3 advent calendars

It's almost time for the official count-down to Christmas to begin. The advent calendar was one of my favourite Christmas activities when I was a child. Normally my aunt or my Nanna would give us a calendar, and we couldn't wait to open the new little window each morning. All that anticipation. WHAT will be behind the window? What's in the picture? Sometimes the calendars had chocolate behind the windows but to be honest that wasn't such a big deal. It was the surprise and the anticipation that made the advent calendars so special.

There are three advent calendars in our house this year.

1. The North Pole Express

This lovely wooden Christmas train was a gift from my parents last year. The idea is that you hide little ornaments or sweets in each drawer in the train. I don't want Scout and Ralph to go straight for the sugar without understanding the anticipation so, this year, they'll get a Christmas story instead. I'll hide a slip of paper with one sentence of the story in each box and we can read it together every morning.

2. The Victorian calendar

This traditional calendar will be our main advent calendar. The cardboard tree folds out and stands on your table. The snow-scene picture is filled with numbered windows, like a traditional advent calendar. There's a tiny cardboard tree-ornament behind each window, which the children can then take out of a morning and place on the cardboard tree.

3. The children's book

The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder is a favourite children's story of mine, with 24 chapters, named to match the advent. A little boy finds an old, dusty advent calendar in bookstore. When he opens the first window, a tiny story falls out, about a little girl who followed a lamb back through time and across continents, to the origin of the Christmas story. This year I'll read The Christmas Mystery (again) myself but, when the children are older, I'll read them one chapter a night until we reach Christmas Eve.

What are your favourite advent calendars?

If you're a fan of the homemade variety, I still love this punch-it-through calendar, and this one made out of old match boxes.

Thankful for...

The growing semblance of sleep at night Air conditioning Being loved My lemon tree The exquisite, unbearable heartache of motherhood The morning's first cup of tea Creative freedom Creative inspiration Peace, in my corner of the world The opportunity to contribute Turkish Delight

On the weekend our family shamelessly appropriated the North American custom of Thanksgiving and adapted it for our own purposes.

In our case, that meant gathering together a group of friends and family, eating way too much INSANELY GOOD traditional Thanksgiving fare (cooked up by the good folks at Gerald's Bar, who truly outdid themselves), and talking and laughing and shouting and joking and eating and drinking and eating some more, all afternoon.

The motivation was that Em was leaving for the UK at the end of the week and wouldn't be back until after the New Year. We were a little bit devastated to miss out not only on Christmas with Em, but on the usual summer holidays we would get to spend with her. Em, likewise, would miss out on seeing all the family she normally spent time with at Christmas. So we held the whole shebang a month early and thought "what the hey, let's call it Thanksgiving."

I was over the moon because I have been trying to get my family to give this particular holiday a go for YEARS. It was such a special time for me when I lived in the US. Here's what I wrote about understanding Thanksgiving a little while back.

This was such a fun and stress-free lunch and, unlike Christmas, it was loaded with exactly zero family dramas or expectations. I guess that's one of the best things about taking on a holiday (or elements of a holiday) that belong to somebody else's culture, huh. Clean slate! No expectations! So we plan to do it again next year. And every year.

Next time I might even remember to bring the camera.

What are you thankful for?

Photo credit: Todd Quackenbush (licensed under Creative Commons)

The 10 best herbs to start growing today

Once upon a time, on my parents' property, I had a herb garden.

A really big, old-fashioned, formally laid-out herb garden. I grew herbs for cooking, and also for medicine. My poor family: they were my guinea pigs. I used to grind up herbs and squeeze them into glycerine tablet casings to make them easier to ingest. I made verbena-infused lemon butter and pineapple sage jelly and herb crusted pies.

At some point during the 90s, I wrote this:

"...My garden becomes a place of comfort: hard work, gentle rest, no need to swallow these herbal remedies for the healing to begin.

