Goal!

Recently I find myself talking about cooking as though it were a spectator sport. I'll have forgotten two ingredients for a curry dinner but only remember at the last minute. I come up with a pie that is equally satisfying, if not better, and after dinner I'll go to Josh 'That was a good save, wasn't it?' and he'll go 'Yeah, it was an awesome save!". I'll bake the chicken for quesadillas instead of pan-frying it to save the pan from two rounds of washing and I'll call it a 'brilliant move'. I'll applaud Josh's rare displays of excellent knife work on some fish and congratulate him on wonderful skills. Conversely when he tips ingredients into the pot in the wrong order I'll scream 'What are you doing? Arrrghhh!' and clutch my hair and jump up and down. I could be watching a terribly exciting football match for all you know. Should I now address a delicious and deeply skilled dinner as a 'goal'?

Now can I blame the ever increasing popularity of food media?; Masterchef, the lesser and even more appallingly scripted My Kitchen Rules taking up excessive amounts of air time and SBS seems unable to get re-runs of Japanese Iron Chef (please don't show the American version ever again. EVER.) off Saturday nights.

Or is it just because I have no life?

It's all brown to me

On Monday I was making dressings at work. I mistakenly grabbed the Worcestorshire sauce instead of the balsamic and whisked that up with the mustard and oil. It was pale brown and tasted vile. To fix it I just tipped in two cups of balsamic (which is in the same shaped plastic bottle; anyone could make that mistake!) which effectively masked the Worcestorshire sauce taste and turned it the proper blackish brown shade. Saved my arse. Unless someone from work is reading this, in which case I have effectively fired myself. I'm not sure what's wrong with me at the moment, but I seem to be making mistakes left and right. But I didn't burn anything! That anyone knows about. Tea towels aren't food at least. It is a funny thing to see a wooden spoon on fire. You just don't expect it.

It's also very bizarre reading the Epicure's jobs section and discovering your workplace is looking for a new someone. I thought I really was fired for a second because at first glance I just saw GAS-need-breakfast-cook and thought that this was one of those B movie moments where the tragic eventual hero discovers he has well and truly hit rock bottom in a most brutal fashion. Then I remembered that I haven't cooked breakfast since my last day there before giving birth, which was of course the worst work day of my life. I'm a 'general' cook. I hope they find someone nice, efficient and not me for the breakfast cook position.

If any of you ever do end up hiring me in the future for some reason or other, I'm not really like this all the time. Generally I'm known for being at least somewhat quick and creative in the kitchen. And when not pregnant or spending my entire days away from my baby son, the only things I ever burn are my own flesh and the fine hairs off the back of my hand. You don't even realise they're there till you've burned them off.

Nobody Knows

Did anyone catch SBS2's screening of Nobody Knows (dare mo shiranai)? I'd never heard of it before, but in 2004, Yuya Yagira, who played main character Akira won the award for Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. Don't read on if you plan to watch this yourself or if you are quite squeamish, but God what a bloody captivating film. In in a young mother and her eldest son Akira move into a new apartment, fooling the neighbours into thinking she only has one child by transporting her two youngest in suitcases while her eldest girl is snuck in from the train station in the middle of the night. Only Akira is allowed to leave the apartment, of all the children, so that he may to grocery shopping and pay at bills. At first the mother seems loving and genuinely caring despite herself, appearing to work all day and return home late but happy to play with her children. That is until she abandons them to marry a man who knows nothing about her children. Suffice to say we spent the whole film clutching each other on the couch, begging the powers that be that someone discovers them and gives them the help and protection they need. 

At the beginning of the film is a disclaimer mentioning that the story is based on real events. Naturally I had to find out what really happened, to get closure from the film which left things quite open ended. I almost wish I hadn't; the true story is far more gristly and tragic. In the press the story was called 'the affair of the four abandoned children of Sugamo'. The real mother had five children, none of whom were registered. Her youngest son died from illness not long after birth, but rather than telling the authorities and giving him a proper burial, she wrapped the child in plastic sheets with some deodoriser and hid him in the closet. When she abandoned them to live with her boyfriend, she left them only 50,000 Yen for living expenses. The eldest son befriended to other young teen boys who took to hanging out at their apartment. One boy became angry with the youngest girl, two years of age, for eating a bowl of ramen he'd brought for himself and he beat her to death. The eldest son and the other friend packed up her body and buried her in a shallow grave by some nearby mountains. Eventually the landlord discovered them and called the authorities. They had been abandoned for 9 months. The mother saw the story on the news and turned herself in. She spent only three years in prison and four on probation. She even got custody of her two surviving daughters. Charges were made against the eldest boy but dropped and he was remanded to a care facility; he was only 14 at the time. The two friends were sent to a reform school.

