Smokey the Magnificent

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?

Didn’t fancy pasta on Monday, so we had lentils cooked in chicken stock instead. We are thus one up on nutrition. Ha. Take that, cellular degeneration brought on by poverty-of-affluence demineralisation. The snortlepig, interestingly, has decided chicken soup is the best thing ever thunk up by man, so I’ve made a big batch of it replete with minched garlic, onion and carrots, and will freeze it in muffin tins in order to sup on some before Proper Lunch every day.

Today is slightly momentous, in that Helpdesk Man is going to hand in his notice at the respected government institution that gave him his name, focussing his not inconsiderable energies on his new business, Information Highwayman, instead. I am waiting with the pleasant thrill of anticipation to see if we make our first million by 30 or end up moving into Mother’s spare room, feeding gin to the snortlepig to stunt her growth. A more pressing question, however - can I continue to refer to him as Helpdesk Man? Information Highwayman is certainly a good name for a business - in fact, I suspect that’s what prompted the career change - but it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, blog-wise. Do share your thoughts, which are valuable to me.

Also, I need documentary recommendations. The snortlepig is becoming too jolly sentient to watch dubious movies with, as was brought painfully home wen she started saying “Fall down!” the other night every time somebody got shot in The Boondock Saints. And as Soon-To-Be-Ex-Helpdesk Man* refuses to spend the next fifteen years watch Pollyanna and Meet Me in St Louis while he eats his sup - or worse, Dora the Explorer - we must resort to non-fiction. At least, once we’ve finished the A-Team, which is borderline acceptable in that no matter how many cars blow up or firefights begin, nobody ever gets shot or killed. (It took me, like, a whole season to notice this. I’d long thought it was suspicious that a car could flip three times and explode in a flaming fireball while the bad guys simply hauled themselves peevishly out of the windows unscathed - but I had naively assumed that a team of desperadoes so a) hard-core and b) competent as the A-Team might occasionally hit a target while emptying their two dozen guns, if only by the laws of statistical probability. But nope. Only Imperial Stormtroopers could be so precise.)

So, yeah. No looming undersea life, no searing exposes of the underbelly of Rwanda’s drug trafficking industry - just nice documentaries, TV or movie, that won’t bore STBXHM or scar the pig. If you happen to know anything on the subject of rhinos, babies, duckies, horsies, the moon, milks or mousies, she would be particularly agog.

Go now.

*Not, like, in a divorcey way. Who has the time?

As some of you may know, I’m a vague, lazy adherent to Traditional Foodism, aka the Weston A Price Foundation system of nutrition. Of late I have decided to step it up a notch, and thus rashly made a pledge in the presence of my online peers to:

• eat fish twice a week
• eat organ meats once a week (and a tablespoon of liver hidden in a largeish lasagna counts - what am I, Wonder Woman?)
• eat yoghurt five times a week
• and consume chicken broth in some form three times a week.

Fish twice a week is a tad pesky, as I don’t drive and only go to the supermarket once a week. I might have to buy frozen, which is problematic because Helpdesk Man once violently hurled after eating some frozen fish - and even though I’m pretty sure it was coincidental, it causes him to view all iced seafood with a rheumy and skittish eye. I cannot blame him, really. I ate a kebab once with little bits of carrot in, and - well, we shall not speak of it. Anyway, apparently fish roe is the most nutrient-dense form of seafood, followed by shellfish, but I simply cannot bring myself to look a mussel in the eye, and the snortlepig made friends with some at the supermarket the other day (”Bath! A having a bath!”), so fish it is. Fissssssh.

So, yup. Tomorrow the lawn-mowing man will be upon us with his claw outstretched for the taking of lucre, so I have to get up early in the morning and walk the piggie to the butcher’s (not as terrible as it sounds). Helpdesk Man is away on Monday nights, so… let’s see here…

Monday: Pasta for dinner, go to butcher’s in morning, get cash out for lawn-mowing man, make hot cross buns for in-laws. Yoghurt for breakfast. Get Helpdesk Man to charm the chappie at work into putting free bus credits on my bus card, which is running out (he thinks the snortlepig is cute in the face - v handy, thrift-wise). Chicken soup for lunch. Try to finish knitting the snortlepig’s other wristlet.

Tuesday:  Yoghurt for breakfast. Go into town and buy wool to knit this top for the snortlepig. Get library books. Stop in at supermarket on the way home and buy fissssh. Fissssh for dinner. Wait, smeg. Mum’s homeschool choir is having its first performance at a rest home, and I am expected to attend for reasons of dubious usefulness. Do the shopping in the afternoon, then. Or whenever the performance isn’t. When is it? Then my choir practice at night. Gotta make something. Something bananoid, gotta use them up. Yus. Defrost gravy beef and liver.

