inner pickle

different-country cousins

I don't know about you, but cousin-ness has always been a special relationship in my family.

I have lots of cousins and I love love love them. I love seeing them at weddings, Christmas, christenings. I've never lived close to many of them, we're always spread out, but it just spreads out the love, right?

So I'm really happy my kids have cousins. Awesome ones. 

Henry is less, shall we say, engaged with his cousins than Tilly who loves them all passionately. She followed Jim (above) around all Christmas, wait for me, Jim! until he found he could shut her up by reading her a story. Or making one up to the pictures. 

Here is Henry attempting to get into my sister Suzie's car as they were leaving Gerringong. No one is buying that disguise, dude.

 

My kids are lucky to have a cousin just around the corner, Stella, who may only just be learning to walk but is shaping up to be a great deal of fun a.k.a. mischief if grins and the desire for high velocity swinging are anything to go by:

And then there are our beloved Germany based family who left Australia today and we are all just a bit sad about farewelling... most of all Tilly. 

Actually most of all me.

  

I miss them horribly when they go.

Tomorrow I'll just remember all the excellent fun we had while they were here, but tonight it's just that they're not. 

Cup of tea, perhaps.

xxx

 

Surprise wedding!

 

So you know how I mentioned here that my beloved brother Tim was visiting from the States with his fiance and we had an engagement party for them a fortnight ago? Did I mention they were planning to get married next July?

Well on December 23rd the fellas all got up very very early to go deep sea fishing, something my Dad organised ages ago. The girls were sitting around over breakfast when Betsy casually asks if we have plans for the afternoon because she and Tim are planning to get married.

Cue my Mum: totally speechless.

My sisters and I: perhaps a bit of excited shrieking.

They organised the whole thing from Virginia, US. The celebrant, the photographer, the fancy dinner reservation, the dress. 

Mum said something about it being a shame Betsy's folks weren't there, only to discover they actually were! In Kiama! The next town! Staying in a hotel!

We were expecting the fellas back at about 1pm until at about that time Adam texted me to say they may have lost an engine on the boat and were about three hours off shore and not to worry, Tim wasn't really very seasick at all.

Excellent.

They finally arrived back at 4pm; I think the celebrant and photographer were booked for 4.30pm. Tim held it together so well and turned up half an hour later from their room looking perfectly dapper.

Betsy meanwhile looked like a dream. Her Mum had brought the dress over with her, and it was utterly perfect.

They were married down on the headland at the back of Mum and Dad's farm, with a gorgeous, simple ceremony, there were a few very happy tears and lots of joy. 

Awesome, hey?

  

{That's my gorgeous and very earnest nephew Dougie (in green) being the ring bearer.} 

Please ting ting ting your glass for Tim and Betsy, a toast to the gorgeously happy newly-marrieds. Hooray for you two and to your happiness. Cheers.

xxx

     

all starred out

Goodness me how many of THESE have I eaten this week?

Mowielicious's Gingerbread Stars.

Quick and delicious, perfect with egg nog or whisky or espresso, I love these biscuits. 

I made about 100 stars per batch but that depends on the size of your cookie cutter and how many family members are lingering, "chatting", waiting till you turn to the sink for a second to take the chance to purloin cookie dough.

My Dad is the worst culprit. All my baking life I've ended up with just a twist less of whatever it is I'm making if he's in the vicinity. He even loves uncooked scone dough. I scold, because it's expected, then spend a minute longer at the sink than I need to until he and all my brothers-in-law skulk off guiltily victorious. It's tradition.

GINGERBREAD STARS

from Mowielicious

130g butter

4 tbsp golden syrup

100g muscovado sugar

330 plain flour

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp bicarb soda

METHOD

Preheat oven to 170C and line two or three baking trays with paper.

Melt butter, sugar and syrup in a suacepan together over a medium heat.

Mix flour, ginger, bicarb soda in a bowl and add melted ingredients to dry mix. Mix well until a ball of dough forms.

Roll out onto floured surface to whatever thickness you like (they rise slightly in oven.) Use cookie cutter to cut desired shape. (Tip: it helps to dip cutters into a bowl of water between use.)

Place on paper lined baking tray and bake for about 10 mins until golden brown. They harden once out of oven.

Dust with icing sugar.

Note to self: Give away as many as you can or you may find yourself turning into a gingerbread star.

xxx 

P.S. There are worse things to be. Room for a small one. They have such a delicious ginger snap.

 

Totally Cheating Christmas Trifle

So what is a festive dessert you can make a couple of days before Christmas when you have a bunch of people coming for dinner and visitors staying and you're still hoping the last online toy order you made will be delivered on time and where on earth is all that Christmas wrapping paper you know you had left from last year?

