Good Things Autumn 2012

Our garden is mostly a winter garden, due to all the camellia trees, and they are just coming into flower now:

It is only when I attempted to paint a camellia that I realised a flower like this was not just pink, but also purple and grey and white and blue and even orange.  If you like camellias I have a board devoted to them on Pinterest. 


I have been on a cleaning and sorting frenzy recently, mostly because nothing has been done in that department for at least a year.  I have now done the linen press, the wine \ storage room, the Cupboard of Doom, the hallway bureau.  Plenty still more to do like garden shed, garage roof storage, chests, etc.   Anyway, I came across some old children's jumpers.  All coincidentally in pink and green, my favourite combination.   Like so:

(via Style Files)

(via Decorpad)

I can't bring myself to sell second hand clothes.  I either keep them because they are tiny or sentimental, re-use them for something, or give to the Salvos. 

I think I will make another patchwork blanket from them, like this one I did for my son:

It is a bit worse for the wear but he does love it.   These blankets take a long time to put together, I think it  is something to do with the stretchiness of the knits.  Maybe I need an overlocker?  Anyway, I expect it will be draping our dining room table for the next 6 months.


Autumn has been very late this year, too much chlorophyll in the leaves or something but finally the maples are beginning to turn orange.

I have been also doing a huge amount of new cooking.  With ingredients I have not used much before, like farro, and freekah, and lentils, and millet flour, and red and black rice, and steel cut oats, and amaranth flour, and coconut oil and cacao nibs and spirulina and activated nuts and bee pollen and more - the list is endless.   I have been completely inspired by these cookbooks:

Brilliant tip - you mix the kale and coconut and roast it for a bit and then add to your carbohydratey item like rice or couscous or farro.   Divine.

MaAny of you will know that Supernatural is by Heidi Swanson, she of 101 Cookbooks blog, and the one above left by Beatrice Peltre of La Tartine Gourmande (see my side bar).   I have a bit of a prejudice against cookbooks by bloggers don't ask me why I know it is irrational, but anyway these are both brilliant and highly recommended.   It all started for me when I stopped eating sugar, which is about 12 months ago.  Because when you stop eating something you have to fill the gap with other food products, like eggs and bacon and also some healthy things.  I think I will do a little post on this at some point.  I sound terribly pious and boring not eating sugar, but really truly, it has been No Problem At All.  And has sorted out some real health issues for me.  And given me very clear skin. 


There was an article in the Age late last week about a deal a fashion distributor has done with some denim designers including Paige and AG Adriano Goldshmied.  From now on, sites like Revolve will not be able to ship these jeans to Australia and we will have to pay double or triple the price from shops here.  These are my two favourite jeans makers.  This story got more than 900 comments, and I can assure you they were not in support of this move.  I don't mind paying a bit more to buy in a shop around the corner, but double? Triple?


Just as well I bought these jeans a few months ago. They are a dark teal colour and I love them, Very comfortable and soft and strangely flattering, which is not something one can often say about 'cigarette' jeans.  These are by Adriano Goldshmied.

I can't do bright pink jeans though.  I just can't.   I remember them last time round, in 1983.

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Good Things Autumn 2011: Burmese Statues and Gwyneth Paltrow

The little things are infinitely the most important (Arthur Conan Doyle). 

In the face of bone aching fatigue last week, I have found lots of pleasure in tiny achievements.

Like this embroidered cushion I found at Safari.  In the background is my fiddle leaf fig tree, which almost died when I was in hospital in January because no one thought to give it the thimble full of water it needs to survive each week. I am slowly nursing it back to health but it is still too straggly.  Such a shame because it had a beautiful full shape when I first bought it.  

Pepper the Burmese cat managed to knock over this (Burmese!) statue we have in the front hall.  Of course the Burmese army had already taken care of her head, feet and arms (the statue I mean not the cat).   But her leg broke in two. I fixed it with Kwik Grip or something equally unmentionable.  I know that is not the correct way to mend supposedly ancient Asian artefacts but there you have it.  You can barely see the mend line. 