Children will do stupid things, especially when they have no example to follow and are given responsibilities far beyond their capabilities. The film portrays the eldest son as more of a generous but flawed hero, and his friends as mere delinquents. But I can't believe a woman could abandon her children like that, without a thought to how they might survive and then only get such a short time in prison. 

If you ever have a moment where you feel like you're a bad mother, perhaps you should watch this. You'll feel better about yourself, but rather a lot worse about the world.

Mothering Madness

I think I'm going to be one of those mothers who over-protects and nearly over-feeds her children. I had a bit of a panic yesterday and bought extra groceries on our market shop to prepare various lunches and dinners for Wolfgang. I've gotten a little over-excited about new foods, with Wolf already trying chicken, fish and cheese in the last week. But he seems to be enjoying them and hasn't displayed any allergies or generally unpleasant reactions. I have food to last him the next couple of months: chicken and sweet potato, chicken and potato to be combined with green vegetables later, fish and potato, zucchini tasty cheese and brown rice pasta, pure unsalted chicken consomme. Partly this sudden desperate mothering is because I start working on Sundays as well as Mondays. Two days is not much work at all. But for some reason I feel as though being away from him another day means I won't be able to stay on top of things and I should prepare food like a war is coming in case anything should happen to me. I can't seem to express enough milk to make me feel 100% comfortable leaving him, so I suppose I'm trying to make up for it with solid foods. It's quite silly I know.

Paranoia. I think the two words that best describe me would be generously paranoid or paranoid-ly generous, depending on my state of mind. On a more positive side, this cooking was inspired by gifts from my friend Rachel, one of the genius writers of the Hungry Girls Cookbook. She and her gorgeous daughter visited the other day, bringing with them half a dozen eggs from their own chickens and a huge zucchini! I have to say it's one of the nicest gifts I've received, ever! There is something so beautiful and generous in giving of something you have grown yourself. So on Friday Wolf tried his first pancakes, albeit one's made with just egg yolk, flour and milk. The egg yolks were a beautifully vibrant orange. 

Admittedly he didn't like the little pancakes much, as tasty as they were. Wolf hates warm food so he sort of shuddered when he picked one up. But he did have a good go and tore them apart. However he loved the pasta made with Rachel's zucchini. Much sweeter and less watery than store bough vegetables. Thank you Rachel!

The Intersection of Death

What you're looking at is the intersection of Montague Street and the Docklands Highway and Lorimer Street in South Melbourne. Every work morning this is the intersection I have to get through on my bike without dying. I'm actually riding on the pedestrian path along the left but have to cross at a hundred odd lights to even make it through to the other side. It takes forever, it's scary, noisy, dangerous and there are hardly ever any other cyclists around. It's either this or ride all the way up Spencer Street. 

This is what one gets for moving to the industrial side of town. Next time Google Earth updates there images, there will be a big pink splodge somewhere on here which will be me and my bike having been run over by 50 uncaring motorists. 

Emma, The Walking Disaster

When I was working at the patisserie, I had a special nick-name given to me by the master. 'Emma Catastrophe' pronounced the French way. So basically every time I dropped a hot tray, rolled a wonky escargot, or someone mixed the incorrect quantities of ingredients together for anything (something that happened A LOT for some reason), my boss would walk in and go 'Ah la la, Emma Catastrophhhhh!'. It drove me nuts. As if I didn't generally feel like a royal moron already. There was a song that went with it too, but I won't go into that. 

Monday was only my second day back but the curse of being a walking disaster has already come back. Sure, on paper I look like a pretty competent and efficient cook. But when I'm bad, I'm pretty dumb. It's mostly burning stuff that I have a problem with these days. The incorrect quantities thing doesn't matter so much at Gas, as anything other than cakes and pastries are generally repairable. So I burnt some sausages when I went upstairs to express some breast milk (is anyone else other than me actually checking things in the oven?), burnt some pastries at the end of the day (again same question), knocked over the giant pepper mill a hundred odd times and nearly forgot two items of catering. Argh. I could have bashed my head against the wall. Sometimes I do wonder exactly what career I'm naturally suited to. I love being in the kitchen and I can't imagine wanting to do much else, other than write (and I don't think a major in creative writing did anything to inspire some talent in that department), but I was born a sort of absent-minded klutz and I suppose I will die by those very symptoms. Anyway I've got to buck up because I'm fairly sure I'm the most disposable member of staff at the moment. Sure it didn't help that it was 34 degrees and my brain fairly melts in hot weather, but now that it's not possible to just crash and burn when I get home, I've got to stay on top of things or risk falling off the edge of the Earth completely. Sound dramatic? I like over-reacting.

