Emergency Winter Food for Children

After last year, where I took 45 (officially noted) days of sick leave (which felt like double or triple that amount), it has been very busy at work. I have child care constraints at the moment (is everyone in Europe or is it just my imagination?) so I have had to be creative with the last minute pick up from after school care.  With complaining \ hungry \ tired children, getting them fed \ bathed all in time to go to bed at 7 pm is a bit of a challenge.

(How amazing is the colour of this camellia? Instagram and its Bad Photography Concealing Filters love my camellias!)

Fast food is a must.   I am a night before person, which means that I try to  have dinner ready to go in the fridge the day before if I am not going to be there to cook it slowly.  So so much easier that way. 
  
But last week disaster struck - my daughter had a friend coming for a sleepover and the food had been prescribed in advance (spaghetti bolognese, white bread only, Tic Tacs and icy poles because she doesn't like ice-cream) and at the last minute I had neglected to defrost the pasta sauce. So I turned to my emergency bolognese sauce. 

Emergency Bol Sauce for Screaming Children


Ingredients
2 - 4 high quality pork sausages or chipolatas (not with fennel or chilli)
some butter
Splash of milk
A cup of tomato passata
3/4 cup of stock

Method

Squeeze the porky meat out of the sausage casings.   Gently melt the butter in a fry pan, add a splash of olive oil and some crushed garlic if you want.   Fry the sausage meat, breaking it up with a fork.   When the sausage meat is lightly browned and broken into even tiny bits, put in a splash of milk (sounds gross but Italians do it and it keeps the meat moist).  When the milk has bubbled down, add the passata and chicken stock. At first it will be runny, that is fine.  Cook it down until the sauce has the consistency you want. I like my bol sauce a bit runny and not dried out.

Serve proudly with spaghetti and Parmesan.

When I first went to Paris in 1992, my lovely friend Penny took me for hot chocolate at Angelina's Tearooms in the Rivoli.  The hot chocolate blew my mind, so much better than the watery cocoa I had previously had.   There are a number of different ways to recreate proper hot chocolate, but I like this the most.  It is quick and not messy.   I have forgotten where I got this from, possibly Orangette.   Only proviso is that you really do need a stick blender to get it smooth and frothy. 

Semi Authentic Super Quick Hot Chocolate

Ingredients (this serves two, can easily be doubled)
2 cups of milk
2 tablespoons of water
1 1/2 tablespoons of caster sugar
a handful of chocolate chips which is about 1/4 cup.  Or more to taste but these won't melt as well. 

Method

Put the milk, water and sugar in a saucepan.  Heat gently.   Watch it, when milk boils over it is horrible and messy.  When it is just about to boil there will be little bubbles around the edge.   Take it off the heat and put in the chocolate chips.   Assuming your pot has high sides you can do the next step in the pot.  Get your stick blender and whizz away.  The movement and heat will melt the chocolate, and the mixture will become frothy and smooth and thick.

Drink and enjoy.  

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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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Change

Lately I have been wondering whether the last 8 months have changed me.  Objectively I would expect that a diagnosis of cancer at 42 would change me significantly. 

There is no point dwelling on the nasty changes like increased neuroses or bitterness or resentment. (Mind you sadly there has been a bit of that floating around the house this year).  No, I am thinking more about positive behavioural and personality changes. 

And yet I am still not sure really if I am that much changed inside.  I continue to surprise myself - first, on diagnosis I didn't cry and scream for a week in manner of Bronte style heroine with heart broken by cruel man.  Second, I feel so different physically (much better, in fact) that it is a bit odd that on the outside I appear to be the same person (albeit with some Hair Issues).  

When I finished chemo I got a lot of little booklets from the hospital about how to cope with this new period with no treatment (excluding Herceptin, which continues till next April). 

If all the pundits are correct, this is a hard time, where you feel empty and a bit directionless, and even depressed.   The treatment provides structure and something to think (or even complain and moan) about.  Life with no routine treatment means that a large gap opens up, which is there to be filled with horrible thoughts of the future and possible recurrences of cancer.  Every little twinge makes one think 'arggh shoulder cancer, or stomach cancer or foot cancer or lung cancer or mouth cancer or eyelash cancer..........'  My surgeon calls this hypervigilence and it is very common in post chemo patients. 

