Smokey the Magnificent

1. I am frequently amazed by the kind of men who manage to get wives.
2. Yesterday I finally bit the bullet and attempted to cure myself of fatigue, anaemia and the moops by consuming raw, frozen liver cut into little pills and swished down with water. It was horrid, but considerably less horrid than downing liver in its customary cooked, chewable form. I only managed to ingest about a teaspoon’s worth, and it had no appreciable effect on my desire to train for a half-marathon, but they say it’s cumulative. I will Let You Know.
3. I found out at the supermarket today that the salmon I have been smugly purchasing to ward off the brainworms is farmed, not wild. There’s always something, innit. Farmed salmon is evil; they keep them in cramped conditions and feed them soy and grains and things, which mucks up their omega 3-omega 6 ratio and no doubt makes them discontented in their squish. And then they have to feed them dye to get their flesh the correct pink. I got cod instead, which is cheaper and hopefully less evil, but not very appetising.
4. Did you know more women have blonde or red hair than men? Wikipedia said so. I wonder if it’s due to the Barbie/Ken beauty model.
5. Speaking of Barbie and Ken, Toy Story 3 is excellent.
6. I need a way to make a lot of money fairly fast. Nobody’s going to lose an eye or anything if I don’t, but it would be handy. Ideas?
7. I made white chocolate ice cream with homemade ginger cookies crumbled through, and it is mighty tasty, but Helpdesk Man does not like it. I am torn between wounded scorn at his dismissal of any ice cream that is not double chocolate, and smug because it means more ice cream for me.
8. The snortlepig is probably going to grow up to be a taxidermist or a serial killer. She has a penchant for Death. The highlight of supermarket trips is visiting the “dead fishies”, to the point where she refers to grocery shopping as “seeing dead fishies!”; and today when we went to the butcher and they had large portions of cow hanging up out the back, visible through a window no doubt designed to prove that everything is sanitary and pukkah, the pig was delighted and insisted I lift her up so she could beam at them for five minutes while a butcher whacked off bits with an evil-looking knife and gave us uncomfortable glances. Also, though? According to the sign, the Maori word for beef is “kau”. This gives me more happiness than words can convey.
9. Would you rather lose all your worldly possessions in a fire, or be stranded for a month on a desert island after your plane crashed into the briny?
10. I have megalophobia.

10:32 - Under-layer of fondant successfully applied to all three cakes. Helpdesk Man, who was also stricken with the deathpox, is lying in bed next to a bucket. The snortlepig thought it would be amusing to watch as I dusted the table with icing sugar, and then plant her foot in the middle of it. Oddly enough I still like her; it must be the fever. Am keeping body and soul on nodding terms with scraps of cake and fondant.

11:39 - Realised any skill I once possessed at making icing roses has disappeared, either due to the passage of years or rapidly-progressing nerve damage. Am Googling “how to make icing roses”.

12:02 - In a martyr-like display of maternal solicitude, made bacon and eggs for me and the snortlepig. Snortlepig choked on a piece of bacon rind. Proudly: “I throw up!” Peering, delighted: “I throw up BACON!”

1:36 - Seven roses of somewhat dubious botanical verisimilitude completed. The pig keeps eating the flower paste. Helpdesk Man has staggered out of bed and had a bowl of ice cream, despite my warnings that Dairy is Mucous-Forming.

2:56 - Have piped a large number of royal icing butterflies on greaseproof paper. It calmed me temporarily into a trance-like state, until I sneezed three times and my amygdala got lodged in my sinuses.

6:13 - All cakes fully masked. Had a break for a while giving the pig the milks and watching a bit of Volver, which Helpdesk Man and I started watching last night upon discovering it in several Top Feelgood Movies of All Time lists. Last night the main character’s no-good husband tried to rape her teenage daughter, who killed him with a knife. About the time she started dragging the body to a nearby chest freezer we decided we didn’t Feelgood, and went to bed. Today, while the snortlepig slept and had the milks, the main character engaged a local prostitute to help her dump the body. I also learned the main character’s father had had an affair with another woman, who may or may not have burned him and his wife to death before leaving town, and whose daughter is now dying of cancer. It’s a gay romp, I tell you. It’s also subtitled, so after half an hour of this my eyes started to frizzle and I decided icing the wedding cake would be more Feelgood. Incidentally: never trust things you read on the internet.

8:11 - You know what I’d do if I ever wanted to torture someone real bad? I’d find one of those tiny freezer compartments you get in fridges, all iced up thick around the edges. And I’d hold his hand in it for five minutes until it was good and chilly. And then I’d bang it back and forth, not particularly hard, against the sides. And then I’d do it again. It would be extremely unpleasant. I’ve affixed the roses to the top tier and placed a few butterflies on wires amongst them, but they had a high mortality rate when I peeled them off the waxed paper so I’m making another batch. I asked Helpdesk Man and Flatmate Man to saw my dowelling, but Flatmate Man is as drunk as a large, smallish fish and Helpdesk Man has oosed off to get some Burger Fuel for dinner, me being both too busy and too infested to make the boeuf bourguignon for dinner, which yes, actually was on the meal plan, although admittedly not spelled quite that well.

10:39 - Yay! Apart from putting in the ribbon, the cake is DONE. Including some spare butterflies to give the transport girl in case anything shatters in the car, which is sadly likely - those butterflies are ridiculously fragile. As are the real ones, though - realism, innit. Anyway. I am going to bed.