I don't mind being called Princess Jane by my daughter.  Note the little copyright symbol. It is not easy to explain the concept of copyright to an 8 year old but I think we got there.   And now her intellectual property is protected!

Oh Scanlan & Theodore how I love thee.  And your grey cardigans.  No I don't need another to add to the collection.  But it called my name and its siren song was answered.

Australian candle with Liberty-esque wrapping.   It's true I bought it mostly for the presentation.  Very superficial I know.  It smells nice but I still think Americans (think Tocca, Voluspa) make the best candles. 

Can we talk about Gwyneth?  I almost felt a bit ashamed buying this book and my husband teased me for a good five minutes.   I am completely absolutely anti celebrity chefs. I don't even watch Master Chef which is practically a crime in Australia.  I have no celebrity chef books. I loathe Gordon Ramsay.  I liked Nigella when she was thin and wrote for UK Vogue in the early 1990s.   I still love her books but only because I was an early adopter and she writes so well.

And Gwyneth herself is so multi talented, with her unusually named children, not very good interior design taste (at least that is what I think - check out these pics of her NY apartment), very nice Hampton's kitchen, okay singing voice, macrobiotic passions, kind of saccharine website and wardrobe to die for.  She's so earnest.   And that can be annoying.

But this book really resonated with me.    There are a few reasons for this. 

First, she speaks authentically of her love for her father (who died several years ago from complications of throat cancer) and her naive belief that he could be cured if he changed his diet.  (As an aside I have thought many times since my diagnosis whether my diet could be a cause. I think I eat pretty really well but according to the evil Internet breast cancer can be caused by all kinds of things ranging from milk to coffee.  It is of course so natural to blame yourself for these things (was it stress? was it the pollution from the street? what about deodorant? Could that be the cause?) and diet is always high up the list.)  Her father taught her to love to cook and eat.  He loved American foods: burgers, pancakes, hotdogs et al, and some of his recipes find their way into the book.  

Second, she really wants her children to eat well, cook with her, and to share magical times around the table.  This too is what I want for my children.  And I am at the stage where my son won't eat green or slightly green tinged things and my daughter won't eat most butter or dairy products.  So I am desperate to cook them things they will eat with enthusiasm.  And this notion of hiding the good items in what you cook for children is weird.   I want them to know what they are eating and come to love it naturally. 

Third, this book made me want to cook and eat.   Surely there can be no higher recommendation? These days of course we can get any recipe we want for free.  So why buy a cookbook?  I look for a way of viewing cooking which I can relate to.  Presumably if you enjoy cooking one or two of a favourite cookbook writer's recipes, you will enjoy cooking more.  That is why our Marcella Hazan cookbooks are falling apart through overuse.

Over the weekend I cooked the following from this book: kale crisps, cheesy stuffed burgers, duck burgers, macaroni cheese (which she makes with mascarpone and Parmesan), oatmeal and raisin cookies (no butter and no eggs), white bean soup with cheesey croutons, zucchini with pasta and berries with caramelised cream.   All the recipes worked well, and the children loved them all.

This is not a macrobiotic book by any means. There is a lot of cheese and dairy and eggs and pancakes.  There are also some nice zen meals like soba noodles and savoury rice bowl. 

Finally, I have ticked a few book purchases off the to-do list.

Two books for my husband's birthday which always must be history although unfortunately Mr Fitzsimons is a journalist which may make the history a bit 'chatty and accessible' which my husband does not like at all.   Oh well.

And the new Geraldine Brooks book set in Martha's Vineyard in the 1660s.  If you have not already, please read her earlier books - Year of Wonders (set in plague torn England) and March (Dr March from Little Women's experiences in the Civil War) are both completely brilliant. 

And truly finally, some toast with avocado, fetta, mint and olive oil has been giving me much comfort lately.

I am so boring that I realise as typing this that I have already done an avocado on toast post.  But I love it so much. 

In fact I think I could easily find enough posts to run a 'Things on Toast' blog for a good couple of years (other ideas for alternative blogs - Dollshouses (but that might attract some weirdos) or Celebrities with No Interior Design Taste).

