mutteringhousewife

June 13, 2014

Heading to BrisVegas

I’m running away for the weekend. My sister is turning forty and she was so disgusted at myself and my brother not celebrating our fortieths with wine and revelry that she’s having a party big enough for the three of us. She lives in a whole other city, so I’ve packed a bag and am escaping debating, soccer, basketball, more soccer, juggling lessons and Supanova (that gave me pause) so we can party til we’re purple. Spongebob reference. Not a blood pressure reference.

There are three options for getting to the airport. Taxi. Driving to close to the airport and paying a small man with a giant moustache an amount of money to mind and possibly wash your car for the weekend and hopefully convey you to the airport in a clapped out minibus. Or public transport. Husband wished to have the station wagon handy because it was full of necessary soccer balls AND the Odyssey because he is a braver man than me and is taking many kids to Supanova. I’m a bit tired of giving taxi drivers directions to the airport and showing them how to work their GPS and, you know, human interaction. I had the time, so public transport it is.

It’s quite simple, really. You walk up to the bus stop and catch the bus to Central. You descend an escalator, walk quite a long way underground, drag your bag up the stairs to platform 23 because there isn’t any other way of getting up there other than levitating and there’s a train every five minutes on a Friday morning. They do slug you $14.91 for the ten minute ride. At the airport station there are many signs suggesting you should take your luggage in the lift, if you can find it, but no one is taking any notice because the signs are in Comic Sans. I thought the Graphic Designers Guild had boycotted that font, must have used scab labour. The whole trip took less than an hour and was definitely the cheapest option.

Having been recently briefly disabled, again appreciate how difficult it must be to get around if you have mobility issues. Some of the trip could be done, the bus, the train. But no lifts at Central. Some lifts at the airport, but not always obvious where. And a lot of walking. My ankle is currently functioning, but I am looking forward into settling into my economy seat and resting it gently on the top of my head. If only I’d done those yoga classes.

A postscript: have arrived, been appropriately leapt upon by nieces, the ankle is elevated and there is a fruity red in hand and the delicate scent of lamb shanks in the air. Have had the FBI report on my children’s day via the Moose’s phone, the Muffet’s blazer is still missing, Moose won his debate despite knowing next to nothing about drugs in sport, and the Horror has fairly reluctantly been gratuitously nice to someone today, a character building exercise for him. So all I need to worry about is what punk hairstyle I’ll be going with for the party tomorrow night. Fauxhawk? Random colours? Upset my hairdresser and have the sides of my head shaved? Who knows what the morrow will bring?

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May 28, 2014

Schrödinger’s Ankle

“Well, we won't know until we've got in there and had a dig around whether you just need a bit of scraping out or if we'll have to put a bolt in it”. Not my car, dear reader. My ankle.

I may have mentioned my skiing injury once or twice in these pages, the splint, the boot, the cast. Two years later it was still randomly swelling up and causing me to not run around The Bay. So I went to an ankle man who spent about thirty seconds poking at my ankle and tut tutting at my scans, and the above was what he came up with. And yesterday was the day.

The big problem was that if he did put a bolt in it I would be back in a cast for eight weeks and Not Driving. The Moose had suggested leaving the procedure until he was old enough to drive, a mere two years away now, so help me. I like to get these things over and done with, so I booked in and crossed my fingers. I also washed everything in the house that wasn't nailed down, bought a bushel of apples and many litres of milk, some kilos of meat, practised hopping and did some tricep exercises, just in case.

Before the day dawned I got everyone out of bed and had my allotted piece of dry toast and black coffee before the cutoff time of 7am. Dear husband took the day off work, so he drove the boys to school and I took the Muffet. When I drive her in her reward for getting ready early is for me to take her to breakfast at a coffee shop close to her school. “But I won't be able to eat!” I protested. “So?” was the daughterly reply. It seemed to increase her enjoyment of the meal.

Such a delightful child.

I spent the morning taking my mind off things by going up to the shops to get a birthday present for the Moose's friend, supplies for the Horror's DaVinci Decathlon, another gross of black hair elastics for the Muffet who likes to feed them to the dogs and even more bread and milk. Who knew when I would be able to come here again?