"Grape vines curl and twine up the walls and espaliered wire that anticipates their embrace. Old briar roses climb over one arch, filled with used and abandoned finch nests, and at the other end, jasmine pulls apart a flimsy metal gate. Different tastes and colours of thyme, marjoram, oregano and sage blend with camomile, tarragon, two types of parsley and lemon grass.

"In this garden comfrey grows in abundance - kept green even in the harsh summer by its deep tap root - tansy, horseradish and borage; onion chives, garlic, santolina and marigolds.

"Chinese allspice flourishes here with the rose-scented geranium, lemon balm smells so good I can almost taste it, mint, spearmint, cold and dark, French lavender fills a middle diamond, while coriander and tarragon spice the furthest end. Strawberries line the path, though few survive the birds' early morning breakfast - and a lemon verbena tree is a suitable diving board for the bellbirds to splash in and out of the birdbath.

"In summer, the basil takes hold, calendula marigolds go wild, and in some years, sunflowers are encouraged to wave their golden heads over the front fence."

It sounds like a rather heavenly place, doesn't it. It was.

Now, I have a tiny, one-metre square box in which I grow herbs and vegetables (although I'm working some extra hours and saving as hard as I can to have our tiny courtyard converted into a tiny garden to grow herbs and flowers and where the children can play. One day…).

But the good thing about herbs is that they grow just about anywhere and for just about anyone. And herbs are incredibly versatile, wonderful plants to have around: they smell good, they taste good, they look good, and many of them come packaged up with a generous dose of colourful history and folklore.

If you'd like to start a herb garden, these are my 10 favourite herbs to grow:

Basil Why? Yum! And also, oooh that smell. Cool folklore quirk: in medieval times, some 'experts' believed that if you laid basil to rot in horse dung, it would breed venomous beasts. I have not personally tried this.

Lavender Why? Purple flowers almost all year 'round. Crystalise the tiny petals and use them to decorate cakes; dry the flower heads and use them to give a relaxing and cleansing scent. Mildly antiseptic. Cool folklore quirk: "Lavender is of special good use for all the griefs and pains of the head and brain that proceed of a cold cause, as apoplexy, falling sickness, the dropsy, or sluggish malady, cramps, convulsions, palsies and often faintings." Culpeper, 1653

Lemon balm Why? You will never smell anything better. Beautiful to flavour summer drinks, jellies and jams. Cool folklore quirk: apparently taking lemon balm makes you live a long time. For example in the 13th century, Llewelyn Prince of Glamorgan regularly took lemon balm tea and lived to be 108.

Nasturtium Why? Grows rampantly and covers a big area with beautiful, sprawling, orange and yellow flowers. The flowers taste like pepper in a salad. Cool folklore quirk: native to Peru, nasturtium was first brought to Europe in the 15th Century by the conquistadors.

Mint Why? Takes your Asian salads to a new level. Not to mention your cocktails, your smoothies, your desserts… Cool folklore quirk: in Greek mythology, Minthe was a nymph who caught the eye of Pluto, the god of the underworld. When Pluto's wife found out about their affair, she turned Minthe into a plant. Pluto couldn't save her, but he gave her a wonderful smell that would get even better when someone stepped on her (!)

Lemon verbena Why? A beautiful little tree with rough, lemon-scented leaves that you can use in cooking or tea. Gives the garden soft shade in summer and lets the sunshine through in winter. Cool folklore quirk: I couldn't find one! Came to Europe from South America in the 17th Century (via the Spanish).

Calendula marigold Why? Happy, sunny, yellow and orange flowers. The petals are a nice addition to salads, and can also be used to treat pimples (true!). Cool folklore quirk: the name comes from the fact that it seems to flower just about all year 'round.

Parsley Why? To eat! In anything (savoury)! Cool folklore quirk: was used by the ancient Greeks to crown victors at the Isthmian Games. Can you imagine sticking parsley on the heads of our athletes today? Let's bring this tradition back!

