Smokey the Magnificent

Committed a near faux pas tonight. I was sitting at the computer typing an impassioned diatribe about the Catholic position on birth control (long story) when an elderly couple from our church walked in, Bibles in hands. I had a moment of panic that they’d heard we’d taken up poker and had come to stage an intervention: but fortunately, before I could ask them to what I owed the pleasure of their company, they were followed by another elderly gentleman from our church with a Bible in his hand, and I remembered: this was our turn to host prayer meeting.

By what can only be described, given the circumstances, as Divine providence I had cleaned the bathroom this afternoon on a whim, and had a cake tin full of triple chocolate cookies. More fortunately still, I had not yet gotten around to hennaing my roots. I’m not entirely sure I pulled off the impromptu gracious hostess act as it is, but it would have been far more difficult with a plastic bag on my head and green eyebrows.

The panna cotta… I’m not quite convinced about the panna cotta. I think it was a little too firm: one expected to find a goldfish or similar preserved within for making specimens of. And I think milk chocolate might be more promising than white. Still, the panna cottas blooped out of their molds pleasingly like little volcanoes, and I spooned caramel sauce over them, and calories were ingested, and all was well. For my next project, I am going to learn how to make bagel crisps. I like ‘em. And they’re nearly five dollars a packet, which is more than my sorry life is worth.

What did the snortlepig do tonight? Counted to eight. I was confused by this, as I’ve never counted with her past five for toe-related reasons; but I think she probably picked it up from a vocal exercise we do at singing group. We count up the octave and back down. The snortlepig tends to leave out number 5, but I am impressed with her nonetheless. We should do a vocal exercise based on Roman numerals next, or the dates of kings.

Of the three candied bacon ice cream eaters, one was enthusiastic, one mildly so and one not. So there you have it. I’m not sure I’ll make it again, partly because it was rather labour-intensive; but I might make candied bacon next time I go on a hike, ie. in about ten years.

My article about FAM is done and handed in. Woot.

Today I just fulfilled a long-put-off vague desire and made panna cotta. White chocolate panna cotta. I’m not sure about it. I like custard and milky things and white chocolate, but on the other hand the simplicity of the recipe makes ot starkly apparent that it is basically solidified milk. We will see.

More excitingly, I am trying my hand as a conductress this afternoon. Well, a semi-conductress. Like silicon. Or silicone, I suppose, being the feminine variant. Never mind. Anyway. My mother has started up a homeschool choir, and I will be doing vocal exercises at its inaugural meeting today at church. The choice of location was fraught with politics, as Mother did not wish the choir to be exclusively for Christians; but there are too many kidlings to have it at someone’s home and our church has a very decent piano. The decor isn’t that oppressive - no gold eagles or stained glass or anything - but we will see.

What’s more of an issue is the songs. In case you have never interacted with homeschooling parents en masse, they tend to be - how shall I put this? - intense. “Live and let live” isn’t necessarily their motto. “This isn’t a hill I want to die on” is not something they say a lot. “Meh” is not in their vocabulary. Confronted with an innocent peanut butter sandwich, the average homeschooling parent will immediately wrestle five moral/ethical/ecological issues out of it, ranging from disadvantaging peanut-allergic children to objecting to the non-organic nature of the bread*, and will probably call for its immediate ritual incineration. On a good week, letters to the local paper will accompany the process.

The upshot of all this is that finding neutral and inoffensive songs for the 5-16 age range is a very, very difficult task. Mother has stated at the outset that Christmas carols will be part of the programme, but otherwise she wishes to avoid religious songs (otherwise what will happen? The Catholic mothers will want their little angels to sing Ave Maria, that’s what’ll happen. In the chapel of a Reformed Baptist Church. And we don’t even want to think about that.) Which leaves… what?

Do Re Mi, pretty much. Double Trouble from the Harry Potter films? Vetoed due to witchcraft. Blackbird by the Beatles? Vetoed due to drugs and immoral living. Anything from the Disney canon? Vetoed because, well, it’s the Disney canon. Puff, the Magic Dragon? Vetoed because, obviously, it’s a metaphor for getting high. Somewhere Over the Rainbow? Mother, nervously: “I’m not sure… it does have witches in it…”

To put this in perspective, Mother knows a homeschooling lady who pulled her children out of a children’s choir because one of the songs was entitled “We Love Chocolate”. Can you spot the issue? Here it is: We do not love chocolate. We love Jesus.