I nicked these pictures off the cafe's website. The above egg dish we don't actually make like that. It was invented for the promo pictures. It's delicious though. An enormous pan of it like this would feed about 8 people, but usually it's done in a miniature pan. Turkish tomato sauce, eggs poached in the sauce, topped with fried haloumi, parsely, paprika and served with toast. About the best winter breakfast dish in existence. The green olives were added just for the picture, though they go awfully well. 

And we have a wonky image of the sandwich display in the store. My only claim to fame is that I can be bloody fast. I'll make 55 flatbreads and baguettes in an hour and a half. That's the record! Everything else I do too fast. All speed and no brain. Should I have become a rare female motorcycle racer (but I have no sense of balance)? 

At least I have my own money now and can afford to take Josh out to dinner for his birthday next Monday! La Luna, his absolute favourite. And I bought myself Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's River Cottage Everyday cookbook. His books are the most useful I've ever come across! Not only are the recipes seasonal, simple and totally delicious sounding, but he always includes ingredient alternatives or seasonal alternatives and appropriate accompaniments. It's the kind of cookbook that Josh can read and sort of understand. And that's an achievement. Not a picture of a bicycle in sight. 

Back at work

It was easy. I remembered how to do everything. The ride took a while but I enjoyed it and it was fine.

Phew! Back to being arms deep in super high quality lamb mince and paprika. Back to being able to throw together amazing dishes with speed and ease in a fully stocked and equipped kitchen. Back to the hilarious banter one shares with friends and cooks. Back to having adult(ish) conversations about serious(ish) topics. Though I was absolutely focussed on work, every now and again I did have a niggling feeling that I was forgetting something. Then I would be like 'Oh my baby! Where is he?' in my head. Then I'd remember he was home safe with his dad. I would have liked to see a heart rate chart for yesterday. It would have looked unnatural. Maybe like that of a startled geriatric. That was certainly my bike riding style anyway. I used to hate being passed on the road by overweight business-men on their expensive road bikes or cheap and ugly hybrids. Riding a fixie means people expect you to go fast and ride dangerously. But I can't be bothered to do either of those things anymore. Well, perhaps the latter, but that's only by accident. I did nearly take myself out going too fast around corners and was nearly run over by an enormous semi-trailer crossing lanes (which I was at perfect right to do) on Ballarat road. I hate trucks. Stupid driver gesturing and yelling at me. What did he want me to do? It was either cross to my lane or be run over by someone else. Anyway, it's nice to be earning money again and it's nice to be exercising. We may yet lose this post-baby fat. Nothing I can do for my hips though. Like someone's over large head pushing itself through the neck of a borrowed t-shirt. It will never be the same again.

First time back on the bike

There I am on my beloved horribly garish pink fixie. Showing a lot of bum crack. I mean woah. I'm not sure I see that much of my own arse on a regular basis. It's been a year since I've ridden but it all came back nicely, which is surprising, because I have this appalling sense of balance. My step-ish-father maintains this fact. He did try to teach me how to ride my motorcycle. I think it was just too heavy. Anyway, I do hope I don't show this much arse riding to work on Monday, or I suspect I will quickly become some sort of cycling urban legend. The fat mum on a pink fixed gear. Something a bit ruder than that I'm sure. I'd ride a more normal type of bike to spare myself the ridicule from the painfully cool culture that comes with them, but they're just so much more efficient and easy to use. I used to like that cool culture. But it consists of too many skinny boys. Now I want to go incognito.  Urgh. At least I'll start losing the baby weight again. Yay! I need to lose the 10 kg that I gained. Anyway, I just need to keep looking at this photo to psyche myself up. Thanks to Josh for capturing it from our bedroom window. You really know how to get my good side.

The end of the holiday

All I can think about is that on Monday I go back to work for the first time in nearly 8 months. Sure it's only a couple of days a week. 

But leaving this little guy. The hardest thing I can imagine. I don't know how you other mothers working full time manage to do it all. And even earlier than I'm doing it! And you do serious jobs with long term goals and lots of paperwork! It's impressive and admirable. Working mothers deserve some kind of award. Like a licence to endless phone calls home and some kind of lackey to fetch you tea and biscuit whenever you desire them. Make it government policy. 

I think I'm just some sort of chicken. Hopefully I won't be so distracted in the kitchen that I cause myself or someone else injury. I'm already 50% likely to do that generally so...

