mutteringhousewife

December 11, 2012

What am I going to wear?

Being the volunteer Treasurer for even a moderate sized not for profit organisation is often an invisible but very time consuming position. I’m a bit of an expert now on the super guarantee contribution for employers and what I don’t know about the Incorporation of Associations Act of 2009 really isn’t worth knowing. I’m also fairly familiar with all the ways an organisation such as ours can accept money and the ramifications and costs thereof, but where is any of that going to get me in my real life as a housewife? Nowhere at all, but you do occasionally get a very sweet perk like the one I’m going to tonight.

Tonight the University of Sydney farewells its beloved Chancellor, Marie Bashir, and I’m invited. Marie Bashir is an absolutely extraordinary, inspirational woman. Constantly cheerful, kind, really interested in the thousands of people she meets, funny, down to earth and possessed of boundless energy and enthusiasm. I’ve met her many times, but sadly each time I just stand there with my jaw hanging restfully down instead of engaging her in sparkling conversation. She’s the patron of our choir and has managed to come to all three of our concerts this year. She popped in the back door of our concert last weekend, startling our president who was waiting out the front for the big car with the flags and the aide de camp. She said “oh, I get sick of those aides hanging around all the time, so I thought I’d just drive myself”. The University is apparently having huge difficulty finding a replacement, but her husband has said he’d like to actually see her from time to time and not just on TV, so she’s agreed to slow it down a little.

I’m going to be leaving in about two hours, so no time to make any new jewellery. I’ve dug out of the wardrobe a black lacy Review dress that I pinched from my youngest sister some years ago and never returned. And I have just the necklace to go with it.

I actually made this for a charity auction at my daughter’s school, but then they annoyed me quite a lot, so I’ve kept it. I’ve made a few of these as commissions in different colours. It’s a pattern I found in a Bead and Button magazine a few years ago, it’s quite tricky to start, especially if you’re using a lot of colours, but once you’ve done a couple of points you can let your mind wander. It takes me weeks to make, but I haven’t made one in a while so I might have a look at what other of my formal outfits this pattern will go with. It’s really light and flexible, but it has a tendency to travel from the central if you turn your head a lot.

I really can’t wear the ankle brace. No amount of fur trim or jingle bells is going to make it any better, so I’ll have to wear flats and not trip over anything. Harder than it might sound, I’m relatively clumsy. I hope I don’t get punished by having to wear it for a few more weeks. Don’t tell my doctor!

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December 10, 2012

Baked Rice Pudding

I was driving the rather reluctant Moose to his surfing lesson this morning through the wind and rain when I suddenly remembered that the loose objects rolling around in the back of the car were two cartons of milk. In my day young men learned to surf by stalking older surfers and watching grainy surf videos. You can buy anything these days. However. Milk.

Contrary to the opinion of my brother, milk doesn’t go off when left out of the fridge for more than ninety seconds. I remember travelling through Eastern Europe when there was still a Czechoslovakia and being amazed that the dairy goods in the supermarket (and it really wasn’t that super) were stacked in an irregular pyramid on the concrete floor. The milk in the back of my car had been given to me last night after a complicated series of events that I won’t bore you with, except that there was a lot of singing involved and not nearly enough wine, as we were all driving home. It was a cool night last night and the milk had been bought that day, so I was confident that it was still OK.

Not confident enough to let the kids put it on their cereal, I’d never hear the end of it if they contaminated their precious palates with off milk. Did you know that in France they let it go off, even in encourage it by leaving it on the heater, then call it fromage blanc and eat it with a long spoon and a honey biscuit? Travel certainly broadens the mind. What I needed today was a recipe that involved a lot of milk and that resulted in a product that would be soothing to a set of tonsils that had had a very rough weekend.

I was going to go with creamed rice, of which I am very fond, but didn’t have an hour to stand around stirring the stuff, what with transporting the Moose and having an appointment with some coppery highlights delivered by my very talented hairdresser who today had to wade through dogs AND children. The labour saving and slighter lighter version of creamed rice is the baked rice pudding, and this recipe comes from the 1970 Women’s Weekly cookbook.

Rub a stick of butter around a small casserole dish. Dump in half a cup of short or medium grain rice, a teaspoon of vanilla essence, three cups of milk and a quarter of a cup of either brown or white sugar. The version with brown sugar, which I went with, looks less appealing because it’s a bit brown, but I prefer the flavour. Stick it in the oven at 140 degrees for bit over an hour or until the skin on top is a caramel colour. Eat hot or cold or in between. It’s solid enough to slice, and not very sweet so it would be good with a fruit compote if you’re being fancy, or tinned apricots if you’re being retro. I’m eating it on its own, it’s very soothing to a throat that’s got to produce a whole lot of Christmas Carols tonight and a Gaudeamus Igitur tomorrow night.

