Hiding Away

Lately my daughter has been coming home with news that she is being teased.  The tease is about her feet.   Apparently they are too small.  To me, this is a pretty laughable insult, along the lines of 'your hair is too shiny' or 'your eyelashes are too long' but it affects her.  It is a point of difference between her and her little friends.  Who knows why little girls do this.  I know it is worse in single sex schools.   And I know that generally little boys aren't bitchy. 

I cannot make my daughter feel better.    She doesn't believe me when I say that the size of your feet is just one of those things you cannot change, and it is a waste of time and energy to worry about it.  

Everyone has to endure some teasing at school. It is a rite of passage, although it shouldn't be.   I keep telling my children that they must never make personal comments about people's appearance.   But when others all around you do this, it must be hard not to retaliate.  

When I was teased at school (about my name, my fair skin, whatever) I wanted to curl up in a little ball, in my own separate magical home.   So here they are for my daughter, some magical places to hide: 

(Little willow folly, by artist Patrick O'Donoghue, found here) 

(a walnut shell carried by a sperm whale, by Johanna Wright) 

(A hay bale cottage, by Ludwig Design) 

(mice over Paris, Johanna Wright as above) 

(a beaver house by artist Mark Ragonese see here) 

(A grown up treehouse by Blue Forest) 

(as above) 

This weekend we are going to rug up in front of the fire as I hope it will be cold, and I will make a start on sanding back my horribly painted cedar bench.   And read as much as I can.  And, I am a bit ashamed to say, probably watch Avatar (it's not me, my husband wants to watch it). 


Have a lovely weekend. xoxo

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Good Luck Ganesha

How often, I wonder, do people return to the same place they have stayed before on their travels, even one they have really enjoyed?  Quite rarely,  I am guessing.  There are so many other wonderful places to visit, and who needs routine and the familiar on holiday.   However  I am sure that the return visit is, like a repeat shop visitor, what all hotel and resort owners aim for.

We have visited the same magical place in Bali three times now.  It is in northern Bali and getting there is an adventure in itself involving a 7 hour flight (which if you are flying Garuda could indeed be taking your life in your own hands - in fact I could do a whole post on Garuda stories I have heard), negotiating customs, confronting the heat and humidity, then a 6 hour drive from the bottom of the island to the top, through chaotic Kuta, dodging motorbikes and Spirit Day processions, across a volcano, through the misty mountain top and vegetable gardens, and down into the rice paddies outside Singaraja.  In our case it also unfortunately has involved numerous toilet and vomit breaks.

Having said that, Puri Ganesha has inspired us in so many ways and also help me to keep dreaming of new ideas for our house.  Thank you Diana...

These stone lights reinforced our love for stone walls, which I wrote about here:

This spice market made me appreciate freshly ground spices and now I always cook this way excepting of course when I just can't be bothered:

And these terraces made me realise the importance of a shady quiet place to read. I am still working on this one. 

Some ideas didn't work out.    We loved this bed so much we bought a queen size bed net to fit on a frame in Ubud and I got our carpenter to rig up a wooden contraption to hang it on.  Well was that a mistake.  You know how DIY can occasionally look embarassingly unfinished and basically, crap?  Well that was what this looked like.  It lasted only a few months over our bed.   (I do have an excuse which was that I had just had a baby and was obviously not thinking straight).   Clearly some holiday experiences are best left on holiday. 

And we still have a few 'still to be fulfilled' ideas.

An outside bathroom, like this one.   In Australia, I think an outside bathroom is quite sensible and practical.  Perhaps not in Melbourne but how wonderful to step out to this each morning....

A wooden door to replace the basic standard gate we have down the side of the house, so that the dark side of the house becomes a transformational adventure, rather than a dark spider dodge:

And,  perhaps not for our current house, a deep stone paved pool, which looks somewhat like it has been carved from rock:

Or this one from the Uma Ubud:

And finally, somewhere, somehow, by hook or by crook, I will one day have a pink painted outdoor wall, like this:

(Photos: 1, 4, 5, 8 and 10 Puri Ganesha, others by Jane)

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Spice World

I have been rereading Elizabeth David's eccentric little tome 'Spices Salt and Aromatics in the English kitchen'. It is a short book, which reviews spices in the English kitchen, their use for preserves and pickles, the Indian influence in England and includes lots of recipes for things like pickled onions and a 1950s style curry.

She quotes Sir Henry Luke from the Tenth Muse (1954):

'To turn to spices, mace - that aesthetically beautiful by-product of the nutmeg tree, a network husk of deep and brilliant lacquer red while it is still fresh on the nut - enriches thick soups and the stockpot generally with its singularly piquant aroma. Nutmeg itself, grated, is also a help in soups no less than in a bread sauce and a rum punch. Saffron is as indispensible to a good Milanese risotto as it is to a bouillabaisse and a paella. A touch of cardamom or coriander seed transforms a humdrum stew with the aroma of a Middle Eastern souk.

And what a rich evocative aroma they have, those ancient vaulted bazaars of Aleppo and Damascus and the Old City of Jerusalem, of Qazvin and Meshhed and Isfahan, as you approach the streets of the vendors of spices. Here you inhale an amalgam of all the aboriginal savours and smells of the Orient: the pepper and cloves; the cinnamon and turmeric and coriander.'

I cannot wander an Arabian souk today, and this is the closest I have ever been to a Middle Eastern Spice market:

(Market, Singaraja, Northern Bali, 2005)

Isn't it incredible how the scent of spice can evoke a long dormant memory. For me, cloves take me back to when I was 10 and we made pomanders for Christmas by sticking cloves into an orange. Cinnamon reminds me of the cinnamon and sugar mixture I ate sprinkled on buttery toast when I was a teenager. And the mixture of pepper, nutmeg, blachan, galangal and turmeric brings back many meals from Bali.

I may have written about the pointlessness of muffins. Well here is a wonderful Nigella Lawson muffin recipe which has some spices, and last for a few days in a sealed container. Your kitchen will be filled with a spicy Christmassy ginger glow.

Gingerbread muffins

Ingredients

250 g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp ground ginder

1 tsp ground clinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1 egg

50 g dark muscovado sugar

50 g light muscovado suger

150 ml milk

1/4 tsp balsamic vinegear

6 tbsp vegetable or corn oil

4 tbsp golden syrup

4 tbsp black treacle

Method

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celsius. Line a 12 bun muffin tin with muffin liners.

Combine the flour, bicarb of sada, baking powder and spices in a large bowl. Whisk the egg in a large measuring jug then add the sugards, breaking up any lumps. Add the milk and vinegar then measure in the oil with a trablespooon. Use the same oily spoon to add the syrup and treacle so they don't stick to it. Whisk the mixture to combine and add to the flour and spices.

Stir until mixed but still fairly lumpy - the mixutre may be quite runny but this is okay.

Spoon or pour the mixture ino the muffin papers and bake for 20 mins until the tops are browned - the muffins will still be squashy when you take them out to cool on a rack. Note you will not get the hump topped look of other muffins. This is a good thing.

And if you want to learn more of spice history, go no further than Giles Milton's Nathaniel's Nutmeg in which (amongst other things) the farsighted English, following a little spat wih the Netherlands, traded the tiny island of Run (part of the Banda Island chain in southeast Asia) with a rather larger rocky island off the coast of north America called Manhattan.

The transation was considered to be fair largely because Run had scores of nutmeg trees, and Manhattan had none.

(Images: (1)(5) Taschen (3) Flickr (4) Jane (5) Point Click Home)

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