Wednesday: Yoghurt again. Make something crockpoid with the gravy beef, incorporating a minute, token amount of liver. Soak rice. Chicken soup for lunch.

Thursday: Shopping with sister-in-law. Buy fish! Eat fish. Red fish. Blue fish. Have rice with the fish, cooked in chicken stock.

Friday: Date night with Helpdesk Man, a concept that has become laughably meaningless of late, but which will probably involve eating steak on the couch and watching the A-Team while the snortlepig kicks us in the face. Must ask Helpdesk Man what he wishes to eat sometime before Thursday, so as to buy it from the supermarket again. Yoghurt again - by this time, gut is teeming with iridescent life to the point where we will probably cancel Saturday altogether in order to sprint a half-marathon.

Wait. On Friday my practically-nearly-only-brother-in-law will be staying the night in honour of Easter. I shall have to ask my sister what he eats. It better not be fisssh.

At some point during this whole protein-laden debacle, I should also finish sewing the snortlepig’s spotty winter top, query a couple of print articles and write a few more for the web. And clean the light shades, on which flies have rudely throomed. Also experiment with a sugar-salt-water syrup, which tonight I used on my hair admixed with henna as a moisturising agent, but which needs to be more scientifically tested next time I wash it.

K.

You know what’s dismal and moopifying? Trying a fancy recipe from a slick food blog - a recipe the blogger praised to the stars, gushed about in a friendly yet authoritative way and photographed in glorious closeup with bokeh and the good spoons - and finding the finished product to be insipid.

This has happened to me a number of times recently, and it’s not that I’m a bad cook. Really. A friend of mine once spontaneously referred to my cupcakes as “little gems of sunshine”, and she’s not even the poetical type. Before our semi-regular braais, whatever chump gets stuck buying the meat brings it over a day early to my house so I can soak it in my wondrous marinade. The biggest fan of my pumpkin pie is a guy who doesn’t even like pumpkin. The point is, I can cook, dammit.

And as someone who can cook, I tend to prick up my ears when a blogger of the calibre of Pioneer Woman or Smitten Kitchen starts raving over a recipe. (By the by, did you know Pioneer Woman’s autobiographical love story Black Heels to Tractor Wheels is going to be made into a movie? True’s I’m sitting here. They’re considering Reese Witherspoon for the lead. I’m really not sure how I feel about all this. Anyway.) You get six stunningly glossy photos, rhapsodies about the rhapsodies of the guests who got to eat the thing, and comparisons to similar products from swanky-sounding restaurants who would allegedly close their doors and commit seppuku if they tasted this, the food blogger’s infinitely grander version.

And then you make it. And it’s…. nice. But no more. In some cases, to add insult to injury, it turns out to be less nice than a recipe you already had (making you secretly pleased and curious as to what heights of enthusiasm said blogger would sustain if she tasted your recipe, and considering sending it in, but refraining because a) food bloggers get that all the time, b) it goes against your upbringing to send emails that say “Your brownies were rubbish, mine are better”, and c) you harbor a tiny possessive streak that forbids it, because what if you want to have your own food blog some day, or even write a cookbook? - even though you know you won’t, because you can’t photograph to save your life and have no discipline). And sure, sometimes you can attribute this to using Pam’s chocolate chips instead of grated Valrhona 70%, or omitting the sun-ripened seasonal figs from the beaming Frenchman with photogenically wrinkled hands at the market who can name to the millisecond when they will start to pong, because you’re not a pretentious privileged gi - I mean, because your supermarket hasn’t stocked figs for years. But sometimes you can’t. Sometimes the recipe is just average.

Now, I get why they do it, of course. There are a lot of food blogs out there, and who’s going to make a cake on the description “Ehh, it’ll fill up a chink in the old tum” when the rest of the blogosphere is claiming their recipe will cause your old high school flame to ring you up that very night, the heavens to open and Elvis to return from the dead? Similarly, who after posting a truly delicious recipe is going to admit that the next few are a come-down, a sop to the necessity of not buying a bucket of creme fraiche every night? And so it begins, a vicious cycle of one-upmanship, and perfectly decent recipes get Botoxed, corseted, squeezed into evening gowns and nudged out onto a stage in front of thousands. One almost feels sorry for them standing there simpering, saying “Oh wow, I’m only a little cake from Texas and this is just such an honour, um, I’d like to thank my mum…”, while knowing deep in their cakey little hearts that it is all a Sham and a Lie.

And if you were not convinced by the photos and the promise that the eating of this cake will provide a spiritual experience so intense that the soles of your feet will be lifted off the ground and you will lapse into a brief coma, there are the comments - all 680 of them. But the thing about the comments, on popular food blogs, this is… is that nobody ever makes the darn thing. It’s all “Oooooh, you’ve done it again! *runs to kitchen*” and “Oh my, I’m totally bookmarking this, how sinful and delicious, my thighs will kill me!”. Which is all very well, but it’s hardly peer-reviewed, innit?