Totally Cheating Christmas Trifle.

Yes I made it up. No one would publish something with this many pre-prepared items. 

And it was delicious. And unbelievably quick.

 

Given it is now after Christmas and you may never feel like looking a trifle in the eye again let alone a piece of Christmas cake, I'll index it and you never know, maybe next year?

Totally Cheating Christmas Trifle

INGREDIENTS

800g light fruit cake 

Approx 100ml brandy

450g mixed frozen berries (defrosted) or fresh berries if you like.

500ml vanilla pouring custard

500ml thick brandy custard

fresh cherries and icing sugar to decorate

METHOD

Cut the fruit cake into cubes and line a glass bowl with them. Pile rest into middle. Soak cake in brandy. Tip in berries. Pour in pouring custard. Spoon on thick brandy custard on top and smooth out. Decorate with fresh cherries and icing sugar.

A trifle festive? 

Any other short cuts, always welcome here thanks!

xxx
 

Merry Christmas!!

Don't you just love Christmas?

Families and friends clinking glasses, sparkling lights, tinsel, fabulous food? 

Every year I think: why don't I make Christmas pudding in July sometime? It would work perfectly in Australia, it's cold in July.

I love ham, cold, kept in a pillowcase in the fridge. An Australian quirk, I gather, as Virginian Betsy looked utterly horrified as she peeled back the damp pillowcase and said, really? Is this all right?

I love mince tarts, crisp and soft and fragrant from the oven.

And the kids, bright eyed, full of spirit, conked out at 4pm (see above) in new dress on new surfboard, from sheer excitement and perhaps a touch too much icecream.

It's just so cool.

Merry Christmas, lovely people, I hope you've had a marvellous one. 

xxx

PS I was unexpectedly offline in the lead up to Christmas so will be running with pre-Christmas baking in the next couple of days! (Just in case you have any room left for a wee cookie or trifle!)

xxx 

 

missing the yum in yum cha

I used to LOVE yum cha.

In fact, Adam and I used to go all the time, together, sometimes with big groups of friends. We had one memorable birthday for Adam at Marigold a number of years ago that ended, just as we'd finished our last dish, with black smoke pouring from the kitchen and waiters locking up the till and yelling at us to leave the restaurant. Our complementary table of 12 signed happy birthday messages on the stamped card, I think Ad's still got it here somewhere.

Henry's always loved yum cha. A bowl of noodles for breakfast? AWESOME! Lots of nice people coming and going, suspicious eyed fish in a fishtank, it had it all.

He's even yum cha-ed in Hong Kong with Naomi and Julian, and that was a hoot.

So today. Nomes and Jules suggest taking us out to yum cha this morning. Fabulous idea. Except the last time we went Tilly was probably only about 1, not almost 3, and Henry could be occupied with a fried shrimp.

Didn't go so well today.

No noodles available until after 11am. 

Here's Tilly eating apple dealt out by beloved cousin Georgia (thoughtfully brought by Auntie Nomie, thank goodness, the apple I mean, not Georgia.)

 
And that's it, that's all she ate. In between diving between the trolley wheels of the patient serving ladies. I nearly snorted my hot Chinese cha up my nose as I lost her for a second and turned to find her almost ON the bottom shelf of the trolley carrying custard tarts. 

Meanwhile Henry's reprogramming my iPhone a.k.a. playing the kids apps I've downloaded for him. Except for when he found the voice record function and spent some quality time recording messages to himself. 

Nieces Rose and Georgia? The poster girls for yum cha. 

 
Maybe it helped that Georgia was born in Hong Kong? Oh wait, no she wasn't. She was born in Sri Lanka. Dammit. 

And our beautiful Rose? Born in Germany. So not natively predisposed to Chinese food. 'Cept she totally got into it. Excellent child.

Sigh. 

One day they'll be ordering off the trolleys and using chopsticks, right? 

Till then, then.

IKEA meatballs it is.

xxx

 

last days of preschool

Preschool is so interesting to me because it's such an amazing chance to see a kid in a social context of peers. It's very different than one on one friends play sessions. I love it. 

I love watching Henry follow directions and participate and cooperate. 

Such a novelty. (Love him, love his special Henry-world peopled with imaginary friends who live in his foot and giant robots who love conversation. I'd be distracted if I were him, too.)

Anyway, yesterday was his last day of preschool. Very cool. Bit of a lunch, bit of a sing, bit of a presentation. Hooray. 

There is a lot of lasts right now. I got very teary at our final Lifestart session last week. Lifestart was Henry's Early Intervention program, he did a prep for school class there all year on Wednesday mornings and the special educators there have been instrumental in getting him to where he is today: good to go into a mainstream school. 

