A litte house in a tree

My dad has just finished building a treehouse right down the back of my parent’s garden. My dad is a meticulous planner, and a brilliant problem solver and he has put in a grand, last-ditch effort to get this finished so that the girls could enjoy it before we leave for Canada. We are all so impressed with this little beauty which he built from scratch and from his own design and is now perched amongst the boughs of a tree. When you are standing inside, and then peer up through the plastic roof you can see the nose of a possum hiding in his little wooden possum box, high up above. The magpies and the noisy miners loiter about up there too. All that is needed now is a family of small marsupials or rodents of some kind to make a home underneath, nestling around the tree trunk and the uprights and it would be an entire apartment block of cheerful but quite noisy creatures.

Sunday Night Spag Bol

There is nothing nicer than something bubbling away on top of the stove on a Sunday evening. When I was small, Sunday evenings were the pits. I would watch the Donnie and Marie Show and then cry, every single Sunday of the term. Donnie and Marie meant that Monday morning – and school – was nigh. The horror! But now I like Sunday evenings. Is it because Monday morning and school is nigh? Possibly! But I also like the nesting feeling; the last moments of quiet and calm before the busy week begins, the turning on of the lamps, the kitchen radio playing, the kids are well rested and usually involved in some game, or drawing or watching a beloved movie on the couch, finally without screeching at one another. And so the cheerful burble and the delicious smells of something in the big pot fits into all of that.

Lately, that big pot is filled with bolognese sauce on a Sunday, which we serve up for dinner and then freeze the rest. It’s so easy and so delish! Until early this year my bol sauce consisted of meat + a jar of Paul Newman’s. Not very posh really. Wanting a change, I had done a little research (well, I opened Stephanie’s encyclopedia of cooking) and felt that inward lazy sigh when I looked at the list of ingredients… it looked very good but I wanted something quick –  a step up from the meat + Paul’s, but quick just the same. While we were holidaying up in Sydney in January my Sister-in-Law defrosted two tubs of her bolognese sauce and it was so good. So good! And she assured me that it was very easy and exceptionally freeze-able. I copied out the recipe pronto – it’s a Ragu recipe from Delicious magazine — and I can’t find a copy of it online and I didn’t note down which issue it was from … but I have fiddled with it now anyway. Here’s what I do:

Sunday Night Spag Bol

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove (or more) of garlic, minced
500 g beef mince (ground beef)
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
3/4 cups (180 ml) beef stock (or half red wine)
2 x 400 g cans diced (crushed or even chopped up after opening) tomatoes
1 dessert spoon of dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon tomato sauce (use my Mum’s if you can get your hands on it! It’s as rare as hens teeth).
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a large nonstick fry pan over high heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook for 3 to 4 minutes or until softened.
Add the mince and brown well for 10 mins – making sure to break up any big lumps with a wooden spoon.
Add tomato paste and cook for 1 minute.
Add stock and stir until the stock has almost evaporated.
Add canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, sugar, salt and pepper. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the lid and cook for a further 5 minutes. At this point I cover it again and let it bubble away for another fifteen minutes or so. I don’t know why – I seem to think that it makes it taste better, but I have never tried *not* doing it so I have nothing to compare it to, so let it bubble away for another 15 to 20 mins, stirring every so often so that it doesn’t stick on the bottom, and making sure it doesn’t dry out too much.

Serve on pasta with parmesan cheese and a green salad – or in lasagna. It’s pretty good in lasagna actually.

Serves 4

I usually double the batch and then divide it up into small containers and freeze it. My Sister-in-Law also suggests added grated veg to it to get the extra goodies into veg-phobic kids.

By the way – did you see the Gruffalo on the ABC a few weeks ago? We taped it and play it so much! It’s our favourite Sunday evening viewing.

Melbourne craziness

We took the kids into the city on Saturday morning – we wandered the laneways and crossed through Federation Square… for us it was a little like this cheesey musical number (via @twitofalili), but all I can say is that sometimes it pays to have a super grumpy, tired pre-schooler who forces you to abandon your adventure earlier than expected and come home for some r & r. An hour later the city looked like this:

We were there to see Van and Isobel’s work “You Were in my Dream” in Experimenta Utopia Now – apparently there was some flood damage after we left – but if it’s up and going again, it’s very worth getting to before it closes this weekend.

My parents quite like books

Doodling

We are slowing moving into my favourite time of year – Autumn that is. I am still yet to catch my breath after the start of the school term and, as we are doing home renovations, there is chaos all around us, but I can see the golden autumn light shining up ahead with the promise of less heat-waves and more polished floorboards.

So, now what to do?
What to do?
Where are my children? Far from home! (well. not really. Quite close by at educational institutions actually.)

But suddenly I am all at sea. After 7 years where motherhood has been my primary focus I am wondering how to scramble back.

“Let the nothingness wash over you” is what my dad would say, he in the midst of the first days of retirement. “Write a blog post!” My mum would chime in, always checking and often being disappointed these days. “Make some more of those bloody bunnies and make yourself some cash!” is what some of my friends would say, still rolling their eyes at the ludicrous yet profitable nature of that pass-time. “Get your illustration folio together and get some freelance work” some of the others would suggest. “Finish that flaming second draft, you lazy nong,” Is what another bunch entirely would shout at me, as their waggle their chopsticks over Beef in Mandarin sauce at our favourite cafe. “Make me a chocolate cake!” Is what Amelia would shout as she waves goodbye at the school gate. “Don’t forget to pick me up and then can we watch tv?” Is what Lily would say.