This promises to be an interesting afternoon.

*Plus, the owner of the store at which the bread was purchased has dubious political views. And we shouldn’t be eating non-Essene bread anyway; or, perhaps, we shouldn’t be eating grains at all, because humans were designed to forage for raw fruits and nuts only, but not in an evolutionary way.

The candied bacon ice cream was delicious. The snortlepig and I both thought so, polishing off every tender morsel stuck to the dasher and freezing bowl in no time flat. (”Some?” asked the snortlepig plaintively every time her spoon was empty. “Some?” She is a sweetcheeks. You know what she did this morning? Counted to five. “One two three four five”, like that, while trying to buckle her own carseat. Prodigy Pig, we call her.)

So when Helpdesk Man returned home from singing at a wedding with his marvy young vocal collective (oooo), I accosted him with great delight and force-fed him a large spoonful to prove its deliciousness. He squealed like a girlie, demonstrated tremors of the head and declared it was Weird and He Didn’t Like It. I can’t prove it, but I think he cried a little.

Hmph.

Fortunately there are three other tasters who have yet to vote on the matter. I will let you know.

Poker seems to have gone to Helpdesk Man’s head. Yesterday he came home proudly bearing a brand-new poker set, and taught two of my little sisters to play when they came over to be babysat. (He won, but it was neck-and-neck with the eleven-year-old for a bit. I went bust early and gracefully retired to the kitchen to cook. Beat him three times yesterday though.) Then he was up until 1AM watching the poker World Series on YouTube. Should I be worried. do you think?

In other news, today is Bacon Ice Cream Day. I made a butterscotch ice cream base and have candied the bacon by cooking it on foil with brown sugar sprinkled over it (yummy!). I’m a little nervous about adulterating the lovely butterscotch ice cream with bacon, but these things build character. I also made a French vanilla ice cream with crumbled gingerbread cookies in it, which is ridiculously yummy… and now I have twelve egg whites waiting to be pavlovified. It’s, like, the circle of life.

Tonight Helpdesk Man took it upon himself as the spiritual head of the family to teach me poker. I’d only played once before, a game of Texas Hold’em  during a rather disastrous dinner party, at which I was so distracted with a screaming four-month=old snortlepig that I tried to win a hand with three pair. Tonight was somewhat more successful. We played for beans - literally. Kidney beans. We didn’t have any chips and playing for cash seemed a tad redundant given that we share an account. I won several hands, but no games. The pig sampled our olives, played very professionally with the Jokers and kept hiding our beans in her mouth. Anyway, I liked it. I like the faintly Freemason-slash-Star Trek vibe it has, with the jargon and the rapping on the table and the hats and all. Makes me feel classy. What with this and the olives, I have come a long way from the bumpkin of yore, no?

Remember the snortlepig’s security knickers? Well, she seems to have made a new friend. It is a small bottle of peppermint essence. She fell in love with it at the supermarket when I gave it to her to hold in place of the cream, having spotted at the last second that she had taken the lid off and was about to upend it onto the supermarket floor. That same day I made mint chocolate chip ice cream (not my most successful flavour - that was three weeks ago and we still have some lurking in the freezer), and had to wrest the essence away from a squealing pig with entreaties and promises to give it back. When it was returned to her, sans half a teaspoon, she carried it away in sobbing triumph and promptly hid it under the sofa where my clawing fingers and dodgy housekeeping would never find it.

Then a few days ago, the snortlepig’s tiny aunt discovered it under said sofa while searching for the snortlepig’s small wooden animals. I put it back on the shelf and thought nothing of it until today, when the snortlepig started dancing and pointing and saying “DA!” at the pantry. I picked her up, wondering if she’d developed a sudden taste for dried chickpeas… but nope. She’s been carrying the peppermint essence around again for two solid hours. Freak.

