rock

I've said before that I don't consider myself an artistic type. I'm a maker for sure, but that finely honed aesthetic sense is missing in me. I start with what works and what's beautiful comes second every time. Second, or not at all.

I have huge admiration for those who can imagine up beauty and go about making it. Who surround themselves with things that reflect that inner landscape of harmonising visuals. I know when I am in their spaces that it resonates within me - it is real for sure - but I am just not that kind of creator.

But during this last holiday as I spent a bit of time indulging my inner rock nerd at the beach I thought a lot about how much my sense of beauty tracks in natural environments. The attraction I feel to some of these pebbles comes close to how I feel about really incredible and inspired works of art. Well beyond words, holding these things, looking at their colours and forms, feeling their surfaces fills me with emotion.

I absolutely love them.

I blogged about my first sample collecting journey here, and my lack of understanding why I did it, and about the deep emotions investing in these wee bottles.

I added to my collection in Bali, some black sand (which I find, quite frankly nothing short of magical),
some lovely volcanic beach pebbles
and this odd spine found floating in the ocean. The locals we asked assured us it was from a pig, but that seems a complete fantasy to me. Sure a sea creature of some kind?

In this latest trip there were some bigger pebbles in Mallacoota - the absolutely most perfect one I picked up when we first arrived has gone missing. But I love the stripes and colours of these ones too.

And then at Cape Conran these stunningly tiny pebbles - the black ones are like velvet they are so smooth and matt and the white ones just fill me with light joy.

It's not just rocks. The green canopy over the top of the tea trees on the dunes is magnetic to my gaze, and the waves of green around the distant river shores expands my chest in a way I find quite inexplicable. But my photographs just can't capture them, and I can't bring them home, or touch them or stroke their textured surfaces.

By comparison so much of my home like is visually jarring and ugly, the textures are wrong and jumbled. I don't know that there is anything I can do about that, in a grand solution kind of sense, but I'm feeling very attuned to the colours and textures of the wilds still and looking for ways I can do more than just play with rocks.

wilds

Home.

After 10 days in the wilds.

The first family holiday where I have felt the crushing burden of small children is waning - even the lad spent his days off riding his bike alone, chatting to strangers, learning the art of the skid stop and discovering an abiding love of bugs. The girl went off alone to town on her bike, bringing back supplies and an enormous sense of achievement in her independence.

Beautiful places.

Lovely times.

Really lovely kids helpless with laughter, playing hilariously, walking through new landscapes with open eyes and full of the wonder of the world times.

A great start to a new year.

cooker

Since Amy was quite small we've been referring to a mythical golden age when she* will be old enough to cook dinner for the family on a regular basis. D and I have looked forward to that time because we won't have to shoulder all the cooking work, but also (and way more importantly) because I want Amy to be a part of the labour team that runs the household and gain confidence in herself to be able to run her own household some day.

By the time I left home I knew how to cook. I knew how to shop, budget and plan meals. I had a stable of things I knew how to cook by heart but also a collection of recipe books and the skill and desire to use them. I was by no means an excellent cook or a fancy cook but I could feed myself and my housemates wholesome and tasty meals for a reasonable price.

I did not see cooking as an optional extra or a form of performance art. It was something I had been doing, in various forms at various levels since I was wee. In fact I was such a mummy's girl that one of my most favourite childhood places to be was on the kitchen bench helping mum to cook. And cook we did - from the daily loaf on up, my full time working mother made everything from scratch from a single weekly shop.

As I got older I positively enjoyed baking (it was getting to eat the results that did it), but I also had responsibilities to contribute to the family meals. I helped mum to shop and I picked our own home grown produce and I learned about produce and how to pick the best stuff, I top and tailed beans, stirred gravy on the stove and tossed salads. I also got home from school to notes about putting on the roast at a certain time or getting the vegetables ready.