In the manner of a controlling lawyer I have developed a 6 point action plan to try to get me through the next little period. I have implemented most of the steps, and it is really helping.  I will post on that next. 

But even then I still have moments when I despair just a tiny little bit, and think why on earth has this happened to me?  But those moments then go, and I look at the blue sky, and think that things are probably okay.

These are the areas where I think that I may have changed. 

1. I smell the flowers.

The absence of picking flowers in my garden has been annoying me for sometime.  But if there is one thing my garden can produce in spades it is Daphne.  Here it is looking flush and smelling lemony.

My husband occasionally said to me during chemo 'please don't rush around' and I would say 'you have no idea how completely incapable I am of rushing around.' And now I am still in a rush free zone. Yes I am busy busy of course isn't everyone, but I am deleting things madly, walking slowly, and smelling the world outside. 


2. I feel more empathy.

I think I have always been a reasonably caring person, but now I can feel others' pain more tellingly.  If you have been pregnant you will recall how the tears start to flow when you see images of famine in Africa or lost puppy dogs on TV.  Well I am like that the whole time now.  This of course is the true meaning of compassion - that feeling of sharing the pain, of connectedness.  I still feel raw to the touch, I think, and that makes me feel things really intensely.

I was given quite a nice camera for Christmas. I have barely used it but am now starting to experiment with super close ups of flowers.

3. I am more aware of how I spend my time.

I am aware every day of how many books I still have to read.  The pile on my bedside table is towering, and that doesn't even include books on my Kindle. 

As an aside, can I recommend another book to you all?  If you read one book this year please make it this one.  In Anti Cancer, Dr David Servan Schreiber talks of his brush with cancer and what he has learned since about leading a life which repels cancer in all ways. This is not just about diet, although that is important (he mentions specifically green tea and turmeric and many more), but about ensuring despair and helplessness (not necessarily stress) have no place in your life. 

So with all these books to read I am trying to rationalise wasted time.  And sadly that does mean less time on the Internet.  I just can't justify it anymore.  I am still visiting you all, just not commenting as much.  I hope you all forgive me.

4. I am less interested in controlling my children's behaviour.

I still have some way to go on this one, but I am learning to pick my battles a bit more.  I have a very strong willed son, and it is exhausting trying to get him to conform all the time.  And what's more, I think it is bad for me and causes me anxiety. 

So now, if they want ice cream for dessert when they haven't eaten 100% of their dinner, then frankly, that is fine by me. 

(son having roll into ball tantrum in the street. One of his specialities)

Do you know what happens when two stubborn strong willed impatient and argumentative people live together?   It is fireworks and that has long been the way for me and my son.  But now, I am trying to learn new ways to manage him.  I am still disciplining him, but trying to be so much calmer in doing so.  

As an aside this is how I get the children to eat meat.  Slit open some little pork or beef sausage and fry gently with some butter and chopped garlic, pressing down with a fork to create smaller bits.  Add half a tin of chopped tomatoes and cook for 15 minutes. Serve with spaghetti and Parmesan. 

5. I want to make the most of things

During chemo I bought a new car. I suspect some people thought that was a bit strange, but once it happens to you, you realise that life doesn't stop just because you have cancer.  You still have to live, work and love.   You can't say 'oh I might die so I had better not do that'.   In fact it is the opposite. 

Next on the list is a little shack with a sea view, something we have always wanted to do but avoided for reasons to do with debt.  Do you know what I say to debt now? I spit on it.  Or laugh at it.  Conservatively and with a fair interest rate of course.