Weird Chemo Side Effect No 4: my eyebrows are definitely thinning out. I hope to hold on to them for the next 6 weeks.  I have probably in the past said something stupid like I will stay in my bedroom for the duration if I lose my eyebrows.  However, now it is potentially happening, I just don't care.  On the bright side, it makes me look just that little bit more like Gwyneth. 

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Lemony Snickert

According to Maggie Beer, wonderful South Australian cook and 'I wish she was my grandmother' lady, you either have a sweet palate or a sour palate.  Hers is sour.  So is mine. I love lemon lime tasting food.   And chemotherapy is making me want it even more (partly I think because my taste buds are a bit shot).   My son also has a lemony palate.  He is quite interested in licking the cut side of a lemon and making a Lemon Face. 

So I have been doing a bit of lemon \ lime cooking.  

Last week I made this simple cucumber lime relish thing.  Just diced cucumber, chopped mint, some salt and pepper, a tiny bit of chopped red chilli, and a good slashing of lime juice.  It went beautifully with a Northern Indian chicken curry I made.  ('Making' at the moment also includes buying pre-cooked from Tartine up the road.  Much as I love to cook there are limits to what I can do when everything smells slightly gross.) 

Then I made this polenta lemon cake from Nigella Lawson's Kitchen. It took a while for me to get into this cookbook.  I think it was something to do with the font and layout -   picky, I know but it just didn't grab me.   But revisiting it has paid off.   Nigella describes this as a cross between one of those polenta-ey Italian cakes and an English lemon drizzle cake.  A truly jolie laide cake.

Even my daughter loved it:

And the cake would not have been possible without my favourite new implement. I can barely believe I have survived without one for so long.  A Microblade, invented by a clever American and the only thing for zesting. I confess, I am in love with this thing. I clean it carefully and put it lovingly back into its plastic case.   You can also use it for parmesan and coconut.

It seems a bit odd to be writing of lemony recipes when there is so much devastation in Christchurch.  I have been there a few times, for conferences, and once on holidays where we stayed here. I am not sure if it is even still standing. 

(The Northern Club, Christchurch) 

My heart is very heavy for all New Zealanders today and for all those who have lost loved ones and may be waiting for terrible confirmation of more deaths.   It is almost too much for one country to bear. 

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Salads for Madame Bovary

Whilst looking for some Christmas table inspiration I came across this wonderful French dining room.

And I thought - I know just the woman for this room: the highly imaginative, but unhappy, Emma Bovary, the heroine of Gaustave Flaubert's beautiful book, written in 1854, which I am re-reading at the moment. This book was listed in the top two best books ever written (along with War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy) in a poll of contemporary writers in 2007.   

This was an excellent book for backpacking around the regional cities of France as a young girl, accompanied only by some mournful New Order music on my 'Walkman' (these large plastic portable tape decks seem so dated now don't they?) .  

This room looks like just the place Emma, enticed by the money lender Lheureux, may have excitedly spent money she didn't have decorating, in an effort to make things and in particular, her life, more interesting.    Really, who needs Eat Pray Love when you have a book like this to delve into a complicated female psyche?  After all, Emma Bovary tries all the same things that that woman does from Eat Pray Love (am I the only person on the planet to have found the EPL woman appallingly self indulgent?*):  turns to religion, has affairs, meditates on the meaning of life and indulges in romantic fantasies.

(Isabelle Huppert as Madame Bovary in Claude Chabrol's adaptation from 1991)

For Emma Bovary, in this dining room, I would serve salads.    Something delicate but well flavoured. 

Which coincides nicely with the no 1 item on my Christmas list this year, Salades by Sydney chef Damien Pignolet:

I really am very easy to buy for at Christmas.  Just a few cookbooks and I am a happy girl.  And this one looks to be a cracker.   So Santa, if you are reading this, please can you oblige me? 

Here are some of Pignolet's salads to entice you into summer (or winter!)

(cauliflower, beetroot and celeriac with horseradish cream)

(nicoise salade)

 

(goats cheese fritters, baby beetroot and figs)

(warm salad of scallops, sorrel croutons, grilled red pepper and witlof)

 

I think I could pretty much happily live on salads for the rest of my life.

