Cooking, Schmooking

 via Bev at Sunday Stealing

1.  How often do you make food and eat it?

If coffee counts, then twice a day.  Toast for my husband and myself in the morning and the bread has at least been made by my own hands. One of the very few lockdown skills learned.

2.  Do you consider toasting bread, preparing instant noodles, or boiling an egg to be cooking? Why or why not?

Can't see why not. If some sort of heat has been applied to a food instead of merely just opening a packet and eating the contents 'as is', then yes, that's cooking.

3.  What’s your favorite dish to make?

As a main course - spaghetti bolognese. It's the ultimate comfort food and I could eat it at least twice a week and be content.  There's loads of other more exciting and posher foods too, but, at a pinch, if spaghetti bolognese is what's for dinner, I'm always smiling.  AND always wearing two paper-roll napkins down my front to catch the sauce I splatter everywhere when slurping up the spaghetti.  It's a particularly attractive look for Dean, he tells me.

Desserts - baked cheesecakes, tiramisu, ANZAC biscuits, choc chip cookies, pavlova, Eton mess, carrot cake.... We don't eat desserts on an average day, so it's fun to bake something deliciously sweet for a dinner party (hello, I'm in France on the third lockdown - what are dinner parties, again?) or special occasion.

4.  Cooking or baking: what’s more fun? What’s more difficult?

Baking is the most fun because it's an activity that you can do when you're in the mood for it and, unlike what is depicted on TV shows, there's no urgent rush for it.  Think of a rainy afternoon, your favourite music on and baking something that's not very healthy but very fun to eat.  The difficulty is in getting the measurements and baking time correct, but that's a minor issue.

Cooking a sensible evening meal is extremely un-fun. My mother would agree.  On a budget in the 1970s with a husband and three growing kids to feed, lamb chops were then the cheapest meat and we had them done via the electric frypan at least four nights a week accompanied by the predictable boiled peas and carrots and mashed potato.  Her other standby was 'stew.'  She wasn't one to sex things up by calling it a 'casserole' or 'surprise.'

I'd like to think that I'm a bit more adventurous, but really that's only due to several decades of increased and expansive culinary trends, availability of more interesting ingredients and the joy of 'one pot' meals.  If I can do a pasta, curry, soup or stir fry in one pot and slop it into a bowl, then that's my work done.  Creativity in the kitchen is something lacking in me.  Looking in the fridge never provides an inspiration other than to take a bite out of the cheese.  Cooking is much more difficult as it has to be done every. damn. night. and somehow be nutritious, interesting and appealing.  The level of gratitude I have for my scientific husband to express his creative skills in cooking extraordinary dinners nearly every night can not be overestimated.

5.  Who did most of the cooking in your house when you were growing up?

Mum. She was a housewife in the 70s but even as a child it was obvious that she would have liked to have spent the necessary time on meals doing something else.  She was (is) a brilliant gardener, singer, sewer, charity participant and is always willing to help others.  As her children found partners, she'd gladly say, 'My kitchen is your kitchen.  Go for it!'

6.  How have you learned the cooking skills that you have?

Not via Home Economics at school or due to natural curiosity, that's for sure.  Necessity after leaving home, then watching Dean.  I've maybe gained 2% of his abilities but none of his enthusiasm.

7.   Have you ever taken a cooking course? If so, what did you learn? If not, would you like to do one? What would you like to learn?

Nope.  I did a bar and waiting course to land a summer job during uni, but a gift voucher for a cooking class would be my idea of an evil joke.  Breadmaking during lockdown is different because it's so simple and kneading it yourself is a sort of soothing 'being in the moment' meditative gesture.  The smell of it baking is also utterly wonderful.  Sometimes I've fantasised about being rich enough to take Dean to a crumbling old castle in Tuscany to learn from an Italian chef, but even he has not taken this idle idea into consideration.  

8.   Have you tried cooking food from another culture? What did you prepare? How was it?

Depends on what you mean by 'another culture' because the recipes I've followed have been by English peeps like Jamie or Nigella or old Women's Weekly cut outs.  These would all be slightly anglicised so that we can get our hands on the ingredients.  Dean has been impressed with the naan breads I made, but, again, I had to thank Mr Oliver's online recipe for that!

