Pretzels

“Meet the teacher day” means kids home in the middle of the week. It means other kids hanging out here too and lots of hungry people. For entertainment value and for a fool-proof stomach stuffer, we made pretzels. It’s really just like making a batch of playdough (with yeast), sticking it in the oven and then eating it. Making the dough takes around 7 minutes and the shaping dough creatures can take up to an hour if the pretzel artists decide to remodel their monster into a car into a pretzel into hedgehog etc. Highly recommended. Don’t be scared away by having to use *active dry yeast*. It’s a cinch.

Pretzels

4 teaspoons of active dry yeast
1 cup of warm water
2 teaspoons of honey
2 2/3 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt

for finishing them off to perfection:
beaten egg
granulated salt

Preheat oven to 400°f
Mix flour and salt
Mix warm (not hot) water with yeast and honey. Let it stand for 5 minutes.
Mix together and knead.
Make shapes (pretzel shapes, monster shapes, shapes of hedgehogs etc).
Brush with eggwash and sprinkle with an itty-bitty bit of granulated salt.
Bake for 10-12 minutes on a greased cookie sheet.

To be eaten immediately. They are pretty tough if left for a day.

* thanks to my lovely friend Aidan Cassie, who introduced us to the world of pretzels *

- a late update : not all the kids dug the pretzels. Some thought they were down-right yucky. Rather than scrap this blog post about how awesome and easy pretzels are, I will just add in that they are “good, easy, and sometimes down-right yucky”. Personally, I thought they were delicious.

Misty spider morning

We were up at dawn on Saturday to watch spider webs billowing in the breeze.

The misty garden was full of them. One lavender bush was like an apartment block with dozens of beautiful, fully occupied webs stretching between flower stems.

The spectacular web pictured above was strung delicately in a japanese maple just outside our back door.  It had one long anchor line hanging from the bottom, attached to a little grey pebble from the gravel path. The pebble had been lifted by the web and hung suspended about an inch from the ground, spinning constantly. So cool.

And with the garden spiders comes autumn. The rain sounds good on the skylights at night and I am amazed to find *both* children in school full-time, happy and occupied. Meanwhile I attempting to get back into this thing called “me”. Ah, and what was that again? I draw? I make stuff? I write?

Amelia once said to me “Mum, I would like to be an artist when I grow up, just like you.”
How sweet – and how touching! How good to be a role model! After I gushed and carried on and told her how nice that was to hear, she followed it up with an entirely innocent; “so I can do nothing, just like you.”

I ranted and raved about motherhood, and roles made by choice and circumstance and feminist ideals but, in truth, I do feel like things have been on hold for a very, very long time. So now that the house is empty and quiet and it’s time to step up and get busy.

Distractions this week, other than the obvious Facebook and Twitter:

- Goodreads – catalogue your reading list, your book shelf, get recommendations, find friends and creep their reading lists. My friends are all impressively and intimidatingly well-read.

- The flickr photostream of illustrator and cartoonist Tom Gauld.

- The Lonely Polygamist: A Novel by Brady Udall. Not actually a distraction, per se, as it’s for bookclub and also reading is an entirely legit pastime for any aspiring writer (just ask Stephen King). The Lonely Polygamist is great fun and doesn’t feel like hard work in the least. I’m highly recommending it thus far, although I see from my goodreads status bar, I am only 11% of the way through, so perhaps not the best judge.

Ode to a celeriac

I picked up this gorgeous guy at the grocery store.
Have you ever cooked with celeriac?  For such an ugly vegetable it quite honestly produces the most delicious aroma while cooking up in a pot of wintery soup or Bill Granger’s chicken casserole (I will be forever grateful to the Waffler for that one).

I am basing a character in a book on a celeriac so I actually bought this particular specimen to model for me. He’s doing a stellar job but might end up being a wee bit cuter. This one looks like something out of  Pirates of the Caribbean. Regardless of the hairy ugliness of this celeriac right now, I see a bright future for him ahead; mingling with lemon rind, chicken, bacon and melt-in-the-mouth onions in an autumnal casserole.

Inspired by: Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall on eating veg in the Guardian:
“Undeniably, we are faced with the very challenging question: how can we eat really well every day without contributing to global warming, the suffering of animals or the pillaging of our precious marine resources? There is one, unequivocal answer: to eat more vegetables. Addressing this issue isn’t about giving anything up, it’s about filling your boots: embracing a world of fabulous, fresh ingredients and finding some new and irresistible ways to cook and serve them. The crucial thing is the mental shift: after that, I predict you will find it a breeze.”

Following up from the treehouse post:

My Dad writes:

Here are some sites I found useful, but there are plenty of others online if you google “building a treehouse”.

Treehouse construction
1. The Treehouse Guide
2. Out’n'About Treehouse construction

Also some more general sites dealing with decking, stairs and framing
1. Renovation Robot
2. How to Dig Post Holes & Install Posts
3. Buildeazy

Also Peter and Judy Nelson’s book, “The Treehouse Book“, has a useful introductory section about building.

Keeping digital scrapbooks: I have a handful of accounts for bookmarking stuff I like – feel free to have a look around. I collect recipes at chompers, pretty boho house pictures at shameless housey, gardens at creatures of habitat, awesome online videos for kids at meilz and lilo, and everything else at loobylu tumbles. And pintrest. There’s always pintrest.