mutteringhousewife

September 7, 2012

Ode to the Bo Peep

I’m unashamed of my relationship with sugar. I just love it. You’re not going to get me giving it up, not for a detox, not for Lent, no way. I have fond memories of finding my Nanna’s many stashes of Pascal’s Columbines behind lounge cushions and inside dressing gown pockets, so it’s one of those hereditary things you just can’t argue with. I’ve handed it on to my youngest, the Horror From Outer Space as he’s formally known, who is forever discovering where I’ve hidden the the cooking chocolate and leaving sweet wrappers in his pockets.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t eat a lot of it. As you may have gathered from this blog, I don’t use much processed food, and despite the enormous amount of baked goods I turn out I rarely eat any of it. For breakfast I have a bowl of chaff with plain yoghurt, lunch and dinner are also fairly simple and I bow to the combined wisdom of the health pundits in my snacks. Because I like my sugar fairly concentrated, I don’t go diluting jam with bread, I eat it from the spoon. I like to buy the pure icing sugar rather than the smooth pour mix ostensibly because I don’t want additives, but actually because the pure stuff forms lumps that are easy to consume standing in the pantry.

So it is with my preferred sweets. I don’t want to go mucking around with bits of wafer or nuts or any such fillers. I like them as close to pure sugar as possible. So I’m very wistfully consuming my last bottle of Bo Peep sweets bought from a Darrell Lea shop. We used to get them in our Christmas stockings, back when they came in glass bottles. You can’t really hoard them for very long after you’ve opened the bottle, they get stuck together after a few days and you have to get in there with the end of a spoon, which smashes up their inviting pillow shapes. On the rare occasions I buy them for myself I look for a bottle in which the reds and purples dominate, rather than the less desirable orange and the completely give them to the husband black. There’s not a great deal else I’m that fond of at Darrell Lea. I’ve never understood the appeal of soft centred chocolate, the toasted marshmallows aren’t as nice as they used to be, and liquorice is anathema. I’m not sure what we’ll do without the Bulgarian Rock as the ideal gift for my father in law, though. Perhaps I’d better get up there one last time and lay in ten year’s supply.

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September 6, 2012

Wonton Wrappers

The problem with going shopping when you’re hungry is that many many things on the shelves of the supermarket look like a good idea. Not Coles, everything there looks appalling and I hate them, but that’s a whole other rant. I’m talking about Harris Farm. Wonton wrappers are amazingly cheap and come in a neat little cube, and I have a thing for the square form. So I’ve had a packet of wonton wrappers sitting in my fridge now for nearly a month and it’s time to either use them or write off that two dollars seventy.

First I tried baking them as tart cases, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them used like that in the a gourmet Traveller magazines I read at the physio. I have a pan from my Nanna’s kitchen that I think you’d use for jam tarts. Twelve depressions, smaller than muffin size, with a rounded bottom. I spray the pan with oil, line the depressions with wrappers, then spray again. After fifteen minutes in the oven they’ve all puffed up in the middle. I think if you sprinkled them with salt or brushed them with teriyaki sauce first they’d make a rather tasty snack. Still, there’s enough that are vaguely tart shaped that I can later fill them with the bacon and egg that the Horror has requested.

Next I chop up chicken, celery, leek and mushrooms and stir fry it with chopped ginger, chili paste, teriyaki sauce and a chunk of palm sugar. Then I have to pick up the boys from their various afternoon activities, and that kind of neglect does make a wonton wrapper dry out a little. I salvage enough to line the pan again with another twelve wrappers and drop spoonfuls of the chicken mixture in the middle. It’s very easy to pinch the wrappers together at the top with wet fingers and they look rather delectable. I spray them with oil, then bake them for twenty minutes. You just need to crisp them up, they’re cooked on the inside.

The next lot I’m going to line the tart tray and fill with left over BBQ chicken. I’ll bake that for fifteen minutes then top it with chopped lettuce and capsicum, because that’s what the Moose and the Muffet have requested. I’d better get cracking because I have a committee meeting to get to. I can go with my head held high, because I did manage to get that Treasurer’s report written after all.

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September 5, 2012

Not procrastinating, beading

I have a Treasurer’s report to write for a committee meeting tomorrow, so I decide to spend the day beading. Come on, my Bead and Button subscription arrived yesterday and it’s actually warm enough to move around the house.