9.   Is it cost-effective to do your own cooking? Can you save money by cooking?

Of course! Ingredients and the time taken to cook your own meals is a far cheaper than eating out. However, I don't want to put down anyone who orders more than their fair share of Uber Eats.  My Italian neighbour lives on his own and in his third lockdown, the Uber driver is appearing more often at our front gate.  Claudio told me that it just got tiring and depressing having to cook lunch and dinner day after day, for one person for so long.  Despite having an extended curfew of 7pm (it was 6pm but daylight saving has been taken into account), from tomorrow we are no longer permitted to order food deliveries after 10pm.  That will most definitely reduce the sound of scooters on the street below at midnight!

10.  Would you rather do the cooking or do the washing up afterwards?

Wash up. Every time.  My personal OCD involves constantly putting away vegetable peelings straight into the bin, stacking the dishwasher, soaking pots and wiping down counters; tidying up on the go. Sometimes I put the chopping board or knife in the dishwasher and Dean has to say 'Hey! I'm still using that!' He's been lovingly honest about telling me to stay OUT of the kitchen until the meal is served and only then I can enter and work my OCD magic.  With the incredible meals he makes, this arrangement is perfect.

11.  Do you use recipes to cook? If so, where do you get the best recipes? Do you get them from friends, family, online, or from cookbooks?

I think all Aussies had the famous Women's Weekly cookbook which every person who left home usually got given as a particularly useful present.  I don't have many cookbooks, but do have plastic folders of recipes handwritten by friends or family, printed off the 'net or ripped out of magazines.  The ones that are actually slotted into a separate plastic insert are the holiest of holies because they're the ones that I use and can rely on.

12.  Have you ever tried to prepare some food and just totally ruined it? What happened?

Oh, there's so little time.....  I once nearly broke my flatmate's blender by smooshing raw carrot, onion, tomatoes and celery and then heated up the muck in the microwave until it was boiling.  That it tasted like garden dirt helped me learn that patience and long cooking is key.

Trying out a traybake for American-style macaroni cheese resulted in an unedifying claggy mess that sucked the saliva out of your mouth after the first bite.  Even the dog refused it. Would have made a handy cement for a garden wall though.

Easter hot cross buns in last year's lockdown.  The mixture was supposed to be 'sticky' after the first leavening, but it still seemed too wet and I added more flour.  The results were not dissimilar to office 'stress balls' but studded with a few sad sultanas.  If thrown from our balcony they could have seriously hurt somebody.

13. Do you prefer cooking at home or eating out at a restaurant? Why?

Home. Because it's Dean's cooking.  He doesn't follow recipes, but when we do eat out (again, 'eat out' what's that again?) he takes note of what he's enjoying and then tries it his own way at home. Even in Italy, the pasta dishes we tasted were no better than his. His roasts are spectacular, curries fragrant and varied and when our vegetarian daughter is home his standards of cooking almost seem to improve. His eggplant parmigiana makes me drool just typing about it.

Also, restaurants (places I dimly remember) mean that you can't be yourself, often have to shout to be overheard by the music and can sometimes feel like the lady at the tiny table wedged in next to yours is closer to you than your partner seated opposite you.  The wine list prices are also out of control, especially if you know what they cost at the supermarket.  Plus, it means I have to dress up, which is a pain.

14. Is cooking a social activity for you? Do you like to do it with other people, or do your prefer to do it alone?

Nope.  Not social, not fun, just a chore.   Unless I'm baking, which I do prefer to do alone with music of my choice that is out of earshot (and therefore ridicule) of anyone else in the house.

15. Do you have a lot of cooking equipment? How often do you use it all? Do you have any pieces of equipment that you rarely ever use?

Not as much as you’d think, considering Dean’s talents.  Our apartment is not large, so every appliance has to be really worth it in order to take up precious space.  We have a bamix-style stick blender, coffee machine, kettle, sandwich press and handheld beaters.  All are well used.  Utensils are mainly from IKEA or Swiss supermarkets and do us just fine.

Items such as slow cookers, rice cookers or juicers seem like they’d quickly end up in the storage unit right next to the raclette machine bought on a whim a few years ago.