I write you all from a haze of cheem. A few weeks ago I rashly agreed to make a last-minute wedding cake for my sister’s friend, and what do I do but contract septicaebola three days before the big event. The batch of cake batter I mixed up this morning contains 1 kg butter, 6 cups of caster sugar, four blocks of chocolate and not less than four parts per million of my own personal pus, mucus and other bodily fluids. Something old, something new, something fetid, a bit of goo, as the old saying goes. I’m supposed to be making icing roses right now, but whenever I try to alight from the couch I see this

and my brain goes

and I have to pass out for a bit.

Today I told the snortlepig she could not lick the beaters yet, because I still had to beat in the vanilla essence. She called me a pesky wench. (A “peshky wench”, technically.) At times like these, I begin to doubt my parenting. Discuss.

It seems I forgot to update on my Medical Situation of Doom. Well, it turns out that not all healthcare practitioners keep virgins locked in their basement and howl at the moon. The doctor I saw was pleasantly tartany and consoling, hunted out a speculum a quarter of the size of the previous one, scoffed at the idea my cervix was hard to find and indicated by slight though not disloyal hints that she, too, thought the Nurse From Hades could use a stint in the Iron Maiden. It turns out my cervix is peachy awesome, and in her doctorly opinion the only reason it had looked inflamed the last time is that the nurse had bungled and assaulted it. Words cannot describe, etc.

Anyway, this is in the past and we shall move on to happier and less cervical topics.

I made a cake (for instance). Tomorrow is the twenty-first birthday of practically my only sister, who is autistic and therefore should not, according to the textbooks, be inviting upwards of a hundred people to the accompanying bash. (How many people came to my twenty-first? Like, ten. Including me and a foetus. All blood relations, again, including the foetus.) My mother cunningly inveigled me into making and icing the cake, back when I thought this was a modest twenty-person shindig; and now - a hundred icing flowers, nine cups of sugar, 1.5 kilos of butter and two significant mishaps later - the thing is done. It is large. And purple. Not my fault, in both cases. I tried to take a photo so I could be like those bloggers that make things, but it came out blue (which was depressing, because it actually looked a lot better than the current colour scheme) and I couldn’t find the camera cable, and then the pig wanted the milks and I got distracted looking up Hypnobabies, which I’m totally going to do next time I have a pig, but I will still call them “contractions” and not “power surges” because good heavens, who do you think I am.

Also I made butterscotch straciatella ice cream, tomato oregano bread and marbled chocolate-orange cheesecake. ‘Cause after Becky’s party we are coming straight home to have another one, this one for me. I turn twenty-four on Thursday. A near-as-dammit quarter-century, and I’m still not clear on the role Japan played in World War Two or what happened in the movie Primer.

I leave you instead with a thought that gives me daily succour: “It’s pow’ful hard ter po’ outer a bung hole inter a go’de”.

Today Helpdesk Man and I sallied forth, pig in tow, on a cast iron pot mish. Our previous frying pan (Analon anodised aluminium, we’re looking at you!) had begun to flake Teflon into the food and smell vaguely rubbery when heated. And then there was the matter of Helpdesk Man growing fingers out of his armpits and the pig speaking Cantonese for an hour every time she had a fried egg. So it was time.

We didn’t get Le Creuset, partly because of the half-mortgage price tags, but also because they’re enamelled and we liked the idea of absorbing iron into the food, which apparently happens with true cast iron. (And a similar thing with Teflon, apparently…) Incidentally, I may have been pronouncing Le Creuset wrong my entire life. Leh Crusoe, I thought it was, like the chappie - but the lady in the shop pronounced it Lah CrooSAY, which now I think about it makes more sense with the spelling. I am deeply shamed.

Nice pots, though. The Old Lodge, pre-seasoned, black, could kill a man. And a whisk, because our old one was of feeble construction and one wire kept pinging out and hitting you in the eye. We needed a new fish slice too, after Helpdesk Man used it to swat flies one time and I said “Don’t do that, it’ll break” and he scoffed at me and then it broke, but the pig was pesking around the shop and we forgot. The lady gave us a free teatowel, though, to wrap ourselves in on those cold winter nights under a bridge due to having spent all our money on cast iron pots.

I want a grain mill, also.

Further along the crunchy front, tomorrow I will be in possession of milk and water kefir grains. It is a little scary, like finding a chinchilla on your doorstep. I’m not sure how to make them not die, and I’ve never tasted… them, and what if I don’t like ‘em?

Also, becoming tired of my own stagnancy and lack of fame and riches (see above re grain mill), I am hereby setting up a writing schedule for me to stick to. I don’t want to, mind you. It sounds ghastly. But the one-hour-of-housework thing has worked surprisingly well this year, so here goes.

So.

Until I complete these goals every day (Monday to Friday), I will not surf the Internet:

• 20 minutes of Suite101 writing/editing/publishing
• 10 minutes of UTH editing/writing
• 10 minutes of marketing, ie. queries or invoices
• 10 minutes writing print articles, if they are due in 2 weeks or less (obviously, it will take longer once the deadline looms, but this will help, one hopes)
• 15 minutes writing fiction
• 10 minutes writing/researching/find agents for my non-fiction book

Making 75 minutes in all. This is a lot. But my ability to read xkcd depends upon it. And when I look back on my wispy existence in twenty years’ time, will I wish I had spend less time writing and more time googling “really awesome coat”? Probably not. I may wish I’d eaten more dietary fibre or refrained from trying to knock over a bank with a Sharpie, but those are different issues.

I feel virtuous already. Gonna go put trousies on, and everything.

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.

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.

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.