In an ideal world my beach house would be Scandinavian, a bit grey and brooding, salty but with clean lines.  Here is something to really live for:

6. I don't feel as sorry for myself as I used to.

Someone left a comment here about the 'downward social comparator', which is about realising that no matter what you are living with, there is always always someone going through something worse than you.   Like the young woman in my meditation class with three small children who has been told her cancer has spread and that there is no hope for her.  She is on chemo and a drug trial indefinitely, which is of course code for as long as she lives.   Or the woman I met at a dinner with a slipped disc and such chronic back pain resulting from a failed operation that not only can she not lift or hug her children but she cannot even get out of bed without taking 7 painkillers.

To me, these situations make my recent life look reasonably okay in comparison.  And they certainly make my regular Sunday Afternoon Folding And Putting Away 10 Loads Of Washing (something I was a bit apt to complain about) a walk in the park. 



What about you?  Have you been changed by an event? 


(Images (1) Pinterest (6)(7)(8) My Scandinavian Retreat)

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Olley

Vale Margaret Olley, Australian artist who died on 26 July 2011 this week at the age of 88

(Cyclamens and Apples 2005)

(daisies and pears 1978)

She recently sat for a portrait by Ben Quilty, which won this year's Archibald Prize, here it is.

Olley was a figurative painter of great skill, who produced wonderful still lifes, which seem so old fashioned these days and yet full of life and light and substance.  What, really, could be more wonderful than a perfect bunch of flowers and a bowl of fruit sitting in the sunshine. 

(Poppies 2004)



(spare bedroom, 1970, which is at the Lismore Art Gallery)



She always struck me as a very determined person, not at all a flighty scatty artist.   And I love her food \ flower combinations.  Others include cornflowers and pomegranates, cliveas and mandarins and ranunculas and watermelon).

(Quinces and Marigolds 2005)

The older you get of course the more you can get away with saying what you want.  I love this quote of Olley's:

'I’ve never liked housework. I get by doing little chores when I feel like them, in between paintings. Who wants to chase dust all their life? You can spend your whole lifetime cleaning the house. I like watching the patina grow. If the house looks dirty, buy another bunch of flowers, is my advice.'

(from the biography by Meg Stewart you can read a review of this here).  

She certainly took her own advice because here she is in her studio:

The Sydney Morning Herald's obit is here. 

One of my ambitions in life, if you could call it that, is to reach such a ripe age, say what I want, paint what I want, and clean when I want (or not).

(all still life images from Eva Breuer)

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Flower Fields

I have spent more time than is normal lately staring at this wallpaper:

(Blazing Poppies wallpaper by Anthropologie)



wondering if there is some way I could buy it, and then conspire to find a way to use it.   Wallpapering a powder room comes to mind, of course, but we don't have a powder room.  

I have always loved dense floral patterns.  I love it in art:

Untitled no 5 by Kent Rogowski (available on 20x200) 

but most of all I love it in skirts.

(The Sartorialist on the streets of Milan) 

(Prada resort 2007)

(more Anthropologie)

I even know why I love this look so much (and I loved it long before Mad Men came along). It is something to do with this book, which I read as a child:

Because fields of flowers and full skirts make me think of the Swiss mountains.  

Just as children who live in the snow dream of the strange orange dust of the desert, I, growing up with pale green eucalypts and dry hot summers, dreamed of a little Swiss chalet and green fields of wildflowers.   For us, green lawn came for half the year, but tended to dry up over summer.  

When I actually went to Switzerland as an adult, I could not believe how like my imagination the country was.  It was just like I pictured it.  The emerald green, and soft rolling hills.   The little dappled flowers everywhere by the roadside.  Just perfect. 

But back to business.   When, I ask does it become inappropriate to wear a flowery full skirt?  I have been sorely tempted online and in the shops recently.   Does it get to the point where it is a bit silly if one is over 40? 

(Am sorry for my intermittent posts and comments lately. I am flat out at work, and heading up to Queensland for a conference later this week.  Looking forward to the weather (hot and rainy! How can you Queenslanders keep your hair straight?)  Thank you all for taking the time to read and comment over the last few weeks)

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12 years ago today...

on a bright, sunny spring day, I carried these:

wore this:

sat in here:

ate this:

and married you.

Happy Anniversary my darling.


