This is the first recipe I’ve made that I’ve followed down to the very syllable and as such I’m not comfortable posting the method like I have for most of the others so far. Luckily, though, I’ve found it for you via a scanned Google book (which is hardly any better copyright wise, I’d argue).

Fruit Soufflé Tart (+ the pastry)

I’d never made a soufflé before and I was a little scared once I got started and actually read all the steps involved. An extra complication was I only had a 26cm flan tin (which a special trip to Safeway procured) and the recipe asks for a 23cm. But it still worked.

See?

(Not quite as nice as the picture in the book. Never mind. Oh, also, I used nectarines, but most varieties of stone fruits would do.)

This is week fifteen of the 1 recipe a week for a year ‘living list’ challenge. (15/52)

Fruit Soufflé Tart is a post from: Miscellaneous Mum - Trying to find the objective correlative, everyday

I don’t know where to start, but this is a start so it’ll have to do.

Or it could begin with my son’s wobbling lip, when I caught him balancing on a blue plastic step on top of a kitchen chair while he was hanging off a pantry shelf, trying to reach the top and tub full of jelly beans. He teetered, then his foot slipped, and I ran up and grabbed him before he fell. Placing him on the floor, the words came out, hot, righteous words like ‘safety’ and ‘not for children’ and ‘you know better‘. His lip wobbled, his cheeks dropped. Eyes wet. My mouth hurt from the sudden yelling. Then I wanted to cry too and I opened my arms and said sorry.

We hugged silently. I crumpled to my knees and he sat in my lap, his back bent over, head buried into my chest.

It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it? I said.

And school hasn’t even begun yet.

*

I feel like I dropped Monday’s news and ran, and that’s not too far from the truth. I had to go into the city to make my specialist appointment. His offices are opposite the Alfred Hospital. By chance I was able to get some free parking across the park and as I walked the little way to get back where I needed to be, I couldn’t help but marvel at the way life just… happens. The cosmos is made up of such strange configurations, I’ve given up trying to work them out. January has seen new beginnings and greater challenges all at the same time. The specialist confirmed this when he used such phrases as “we need to manage your condition”, “I’ve had patients sit in that chair for thirty years” and “I want to see you back in March and if there’s no improvement, well, we’ll talk more then”. He ripped off a script for more medication and gave me a handy plastic folder full of cross-sectioned faces.

For those of you who are curious, it appears my articular disk has slipped out of place. The articular disk is that purple slug shape in the centre picture. If it slips, then it acts as a kind of doorstop, jamming the regular motion of the jaw. I have lots of exercises and a whole LONG list of stuff not to do, which as far as I can see is really to assist the compromised muscles not over-exert themselves. Whether or not the disk moves back to where it should be is really up to God or Jesus or Justin Bieber or George Clooney – whoever’s most powerful these days – to decide. A Higher Power – or surgery. That’s next for this contestant. Maybe (hopefully not). To be determined in March, at any rate.

(One of the things I’m not supposed to be doing is “vigorous kissing”. It was such an odd phrase, part of me wonders if it’s not a euphemism.)

(OMG IT’S A FOOT PICTURE!!!)

But it’s okay. What I’ve been telling people since, is things could be a whole lot worse. And as I walked across the park, on that sunny, stormy, windy, Melbourne-throws-it-all-at-you-day, I felt happy. Nervous, yes, with everything set to change, but excited too.

We’ve also had relatives down visiting this week and the kids have been sucking up this time with greedy gusto. They’ve played hard and stayed up late and bam! School looms again.

*

I’ve been wondering how a new job will impact my blogging. I’ve been wondering if I should keep up with it.

And I will.

I can’t imagine not blogging.

I was thinking about this when I was driving home on Monday afternoon, and Metallica came on, and the words of the title of this post came out through the speakers during ‘Nothing Else Matters’.

