Smokey the Magnificent

Feh! I am in a culinary mood, but all the recipes I know seem mundane and all the ones I find online have cacao nibs and creme fraiche in them. Not that that’s a bad thing, but judging by the reactions of the staff at Pak’N'Save when I asked if they had rennet, I don’t fancy my chances.

I have, however, completed two tasks of kitchenness today. The first, defrosting the freezer - well, technically, wiping the mould out from the freezer I started defrosting the other day until I got bored - we shall not speak of. The second was starting a batch of sauerkraut. I am not fond of sauerkraut. Nevertheless, Sally Fallon recommends it so sternly that I feel obliged to try it at least once. It’s pretty simple to make, in theory - all I did was mash half a head of chopped cabbage, two carrots, three cloves of garlic and some peppercorns and mustard seeds with salt for ten minutes. This draws out the humours and exhausts a small percentage of the snortlepig’s destructive powers, until she gets distracted and spills your entire bag of black mustard seeds over the floor. The kraut is now chillin’ on the bench, lactofermenting away, and in a week or two, if all goes well, my intestinal flora will be so lushly biodiverse that armies will quail before them. I’m also attempting a sourdough starter on the bench next to the sauerkraut, which now I think on it may not be wise. The beasties will probably hybridise into some hideous Frankenzyme and kill us all. Still, it is called wild fermentation; one learns to live on the edge.

Also, this will make you happy. If it doesn’t, that’s probably the universe’s way of telling you something.

OK, people. I need suggestions.

Next March or April we are planning a trip to Disneyland - about which I could write many thousands of words, but won’t for the time being. While we’re in the US we naturally wish to squeeze in as many activities as possible, particularly the sorts of things we don’t have in New Zealand. Like, well, everything. So we’re hoping to have dinner at Medieval Times, go to see Wicked, visit Universal Studios, see the San Diego Zoo and Wildlife park, and all that jazz.

And then it occurred to me… USA. Population. Subcultures. Geeks. Conventions!

Sadly Comic-Con is on at the wrong time and place, but thus far I’ve scouted out two potential conventions (in San Diego, I think) - ConDor and MegaCon. Guest lists aren’t up yet, it being a year away, but they both look promising.

So my question is: What costumes can I bring to wear that are portable, unbreakable, preferably washable, non-bulky and otherwise suitable for dragging halfway around the world and back?

The obvious choice for the snortlepig is Ensign Ro, although I’m not sure how to get her to wear the traditional Bajoran earring. Helpdesk Man wants to go as the Tenth Doctor (actually I think he wants to be the Tenth Doctor, but that’s another, deeper issue). Which leaves myself - redheaded but unchesty, which is an inauspicious combination for convention garb.

Any thoughts? I’m open to ideas from Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Buffy, LOTR… pretty much anything except Twilight, in fact. My default option is to attempt to recreate Penny’s outfit from Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. This mostly appeals because I may be able to get away with wearing it at Disneyland too, even though it’d technically a costume and I’m over 9. And the anarchist in me goes “Heh” at the thought of illicitly wearing Unauthorised Character Garb under the nose of Walt himself. It’s how revolutions happen.

Or I could get around to making the steampunk outfit I’ve been threatening to make for years, and wear that. But Victorian clothing, neo- or not, tends to be bulky and I don’t want to clog my suitcase up with bustles and frills.

I await your suggestions with calm severity.

The snortlepig has adopted a new custom. You know how one blows a kiss? Well, she bites her hand instead of kissing it and then wipes it on my face. It is at once immensely threatening and self-defeating, like cutting off your own hand with a sneer and throwing it at the messenger of your enemy.

Also, I utilised the bok choi. That isn’t Navy Seal code. Cauliflower dish. It was passable.

Today I achieved another milestone of adulthood. I bought a bunch of bok choi, deliberately. Not because I mistook it for shmallows or anything. Full intent of wilting it into scrambled eggs, stir fries and similar dishes for the purposes of adding nutrients. $3.49.  Impressive, no? I felt a frisson of self-awe comparable only to the first time I looked at a cookie and decided I didn’t really need it, and the first time I mentioned querying an editor without feeling dizzyingly conscious of the glamour of this exercise. Self-awe comes pretty cheap round these parts, it must be said.

I have not updated this blog for some time. According to all good bloggers, this is very bad practice. Regular content is key. Flee to the south of France for a week without your laptop, and you’ll come back to find all your readers have died of lupus or defected to Steve Pavlina or summat.

The trouble is, things have been happening. And when one thing happens and I fail to record it, something else goes and happens too, and the psychological pressure of writing up a mega-long post doing full literaru justice to both events begins to weigh on the brain like a large, smallish brick. Add a few more eventful days and what do you get? A vicious cycle of sulking and resentment. So I have been grumpily ignoring this-here platform to the wider world for weeks, and only return now because a) I’m cleaning out the freezer, an event which demands publicity and b) I’m bored.

