i love ratties

Or, seven years since we first met.
Everything and nothing in these numbers,
a lifetime wouldn't be enough anyway!

Happy Anniversary Bear!

Husband of the Year two years running!

This is Milo, sleeping in his hammock during run around time. He's not well at the moment, so he's resting a lot more and running around a lot less. Hopefully he'll feel better soon. He's very special to us.

Adapted from this recipe by Neil Perry. I doubled it and found that it actually filled three ramekins, so that was a bonus! Unfortunately the flavour was rather muted. Next time I think I'll cook the fruit puree/juice with a bit of cornstarch to thicken it first (like this recipe by Luke Mangan), and see if that makes a difference. I've had Luke Mangan's raspberry souffle and it was totally amazing. Especially with the hot chocolate poured in.

I made some warm chocolate ganache for this too. It was A Good Thing.

Afterwards, the boys got to have a go at removing the baked on bits.







But only a little go, because, well, you know.

Some pictures in detail of the invading zucchini plant in our backyard.
I am always astounded when I see how large the flowers are when open (in the mornings).









Tasty tasty flowers. Mmm.

This evening, faced with two bunches of rapidly wrinkling passionfruit, I hunted around for a recipe. I didn't quite feel like a passionfruit tart, and shortbreads didn't use up quite enough at a go. What I really wanted, I suppose, was a passionfruit mousse cake, one of those things that you ever only get at classy bakeries with expensive arty decorations on that cost more than 50 dollars.

Unfortunately, I am also an impatient cook and frankly couldn't be arsed with the fuss of making the mousse. So, instead, I looked through my trusty Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander, dismissed 'jackie's mum's sponge cake' (made it before, too dry, eggy and gritty), and thought I'd give the Genoise Sponge a go, and What A Massive Success! I have Made a Sponge Cake! a NICE sponge cake!

This sort of domestic achievement is quite overwhelming. Next, I might just sew my own curtains! Make lace doilies! Hand me my frilly apron!

So anyhow, I am going to preserve this moment for posterity by writing down the recipe here. I tweaked it the wee-est bit and don't want to forget. If you're thinking of making a sponge cake, this is The One. As Bear says, it was fan-bloody-marvellous. The best sponge cake he's ever had, he's serious.

This is where I would put the photo except I haven't taken a photo. The cake is now sitting in the fridge divided into several tupperwares and being unattractive, so I'll take a photo next time I make it. I still have plenty of passionfruit to use up!

( the recipe, etc )

All fuzzy half asleep.

This was our veggie garden, many months ago.



The climbing beans are in the middle, with dwarf butterbeans at the bottom, and two rows of carrots on the right. Corn is on the left. The zucchini are further away in the background, and there is some of the dill which grew like crazy then went to seed just like that! Tomatoes are all the way to the left, not really in the picture.

( More )

Saturday. Big Wet sneezes. General air of low grade misery. Blame it on allergies.

Sunday. Mucus mucus everywhere! Require afternoon nap. Use up entire box of aloe vera tissues. Cook up a luscious veggie and bean stew thing. Unable to taste it.

Monday. Overnight, the mucus has turned a yellowish-green. Very fashionable. Yellow is very in! Wake up every two hours to dispense of nose gunk. Start coughing. Uhoh! Inhale plenty of asthma medication in the hope that it will not turn into bronchitis this time. Stay at home and proceed to burn my cheap frying pan (and eggy remains) down to charred rusty mess by forgetting to turn the stove off. Also spill contents of jar of raw honey onto rug. Do two loads of laundry (including rug) and stagger inside, winded from exertion and sunlight. Fantasize about homemade chicken soup with fresh ginger. Mmmmm....

Cheer up a little by looking at absolutely gorgeous rattie photos while drinking troublesomely-gotten ginger, lemon and honey tea.

Hmm!

I just wanted to write the recipe down for the salad I had for lunch today (and yesterday) so that I don't forget it. I didn't take a photo or anything, because I didn't think to do so, but it was really good. So, for posterity:

Some cherry and plum tomatoes, from the garden
A small bunch of rocket leaves from the garden
A cucumber
Red bullhorn chilli (or capsicum)
Small shallot (or half a one)
Ligurian olives

Chop up relevant ingredients into appropriately-sized pieces (finely dice the shallot).
Sprinkle over some dried oregano, pinch of salt.
Squeeze of lemon juice. Half a lemon per serve.
Drizzle spoonful or two of good extra virgin olive oil
Toss about, then add a generous quantity of fresh ricotta on top, as much as you like (I like a Lot), then sprinkle more oregano over, and grind some black pepper, and you have a really nice lunch! I especially like how the olives go with the ricotta. Both from the Norton St Grocers' incredibly popular deli section.

And now, Bear has just handed me a bowl of homemade vanilla ice cream with fresh mango and toasted almond slices. PHWOAR!

One of the unexpected joys of our new house has been the fig tree, which was surprisingly prolific last summer considering its dead-like scabrous condition during winter when we first moved in. Perhaps it overheard me saying that we should cut it down because of said dead-like appearance, and made a special effort to show us that it was still alive.