On the other hand I am looking forwards to feeling more generally useful and productive again. Making rather than just spending money would be great. It would mean I won't feel so guilty about all those online purchases I make. 

But then again I'm terrified of the bike ride from here to South Melbourne. I haven't ridden a good distance in a year. I did try out my fixed gear bike and I remember it all fine and aren't likely to fall off, but my thighs feel like they are filled with rubber cement and bending over elicits a very unbecoming geriatric sort of groan.

All this keeps going round and round in my head.

I'll probably post again on Monday and I won't be so morose and I'll say work was lovely, the ride was good fun and Wolf survived without me. I hope!

Dad Candy

You're going to call me a nerd-burger, I know. I'm totally pathetic. But I can't resist an awesome daddy-offspring picture.

Plus, it's a sign for changing times. If we were falling into a pit of self-indulgent sort of 'me me me!' attitude to life, where career and pleasure had to come before having a family, then these pictures can only be evidence of change! We can do both!

I mean, Anthony Bourdain. Drinking, smoking, travelling and typical cheffy bad language. Now super dad to Ariane. He quit smoking! If you've ever read his books or watched his show No Reservations, then you know that's amazing.

Also, popular actor Cam Gigandet. Generally I don't like his stuff much. Always some sort of broody, snarly, muscular, occasionally blood-thirsty villain. I thought it was just as well that they gave him a role in Twilight that resulted in his head being ripped off (hence no repeat appearances). But look at this. Admittedly I found it on Celebrity Baby Scoop. Yes, yes, pathetic. But it's Sunday morning. I'm feeling sort of sappy and bored. And this is in lieu of chocolate, because there doesn't seem to be any in the apartment.

Slings are great. They make toting a baby around look effortless. Her name is Everleigh Rae! Yes he comes off as a massive twat but look at that. Excellent daddy-daughter picture. I just wanted to share that with you. Now I'm going to toddle off and hide my red face.

Baby mothers looking good

I love that there is such a thing as maternity lingerie. And all the brands have such lovely foodie names like Cake and Hot Milk though the latter makes me feel slightly uncomfortable in the chestal area. If you're a breastfeeding mother and you're over flashing your average Bonds maternity bra every time you feed your child, go to Bloom Maternity because you can currently get 25% off not only lingerie but all maternity and nursing clothing with the discount code 'COSMO'. I wish I'd done this before I'd had Wolf and taken this stuff to the hospital with me so I didn't feel like the most enormous un-fashionable lump in the World.
As you well know, buying this lingerie will not make you look like this skinny bird without a stretch mark in sight (I think she's pregnant here. Very early. Wonder what she looks like now?), but it should make you feel quite good. This is the set I got. My grandmother used to say that wearing yellow or green made me look jaundiced but I don't care. I like yellow. I bought a very sexy black bra for a friend who is about to have her second child.

Don't let your partner think you bought the lingerie for them! This is confidence boosting stuff for you, retail therapy that helps you remember what it was like to be sexy. For yourself. I'm going to stop using correct grammar in a second if I haven't already. A nice maternity bra for $45 is a pretty good deal. It ends January 31.

Ben and Jerry's is here!

I have good news, particularly for my mother's group friends living in the vicinity of the Edgewater shops. Ben and Jerry's is here! Sure, it got prime time news coverage and everything, but where was the evidence that it had really happened? What is it about these American foodstuffs that make us go so crazy? From Reeces pieces (my dad used to keep a bag in his glove compartment) to Krispy Kreme donuts (remember the huge lines when they first opened?) there is something about shiny American food that is appallingly appealing. I'm guilty. I've used Junior Mint boxes as bookmarks. We first tried Krispy Kreme in London at Selfridges. A very attractive and charismatic black guy called us over and gave us samples. We may have talked about him for the rest of the trip. We're weird like that.

Anyway, Gavriel's Deli in Edgewater, is now a retail stockist of Ben & Jerry's take home and mini tubs! I just picked up a pint of Chunky Monkey this afternoon. Nice surprise for Josh. He doesn't deserve it after putting that hole in the wall that required the electrician to come and re-wire our hot water system, but I'm kind and generous to a fault. Yes, I hear you laughing. You all know it's not true. Admittedly he has already been punished. I have creepily perfect aim when I'm angry, and I managed to pin a clothes peg to his nipple through his t-shirt without really trying. Emma - 1, Josh - 0. I'm supposed to be talking about ice-cream. To find your own local stockist of Ben & Jerry's, there is a website with a list of every store, and there seem to be a decent number so it shouldn't be hard for you to find a very convenient local.