I don’t ‘just’ say anything here. I will continue for as long as I feel like I have something worthwhile and valuable to contribute to this community. I’ve got a lot of plans for this year. It’s going to be very exciting. Hard to juggle, probably! But we’ll get there.

I hope you stick around

31st January, #janphotoaday, Me, Again

All These Words I Don’t Just Say is a post from: Miscellaneous Mum - Trying to find the objective correlative, everyday

When I was invited to be a part of the ‘Save Your Friend’s Skin’ campaign I immediately said yes. After all, my grandmother had skin cancers, as did my father. On top of that my mother, my sister and myself have all had moles removed before they potentially became issues at a later point in time. So you can see why I think this is an important message that needs to be sent out. I’ve even blogged before about when Adam and I went on a skin check ‘date‘.

Here’s some additional information that might surprise you:

1. There are two different kinds of sun rays which can cause our skin serious skin damage – UVA and UVB.
2. As much as a short walk from the train to work is enough to cause incidental sun exposure.
3. More than 47% of Australian women rate dry skin as the number one skin concern, while less than 40% use a body lotion daily.
4. One of the major causes of dry skin for Australian women is UVA damage from incidental sun exposure.
5. UVA ray strength remains much the same all year round – causing constant dryness and ageing.
6. UVA rays can cause premature ageing, wrinkling of the skin and indirectly contribute to skin cancer formation while UVB rays can cause skin to burn.
7. Lack of sun protection is dangerous – skin cancers now account for 80% of all newly diagnosed cancers.

Are You Taking Enough Care Of Your Skin? (+ Competition) is a post from: Miscellaneous Mum - Trying to find the objective correlative, everyday

I’m really happy to be able to share with you some news today: I have been appointed as Program Manager at the Emerging Writers’ Festival.

I’ve written a little more about it over at the EWF blog if you’d like to hear a little more.

2012 is off to a racing start!

Some Exciting News is a post from: Miscellaneous Mum - Trying to find the objective correlative, everyday

I was recently reading the Bourke Street Bakery cookbook and there was a recipe in it for ‘oat and barberry biscuits’. Normally I’d skip past a biscuit recipe, but this one made me stop – foremost because I wondered ‘What on earth is a barberry?’ Then I looked at the ingredients and thought, Yippee! I have all those (except the barberries, naturally). I looked in the cupboard and found some glace cherries and thought the might do as a substitute. And they did! If you’re thinking it looks like an Anzac biscuit you’d be right –  the original recipe is an adaptation of the perennial favourite.

Ingredients

165gms (1 2/3 cups) rolled oats
220g plain flour
100gm desiccated coconut
175gm brown sugar
85gm glace cherries, chopped
185gm unsalted butter
60 ml golden syrup (or honey)
1.5 tsp bicarbonate soda
60ml water

1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees.
2. Combine oats, flour, coconut and sugar in a bowl.
3. Put butter and golden syrup in a saucepan on low heat and melt the butter. Take off heat and add the cherries. Combine bicarbonate of soda and water and stir into the pan. Pour the wet mixture over the dry and stir quickly, while still foaming. Mix well.
4. Roll into even size balls in the size you desire. (The original recipe says this makes 12; I got more than that. Obviously if you do more/less you’ll need to amend the cooking time a bit.) Put on a lined baking try and flatten slightly with a spoon.
5. Bake for 15-20 minutes (keep an eye on them). Take out and cool.

Notes:

1. Riley ate these despite the presence of evil fruit in the form of cherries.
2. They were all gone within a day or so. These will be a school lunchbox feature this year.
3. The Bourke Street Bakery picture has these squished down really flat, but I kept mine in a rounder, chunkier shape.

This is week fourteen of the 1 recipe a week for a year ‘living list’ challenge. (14/52)

Cherry Oat Biscuits is a post from: Miscellaneous Mum - Trying to find the objective correlative, everyday

(No vlog this month on account of my sore mouth and our internet being drastically shaped. It would take ten weeks to upload any video to YouTube at the moment.)