I used to sulk at my diaries too. Also at the freezer. This is why Steve Pavlina is mega-successful and I can’t afford olives. On the bright side, I found some oldish Kapiti double cookies and cream in the freezer. Who said virtue wasn’t its own reward?

Anyway. Events. Yus. Firstly, we now have a flatmate, who for consistency’s sake I shall refer to as Flatmate Man. He has brought with him a rather nice bookshelf filled with graphic novels, DVDs and Terry Pratchetts I haven’t read; also a copy of Nourishing Traditions. So life could be worse, even if I have to wear more clothes around the house. Plus, he reads this blog, so what can I say?

Secondly, my practically only small sister and I went to Rainbow’s End, New Zealand’s fanciest and also least fancy theme park. It was an interesting experience. The trip was largely to determine if my small sister is keen on rides, so she can save up to come with us to Disneyland next year (reliant on Helpdesk Man’s successful pursuit of lucre). As such, having Disneyland on the brain, it was diffcult to avoid noticing that Rainbow’s End lacks a certain lustre in comparison to the Happiest Place on Earth. The throoms were set into a fake rock wall, yes, presumably in an effort to make us feel excitingly like King Saul; but the stromgly-worded laminated list of instructions for cleaning said throoms rather spoilt the effect - particularly as they hadn’t been followed. There were a couple of new, shiny rides called the Invader and Power Surge; but also the Gold Rush ride, whose queue was twice as long as the ride as a pathetic homage to many years ago when the ride first opened and was actually popular. Being a Friday, there were approximately twenty people in the park and four staff members. This was good for queues but bad for motion sickness… it turned out riding the Invader three times running is less efficient a use of time than you might think. And it’s a little awkward riding seven rides with the same two guests - I don’t believe Miss Manners ever adequately delineated the nuances of such a relationship, particularly when much of it is conducted at high G-forces. Nevertheless, as long as we avoided the peeling arcade section and derelict hot dog stands we managed to keep the crippling depression at bay and have a rollicking time. The general atmosphere of the park can be summed up by the website’s description of the Cinema 180 attraction. Clearly worrying that the name Rainbow’s End might conjure up inappropriately fantastical images of joy and splendour, the website tempts would-be revellers thusly:

A more mundane feature of the design is the drain in the centre of the dished floor, which is carpeted with polyester swimming pool carpet. This is so the floor can be hosed down after the inevitable motion sickness felt by some patrons when watching Cinema 180°!

As it turned out, I very nearly availed myself of this technological wizardry during the film. But still though. And in other news, why is it that I can ride the Fear Fall five times without blinching and the Power surge with only a manic giggle, yet become paralysed with terror while floating past animatronic gnomes in an artificial log? The Log Flume is smegging creepy. I eschew it.

Conversations with the snortlepig have entered the realm of the absurdist lately. Take this wee chat from yesterday.

Helpdesk Man: Come on, pig, we need to sort out your tiny toofpegs.

Me [in a fey and playful mood]: Shall we sort them out or pull them out? Which do you think?

The snortlepig: Tomatoes.

And then there was the night she woke up, shouted “RHINOS!” and went back to sleep. It makes me jumpy. She’s also developed the disconcerting habit of grabbing my face with both hands, enjoying a brief spasm of rage and saying in a slow, creepy and violent manner, “Heeellllooooo, mmummmmyyyy”. What does it mean? Maybe I should have followed my mother-in-law’s advice and had my milk tested after all.

Note to the world: never trust a snortlepig. Today I was doing some long-overdue gardening, and in the course of pulling out three gone-to-seed parsley plants the size of trees I accidentally terminated a tiny spring onion. As I’d just put on some chicken soup - incidentally, you might like to pause at this point and contemplate the picture of virtuous and wifely industry I paint here - I handed the spring onion to the snortlepig and said “Go tell Daddy to put this in the soup. Can you give it to him and say “Daddy, soup”?” “Daddy, soup, okay!” said the pig, and disappeared with charming alacrity. By the time she returned, I had accidentally pulled up a baby carrot as well. “Can you give this to Daddy for the soup as well?” I said, and she disappeared indoors once more - but feeling a slight premonition, I followed her inside, just in time to see her up on a chair by the stove, attempting to stuff the entire carrot - dirt, greens and all - into the bubbling pot.

It turned out she had, indeed, shown the spring onion to Helpdesk Man - who, with typical male cluelessness, responded to her enthusiastic “Soup!” by informing her condescendingly that while spring onions can, indeed, be used for soup, they can also be used to cook many other things. At which point the snortlepig must have realised one of life’s great truths, and decided to do the deed herself.

Snortlepig: 1

Helpdesk Man: 0

Smokey: 0

Soup: …still edible, I think. The spring onion wasn’t that dirty.