Comfrey Why? Apparently full of vitamins, and has more protein in its leaves than any other veggie. Also does amazing things for compost. Cool folklore quirk: historically comfrey was considered a "miracle herb" that could fix all kinds of ailments and even mend broken bones.

Rosemary Why? Tastes great with meats and roast vegetables, grows into a beautiful hedge, smells amazing. Cool historic quirk: was believed to strengthen the memory and therefore became an emblem of fidelity.

Photos are of Scout planting and watering basil in our little garden box on the weekend

Life at mine

Lonely gold shoe // Christmas already? // A tale of two cities: New York and Melbourne // First face paint // Mummy Pig // Celebration in stock // Typewriters in the city // Ralph is crawling now. Can you tell? // Boys' night // "Hey Mummy I writing your name" // Afternoon light

I'm taking inspiration from The Veggie Mama for this post. What's been happening at your place?

Home is wherever... (ode to New York)

This is a post about New York but, nowadays, you could apply a lot of the sentiments I've expressed to my life in Melbourne as well. Except my house now is a lot bigger and significantly less... infested... than my old apartment. With not as many steps. Be that as it may. This is also a post about space and city living and interiors and exteriors and worthwhile sacrifices and satisfactory compromises and, most of all, it is a post about home.

68 Thompson Street #36 New York NY 20016

When I lived in New York it was in a classic, shoe-box sized pre-war walk-up apartment. I lived on the fifth floor, which was as high as you were allowed to go without an elevator. There were 84 stairs between the pavement and my apartment, every one of them green and dingy and dirty, and I climbed them several times a day.

Inside my apartment was one big room with a tiny sink, a bar-fridge and a decrepit electric oven near the door; and, at the far end, two tall windows with bars protecting them, and a paint-encrusted radiator that hissed and banged and leaked water over the parquetry floor. A rusty fire escape outside one of the windows would offer escape to only the most desperate among us. There was also a bathroom complete with a full length bath - immeasurable luxury for New York - and a bedroom that, once populated with a double bed, was utterly without floor space.

There were also mice in my living room. And rats in the garbage-filled courtyard downstairs. And the echo of sirens and horns and engines, day and night, from the entrance to the Holland Tunnel only a couple of blocks away.

In keeping with my meagre budget, I decorated my apartment with a dubiously-hygienic bed and couch left behind by the previous tenant, a metal shelving unit found in the hallway, a vintage oak dressing table purchased from the side of the road near Bowery, and some cheap cushions, throws and bedding from a rather traumatic trip to IKEA. It's a miracle I wasn't covered in bed-bug bites.

I absolutely loved that apartment. It was home, my very own home in the heart of New York City. It was the hub of the life I lived in the city, a life that was all about art, adventure, and community. Yet I was barely inside the apartment.

Every day, I would tuck my computer under my arm and head out to one of a countless number of cafes and restaurants and parks to take advantage of the weather, the sometimes-good coffee, the free wifi; and to earn my living. At some of my favourite places, the wait-staff became friends. During my breaks, I'd wander the streets of lower Manhattan, exploring shopping precincts and alleyways draped in street art, peering in at secret gardens behind walls.

At night, I would visit one or more of my friends, most of them in equally-dingy and tiny apartments. We would cook together, and laugh, perch on the edge of couches with our plates on our laps, precariously resting wine glasses on window frames. Or we would head out to hear a band. One of my friends would be singing on Bleeker, or over in the East Village. Someone else would be hosting a party on a rooftop. A new show or restaurant or movie would be opening and one of my friends would have invitations.

On weekends, my friend Mish and I would put on our walking shoes, clip the lead onto my dog Oliver, and walk more than 100 blocks along the Hudson River, starting around Canal Street and ending up in the 90s, before turning around and walking all the way home. We'd walk through floral, landscaped gardens, past people sun baking on pocket-handkerchief sized grass lawns, tennis courts and water playgrounds. Past kayaks for hire and trapeze lessons and territorial geese that terrified Oliver as they waddled up and down the wooden boardwalks. After the High Line opened, we'd look up at all the tourists exploring the tall tracks. Or we'd leave our riverside path and join them, taking in an entirely different perspective.