This is not to say that food blogs never produce good recipes. But I’ve had a run of several which have proven disappointing. Smitten Kitchen’s Double Chocolate Torte, for instance, which I made for Helpdesk Man’s birthday. It was OK - I did not blush as I served it, and none of my guests puked it into the bougainvillea - but it wasn’t superlative, and I won’t be making it again. The cake layer was basically a not-as-good-as-mine chocolate brownie, and the top layer a not-as-good-as-mine chocolate mousse (with a slightly salty taste because of the butter. Who puts butter in chocolate mousse?). Similarly, Pioneer Woman’s “The Best Chocolate Sheet Cake. Ever“. Again, not a bad cake, but hardly inspirational. Not something I’d make twice. Certainly not “moist beyond imagination, chocolatey and rich like no tomorrow, and 100% of the time, causes moans and groans from anyone who takes a bite”-able, despite Ree’s promise. David Lebovitz’s Butterscotch Pudding? Bland and cloggy. Helpdesk Man didn’t finish his. And tonight, I decided to have another stab at something creamy and butterscoid, so I made Caramel Pudding, again from Smitten Kitchen. Now, it may taste vastly more delicious after chilling in the fridge, and I hope it will; but judging from preliminary spoon-licking tests, it is no more than adequate.

It peeves me, people.

And lest you think I am picking on these bloggers, SK’s dulce de leche cheesecake squares - ironically, a recipe about which she was less enthused than usual - were pretty yummy, and David Lebovitz’s basic French vanilla ice cream is a thing of beauty and a joy forever (as is his chocolate ice cream, according to Helpdesk Man). (You know, I’m trying to think of a really delicious PW recipe I’ve made, and nothing springs to mind. Isn’t that catty of me? I don’t think I’ve cooked much of her stuff, though. I remember Helpdesk Man didn’t like the Crash Hot Potatoes…)

So, anyway. I love food blogs. They are marvellous. But I am beginning to view their claims with a distrustful and rheumy eye. I’ve had much better luck with recipes ranked by popular vote - the New York Cheesecake on Allrecipes is truly spectacular. So if you are a food blogger casting your eye over my humble pages (and chances are slim, you’re probably my mum, but if you’re not her)…. tone it down a bit, k? Be courageous. Say “This really hit the spot last night when I had pregnancy cravings and would have eaten the fridge if it hadn’t been wedged in, but this morning I think it’s a bit soggy in the middle - but hey, give it a go”. Or take a hint from Presbyterian church supper cookbooks of yore and say “This is an extremely economical pudding”. But don’t play havoc with hopes. One can only get so emotionally invested in caramel-flavoured gloop before succumbing to ulcers, and that wouldn’t be good for your readership, would it?

First off, in the What The I Don’t Even category… I give you this.

Anyone care to shed some light?

The snortlepig had a pleasant birthday yesterday, not withstanding a random outburst of vomiting which occurred at midday. The pig remained philosophical throughout the episode (which was orange and not at all chunky, for those of my readers who document that kind of thing), merely pointing to the puddles and saying “Cloth?”, which was both tactful and hygienic.

While not upchucking the piggie spent the day feeding duckies with her grandparents, Skyping practically her only aunt who lives in England, and eating all her favourite things for dinner.

The rest of my week promises to be on the busy side, as we are having a braai on Saturday night to celebrate Helpdesk Man’s birthday and a picnic at lunch on Sunday to do the snortlepig’s birthday with her other grandparents. Unfortunately I just discovered Smitten Kitchen, which has caused my culinary ambitions to soar and doubled the size of the grocery bill. The plan is to festivise Sunday lunch with dulce de leche cheesecake squares, make straciatella ice cream and chocolate mud cake with caramel frosting for Helpdesk Man’s birthday cake, and fill in the rest of my leisurely days constructing potato salad, fudge, flatbreads galore, hummus and marinade. Not to mention sewing a hasty winter wardrobe for the snortlepig, the weather having abruptly shifted to winter just as I was thinking about making light autumn clothes. And I have a cold. I can see how Martha Stewart ended up on the inside.

First driving lesson tomorrow. I got my licence in the mail, resplendent with a photo that makes me look like a cynical old-maid librarian who swigs from bottles of embalming fluid behind the stacks. My father-in-law will be instructing me. He’s quite good, calm and factual, but with a tendency to start snapping “Brake. Brake! BRAKE!” at apparently random intervals. As I recall, during our abortive lessons in the Uni car park last year, I can get up to third gear and avoid lamp posts like nobody’s business, but I cannot reverse. Also I dislike indicating and checking the rearview mirrors, mostly because it didn’t seem strictly necessary in an empty car park and I was having too much lovely fun with the steering. Not terribly promising, is it?