What I ended up doing was making this tomato sauce, which was vaguely exciting; inventing a recipe for coconut chocolate chip meringues, which was fun; cleaning the kitchen, which was neither; and eating a big ol’ bowl of pasta with the snortlepig while we watched The Princess and the Frog. Again.

So. If your firstborn child had to get twenty-to-life in the clink for something, would you rather it were insider trading or arson? Discuss.

It occurs to me that I tend to leave things hanging on this blog. So, to recap:

• I finished knitting the pig’s scarf. I have also knitted, but not yet sewn up, two wristlets and a headband. The latter I may end up ripping out (or “frogging”, as they call it in the biz - why, I do not know), because my sister sniggered at it and I have been plagued with doubts ever since. It was supposed to be English … something… stitch… lacy, innit, but it has Lumps in it. And I suspect if I end up putting it on the pig I will wince at the photos in coming years.
• Driving lessons seem to have kind of temporarily dried up. I’m not sure why, but it wasn’t due to anything exciting.
• I successfully filled the snortlepig up with the correct amounts of fish, liver etc last week, and have made a meal plan for this week as well. To make things even more exciting, Helpdesk Man’s lack of steady income has caused us to retrench, slimming the grocery store budget down to svelte and cheeseless proportions. I have rationed Helpdesk Man’s chocolate, and were it not for Easter he may have already gone on a rampage.

It’s Easter Saturday - that strange, lonesome day in the middle of a bunch of public holidays, presumably designed to prevent teenage girls who work at the ice cream shop from spending those public holidays sunning themselves in Raratonga. But I haven’t worked at the ice cream shop for years. The situation, then, currently runs thusly:

• Helpdesk Man is at a friend’s house playing a violent computer game for the second day straight. He will probably stagger in at midnight, have nightmares about psionic monkeys and pull the blankets over his head in the morning, plaintively declaring he doesn’t want to go to church.
• My dear friend April was gonna come by and watch movies, but is sleepy after her sister’s wedding so changed her mind.
• I am home alone with the snortlepig.

On occasions this sort of situation depresses me, but on others - like when, as now, I have nearly half a large jam tart in the fridge - the thrill of possibility runs through my veins. Because anything could happen. I could, if I had the oomph, walk the pig down to the public gardens and feed stale hot cross buns to the duckies. I could concoct a ridiculously elaborate dinner and leave the dishes. I could begin a new sewing project. I could start a novel. I could dance around to the Beatles in my smalls. I could rag-curl my hair and smear kaolin clay on my face, and then quote lines from Restless. I could watch old episodes of Lois and Clark. Or I could clean a small, insignificant part of the house impeccably so that Helpdesk Man would notice in a week or two and make a comment and I could be all smug - I get a kick out of that, sometimes. I cleaned a wall the other day, and it made an astonishing difference. I recommend this.

Or I might watch Monty Python clips on YouTube. Or go through the hand-me-downs in the glory box to see if anything fits the snortlepig for next season. Or, ooh, make popcorn. Or something for church lunch tomorrow, which would be more to the point.

Or, I could get distracted googling the top 10 food blogs while writing this post, and suddenly find it’s 7PM and the piggie has been asleep on my arm for so long it’s gone numb. Still, though. Things could happen.

Well, so much for “soon”. Helpdesk Man quit his job yesterday, and his manager kindly gave him the rest of his month off with pay so he could build up his business. So today was his first day at home, commemorated by having bacon and eggs for breakfast at 11:00 after a lengthy sleeping in. In such a fashion are fortunes made.

The pig and I left him to it at four, and wandered down to the supermarket to stock up for the long weekend. While at the checkouts I remembered the piggie needed a new toothbrush, her old one having recently been used by the snortlepig to brush my elbows, the interior of the dishwasher and a raw piece of beef. So we swiftly oosed back to the toothbrush aisle, where I made the mistake of handing the snortlepig the green and the blue so she could take her pick. “Which one do you want?” “Okay!” “No, no, you only need one. Do you want the blue or the green one?” “Okay!” “Do you want the blue one?” “Okay!” “Can I take the green one?” “No!” “You want the green one?” “Okay!” “Not the blue one?” “Okay!”"Can I take the blue one?” “No!” “Do you want this one or this one?” “Okay!” Eventually I persuaded her to let go of both toothbrushes so I could waggle them out of reach, and when she reached for the green one we high-tailed it out of the store. Unfortunately she is so impressed with this fine device that she not only carried it all the way home, but has made it her particular friend ever since. She is currently brushing her toes with it, and had a moment of extreme panic five minutes ago when she lost it in the duvet. It’s a pity she’s over her obsession with the bottle of peppermint essence, which was at least hygienic.

In other news, I am suppressing my skepticism of food blogs once again and making David Lebovitz’s easy jam tart. Pretty cunning, no?