At home at the end of this marathon walk, we'd hobble around, feet aching, ravenously hungry. We'd call our friends and meet them at Lucky Strike, where I'd order the steak frites and a glass of prosecco in a tumbler, and not feel guilty.

All of this is to say that a tiny, dirty, somewhat-infested apartment at the epicentre of one of the biggest and busiest cities in the world can feel like home. And more, a happy home. And more than that, a home in which you are never trapped, never over-crowded, never fenced in.

Because in New York, the entire city is your back yard. You have 18 miles of back yard in which to explore, play... hey, you can even eat, pray and love, if that's your thing. And nobody questions it. Nobody who understands New York ever asks if you wish you had a bigger apartment, or a place to grow your own vegetables: there are community gardens for that, and window sills. Instead, they understand that the compromise is to sacrifice the space inside your home, for all that space and diversion and beauty and creativity outside your front door.

And then I moved to Melbourne.

(to be continued...)

Roast beetroot, pumpkin & goat's cheese salad

On the weekend I was SO EXCITED to finally harvest the rainbow baby beets I'd been nurturing in my little vegetable box, and to turn them into a roast vegetable salad. I made a bit of a big deal about it, taking Little Miss out with me to talk about plants and food. We both put on our hats and gardening gloves, and her Daddy took a photo…

After all that, my big harvest yielded two baby beets. Two. And they were lovely, perfect little beets, but two baby beets does not a salad make.

So off to Paddy the greengrocer we went, and the lesson on "paddock to plate" was not quite as powerful as I had hoped.

This minor horticultural setback aside, I still think my salad was delicious. The sweetness of the roast vegetables with the creaminess of the cheese was divine. It was also easy to make, and would be simple to adapt with slightly different ingredients. I added chicken to the salad this time because we were quite hungry, but I think it would be just as tasty (probably better) without meat.

Here's how to make this salad for two people.

INGREDIENTS (SALAD)

* Beetroot (a medium-sized beetroot or a handful of baby beets) * Pumpkin (a smallish wedge, I used about two thirds of what you see in the photo) * Baby spinach leaves, as many as you like * Chèvre goat's cheese * Pepitas (sunflower seeds would also be great) * Balsamic vinegar * Olive oil * Salt and pepper

INGREDIENTS (CHICKEN)

* Half a chicken breast * Plain flour * Chinese five-spice * Ground black pepper * Ground sea salt

DRESSING

(OK confession: I used a honey and Dijon mustard dressing that was already made by the good people at Praise. It was delicious, and paired perfectly with the flavours in this salad. If you wanted to make your own, I'd do something similar, because the sweetness of the honey and the sharp taste of the mustard were perfect with the roast veges).

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 180 Celcius

2. Peel the beetroots, then chop them into small squares or wedges. In the case of baby beets, peel and halve them.

3. Chop the pumpkin into similar sized pieces, trimming way the skin.

4. Put the beetroot into a baking dish. Splash with olive oil and one or two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper*, then toss until all the beetroot is coated.

5. In a separate baking dish, toss the pumpkin in olive oil, salt and pepper*, just enough to coat it.

6. Put both dishes into the oven and bake until cooked through and the pumpkin is just starting to brown, anywhere from half an hour to an hour (best you just keep checking). I took the pumpkin out and let the beets cook for a bit longer, which would have been fine except then one of the children needed me and the beetroot ended up being in there for just a touch too long, and was a bit overcooked. Ces't la vie. Or more appropriately, ces't la parenthood!

(IF YOU'RE ADDING CHICKEN...)

a) Cut the chicken breast into nugget-sized chunks

b) To about 1/4 cup flour, add a good sprinkling of Chinese five-spice (about one and a half teaspoons but don't worry too much), and several generous grinds of black pepper and sea salt. Mix it all in.

c) Toss the chicken chunks into the flour-and-spice mix and make sure they are well coated.

d) Pan fry in a splash of olive oil until the chicken is cooked through, and golden and slightly crispy on the outside.