I was shocked to realise how many of my peers at school never cooked at all. A lot of my friends with stay at home or part time working mums came home from school to home baked afternoon tea delights and rarely if ever were put to work in the kitchen. When I was younger I was deeply envious but as I got older I was filled with gratitude. Understanding how to cook and feed a family in the routine and mundane way is something I am exceptionally pleased to not have to learn as an adult.

So, back to Amy. This is what I want her to have. To appreciate the work of proper old school cooking, to develop her understanding and skills and one day to leave home ready to provide for herself. While she's always been involved in baking and helping out the move to taking the lead was a whole new ballgame. I've bought her a few cookbooks - I started with ones aimed at kids but I find them pretty limited, with an emphasis on sweets, baking and processed ingredients, so more recently I've kept an eye out for the easy, quick, weeknight meal type books.

We started a year or so ago with the occasional mothers day or fathers day meals but at Christmas time Amy announced she wanted a regular weekly slot. We decided on a weekend night so there would be time to shop and prepare without rush. Last week she made risotto primavera and it was sensational, this week spanakopita.

I find it really hard to teach and nurture her without getting too caught up in doing everything efficiently and well - it will be my ongoing challenge to hand over the reigns whilst still being supportive. I need to teach her more knife skills, and build her confidence with heat and somehow get her muscles going for handling big pots and pans - she's petite for her age and no match for the adult scale of kit. I also need to reinforce the lessons and tips she learns as she goes.

It was while mulling over some of these challenges that I came up with the idea of her blog posting her cooking. In writing down the recipes and steps she can relive the process and better cement it in her mind. She'll have a record to come back to if she wants to cook the same dish twice and I also thought she might gain a readership with some of my blog readers kids - maybe other households will take up the weekly kid cook challenge. I'm letting Amy post in her own words, as she wants, and if I feel the need to add anything I'll do it as a postscript at the end.

----------------------------------------------------------
Hi I am Amy and I cook dinner weekly and I am 9 years old. Here's something I made on the 7/1/12.
And here's the recipe for it:

Spanakopita

Ingredients:
3 eggs
1 box of filo pastry
125gms melted butter
500gms cheese - feta and/or haloumi and/or ricotta
2 packets of frozen spinach
2 large onions
3 cloves of garlic
Oil

Method:
1. Dice both of the onions and finely cut garlic
2. Put garlic & onions in a pan over medium heat and cook without browning with a drizzle of oil

3. Meanwhile crack all the eggs into large bowl [watch out for some shell]
4. Crumble cheese lightly over bowl with the eggs

5. Drain spinach and leave over sink
6. Check on onion, if the onion is ready put it with cheese and eggs if not do this step later
7. Add spinach to the other ingredients and mix and mix

8. After you have finished mixing get a square tin, filo pastry and the melted butter
9. Spread butter around the tin up the side and the bottom work quickly so that pastry won’t dry out

10. Put a piece of pastry in the tin and spread butter all over fast, do it about 10 to 15 times then add the filling

11. Then do the same as you did for the bottom by folding in the sheets that are hanging over the sides of the dish and brushing each one with butter

12. Put it in the oven at about 175 and clean up then wait till it is crispy

serve with yoghurt or tomato and cucumber salad
hope you enjoyed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
by Amy

[Suzie's PS - we actually split our mix in two and made 2 smaller pies - one without spinach for the boy who won't eat green. We used a mixture of haloumi and feta cheese because we like the flavours - ricotta gives a milder taste if that's what you like. I also usually put a bunch of chopped spring onions and a handful of flat leaf parsley in - but we were cooking from what we had so we skipped these things. You can beef the meal up by serving with some steamed baby potatoes or rice and lentil pilaf, we had it with green beans from the garden with a bit of vinegar, pomegranate molasses and some chopped cherry tomatoes. This quantity made plenty for the 4 of us with enough left overs for lunch tomorrow - could have fed 6 adults. Next time Amy makes this I will encourage her to switch a few ingredients so she can explore changing recipes once she has the method down pat.]

