mutteringhousewife

The Kale Review

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I bought kale the other day. I kept hearing about it, it seemed like a Good Idea to try it. It’s also excitingly curly and, the deciding factor, rather cheap.

I had my first second thought when I got it home. All that exciting curliness makes it take up a great deal of space. I managed to squash it down sufficiently to cram it on top of the cauliflower in the crisper drawer where I left it with its thoughts for a couple of days.

My second second thought, which would make it my third thought, came when I started looking for recipes for kale. It turns out that kale is one of the Loony Foods, like spirulina and goji berries, and my old favourite, activated almonds. How did I not know this? People talk about adding it to their diet, rather than just eating it. A worrying number of recipes had the cheery addendum that “they won’t even notice they’re eating it!”. Surely not a great recommendation for eating the stuff. I did see a vaguely tempting recipe for kale chips, which involved washing them and drying them (yawn), tearing them into palm sized pieces, laying them out individually on baking trays (dear lord), spraying them with oil spray and sprinkling them with kosher salt, then either baking them on high for fifteen minutes, or baking them on low for two hours. Or doing them in a dehydrator! Then eating them immediately, because they go soggy fairly rapidly. I bar any recipe that takes thirty times longer to make than consume, so that was out.

They seemed way too tough and leathery to eat raw, I dismissed as extra specially loony the suggestion that you whip it up as a smoothie with green apple and nonfat yoghurt. That’s the type of recipe you get when you’re looking at kale recipes, they involve non fat everything, raw nuts, chia seeds, cottage cheese and soy milk. I’m surprised I didn’t see one with tofu, perhaps tofu is a little last decade. I wonder what kale would be like deep fried? I finally decided that a dip could work, and would go with the fajitas we’re having for dinner tonight.

Here’s what I did. Dumped the lot in a sink full of water. Got the frying pan going with a splash of olive oil and a crushed clove of garlic. You rip the kale off the middle stem, discarding any dead moths, and toss it in the frying pan. I didn’t bother drying it, the water helped it cook. The bunch I had was of sufficient volume that I needed to do it in two batches, with a fresh splash of olive oil and clove of garlic the second time around.

Meanwhile I set my new blender a challenge. I put in it the juice of a lemon, a chilli from the plant I bought at Bunnings because it was three dollars fifty and right next to the front door, about a quarter of a cup of chopped Parmesan cheese and a tin of canellini beans. I let the kale cool a bit, because the instructions for my blender were quite firm on the kind of temperatures it would be tolerating, presumably because too many people were trying to use it as a cut price Thermomix. Then I squashed it in with the special squashing stick supplied with the blender, which already has a chunk out of it as a result of me not reading all the way to the end of the instructions. It worked best when it was allowed to grumble away on the lowest speed for about five minutes.

The final result had the right amount of salt from the cheese, the amount of garlic was about right too. I may as well not have put the chilli in, perhaps they’re decorative rather than fiery. It could do with some heat. It’s overwhelmingly fibrous and not terribly flavoursome. You might eat a lot of it if you feel that you have to atone for some kind of secret sin, but you wouldn’t do it of your own free will. I spread it on some Lebanese bread and rolled it up to eat it. I await the verdict of my capricious digestive system. It will be better in small quantities with the fajitas, but I’m still not making it again. Spinach is far nicer. There’s no way I’ll be able to fool the kids into eating it, I’m on my own with this one. I wonder what sin I can commit to make it all worthwhile?

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January 7, 2013

Do it Yourself

I thought I’d better cram two days worth of efficiency into Monday, as tomorrow looks like being a day of lying down with a cold cloth on one’s head as the road melts outside. So I leapt out of bed and got myself up to Bunnings to get some batteries, latches and what I discovered were called casement stays. Then on to Logan’s pianos for a piano book for the Horror to stop him playing the one song over and over on the piano. Then off to the gym.

