Month: September 2007

Eat your beans

Badger wrote about getting a song out of her head by giving it to the rest of us. I see her Regina Spektor and raise her Joanna Newsom:



Sprout And The Bean (as on Milky Moon)

I slept all day
I woke with distaste
and I railed
and I raved

that the difference between
the sprout and the bean
it is a golden ring
it is a twisted string

and you can ask the counsellor
you can ask the king
and they’ll say the same thing
and it’s a funny thing

should we go outside
should we go outside
should we break some bread
are y’interested?

and as I said
I slept as though dead
dreaming seamless dreams
of lead

when you go away
I am big-boned and fey
in the dust of the day
and in the dirt of the day

and the danger, danger drawing near them was a white coat
and the danger, danger drawing near them was a broad boat
and the water, water running clear beneath a white throat
and the hollow chatter of the talking of the tadpoles
who know th’outside
should we go outside
should we break some bread
are y’interested?

And if that doesn’t get you, this normally will:

Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie

that means no
where I come from
I am cold, out waiting for the day to come

I chew my lips
and I scratch my nose
feels so good to be a rose

oh don’t
don’t you lift me up
like I’m that shy no-no-no-no-no, just give it up

see, there are bats all dissolving in a row
into the wishy-washy dark that can’t let go

I cannot let go
so I thank the lord
and I thank his sword
though it be mincing up the morning, slightly bored

oh oh oh, morning
without warning
like a hole
oh, and I watch you go

there are some mornings when the sky looks like a road
there are some dragons who were built to have and hold
and some machines are dropped from great heights lovingly
and some great bellies ache with many bumblebees
and they sting so terribly

I do as I please
now I’m on my knees
your skin is something that I stir into my tea
and I am watching you
and you are starry, starry, starry

(and you will never
ever know how
very sorry you will be
… I am)

and I’m tumbling down
and I check a frown
well just look around
that’s why I love this town
to see me;
serenaded hourly
celebrated sourly
dedicated dourly

waltzing with the open sea
clam, crab, cockle, cowrie
will you just look at me!

oh, oh, oh, oh
oh, oh, oh, oh

I love the smell of public humiliation in the morning

Just as I need the ritual of a weekly public weigh-in to get my eating under control, posting that post spurred me into action
(BTW – if you click on the images it opens them really big so you can read my oh-so-witty-I’m-losing-my-mind-with-all-this-crap-and-clutter-in-my-life narrative)

The top of the bookshelves have been rediscovered. All that washing has been sorted and (almost) put away. The washing in the laundry has been done and hung out. And today. Today by nine o’clock this morning I had bleached both bathrooms to within an inch of their lives. From the ceiling to the floor. Seriously. In the boys bathroom I washed.the.walls. They’re so squeaky clean even my fingers shine. The next will be the kitchen bench. One day at a time peoples, one day at a time.

Then the entire tribe headed out to the Hideous Mall. The two bigger boys have entire new summer wardrobe thanks to that stunning outlet Best and Less. Chef and I almost vomited at the total once we were at the check-out, but figured it is in essence going to dress four boys so we should just shut-up and wear it. The cost I mean. Then there was a quick supermarket stop. Quick because as soon as I walked in there with four children my head exploded. Too many people, too much noise, too many shelf packers (at 11am on a Saturday? WTF?), too everything. Then an ice cream for the crew and home for Grand Final watching.

Gary Ablett Jnr. Son of one of the great legends of the game.
(Photo: Vince Caligiuri from SMH site)

The youngest little fella has well and truly worked out his thumb and is now like a little clock – feeds every four hours, is up for about two, has a grizzle, goes into his cot, talks to his tiger, finds his thumb and is asleep in minutes. God I love a thumb-sucker.

Cheeky chops – Grover, 12 weeks

I am taking this in all its glory because his older brother is back in a phase of not eating, not going to bed, refusing to take a nap, getting up during the night and wandering around the house or as I found him this morning at 6.03am, climbing up the chair at the end of Grover’s cot to jump.in.Grover’s.cot. While Grover was sleeping in it. Oy.

Tomorrow is the boys bedroom as the winter stuff will get sorted and stored and I will try and make their limited wardrobe space work for them. And me.

But now? Now I’m so freakin’ tired I feel like my legs might fall off.

You know that blogging phenomenom where people’s lives seem so serene

This ain’t one of them.
**UPDATED
For those of you who keep an uncluttered* and tidy house look away. The following images will make your neck itch more than you care for.

The following images shit me to tears. Only moreso that I (kinda) worked out how to draw on them to then load them and they’re so freakin’ small you won’t be able to read any of them.