Edited to add - as one commenter highlighted, this post gives the impression that all these expectations are placed on Amy and not Wil. And I just wanted to say this is absolutely not the case! When Wil is a little older he will be doing the same as she is now - but at 4 I don't think he's ready for kitchen resnsibility. He loves to help me bake and already shows a natural tendency for order and precision that bodes well for his cooking future, and he loves anything that involves following 'structions. And I fully intend to see him off in the world with all the capabilities in the home sphere that the girl child has and besides would I pass up the opportunity for 2 nights a week off cooking?!

restless

I am seeking grace in this period of restless inaction.

My health care professional has braced me for the likelihood that my cough and cycles of exhaustion and infection will probably continue for at least six weeks longer, so I am trying to simply view the next little while as a time of gentle non commitment.

I feel OK enough of the time to keep normal life going - sort of - but crap enough to be uninspired and grumpy as hell, and to have lost all faith in making plans and doing stuff.

Cue the perfect time to chug away on a few miles of the crochet blanket of doom.

I am surprised how much I am enjoying the mindless repetition and the feeling of progress. A long way from finishing to be sure, but now that I have passed the a quarter of the way there milestone it is beginning to look distinctly blanket like.

And while I am hooking I am gathering courage for a mighty destash. Just as soon as my lungs are fit for a bit of dust exposure I am going to be ruthless in getting rid of loads of books, some fabrics and yarn. Really clearing stuff out. I won't have enough stock or interest in running a market stall and while I can fairly easily destash yarn on ravelry and books on ebay I am not at all sure about how to offload fabric in an efficient way. Anyone got some good ideas? Is this blog a reasonable place to conduct a garage sale?

adieu

I confess to a morose feeling and a struggle to find some uplifting words on the last day of the year. The persistent chesty cold and asthma I've been trying to shake since late November is winning at the moment and I feel for all the world like I'm on death's door. I am sure things will improve at some stage, I'm just not sure when.

In the meantime, I will look back on the making highlights of 2011 - as always a mixed bag of successes and disappointments. Interestingly as I was putting these mosaics together I realised I have failed to photograph some of the things I've made this year - some of them my favourites. Odd.

Sewing

Knitting

Machine knitting

#2 and #3

I forgot to take photos - but really how many brown globs can you look at for inspiration?

A Christmas BBQ for the collected neighbours supplied me with an opportunity for another round of mousse trials and a wider test audience.

OK, so #2 was the molecular gastronomy version of chocolate mousse whipped into public consciousness by Heston, but actually captured first by Herve This. It's just chocolate and water, with the water being whisked into the chocolate to form an emulsion as the melted chocolate cools.

It was super easy to make, and for a hard core chocolate lover it has a purity to be admired. On the downside it was heavy. Maybe I didn't whisk hard enough - though the recipe does recommend you want out for over whisking rather than under whisking so who knows. Also, if you aren't a dark chocolate lover, this version might be a bit bitey. My kids found it unpalatable and to be honest, it was too much for me. I'm not clear whether the strict instruction for at least 70% cocoa solids in the chocolate is a form of taste snobbery or an actual chemical requirement - this may have more universal appeal if made with a milk chocolate?

#3 was based on Elizabeth David's perennial whole egg no cream classic recipe, except that at the last moment I added a little whipped cream to try and rescue the overly heavy result. I fully acknowledge user error here but making this version was a total nightmare.

I melted my chocolate and duly beat in my egg yolks in a thin stream but swiftly and the chocolate hardened to a solid mass instantly. I duly added my third of my egg whites to break up the mass as I believe I should have, but they were not nearly enough to break the mass up - it was still a solid lump. I added more whites but the idea I could 'fold' these in was ludicrous, and by the time I had anything like a pliable consistency, the air was fairly fully deflated from the whites. The resulting mousse was very unmousse-like and still very bittersweet, and since I am still hoping to find something both children and adults will eat I whipped a little cream and folded this in.