(* I am aware I have probably made some enemies by this comment.  Please don't judge me by my loathing of this book..... I am of course just a lone voice struggling against the tide).

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A Sunny Spanish Fairytale

Once upon a time there was an Australian girl who travelled around continental Europe with a backpack, some sturdy shoes, a beaten up copy of Let's Go and a Walkman packed with up to the minute musical compositions by The The, Black Box, Nirvana and New Order. 

By and by she found herself sitting on a bench in Parco Sempione in central Milan, on a cold crisp blue day.   She spent some time wondering whether to visit the Dead Christ by Mantegna in the Brera, her favourite painting in the whole wide world, or perhaps some shopping in the Via Montenapoleone.

In spite of her father's admonition to never speak to strange men, she soon found herself chatting to a young man from Florence, in Milan on a weekend holiday.  They had much in common.  Soon they were travelling a little together, to Livorno,  Pisa and in Florence and walking everywhere in the cool crisp sunshine.  They spoke of books, and the strangeness of language, and philology, the study of historical linguistics and of corruption in Italian politics and the wonderful taste of salty cured meats.

(warm salad of roasted capsicum, onion, garlic and tomatoes)

Like all adventures, it had to end sometime. 

Melbourne seemed very boring and pedestrian on her return. A bit sad and lonely, the girl simply had to go back to Europe, this time to Madrid in winter, where the boy was now living, to stay in a little apartment near Calle de Toledo. The days were spent in the crisp blue coldness wandering around the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and shopping in Calle Serrano and the nights were spent dining at 11 pm, drinking gin and tonics and dancing till the sun came up.

(chicken in onion and sherry sauce, saffron rice)

There is a certain time of year in Melbourne, in August, when the sun shines, and the air is sweet, cold and clean.  It reminds the girl of that time in Madrid.   In memory of that time, the girl sometimes cooks a Spanish feast for lunch.

(sweet lemon doughnuts)

All dishes thanks to this cookbook, which is really growing on me:

The end.


(image (1) via La Femme Blog) 

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Two Perfect Green Courtyards and a Lemongrass Marinade

We do not have this kind of garden, but one domestic fantasy I have had is to live in a two or three up one across kind of house, with a little potted brick walled back garden.  To me, in Australia, this means a Victorian terrace, in the US a brownstone like the ones in New York, and in London, this means those Georgian houses which sit in a neat white row. 

So here are two divine examples, for sale in my area:

These little sheltered green boxes are perfect for edible gardens, and the best example I have seen of that lately is Nigel Slater's garden, which he depicts with love in Vol 1 of his opus 'Tender'.

These shots show his garden in each season.  It is hard for me to imagine gardening in the snow. 

This is a book to treasure with photos so exquisite I found myself having to stretch out a trembling finger to touch them.  It is a celebration of garden to table cooking, written with the verve and enthusiasm of a convert to something quite life changing.    (As it happens Nigel Slater could write a summary of the current Australian tax legislation including recent ATO guidance notes and still be interesting.  He is some writer, as I pointed out here). 

A vegetable garden is on my to do list this year, once I find the spot.   In the meantime here is my completely accidental lemongrass bush which I planted expecting it to die (as you do). Instead it has flourished.  I was so ignorant about lemongrass I didn't even know how it would grow, and whether the lemony roots would be entirely underground or visible. It turns out they stick up and out, and for a long time they looked like a weed.    I was tempted to yank them all out weeks ago but my mother cautioned me to wait until they were stronger and fully 'ripe'.

Today, a lemongrass and mint marinade, for lamb chops:

This requires bashing of the lemongrass with lots of mint, olive oil, garlic and salt and pepper.  Marinate for a few hours, then grill quickly.   A perfect Australian recipe. 

First I have to find some lamb chops, which may not be easy given it is a public holiday today and all the shops are closed.   

Here's to those brave ANZAC soldiers.

(Images: (1) and (2) Kay and Burton (3) NigelSlater.com (4)-(9) Jane (10) anzacsite.gov.au)

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