1. Cat’s Cradle – Alas, unfinished. I think it’s because I loved Slaughterhouse Five so much and this is quite different in tone (even more biting and critical) and I had to adjust my expectations (whatever they were). Next time when I pick it up – and I will – I’ll be better prepared. Vonnegut does dialogue brilliantly.

2. Burning Your Boats - A collection of Carter’s short stories (or a collection of her collection of stories, as this incorporates titles such as The Bloody Chamber and Black Venus) set in chronological order, this is a great starting place for someone curious in the Carter’s work. I studied her in passing at university: we spent a week on her work once, mostly focusing on her reworking of traditional fairy tales from a stronger, feminist perspective. I think these Gothic (re)tellings are still what she’s known for best. I like her darkness and her unabashed way of turning over notions of sexuality and home and power (among others), examining their meaning and questioning their relevance. She sometimes hits a wrong note, it feels too arch or contrived, and Salman Rushdie acknowledges this in his introduction when he says, “some of her puddings… are excessively egged.” But this is only occasionally. Her fans are legion and her work has spawned a great deal of literary criticism – justifiably so.

3. There Is No Dog – I read a little and then skipped to the end. I’ve heard a lot of good things about this book and I was puzzled. Was I missing something? The premise – a teenage boy is God – is funny and has potential but there wasn’t enough on the page to sustain my interest.

4. The Popular Girl – More short stories, this time by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s Fitzgerald, so you expect quality and it’s there, but I didn’t finish it. I know it’s important you read his work with the time he was living in and his own personal circumstances in mind, and they inform his work, but perhaps I wasn’t in the mood for privileged people who may or may not be poised on the edge of losing all their wealth and privilege and how this makes them feel dreadfully sorry for themselves. Maybe I should stick with the novels?

5. An Incomplete Education: 3,684 things you should have learned but probably didn’t (3rd edition) – I have conflicting feelings about books like these. On the one hand I think it’s good to have a condensed and readable reference/history book to turn to instead of fleeing to Google. On the other, do they lull us into laziness? You read three pages on how World War One began and you say, “Well, that’s all I need to know about that” and you move on. It’s what most people do, of course, because their curiosity is satisfied and don’t want to know much more anyway. For me, this book is smart and funny (if the odd joke rings false) and the overview of the Spanish Civil War is the first one I’ve read where I’ve gone, “Right, that’s a little clearer now”.

What are you reading this month?

And Happy Australia Day! We shall be swimming and visiting friends for a BBQ. Perfection.

What I’m Reading – January 2012 is a post from: Miscellaneous Mum - Trying to find the objective correlative, everyday

Keira was sitting on the lounge reading Surprise!

[The more cynical of you might think this is a setup, but it's true.]

She was reading a library copy. She prefers those to our own here at home as library ones are virtually guaranteed to have pictures by other children in the back. She likes poring over these the best, appreciating the gift they’ve given, these little insights into other lives and talents.

Anyway, I thought this would be a nice chance to pick up on a debate we’ve had many times: that I do not ‘work’ because I made the choice to be a stay at home mother.

See, that’s work, I said.

She looked up and blinked. What?

You say I don’t work, but writing that was work. As was publishing it.

She closed it and did the half-shrug meaning, Okay, fine, whatever. Then she actually said, Okay, fine, whatever.

Well, okay then, I said, walking off, happy to have made my point.

But this book was done ages ago, she added.

I stopped. So?

So what have you done since?

I spluttered. I’m still writing. I’ve had other pieces come out. There are novels on the computer that are unpublished.

Just no real, proper ones like this. She rapped the cover with her knuckles.

But -

She interrupted me. - and before you say blogging, that doesn’t count either.

Blogging doesn’t count as work? 

No.