I'll sign off by 'gifting' you this picture below.  Source unable to be found, but it seems to be from the time when setting anything in jello was the grooviest of party foods, baby. I can truly swear that even my mother ignored this trend, as have I.

Crying over Q and As

Some interesting questions from Bev at Sunday Stealing but I'm feeling recalcitrant and might do it on another day of the week.  So it's Tuesday and boy-oh-boy, what seemed like a fun Q and A has become quite emotional for me.

1. An unforgettable day in my life.

When my daughter was born.  She started sending me rather strong signals of her intentions to enter the world at a dinner party on Friday night.  It was all rather exciting and I was happy to share it with the other four guests.  Our prenatal classes had informed us that early contractions are NOT like in the movies, with water gushing and being rushed into Emergency two minutes later, but to stay calm and time them.  These were only occurring every twenty minutes or so.

At home that night though, I couldn't sleep and sat up buffered by every ornamental pillow we'd normally toss off the bed when we climbed into it.  I wrote down the time and duration of each contraction and by Saturday morning, they were every ten minutes.  I still knew to stay calm as our teacher had told us that hospitals sent many excited new parents back home until the contractions were every five minutes.

I tried to stand up against our mantelpiece and look nonchalant as Dean sold our tiny little Suzuki to a local florist, not wanting her to know that a) I was having contractions and b) they hurt like hell.

By 8pm Saturday evening, they were five minutes apart. The Melbourne Women's and Children's hospital was still located in Carlton then and a stone's throw from Lygon Street - the busiest street for bars, restaurants and shops in Melbourne.  Dean drove around the block several times trying to find a parking spot. 

Eventually we saw one, but so did another car - I wound down the window of our 'brand new' ex-government Mitsubishi station wagon we'd bought the week earlier in preparation for parenthood, and asked them if, because I was in labour, if we could take the spot.  They kindly agreed and instant karma was bestowed on them as the spot in front of ours also became vacant.

Once in hospital, the contractions were stronger but I wasn't dilated enough.  To avoid all the rather icky stuff, it is best to summarise the experience as having had three different marvelous midwives help us through it before ending their respective shifts. Epidurals, vomiting from bearing down so much and seeing poor Dean's exhausted, sleeping face smooshed up against the steel grey side of the bedside drawer.  By lunchtime, our baby's heart rate was starting to fade and I then started living a Hollywood movie scene when they rushed me into surgery, Dean wearing what looked like a shower cap and tears in his eyes and he ran alongside us.  Our daughter finally emerged via forceps and me numbed from the waist down in case a Caesarean was needed, at 2.15pm on Sunday afternoon.

She was blue, but rapidly turned pink, with a thin coating of strawberry blonde hair.  We'd made a human being!  I was also selfishly glad that I was still too numb to be moved because the infamous tar-like meconium poop she produced was left to be seen and dealt with by poor Dean.

That was 23rd May 1999.  A week overdue, so if you're into astrology, our expected Taurus became a Gemini.

  

2. My favorite snacks

Chocolate.  In my chocolate reviewing days, I was into dark chocolate, but after a decade in Switzerland, it's milk chocolate mostly.  Not the particularly posh stuff either.  Lindt never lets me down, nor the number that appears on my bathroom scales.  However, nothing chocolate 'flavoured' because that's always a very poor substitute and a disappointment, especially chocolate milk, cake or ice-cream.  

3. My biggest fashion accessory

My gold bangles (three) and perfume.  I've adored bangles (plastic, metal, silver, fake gold, real gold) even as a child and my parents gave me a gold one in 1990 and Dean gave me two others in 2005 which was our tenth wedding anniversary.  I don't take 'em off any more after one once broke, so I'm an automatic candidate for an airport security pat-down.

Perfume.  Unbrushed hair and teeth, baggy tracksuit pants, old running t-shirt and stained parka are my 'go to' clothes during this never-ending French lockdown, yet I still give myself a spritz.  My lifetime favorite is the original Chloe that I've used for over 30 years.  It's hard to find and I don't like the newer versions, so Tiffany, good old White Musk from the Body Shop, Yardley's Violet, Chanel No 19, 4077 Cologne and a few of the Burberry's are also in use.  Chloe is for the bestest of best days.