I really liked the look of the Autumnal Spheres project, I do love a beaded bead. After reading through the project, I realise that even though the instructions call them angular spheres, they’re actually cubes. That means you should really do them in delicas, they make a much nicer square. However, if you don’t read the instructions properly and additionally put the headpin through two corners that don’t turn out to be opposite one another, you get a lopsided mess. I wouldn’t recommend using three millimetre Swaros at the corners if you’re using delicas, they’re to big for the gaps. You could leave them out altogether if you wanted to emphasize the cubeyness.

And it’s a tiny bead, about thumbnail sized. I’m filing that one away for possibly redoing in bigger delicas, or maybe in square stitch. Then a bigger face could be supported.

What I was aiming for was a pair of earrings to wear tonight out to dinner with my mates. Still scratching the beaded bead itch, I dug out the components I made for the Galaxy bead featured in an early 2010 Bead and Button magazine. I just couldn’t get it looking right, but couldn’t bear to chop up the components. I had a crack at sewing four together for a pyramid beaded bead to hang upside down off an earring. I suppose you could call the result organic. You could also call it crap, but that would be rude.

I was being too elaborate. So I just took one of the components and did a picot around the edge and hung a tourmaline Swaro off the bottom. I’m pretty sure you can’t get them any more, so I’m careful where I use them. Bingo. Now I just need to to make the other one and find an outfit that goes with them. No, that is not the wrong way around.

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September 4, 2012

Ginger Spice Syrup

I’ve been fighting off a cold for about a week now, and woke up to realise that I’d lost. I’m aware that there is no cure for this insidious virus, so I entertained myself for half an hour on the internet looking up home remedies. My goodness there’s some nonsense out there. One site actually listed a whole lot of studies that showed that echinacea was no better than a placebo for the cold, then went into preparation and dosages of the stuff. The Mayo Clinic suggest plenty of fluids, a saline rinse of the sinuses, and a nice garlicky chicken soup are the only things actually shown to reduce symptoms. I’m the only one in the house capable of producing the latter, but I may have mentioned that I have a cold. Also am lacking in chicken bones at the moment. The middle option sounds rather disgusting, and I’m not that clogged up yet. I’m going with the first. I’m a little bored by water and notice that some of the wackier sites suggest various forms of tea, so that’s what I’m going with.

I like ginger tea, and there are an infinite number of recipes for it. I’ve been making syrups for soft drink for a while, you’ll have to wait for another blog for that, and have done a ginger syrup. But I want it for tea, not for soda, so it won’t need to be as sweet. I also find that the ginger syrup I make gives you a soft drink that tastes exactly like Saxby’s ginger beer, a result I find strangely unsatisying. I’m going to make it a little more spicy.

I chopped up a cup of ginger. Small dice, you want a large surface area, but not so small that you need to mess around with muslin when you strain it. One cinnamon stick. One superannuated vanilla pod that has spent the last year of its life inside a now extinct bottle of homemade vanilla essence. Three cups of water. Put the lot in a saucepan with the lid on and brought it to a low boil. Then I checked my emails, scratched the dogs, put on a wash, had a shower, then came into a kitchen that smelled really quite delightful. I think I got the spice mix right first time. If you’re making a syrup that has chunks that need to be sieved out, I like to put the sugar in a bowl and sieve the hot liquid over it, then stir like mad to dissolve it before it cools down. If you have the sugar in the saucepan, you risk turning the syrup into toffee if you lose concentration, and everything gets a lot stickier. I’m averse to sticky.

The sugar you use in a syrup makes a difference too. For soda syrups I generally go with caster sugar. For this one I used half a cup of brown sugar and a third of a cup of honey. That’s all I had left, and it was rock solid. The Moose gave up eating honey when I told him he had to unsticky everything after he spread it on his toast, and no one else eats it. That wasn’t enough sugar for a soda syrup, not for a kid friendly one, anyway, but great for tea.

Quarter of a cup of syrup in my large Elmo coffee cup, top with boiling water and I really like it a lot. It’s a very unappealing looking syrup, resembling the Murrumbidgee River more than anything else, but hopefully that will stop the kids drinking it.

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September 3, 2012

Custard Tarts

Cast your mind back to the lemon slice blog. Remember how I said I’d worked on it a lot? By the way, three whole eggs will make the curd set better than five egg yolks, but that will muck you up if you’re making friands. Here’s a recipe that is in the early stages of working out. I’ll show you the picture, they really don’t look that bad…

But they just didn’t work. I normally make a large custard tart, and I’ve never been really happy with that either. Never quite got the pastry right. Also a pain to lever out of the dish, and you have to have it on a plate, blah blah blah. Tartlets seem like an easier way to eat them. I got some Bakers Delight tartlet cases from Peter’s of Kensington, and that shop is a whole ‘nother blog in itself. They have a little disc in the bottom that allows you to push the tartlet out of its case, and they worked very well, they can stay in the recipe.