At the hospital they slung me into a bed fairly quickly and kicked the husband out so that he could go home and pretend to be simultaneously working and caring for his wife. When in fact, he was just working. The wait began.

The man in the bed next to me yawns. I feel a little sleepy. I could actually have a little nap. I'm already in bed. Hopefully they would realise that doesn't mean I've been anaesthetised.

Got a bit of crocheting done. Caught up with The Slatest. Took a before shot of Schrödinger's ankle.

Took a very wrinkly selfie. At least they're smile lines. Played around with some filters before deleting it and taking a less wrinkled one (ie less smiling). Started reading the Hitchhiker's Guide for the googleplexth time.

I can hear the man next bed getting his leg shaved.

Hungry. My stomach is starting to rumble. What I'd really like is a glass of champagne and a bowl of salted almonds.

The older woman in the bed on the other side is alternating moaning with coughing up a lung. The nurses ask if she's alright, could they get her anything, she says she's fine. I hope they anaesthetise her soon.

My feet are cold.

The ward closes, so they wheel me into the post-op ward. Those beds don't have a great turning circle, and I feel bad about sitting in the bed crocheting instead of getting out and helping push, there's not actually anything wrong with me yet.

Even after I've met the doctors, had my ankle drawn on and been cannulaed I'm left in the waiting room for exactly twenty seven minutes. I pass the time by seeing if it's true that you can lower your heartrate with biometric feedback. I think it is, I was able to get it from 70 down to 60 most times. The anaesthetist had told me that he usually gives patients a little something when they're in the waiting room to calm them down, but I seemed too chilled for that, and did I like the music they were playing? Debbie Harry was fine by me, and also, wasn't I going to be unconcious?

Eventually I was, and then suddenly I wasn't. I was shuddering though, my usual response to whatever they give you when you're being operated on. I think what woke me was a nurse piling heated blankets on me and asking if I still needed the sick bag? My ankle! I dived under the blankets and there was no cast! No cast! Whoopee!

The nurse said I'd woken up nauseous and the doctor had come to see me to tell me they didn't put a bolt in. What was the point of talking to someone who clearly wouldn't remember anything of it? He'd written it down, though, five days on crutches, don't get the bandages wet and come into his rooms next Friday to get the stitches out and take these drugs. No cast! Man, that would have sucked. I can do five days on crutches easy.

So this morning I've managed to attach a plastic bag to my foot so I could shower, showered on one leg (the old skills remained from last time), and had breakfast. The anaesthetist has given me Panadeine Forte and said I can take Nurofen as well, but I'll get very constipated. I'm already on industrial strength Metamucil, so I may have to swallow a plunger. Now that I'm back in bed, I'm getting a message from the good old non-plastered ankle.

What's that you say? Take the drugs! Oh yes, the drugs. Don't mind if I do. Then I might get to work on that hat I'm crocheting. And have a little nap. It's turning out to be a pretty good day.

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May 25, 2014

The School Trivia Night

The main components of the school trivia night were all there. Old friends. New neighbours. Alcohol. A couple of teachers. Artwork by each class to extort money out of parents. Some trivia questions.

I’m not a parent at the school any more, so it was interesting to note what a representative crowd of them now look like. There were too many leather pants, ie more than zero. A man with a half arm sleeve of tattoos which you never would have seen in MY day. And the crowd was still distressingly Anglo European, so actually not a lot of change.

My new next door neighbour was there, she booked my children in to come in a couple of times a week to help her out with Arsenic Hour. You know, that time of the day when you have three children under five and your entire focus is on getting them alive to dinner time without drinking a whole bottle of wine. The previous owner of my house was also there. She asked a few desultory questions about the neighbourhood. Then, fixing me with a gaze that was a disconcerting mix of steely and wistful she said “So, you’re not planning to sell the house? Ever?” It’s time for her to let it go. Thirteen years it’s been. We didn’t make her sell Her House.

The headmaster bravely came up to say hello. The one who was directly responsible for us jumping ship to the private system two years before we’d planned, costing us tens of thousands of dollars. The one who “couldn’t do anything” about the glaring underperformance about more than one of his teachers. The one who didn’t want to “make more work” for the teachers by even asking them to run a a chess club, say, or maybe mark homework. He was lucky to get away with a cold smile from me, rather than a searing character analysis.