The resulting mouse was still too heavy and still too bittersweet - the 5 children who sampled it gave it mixed reviews - 2 couldn't get past the first mouthful or two. One of them was my son, who would happily eat dog shit if dipped in chocolate, so that's saying something. About half the adult samplers added plain cream to their mousse to try and lighten it. Again I wonder whether some milk chocolate mixed in with the dark, or more sugar or more cream would have helped. I'd also like to know if there's a better way to get from solid mass to mousse.

The adults also joined in with my musings over how low end restaurant mousse is made - several of us remarking how it tastes the same no matter where you have it (single supplier for the whole of Melbourne?) and nothing like anything anyone ever made at home. And while I don't wish to reveal myself to be any more of a bogun than many of you may think of me already - I'm not entirely adverse to the chocolate mousse we occasionally get as a freebie with our pizza delivery from the local pizzeria. It certainly feels blasphemous to say it, but so far the three trials I've run have all failed to inspire me at all to bother making it over buying what is no doubt some kind of hideous caricature of real food.

And this is so very unlike me! I am not a fan of packaged food over home made - of flavours or textures far removed from the source. [Except lolly bananas, but who could blame me there?] Members of my own foodie family have been known to have a go at me for being too heavily into 'quality'.

So what happens now? I am all out of inspiration and right now am feeling not at all kindly disposed to chocolate mousse AT ALL. Is this just my own version of Christmas overload? Performance anxiety? Reaction to so much gluttony? Am I lousy cook, do I have the wrong recipe, will this end well?

So please, please do tell me. I want an authentic French mousse. One that isn't hard to make, one that doesn't pucker my lips with bitterness, one my kids will like, one that isn't so heavy and rich that it can reasonably be eaten at then end of a full meal. Tell me what I'm doing wrong, give me the answer or the recipe, or the number of the guy that makes the stuff that all the pizza shops buy. Because time is running out!

frock

It's the festive season - for me not just Christmas and new year, but also a run of significant family birthdays.

Last night we had a lovely no-children-to-be-seen meal out to celebrate my mum's 78th birthday - amazing food at The Commoner in Fitzroy in an upstairs private dining room. I won't harp about the hopeless service because the food really was stunning, though seriously, if you are going to be a drinks waiter learn to pour a beer for goodness sake!

Anyway, a lovely dinner in adult company is a great excuse to get to and make a lovely frock. I am not a huge dress wearer, though I am trying to wear them more since I do think they look nice when I see other people wear them. I haven't even wore the bubble pocket linen dress I made last month but I am hoping the weather will make it perfect for one or more of the Christmas functions I have coming up.

As soon as my current edition of Ottobre had arrived I'd earmarked both the bubble pocket dress pattern and this one, called Glendora (? it must be a Finnish thing...). Like the bubble pocket dress Glendora didn't go up to my size and required other alterations - the original pattern had a straight skirt under the bodice and cuffs on the sleeves.


The fabric is from (gasp) spotlight, and I love both the print with its combination of black and blue and the fabric weight and structure. It is quite heavy, has a slight sheen and a small amount of elastine making it firm to wear, but very comfortable and it barely creases! I used a very similar fabric from Clegs to make a shirt years ago and it has held up amazingly well. I have to say when I found it at spotlight I stash 3 other prints in the same fabric. I don't like that the predominant background colour is white - I don't like wearing white at all! - but it seems to be the case with every single version of this fabric I have seen and I like the feel so much I'm just sucking it up over the white.


There are no closures at all because the elastine content creates enough give for the shimmy over the head and bust to be easy. It's not just that I don't like doing zips, introducing as they do a whole new set of possibilities for messing things up, but I really think zips change the way the fabric hangs and can ruin the line of the dress even if well installed. It also has my favourite bust dart shape - sloping down into the side seam.

So all up it was an easy dress to make and I did it in a day including tracing and modifying the pattern, whilst caring for kids and doing jobs in between. I sewed the last button on about 10 minutes before I needed to jump in the shower to get ready - oodles of time! I think after it has done party duty this season it may do well as a work dress too thanks to the business like neckline.

I'm really getting into the sewing groove now, which should serve me in good stead as I set to on the Christmas sewing list...