I really do want the windows in the lounge room to stay open. Apparently they are casement windows and they need a little brass stick arrangement attached to them to keep them open. I got out the set that I’d purchased at Bunnings and had a good look at them. They looked like the ones elsewhere in the house – thank goodness we have them elsewhere in the house or I’d never have known where to start, they didn’t come with instructions. Then I thought I’d have a shower, and perhaps some lunch to fortify myself. OK, back to the casement stays. Actually, no, I might fit a latch to the back gate first, that will be an easier warm up job. It swings shut in the wind and shudders itself loose, so it needs to be hooked back. Well, the latch I’ve purchased is way too small for the job. Back to the casement stays.

I spend ten minutes extracting it from its shrinkwrap with a screwdriver and a large pair of scissors while fending off questions from the bored Muffet. “What’s that?” she asks. “You’re just asking me because you’re bored, you don’t actually want to know, and you’re going to ask more annoying questions when I tell you what it is” I reply, knowing that it won’t stave off the inevitable. “I don’t care, what is it?” “Casement stays” I sigh in reply. Fortunately the Horror does something more than usually annoying and is kicked at by his sister. He delivers what sounds to me like a sincere apology. I test him by asking him to empty the dishwasher. He does it. The Muffet, instead of graciously accepting his apology, shouts at him. I ask her to apologise now and give her brother a kiss. She eventually does, but then has to run off to wipe her lips with Dettol and go sulk in her room. That’s got rid of her.

I sit the casement stays on the window they’re going to keep open. My goodness my dear, that windowsill is really filthy. I dig out some Enjo and give it a good wipe down. OK. Right. I go back to look at the existing casement stays in another room, opening and shutting them. I consider taking a photo of them. No, no, I can remember. I get out my 2B pencil and draw around the bit that will sit on the windowsill and the bit that will attach to the window. Then I get out my ladies drill and drill tiny holes where screws will go. I’ve learnt from long experience that it’s faster to do this than to try and force the screws straight into the wood. Dagnabit, flat headed screws! Who uses them any more? They’re extremely annoying to tighten even with a manual screwdriver, and a power drill just jumps out of them. Heigho. I finally manage to attach everything, but when I shut the window, the latch doesn’t sit neatly on the poking up bit. I unscrew it and redo it, not even saying any rude words. And look! I can keep my window open.

For an encore I attach the latch that was meant for the back gate to the outside bathroom door, to stop that blowing shut while I hang out clothes. Got it in one.

Of course, if you had the kind of job that paid you $200 an hour, you would not attempt this kind of thing yourself, you’d get a nice young man in with a bag of functioning tools who never had to unscrew anything and reattach it the right way up. But I think you know what my hourly rate is.

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January 4, 2013

Holiday activities

I’m sitting on one if those balconies that seem to be made for a durrie and a Vodka Cruiser. I, however, am drinking a glass of AC/DC wine and eating what I want to say are activated almonds, but they’re not.

The kids are having one if those holidays people lament as they gnash their teeth paying for little Brayden’s immersion French camp in Gstaadt. Their daily activities consist of riding their bikes the fifty metres to their cousin’s caravan, jumping on the jumping pillow, making movies of each other on the Moose’s iPad;

And messing about in the river. The river is only waist deep in most places, neck deep under The Rope. I thought I’d pop out with them this afternoon to see what they got up to on the river. The Moose thoughtfully brought our little inflatable boat for me to recline on. It wasn’t until we were out on the water that I realised he’d only brought one oar. You can go around in some pretty tight circles with one oar, but it’s not much use as a motive force.

So the main thing they do on the river is climb a tree on the opposite bank, walk out on the overhanging branch and swing into the water using the provided rope. You can do this pretending to be Gollum, pretending to be an acrobat, pretending to be an old man having a heart attack, pretending to be a chicken that your cousin is shooting out of the tree. Hours of fun.

The other fun thing is to go to the Sinking Sands and corkscrew yourself into the mud. That, apparently is also hours of fun, punctuated by making yourself hairdos and moustaches out of seaweed.