*

First of all, I know many people wouldn’t classify blogging as work. For them it’s a hobby or a bit of fun. I can’t afford to be quite as cavalier about it anymore. This conversation happened a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been thinking a lot about it since. In retrospect, I probably should’ve brought up the topic better, when I was in a less prickly kind of mood. I wasn’t trying to wheedle any sort of badge or march of honour or anything. In fact, I’m not sure what I was after. I suppose all I want for them – Riley too – is to understand that ‘working’ doesn’t automatically equate to getting up and catching a train into the city for eight-plus hours a day. I didn’t want to turn it into a Big Feminist Issue either (although I know it can be) – not at her age, at least. I could’ve talked about how goddamn hard writing can be, how anything can be if you’re squeezing it into brief pockets of time throughout the day. How a solo-authored book isn’t the only way one can get published and that it can be tough journey, fullstop, period, that’s the truth, amen.

I suppose that’s what surprised me most of all – after all, she’s been in school two years now. She’s heard from her peers about how other family units operate and, yes, I might be in a minority when I have chosen to be at home for as long as I have. But does that mean my choice was less valid? No, it’s just different. I’m used to being defensive when this topic is discussed in the media, so I always get a little thrown when I hear it coming from the other direction, the one I care about most. I expected a little more. Perhaps that was silly. Or perhaps, ultimately, to a young kid, anything that causes parental distraction might be a bit of a bruise to the ego, whether it be checking into social media, typing, scribbling phrases and ideas on paper, research (online or off). I remember when my own mother was doing her Masters and I felt second-best for a long time. I felt pride too, don’t get me wrong. It was an introduction to the complexities of adult life. It’s why my mother was patient and listened to my grumblings and explained her perspective, and why I in turn listen to Keira’s and try to explain my side to her.

It’s also why I’m trying to cut back on social media – particularly Twitter. It’s why I have a secret private list that I check into first instead of my general timeline (and that subject is a WHOLE OTHER post). It can be an astounding time-suck, when five minutes can magically turn into fifty-five minutes and you have no idea how it happened. My goals for this year are slowly solidifying. I want to write… better? No, that’s not quite good enough.

Perhaps you can help: can you finish this sentence?

I want to write ___________

*

It’s not easy. What do you want to write? Truth? Soulfully? Beautifully? Consistently? Professionally? Lyrically?

Then go. Do it.

When A Seven Year Old Gets Preachy About Blogging – And What I Learned From This is a post from: Miscellaneous Mum - Trying to find the objective correlative, everyday

On Saturday morning I woke up and couldn’t open my mouth.

Hold on, that’s not quite true. I could open my jaw so my teeth were about two inches apart, the same as if you put in your thumb in sideways. I’ve been trying to think of funny ways to tell this story, but in truth this discovery short-circuited my brain into an anxiety attack. At 6.30am. I’m not too sure how I could dress that up and turn it into teh funneh.

A trip to my GP was useless, telling me I had to give it time, to eat soft foods, it’ll come good. Hard telling someone that when it’s a logistical nightmare to get some soggy weetbix past their lips, let alone chew it. Long story short is I have to ride this out until I visit a specialist (which, luckily, I already had an appointment for) next week.

To be honest I’ve been steeling myself for this next development. Thanks to anxiety my brain tends to leap forward and catastrophise situations and this kind of mindset is something I’ve been working on working my way out of, if that makes sense. So when my TMJ issues turned into this lockjaw*, I may worry but there is also a little part of me that goes, “Okay, well, here we are. Now deal with it.”

I can still talk and drink and smile. Brushing my teeth is painful, as is eating. But it is stemming my nail chewing, which will raise a praise the Lord, from my family. Hopefully the specialist next week can help. While I am trying to be zen and calm – and it is working – I can’t deny the wish that I really, really hope this is only temporary. Some Google searches tell me otherwise, but then Google can be a bit of a pessimist.

Oh, and my latop seems to have finally gone kaput after nearly five years. Bummer.

But enough about me – how was YOUR weekend?

*Edit: on second thoughts ‘compromised motion’ would be a better description than ‘lockjaw’. 