There was the art auction, always a guaranteed money spinner, but more than slightly dull for those of us whose offspring had no hand in it. Ably run by an ex P&C president whose kids aren’t at the school any more, it was an example of how a strong school community can operate even in the absence of any interest from the actual school.

My date for the night, let’s call her Daniela, actually used to run this gig. When Daniela ran it she had a minute by minute running sheet, we were out of there before 10.30 after four rounds of questions, numerous games, a whole lot of exciting shopping from the stuff we’d spent months blackmailing out of the local retailers, and over fifteen thousand dollars raised. She and her husband after five years had to decide whether to continue running the trivia night or stay married. They selfishly decided on the latter. So now it’s contracted out to a nice enough man, who frankly lacks oomph. Only three rounds of fairly good questions (“who is older, Kirsten Dunst or Scarlett Johansson?” “who cares?” “Vaughan, it’s a trivia night”), but we were falling asleep at our tables by 11.30. So we sneaked out before the results were announced, leaving Jane behind to pick up our runners up prize of an out of date box of Lindt, piling most of our team and one of the art pieces in a rather illegal manner into Christina’s car.

OK, Kara is allowed to wear leather pants, but no one else. And if there’s ever a next time, I’m going to memorise the entire periodic table first. But someone else can look after the Davis Cup tennis players. Because, really, who cares?

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May 21, 2014

Writing on the iPad

It's true, I'm not blogging much at the moment. I hear you. I am still using the Thermomix almost every day, but doing things in it that you've already heard about, I don't wish to bore you. I'm crocheting a hat. I'm going to renovate the house and have a spot of ankle surgery, so those things should keep you amused. What I am doing at the moment is a bit of study, little light teaching and trying unsuccessfully not to get onto even more committees. These things involve quite a lot of reading and writing, and since I'm a modern girl who got an iPad mini for her birthday and a stylus for Mothers Day, it's all paper free. I thought I'd share with you my thoughts on getting this to work.

First, the set up.

iPad mini with Logitech bluetooth keyboard folio. Closed it's about the size of a slim paperback. I'm using it ALL THE TIME. I can touch type on the keyboard. Note, to do this you must first be able to touch type, I have the advantage that I was a teenager when your typing speed was something you still put on your resumé, so thank you Mavis Beacon on giant floppy disk. Email, recipes (Paprika), calendar (synched with the husband's), weather (not that it's even slightly interesting at the moment, piss off high pressure system and your unrelenting pleasantness), Twitter, reading books, Facebook, Slate. Because it's such a cute piece of kit I am trying to use it for everything, so recently I've been experimenting with using it for minute taking (you can't always trust the committee secretary not to be in Hong Kong), shopping lists, keeping photos of documents that I would traditionally lose, photos of recipes and craft patterns, jotting down observations for the blog, drafting essays and reading my uni notes. And loving it!

The two apps that I've found to be extremely terrific are Evernote and Notability. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. I'll tell you about Evernote first.

I use Evernote for an increasing number of jobs. You set up a notebook, they can't go calling it a folder because, you know, brand, and place notes inside it. I have notebooks such as craft patterns (you can photograph straight into the note if you see something pleasing in the elderly Family Circle magazines at the doctor's), shopping lists (it does checklists that you can satisfyingly check off), receipts and warranties, a notebook for each committee I'm on. You can set task reminders that will pop up on your home screen. If you've installed it on your phone, you can enter your shopping list on your iPad, and have it on your phone when you're at the shops. You can cut and paste from it and email from it, yes you can have the minutes, I'll email them to you immediately. It's easy to use and I'm using it more all the time. You can add tags, links, audio notes, photos and reminders. Evernote and my calendar are becoming my external memory, handy, as the internal one is showing signs of wear. I think it's full.

I'm new to Notability. I'm also new to university study, haven't had to read academic papers for nearly twenty years. I don't know about you, but I like to read a paper with pen in hand. And this is what Notability is for.