I wonder how I’m going to lure them back for dinner? I’m only offering stir fried chicken and couscous, they may get a better offer elsewhere. They might be making friends with people with a BBQ…

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January 3, 2013

Kitchen Limitations

It’s a bit rude. We’re staying in a caravan park some kilometres from the nearest takeaway, and here is the cooking equipment with which our apartment is supplied:

A microwave that can fit a small breakfast bowl into it and a tiny electric frypan.

Last night we had broccoli pasta. I generally only use my microwave at home for defrosting meat if I’ve forgotten that at some point I’ll need to cook dinner that day. If you want to cook broccoli pasta in a miniature microwave, this is what you do. Half fill a small breakfast bowl with dry pasta, then pour some boiling water to come up just under the level of the pasta. Slosh a tiny bit of olive oil over the top and add a little bit of salt. Place a layer of chopped broccoli over the top. Microwave on high for five minutes. Stir and let it cool for a couple of minutes unless you want your lips to fuse together. Top with Parmesan shaved with the Microplane you’ve had the foresight to bring from home. Repeat for the number of people you’re attempting to feed. You won’t be eating all together, but that’s a given because there’s only four chairs in the apartment.

Tonight it’s a meal that has become quite popular with the kids. Deconstructed sushi. I started making this after realising that there must be some kind of secret Japanese glue holding bought sushi rolls together, because I can’t do it. I serve a couple of bowls of short grained rice seasoned with mirin, with bowls of chopped up cucumber, carrots and capsicum, also a bowl of shredded seaweed for that sushi effect. I’ll generally also serve some chopped stir fried salmon or sliced Japanese style omelette, which is just regular omelette with a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of soy sauce. Everyone helps themselves and a jolly time is had by all.

I don’t have any salmon, because when we stopped at the nearest IGA on the way down here, they hadn’t restocked with that kind of thing after Christmas. I do have eggs, but I’m going to have to do them two at a time, because there are no mixing bowls, they’ll be stirred up in coffee mugs. That’s OK, because I don’t think the frying pan will fit anything bigger in it.

I think I may have reached the limits of my creativity. Tomorrow night we’ll have to go to the Fisho’s, and then perhaps we’ll have to resort to two minute noodles. When we get home I’m making a roast. Or possibly a soufflé.

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January 2, 2013

The Trad Coast Holiday

Nothing fancy. You strap a luggage pod on the car, load up the kids and beach towels and most of your kitchen gadgets and head for the coast. It’s a very Australian summer holiday. The kitchen gadgets bit adds a touch of Inner West, but the principle is the same.

We’re headed for the South Coast, where my brother and his brood are already ensconced in a caravan park by the sea. They already have a gang of old school friends and new caravan park friends down there, but we’re horning in anyway, it’s difficult to get the cousins together. The rain is pouring down and I realise that I’ve made all the kids pack jackets, but have neglected to do so myself. We stop at a cafe on a very scenic lookout that is completely obscured by fog. The Muffet and Horror have vanilla and caramel milk shakes respectively. The Moose has vanilla and bull ant, a new flavour created specially for him.

I thought the idea of having electronic devices in the car was to keep the kiddies quiet. That’s what I’ve always heard. Well, not if they’re playing Monopoly on the iPad, that’s just as noisy as the paper version, only the Horror can’t throw it when he starts losing. I wish they’d play some kind of killing game, like those kids people are always complaining about when they’re reminiscing about how well behaved they were back in the good ole days.

As soon as we turn into the caravan park the kids leap from the moving car and disappear for half an hour. We find our accommodation, not cabins this time, but the freshly renovated apartments that are small but perfectly formed. When all the beds are unfolded there isn’t any floor space, but the bathroom is huge. From the balcony I can see the Horror organising all the little kids on the jumping pillow into some kind of bull rush game. There are six assorted children in various states of dampness eating chips on our lounge. I’ve sent dear husband off to the nearest bike shop to get the Horror’s Christmas bike amended. It came in a box, and I managed to get it into bike shape, but the handlebars are clearly and irretrievably on backwards, and they need professional help.

