3-day weekend

The third Monday in February is a public holiday in the US - Presidents’ Day. I can’t say I commemorate this in any meaningful way, other than this year by being even more grateful than usual to get an extra day off. Last week felt like it went on about twice as long as normal, thanks to a confluence of professional and household events that started way too early on Tuesday morning with discovering puddles in the basement, and finished late Friday with a day that felt like a real-life game of Tetris, trying to slot repeated visits from various repair personnel in with work-related Zoom calls, and vice versa. The time in between involved 48 hours of industrial drying equipment that invaded 2 out of 3 floors, sounded like a jet engine was parked in the kitchen, and required constant wearing of earplugs in order to function indoors. 

This disrupted my sleep patterns just a bit, and I was awake before 6 on Saturday morning, even though I didn’t need to be. This was an improvement over the previous 2 mornings - not only because I had slept past 4, but also because it was quiet. Even with a busy Saturday of offline and online chores in prospect, I thoroughly enjoyed a peaceful breakfast - and the ability to move about freely in my own kitchen again. 

I celebrated by making a little something special - a batch of biscuit croissants. I made up a batch of 2-Ingredient Biscuits; rolled the dough out flat; sliced into 8 triangles; filled half with chocolate chunks (for Miss B) and half with cinnamon sugar (for me); rolled them up like croissants; and baked them on a parchment-lined tray at 400F/200C for 15 minutes. I had 2 of the cinnamon ones for breakfast with some cranberry-apple butter.

No alarm tomorrow morning either - hurrah! Hope that wherever you are, you're getting some rest and relaxation too.

Weekend schedules

Do you have a schedule for your weekend? Following on from last week’s post, I’ve been thinking more about time blocks and how useful they are - but also how important it is to not fill up all those blocks with chores. It’s just as important to set aside a few for fun things, or to do absolutely nothing. 

My mother had a tendency to fill her days with chores from morning until night, and to try to combat this environmental conditioning, my sisters and I have been encouraging one another to follow the practice laid down by one of our aunts for herself post-retirement - chores in the morning, fun in the afternoon. 

I can’t say that I’m fully succeeding at implementing this system for my weekends, especially as I regularly push the envelope by doing things like not eating lunch until 2pm. But I think it is making me more mindful about how I use my time. This includes paying attention to how long things actually take; I have a tendency not to notice that, and trying to estimate that more accurately ahead of time is helping me to better manage my own expectations of what’s feasible in a morning. And maybe also helping me to normalize that an hour or two on the couch with a book or a movie is a perfectly reasonable way to spend a weekend afternoon. Even if this weekend I instead gave chunks of my afternoons to an Instant Pot beef stew (very) loosely based on this recipe, and a longstanding family Valentine's Day tradition. It's all about progress, right?  

Snow days

Happy 2022! We got an unexpected bonus weeklong extension of holiday mode around here when Virginia got the first snow of the season last Sunday night. It turned into the biggest snowstorm in 3 years (the last one was our first winter here) and led to treacherous road conditions and cancellations and closures galore, including this I-95 clustercuss, our weekly milk delivery, and most of the school week. A second storm overnight on Thursday finished things off, and we all got some extra down time with no pre-dawn alarms and no good reason to attempt to drive anywhere.

I went back to my normal work schedule, but with most of the global academic community also still in holiday mode, things were relatively quiet and I had a little extra brain space to get creative with my overstuffed pantry:

Kung Pao Chickpeas: Monday lunchtime I was craving some Asian flavors to go along with the weekly batch of Instant Pot rice which is already a fixture on the schedule in order to meet Miss B’s insatiable carb demand. I decided to see what I could do with legumes, and ended up adapting this recipe for kung pao lentils to work with what I had, which was canned chickpeas. It was a success and has now been added to the list of Recipes That Only I Will Eat But Are Still Worth Making.

Speaking of which…behold my first attempt at Whole Wheat Sourdough!

As usual, I’m about 2 years behind the starter/sourdough trend, and this is one that I’ve actively resisted, as previously mentioned. However, I requested and received Bittman Bread for Christmas, and the method of making a sourdough starter described therein finally convinced me to give it a try. After following the prescribed 3-day feeding plan, I now have something living in my fridge (on purpose for once!), and produced this as my first output. On the one hand, I can see that I’ve got some work to do on my folding technique. On the other hand, even a pretty imperfect first attempt is still pretty damn good bread. I’m looking forward to developing my knowledge, and will provide further reports as warranted. 

Alas, it’s raining today, so I expect there will be no further impediment to returning to the regular school schedule tomorrow, including the 6am alarm call. Hoping your weekend is peaceful, relaxing, and free of Sunday Night Blues.

50 weeks

This weekend marks 50 weeks of quarantine life - just two weeks shy of a full year since we went into lockdown - and the final weekend of this longest shortest month. I had a look back through my photos to see what this month looks like for the archive:

Snow We had snowfall or wintry mix with accumulation on 11 out of 27 days this month - beautiful to look at, but messy and slippery enough to mess with my regular exercise and grocery routines. We had an abrupt change from snow on Monday to 60-degree weather on Tuesday and, as much as I love my hibernation, I think I’m officially ready for spring.

