Spring cleaning hurts

Mr B and Madeleine and I spent the weekend in a frenzy of spring cleaning and organising. We sorted through bags and boxes, hunted under beds and on top of cupboards, and moved furniture around like there was no tomorrow. By Saturday night, our house was a dust-ball infested mess on the inside and, outside, it looked like something out of Hoarders, with rubbish and old furniture and dead-looking carpets piled up under the verandah, ready for the rubbish collection. It wasn't always easy, letting go of things. In fact I think we let go of a few too many precious and sentimental things in our (ok my) desire to be tidy (we are both VERY sentimental), and Mr B and I slumped into Saturday night in a kind of daze, slowly taking stock of what we had done and giving in to a few regrets, filling the hole we had created with bad food that generated even more regrets later.

I got up early on Sunday and started cleaning up the mess we had made, then Mr B and Madeleine appeared and Madeleine was so adorably chubby-cheeked and full of smiles that we said "Forgeddaboudit!" and left the mess to head to the shops. (Because what better remedy is there for having thrown out all your old things than BUYING NEW STUFF)?

All in all we were pretty restrained, but we did buy an Ergo carrier for Madeleine after reading all the helpful comments on this post I wrote for iVillage, and already I love it. I carried her around the shops with me for the next two hours and she felt safe and secure (she fell asleep), and my back didn't hurt one bit. In fact it felt like I was pregnant again, without the carpal tunnel syndrome and pinched nerve, and I got all teary-eyed which was embarrassing because the lady in the food court thought I was crying over the milkshake she had made.

The Ergo put Madeleine in THE BEST mood for the afternoon, which is normally her grumpy time, so she and her dad read books together while I finished up the cleaning (that sounds like he is rather sexist but actually I requested this role, it just felt so good to be able to get things done), and we finally hit the hay last night in a sparkly clean house and much more at peace.

A few things that survived the cull:

If you happen past my place in the next couple of days, just don't judge me for the overflowing bins and green garbage bags and broken furniture out front, aaight?

Oh, look!

It's all becoming very real. Now I can say "next month" when anyone asks me when the baby is due, and that is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. On the weekend we managed to set up a little 'nursery nook' for the baby. In a two-bedroom house with two adults, a part-time teenager (that is, she lives here part time, the teenager bit is full time), a home office and soon a baby, there will be no official 'baby's room' or nursery.

But we did manage to repurpose a little alcove by the back door and facing onto the lounge room, next to my office, into Baby B's little day area.

Thus with a quick trip to Ikea and an evening of fussing, heaving and swearing over bizarre instructions, we are almost ready for baby to arrive.

It occurs to me that I never did make an official gender announcement about our little bundle-to-be on this blog. Can you guess now?

Best pumpkin soup recipe for autumn

(Except it's not actually made with pumpkin, but butternut squash to give it a lovely, sweet flavour. Meh. Potato potahto.) It's autumn in Australia and, although Melbourne seems to be clinging to the mother of all Indian summers, the leaves are turning gold and brown and the nights are most definitely cooler. This puts me in the mood for soup.

I have been searching and experimenting for ages to get just the right kind of pumpkin soup for my winter mood: hearty but not too thick; creamy but not too rich; scented with autumn spices but still classic. Comforting. Homelike. I adapted this recipe from one on Good Eatin' With Lynne and I do believe I've found my pumpkin/butternut squash soup holy grail at last.

Let me know if you end up making this. We ate it with thick slices of Vienna loaf, warmed in the oven and then buttered. It was delicious. Ingredients:

1 butternut squash 1 tbsp olive oil 1 large onion, finely chopped 1 fat garlic clove, coarsely chopped 1 tsp minced fresh ginger 1/2 tbsp brown sugar 1/2 tsp nutmeg 1/2 tsp cinnamon 2-3 cups chicken stock 1/2 cup coconut milk Freshly ground sea salt (to taste)

To garnish:

A little extra coconut milk Freshly ground black pepper Fresh herbs (eg sage leaves, parsley leaves, chopped chives)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C.

2. Halve the squash and scoop out the seeds. Place the halves in a baking tray and brush them with a little olive oil, then roast until the squash is very tender. This will probably take up to an hour, although I sped the process up to half an hour by cutting up the squash into smaller pieces.

