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.

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.