Victorian front doors on my afternoon walk

On those days I pick my daughter up from school we (very infrequently) walk the 8 minute walk to collect her. Yes you read correctly. It is an 8 minute walk and I am often Too Busy to walk it. Talk about not stopping to smell the roses.

A street around the corner from our house has a row of 6 Victorian double fronted two storey houses, all with elevated and lovely entrances. It is rare to see such an unspoilt row in my part of Melbourne. Or really anywhere for that matter.

I have a bit of a thing about front entrances.... Equally I have a thing about other people's houses. Don't we all? Ever since I was a little girl I have loved to imagine what is behind those front doors. And I think the way a house presents itself to the world says so much about the inhabitants. How clean is the verandah or front terrace? Is it stacked up (as mine was recently) with packing boxes too large to throw out? Does it have prams and other paraphenalia parked outside? What colour is the front door? How much personality of the owners can you see in the closed off face a house presents to the world?

So here are the houses of my journey.

This house is a lovely pale pistachio colour.

This house has a bluestone front terrace, planted with camellias.

This is my favourite - topiary, bluestone and a quirky Mexican glass star light hanging over the entrance.

Tesselated tiles are not my thing but there is a lovely consistency in the tones of this entrance.

Look at the lovely urns in triplicate.

I was too embarrassed to stick my camera throught the gates of this house.

I am aware that this is a slightly weird, nosy parkerish thing to do, so thank you to the owners....

Oh, and here is my front door, on a relatively neat day.

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Restaurant Inspiration - The Blue Diamond and New York Style canapes

This week, the Blue Diamond, which is not the Riley Car Club, nor is it a restaurant rather a very elegant bar nightclub in central Melbourne. It is in a low rise 1970s building and has this view over the eastern skyline:

It has a light bar menu and at a recent event there I was very struck by the New Yorkness of the venue. A cigar bar, a balcony for taking in some fresh air, little circles of brown leather armchairs, a long cocktail bar and a jazz band playing in the corner.

And canapes. We all know how hard they can be to get right. And so time consuming to make. We all want something easy to hold yet filling and not a rehash of the same old sushi \ mini pizza \ peking duck wrap\chicken sandwiches which plagues us all, everywhere we go.

So coming into party season in Melbourne (Spring Racing Carnival and then Christmas) these are two recipes inspired by the 1920s.

Cocktail Sausages in bacony wraps

This is not a recipe, just an idea, and comes from Nigella Lawson's Feast. These take the edge of your appetite and are excellent with drinks. You will need some thinly sliced proscuitto or streaky bacon, some beef or pork chippolatas and some maple syrup or honey.

Pre heat the oven to 200 degrees celsius. Carefully wrap the sausages in the bacon, and lay on a baking sheet covered with foil or baking paper. Get a pastry brush and thinly coat the bacony packages with maple syrup or honey. Bake, turning once, for about half an hour or until crisp. They can stay in a low oven to keep warm.

Cheese Canapes

Canapes were everywhere in the speakeasies of the 1920s. There is a wonderful on line copy of the Boston Cooking School Cook Book by Fannie Farmer written in 1918 with a vast selection of bread canapes ranging from the simple to tasty to probably not to our current tastes. You can see this here.

Use a scone cutter to cut 5 cm diameter (or bigger if you like) circles out of soft white bread. Carefully toast until just beginning to colour. Spread with Dijon mustard, then sprinkle with a thick layer of grated cheese seasoned with salt and cayenne. Place on a baking sheet and grill until cheese is melted. Serve at once.

(All images: Blue Diamond)

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Do you need one of these rooms?

My list of rooms which I think I can probably live without:

• Mud room (see above).

• Gift wrapping room

• Second gift wrapping room for gift overflow

• Flower arranging room

• Craft room

• Wine Room (actually we have one of those)

• Box room

• Linen Room

Well that's what I thought. But I have realised today that we did something wrong when we renovated our house pre children.

We did not leave enough room for linen and laundry storage. I mean who does? The laundry is always the one shoved into the corner left over space. And as most architects are men, it is the last thing on their minds (there I said it, sorry but it was true for our architects).

So some days even with only two children, I do feel a little bit like this.

Unsurprisingly Martha Stewart has a lovely linen room and this is what I would like if I had a spare room, which I don't:

If not a dedicated linen room, then a very large laundry with linen space would be wonderful:

Or if not a room maybe just a cupboard (or linen press), which is my current situation:

Or maybe just a little set of shelves:

I must say I need to have a really good reorganise. Tomorrow.

What do you think? How do you store your linens and towels? Where do you fold your laundry? Or is it not worth even thinking about?

(Images: (1) SeattleMag.com (2) State Library of Victoria (3) Marthamoments.blogspot (4) Interiordec.about.com (5) Cookie Mag (6) Simplynaturaldecor.blogspot (7) Apartment Therapy(8) Anhminh.com)

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Old Ladies to admire and a Ghost Story

Watching the Pixar film UP a few weeks ago it occurred to me how rarely modern culture has regard to the elderly, except in really one dimensional (grumpy, complaining, super fit) ways.