The pen is a very nifty stylus from Jotpro and handles just like a pen. You can see that you can type, write and highlight on the paper. I've found that to write legibly I have to expand the screen and write in big letters, but that works for me. Apparently you can just handwrite notes too, it has a wrist rest section, but I have a keyboard and can touch type, so whatever. You can then save the paper back over itself onto Dropbox. You could even print it out, but I haven't felt the need. Notability also has folders, but they're called subjects. Could we get some standards here? I can't find any tagging capability either, but search works OK and I haven't got that much paperwork. I've loaded up all of my study modules and it's very easy to flick between them. When it comes to actually writing the essay I usually write it on the PC so I can have the notes in front of me on the iPad.

You can, in theory, use a stylus in Evernote, but man it's clunky. They've got a separate stylus enabled app called Penultimate which can do most of the things Notability can do, only with a fancy leatherbound notebook type interface. BUT it's horrible. The first thing that made me delete it was that it DOESN'T DO LANDSCAPE!!! I haven't clicked this iPad out of the folio since I got it months ago, and I'm certainly not going to do it just so I can use Penultimate without getting a crick in my neck. Secondly it hasn't got the range of pen widths that Notability does, I like my writing fine and Notability also adds a slight pen pressure effect which is very pleasing. So try again, Penultimate.

The ultimate effect of these two apps on my iPad mini is that I can work anywhere and whenever I encounter a laptop I tend to poke it in the screen. I also haven't had to print out anything other than school notes and choir attendance sheets in months. I love living in the future.

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April 20, 2014

Marshmallows

I may have lost the knack of whiling away a sunny day in the hammock with a book and chocolate nicked from the kids. I got into the trackies this morning, no problem. But the husband broke the hammock yesterday, aided and abetted by the larger children, and there is SO much washing to do.

Not only that, but there are jam jars to fill (lemon butter again) and a couple of little nieces coming to stay the night. I do have gingernuts, brownies, caramel icecream and an egg hunt planned for later in the afternoon, but I’ve been hanging out to have a crack at marshmallows. So after putting on a bleach wash full of paint stained shirts, sun hats and sports gear to prepare for the coming school term, I assembled the ingredients.

This recipe does actually require a bit of concentration, not to mention heavy machinery. You can’t do these with a whisk. I think the best order to do it in is this.
Put two tablespoons of powdered gelatine in a metal bowl containing 190 ml of water. Then put another 190 ml of water in a heavy saucepan with 500 grams white sugar and a tablespoon of liquid glucose and start heating it up. I’d use a sugar thermometer for this, due to the concentration needed on other things. Put two egg whites in the bowl of your KitchenAid and get that whisking at a fairly brisk pace. OK, got all that? Gelatine soaking, sugar coming to the boil, egg whites whipping.

You only want the sugar syrup to get to hard ball stage, about 125 degrees C, so when it’s approaching that sit the gelatine bowl in some hot water and gently stir it until it has dissolved, trying to ignore the ghostly whiff of departed horse it exudes. When the sugar has reached 125 degrees, tip in the gelatine and mix it in. Turn the heat off. By this stage your egg whites should have reached stiff peak stage. Keep the KitchenAid going while you pour the sugar solution steadily in, ignoring the wobbles that will develop in your elbow. Chuck in a teaspoon of vanilla essence, I make my own.

Saves a fortune, I go through a lot of it. Then you leave the whipping going for ages, about ten minutes.

Meanwhile mix together half a cup of cornflour with half a cup of icing sugar. Line a couple of baking trays with baking paper, then dust them with some of the cornflour mix. When your marshmallow mix is finally getting thick and glossy, pour it into the trays.

Then spend a couple of hours going about your business, doing more washing, finding what the ants are eating in the Horror’s room, trying to think of a good one hour activity to cover Planet Earth in the Stage 3 science curriculum, ignoring the Moose’s attempts to insert Axis of Awesome’s Skeleton Man into my brain in earworm form.

Sprinkle more cornflour mix onto your benchtop, turn the marshmallow out onto the counter and gently peel the baking paper off, quietly cursing yourself that you didn’t put more cornflour mix on it. Cut it into squares with a sharp knife and dip each square into the remaining cornflour mix.