Interestingly, although the peppermint smell cannot be detected outside the bottle and although she almost certainly does not associate the two, the mint chocolate chip ice cream was her favourite flavour. She also eats olives. She’s classier than me.

Incidentally, shikakai? Good stuff. Exceptionally. If this keeps up I might be able to wear my hair down occasionally, although of course I would then have to navigate the perils of giving the snortlepig the milks without sitting on it myself or having said pig twine it round her feet and pull. Madonna never had this problem (the Blessed Virgin I mean, not the singer, although I doubt she did either).

I’m drafting a dress! It is harder than it looks. And invisible zips are evil. I will update you when there is good news: until then, don’t ask.

In other news… hoom. Helpdesk Man ate the first ripe tomato of the summer yesterday and his eyes watered a little. I am babysitting my small sisters on Friday, and we will watch the last 29 minutes of Toy Story 2 and the entirety of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I have an article due in six days that isn’t even remotely written. We watched Season 5 of The Office and are on to Season 6. I’ve been listening, goodness knows why, to wizard rock and have so far sifted only two decent songs from the dross - I Believe in Nargles and Accio Love. Both of which are, quite honestly, rubbish: but I have a small life. Also, the pig’s wet nappy reeks strangely of tuna, which we have not eaten for months. I’d better go change it before worse things happen.

The fenugreek was OK, if anyone was wondering. I did a pretty heavy pre-wash oiling and didn’t use any kind of cleanser, so I’m not sure how much of the moisture and ensuing greasiness was due to the fenugreek and how much was because of the jojoba. It did give my hair some initial slip which ACV notably lacks, but that was mostly gone by morning. Since then I’ve stocked up on catnip, marshmallow root, shikakai and amla and will perform some experiments, which will hopefully make my head smell less curryish.

That paragraph actually makes sense if you’re into natural haircare, by the way. If not, pay it no heed.

Know what I’m doing right now? Caramelising white chocolate. It had never occurred to me one could do this thing until I found David Lebovitz’s blog - he’s the guy who wrote The Perfect Scoop. Incidentally, he has this whole blog post about how he likes his caramel to taste slightly burned, otherwise (according to him) it is sickly and cloying. Which explains a lot. I was hard pressed to restrain myself from leaving a nasty comment. Anyway his caramelised white chocolate ice cream looked so delicious that I had to give it a go: also I am babysitting my little sistren tomorrow night and need to make something to quiet their gaping maws. I am also planning to make his Candied Bacon Ice Cream - it could be divine or repellent, but I don’t want to live my life not knowing. (His butterscotch pudding is entirely underwhelming, though. I find him a bit hit and miss all round, but the success of butterscotch and white chocolate flavours make me tolerant of a few flops.)

Anyway, the white chocolate has been in the oven for 30 minutes and, as promised, has become chalky and cloggy and generally unappealing. Apparently this is a good sign, heralding the transformation to caramelly deliciousness. We shall see.

Guess what I’m nomming off a fork out of an artily tiny dish? Olives. This is something of a triumph. I never used to like ‘em. Neither did Helpdesk Man. This was once a relevant point in a Christmas gift episode which continues to puzzle me. Two years ago, Helpdesk Man’s sister rang me a few weeks before Christmas and asked “Do you like olives?”. “Not really”, quoth I. “Does Helpdesk Man?” she asked. “Nope”, I said. And what did she give us for Christmas? A big honking jar of olives. We get along pretty well, so occasionally in the stilly watches of the night this incident still haunts me. Anyway. A few weeks ago Helpdesk Man inexplicably developed a taste for the little blighters, and with the proselytising enthusiasm of the novice began berating me about my plebeian palate, lack of class and general unworthiness to consider myself any kind of a foodie. “Is it”, I said with a steely sneer, and not to be outdone by a man who spent his entire pre-married life unaware of the existence of non-packet custard, started nibbling at tiny slivers of olive in an effort to acclimatise myself to their taste.

Fascinatingly enough, it worked. I still can’t pop them whole into my mouth without my eyes watering, but eaten in ladylike (well, rodentlike) nibbles off a fork I can schlp them down with the best of them. Take that, Helpdesk Man.