Handwork More time indoors has meant more time spent on crafty pursuits, and this month I finished another two projects: a crocheted scarf and a zippered pouch. I’m also pursuing my interest in visible mending, and did an intentional repair on a favorite souvenir tea towel. 

Cooking Possibly my proudest cooking moment of the month was creating a complete meal out of what looked like a pretty bare refrigerator. Stumped about what to make for dinner, and not wanting to make an impromptu supermarket run in another wintry mix episode, I stumbled across a recipe for Belgian Endive and Ham Gratin. I didn’t have any Belgian endive, but I did have a heap of leftover braised chard, so I rolled that (along with some leftover rice pilaf) into slices of ham, as proposed by the recipe, and made those the base of the recipe instead. As a bonus, I finally feel like I’ve mastered making a Mornay sauce.

Baking As usual, there was a lot of this - chocolate cupcakes, whoopie pies for Valentine’s Day, Smitten Kitchen’s French Breakfast Puffs for Sunday breakfast - and I also cracked open 100 Cookies and made a big batch of chocolate chip cookies to give away and send in care packages.

Speaking of care packages.... I’ve been participating in the Lasagna Love initiative, a volunteer movement to provide a hot meal to people in our communities who may be in need of a helping hand for one reason or another. Over the holiday weekend, I combined a Lasagna Love delivery with a new-baby meal delivery for one of DP’s students - my favorite kind of community effort!

Other distractions Most of my sisters and I have become obsessed with Spelling Bee, one of the New York Times’ daily puzzles - so much so that we had to set up a separate chat thread to avoid driving the one sister who isn’t playing around the bend. We swap hints, complain about ineligible words (what do you mean “chillin’” doesn’t count?), and cheer each other on to Genius level and sometimes, the coveted Queen Bee.

And last but not least, I can’t overlook the other, happier milestone that we’ve reached this weekend - two years since we brought our furry housemate home from the shelter. Originally dubbed Trinity when she first came home, she has since acquired a variety of nicknames, the most commonly used of which these days is Chubthulu. Here she is in her favorite spot, doing what she does best: improving quality of life for all just by hanging around.

Day 21

Quarantineland is a strange new place - a combination of Groundhog Day and the Upside Down. In many ways, my days are the same as they have been for the last 18 months here in Fairfax, and much longer in other places: I drink my morning coffee at the dining-room table; run teleconferences and send emails from my desk; cook dinner most nights using a meal planning schedule that has been evolving my whole adult life from my mother’s unchanging weekly routine.

Other shifts and routines are emerging that are new and strange in our home ecosystem. Miss B, long self-described as a “slug” who would protest any suggestion of physical exertion, now voluntarily goes out for a walk every morning before sitting down to schoolwork. Sometimes she goes twice a day. DP, who has been up and gone long before sunup most days for the better part of two decades, is regularly “sleeping in” until after 7. And me? I generally revel in being a homebody; now I feel the walls closing in if it’s late afternoon and I haven’t made it out into the fresh air yet. I’m digging into tasks I would normally procrastinate about getting done. And I’m baking even more than I usually do, and wanting to even more than that.

Popovers

I’ve been working on what I call “carbing with intent” for the last year, and part of that is curbing my desire to eat dessert every single night - I usually try to restrain myself to weekends. That has been harder than usual for the last few weeks, when the call of carbs as comfort food has been almost irresistible, and I’ve hit on popovers as a good compromise. You can make them sweet or savory, and they provide a good carb hit without throwing your whole calorie budget for the day out of whack. I’ve adapted Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio recipe to stretch the most basic ingredient ratio into four good-sized popovers - perfect for an impromptu after-dinner treat. (Miss B will attest that they’re also good toasted and topped with maple syrup for breakfast the next day.)

4oz/120ml milk

1 egg

2oz/60g all-purpose/plain flour

a large pinch of salt

1oz/30g/2 Tbsp butter, melted

Combine the milk and eggs in a jug with a pouring spout and whisk until combined. Add flour and salt, and stir until combined evenly. Ideally, for best results let the batter sit for 15-30 minutes (or longer) after combining.

When ready to cook, place a popover or muffin pan in the oven and heat the oven to 450F/220C. Divide the butter into 4 even pieces; remove the pan from the oven and place one piece into each of 4 of the cups. Pour 1/4 of the batter into each of the 4 cups, then return the pan to the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 375F/190C and bake for another 20-30 minutes, or until puffy and golden.

Serve hot with jam or syrup.

Global update

home sweet home

Well, it's been a while since I've been around here. I've been updating plenty on Instagram, so if you want a more detailed recap of the last eight (shriek) months, head over there to rovinglemon. A few high points here:

Miss B is thriving and days away from finishing her extra-long stint in eighth grade. Her first-day assessment of her (no longer) new school has been sustained, and she's already looking forward to ninth grade - after an appropriately slothful summer vacation, of course.