Even if I do say so myself, they’re really good. Fluffy, not sticky. One could have dipped them in toasted coconut, a lá Darrel Lea, perhaps next time. Relatively labour intensive, but it does make a lot, and I wouldn’t mind going a bit crazy with the flavours, but they’d have to be in essence form. I could go lavender, rose and violet, the Paris effect hasn’t worn off yet. But I’d have to visit the Essential Ingredient first. The sacrifices I make.

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April 18, 2014

Excursion to Paddy’s

Earlier in the week I had a day full of absolutely no children. So I thought I’d go on a little adventure. I wanted get some cheap fruit for the jammin’ stall I’ll be running at the school fete in a couple of weeks, but thought Flemington Markets sounded way too daunting. So I decided to go to Paddy’s Markets because I haven’t been there in years, AND you can get the freshly opened light rail right to the door.

The light rail is an odd transport link in that it really doesn’t go anywhere terribly useful. This is because they’ve used an old goods line that was routed to get stuff from various ports on the harbour to various factories further inland. Our suburb has a stop because the line happens to run along the local canal. Anyway, on this bright morning I hauled my old lady shopping trolley up the stairs to step straight on to a service full of prams and small children, all of whom were eating bananas. I have nothing against bananas as a form of nutrition, or as a base for a tasty cake, but when eaten in public they smell like death and should be banned.

I’m not entirely sure where all those kids were going, possibly to what’s left of Darling Harbour, but they’d all trickled off by the time I got to the markets. I fought my way through the fug of cheap plastic to the back where the fruit is and did find myself some cheap apples (apple sauce, and for my children to eat) and tomatoes (roasted tomato paste, see a previous post). Of course if you add on the transport fare they’re not so cheap, but I’m planning to put that in my entertainment budget instead.

I found the rest of the market to be deeply depressing. Cheap garbage being bought by bogans dragging unwilling children through the dimly lit aisles. Tshirts with horribly misogynist slogans, acres of identical i-cases that would fall apart if you looked at them too hard, knock off handbags, plastic plastic plastic.

But then I saw a stall selling Vietnamese clothes, possibly made by three year olds sheltering under a water buffalo, that were just lovely. The stall keeper recognised a sucker and dragged me in, handed me an armful of tops, allowed me to try on one, then started stripping it off and buttoning me into the next one. Admittedly those knot buttons are a little tricky, but dear reader, can you imagine it. Perhaps from the shock of being manhandled by a woman twice my age and half my size, I bought three. They were really cheap! And perfect work tops for this tricky trans-seasonal moment we’re having. I’ve been looking for work tops for ages, why are so many of them see through? I love my Victoria’s Secret collection, but I don’t want people to see it. And I don’t want to have to wear a shirt underneath my shirt, that’s madness.

I wore the purple one yesterday to work and it was just right. Comfortable, breathable, I hate to think what will happen when I wash it. I might soak it in a vinegar solution first. I’m certainly not handwashing it, I’m not that kind of housewife.

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April 8, 2014

Sweet Georgiou’s

No, really, I had to go there for work. I’m giving a lecture next week and solids and liquids will feature a fair bit. Kool Mints actually make a fairly good analogue of particles crystallizing.

The amount you get in the standard sized packet of Kool Mints (which I swear has decreased markedly) isn’t enough to crystallize in a glass casserole dish. So I could buy a few packets. Or I could go to Georgiou’s.

You want to do lolly bags for an entire kindergarten class, you have twelve grandchildren you want to organise an Easter Egg hunt for, you want to give your conference attendees something to do with their hands other than tweet about how bored they are, you have to come to Georgiou’s. It’s a little unassuming from the streetfront, on New Canterbury Road in Petersham.

Walk in and if you breathe in too deeply you’ll get sugar diabetes, as my grandma calls it. As you walk in on the right is the American “food” that you’ve seen on TV, Junior Mints, JuJy Fruits, all the M&M flavours, those large boxes of confectionary masquerading as breakfast cereal.

And Clamato is real! I thought Homer Simpson made it up!

Described as a tomato cocktail, the description proudly announces it contains the equivalent of two pounds of shrimp and clams. The website suggests that it’s excellent mixed with beer. And have a Captain Cook at the item on the right of this shot

I originally took it because of the hot sauce of death, which I wouldn’t have thought was a selling point, and only noticed the caffeine laced maple syrup after. Crikey.

