inner pickle

hey guess what?

Would you believe in blog-land there's such a thing as a blogiversary? And that I completely missed mine? I've been posting to Inner Pickle for over a year now! May 4th last year was my first post. 

Never being one to turn down an opportunity for cake, here's to a year that I never expected and totally adored!

 THANK YOU! 

Thank you for reading and commenting and supporting and getting it. I'm so incredibly happy to be here in this little spot and that you come back daily and be part of it. I wish I could serve you all up a slice of delicious 4-egg chocolate cake (recipe at end of post), I seriously do. Just to sit down with you and a cup of tea and a cake fork. 

Instead, we're going to play a parlour game. I'm going to tell you a few things about me that you might not know and then you have to tell me something about you.

OK, here goes.

1. When I first met Adam I may have pretended to be more outdoorsy than I actually am. (Although I don't believe he was fooled by my shiny mountain bike for a second. Might have been the black beret/9-hole Doc Martins that gave me away.)

2. I keep talking about learning French but never get around to it. 

3. I have a partially researched PhD topic that I would love to go back to one day. It was on the food supply of the armies of the Crusades. I may have been the only person on earth who thought it was terribly interesting. 

4. A small piece of my heart lives in a small town outside Frankfurt, Germany (one of my beloved sisters moves around a lot.)

5. Turns out pregnancy number three is a total breeze. If you've got two and you're considering a third, I'm a big advocate for the pregnancy bit. Let's review "breeze" in six months time. 

6. In high school I wanted to be a composer. I started writing a musical with a friend of mine when I was 15. (He's gone on to become a very accomplished composer. I now compose silly songs to amuse three year olds.)

7. My favourite novel is Middlemarch, by George Eliot. I think. Or maybe it's a trashy Sharon Penman historical fiction. Or The Little Bookroom, by Eleanor Farjeon. 

8. My favourite food has been variously baklava, cheesecake, grilled cheddar on toast, marinated goats cheese and a really good apple or blackberry pie. I am a fickle, fickle lady.

9. The job I've held down longest was in corporate marketing and communications in financial services. My shortest job was as a private investigator reporting on a medical professional under investigation for fraud. My favourite (and lowest paid) job was for four months only, as a cook for a big preschool.

10. I've lived in Gerringong (country NSW), Sydney, London, Brisbane and Edinburgh for the duration of the Fringe Festival for two seasons. Of the places I've visited I'd most like to go back to Jerusalem and Istanbul. Of the places I've never been, the one I'd love to go to most is India. Or Nepal. Or Tibet. (Hoping our kids like travelling.)

OK! Please tell me something about you! Go on! One or ten things, whatever you like!!

And meanwhile, here's the Chocolate Cake recipe.

It's from the Country Women's Association of NSW and I found it on the side of the White Wings flour bag!

INGREDIENTS
2 cups self raising flour

125g softened butter

1½ cups caster sugar

4 eggs

½ tsp bicarb soda

1 tsp vanilla essence

½ cup cocoa powder

1 cup milk

METHOD
1. preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan forced.) Grease and line 20cm round cake tin.

2. Place all ingredients in large bowl and use a mixer if you have one (I don't) - I used hand beaters - for 3 mins, on medium speed.

3. Pour into tin and bake for 1 hour 15 mins - 1 hour 30 mins, or until cooked. Cool for 5 mins in tin then turn onto wire rack. Ice cake when cool (if your kids are leaning on you for icing!) 

xxx

highlights of a Friday

~ Hanging out with a decisive three year old:

Me: Tilds, you can't just wear leggings, they're kinda for going underneath stuff.

Tilly: I'm wearing these. 

Me: Tilds, do you really need to bring your precious Wiggles bag of animals with you? 

Tilly: Yes, yes I do.

~ Local library action

~ The library finally getting in the Primo Levi book I've had on hold 

~ Running a stick along a metal fence

~ Cutting, glueing, colouring action

~ Hanging a finally-framed print that I love love love, from here

~ Tidying up the pantry (nesting??)... I have a bit left to do though, this (above) is actually only a quarter of the space (I'm very lucky - big pantry). See below - 4 cupboards? One down, anyway.

  

~ Stove-popped popcorn for afternoon tea. The kids have theirs nude, I admit to adding butter and salt. Mmmmm.

~ Friday night dessert night: kick arse homemade icecream which I'll blog the recipe for next week!

~ A successful pumpkin and pea risotto that was gobbled up by everyone. Not even a morsel left to freeze. (You might be wondering at the May menu and absence of leftovers? You should see my freezer.)

~ Another semi-regular Friday treat: An after dinner DVD! The whole family watched the original Disney Snow White tonight. Very cool. The kids were laughing out loud. 