This is particularly so with women. And yet in our families, if we are lucky enough to still have grandmothers or great aunts or elderly mothers, they are so central to our lives.

So here are 3 elderly ladies who inspire me:

Sheila Scotter. Former editor in chief of Vogue Australia.


Notable characteristic - only ever wears black and white. Lives on her own at 88. Carries off a headband with aplomb.

She said: anyone can buy fashion but you can't buy style.

Dame Zara Bate (died in June 1989 at the age of 80)

Notable characteristic - stoicism in the face of the drowning death of her husband, the Prime Minister of Australia, in 1967. Getting on with her life after said drowning, including remarrying and always being wonderfully matter of fact in her appraisal of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

She said: on redecorating the Lodge, the Prime Minister's residence in Canberra, that she painted the walls of one of the bedrooms a bright Schiaparelli pink, with a glazed white ceiling.

Dame Roma Mitchell (died in March 2000 at the age of 87)


Notable achievements: almost too many to mention including being the first Australian female judge, Queens Counsel and governor of an Australian State (South Australia).

She said: she never believed 'that women have a monopoly over certain qualities and that men have the monopoly of other qualities'

At the request of the lovely Jane in Spain, here is my little ghost story.

The beginning: we know from the title search of our house that a lady lived in it for more than 30 years and that she was elderly when she died.

The middle: when I was about 38 weeks pregnant, my husband woke to find an elderly lady standing at my bedside, looking down over me in a protective, non scary way. He went back to sleep thinking he had just been a participant in one of those very realistic dreams.

The end: the very next day we decided to walk around the corner to the cafe for coffee. I opened the gate first but instead of walking into the street full tilt in my usual manner, something made me hesitate. That hesitation meant that I was missed, by just a nano second, by a cyclist who was riding down the hill at high speed on the footpath very very close to the gate side of the path. And yes those handle bars were certainly at pregnancy bump height.

I am not sure I believe in ghosts. But perhaps I do believe in guardian angels.

(Images: (1) The Sartorialist (2) National Archives of Australia (3) Mitchell Chambers.com.au)

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A circular chair for the drawing room

I have a little chair in our front room (also known as the Green Room, also known as the Problem Room, also probably known as the Drawing Room by the elderly lady ghost who still seems to reside there) which I have 'inherited' from my mother. By which I mean she gave it to me when I was a university student living in penury and I have never returned it.

I love its circular shape. I have never seen another chair like it. Except of course, its twin, which I was not given and which still lives with my mother in a much much cleaner condition.







But as you can see it is supremely grotty. So I turned it upside down last week and what do you know, instead of being a glued together Made in China chair, it is a screwed together Made in Italy chair, which comes apart like a jigsaw. I also saw that the little padded parts had the fabric stapled to them, quite neatly. After thinking a little bit about the Italian craftsmen who put this chair into its shape, I pulled myself together to rise to the challenge.


So, although I am not a professional upholsterer By Any Means, I thought, why not have a go.


The fabric I bought is above (from Signature Prints - check out their website). It is by Florence Broadhurst and called Japanese Floral.


This may not be to everyone's taste but it does go with the look (Chinoiserie\Japanesque 1930s, light and green) I am trying to achieve in the front room. (No other photos yet, it's too depressing).


Here is the chair stripped down and naked.




And here is the result. I used a staple gun. I must say I am rather pleased, and I suspect it is a chair my grandmother would have liked. Whether that is a good thing or not I cannot say. If only all interior redecorating could be accomplished with a staple gun.

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Restaurant Inspiration - Gill's Diner and Beetroot Carpaccio

Today I am beginning the first of series (which will no doubt be intermittent and unreliable) where I cook a dish I have eaten in one of Melbourne's stellar restaurants and set out the results here.

I have a few reasons for wanting to do this. The first is that I am bored with my cookbooks. As I have mentioned before, I have quite a lot, and there is really no excuse, but there you have it. The second is that I want to see if my tastebuds are on the ball. This means I have to properly taste and consider my food (no wolfing down). And third, it may provide a technical challenge. For that reason I may start small and build up to twice cooked essence of foam and fluff with a jus of par boiled philosophy.

Today, Gill's Diner, which has been around forever, well at least 2 years, in a little laneway off Little Collins Street in the city. Owned by the wonderfully named and talented Con Christopoulos who also has the European, the Supper Club, Journal Canteen and (formerly) Benitos and Syracuse. And quite brilliantly, in today's day and age, it has no website. At all.

Here is are two images of its post industrial chic:

My main complaint about this restaurant is the chairs, which are identical to those I sat in for my maths class in 1979. Apart from that, lovely interesting simple food and extremely good service.