3. While the squash is roasting, prepare your other ingredients: chop the onion and garlic, mince the ginger, and place the spices and brown sugar together into a small bowl.

4. When the squash is cooked, remove it from the oven. At the same time, heat the oil in a big pot over a medium-to-low flame, then stir in the onion, garlic, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and sugar. Cover and let it cook for about 10 minutes.

5. While the onion and spices are cooking, remove the peel from the squash and toss it out, then cut the squash into smallish chunks.

6. Add the squash and chicken stock to the pot then return the lid and bring it all to the boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.

7. If you plan to serve warm bread, pop it in a low oven at the end of the simmer period.

8. Take your soup off the heat and puree it in a blender. Depending on your blender, you may need to let the soup cool off just a little first, to avoid cracking the plastic. (Better still, use an immersion blender. Ahem. I don't have one, Santa.)

9. Return the soup to the pan on the lowest heat. Stir in the coconut milk. Do a little taste-test at this stage. If you think it's needed, add in a little sea-salt, but not too much.

10. When the soup is hot enough to serve, pour it into serving bowls. Swirl a teaspoon of coconut milk in the centre to decorate each serve, grind pepper over it, then garnish with herbs.

11. Quickly take the bread out of the oven and butter it so the butter melts right in. You're done!

Nesting, locally

I came across this wonderful letterpress Illustrated A to Z of Melbourne today, by Benjamin Puckering, and couldn't resist buying it for the baby. As Baby B grows up, so many of these items will become familiar symbols of home to our little one. Like, "T is for tram" and "V is for Victoria State Library" and "F is for Flinders Street Station." Isn't it adorable?

(I took the photo on the right on Instagram a couple of weeks back. When I saw Benjamin's design I had a "Woah!" moment. It's even the same number.)

One year

One year ago on the Monday just past, I stood on the back step of my old home in Enmore, Sydney, in front of a freshly-painted blue door and before a vegetable-garden full of my nearest and dearest, and became a Mrs.

I have often pondered what that means, other than making me think Mr B's mother is in the room whenever someone says "Mrs Bulger." What is it supposed to mean? Why did I need it? Did I need it? Ok, why did I want it?

Mr B and I were in love and fully committed to one another long before we decided to turn our relationship into a marriage. We lived together, we owned houses together (read: we bent our backs under mortgages together). I left New York to be with him. I had been deliberately brought into the lives of Mr B's children, and he jokingly told them to call me "Mama-Na" (still does). I believed then and still believe now that no ceremony, no piece of paper, could have made me love this family more or commit to it more fully than I already did. I was utterly entwined with them already.

And yet I did want this marriage, and I love having it. I guess I wanted to articulate promises I'd already made in private, in front of my beloved friends and family. I happily took on a new name, although that had less to do with romantic notions or patriarchy (Mr B couldn't have cared less) and more to do with practicality, including thwarting an identity thief (yes! but that's a story for another blog post, another time).

This has been a massive year for us, emotionally, professionally, financially and even geographically. I think both of us are still reeling from it and, despite the pending arrival of Baby B, it almost feels like the next year will be a holiday by comparison. Under all that stress and strain, we had our fair share of disagreements (oh, what a polite word that one is). More honestly, we both exhibited our fair share of childish tantrums. And yet it has been such a happy time. I feel like we have grown to know each other better, understand each other better, and become more patient and loving with one another this year. We are better at overlooking one another's faults and each of us is better at building the other one up. I am more in love with Mr B now than I ever was.

Why is that? It can't just be that piece of paper.

Whatever the reason, I am sure our love will continue to grow in the years to come. Certainly, we will put in the effort. But if it was to freeze at today's levels, I still think I would be a damn lucky lady. Happy anniversary, my darling Mr B.

Let them eat cake

When Mr B started his new job in Melbourne, I made cupcakes for him to take into the office for Friday afternoon tea. Apparently they were a big hit, and he came home asking, "Can we have chocolate cake next time? Something impressive, with layers?" I put together this chocolate layer cake with butterscotch cream and topped with caramel hazelnuts, using a recipe from delicious: simply the best (a cookbook given to me, ironically, by gorgeous ladies from his former team. I never got a chance to make them anything out of it. Sorry, Kay and Mel!).