And in order to give you a complete picture of the urbane sophisticatedness of a Smokey, I should probably add that I have a plastic bag over my head. It houses goo. Specifically, fenugreek. I’m fond of fenugreek in curries, but - call me a square if you will - it had not until today occurred to me to soak the seeds in hot water, grind them to a paste and smear them on my hair. Now it has. Mucilage, people. Fenugreek contains mucilage, which gives hair shine and slip and acts more like a commercial conditioner than most herbal conditioning agents such as apple cider vinegar and oils. Good stuff, no? And even if it doesn’t work, I’ll smell… exotic.

Oh, the party? We had it. Eleven people… slightly fewer chairs. Wouldn’t that make a great movie tagline? But we coped. I ended up making five kinds of ice cream: raspberry and white chocolate (schlp!), strawberry ripple (meh), mint chocolate chip (hmm), butterscotch caramel ripple with straciatella (ooo!) and double chocolate ripple (Helpdesk Man insisted). They were enjoyed, but I’ve been trying to palm the leftovers on unsuspecting family members ever since. Something about having five kinds of ice cream in one’s freezer is demoralising to one’s squish.

Say a cleaver was going to fall on thy foot, wouldst thou rather it chopped off all thy toes individually - plip plip plip plip plop - or the whole toe area in one big chunk - thud?

Well, I did my taxes. It was ‘orrible. We will not speak of it. Then today I trundled the snortlepig into town and handed the form to the lady behind the desk, prepared to offer whatever explanations and apologies for my incompetence were deemed necessary, as well as a largeish wodge of money. Fortunately (I guess) both were put on hold, as it turns out they need to go through my form and check it before they officially charge me. In which case, if they’re gonna do it anyway, why did I have to do them??? I beamed at the lady and left before she could discover that the snortlepig had drawn in pencil all over Page 3.

While in town we did a few errands and ended up at the library, where I had a moment of bliss as I discovered both The Joy of Cooking and The Perfect Scoop were available. The latter is considered to be THE ice cream recipe book, containing such dubiously chic items as Red Bean Granita and Olive Oil Ice Cream. Inspired, I read through the whole thing and decided to make butterscotch caramel ripple stracciatella trufitos. Unfortunately my enthusiasm took a downturn when I made the Creamy Caramel Sauce and Helpdesk Man said “It tastes like cough mixture. Ew.” If anything, I undercooked it according to the directions, but it managed to acquire a burned taste nonetheless, and burned caramel is one of the unpleasanter things in life. (It was also one of the few exciting things we did in science class, but what principle it was meant to illuminate I cannot recall. Nothing ice cream related.) I might try again: the texture was gorgeous, anyway.

The next day, back at the ranch:

Ha! Success. Third time lucky. I tried making the sauce again last night - basically, you melt sugar into caramel and then whisk cream in while wearing an oven mitt to protect yourself from searing burns. Unfortunately I got a bit excited trying to get the sugar to melt before the snortlepig woke up, and stirred the caramel more than one is supposed to, thus causing it to clump up and take far longer to melt. And then the baby woke up. So I tipped the toffee onto a greased plate and will make it into praline instead… except it seems to have adhered permanently to the plate. But that’s another challenge for another time.

Anyway, this morning I rose with fire in my eyes and murder in my heart, determined to make said sauce or perish in the attempt. I succeeded. The sauce is velvety, creamy and not at all reminiscent of cough mixture. A large lump of toffee did get stuck to the whisk and refuse to melt back in, but I discarded it rather than risk scorching the batch and all was well.

I have half a mind to write to the author, though. “Wait until the caramel starts to smoke”, forsooth! Who thought that was a bright idea? The kind of guy who considers the acrid tongue-shrivelling taste of burned caramel complex and sophisticated, probably. Like those weedy menus that proudly proclaim “Burned Orange Souffle on a Bed of Wilted Greens and Aged Mushrooms”, trusting your snobbishness will lead you to breathe “How avant-garde!” rather than making pointed remarks about the pig bin.