Anyway, the main part of the warehouse is bulk lollies and chocolates. You can get small packets;

Or big ones;

They had a whole aisle of cellophane and wicker bulking up Easter packs. But you could get cheap packs of deceased chocolate bunnies in pieces. Not sure what you’d do with that. Spread it on the garden, perhaps.

I had to go around the whole place four or five times to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I was a little sad not to see those Austrian rectangular fruit sweets wrapped in waxed paper, Cinnamon Mentos or Callebaut cooking chocolate, but you can’t have everything, and anyway I just would have bought them and eaten them. I got my kilo pack of Kool Mints, some mint sticks that should do for a liquid crystal demonstration, some Mint Imperials because I like them and can’t make them, some non-caffeinated maple syrup because we’re having a maple syrup moment in our house and some Belcolade cooking chocolate because supplies are low. I didn’t want this much, and I don’t know the brand, and considering the dust, nobody else does either.

Now all I have to do is finish writing my lecture and not eat the Kool Mints before the end of next week. I wonder if they’d be tax deductible?

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March 23, 2014

Why Aren’t You Making Muesli?

People all around me are giving up stuff. It may be Lent, though I’m astonished at how many of you aren’t aware that it actually is Lent. Stuff they really like. Alcohol. Sugar. Coffee. Chocolate. Facebook. Sometimes stuff they are more or less indifferent to, but is hard to give up, there seems to be something in the challenge. Wheat. Red meat. Dairy products. Why do you have to give it up? Have you no self control? Can’t you just have a bit less?

You know what you never hear people giving up? Chilli. Watching TV. Muesli. Also things that people like a lot, why are some things worthy of giving up and not others? Oh, TV’s OK, so long as you’re watching the boxed set of House of Cards. And chilli is macho. You can’t actually over consume muesli, too much fibre. Maybe if we added psyllium husk to wine and beer we’d solve all of those young people problems, there’d be no fights, just Generation Y clutching their bloated stomachs while lamenting the lack of public toilets these days.

I love my muesli as much as I love my coffee. Even when I’m out for breakfast I order it. I’m just as unlikely to give up either. But while I’m perfectly happy letting the experts produce my coffee, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to make my own muesli. Here’s how you do it. Are you ready? Purchase a whole lot of ingredients you’d like in your muesli. Stick in a container. Shake (make sure the lid is on properly, dear reader).

Being of the opinion that my body is a temple and I’d like it to last for quite a long time and I should at least start the day eating something reasonably healthy even if during the course of the day I end up eating a whole packet of Kool Mints, I purchase my muesli ingredients from The Source in Balmain.

I start with Five Grain mix, then add quinoa flakes, linseed, wheatgerm, sultanas and currants.

I like a bit of complexity too, so I put dried apricots and dried pears along with almonds and coconut flakes in the Thermomix to chop them into muesli appropriate size.

Toss it into the nascent muesli, then shake, holding firmly on to the lid.

See? It really couldn’t be any easier. Pour out a bowl full one night you’re feeling organised and add your homemade yoghurt and mix, then you’ve got Bircher muesli in the morning. I have actually only managed to make this once, it was a bit cold for my morning teeth, but the microwave sorted that out.

The beauty is you can add whatever you like, in whatever proportions you like. The Source actually stock those odd dry sticks you find in bought muesli, but I can’t see the point in eating them so I leave them out. If you’re going through a chia seed and Goji berry phase (and I’m not judging you), bung them in. I’ve heard of some hedonists spreading the stuff out on a baking tray, drizzling over maple syrup or honey and baking it for a bit to crisp it up. You can even eat it with milk, if you’re the hardy type that can do that sort of thing without flatulent consequences. Boil it up in water in the winter for exciting porridge.

As with many things of this type, once you’ve tried it there’s no going back.

