket. Remember to get the almond slivers, the chocolate chips came home on Saturday.
It is good to do this on a hot day, and to have only one bike between two children, so that the children can bicker about whose turn it is to ride it all the way home even if they did promise before you left home that of course they wouldn’t argue, of course they could share, please please please. Just keep walking and occasionally calling back I’ve got ice cream don’t forget. Hope that all the people who normally hear you are home, so that they know that at least this time you are not just being a grumpy mother with unrealistic expectations of her children. This time, you have purpose.
By the time you get home the ice cream will be pretty much melted softened. Tip ice cream into mixing bowl. Finish softening.
Have flash of memory about why you had two flavours of ice cream last time. Congratulate self on superior memory. Divert children’s attention from ice cream now can we have a try, now can we lick our fingers with ice blocks. Green ice blocks. Congratulate self on cunning.
Tip in almonds. Mix. Tip in chocolate chips. Turn back for one second.
Console self with child’s quick-witted response. There were too many, the recipe said only thirteen.
Mix in chocolate chips. Prepare the least unsuitable bowl chosen from your range of unsuitable bowls. Curse self for only remaining commitment to sustainable lifestyle – no rolls of glad wrap – as you try to get bread bags to sit in bowls. Squish smaller bowl on top to make room for chocolate ice cream, to be added another day. Think to self: there’s a chance this won’t work so well, these bowls really aren’t at all suitable.
Impress self by only having to move one thing to make room in freezer. Think to self: at worst, we’ve got good quality ice cream with almond slivers and chocolate chips mixed through.
Now you can lick the bowls. But NO! not the floor.
To be continued…
a phrase I just discovered, but very much like
like putting lipstick on a pig
I’m sure that will come in useful, one day.
this week’s cake
Grilled instead of baked.
Check your settings, peeps.
It’s not the vegan lunchbox…
This is SecondCat’s lunch.
It is mozarella cheese. ‘The gratings part’.
A carefully segmented soy sausage. ‘Wet’ and ‘not cooked’.
Frozen peas. Again: ‘not cooked’.
Three slices of cucumber. Not four.
Did it fill my heart with mother-love warmth to serve it up to him? No.
Did he eat it? Yes. All that and more.
A waste of expensive blackberries
Last night, I made muffins which were so appalling that even my mother-in-law – a most generous and supportive and polite mother-in-law – agreed that the best place for them was the bin.
That has never happened to me before. Muffins are fool-proof.