I think it may be cider o’clock.

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January 1, 2013

New Year’s Resolutions

I wasn’t going to do this, but I’ve been reading a lot of celebrity ones and getting annoyed. Most of the resolutions from people I actually know are pretty good, have some self control and be nice to people. That’s a very fine thing, but not very interesting and more like lifetime rules than new stuff. You want new stuff, something you can tick off a list. Here’s mine.

Wear more lipstick. Actually, this is a long term one, I’ve had this on my list ever since I wore lipstick to school pickup one afternoon and someone asked me if I was having an affair.

Wear an apron while baking. I do have a nice apron, but I was rather put off it when I grabbed it to wear for the first time and found it adorned with a dead huntsman spider. I must get over this baseless fear and protect my clothes from butter and dried flour.

Shout at my husband more. Most people are too scared to, so I’ll be doing a public service and it will make me more assertive. He may not like it, but he can go suck a lemon.

Spend less time with my children. That’s also a long term one, I never seem to achieve it. I should send them on more holiday camps and expect them to get themselves home from school. Unfortunately society and my husband like us to eat dinner together, but see above.

I’m pretty happy with my weight and my exercise regime has kept a physio and a sports doctor in full time work, so there’s nothing to be done there. I may have to accept my advancing old age and swim more often. You can’t ask me to enjoy it though.

Another long time one has been to list my handmade jewellery on some kind of ecommerce site. I have been waiting for the time when I can just wave my phone over the lot and it will set up automatically, but that may be some years away. It is certainly something I can tick off a list, so I’ll leave it on. My phone does take pretty good photos, so that will help.

Drink more coffee. I really love coffee and I have a low tolerance for it. Some extremely carefully selected scientific studies show that it’s pretty good for you so long as you’re not pregnant. Over many years I’ve worked up to being able to drink a large one every day. This year I want to be able to have an extra small one on top of that if I want to without feeling as if I’ve been kicked in the kidneys.

Lastly is a household thing I’ve been meaning to do for years, fix the windows in the room we call the lounge room, despite having no lounge. They have some heritage name, but they’re like doors and need some kind of stick arrangement to keep them open instead of slamming annoyingly shut every time there’s a slight breeze. I’m putting this one down with a deadline, I want it done before the end of the month. I shall keep you posted.

This is my one hundredth post. I started this thing with the aim of finding something interesting to write about every day in the life of this overpriveleged housewife, after many social gatherings at which I’ve been very politely asked what on earth I do with my time. There are only so many jokes you can make about playing tennis and painting your toenails. I may still continue writing a daily post, but it seems more likely that it will end up being weekly. I’ve been very surprised and rather touched to have so many readers. Thank you very much for your attention and your feedback, I hope it’s shown that us stay at home mums aren’t complete layabouts and that there are lots of things in packets that you really don’t need to buy.

I now need to finish assembling the Horror’s bike. I’m having a lot of trouble with the front brake, possibly because someone is sitting on the instructions.

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December 31, 2012

Jamberoo on New Year’s Eve

Not a Jamboree, that’s those twelve thousand Scouts converging on Queensland today and tomorrow. Jamberoo, where you control the action, the water park down the South Coast. That’s where we took the kids today.

I’ll pass lightly over the cheap shots, the astonishing variety of tummies and all those tattoos on display. All I’ll say is that if you’ve got a tattoo that’s over twenty years old, it’s going to be a blur unless it’s a very strong pattern. Also, if you’re going to tattoo the names of your children onto your skin, don’t put a border around them because if you then have another, you’ll have to have some laser work done and the next tattooist may not use the same font as the previous one. That’s all.