7. Put your salad together! Into a salad bowl drop your beetroot, pumpkin and spinach leaves, then pour over the dressing. Not too much, you only want to lightly coat it. Toss the dressing through. If you're serving the salad in individual bowls, now's the time to transfer them. Break apart the chèvre and place it around the salad, then sprinkle the whole thing with pepitas. If you're using chicken, place it on top (but don't toss through), before the pepitas.

Voila!

* Don't use too much pepper or it will overpower the flavour of the roast vegetables.

8 things I loved at the Grand Designs Live Home Show

I am super grateful to the folks behind the Grand Designs Live Home Show in Melbourne for sending me tickets to this event on the weekend. Here are eight things I spotted at the show that I really wanted to spend my (sadly non existent) money on.

Clockwise from top left: This sweet set of four animal wooden spoons from Anrol Designs :: Painted geometric coasters from Amindy :: Hand carved and painted stoneware cups from Koa :: Lightweight, wooden K bowls, from Eco Wood Design :: An "eyoi yoi" table lamp (I used to have an eyoi yoi floor lamp that I loved) from Marc Pascal :: Humble milk crate tables & chairs made lovely with wooden tops, from Sawdust Bureau :: Shadowbox shelving from Cantilever Interiors  :: An image created from the text of an entire book, from Spineless Classics

(A little note about the pics: I did take my camera along to snap photos while I was there, but the combination of limited natural lighting plus the wearing of a toddler in the Ergo did not a steady hand nor pretty picture make. So to do these lovely products justice, I've used images from the makers' or vendors' websites.)

The great custard controversy

Don't say I never bring you the important issues. While we were chatting the other night, Mr B started to tell me about the custard his Nan used to make. To hear him tell it, "Nan's custard" was rich, creamy and perfect. She would whip it up for dessert after a Sunday roast, and make it at Christmas to pour over pudding. Mr B's Nan was one of those truly hospitable women that you mostly only read about in old books. She'd be up at 4am on Christmas Day to roast the turkey, preparing a veritable banquet for the family.

I've got to be honest, I've never really thought of custard as a dish in itself. It seems more of... I don't know... a condiment. But he was so passionate about Nan's custard and how good it was and all those memories, that I asked him to get the recipe so I could try to create his happy culinary experience. Here's how the conversation went next.

Mr B: I don't think she had a recipe. She just mixed it up on the stove.

Me: Would she have given your Mum the recipe?

Mr B (ignoring my question and looking all misty-eyed): It was delicious, and fluorescent yellow.

Me (growing suspicious): And she definitely made it from scratch? What ingredients did she use?

Mr B (with a withering look): What all custard is made from. Custard powder!

And just like that, the Great Custard Challenge was born.

To the best of my knowledge, there are three types of custard: the type you buy ready-made and refrigerated, the type you make up with custard powder, and the type you mix up with eggs and milk. I decided I would make all three, then challenge Mr B to a blind tasting to see which one lived up to his memory.

It took me two goes to make the powder version, because I tackled it first and while I think I got the consistency the way Mr B described it (quite thick), by the time I had subsequently cooked up the 'real deal' version, the powder version had become congealed and gluggy, and I had to throw it out and start again. We will be eating custard in our house for a long time because Mr B bought a two kilogram jug of the refrigerated stuff because it was only a dollar more than the small carton. Sometimes he forgets it's just us and two very small children, and shops like he's back in his childhood home with three adults, five children, and umpteen aunties, uncles, cousins and neighbours visiting at any given time.

If you've never made custard from scratch (actual scratch, rather than with powder), it's incredibly easy. Here's my recipe, a bit of an amalgam of a few I found on the Internet. These are small quantities, and it makes about a cup and a half. I'm going to try it without the sugar next time and see if the kids still like it for a healthy snack.