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March 18, 2014

Three Litres of Pizza Sauce

Owning a Thermomix, as I do, gives you delusions. Of course I can make that. Strawberry jam for about a thousand Devonshire teas at the school fundraiser? A mere bagatelle. Salted caramel icecream? Give me half an hour. A pair of tights with Middle Earth printed on them? Come on Kath, you know there must have been a Thermomix involved in there somewhere. So when the call goes out for three litres of pizza sauce for the school garden party one doesn’t even hesitate.

I only have the vaguest idea as to what they meant when they asked for three litres of pizza sauce. Clearly the volume is fairly straightforward. I’ve only ever put Leggo’s tomato paste on a pizza. I don’t much like the look of the Approved Thermomix recipe for tomato paste, surprise, surprise, so I thought I’d make something up.

Obviously tomatoes. For tomatoes, there is only one place to go, and that is to Frank. You can actually smell the tomatoes as you walk past his tiny unreconstructed shop. I don’t want the giant ridged ones that you slice and put on a sandwich, though they were a revelation the first time I tried them. They don’t turn your roll to slop. I got some little Romas he had packaged up as they were getting a bit soft and some small round ones that just smelled divine. Frank doesn’t seem to mind me sniffing his produce, or maybe he’s just too polite to say anything. But how can you tell if you don’t breathe them in first?

I thought some red onions might be nice too, sweeter than brown, and the garlic looked good, and some basil. To make a paste you have to get rid of much of the water in the tomatoes, and the suggested recipe involves just boiling them for ages. You know what’s better than boiled tomatoes? Almost anything. I thought I’d roast them instead. Aren’t they beautiful?

Don’t roast the basil, and don’t bother peeling the garlic cloves. I used two garlic cloves and one onion per pan. I drizzled them with balsamic vinegar and the special olive oil I bought from Fernando in Montefioralle. I sprinkled them with salt and a Tuscan salt blend I’d bought from a madly striped macelleria. As it cooked I started to suspect that what was blended with the salt was a whole lot of MSG, mmmmmUmami.

They roasted on and off for about two hours at 140 degrees. Hard to tell, there was a train station pickup and a choir pickup in there too. I didn’t want it to dry out too much. This looked about perfect.

I squeezed the garlic out of their skins, the first time I’ve ever successfully done this. I usually burn it. 140 degrees, give it plenty of time, that’s what I was doing wrong. The whole lot went into the Thermomix to blend, with a dainty covering of fresh basil.

Telling you that it made almost exactly a litre isn’t terribly helpful if I can’t tell you what weight of tomatoes I started with. Maybe a kilo. I will concentrate when making my next two litres and may even remember to tell you.

The consistency was just right and tasted divine. I’m resisting the urge to add sugar and salt, that’s what Leggos would do. There’s something else they’d do, something I hadn’t realised until I made my own. Have a look at the finished product.

It’s not the lighting. It isn’t bright red, it’s more a sunburn colour, sort of orangey brown. It tastes of sunshine and essence of tomato and I’m very proud of it. But no shelf appeal. Luckily it isn’t going on a shelf. And neither are its two friends that I’ll make just as soon as I get myself back up to Frank’s.

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January 24, 2014

Two Versions of Versailles

Our last day of touristing. We were finally going to have to get on a train. I’d foolishly been researching how to get to Versailles and been a bit taken aback by how complicated it seemed to be. That plus the fact that I panic when confronted with the spoken French language. I can make it out when written down, but when spoken they may as well just be gargling honey at me. But we popped into St Michel Notre Dame, asked for some return tickets to the Chateau, was sold same and directed to the adjacent platform in perfect English and told to wait nine minutes. Easy as tarte tatin.

We arrived in the weak sunshine, ignored the enticements of the travel guides and followed the tourists. You turn a corner, and it rather stands out. The golden gates were only restored in 2008, but they give a taste of the sheer quantities of gilding you find within.

Once again the children were free, and I shelled out the extra three euros to take a look at Marie Antoinette’s digs at the other end of the gardens. We wanted to do this first as I’d noted that the weather was set to get a little unpleasant in the afternoon, and look at all that garden. The gardens are open to the public and despite the chill there were quite a few locals in there going for a jog in their all weather gear or riding a bike. And wouldn’t you, if you lived nearby? All the statues were hibernating for the winter.