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December 7, 2012

Bounty balls

I feel like there’s a pirate joke in there somewhere, but I’ll let it go. I’ve learned my lesson and am doing a test run of Bounty Balls before unleashing them on the general public. I may also need to come up with a better name.

I really love it when people give me raw ingredients. A friend of mine recently accidentally bought two and half kilos of shaved coconut rather than the five hundred grams she’d intended. It could happen to anyone. She was correct in assuming I’d be delighted to take some off her hands. Earlier this week I was trying to convert some of it into desiccated coconut in my coffee grinder, now that the hand held blender has gone into the cleanup after it refused to be a substitute for a Thermomix. The result was useable on top of a raspberry slice, but it was more of a coconut meal than little shreds. It also smelled gorgeous and I was keen to use it something else. Combined with my recent chocolate mint experience, the obvious choice was to have a crack at the Bounty Bar.

How people found new recipes without an entire library of cookbooks or access to Google is beyond me. Tons of trial and error, I’ll bet. I was surprised not to find lots of Bounty recipes, I guess people are pretty happy with the commercially available version. The one I decided on was on taste.com.au, but came with a warning that it hadn’t been tested and there weren’t any reviews. It was also half in metric and half in ozzes. It looked like it might possibly work though, so this morning I gave it a go.

Mix together 100 grams of desiccated coconut with 200 grams of condensed milk. If you’re processing the coconut in a twenty year old coffee grinder, be aware it will only take 20 grams at a time. It will smell very good, though. It’s also not the best idea to wipe out the crumbs with your finger without turning it off at the wall, but I like to live dangerously. Start mixing in 200 grams of icing sugar. That will be quite wet, so you work more and more in until you have a fairly stiff dough. It actually behaves like a flour dough, I think it probably took about 300 grams for this batch. You can knead it and everything. Interesting.

Pinch bits off to roll into little balls, put them on a tray lined with baking paper and whack them in the freezer for ten minutes. Meanwhile melt 300 grams of good quality dark chocolate over a double boiler. I used metal tongs to dip the coconut balls, more lenticular than spherical, really, into the chocolate, then placed them on a tray lined with baking paper. Not as fiddly as it sounds.

I have them in the fridge now, but the Horror snaffled one on the way. He snarfed it down, choked quite a lot, had two glasses of water, then asked for another. He’s not getting one, but be warned, you can’t just breathe them in, they should be savoured. I hope they set nicely. Might be safest to keep them in the fridge. Hidden behind the pickles, so the Horror can’t find them.

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December 6, 2012

Award Season

You psych yourself up for a lot of things when you become a parent, sleepless nights, attitude issues, everything being sticky all the time. But nothing can prepare you for award nights. Especially not private school ones.

The week starts off with that of the Muffet’s school, who has a Year 3 to Year 12 ceremony at the Opera House. At first I thought they were doing it to show off, but when we got there I realised that the sheer number of people involved meant the venues you could hold this kind of thing at were pretty limited.

Because we live in Sydney it takes us an hour to travel the eight kilometres to the Opera House by bus. Once there we pick seats up the back so we can have a refreshing doze before the speeches kick off. The Muffet deserts me to sit and giggle and whisper with Lindy Lu, a few rows back. Proceedings are opened by a very impressive pipes and drums performance, I love bagpipes and am devoutly glad they are not played by any of my children. The head of the foundation that administers the school hauls himself to his feet and spends twenty minutes telling the outgoing Year Twelve that it’d be rather good to be nice to people. He is followed by the headmaster, who does a very similar thing, only addressed to all the girls. He introduces the special guest speaker as “a Christian woman”, all the way from Chicago, who is studying the lives of women at the time of Christ. He doesn’t want us to labour under the impression that he’d invite an infidel to address our precious daughters, especially not an Australian one. She holds us spellbound with a learned dissertation on how difficult it is to tell whether Roman women sat on chairs or lay on the lounge when eating with their husbands. She seamlessly segues into a thirty second rap on how lucky those present are not to be shot in the head for going to school like that poor girl in Pakistan. The only bright moments in the whole shebang are the musical interludes by students that are quite terrific and the outgoing school captain’s speech which is essentially that you should try to be cheery and if you’ve worked really hard you should reward yourself with a Tim Tam. All the Muffet got out of this was that school captains eat Tim Tams. Would it kill the adults to throw in a few jokes?