Also, practically my only sister Betty Scandretti has become affianced. Three cheers for Betty. Top work. We knew you could do it with a little application and persistence. Let us all learn from the example of Betty.

I made pumpkin chocolate chip pecan cashew cookies today. Who knew such a thing existed? I was mooping around the blogosphere in that contrary mood where no recipe seems to fit - it has ingredients you do not possess, or has to sit overnight before cutting, or needs those little cookie cutters the snortlepig scattered around the floor and Helpdesk Man trod on so the heart, your favourite shape, will never be the same again. And then suddenly, pow. Or zap. Bakerella, whose website is causing you to sniff snobbishly because of her lavish use of Betty Crocker boxed mixes, comes out with a for-scratch recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip pecan cookies. And your wilting spirits perk up like the ears on a cartoon rabbit, and away you scurry. The cashews weren’t canon, I just ran out of pecans. And the biscuits were nommy, and it made enough to give to my father-in-law tomorrow to say thank you for the driving lesson, assuming he exits said lesson still able to eat; and for Bible study on Thursday. So ha.

Well, anyway. It is 11:30 in the blessed PM and I must go publish an article about the best times of year to go to Disneyland; a subject on which I am troublingly knowledgeable, considering I have never been.

1. I found a pit in my allegedly pitted olive.

2. I schlped up a fly with the vacuum cleaner. I’ve been wanting to do this for years, but have been hindered by both the wiliness of flies and my tendency to not vacuum. But today I got sick of seeing bits of dry rice stuck between the floor boards, so I got out the vacuum and there it was, chillin’ on the lampshade. So I crept up behind it, and - schlp! It was this big. Do you think it died, or flew out again?

3. Speaking of flies, the snortlepig totally wigged out after seeing the corpus of a fly on the living room floor. She responds to seeing dead cockroaches on the ground in town with a gleeful “NASTY crocus!”, so I’m not sure why the tiny mortal coil of a mere blowfly filled her with such terror and sorrow. I had to give it a decent burial with the dustpan and brush before she’d calm down.

4. I made white chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate straciatella.

5. I bought two cheap bottles of wine at the supermarket, one white and one red, for experimental cooking purposes. Tonight was fish, which we had with an Italian tomatoey, white wine and olive sauce. It wasn’t the best fish I’ve ever had, but it was sophisticated as hell. Must have been a whole, what? 75 cents’ worth of wine in there? Earth has not anything to show more fair.

Actually more than five exciting things happened to me today, at least judging by the standards of the above. I cleaned the leather couch. This shouldn’t have been exciting, except that we a) eat dinner on the couch every night and b) have a one-year-old. Apparently the makers of the leather cleaner did not expect the couch to attain this level of filth. “Do not rub”, indeed. HOW ELSE ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO GET THE SWEETCORN OFF?

More excitingly yet, I discovered this blog: Sleep Talkin’ Man. It is simply a record of a man’s nightly unconscious ramblings, recorded dutifully by his ever-loving wife. Some of the things he says are not entirely decent, so I shall reproduce a few of the tamer ones here for those too moral to click:

“You’ve got to save the curtains! Save the curtains… They hold so many secrets.”

“I know it’s a shame that when I walk out of a room it gets just a little bit darker and gray. It’s a burden I carry.”

“Tea bags, see? Better be careful with the tea bags. They’re delicate creatures. Handle them with care.”

“Imagine waking up next to you every day… One chunder-bucket moment after another.”

“Legs time! Everybody get your legs!”

And my personal favourite:
“You know, it’s a human race. And you lost.”

So I suppose the seventh most exciting thing that happened to me today was discovering at least one person in this world is wittier than me in his sleep.

I am now an official scholar of the automobilial arts. I have a dodgy-looking temporary licence and everything. And while we’re on the subject, is it license or licence? I can never figure that one out, BA notwithstanding.

This weekend will be full of glamour and sparkle due to the annual Summer Festival, which is currently sitting soggily in the public gardens getting rained on. Assuming the lightning storm clears by tomorrow, Helpdesk Man and I will be moseying down at 9PM to watch Broadway on the Boardwalk, a collection of show tunes sung by the local operatics society. Then on Saturday the piggie and I will trot to a pantomime of Beauty and the Beast and a Food, Wine and Jazz festival - I’m not into wine and have no particular opinion on jazz, but the thought that there might be little bits of cheese to sample on toothpicks justifies the $20 entrance fee in my mind. On Sunday the main event will occur, the Sunset Symphony at which my own dear Helpdesk Man is performing along with his marvy young vocal collective. There will be fireworks, which I like muchly.

Add to that the zoo trip tomorrow, and I have four events for which I need to cook exciting snacks. Plus I have to finish a baby’s bonnet for a friend’s new baby today and go grocery shopping. It is an exciting time to be a Smokey.