But I don’t know. I just don’t know. This term is so short. Before I know it I will have settled into a routine only to find that we are on the eve of the Easter Holidays. Can I put off real life until term two perhaps?

In the meantime I am going to drink a cup of tea, read Keri Smith’s How To Feel Miserable as An Artist and write and enormous list.

Touching base

Only four days into term and our mornings, like every other family’s, have become alarmingly busy. We have lists to streamline the mobilisation of our family unit to get out the door and off to our various activities and mostly we manage to all pile into the car and be backing out of the driveway on time but occasionally things go under the radar – like making sure shoes go on the right feet. Fortunately we spotted this little oversight before she stumbled into her very first kinder session. Perhaps if we had missed it, and I had also been sporting a wild hairdo with a pencil or a twig sticking out of it, and an inside out cardigan while forgetting my name and which child I was enrolling we would have looked on the outside exactly how I am feeling on the inside. I am guessing I will find the natural rhythm of all of this soon enough, but for now watch out for the wild woman with the fist full of hastily scribbled lists.

I will always love you, cumquat may.

8 years ago today we rocked the registry office… well, we said our vows and shed a few happy tears. It was only a few days after September 11 and the world still had that weird, tender feeling, but it was the day we had booked and planned for and we couldn’t see any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead and get married. It was a lovely day.

Five years earlier Phil and I had moved into a share house in Fitzroy together and he gave me a cumquat tree for our first Christmas. It was a delightful surprise when it turned up on our front verandah, delivered by the wonderful folk from the Fitzroy Nursery.

I have always had this kind of (overly imaginative) idea that our tree reflects the state of our relationship – it’s always been happy and fruitful except for a short time during our first year when I think I may have been feeling scared and paranoid having met the “One”, and worried that he might not stick around. It sat out on our balcony above the dusty Fitzroy street away from light and water, and shed its leaves. Shortly afterwards we moved into a little house without the flat mates and it came back to life with lots of leaves and fruit.

13 years later, with love and pruning, rain and sun, our little cumquat is as happy as larry and produces chubby little cumquats in its cheery little pocket of our late Winter garden. There is a pot of marmalade cooking on the stove at this very moment, filling the house with delicious citrusy smells.

And of course, the One did stick around, otherwise he wouldn’t have been the One, right? I don’t know why I ever doubted it – except I thought he was too good to be true. But good he is, and true too.

Happy anniversary Phil.

PS. do you like my pun in the title? My Mum will roll her eyes as there is nothing she despises more than bad puns.

PPS. Oh no, I just burnt the marmalade. Now it’s appropriately BRONZE.

Ketchup

My week in pictures. There were wild winds and sick kids.

Aah Friday… In exactly two minutes I am picking up the phone and ordering Mushroom Mutter, naan bread and some kind of crazy deep fried chicken (pakora?). I will also be encouraging the girls to turn off the tv and will be switching on the radio to listen to Classic Drive with Julia Lester because I like Julia and her music programmer. Tonight I am ducking around the corner for some classy drinks with the girls and then tomorrow I am leaping up to go to the market to buy my usuals (celeriac? feta? cos lettuce hearts? these things seem to make it into my bag every week).

this weekend I am also going to be

- making chicken pie for friends
- visiting the flea market
- painting some window frames
- trying not to think about gorgeous mid century furniture I spied with Kirsty in Fitzroy today
- pulling up weeds
- picking up a copy of Jane Eyre
- putting together a costume for a school performance
- starting a design for an embroidered cushion for Amelia’s birthday
- pulling out that old prickly pear pattern and making it into something that others might like to buy (hello 2005!)
- taking the girls to Ponyo
- and some more!

What are you up?

How to Build Community

Love this – building connections and community is big on my mind these days. It’s the stuff of life, don’t you think? This should be stuck on our fridge.

(via shauny on tumblr)

Skipping in the daisies

Image via the wonderful Dinosaurs and Robots

Saturday afternoon and we’re wagging swimming lessons. Just another thing to not tick off the list this week.

So what have you been up to?

I’ve been in stalling mode. House needs cleaning, hair needs cutting, writing needs writing, softies need sewing (I need a little banana slug in my studio to get that done), books need reading, dinners need cooking, plans need planning, weeds need weeding. 

Things I have managed to get done lately (brace yourself, it’s been a killer week);

I gave myself a recession-era fringe cut which may have been a mistake.

I made Mum’s You’ve got Friends Chocolate Cake and it worked! I did the 1.5 size recipe and used a big bundt tin and it was a great success.

I twittered about a library book full of cat hair and a fish bone stuck in my throat.

I watched loads of telly… Season 3 of the Mighty Boosh (loved it), Starter for 10 (great), Oscar & Lucinda (lovely), Survivor (oh yes), Lost (to keep Phil company these days),  Flight of the Conchords (and bought Carol Brown so I can listen to it all the time), The Jane Austen Book Club (meh), and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (still watchable). 

I heard myself tell someone that we don’t watch a lot of television. At that moment I actually believed it.

I had lots of coffees, at Bliss, at Snow Pony, at Laurent, at home from a packet of Jasper’s and then heard myself tell someone that we are not spending any money on unnecessary items in 2009.

I downloaded M Ward’s new album, Clementine by Melbourne’s (not Norway’s) Washington, The Lark Ascending (which reminds me so much of that wonderful movie ‘The Year my Voice Broke’) and listened to the Dodo’s a lot while I was pretending to write. 

I looked at loads of Oscars frocks and then looked at the NME awards photos and felt a bit relieved that the Brits are still so grungy. Clearly not a stylist in the house.

And in case you missed it, I listed a softie on Ebay for the Bushfire Appeal and it ends Monday!