The Horror’s awards morning is a lot more snappy. The headmaster speculates on who is going to win the book being run by the staff on how long his speech will be. The head of school, who has a voice like a sergeant major and a haircut to match astonishes the boys with a story about when he was little they only had a black and white TV that only his father was allowed to operate. He also massages his face quite a lot during the music which haas a pretty shaky start, but finishes strongly. It’s always risky to get a lot of little boys to sing a round.

We’ve just come home from the Moose’s evening. None of my kids have won prizes this year, so once again I can sit up the back and let my attention wander. This was at the Town Hall, and they may want to consider using the Opera House too, so they don’t need to crowbar parents into corners and alcoves in that crenellated building. Nice and squeezy. The adults once again make worthy speeches, but at least they’re not all smooth platitudes, and they get in a few laffs. I did appreciate the head of the school council, finding himself without the appropriate award to hand over to a community worthy, handing over his mobile phone instead, then rounding off with “well that’s it, I’m off”. The prize for dux of Year 7 was awarded in memory of a child in the nineteen forties who had been dux of Year 7 and dropped dead of heart failure shortly after. And we think we put our kids under too much pressure. I do wonder how the Year 11 prize for Altruism is decided, and how it differs from the Year 11 prize for Citizenship. I think about investing a prize for Year 7 boy who only Pulls his Finger Out Late in the Year, but it would be too late for the Moose. The music was really outstanding, they want to get these kids out on the street with a hat. Bring our fees down.

Now I have to work out what to do with the lot of them for the next two months. There’s only so much watching TV and eating ice cream that one can do.

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December 5, 2012

Chicken Noodle Soup

If there has been roast chicken for dinner earlier in the week then my family know with a cosmic sense of inevitability that there will be chicken noodle soup being dished up to them before long. Sadly, they are the only children in the history of the universe not to like it. My husband and I love it, so yar boo sucks to them.

First you strip the chicken. If you haven’t witnessed that scene of Bill Bailey stripping a chicken in the BBC series Black Books, then close down this blog immediately and google Manny Stripping the Chicken. Wait five minutes for the convulsions to stop, then return to making soup. Make chicken stock from the bits left over as advised in this blog, oh, about a month ago. You can pause for a couple of days after this step, or carry straight on. Reserve about two cups of stock and freeze the rest in little baggies, if there is any left.

Place in a large saucepan sliced mushrooms, diced carrot, chopped cauliflower and the sliced off kernels of a cob of corn that you bought from Frank this morning that is so fresh it still has a caterpillar wandering around in it. Also a slice of butter and a squashed clove of garlic. I don’t put in onion or celery because I feel that there’s enough of that going on in the stock, but you can really put in any hard vegetables you like in here. I don’t see any point putting stuff like zucchini in, it’s mainly water and its delicate flavour disappears in a soup like this. Cook it up until the mushrooms start looking rather tasty. Add the stock and a whole lot of pasta. I put in dried fettuccine because it’s easy to pull out for my fussy kids, but I’d prefer to use a pasta of a similar size to the bits of vegetable in the soup. I’m really bad at estimating quantities of pasta, so your guess will be better than mine. Sometimes I put in a chunk of chorizo or salami for a bit of smokiness and pull it out before serving.

I cook it uncovered until the pasta is cooked because I like all the stock to be absorbed. If you prefer it more soupy then stick a lid on it. I then remove the chicken flavoured pasta for my overindulged children. I put in the bits of chicken and also some chopped up parsley and stir it in. Actually, I appear to have purchased coriander today, shopping while thinking of other things. I’m sure that will be just lovely. I did have parsley growing next to my accidental rosemary in the front yard, but it doesn’t have appeared to have survived the hot weekend, and there wasn’t enough to harvest anyway. Perhaps I should water my herbs.

Serve with a sprinkling of Parmesan and a cheeky Chardonnay. Is there any other kind?

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December 4, 2012

Horseys

One the many things I don’t get about girls is the horse thing. The Muffet has loved them from birth. When she was five her cat got run over and before the body was even cold she said “well, I don’t have a pet now, how about a pony?”. We compromised with a dog, and Harry is now often my favourite member of the family. She still manages to get close to horses whenever she can, like today.

There’s what looks like a multimillion dollar slab of land across the road from Centennial Park which houses quite a lot of horse stables. You can’t really see it from the road, but once you’re inside it’s all chaff bags and sawdust and arenas and a whole lot of rough looking women wearing jodhpurs. Also, a whole lot of what look to me to be fairly depressed looking horses, I can’t imagine that living in a box for most of your life punctuated by being kicked by overexcited little girls could be much of a life. Still, presumably better than being made into glue.