It’s a terrific family day out, there’s lots to do for little kids, for medium sized kids, and not so much for teenagers, which means there’s not that slightly antisocial horseplay you get with a lot of teenagers around. The grounds are lovely, with lots of shade and a large swathe of grass for you to spread your towels out on and park your esky at. I would highly recommend packing an esky (one with wheels), so you can avoid that deep fried stuff with yellow powder sprinkled on it that these places of amusement seem to specialise in. We brought a whole lot of water (the water out of the taps isn’t potable), cheese and vegemite rolls made last night (I’m sure I’ve blogged about these, anyway, the white bread recipe from Friday, roll it out after the first rise, spread it with Vegemite or cheese, slice it and roll it, rise again, bake), cut up watermelon, nuts and biscuits (Anzacs and ginger nuts). That pretty much did us.

There’s a variety of things to do. There’s a wave pool, a very wet kids playground with buckets of water tipping over them, water guns, and lots of little slides, one of those river circuits with inflatable rings, some big slides. The Taipan was probably my favourite, you and four of your personal friends or offspring load into an inflatable round raft and get shoved down a very twisty covered slide. The Funnelweb is their latest attraction, you’re loaded into a raft, pushed down a covered slide with no light and ejected into a huge funnel, where you twist and slip down to the vortex and get spat out. The kids loved this one, but said landing in the funnel hurt their buttocks, they may want to tweak that aspect of the ride. I didn’t go on it because I already have enough excitement in my life. The Moose said it made him feel a little ill.

They also really loved Jump Off the Rock. There’s a cliff over a five metre deep pool and you have three choices, the five metre jump, the three metre jump, and a slide for the slightly more risk averse among the crowd. I enjoyed watching this very much, the kids like to have someone to say “yes, I did see you do a triple corkscrew, you’re so clever”. Even the Horror managed the five metre jump, he appears to have conquered his fear of heights. The key to this jump is to take it at a run. Almost everyone who tiptoed to the edge to peer over chickened out. Something the lifeguards have evidently noted is that if you have a person of foreign appearance wearing street clothes instead of swimmers taking the slide, they will need rescuing. I saw it twice. I wonder what exactly they were thinking? That water I’ll be landing in after a five metre descent will be shallow enough for me to stand up in? Possibly. Both guys that did this looked very surprised in that brief moment between surfacing and thrashing their arms around then sinking like a stone. Both times the lifeguard was in the water as they landed.

You can have a full and action packed day if your kids are between, say, eight and fifteen. If your kids are younger, you may want to come with another family with similar sized sprogs so you can share the guarding of the various kiddie pools. If your kids are older, you may wish to leave them at home, or rope them into supervising the younger ones. Either way, it is fun to go with other families, everyone keeps dividing into different groups and meeting up throughout the day all over the place. During the afternoon the road surfaces get extremely hot, I just told the kids to harden up so I expect that over the next week the entire soles of our feet will be peeling off. It was too complicated to leave your thongs at the top, then fight back through the queue to retrieve them. Might be worth it for littlies though. Take your long sleeved rashies, this is not the kind of place you go to show off your breast enlargements or your months of hard work at the gym.

Here’s the Moose drying off. We’re all going to need a rest day tomorrow, especially judging by the appalling headache inducing dreck “music” thumping through our neighbour’s fence at this early hour. Hope you have a Happy New Year.

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December 28, 2012

White Bread

I do appreciate that everyone is entitled to holidays, even the hard working Vietnamese couples that slave away at all hours of the day and night at our local hot bread shop. I hope they’re having a lovely time. What I should have done is to buy a whole lot of bread before Christmas and stuck it in the freezer, not that there would have been any room with all the ice blocks I was making. But I didn’t, so here we are with no bread. Oh, yes, I could go up to the nearest mall because Baker’s Delight doesn’t go on holidays, but then the Horror will want to come too and he’ll want a milkshake and a surprising amount of sushi and then I’ll have to have a coffee to cope with him and then a loaf of bread will have ended up costing me thirty dollars. I’m going to have to make it myself.