4. My biggest celebrity crush

C. Thomas Howell.  Ponyboy in The Outsiders.  That adorable face....!  I spent a lot of my hard-earned babysitting money to buy imported UK teen mags like 'Tiger Beat' in order to find posters of him.  He didn't reach the fame or cinematic heights of most of his Outsiders costars but that face.....

5. One hobby I would like to learn

I would have said 'learn French' but my old brain is always working in English. I can't help but automatically read every label, street sign and, to his great annoyance, Dean's iPad when he's sitting next to me.  I love alliteration and thinking up things to write about, so when I did try to learn French my brain just....turned itself off.  I know that you must give things a good hard try and nothing comes easy and you live in France and you're lacking confidence and, and, and.....  If it could be 'magicked' into my brain I'd be thrilled.  

Maybe a drama class for oldies?  A fantasy would be to occasionally get to play an unglamorous but rude old lady who couldn't care less about what swear words she gets to say at shocked youngers.  That seems like fun.

6. My OCD habits

Harrison Ford was a carpenter by trade and he once mentioned in an interview that he can't help straightening books or magazines on coffee tables so that they're in a straight line with the edges of the table.  I do that too.  Even before 'happy birthday' hand washing timings of Covid-19, my hands resembled scaly claws due to the dozens and dozens of times I wipe down the kitchen counter, sink top, table, coffee making machine, spills etc.  The worst decision I've made was deciding on a stainless steel splashback for the stove top and sink because the calcium-rich water here shows up every single drop and I seem to spend every single moment wiping them off.

7. If I could eat one last meal

Dean cooks an amazing spiced coated chicken schnitzel that he serves with twice cooked roasted potatoes, onions, carrots and garlic. The soft roasted garlic oozes out of the skin and doesn't give you the dreaded 'ten feet distance away from me, please' breath afterwards.  Add steamed broccoli and fresh asparagus and sweet corn.  Dessert could be a good baked cheesecake or carrot cake struggling under the weight of the cream cheese icing.  Add a generous handful of fresh raspberries.  Moet to wash it all down with.

8. Working on my fitness

Both of my achilles and both of my (I don't want to say 'bone spurs' because I don't want to have ANYTHING IN COMMON with Donald Trump ever) plantar fasciitis thingies have finally ended my running.  Even with a treadmill on a much slower speed and planned shorter distances, these flare up and I spend more time off recovering than doing any actual running.  The treadmill is a good place to drape bed sheets to dry though.

I have a fitness DVD by Jillian Michael called the 'Thirty Day Shred' that I could probably recite word for word, but after the end of Lockdown One, I lost interest.  My thighs sighed with relief.

During Lockdown Two, we adopted Felix.  As a four year old dog, he's got the body of an athlete in his prime and, as an apartment dweller with a balcony for a garden, he needs and deserves long walks and the opportunity to explore and have a deep think for several seconds before deciding to pee on the wild chives in front of him.  This has been a genuine gift for me.  No, not the obsessive excrement eating or raging barks at elderly folk, but the distances we end up walking each day.  I'm not seeing any amazing weight loss but, unlike Felix, no-one controls what I get in my food bowl per day, so that's on me.

9. What I spend money on

Apart from the mortgage, utilities, credit card and groceries?  Wool for the scarves I've been knitting as a LGBTQI fundraiser.  You can see some of them here at  https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/EverythingWoolBeOk.  

For some reason it's stuck in AUD prices which makes postage estimates from France (especially during Covid) almost impossible.  I've had better luck selling them privately.  I can't knit anything fancy or know how to follow a pattern but the repetitive nature of knitting is comforting and helps stop me from picking at my fingernails quite so often. Elmo's been an enthusiastic model, but as soon as I use up my last batch of wool I'm going to donate them to the French Federation - https://federation-lgbt.org/

10. My favorite recipe

No single one, as I'm not an enthusiastic cook, which means that sensible things like evening meals I have boring 'go tos' like spaghetti bolognese, various soups, various stir-fries and quiche. That's why Dean is the chef in our house: he enjoys it and is particularly good at it.  Favourite recipes for me always involve sweets.  That said, I'm still baking our lockdown bread because I like the hands-on habit of it and the process involved.  But being asked to 'bring dessert' which means make a white chocolate and blueberry cheesecake, tiramisu, pavlova or carrot cake means a happy Saturday afternoon in the kitchen listening to ABBA as I bake.