I was also happy with the pastry. I went back to the 1970 Women’s Weekly cookbook, an essential guide for any housewife, and they suggested using a Biscuit Pastry. And how right they were. Here’s the recipe for that.

90 grams butter (obviously they said 3 oz, but I’m translating)
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder (they actually specified 1 1/4 cup plain flour and 1/4 cup self raising flour, but I’ve never seen the point of self raising flour, just add baking powder, how hard could it be?)

Beat butter until creamy, add sugar and beat until just combined. Apparently overbeating at this stage will make pastry difficult to handle, like a housewife without her Bex. Work in flour and baking powder. Turn dough onto a lightly floured board and knead lightly until smooth. Refrigerate 30 minutes before using. I thought I’d need one and half times the recipe for 12 tartlets, and I was about right. Yes, I know you can’t get one and a half eggs, I just used a really big one, OK?

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I roll out cold pastry, it breaks up and looks a lot more like a Norwegian coastline than the smooth circle in the book, but I charge at it. You want it fairly thin for tartlets, I think mine was a bit too thick at about 4mm. I upend the cases on the pastry and draw a circle around them with a knife about one cm away from the circumference, and this also appears to be about right. Nearly half need to be cobbled together from bits of coastline, perhaps next time I should squash them up and roll them out again.

At this point I foolishly deviated from the recipe and baked the tartlet cases. Here’s the custard recipe
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons sugar
1 pint milk
Nutmeg
You beat the eggs, vanilla and sugar together while multitasking by heat the milk in a saucepan. Gradually stir the warm milk into the egg mixture. Then, you’ll need to decant it into a jug so you can get it into the tartlet cases without tipping it all over the Caesarstone. It was probably about twice as much custard as I needed, so I put the overflow into two ramekins and baked it too.

Bake in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes, then slide them out and grate a bit of nutmeg of each one. Slide them back in for another 15 minutes while you apply aloe vera to your burnt knuckles. Watch in despair as the custard seeps into the pastry, and in some cases, through the holes in the pastry and onto the baking tray holding them up.

The kids ate them anyway, but I am filled with a quiet determination that these shall not conquer me. Perhaps next time I might follow the recipe. Or maybe an egg wash over the cases? Maybe a thicker custard………

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August 31, 2012

The Schoolgirl Figure

Another thing us housewives do is put a bit of effort into maintaining the schoolgirl figure. There are various means of doing this, pills that you get from clicking on a Facebook ad, eating disorders, diets you find in magazines. My preferred method is to eat sensibly and get regular exercise. I know it sounds crazy, but it seems to be working for me.

Last school holidays we went on the family ski trip. On the second last day, with the sun shining and everyone feeling like they were a pretty fantastic skiier, we took the Moose down a black run. My husband recklessly turned his head on the way down to see how he was doing and took a fairly predictable tumble. I attempted to stop gracefully beside him, but failed. Instead I cartwheeled over the top of him and, to cut a long story short, sprained my ankle. This has cut out quite a large part of my regular exercise, as I still can’t walk very far without it swelling up. All that is left to me is cycle class.

There are three cycle class instructors at my gym. The first is enthusiastic, but uninspiring. I mainly do his class to marvel at the amount he sweats. I feel that they should put a tarpaulin underneath him so they can reconstitute him afterwards. The second is a hyperfit woman in her fifties, all zip and gristle and black eyeliner. I very much enjoy her classes, but the best of all is Dmitri. I did Dmitri’s class today. He’s the kind of short, stocky Mediterranean type that I’d always have a crush on in high school. It’s not that which makes his class the best, in fact I’m not really sure what it is. All I know is that it is in Dmitri’s class that I’ve come closest to vomiting like they do on the Biggest Loser. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned this to the young lady next to me, as she kept shooting me startled looks every time I coughed. There’s a lot of sprinting sitting down and sprinting standing up, and giving it one hundred percent, and it seems to be over fairly quickly and I’m never quite sure that I’m not going to sink quivering to the ground after dismounting. He manages to run the entire class without once saying “woohoo”. The real measure of his class is that when I go out into the carpark, I can’t remember where I’ve parked. And when I do find the car, I attempt to open it with my gym card.