It is one of these establishments that the Muffet frequents. They’re having a gymkhana in a couple of weeks, so she must brush up on her jumps. A gymkhana consists of a group of determined young ladies sitting on horses and making them do a whole lot of things they would rather not. Whomever is the bossiest wins. The Muffet was practicing being bossy today on a horse called Harley, and today he was the winner and she fell on her bottom. Hooray for Harley, I say, but she got back on the horse and was much lauded by her instructors for it.

It is better than watching TV, and it does get one out in the fresh air, and it can be good exercise, especially if you’re falling off a lot. Just don’t expect an intelligent response from me if you start going on about rein notches and bending and chain jumps. I’m just the chauffeur. And I don’t get horseys.

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December 3, 2012

After dinner mints

Well, why not make your own after dinner mints? I have discovered a few reasons why not, but I’m sure that in the fullness of time I’ll be able to overcome them. Because I do love a good after dinner mint.

In my search for likely recipes I once again marveled at the sheer range of ways to make after dinner mints. Again, the Americans have a whole different idea of what these constitute, I even found an Oprah sponsored recipe involving cream cheese. There was one that I’ve filed for future reference called Butter Mints, two of my favourite flavours, but that will wait for another day.

I’ve used a recipe I found on the British Delicious Magazine website. It’s pretty simple. Melt one hundred grams of dark chocolate in a double boiler. Spread it over baking paper in a 20 by 28 cm baking tin. Stick it in the fridge to harden. Make a peppermint fondant by mixing one egg white with 110 grams of icing sugar and a tablespoon of peppermint essence, then mixing in a further 110 grams of icing sugar. They suggest colouring it with a drop of green food colouring, but we are above such things. Spread this on the chocolate layer, then whack this in the fridge. When that has set, spread on a further 100 grams of melted dark chocolate, and back to the fridge it goes.

That’s all well and good, but then what do you do with a large sheet of after dinner mint? The magazine suggests placing on the dinner table and encouraging your friends to have at it with sharp implements. I wanted to take it to a party, so I broke it up with a knife, which may not have been the best idea. It didn’t help that the day of the party was a jillion degrees with one hundred percent humidity, which meant than even after freezing the things, they were an unattractive, but delicious, sticky mess, the remnants of which can be seen here:

Even by my low decorating standards, these were unacceptable. They did get eaten, though. I have found that after a couple of days in the fridge they have dried out a lot, so though they look sticky, they are not. I’m going to have another crack at these, I might investigate a more solid fondant and consider cutting them up with a hot knife and a lot more patience. Actually what would work is hot piano wire, but my piano wire is currently in use inside the piano. I’ll have to violate someone else’s piano.

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November 30, 2012

Minor creations

I’ve spent most of the morning calculating and paying super for musicians, and that makes me cry with boredom, so I can imagine how you’d feel about it. Instead of going into that I’ll give you two things that I’ve made this week that I’m rather pleased with.

The first was inspired by a key holder I saw on the ThinkGeek website. I really cannot believe I’ve never thought of making household objects out of Lego before. We have about ten kilos of the stuff, although in these decadent days it’s a lot more specific than the primary coloured bricks of my youth. I decided to raid the Horror’s stash because his was less organized than the Moose’s, but I knew I’d get in trouble. To circumvent this I thought I’d tidy it up a little. I tipped out a large boxful, procured three smaller boxes and sorted it into specific (weapons, leaves, mini figs), difficult shapes and general shapes. There was a fair amount of washing and drying going on too, a neglected bag of lollies had met its doom in there quite some time ago.

What I wanted to make was a rack of utensil hooks. I have a large glass splash back surrounding my stovetop and a goodly number of utensils with holes in the handles. I have some suction cup hooks which work well, but are outrageously expensive. I bought some of those stick on hooks which are also fairly expensive for what they are, which is completely useless. Apparently their formulation is such that if you ever want to remove them in the distant future they will come off leaving no sticky residue. Sadly, they just don’t stick on in the first place. Too politically correct. At least you can get robust double sided tape, which was all I needed to mount my Lego creation.

As expected, I did get in trouble. “Mummy, I might have had plans for that.” . “Well, it was all a sticky mess, and I’ve sorted it for you”. “Hmm. Thank you for sorting it for me, but next time you want something built out of Lego, you ask me.”. I might have to get my own Lego.

Then there’s decorating the ankle brace. I had some left over glitter felt from the Costume Making Experience and what better use could it be put to than sprucing up the ole boot.