~ Weekend is here. 

Hope you have a wonderful one, wonderful people. 

xxx
 

dog day

I LOVE dogs. Love love love them. Don't have one. Grew up with lots of them (a.k.a farm hounds or as Dad referred to them, co-workers.) Had a very big badly behaved Alaskan Malamute/Alsatian cross called Kiska a number of years ago who I still pine for. 

Our friends with the rabbits? They just got a dog. 

Just look at that face. Meet Turnberry. Yes, I had to ask too. James is a mad golfer. 

 There was a lot of running and chasing and screaming. Marvellous. 

When we got tired of playing run-away-from-Turnberry we played hide and seek.

James' hide and seek technique is a tad flawed.

Surrounded by clowns.    

xxx

gladness

Thank you for the gorgeous comments yesterday. It sounds a bit hollow to say now that I wasn't fishing for compliments, and I really wasn't, but it means a great deal to me to receive your lovely words and to feel like I'm on the right road here, thank you.

Four things to celebrate:

1. a DELICIOUS smelling citrus cake which I put in the oven after I got the kids to bed tonight and which is out now cooling, waiting to be iced, making the house smell totally amazing. Bugger essential oils. This is the stuff. Will post it tomorrow (if there's any left!)

2. ANZACS

Because it was a working from home day today and who is to say you can't reconcile a payroll while measuring oats? Recipe here. They're such a staple Australian treat, perfect for an afternoon munch after preschool and school. 

3. Growing stuff

Next to my now completely out of control sweet potato,  I'm growing mixed lettuce. Look at those little heads just poking up, so perfect.  Also basil in little seed-raiser pots further along the windowsill, but not yet shooting. The kids love it. 

The herbs outside took a beating in the last lot of prolonged Sydney rain and so I've had to start again. I'm also losing the battle with the caterpillars for the tomato plants and am about to google a solution in exterminator mode (sorry caterpillars.)

4. The traveller

Our baby now weighs the equivalent of about 510 paperclips apparently, and might look something like this. She has eyebrows and fingernails and is almost as long as a school ruler (30cms). Plus my belly button sticks out which the kids (and my dear friend Ness) think is totally hilarious and obviously for poking. 

A very good reason to celebrate.

xxx

blogger

There are days when I wonder: why blog? 

It opens you up to criticism and opinion and a whole new world of insecurity. 

Sometimes it feels a bit like a club I'll never quite be part of. The "big" blogs, the ones with big public profiles and thousands of readers, are, for me, at the same time inspiring and intimidating. Some days I just can't believe how productive these women are. How perfect their photos. 

When I come home from a day of work and just manage to get dinner on the table, the kids bathed and storied and songed and bedded and I'm hanging out the washing at 9pm, I look up some of my favourite blogs and they are full of the fabulous knitting and sewing projects people finished in one day, the perfectly arranged (and clean) corners of a perfectly gorgeous house, the fabulous food shots, photographed perfectly in natural daylight. Young children photographed playing happily with organic wooden toys or out in the woods and multiple older children all being successfully homeschooled, and I admit, it can inspire and depress me in equal parts. 

But today. 

I was walking through the supermarket, trailing Henry, consequently carrying three things I did not go into the supermarket to buy, and I bumped into a lovely friend of mine, also shopping. 

She was holding a recipe and buying the ingredients - and it was my recipe. 

She'd seen it here and decided to make it. 

And THAT's why I blog.

I hope I never irritate you.

I hope you never look me up here and feel in any way inadequate. 

My house is rarely clean and my children watch TV while I'm cooking dinner. 

I struggle to finish any project (you may have noticed) and set myself too many, all the time. (See side list.)

But the fact that one person might look up a recipe here and go make it, makes it completely worthwhile. My food itself is lowly and unsophisticated and my food photography is usually rushed and there's certainly never any whiteboards used to reflect light or anything fancy.

But I do really care about what you're eating and the trouble you're having getting your three year old to eat vegetables and your one year old to eat anything but fruit. I really GET the whole question of whether you cook one meal or two (kids + adults) and how to encourage kids who won't eat breakfast/bread/beans to eat something. 

I love making stuff when I get around to it, and I love talking about my family and asking for feedback on things like classic movies (thanks so much for the lists of films! We're going to be all set!)

Thanks thanks thanks for tuning in. 

I'm so glad you're here.

xxx

talking pictures

The photographable stories today: 

1. Teddies on the line. Bit of an accident in a small bed. Who knew how many teddies could be involved? 

  

 Indicative of the favoured few: there were actually more on her bed but these were the potentially affected ones. Each has a back-story, just like all our children's toys. 