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August 30, 2012

Beautician

Like so many things in my life, going to the beautician isn’t really one of those things I choose to do, it just happens. The first time I went to one was to redeem a gift certificate. It was a fairly pleasant experience, but the beautician went broke shortly afterwards. There was another one that my sister booked me into, which was also pleasant, but extremely tedious. She also went broke shortly afterwards. There have been a few in between that I’ve just drifted into, one who commented on my extreme old age, one who was a bit over ambitious getting my bikini line even, one with scary multicolored talons.

Today’s appointment was set up by my hairdresser. He’s insisting on dying my hair at my next appointment, unable to stand the kaleidoscope of ginger, blonde, dark brown and grey that is happening on my skull any more. I mention that when he dyes my hair, my eyebrows look a lot lighter. I’m actually in fear of them disappearing altogether, like my mother’s. My niece has suggested that perhaps Grandma got a big surprise one day and they just flew off. It could happen to me, I’m easily surprised.

Apparently you can get your eyebrows dyed. Also your eyelashes. So Gary has organized a young lady in Paddington to call me and book me in to her emporium of such mysteries. Paddington. That’s in the eastern suburbs. When people find a parking spot in the eastern suburbs, they pop into a dodgy doctor to get a disability sticker so they can leave their car there for the rest of their Ives. Then they bequeath it to their children. So I was foolish to venture there without my GPS enabled iPad, and even more so when I realized there was no map in the car. Fortunately my patient husband was able to talk me from the skip I’d parked beside to the emporium over the phone.

Once again, it was all very pleasant, though I hadn’t realized eyebrow shaping was one of the arts. I didn’t even really want my eyebrows shaped, I like them way they are, they’re rather sardonic. I just don’t want them disappearing in direct sunlight. She was very lovely, spoke English, didn’t draw blood at any point, and was very gentle with my eyebrows. She also dyed my eyelashes, which I knew was a beautician thing because I’d accidentally had it done at my very first gift certificate visit. I hope her finances are in order.

I think they look a little dark, I shall have to spend the next couple of days being very cross to use them to full effect. Apparently they’ll lighten a bit when I wash my hair. Nobody has noticed them, except my smirking husband, so they can’t be too savage. I wonder if it’s something I’ll do again? Perhaps I should just buy a dark brown Sharpie, it’d be much cheaper.

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August 29, 2012

ENJO

Today I had the quintessential housewife experience. The ENJO party. Not at my place, because I know my strengths and one of them isn’t hosting parties. There was only one other housewife there, everyone else was in gainful employment of some description, some even skiving off work for the occasion.

For those that haven’t attended one, an ENJO party works exactly like a Tupperware party, only with cleaning products. We straggle in, are greeted by the dog, stand around awkwardly for a bit until everyone has a hot beverage, then we sit down and get stuck in to discussing the school that our sons all attend. Because they are at a private school the discussion is mainly about what a fantastic time our sons are having and what legends their teachers are, with a little bit on sporting choices and whether last year’s school captain will be Prime Minister someday or just Emperor of the World. He was that kind of kid.

We do eventually move on to the products. The ENJO system consists of a cleaning cloth with a matching drying cloth, tailored for various cleaning situations. In your kitchen you wet the kitchen glove, wipe over your greasy stove, then dry it with the kitchen drying cloth and stand back in amazement, because they really do work this way. You never need to buy any cleaning products ever again. Because I am a housewife of long standing, I already have most of these cloths and am mainly there for moral support. They have moved into soaps, so I get some hand wash – which emerges from the pump in enticing little puffs of foam, and dish washing liquid. They also have little circular make up removal pads, which we try by applying lipstick to our hands then wiping it off with the wet pad. I’m utterly sold, despite the fact I’ve been on the same pot of Ponds cleanser for about ten years. I may have to start wearing makeup.

A jolly good time was had by all, and arrangements are made for the next party, because that’s how these things work. I’m going to have to go to that one because I want to see if the sales lady is going to wear another ENJO coloured dress.

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August 28, 2012

Better Lemon Slice

Most recipes that I tweak with only usually need an adjustment in the type of sugar, or a bit more or less butter, or something fairly minor for me to add it to the collection. Not this one. I had been on the hunt for the perfect lemon slice for some time, but the Women’s Weekly one was just adequate, the Donna Hay one a bit gloopy and I didn’t like the base. The recipe I lay before you today is almost right. Possibly still a little gloopy, but not unacceptably so.

The recipe for the base I unashamedly stole from a fascinating book called The Good Cookie, by Tish Boyle. This book was given to me by my worthy and esteemed brother-in-law, who also happens to be a B grade celebrity chef. If you’re the kind of housewife that lounges about the place watching telly and eating chocolate, you would have seen him on daytime TV. His celebrity status should be much higher, as he is an excellent chef, festooned with hats.