Once again we were amazed at how much the French love a formal garden. The Moose was trying to estimate how many Groundskeeper Willies would be needed for the sheer amount of topiary going on. We came up with a round thousand.

We got a bit Harry Potter in the maze in an enormously long line of disciplined trees.

Petrificus totalus! It felt like a really long walk to the Trianon group of buildings at the other end of the gardens, but it must have been less than an hour. Louis the Fourteenth built them for his mistresses, the first of which was Madame de Pompadour. Marie Antoinette ended up living here for a bit, finding the excess of gilt and all the straight lines in the garden a bit wearing up at the main palace.

The kids noted that there were a lot of pictures of Marie Antoinette in the Petit Trianon, but none of her husband. We couldn’t visit the top floor, the King’s Apartments, there may have been some of him up there. Anyway, it has all been restored, so who knows how it was originally decorated. It was a rather cosy little house, we could well imagine Marie Antoinette and her mates hanging out here, drinking cups of tea and buzzing about the English garden she created. That’s what we visited next, she made a whole little fantasy area complete with ideal farmhouses and a tiny little farm, as a bit of an antidote to the enormously pompous geometrical hedges and lines of rectangular trees and sweeps of statues and wide gravel walks up at the main house. I wonder if Walt Disney ever came here?

It was outrageously cute and just a bit artificial. I kept expecting Mickey Mouse to pop his head out of a rustic window under a mossy thatched roof. There were even chocolate box animals.

And, wondrously, we had the place completely to ourselves! It mustn’t be on the one hour tour.

The donkey looked like the one in Shrek, the sheep had twisted horns, the rabbits looked like the Velveteen Rabbit and the goats put on a head butting display. Just for us. That wasn’t in the brochure. We then wound our way back to the main waterway via some Marie Antoinette grottoes and artificial rock formations. The woman should have been designing theme parks instead of irritating the locals.

So that was the first half. We grabbed some baguettes just as the cold cold rain started, then sprinted up the gravel walkways to the palace. This was the real deal, a palace dedicated to showing the peasantry exactly who was boss and how many artworks and gold leaf you could actually cram into a building. Early on we got the Hercules Room. It had a most magnificent fireplace, in which it would be a pleasure to travel by Floo Powder.

Facing this was a massive painting by Veronese of The Meal at the House of Simon. You may remember me mentioning him in our visit to the Louvre, he was responsible for the biggest painting there, the one nicked by Napoleon, the Marriage at Cana. Veronese must have charged by the square metre, but at least this one was given by the Venetians as a sweetener to a deal for support against the Turks.

There was room after stateroom, chock full of paintings and marble and so much gilt. I do like the idea of wallpapering a room in green velvet damask. Where can I get some?

The Muffet wasn’t terribly impressed with the Hall of Mirrors, she thought with that kind of description it would be 360 degrees of mirrors, not just “a hall with some mirrors in it.”

Well I thought it was very impressive. It wasn’t until later that I realised the audio guide hadn’t mentioned that this was the room in which the momentous Treaty of Versailles was signed. You’d think there would be a bit of a song and dance about that in there, but no.

Nothing was private for the monarchs, even their bedrooms had a public area, with a gilded fence in front of the actual bed. My photo just can’t convey the overwhelming amount of scarlet and gold the Sun King managed to cram into his sleeping quarters.

They even ate their dinner with the adoring aristocracy looking on. The original dinner service was swept away by the French Revolution, but luckily the English King at the time had had a copy made and here it is. I really hope that’s also how their serviettes were folded. Amazing.

Napoleon Bonaparte moved into the Trianon buildings while he was being Emperor and tidied the place up a bit after its sufferings in the Revolution. He had commissioned a painting of his coronation at Notre Dame from the French painter Jacques-Louis David, the original of which we’d seen at the Louvre. It was here before being moved to the Louvre, but what is here now is a replica of that piece, also painted by David. I dunno, does that make it a replica? Or the same piece, painted twice?

A few more staterooms later and we were gilded out, the kids too tired and cold on the way home to even want to find some exciting afternoon tea. An early dinner at home and I haven’t heard a peep from them for a couple of hours. I’m sure we can find some kind of sugar coated pastry for them in the morning, they’ve earned it.

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