Well, that was an interesting weekend is a post from: Miscellaneous Mum - Trying to find the objective correlative, everyday

This is a recipe modified from Marion Grosby’s Marion: Recipes and stories from a hungry cook (she used pork in hers). Because the kids refused to eat it – more on that later – it fed Adam and me for two nights running. The portion sizes are pretty generous.

Ingredients

100g vermicelli noodles
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp white pepper
1/4 cup fish sauce
2 tblsp soy sauce
2 tsp white sugar
500g chicken mince
1/2 cup chopped coriander leaves and stems
4 spring onions, chopped
2 cups shredded wombok

1. Cover and soak the noodles according to pack instructions until they are soft. Drain and set aside.

2. Mix the garlic and pepper into a paste. Put half of the paste in a large saucepan with 2 tblsp of fish sauce, 1 tblsp soy sauce, 1 tsp sugar and 1.25 litre of water. Bring to boil and bring back to a simmer.

3. Meanwhile, mix the mince and coriander and the remainder of the garlic paste, fish sauce, soy sauce and sugar until combined. I used my hands, but you could use a food processor.

4. Use your hands to roll the mixture into ping-pong size balls and then drop into the soup. Once all in, it should take a few minutes to cook (test to check, I did). Add noddles and spring onion and simmer for 1 more minute and turn off heat.

5. When serving, put equal amounts of wombok into a bowl and pour the soup over the top, making sure all components are evenly distributed. Top with more coriander, if desired.

Notes:

1. I really, really liked this soup. Arguably my favourite meal discovered on the challenge so far, which makes it all worthwhile. As Riley is fussy I was expecting his refusal, but Keira’s was a surprise. She didn’t like the coriander or the fish sauce.

2. The original recipe called for white peppercorns, but I only had the ground white pepper.

3. Marion has a sauce recipe to go on the side, but I had mine with just a dash of sweet chili and extra soy sauce (I love soy sauce).

(Shot taken before I added the noodles, which I forgot to do until just before serving! My methodology is scatter-shot at best.)

This is week twelve and thirteen of the 1 recipe a week for a year ‘living list’ challenge. (12 & 13/52)

*

Wait, where’s the second recipe, you ask?

Well, last week, I attempted to make eggs benedict. My hollandaise sauce was dreadful. DREADFUL, I say. I used a Woman’s Weekly recipe and I feel horribly disenchanted now because they failed me (just kidding)(only a little). The sauce didn’t thicken despite my doing everything they told me to. I don’t like talking about my failures, but in the spirit of the challenge I will.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor for life to be found in this bowl of vinegary muck…

… somewhere.

Chicken Ball Noodle Soup is a post from: Miscellaneous Mum - Trying to find the objective correlative, everyday

From the Starlight Children’s Foundation website:

Living with illness or injury can cause enormous strain in the lives of children and their families. The pain, loneliness and isolation that sick children feel dominates their lives, and they often miss out on normal experiences that healthy children take for granted.

Starlight provides programs integral to the total care of seriously ill children – while health professionals focus on treating the illness, Starlight is there to lift the spirits of the child, giving them the opportunity to laugh, play and be a child again.

I’ve been aware of The Starlight Children’s Foundation for years. A former work colleague was quite passionate about the Foundation and did a lot of volunteering for them and would often tell me stories of the smiles and wonder on children’s faces. In more recent times, I’ve been reading of their extraordinary work and impact they have on lives and families through the blog of my dear friend, Tiffany at My Three Ring Circus.

Her post, Her wish come true, accounts the day her daughter Ivy was granted her wish of being able to be a ballerina and dance with The Australian Ballet. It was a moving, magical piece of writing which moved me – and many others – to tears. It also spurred me to think of other families who should have a similar experience. This profits promise is just my humble way of trying to spread the word a little further and hope that my small contribution might make a small difference.

Profits Promise 2012 – The Starlight Children’s Foundation is a post from: Miscellaneous Mum - Trying to find the objective correlative, everyday