Summer holidays

I am off to immerse myself in summer holidays. Another road trip. Christmas spent with friends and family. A home filled with children and laughter and most probably too much junk food than is strictly good for any of us. We will walk with our feet in the Southern Ocean at sunset. We will joust one another on inflatable logs in the swimming pool. We will get sunscreen in our eyes, and salt water in our hair. We will play many rounds of Pictionary, all of which Mr B will lose. We will have picnics and play petanque in the park. We will take trips to strange country towns. We will bake and cook and eat, and eat more. We will spend whole days immersed in books. And we will make plans and promises and dreams for the coming year.

Wishing you a glorious holiday season, whatever and however you celebrate; and a refreshing, hope-filled, love-filled 2012. See you next year!

Yuletide weekend

It was one of those lovely, lazy weekends. On Friday, we had friends over for Christmas dinner. I used candles and gold-painted pine-cones to create a table centrepiece, alongside fresh pine needles I picked from a tree that afternoon. To cover the table, I pulled out a vivid, striped red cloth that, the last time it left the cupboard, Mr B wore while dancing with the Masai in Kenya.

The menu was challenging, rather. Among the six of us, we had a pescatarian, a vegetarian, someone with an egg phobia, and a pregnant woman. That pretty much cancelled out meat, and any eggy and most cheesy meat substitutes. Not great for the remaining omnivores in the group. And I don't know about you, but I'm not a fan of nut loaf.

In the end, I opted for individual savoury strudels with wild mushrooms and artichokes, and added prosciutto to the meat-eaters' strudels. Then we had some shaved roast turkey and ham on the side for the carnivores; cranberry sauce; herbed baked potatoes, carrots and pumpkin; corn on the cob; and green beans and roasted garlic tomatoes topped with toasted almonds. It was a kind of Christmas-meets-Thanksgiving, almost-vegan dinner.

Dessert was cognac-and-plum Christmas pudding (of course) with custard and fresh cream, a big bowl of mixed berries, my old classic peaches-and-cream pie on an almond base, and the lemon snowdrop cookies I made last week.

We finished our Christmas shopping on Saturday, I am proud to say, then I set up my desk in the lounge room to watch Harry Potter DVDs and Antiques Roadshow on TV while I made Christmas cards.

To make the cards, I cut out photocopies of the little partridge-in-a-pear-tree painting I finished last week, and pasted them onto slightly larger cardboard cut-outs. Inside each card, I stuck a slip of paper with a lovely little Chinese proverb: "Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come." Finally, I left a few fresh pine needles in the spine, in the hope that when the cards arrive in my friends' mailboxes, they will smell like Christmas.

I came very close to achieving my month-long goal of going cherry picking on Sunday, with a local orchard's promise of a sausage sizzle and homemade cherry ice cream almost winning Mr B over, but not quite. I'm still working on that. Instead, we we took the dog for a two-and-a-half hour walk around Adelaide, headed up to the pub for lunch, and had such a lazy afternoon at home that I honestly can't remember what else we did.

Deck the halls...

...is what I've been doing all weekend. I love Christmas: the smell of pine needles and jasmine, plum pudding, gift shopping, family holidays at home. So, this being the first weekend of December, I made a good start:

Trimming the tree. Still a little way to go before I'm satisfied. Painting a partridge in a pear tree as a gift card for friends. Gathering pinecones on a walk with Oliver and Mr B; painting them gold. Making solid progress in wrapping all the Christmas presents. Baking chewy lemon snowdrop cookies for a sweet Christmas treat.

I've also been re-reading the Harry Potter books, because somehow they feel like Christmas to me. Next, I think I'll make paper snowflakes and decorate the house. How do you get into the holiday spirit?

Sweet mama bird

A gardener came today to cut back the vines beside our house (yes, we have the best landlords in the world). While working, he inadvertently exposed this sweet little mama. She refused to budge from her post, even with all the noise, and blades whirring millimetres from her nest. Luckily, little mama bird and her nest survived. Later in the afternoon I snuck back out to visit what she was so carefully guarding.