My dish was beetroot carpaccio with bits and bobs over the top.

You have probably noticed the carpaccio trend which has taken over the world, rather like confit. Anything that can be thinly sliced can be called a carpaccio. And wouldn't the painter himself be turning in his grave if he could see the use his name is put to.

Vittore Carpaccio 'Martrydom of the Pilgrims and the Death of St Ursula' (1493)

Recipe (for 2)

Ingredients

2 medium beetroot

About 6 celery leaves, picked over and cut into smaller pieces

Zest of one orange

About a tablespoon of walnuts

Goats cheese (about 1/4 cup) Note: this needs to be the crumbly goats cheese not the creamy one

Walnut oil

Balsamic vinegar

Salt and pepper

Rubber gloves

Method

Put on your gloves, and peel the beetroot. Then slice very very thinly (realistically the only way to do this is with a mandolin). Get two very large crisp white porcelain plates and place the beetroot slices on each plate. You can overlap them slightly. Whether you use up all your beetroot will depend on how big they were to begin with. And how big your plates are.

In a small glass, whisk together the walnut oil and balsamic vinegar, in proportions of 3 parts oil to one part vinegar (I have not given measurements as you may wish to make more). Season with salt and pepper. Get a spoon and drizzle the dressing over the beetroot. What you want is a very light drop here and there. If there is too much dressing the beetroot will bleed and your plate will look like a massacre has taken place. Let the beetroot rest quietly for a little while on the kitchen bench.

Just before serving, scatter the walnuts, celery leaves and orange zest over each plate of beetroot. Then break the goasts cheese into little crumbly bits and scatter evenly over the beetroot.

This is a very nice refreshing entree to have with a glass of chablis or reisling.

(Images (1) Marie Lou at Flickr (2) Swellkh at Flickr (3) Mute Monkey at Flickr (4) Lib-art.com)

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Surfing and Breathing - Tim Winton

I have just read Tim Winton's Breath, which was published in 2008.

For those of you familiar with the writing of this Western Australian native who have not read this book, you must, it is really wonderful. If anything, he is getting better and better (which I guess is what you would expect but we have all been disappointed by writers who start out with such great promise only to embarassingly and over a long period decline in terms of quality of output).

What is this book about? It is about breathing and life. Surfing and stepping outside your own skin, even if just for a minute. The chasm which opened up between parents who lived through the Second World War and children who came of age in the 1960s. It is about doing what you dream of doing, even if only for a short period, and about how hard it can be to come to terms with the loss of a lifelong dream. It is about addiction, and living on the edge of life. And most of all perhaps, about being an adolescent, the decisions we make when we are young, and those life changing events which live with you forever.

In essence it is a memoir of Bruce, who describes growing up in south west Western Australia in the 1960s, his discovery of surfing, his friendship with the completely crazy and appropriately named Loony and his entanglement with the lives of a mysterious couple, Sando and Eva, whom they befriend. Sando and Eva live near the beach, between their grim little mill town and the aqua edges of the surf at the Indian ocean.

Tim Winton is such an evocative writer, you barely need any imagination at all. His passages about the obsessive challenges presented by surfing and the risk of it all are wonderful (when you think about it unless you have actually surfed this can be very hard to get right).

Just as good are the way he handles the death of a friendship, first 'love' and the divide between parents and child.

The house in which Sando and Eva live is clearly brought to life. They could be described as hippies, but we learn they are hippies of means. When one has been raised, as Bruce has, in the straitened, chintzified environment of his conservative parents, a house with rough plaster walls, a hammock and airy open wooden rooms is quite a shock to the system.

I see one of those silvery wooden beach houses you used to see everywhere along the Australian coast line, sitting gently on the curve of the dune with lots of scrappy srubby bushes all over the place, the sandy dust washing over the steps up to the entry, where Eva spends a lot of time, sitting and looking out.

And this to me is the kitchen where Bruce first learned that Eva had a past, and a painful disability which she grappled with every day.

Tim Winton is the quintessential Australian writer. His work has that rare combination of readability and literacy. He has won the most prestigious Australian literary award (the Miles Franklin Award) four times, including for this book.

In an interview he said in response to a question about 'what is down there in the sea':

Well, less than you think and more than you think. Do you know what I mean? When you're a teenager you feel overcome by all these problems. Everything seems enormous. Everything seems big. You seem tiny and bewildered. So, in a way, jumping into the ocean and diving deep was a way of getting over myself, you know, a way of leaving myself, not worrying that I wasn't tall enough, that I wasn't skinny enough, that I wasn't smart enough, that, you know, you didn't get the girl. You jump in the water and just... It was like a hallucinatory experience, you know? Fish, sharks, dolphins, seals and weird noises, like something out of a Kubrick movie.

I say, if you want to understand an Australian, read a Tim Winton book.

(Images (2) (3) Taschen.com (4) Quote from Enough Rope ABC.net.au

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