The top of our bookshelves (NOTE: Ikea Ivar shelving we were so going to paint. Bought c. 1995)

The ‘office area’ that is simply code for ‘dump it here to really piss Mum off’
See this desk below? the desk that had a pile of sorted filing sitting on it for six months as I figured the fact I’d sorted it and entered it into our 06/07 spreadsheet meant that someone else could at least put it away? Which I put away on Tuesday after seeing the accountant. It’s now covered again.

And this? If I hadn’t had my soul crushed by the detritus over on the office desk, this’ll do it nicely.
The only thing more depressing than this:

Is this:
And well, you all know my feelings about Thomas the Effing Engine:

For those now in the fetal position, please go and visit Hyena in Petticoats who’s world seems serene, pretty, full of lovely things and artfully arranged room compositions. You’ll feel so much better.

* as opposed to clean. My house is clean – as in the kitchen, bathrooms, tables we eat off etc are all cleaned regularly. It’s the CLUTTER, the CRAP, the artwork, notes from school, junk mail, mail, toys, presssshiiiouusssss toys, that does my head in and make my house look like this!

Take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time

First it happened to Badger and now me. Damn that Heather.

A few weeks back Chef went for a new job. I dropped him off at the interview (because the parking is horrendous in the area where it is) and was just going to drive around exploring the area while he was in there pitching himself as the next best thing. What we both thought would be half an hour turned out to be closer to an hour, but that was OK because for once Virginia VitTrioli was being quite gentle.

Her regular film reviewer was on talking about this little film he’d seen. How the story of the film mirrored in part the life of one of the people in the film. Or something like that. The details are hazy because I was concentrating on the road and imagining my life living in one of these spectacular waterfront apartments. But what caught me was the way this guy was talking about the film. He kept saying that people would listen to him and go expecting some masterpiece and that the film wasn’t that at all, just this quiet, moving, touching tale. And how knowing the back story made it all the more poignant for him. But then there was the clincher. At one point he choked up. On air. Talking about this movie. The dude got teary.

So I knew. I knew that the quiet promise I’d made myself for Thursdays to be my day that I would do something for me as only Grover would be in my care. I had this idea that I’d see films regularly as part of that promise. And sit in cafes and catch up with friends. Instead, the reality is I tended to stay home, unshowered, sitting on the couch and eating myself into oblivion. Project Boombalardy has put an end to the last part but I was still having to find the energy and confidence to actually leave the house.

Then Heather posted a very short little recommendation to go and see it.

It’s called Once.

I saw it yesterday.

And indeed, it was so worth it.

Tangelo cake

I’ve gone through phases of cooking cakes made with almond meal instead of flour and I do like them very much indeed. But then time passes and in my mind grows some misnomer about how they’re fidly or take too long or some such other excuse for not making them more often.

Then the other night the Nigella Bites episode was on where she made her Clementine Cake and I had an idea. Clementines for me are deeply associated with a time long ago when I went to Italy with my school. Yes yes, I was one of those private school girls. If it’s any consolation, the airfare/trip cost was an entire term deposit my mum had put aside for me from some money she’d inherited from a family friend and the spending money was almost entirely my own from the previous two years of working as a check-out chick at Kmart. So you see, while I might have been one of those private school girls, I wasn’t really at all (as opposed to the girls on the trip who just had their own Gold Amex without limits of any kind).

Anyway, our pensione in Florence was very close to the town’s fresh produce market where I would venture at every opportunity and make the shop owners teach me how to pronounce the names of everything correctly. Clementines were very cheap and something I had never seen before. As it was, it has only been in the last 6 months that I saw them in Australia and even then it was only at Fratelli Fresh. They were as divine as I had remembered them. But that was about four months ago and the season is now long gone. In their place I am equally enarmoured by the tangelo . They’re juicy, tangy, easy to peel with very few seeds. I mean, talk about win win win. So I came up with this:

Tangelo Spice Cake

  • 3 tangelos
  • 6 eggs, separated
  • 1 heaped cup caster sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups almond meal
  • 1 heaped tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
  1. Cover the tangelos with cold water in a saucepan and boil for two hours and allow to cool in the water
  2. Preheat oven to 180C and grease and line a 24cm (9in) springform tin
  3. Blend the fruit in a processor until relatively smooth and pale
  4. Beat the sugar and egg yolks together
  5. Fold into the pureed tangerines with the almond meal and baking powder
  6. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks
  7. Fold into the cake batter then pour into prepared tin
  8. Bake for an hour or until a skewer comes out clean and its pulling away from the edges.


The cake was really ‘wet’ but delicious. Not too sweet with a good level of tang. I sprinkled icing sugar over the top as a treat.