Things learned and loved on Tuesday

 

Learned: I couldn't save the world but I could make someone's world better

Loved: Oona Ristola photography

Learned: a recipe for fig, ricotta and honey toast. Yum!

Loved: green and growing homes

Learned: why our children need to read

Loved: knitted comfort food

Learned: three surprising decorating tips

Loved: this book-themed hotel

Learned: how to put together a cheese plate

Loved: the chance to get my paws on a note pad from the Great Northern Hotel, Twin Peaks

Learned: little baby pumpkins make really sweet (and not at all scary) table decorations at Halloween, even if it isn't autumn or Thanksgiving

How about you? What have you learned and loved lately?

Morning at mine: pictures + proverbs

Lessons learned lately:

The first cup of tea of the morning is the best cup of tea of the year

One mango can make a whole house smell like Christmas

Sugar is harder to give up than Facebook

Clean house makes happy heart

Spring starts when the flowers bloom

Two children napping at the same time is a rare and precious jewel

Guacamole season (and also a recipe)

I have been trying to teach the children about seasons for fruit and vegetables. Late in autumn we had a "goodbye green grapes" party to enjoy the final bunch of the season, which was harder to explain than you might expect due to the plethora of gigantic, California-grown green-grapes that started appearing on grocery-store shelves soon thereafter. We made good use of mandarin season but recently had to say goodbye to them, too, and now we are all eagerly anticipating the arrival of stone-fruit season.

You get my drift.

And then last weekend (or thereabouts), guacamole season started. Big excitement!

Guacamole season goes hand-in-hand with daylight saving and Caprese-salad season and dry-white-wine season and also friends-over-at-dusk season. So even though I'm not famous for loving the warmer weather, I am nevertheless quite the fan of guacamole season.

Guacamole season starts with longer days and bare feet. Soggy bathers, sand inside the house, tasting sunscreen after kissing sweaty lips. Cicadas after dark, mosquitos too, and the hum of the fan in the bedroom. Guacamole is made to share and taste and leave and come back to, and then come back to again. Double-dipping is ok because we are all friends here, family probably or practically, and somehow the guacamole bowl is always empty before the corn chips run out. Some people pair guacamole season with margaritas in glasses with the rims crusted with sugar-salt and I totally get that, but I am too lazy to mix even the simplest of cocktails. White wine or prosecco, straight from the 'fridge and therefore too cold for the purists, suits me. Maybe some homemade lemonade, too.

Would you like to know my guacamole recipe?

A few words before you try this. I have been hunting for the perfect guacamole recipe for a long, long time, and this is the closest I've found to it. Each time I make it it is different, sometimes better than others. But in case you try it and then yell "Naomi, what?!?," here are some things that I look for in what I happen to think makes a good guacamole, and maybe you will agree or maybe you won't.

1. It has to be smooth. None of this lumpy, chunky stuff
2. I'm a bit of a guacamole-purist so this recipe is very simple. No onion or tomato or cheese for me. This ain't a meal, folks, it's a tasty snack
3. No Doritos or other cheesy, processed corn-chips are permitted within a 100 metre radius of guacamole at my house. Get yoself some stock-standard "proper" corn-chips, cheese-free

Naomi's guacamole recipe

Treat this recipe with a fair bit of flexibility. For example I like a decent kick to my guac so I'm generous (ish) with the cayenne pepper and chilli flakes. I also like a lot of lime zing to my guacamole, so I add a lot more lime than others tend to do. Add the lime-juice one lime at a time, to get the taste you like. If like me you love a lot 'o lime, but you find the guac is getting too sloppy, start adding zest instead.

Ok let's go...

Ingredients 4 avocados 2 cloves garlic, minced juice of 1 - 4 limes, to taste 1/2 teaspoon sea-salt 1/2 - 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1/2 - 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 tablespoon chopped fresh coriander (cilantro for my American friends)

Method Scoop all the avocado into a blender, add in the minced garlic, and mix until it's nice and smooth with no big lumps. Now add the juice of one lime, and about half the amounts of the dried spices and fresh coriander, blend to mix them, then taste. Start adding bits and pieces of the rest, plus more lime juice, until you're happy with the flavour.

Serve it with corn chips (the real deal, nothing cheesy), and enjoy!

ps. If you're feeding other people, make the guacamole just before they arrive as the avocado will start to oxidise and turn brown after a little while and you want it to look good as well as taste good!

Sugar free?

I have been trying to give my body a break from sugar. I like sugar a lot more than is strictly good for me, and also, it’s pretty hard to insist that my children have a healthy diet if I don’t model said diet myself.

On Friday I made this sugar-free take on lemon meringue pie from the I Quite Sugar for Life cookbook. It was surprisingly tasty, and I impressed myself with how good (I thought) it looked. Emboldened, I also made a peppermint slice from the same cookbook. It was awful.

Do you have any tips? What are your favourite sugar-free recipes for sweet-toothed folks?

Welcome, spring

Pastel-perfect blossoms from the tree behind the wall and across the laneway are floating into our garden and carpeting the grass in pink confetti.