Thank you for all your words and acts of support, encouragement, common sense, comfort and love.   


May there be many more years of the same.

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Camellias for all Hairdressers

One of the best things about living in a 100 year old house is the garden which comes with it.

We have 9 camellia trees, of varying sizes and shapes.  They have struggled mightily over the last few years - not enough water, too much sun, a 48 degree day which burnt their leaves off in 2009 and so on. 

But this year they have come good.   And are thriving.

These camellias come from the tree outside our study:

Here is one I cruelly picked before it had a chance to properly open:

When I took botanical illustration classes 5 years ago, camellias were the flower I turned to first:

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with hairdressers.  

Well, a few months ago my hairdresser noticed something not quite right on my scalp.  She scolded me and said I must go to the doctor.  It was a basal cell carcinoma, and a little operation a few weeks ago and 10 staples in my head later, it is all pretty much gone (we hope).   

You may say - of course she should have mentioned that.  But I think that many people wouldn't bother.  And she did and I am grateful.     And it happens that I have a history of skin cancer in my family so I do need to pay attention to such matters.   

I have not actually sunbaked since I was 15.  But these things do keep appearing on my pale surface.    It is a real issue in Australia.   The sun is just so strong, and it penetrates you like the heat from an oven.    And leaving aside the health risk, growing up in Australia in the 1970s with white skin was not that easy.   No one knew of the dangers of the sun.  It was quite normal to spend the day on the beach and burn one's skin to a crisp and watch it then blister and peel.  And there was no proper fake tan (remember Sudden Tan, which came in a foam tin and made your skin go orange) and lots of taunts from school friends newly returned, honey coloured, from Noosa.  Now of course we have Cate Blanchett and others to admire.  Then, one had to really turn the other cheek.   

So, for bothering, Gloria, thank you.   

And I must mention an upside of  my paleness.  Not as many wrinkles as I would otherwise have.   At least that is what I tell myself.   And whilst I don't go as far as Nicole Kidman who apparently 'wears a hat to cross the street'* (oh right so that's why her skin is so perfect), go to Little Augury here to see in art and photos how wonderful a parasol can look. 

Happy winter sunny weekend to you all. 




* this is what Naomi Watts, her friend, once said in an interview.  

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Violets for almost spring (and my grandmother)

Today it is sunny and one can almost see spring around the corner.

This week I bought a lovely little blue and white jug from Safari Living in Prahran. At $22 it must have been the least expensive thing in the whole shop, which sells so many beautiful things including a wide range of Missoni wares. (In fact I had one of those moments when I thought the shop assistant had made a mistake - my eyes were darting around, I was thinking should I tell her or should I not? In the end honesty got the better of me - as it should - and I checked another jug and there it was, $22 also).

This morning I picked up some violets at the Prahran Market.

And here are the two together. I rather like them this way. I hope the violets don't disappointingly shrivel up and die tomorrow, as they sometimes tend to do.

They don't seem to smell as well as they did when I was little but nevertheless the scent always reminds me of my divine, powdery grandmother, who has been gone now for many many years but whom I remember so fondly.

I can clearly see her oval face, steely gray hair always in a bun as if she had just left the room. I was going to describe her eyes as cornflower blue or delft or some such but in fact having just looked at the rather useful 'shades of blue' entry on Wikipedia (complete with colour chart) I think they were really a steel blue. And that is apt, because like so many ladies of her generation (born in around 1910) she certainly lived through a lot. She had a twin brother, who managed to outlive her by about twenty years. I always thought that was one of the great sadnesses, that their lives did not run more in parallel. It must have been very hard for great uncle George when she was gone.

I remember her dark green cardigan and matching checked kilt skirt. I remember the cumquat tree in her front garden and the jars of marmalade which resulted from that tree. I remember the little glass bottles of coca cola she gave us when we came to visit. I remember her pale butter yellow wooden kitchen. And I remember her calm stillness. I don't think this was because I was little and she was older. I think she really was a calm person. I would like to be more like her.

And although bitter experience has taught me not to mess around with font colours on Blogger, this post is violet for my gran.

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