I have alluded to this method of making bread when I was chatting about cheese and bacon rolls a while back. It isn’t a method that requires a whole lot of kneading, but you do have to stay a little focused, otherwise you get the risings all wrong and you end up with a loaf that looks like a depressed Frenchman. This method comes from that monumental tome, The Cook’s Book.

Place in a bowl twenty grams of fresh yeast with three hundred and fifty grams of water. Squash up the yeast with a fork until it’s dissolved. Add five hundred grams of flour and about ten twists of the salt shaker. Mx it all up with your hands until the flour is incorporated, then cover it with a damp tea towel and go fold sheets for about ten minutes. Pour a slug of nice olive oil over the dough and knead it in. Go pay a phone bill or two. Repeat with the olive oil and the ten minute pause until you’ve done it three times. Leave the dough covered in a warm place to rise until it has doubled in size. This is very dependent on how warm the spot you’ve left it in is. Often I put it in the oven with just the light on, but today my oven is occupied with ginger nuts, so I’ve placed it in the square of sunlight that comes through the kitchen skylight and moves like a laser beam through the room during the afternoon, melting everything in its deadly path.

Once it has doubled, punch it about a bit and manhandle it into a loaf tin that has been lined with baking paper. Leave it again, covered with a damp tea towel, until it has doubled in size. For my sized tin, this is when it’s doughy shoulders have just risen above the sides of the tin.

You put it in a hot oven, about two hundred and twenty degrees for fifteen minutes. You can mess about with brushing the top with water and slashing it with a sharp knife, but nobody really cares about that kind of stuff among my consumer base. Drop the temperature to one hundred and eighty degrees Celsius and bake it for a further thirty to forty minutes, but keep an eye on it. It should be all brown and crusty looking on top and sound hollow when you, feeling slightly foolish, knock on its top.

Once it’s out of the oven, lift it out of the tin by the baking paper, otherwise it’s sides will get damp as it cools. My grandma says you shouldn’t eat bread the day it’s baked, it’ll give you a tummy ache. I defy you to try abstaining from chopping off the end of your loaf and slathering it with butter and possibly Vegemite while it’s still warm. I’m willing to risk a tummy ache.

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December 27, 2012

The Hobbit Review

Those of you that didn’t like the Hobbit movie or found it boring can go suck a lemon.
Admittedly, it isn’t for everyone. It is exactly tailored to people like me. I spent a lot of time in Middle Earth in my youth, way before there were any decent movies made about it. I taught myself the Angerthas alphabet, featured in Thorin’s map. I learned quite a bit of Sindarin. I read not only the Silmarillion, but the far more disjointed Unfinished Tales. I took for myself a Sindarin name, and here it is, rendered in Tengwar.

I am a hard core fan, and was delighted with the job Peter Jackson did with The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit didn’t bother with trying to be a stand alone movie. It assumed that you had a working knowledge of Middle Earth and were aware that it was the first in a trilogy. All those people that thought it went on forever and nothing really happened, they should have gone to see Skyfall. This movie was not for them.

Well, I’m glad we’ve got that established. I’m looking forward to seeing it in 2D when we get the DVD, because I found the 3D experience to be a little unnerving. I appreciate it was new technology, and was certainly nothing like anything that has gone before it, but it made me feel like I was in a Disneyland ride. I’m not sure what it was, something about the lighting, or some weird perspective thing made me feel like I was being tricked and it was off putting. I also hate wearing the glasses, especially as they have to rest uneasily over my own glasses.

I really liked how fondly they treated us fans, with the cameos by LOTR characters and the music. I thought the bit with Galadriel and Saruman was very important and well done, despite not being in the book, and how old is Christopher Lee now? Hang on, I’ll look it up. He’s NINETY!!! A month younger than my grandma, and she hasn’t starred in any blockbusters lately.