The children are shedding layers, leaving trails of socks and stockings and cardigans throughout the house as they cast off the long, long winter and turn their faces to the warm and welcome sun.

The urge to clean and cleanse is irresistible. Last week a toy cull, clothing next. Floors and benches and table-tops shine.

I pick a posy of geraniums and pineapple sage and something purple that I can't remember, and they spill out of a fat, old teapot, brightening the table while we eat outside.

We discover Ralph has grown out of another hat. Last year's sun-hat, pulled out of winter storage this weekend, sits comically and ineffectually atop his beautiful, big noggin.

Tiny poppy seedlings are pushing their way up through the soil in our garden. “Little baby plants!” breathes Scout in awe. “Be very, very gentle.”

Welcome, spring. This year, I've made my peace with you.

Image credits: Alexandru Tudorache, licensed for unconditional use under Creative Commons

Getting neighbourly

A group in Switzerland has come up with a simple and rather lovely way to use your humble letterbox to build community.

But it’s not through the writing and sending of letters, it’s about sharing, and involves (gulp!) actual face-to-face contact.

You know the old saying about popping into someone’s place to borrow a cup of milk? When I was growing up, we really did that. We knew all the neighbours in our little suburban cul de sac, and they knew us. When someone new moved into the street, we would bake them a cake or pick them some lemons and we’d knock on the door with our gift, to say welcome. And if someone in the street needed to borrow something and someone else in the street had it, no problem!

Relying on that kind of old-fashioned community spirit, a group called Pumpipumpe has designed a series of stickers depicting household items that we don’t necessarily use every day: things like lawnmowers and blenders and fondue sets.

The simple idea is that if you have one of these items and might be willing to lend them to a neighbour, you put a sticker on your letterbox.

They say, “That is how you can stand up for a reasonable, sustainable way to use consumer goods in your own neighbourhood, build a local network, get to know your neighbours better and buy less all together!”

The project is deliberately low-tech. They could have built an app, or a website, designed for sharing. But Pumpipumpe is about bringing back neighbourhood: walking around the streets where you live, and still having to physically knock on the door of your neighbour, say hello, and say “yes please I’d like to borrow that bike pump.”

Likewise, they say, they leave it up to the community how they will manage or reimburse each share.

“Do you want a deposit, in order be sure to get your jigsaw back? Maybe you and your neighbour will in the end share your expenses for a common newspaper subscription? Or will you offer your neighbour a piece of the delicious cake you made with his cake tin? Please do individually discuss the ideal conditions with the people you share your things with. Pumpipumpe promotes the sharing (not renting for money) of personal belongings, so please use these generous offers of your local neighbours respectfully. Good sharing to everyone!!”

The scheme started in Switzerland and that’s where it's strongest, but is now spreading across Europe, and at last count was making use of 7290 letterboxes for the purpose of sharing and community. The Pumpipumpe people have created an online map that shows where items might be available to borrow, to save you having to roam the streets for days, searching for a sewing machine.

I’d love to see this in Australia! Wouldn’t you? We’d just need a small group of us to make it work. Like say maybe 10 friends who all live in the same city start it off, putting out their stickers and letting each other know, and then they each tell the other people they know, and hopefully it spreads from there.

Stickers are available to buy online at pumpipumpe.ch.

Cute, super-daggy video explaining it all here:

Images are all official Pumpipumpe media images, owned by Meteor Collectif.

Queen of the universe

“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” ~ JD Salinger, “A Girl I Knew” Sometimes do you feel like you are trying - and failing - to hold the universe together? I don’t mean the WHOLE universe, of course (now wouldn’t THAT be a task), but the universe of your life, whatever that may be. Your job, your family, your home, your health, your friends, your creative ambitions, your grand plans, your pets, your breakfast… that kind of thing.

Yep, me too. It’s a big job, isn’t it, universal maintenance. Should we learn to let go a little? Maybe. Or maybe not.

Last week I was sick at the same time as my children were sick and that was… challenging… especially as it came on the back of about a month of bad and broken sleep, and descended only two weeks after I’d recovered from a prolonged cough that had racked me to the core.

It felt like forever that I’d been “normal” and when I came downstairs last Friday, still unwell but definitely on the mend and at least able to stand without wobbling and (more important) able to keep down a cup of tea, the first thing I wanted to do was to regain control of my own little universe.

After successfully getting the kids off to daycare (anyone with toddlers knows what a mammoth task that is in its own right), that meant tidying the house so that I could find enough surfaces to clean and scrub the house, following the rigours it had endured of small children being looked after by their father. It meant stock-taking the contents of the ‘fridge, sadly depleted. It meant dusting off the pile of briefing notes and research on my desk, apologetically emailing neglected editors and clients, and writing up a task-list with associated deadlines on my whiteboard.

And so on and so forth. None of those tasks was particularly fun, and not how I wanted to spend my time. How I really wanted to spend my time was in writing and drawing and painting. Or, if I was still too sick to get creative, I wanted to spend my time under a crocheted rug, watching re-runs of Veronica Mars.