Place in a bowl one and a quarter cups of flour, 125 grams of room temperature butter, one quarter of a cup of brown sugar and two tablespoons of finely chopped crystallized ginger. The ginger is optional, but try it with, I love it. You could possibly use the stuff in syrup in a jar if you can’t find the sugar coated crystallized stuff, but gosh you’ll be sticky after chopping it up. Get in there with your hands and rub the butter in until what you appear to have is a bowl of breadcrumbs. Tip this into your roasting pan line with baking paper (mine is 20 by 27 cm) and press it down. Bake in a 180 degree oven for about twenty minutes, or until it is starting to colour on top.

Meanwhile, you’ll be making the topping. Separate five eggs into two different bowls, you’ll be using the yolk component. You could just use three whole eggs if you’re not planning to make friands at the same time in the other bowl. To the five egg yolks add one and a half cups of caster sugar, one third of a cup of lemon juice, one quarter of a cup of plain flour, half a teaspoon of baking powder and the zest of two lemons. Obviously lemons come in a wide range of sizes, so let’s say two moderately small ones. I zest citrus fruit a lot and use the Microplane for it, it’s also super for grating nutmeg and am I starting to sound like Martha Gardner? I’d recommend growing your right thumbnail long if you’re going to use the Microplane regularly, emery boards are cheaper than band aids.

Whisk that lot together and pour it straight onto the base you’ve just taken out of the oven. It will make a pleasing sizzling sound. You don’t really have to do it straight away, that’s just how it worked out today. Stick it back in the oven and bake it for a further twenty minutes or so. You want the top fairly well coloured to make sure that it sets when it cools down. Don’t even think about cutting it up before it has cooled down. When you’re piling it into the Tupperware you’ll have to separate each layer with a sheet of baking paper, because they do tend to stick together.

One slight disadvantage to this recipe is that if your kitchen is on a lean because your house is slowly sinking into the swamp, there will be one side slightly more lemony than the other. But who could be bothered turning it halfway?

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August 27, 2012

Not ComicCon

A few weeks ago we turfed our eldest, the Moose, out of his bedroom to accommodate two little girls from my daughter’s school’s Armidale branch. He didn’t have any choice in the matter, but was very gracious about having to sleep on the lounge with a snoring dog on his chest for three nights and being giggled at every time he opened his mouth.

As a reward I offered to take him and his comic book loving friend the Care Bear to an event called Heroes and Villains. It was held at that world of entertainment, Penrith Panthers. That would be in Penrith. Which is a little under sixty kilometres from the Care Bear’s house. Two of its headline attractions were the guy who does Squidward’s voice in Spongebob Squarepants and a chap who was a Kaos agent in the original Get Smart, making him approximately ninety seven years old.

It was a jolly gathering of like minded folk. There were the beyond cliched obese guys with ponytails. The women who cut their own hair. More people than I’d expected came dressed up, as characters that I didn’t recognize. I did recognize a Tom Baker scarf, a Matt Smith lookalike and a sadly accurate Sylvester McCoy. Why would you pick that Doctor?? There were also several people wearing a white bag over their head topped with a fedora hat. It could well have actually just been one fellow who over around a lot, I don’t know. To the fellow in the silver jumpsuit, you may want to rethink boxer shorts as the undergarment of choice for whatever superhero you were. We also spotted Liam Neeson. After a bit of discussion we agreed that he’d need to be a foot taller and not eating a pie to truly fool us, but he was a terrific Qui Gon Jinn.

There were only about twenty stalls, so I got to go around about sixty three times before the boys had had enough, each time assiduously avoiding eye contact with the folks at the Doctor Who Association of Australia who were handing out jelly babies. They were a bit close to the bone for me.

My fair of choice is usually a craft fair. You would think that a gaggle of elderly ladies eagerly poking at the latest line in Japanese print fat squares would be more flatulent than this cheery gang of anime fans. You would be wrong.

I did pick up a sturdy looking water bottle with a Tardis printed on it and a purple shirt with a panda on it for the Muffet, but here is a photo of the Moose’s find of the day

As we were leaving we passed three Storm Troopers who paused to glare at the Care Bear. He look at me, little horrified, and I said “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for”. He smacked himself on the forehead, realizing he’d missed the opportunity of a lifetime. I think he’s going to save that one up for the next Supernova. Because they never would have heard that one before.

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