2. Gorgeous lilies

I read somewhere that flowers on a table inspire you to clean off the table around the lovely flowers, which makes you then review the mess on the floor underneath and then sort out the room around the table etc. It's true, I think. 

Adam and I are clearing out, boxing up and rearranging, finding room for our new little one who'll be joining us end June/early July. It's fun. And easier with gorgeous and inspiring flowers in view. 

The stories not photographed today:

1. Laughing out loud with Henry's very funny occupational therapist before school.

2. The marvellous midwives at the hospital I'm booked into - I always feel thoroughly cared for when I visit for a checkup. 

3. Reading Between The Wines bookclub, which met at our place tonight, over wine (or tea for the pregnant lady) and yummy coffee biscuits there was a bit of literary discussion. I adore it. It's a wonderful mix of people and there is always some pithy talk and lots of laughing. Perfect. We read Shantaram this month. Next month: Peter Carey's My Life as a Fake.

Hope you enjoyed your Tuesday!

xxx

things are happening...

1. Friday night dessert night

We don't usually eat dessert in our house but (at Henry's suggestion) we started Friday night dessert night a few weeks ago and it's a highly anticipated new addition to family ritual. Here's tonight's: the recipe is at the end of the post.

2. School

or: Breaking in the new school shoes.

I've done a lot of reading about homeschooling in the last few weeks which I'll definitely talk about in a future post, but Henry is enrolled at our local school and due to start next Thursday. All very exciting. We've done a lot of preparation (particularly for a kid who doesn't transition well or 'do' change very well) and I'll tell you all about our school prep next week. He is super excited though. Me too.

And still on schools, of all the conversations I've had over the past two days, hardly one does not involve some discussion about www.myschool.edu.au

In Australia, the federal government has created what amounts to a 'league table' on school's performances. From a parent point of view it's very interesting seeing how your local school ranks (incidentally ours ranked very highly) but the rural and regional schools I suspect must be hating this system, and there are many issues with comparing apples with bananas (as my sister Suze, a teacher, described it.) 

For New South Wales our main broadsheet The Sydney Morning Herald actually provided school's rankings from 1 to about 800. A tough business. Great if you're in the top 20, not sure how the teachers in the smaller schools in the 700s will be feeling about this. Or the parents of the children at those schools... Very interested in your thoughts on this!

  

 3. Artificial colour in the garden.

I have somehow managed to kill the majority of my herbs in the past fortnight. Not from neglect, but perhaps too much water and/or fertiliser (from the worms). Very disappointing. Resorted to spinning cheerfulness to inspire the geraniums not to die too.

4. Beloved neighbours back home

Gosh we missed our lovely neighbours next door when they went away for two weeks! We do see quite a lot of them, most of all this family member above ('Cow') who has spent this week almost entirely at our place. I think she missed us too.

5. Sleeping!

Thank you you beautiful people for all the emails and suggestions about sleeping issues in our house. We are now (touch wood!) all good. 

6. Proud mum

Henry and Tilly made some chocolate chip cookies this afternoon almost unsupervised, and gave a little visiting playmate jobs to do that they thought he could manage. Henry retained the egg-cracking responsibility and only Tilly is allowed to handle the vanilla. I'm really so proud of my budding cooks. 

So what should we call this? Peach and blueberry pie, I think.

Peach and Blueberry Pie

You need 1 portion of short crust pastry, I always use this super quick and easy pastry recipe.

I then used half a portion of this recipe: PLEASE NOTE, Estelle's Mum's recipe, NOT mine... ie the one with the milk powder and water. If I want cold custard, this is the one I make. It sets really well, unlike mine. I used half the recipe because I made it a few days ago and that's all that was left!!

I pressed the pastry into the dish, spooned the custard on top then sliced fresh plums and peaches on top and sprinkled with blueberries. 

Bake for 20-30 mins (my oven was quite hot because I was cooking roast beef and baked potatoes at the same time.)

Anyway, it was delicious. Perfect with a spoon of good greek yoghurt. Yum. I love Friday night dessert night.

xxx

 

Three New Excitements

One of my favourite favourite favourite things to do is to talk about books. 

And weirdly enough, I've never been in a bookclub. None of my friends have ever started one!

So I decided to. And we meet for the first time tomorrow night, and I'm really excited! Some of the most interesting people I know, all in my loungeroom, sipping wine/tea/coffee and chatting about fiction. AWESOME. 

And we even have a great name thanks to Rachel, we're called Reading Between The Wines. 

Something else exciting:

SEWING MACHINE!!!

It's Mum's, a terrificly heavy sturdy old Singer. The same one I sewed my own High School Formal dress on (a lace tablecloth and sheet ensemble, dyed green. Sadly there doesn't seem to be photographic verification that it wasn't as tragic as it sounds.)