But somehow it was enormously satisfying to be putting my own world - ok my universe - to rights. The life I lead right now might be small, to some. It is small compared to my past, even, filled with the domestic mundanity of life with small children and a part-time job that I do from home, trudging through the same kind of writing I was doing more than a decade ago.

But in this little universe, I am Queen. This life is MINE and I have chosen it and I am in charge of it, and that feels GOOD.

Even when I’m on my hands and knees, scrubbing something unidentifiable off the playroom floor.

How is your universe holding up?

Lovely, dreamy girl image is by Schlomit Wolf, licensed for unconditional use under Creative Commons

Winter

The trees that line our street are bare, their leaves rotting in brown, woodsy, rain-soaked piles in gutters and corners. We are spending more days inside. Baking bread, writing letters, painting, cuddling.

Pumpkin, pomegranates, cinnamon, crumpets. Mandarins, red wine, sausages, cloves.

Every morning I rise before the sun, readying the house for my still-slumbering family. I turn on heaters to take the chill off the rooms, flip the kettle on. I squeeze half a lemon into a glass of water and sip it, leaning on the bench as I contemplate the day to come and the jobs ahead. The kettle bubbles, steams, then clicks off, so I pour a cup of tea and take it into my little study to start writing. I turn on the computer, take a sip while I wait for everything to load.

The first sip of the first cup of tea of the morning is one of life's highest pleasures.

The dawn is beginning to grey the sky when the children are ready to get up. Scout looks out the window, pauses with a spoonful of Weetbix half way to her mouth. "Mummy! It is dark outside!" she says, eyes wide with wonder. And then, just to be sure, she cautions me: "But it is not our bed time. We did only just wake up."

What are the words to that song?

Let's talk about song lyrics, for a minute. Specifically, song lyrics that you get wrong, with somewhat hilarious consequences. I'll start.

1. In high school, I thought Madonna was singing "Dress you up in Milo" rather than "Dress you up in  my love." (Non-Aussie friends, Milo is a kind of chocolate drink powder that you mix with milk. It's a bit more crumbly and a lot more delicious than normal chocolate milk powder.) I thought it was particularly gross when she sang "I'm gonna dress you up in Milo / all over, all over / from your head down to your toes." I mean, how would you ever get that stuff OUT? (Don't answer that.)

2. Once my friend Rachael told me, her tone dripping with derision, that her little brother had thought John Travolta's lyrics in 'You're the One that I Want' included "I got shoes, they're multiplying." Picking up on Rachael's tone, I said "Pshaw, what an idiot," but that was just to save Rachael's feelings. Secretly, I was pretty sure Rachael's little brother was right. I mean, it made perfect sense! "I got shoes, they're multiplyin'" (because, you know, he was dancing SO FAST) "and I'm losing control" (well of course you would - if your feet were moving so fast they looked like they were multiplying, you probably WOULD lose control at some point. It's just physics, Rachael.)

3. When I went through my Jem phase about 10 years ago, I could have SWORN that after the chorus in 'Them,' some children started singing "Ooh Jackie Chan, dum-de-dum-dum-dum Jackie Chan." You know exactly the bit I mean, don't you. Don't you?

Ok your turn. What song lyrics do you get wrong?

ps. I am not alone. Behold!

ANZAC biscuit recipe

This morning Scout and I whipped up a couple of batches of ANZAC biscuits. We made the monster-sized ones you see here for us to eat on the weekend (and one for me at morning tea), then another batch of slightly more reasonably-sized biscuits to take to her friends at daycare. She was bursting with pride.

Growing up, we always had two great recipes for ANZAC biscuits, and I made these using the one of them I still have. I don't actually know if this is Nanna's family recipe, or the one Mum got from the Wideview School Fete in the 1980s, but either way it is quick, easy, and the biscuits always taste delicious.

Ingredients: 

* 1 cup rolled oats * 1 cup flour * 1 cup sugar * 3/4 cup coconut (I prefer shredded though the biscuits you see in these photos used desiccated) * 1/2 cup butter, melted * 2 tablespoons Golden Syrup * 1 tablespoon boiling water * 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Method: 

1. Preheat the oven to 160 decrees Celsius 2. In a large bowl, mix together the oats, flour, sugar and coconut 3. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over the stove, then stir in the Golden Syrup 4. Add the bicarb. soda to the boiling water, then pour it into the melted butter mixture (if you are cooking with kids, they will love this part because it goes all frothy like a science experiment) 5. Pour the butter mixture over the dry ingredients and mix well 6. Shape the mixture roughly into balls and place on a greased baking tray (allow room for the balls to flatten and spread as they cook) 7. Bake for up to 20 minutes, checking regularly for colour and turning if necessary

Make sure you don't overcook the biscuits. Base your estimation of their "doneness" on the golden colour. When you pull them out they'll still be smooshy but don't worry, they'll firm up as they cool down. I like my ANZAC biscuits soft in the centre but if you want them to be crunchy, give them a couple of minutes longer.

ps. Have you ever wondered how ANZAC biscuits came about? They used to be called Soldiers' Biscuits, and were created by mothers and wives and girlfriends to help give their loved-ones the nutritional benefits of oats during the long sea voyage to the front. You can read the story here.