Anyhow, several very pleased people benefited from our fig tree last season, because we don't actually like figs very much. They're okay, you know? But other people go mad for them and they are expensive to buy, so the fig tree made us quite happy by allowing us to give figs away and make friends and family happy. Friends and family and all our neighbourhood bats apparently, who ate the majority of the crop. Short of caging the entire tree in wire mesh, I'm not sure that we could have really prevented them from taking what they wanted!



This year, the fig has grown in masses, throwing out an explosion of bright green leaves over the first warm days of spring and then taking it from there. Luckily, it hasn't just contented itself with producing a dense foliage and plenty of little figlets have appeared as well. One was nearly ripe a few days ago, but before we could pick it, it disappeared!

Tonight, Bear and I are sitting in the study (the fig tree is just outside the window) when I hear the tell-tale flap-flap-flap-flap-CRASH! that is the sound of a bat (crash)landing in our tree. I tell Bear and he is mildly concerned, noting that there was another fig that was about to ripen. He is, however, looking at second-hand cars to buy and is concentrating hard on trying to find something cool despite being cheap, small and Japanese (my criteria). A moment later, I go to the toilet, and I hear Bear walking past. He says, I'm going to chase that bat away.

I protest. I tell him not to, the bat has to eat too!

He says, I don't want it to eat my fig.

I plead, But you weren't going to eat it either!

(Silence. I am trapped, powerless, on the toilet seat.)

Bear comes back in, satisfied. He tells me that there are other fig trees in the neighbourhood and that the bat can go and eat from them.

...

Well that was half an hour ago and Bear has gone to bed now. Which is just as well, because I have just heard another flap-flap-flap-flap-flap-flap-CRASH!

:D

We made a chocolate souffle!



In our saucepan!

It was light and luscious, for at least the first serving, and then it became decadent and rich and then finally too much, as we greedily helped ourselves to large seconds, polished off with the aid of strawberries and whipped cream.

Yom.

Today, I called my literature review stupid. As in, "I have to go back to work now on this stupid literature review".

Immediately, I apologised to it.

(In my head, not out aloud, I'm not performatively crazy yet!)

I think we will all be glad when it is finished.

Writing a literature review for one's phd thesis is not, as it turns out, a matter of finding everything relevant in a fairly narrow topic of study and creating a kind of annotated bibliography (as it was in honours), nor is it the gathering of everything relevant and then evaluating and synthesising the lot in a coherent back history that leads naturally to your study (as it was in masters). So far, it has been the digging up of everything you've read in the past 2.5years, finding stacks of un/half-read papers, coming across new citations that you absolutely must obtain (and then somehow read), and in an iterative process, alternating pedantic criticism (hating it - it's so superficial!) with seeing things in new light and with new insight (Oh the subtlety, the clarity!), all the while making notes in a document optimistically called thesis.doc, hoping it will all come together in the end (the END!). All the while, Not Feeling Any More Knowledgeable, but Quite the Opposite!

Why why why why why why why!

>_<

As my 29th birthday approaches, two things occur to me.

1. I have nearly used up all of my twenties, and
2. I am running out of youth!

For that matter, 29 isn't even really a 'twenty' but so much more an 'almost thirty!' (with forced-cheery exclamation mark)

No more am I going to blithely go about exclaiming how much I feel like I am already 30 anyway because of the company I keep. It's actually happening, and it is not without scariness!

In other news, I made the above peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies tonight using this recipe and store-bought Kraft peanut butter and they look great but tasted odd. Maybe I didn't mix in the baking powder well enough. Perhaps they will taste better tomorrow, but if you want to make a chocolate chip and nut cookie, I think this recipe by David Lebovitz (recipe link is to 101cookbooks.com) is much nicer.

Simon makes an excellent pillow for Beans.

Doesn't that look so warm and cosy? I swear Simon is the plushest creature ever. It is impossible to resist picking him up and rubbing your face in his flagrantly fluffy fur. Mmmmh!

I wish he was my pillow!

Oh well. Off to bed now.

Hanging out with your mate.

The best way to spend your holidays!

(P.S. I have so much free time! It's incredible!)

Milo sitting on his comfy facecloth rug, looking out of his cardboard house.

I love making houses that rats like to hang out in. So satisfying in that deep warm fuzzy happy way. Like baking cherry pie. Hmmmh.

Not at all like the self-flagellating prickly drudging falutin that is academia. Some of the time anyway. I'm just sayin'!

From scratch! >_<

Ravioli filling was roasted butternut squash, garlic and pine nuts, and the pasta was made with organic eggs and 35% durum wheat flour for extra bite.

We ate it with sage butter, goats cheese and sage flowers.

It felt like an enormous success, since the previous (and first) time we made ravioli it turned out a flat wet floppy mess, so this attempt was pretty astounding, on a personal as well as tasty level.

(Quietly elated.)

:D

Such fun to watch, this video by Keith Loutit, on scenes in Sydney made to look miniature.

My bright-eyed boy has been battling some itchy mites for a month now, with a horrible red and scrappy looking sore chin. Tonight we did another dose of the treatment and accompanying mad scrub down of everything, and he looks a little happier, maybe? Fingers crossed everyone for my little Milo!