His preschool experience has also been formative and fabulous, and I'm so glad he's been there all year. 

Next stop: school! (Next February.)

So here is a stand-up cheers to wonderful early childhood education and hardworking teachers and carers who help us look after our precious wee things before we introduce them to the kindergarten melee.

I am so proud of my little dude. And so looking forward to this Christmas break. Our tree is up and the lights are on. I have my pudding and Christmas cake recipes ready to go (thanks Alex!) and the jollyness of the season is descending in spades. Tis the season, hooray hooray!

xxx

 

heaven-sent cheesecake

I have a proclivity to fixate on a food and make it repeatedly in varying versions until I get it right. 

You saw this here.

I admit I have also done this with cheesecake. I don't know how many cheesecakes I've made in my life. Many. Oh so many. 

But the best one I've ever tasted came from a cafe where I worked as a cook about a hundred years ago, and I could never recreate it. I knew the head chef had given me the recipe but I was 19 and I'm lucky if I can find my head at all from 19, let alone a recipe on an index card.

Then one day about 2 years ago it showed up. At Mum's place. 

I don't mean to overstate it but I don't think I've ever been so excited to see a recipe in my whole life. (I have a committed relationship to cheesecake, you have to understand.)

Anyway, for your enjoyment, here it is. 

 The Rose Blues Cheesecake

INGREDIENTS

(this makes a large cheesecake in a 24cm round springform pan)

2/3 box of tiny teddy biscuits (if this doesn't translate to UK or US, try plain chocolate biscuits, about 2 cups)

1/2 packet shredded wheatmeal biscuits

135g melted butter

500g philadelphia cream cheese

3 tablespoons sour cream

juice of 1 lemon

2 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

METHOD:

Crush biscuits in a food processor. Tip into a bowl and stir in melted butter thoroughly. Press into base of springform pan put into fridge while you make the middle.

Soften your cream cheese really well - either in a microwave until you can really poke it, or at room temperature. This will make it smooth. Using a mix master (ideally) or if, like me, you don't have one, hand beaters will do, whizz in the sour cream, lemon, eggs and sugar and beat until smooth. 

Pour onto cold base and bake in oven set to 100 deg for an hour. Then allow to cool/set for another hour in oven ideally or if you're making it late at night as I tend to be, wrap your pan in cling wrap when it's cool enough to go in the fridge.

Please make it, enjoy it, and if you lose the recipe you know it'll be indexed here.

xxx

more family weekendiness

On Sunday, at my parents' place, we had a bit of a party.

{Fabulous niece Georgia. Totally takes after her mother.}

The party was variously referred to as an engagement party or a meet and greet or (by my Mum) as The Betsy Fiesta.

It was to introduce my brother's fiance (they live in the States) to The Family.

Unbelievably the gorgeous Betsy is not on a plane back home as we speak. She's still here, which is marvellous and much more about Tim than the rest of the larrikins she'll shortly be related to.

 {The lovely Betsy, not running madly for the nearest exit}

We had some family photos taken before everyone arrived, and I snapped this one while staying out of the way of the proper photographer...

{I love my Mum and Dougie, in green, in this one. And Jim too, second grandchild from left, I can hear his funny chuckle from here.}

  {Oh, did I take another picture of Rose? And Naomi, responsible for adorable one year old.}

 

There were sixty people at the party, it was a gorgeous day and there was only one minor incident when Dad climbed a ladder to retrieve a kid's ball off the roof and one of my cousins attempted to remove the ladder. No injuries sustained. 

In all the preparations, Dad somehow found time to hang a swing for the kids in the corner of the back garden.

Perfect Australian backyard tyre swing.

Thanks, Grandpa.

xxx 

 

family weekending

{cousins: Jim and Henry}

I know big family weekends are primarily the subject of sitcoms and therapy, but damn we just had a fun one.

We really don't all get together that often. My sister Naomi lives with her family in Germany and my brother Tim lives in the States. My sister Suzie I see more frequently now that we're at least in the same state!

Anyway, it's chaos when we all get together but so much fun.

{Tim being rumbled by various nieces and nephews} 

{Naomi's daughter Georgia, subject of Tilly's deepest adoration}

{Rose}

{Suzie's Jim and Nate}

{Where the girls escaped to for Saturday lunch: Coolangatta Estate Winery. A chance to hang out and giggle and get to know Tim's gorgeous fiance, Betsy, just arrived from the States with Tim}

    

{Mum, Naomi, Betsy, Suzie. The best girls to go to lunch with.}

More tomorrow!

Hope you've all had a fantastic weekend. 

xxx