11. The best part of each season

I'll apply my European view on these, as the seasons are much more distinctive from each other than where I came from.

Summer - fields of sunflowers, outdoor drinking, long hours of daylight

Autumn - the beautiful changes of the leaves.  Cooler nights which are better for sleeping.  Seeing cute little pumpkins sitting on ancient stone door steps and fences as decorations.

Winter - Snow skiing (if not shut down due to Covid as it has been this past season), seeing robins hop along the path ahead of where Felix and I are walking, Christmas decorations and traditions making more sense in the cold weather.

Spring - the violets, daffodils and snowdrops that have somehow survived the winter and emerge into the still not-very-reliable sunshine.  Blossoms.  Felix trotting on green grass dotted with tiny white daisies. Being able to sit out on our balcony again.

12. A life lesson I’ve learned

There's always a tiny grain of truth in stereotypes.  They can be over-generalised and sometimes cruel, but they expose a commonality that a lot of us recognise.  None of us want to be BE a stereotype, but we can sure recognise them.

13. My inspiration to blog

I did it pretty regularly as a way to recover from a full-on breakdown in 2005, before stopping in 2013. My daughter was then a teenager and it didn't seem right to mention her at that time of her life as it was her own.  Plus, my older brother's wife emailed me to say that she'd always disliked me; didn't know why but had decided to therefore cut me, my husband and then thirteen year old child out of her life forever.  Up until then she had been a regular reader and commenter on the blog and I figured that she didn't deserve to see what I was thinking or getting up to if she was OK with making my daughter cry every birthday when she realised each time that her aunt (and uncle) had completely written her out of their lives for no reason that has ever been explained to her, me or the rest of my family.  

My daughter is grown up now; at university in Edinburgh and I'm trying to see if I can write stuff that isn't just relying on what a silly mummy I am.  Therefore, starting up again has been a bit slow and painful. I'm not sure who still reads blogs as about 99% of my old links have disappeared and tiktok just doesn't seem to be the right option for creaky old me.  I didn't know if I had anything worth sharing or saying - I still don't know - but I feel somehow, as though I want something of me put somewhere. If nothing else, having stuff to think about does help with my depression, self confidence and wondering just how and where I fit. 

14. What’s inside my closet?

Pretty boring clothes, to be honest.  Maybe two dresses, but the rest are shirts, t-shirts and jackets. As a teen/early twenty something, I was very much into fashion, but for me it was out of anxiety.  I didn't have the movie star looks of my mother and it was my friend Jo the guys flocked to, not me.  Fashion felt like a teeny tiny way to at least look the part.  After doing the two-year working holiday stint in London, it was travel, rent and cider that was more important to me.  These days, I just want my clothing choices to ensure that no-one runs away from me screaming.

15. Let me brag a minute.

You've got me on a down day, unfortunately.  I have so much to be thankful for, but when the 'Big D' (my sad attempt at nullifying the effects of depression by giving it a disrespectful nickname) kicks in, it can seem like I'm dragging one foot behind the other, stretching my facial muscles to adequately resemble the socially acceptable expression and keep it up until bedtime.  The good thing is that these days or weeks don't last forever.  It has taken me a lot of time, mistakes and incredible personal pain to finally understand that.  

So, maybe my 'brag' is that yes, I have depression.  And yes, it does define me - how can it not?  It is a part of me and sometimes wields a much larger and more exhaustive control over me than I'd like.  Other days I'm only dimly aware of it, but am never in doubt of its existence or that it's lurking there, always waiting and watching.  Maybe the best advice I can give myself - and lord knows I try to - is to say what I'd say to anyone I loved who was suffering.  

"What would you tell your friend?" They'd invariably come up with some pretty decent responses and I'd say, "well, if it's good enough for your friend, it's good enough for you."  Perhaps that advice is something to brag about.