I felt like the massive amount of nose and hair and eyebrows the dwarves had going on hampered their performance a bit. I agree that Richard Armitage spent a lot of time scowling and brooding, a very similar performance to that he gave in Robin Hood, but that’s really what Thorin does if you’ll go back to the text. I’m glad Gandalf got to get a bit of fighting in, rather than just standing about looking wise and saying memorable stuff.

I thought there were some overly cheesy moments. I really didn’t think Bilbo rushing in to save Thorin from Azog’s minion worked at all, Bilbo really shouldn’t be starting to earn his place until the second film. Much of the action inside the goblin’s lair was frankly unbelievable. But I LOVED Gollum, and I thought Radagast was a good inclusion too, and a past Dr Who!

I’m really pleased Peter Jackson has been allowed to lavish such attention on this story. We had a lovely time in the car going home discussing what dialogue was and wasn’t in the book and where they’ll be able to stop the next movie and how much a mountain troll looked like a cave troll. We’ll have to go again these holidays and next time I’ll remember to wear my dragon earpiece along with my Evenstar, Mordorable T-shirt and One Ring that I wore to today’s viewing.

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December 26, 2012

I am Boost Juice

One of the many advantages of getting older is an increased pragmatism around gift giving events. In our youth we imagine that those who love us can also read our minds and will occasionally buy us the perfect gift. If you are young and are feeling slightly disappointed once again, take my advice. Buy your own presents. Or at least have very tight specifications to minimize the risk of getting something from Aldi.

For those of you who follow my meanderings on Facebook, you’ll know that I chose for myself a blender. I decided on the Sunbeam Cafe after a great deal of research and deliberation. It arrived from Kitchenware Direct with days to spare and was very neatly wrapped for reasons I’ve yet to get to the bottom of by the Moose’s friend Charles. He also has lovely handwriting. The kids hustled me up to Broadway shopping centre today to spend their Christmas money and I promised them that if they didn’t nag me for any food or drink, I’d make them homemade Boost Juice as a reward. We even went to Harris Farm to pick ingredients.

Proportions of ingredients are different for smoothies than they are for ice blocks or sorbets or soda syrups. Some trial and error will be necessary, but here are two I’ve tried today.

Pina Colada. Place in blender a cup of crushed ice from the button on the freezer, half a chopped pineapple, half a cup of shaved coconut (this doesn’t disappear entirely, only include it if you’re prepared to chew your drink a little), the juice of three limes and a quarter of a cup of condensed milk. Why the condensed milk people haven’t given me money and a cookbook deal yet I just can’t fathom. It adds sweetness and creaminess which was otherwise a little lacking. The blender has a smoothie button, which you press and it goes through a couple of different speeds then stops by itself, having produced the perfect consistency. This makes two tall glasses of something really very delicious. The kids didn’t like the coconut bits in it, but I did. This group of ingredients would also make a terrific ice block.

Mango Apple. Actually, mango apple passionfruit. One cup of crushed ice, one large mango cheek, one peeled, chopped green apple and two passionfruit. You guessed it, kids didn’t like the crushed up bits of passionfruit seed. The blender made very short work of the chopped up green apple. This only made a bit over one large glass. The kids advised me that next time I should leave out the passionfruit and double the mango. This mixture didn’t need sweetening.

I can see why Boost Juices are so expensive, it’s a really quick way to consume fruit. On the plus side, you’re getting the whole fruit, not just the juice, only without the trouble and expense of chewing it. I still have to try various berry combinations, but I’ve bought frozen berries for that, way cheaper than fresh. I’m thinking they’ll go nicely with yoghurt and possibly honey. I’m also eyeing off some lychees that are past their best and a bag of peaches that was on special.

I must go and wash out my new blender, I’m planning schnitzel for dinner and have some dried up bread rolls that are going to be pulverized in there shortly. It’s a far far more impressive unit than my poor old one hundred and forty watt Ronson and I can’t wait to turn all kinds of things into liquid or powder, according to original composition. I just need the weather to warm up. Or to have a cocktail. Anyone got tequila?

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