Ingredients: 


1 egg 1.5 tablespoons cornflour 1.5 cups milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract* 1.5 tablespoons sugar

*We only had vanilla essence in the house for this experiment because I bought it by accident, and it still tasted ok, but I definitely think extract or the scrapings of an actual vanilla pod would be the better way to go

Method:


1. In a small saucepan with the heat off, whisk the egg, cornflour and a couple of tablespoons of the milk together 2. When you have created a smooth paste with no lumps, turn the heat on low, and gradually add the rest of the milk, stirring continually 3. As soon as the custard becomes thick and creamy (which will happen the second you start to think "this is taking too long it won't work"), remove the saucepan from the heat 4. Stir in the sugar and vanilla

Can you guess which is which by looking at these? L-R = the powdered stuff, the refrigerated stuff, the homemade stuff

The outcome of this challenge? Much to my surprise, Mr B chose my homemade custard in his blind tasting! I can't claim that it was up to Nan's Magic Custard Powder dessert standard because a) I never got to taste it and b) possibly I just didn't do the powder justice. But it was nice to get the stamp of approval on my very own creation. The best part was that the Custard Challenge led to a longer conversation about Mr B's Nan and their Christmases in Bendigo and about the kind of woman she was. Which was quite lovely, and exactly what food memories are all about, I think.

This is part of a new regular series exploring food memories from our childhoods. The good, the bad and the bizarre. I explain the whole thing in this post if you're interested. Do you want to join in? Recreate or reinvent some of your best or worst food memories and use the hashtag #naomilovesfoodmemories so I can promote what you're doing. Or ask me to have a go at one of your food memories and I'll see what I can do!

Homemade childhood food memories

This is a new thing. It's something quite fun and I hope you want to play along. Mr B and I have decided to revisit some of the meals and dishes of our childhoods, and the memories that go with the meals. We are going to cook them up and photograph them and blog about them and share our recipes. The meals we hated and the meals we loved, and the meals our families seemed to eat over and over and over again.

We had a little brainstorm the other night and the list above contains some of our most potent food memories. There's nothing sophisticated in there, it's just childhood. Chilli con carne? Oh, how I hated it, served up with sides of coconut and banana and sultanas (why? WHY?). Chocolate eclairs? You should hear Mr B go on about his grandmother's "famous" eclairs.

Taste is an extraordinarily powerful sense, wouldn’t you agree? Even more so as it is combined with smell. Just one little taste of something can instantly transport you in time and space. There is a cake shop on Rathdowne Street that, until recently, sold cupcakes that tasted a lot – a LOT – like the vanilla cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery in the West Village in New York. I would go there and get a coffee and cake to go, pushing then-baby Madeleine in her pram while she slept. And as I took that first bite Rathdowne Street would melt away and I’d be crossing the road with my dog into a little park just over the way from Magnolia and checking the bench seats for pigeon poo and fishing my notebook out of my bag and writing poetry in the last little pockets of autumn sun before the evening closed in.

What about you? Tell me your most powerful food memories. I'd love you to join in with me, if you want to. There are two ways we can do this:

1. Cook up your own food memories, and use the hashtag #naomilovesfoodmemories around the social media traps so we can all see what you've been cooking and what you remember, and share the love

2. Another way you can join in, if you prefer, is to tell ME about a dish that brings back special memories for you. Mr B and I will add your dish to our list and cook it up on your behalf. Now THAT could be fun

Let's do this!

Melbourne gift guide

A good friend of yours is visiting your neck of the woods. What cheesy souvenirs do you give them? Here are six ways I'd like to welcome someone to my wonderful (adopted) city, or say "thanks for visiting" as they leave. Clockwise from top-left:

Toy Melbourne tram // Hook-turn mug // Melbourne skyline watercolour // Adorable greeting card // Pellegrini's tea-towel // Melbourne Precincts book