Currently Gavriel's is out of stock of their larger tubs, but they have a huge supply of mini tubs and a good range of flavours. Next week they get their Ben & Jerry's fridge and plan to order the full flavour range available in Australia!

This is possibly the best news about living here that I've heard since we moved. Not even my neighbours leaving an empty pram at the bottom of the stairwell and letting their children run around shirtless wielding electric fan bases and rocks can ruin my happy glow.

Post-Christmas Christmas

I do hate sitting here waiting for the electrician. They always give you a large space of time in which they might drop in and see what the big problem is. Hence sitting here, not in pyjamas, with a vaguely tidied apartment, waiting. So I'm looking through some recent photos. On Sunday Josh's mother's side of the family had their usual post-Christmas Christmas get together. It's a pretty good idea. Take away the stress and compacted necessary activity of Christmas eve and day, but keep the decorations, good food and good company. Even the music. Though someone axed that pretty quickly. Wolf was surprisingly well behaved and napped properly even though he was in an unfamiliar house and it was quite noisy. Leaving him his dad's smelly t-shirt in the cot definitely helped!

Perhaps the oddest thing of the day though something only mentioned between Josh and I, was the fact that the room Wolf slept in houses 2 or 3 snakes (I'm not sure really. I saw two but there were three tanks and one had a very impressive shed skin in it). Sure they're well locked up and properly fed and everything, but it's a funny thing, to think of putting your nearly 7 month child to sleep in a darkened room with snakes for company. Wolf of course didn't register any danger. I would have liked to show him the snakes but we forgot. He didn't much like the dogs though. Dogs and baby stared at each other not knowing what to do. Wolf touched one and then freaked out. I think we're just lucky he didn't try to pull it's hair or it's ears or try to bite it.

Josh bought me a beautiful trifle bowl from Queen Vic market on Friday so I thought I'd honour it with yet another trifle (but technically it's the first one of the year!). Christmas day's was a Peach Melba trifle, so this one comprised sponge fingers soaked in rum sugar syrup (this Christmas I think I'll make my own sponge), egg custard, strawberry fool and sliced mango. It went down well! I think Josh's grandmother had three bowls.

I also made some pudding truffles. I'd been eating a lot of commercial ones during Christmas but figured it's a pretty simple thing to do. Citron peel and sultanas soaked in brandy for a week with a hefty dusting of cinnamon. Puree and mix through a dark chocolate ganache. Roll in proper cocoa. They admittedly look like little turds. Many jokes abound about them coming out of Wolf's nappy (if that was so they would have been orange or green, not brown). The flavour is pretty good. Not to sweet and a bit more pudding-ey than chocolate. I definitely made too many because I took some to mother's group as well and I still have a boxful of them sitting in the fridge. Must learn not to automatically double recipes before I've attempted them. I think I need to ban myself from baking and confectionary because eating this stuff is not helping my baby weight go away. But work is less than a month away and that will include a lot of running around and riding my bike to and from, so perhaps I'm off the hook. That's what I'd like to think anyway.

Corky Goodies

A few days ago Josh, Wolf and I made a rare trip to the Flinders Lane shops, to have a sticky-beak at our old haunts, but mostly to drop in on Godfather Louis at Corky Saint Claire. It was very impressive to see Louis manning the shop on his own while his boss is on holiday! So professional and courteous; it's lovely seeing friends in their professional element, like a whole side of them you never knew. A bloody lot of people visited the store and in the end it seemed like someone always bought something. Josh and I walked Wolf around the store and saw so many things we wanted! The lovely woodland creature motifs are irresistible. They have some owl, bunny and squirrel shaped lamps that we're saving up to get for Wolf's bedroom. And possibly one for our own.

What we did get was this beautiful hummingbird mobile. It's light, delicate and very pretty. I'm always so impressed by people making mobiles like this and having each arm perfectly balanced. Wolf already has three mobiles in his room so we thought we'd put this in the lounge, in front of The Lark's 'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster. The metal birds themselves are so beautifully articulated.

The craftsmanship at Corky is always marvellous. From the jewelry, to home wares, to apparel, it's just enchanting stuff! Another special surprise of the day, Louis had kept my birthday present waiting for me. His, annoyingly, arrived via air mail the day after our visit.

Lovely Louis read my post about the rain cloud necklace and got it for me for my birthday! What a doll. What a thoughtful friend. I can't wait to wear this out. It's really stunning; there's something about the shape that is so pleasing. It's very light too. Thank you Louis.