I used to sew all the time. I may now struggle to even thread the bobbin. 

I really borrowed it to sew some frocks for Tilly but I do have some stashes of fabric for a couple of other projects! Stay tuned! 

And lastly:

The significance of these two new things is actually neither the excellent new sunnies in preparation for a fantastically fun summer, or the BRAND NEW DIANA GABALDON, number 7 in the Outlander series and there goes three nights sleep... but the fact Henry and I went to Westfield, post work and pre-school (Tilly still at daycare) and managed to buy sunglasses, a novel and go to the bank and it was actually quite fun. 

I remember my friend Catriona's euphoric first trip to the shops with no nappy bag, no changes of clothes, just two small girls, one attached to each hand, and her wallet.

It felt like that. REALLY good. 

OK. I have an excellent novel to disappear into.

Tell me one exciting thing! Something new! Something that has made you buzz!

xxx

housekeeping

Hi! I know some of you have already found it but just wanted to draw your attention to the new Recipe Index page on the right hand side bar. It's a work in progress, I'll categorise it so it's easier to use, but at least it's a start!

Thanks to those lovely friends who've been commenting - without your comments it's a bit of a one-sided conversation and I can have that with my navel. Or with Adam when he's crashed out on the couch at the end of the day. Or with Cow, the next door cat. I love Cow. She sits in my dining room in a patch of sun in the morning. I digress. I love your comments because it gives me an idea of which posts people are responding to. 

I'm also going to list in the right hand side bar all the food adventures I plan to have in the next month, it'll give you an idea of what's cooking!

And meanwhile, I'm going to tell you a few things about me. 

I love cooking.

I love medieval history.

I love reading.

I love writing.

I love blogging.

My biggest goal in life is to publish a novel.

I love Celtic music, even though it can be as daggy as all get up.

I love films.

I love yoga.

I love people, generally. (Which I didn't, when I was younger.)

I love this guy:

He's marvellous and possibly the best fella I've ever met.

I love fabulous food and extravagant dinners but most of all I love grilled cheese on toast, sausages, baklava and I love custard. Any kind. Most of all the kind that my sister Naomi used to bring me home when we shared a house and she knew I'd had a bad day. My sister in law Rachel has taken over that post now that Nomie is out of the country and she will occasionally drop in with a pot of custard to ward off the world. I'm very lucky.

I love dark beer, like Toohey's Old, or Stout or Caffrey's.

I love a really big Shiraz.

I know it's horribly corny but I love love love my family. All of them. They're the best people I know.

I love the country (although I live in the city) and I love this house, currently for sale, three hours out of town:

Awesome, hey?

I have a just-turned five year old who's been in various therapies since he was nine months old and was recently diagnosed with a genetic disorder called Velo Cardio Facial Syndrome. He's developmentally impaired and gets terribly terribly tired and is a HILARIOUS mimic and could re-programme your web browser with his eyes shut.

I have a two and a half year old who has been trailing after her brother through hours and hours of Occupational therapy and Speech Therapy and Physiotherapy and is the most cheerful person I've ever met. She's the queen of stripping naked and wearing her swimmers over her clothes. She loves her dolls above all else and I love watching her put them to bed and sing them baa baa black sheep and pat them till they go to sleep.

All right then. 

Shiraz, anyone?

xxx

what was wrong with the old vegemite?

So they've made a new Vegemite.

This has raised lots of questions with me. 

Namely: why do we need to improve something that has been awesome for so long? Just coz it's old? 

Isn't the fact that it hasn't changed for so long enough?

Here's the guff from the company. It's Vegemite, but different. 

Yeah, OK.

It's different alright. It looks like Nutella. It tastes like a "soft" version of the full throttle salty, sticky, hard-arsed Vegemite we grew up with on our sarnies.

It's all easy on the throat and will simply wipe off children's faces. No more scrubbing with a washer after a piece of toast. The shame of it.

COME ON!!! This new stuff even needs to be refrigerated after opening. Poor soft high-maintenance new Vegemite. 

Don't be swayed by the novelty. 

It'll be all sweet excitement and then you'll miss the faithful old can and what if it's gone? Swept off the shelf by the new, the creamy, the toned up version. Goneski. THEN you'll be sorry. 

It has cream cheese in it for eff's sake. You think it'll last?

It's botoxed. AND it has an extra preservative in it, 234. (The fact that this is pretty harmless and has no known effect on children means nothing to me. Nothing.)

Go on. Be seduced by the diversion. You'll come back home eventually and your disloyalty will taste as bitter as straight Vegemite (original) on the roof of your mouth. 

In your eye, then ;-)

xxx