I even sewed some tiny bells on in the devout hope that I would be shot of the damned thing by Christmas and could reuse it as neckwear for the doggies. I also have in mind a white fur cuff, but you’ll have to wait for next week for that.

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November 29, 2012

Passionfruit Muffins

I didn’t actually kill our passionfruit vine. It was a combination of strangulation by a virulent bougainvillea (that we had to pay someone to dig out before we lost a child in it) and a lawnmowing man with a short attention span who kept whippersnippering it at the base. In the fullness of time I shall pick a spot and plant another and possibly even water it occasionally, but until then I’ll just have to wait until the fruit shop is selling nets of them for five bucks a pop.

To make passionfruit muffins, one must first locate a recipe. You can skip this step, there’s one happening further down as you may have surmised from the blog title. Many recipes with fruit in the title are misleading, the fruit goes on top as decoration or in icing. I’m as happy as the next person to make passionfruit icing, but I like my flavour to go all the way through, and you shouldn’t be putting icing on a muffin anyway, that turns it into a cupcake. I’ve adapted this recipe from one I found in a slightly stilted article published in a range of New Zealand newspapers. My researches indicate that cooking with passionfruit may be a bit of a New Zealand thing.

Mix in a bowl the wet ingredients, which are one egg, sixty grams of melted butter, sixty grams of softened cream cheese, three quarters of a cup of milk and three quarters of a cup of passionfruit pulp. Today, that was six passionfruit. Add the dry ingredients, which are two cups of flour, four teaspoons of baking powder and three quarters of a cup of sugar, and after tasting these guys I’d also add a pinch of salt. Mix lightly, then fill up a twelve hole paper lined muffin tray. One day I must see how using squares of baking paper works, so I can pretend I’m running a cafe, but I still have about fifty of those accordion style cups, so I’ll use them up first. Get the batter in quickly, it seemed to be starting to react with the baking powder as I was spooning it in, I’m guessing because of the acidity of the passionfruit. Resist the urge to go and hang out the washing halfway through. Bake at one hundred and eighty degrees for twenty five minutes.

These have come out fairly cakelike, probably because of the extra fat in the cream cheese. I added the cream cheese in mainly because I thought it would be a nice flavour combination and I actually had some. They’re very light and not too sweet and I don’t expect them to last long.

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November 28, 2012

Enough Black and White Jewellery – for the moment

I could just put up the photos of the final three, but I thought I should share some of the agonizing and carry on that goes on behind the scenes.

First, the music teacher. I was going to bestow upon her that black and white beaded bead on a black cord. But it looked a bit plain by itself, so I made a couple of smaller ones to go with it, and that’s all very nice, but then I realized this woman was much less involved in the Horror’s school life than his class teacher and would also probably cop a gift every year, so it was too fancy. Too fancy, I tell you. It has gone into the private collection for the moment. Here’s what she’s getting instead, and it will have to go in bubble wrap as that diamond shaped stone is actually stone and a little fragile. Perhaps she’ll break it, so she can get exactly the same next year.

Now for the Horror’s class teacher. For a while there she was going to get gingerbread men, as we haven’t actually seen her wear any jewellery. Then the Horror suggested that was possibly because no one had ever bought her any. Then we spotted her with a gold chain on, so jewellery was back on again. She had only been a casual appointment this year, so did we go and black and white? It may not be as useful to her as to everyone else. However, she does wear a lot of black, despite having more autumnal colouring, so she will get a herringbone spiral necklace, a pattern that has gone down rather well with teachers in the past.

It’s quite delicate, and will have a magnet clasp if I ever get around to finishing it. Those herringbone ropes are all middle.

Finally, the redoubtable Head of Year 7. She’s quite a flamboyant dresser, which is a shame because my stuff tends to be on the light and airy side. She should really be getting something from Six in a Row, but I can’t go around buying other people’s jewellery. I’ve gone with a star pendant which hasn’t turned out quite as I’d hoped. I usually use colours that are quite close together for it, using black and white makes it look rather pixelated. I’m happy with how it’s strung, I found a length of tubular mesh in the archives while digging around for black velvet ribbon, even though I knew velvet wasn’t quite right. I’ve done one in pink on a rosary chain coming out of two of the points, but that wouldn’t have been right for this teacher. I’ve also just sewn a bail onto the top point of a red and grey one, but that didn’t work at all. This works for me, I just have to figure out what clasp to use and I’m done.

Once I’ve finished that herringbone spiral, I can go back to decorating my ankle brace. I wonder how annoying little bells would be?

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