DP is also flourishing; busy as always with work, juggling multiple commitments and getting another new program up and running - just the way he likes it.

My work is also pretty full-on. Last year was one of professional as well as personal transition for me: after 19 years with the same global organization I decided it was time for a change, and am now working (still from home) with a much smaller non-profit startup in the same research area. I love the challenges of working in a startup, even on the days when I feel like it's swallowed my life whole and left me no time to think about anything else.

Home is great: moving to metro DC was dictated by DP's job, but we're really enjoying it - feeling settled in the house, getting to know the area, and in a great location for work trips, family visits, and weekends away. Our plan is to give Miss B a good long stretch of staying put, and it's a huge mental relief not only to be able to think about the future with that in mind, but also to look forward to the prospect.

Food is of course what this blog always comes back to, so here are my top five recipes from my blog hiatus:

1. Shortbread This isn't about a specific recipe so much as it is a technique that I finally realized this Christmas: after multiple disappointments with making shortbread, I finally decided to try a throwaway suggestion from an Australian friend: chilling the shortbread dough before cutting and baking it. And I mean really chilling it - at least two hours, and preferably overnight. This did the trick of improving both the shape and the texture of the finished product, and I will now do this with any shortbread recipe I make from now on, whether the recipe mentions or not. (Here's a good one.)

2. Dutch baby I've written about this before, so I won't rehash the recipe; this is really just a reminder to us all of this as a delicious, easy, scalable, and impressive recipe that can be adapted to almost any situation.

3. Hand pies / turnovers / DIY toaster pastries Whatever you call these, they're delicious, and if you make them square, there's almost no dough wastage. Use this Genius Recipe for pie crust, fill with fruit, jam, ganache, Nutella, whatever. For the next batch, I'm going to cut the dough into rectangles and freeze ready for use, so that I can make these to order. Having a batch of six sitting around ready to eat is too dangerous.

4. Whole wheat sliced bread After multiple failed attempts over the years, I've finally got a recipe for whole wheat bread that I really like. The recipe is a mashup of several others, with a few tweaks of my own, plus one key step from here that makes a major difference to rising and texture.

Slow rise whole wheat bread for slicing

250 g/8 oz whole wheat flour

250 g/8 oz bread flour/strong flour

2 g/.5 tsp kosher salt

3 g active dried yeast

300 ml/1.25 cups liquid, comprising roughly equal parts Greek yogurt, milk, and water

15 ml/1 Tbsp canola or vegetable oil

15 ml/1 Tbsp maple syrup

1. Measure flours, salt, and yeast into large bowl.

2. Measure Greek yogurt, milk, and water into microwave-safe measuring jug and heat until just hot enough that you can stick your finger in and keep it there for 10 seconds. (You can also do this on the stove if you don't have a microwave.)

3. Add liquid, oil, and maple syrup to dry ingredients and stir together briefly. Let this stand for about 20 minutes to allow the flour to absorb the liquid.

4. After 20 minutes, continue mixing the dough until fully combined and consistent, then knead by hand until the dough is smooth and springy. You can continue to add flour as you knead, but it should be a little sticky rather than dry.

5. Put dough back in bowl to rise and cover with a cloth. Leave to rise until doubled in bulk; with the smaller amount of yeast used here, this should take a couple of hours. I prefer this because it gives me more schedule flexibility, and develops the flavor of the bread.

6. When the dough has had its first rise, grease and flour a loaf pan. Shape dough into a loaf (there's a good tutorial here on how to do this) and place in the pan. (The cook who provided the standing technique also says: "It's important that the surface of the loaves be stretched taut; this helps them rise and prevents an overly-dense interior.")

7. Let the dough rise a second time until it starts to rise over the edge of the pan; this should take 40-50 minutes. Heat the oven to 425F/220C.

8. Before putting bread in the oven, make a slash down the middle. Bake at 425F/220C for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 375F/190C and bake for another 30 minutes before testing the bread for doneness.

9. The traditional way of testing bread is color (golden-brown) and sound (hollow), but these days I like to use an inserted thermometer to confirm that the bread's internal temperature is the recommended 190F/88C.

10. Remove loaf from pan and cool completely before slicing.

5. Zoodle carbonara Given the above list, you may not be surprised to read that I've also decided to make a concerted effort to be more mindful about my carb consumption. I've been doing what I call a "Keto-ish" diet for the last couple of months, and this is my go-to low-carb meal these days.

1. Chop up and fry 2 pieces of bacon.

2. While the bacon is frying, turn 1 medium-sized zucchini into noodles. Add these to the pan with the frying bacon.

3. In a small bowl, mix together 1 egg, 2 tablespoons grated pecorino romano, and 8-10 grinds of black pepper.

4. Pour egg mixture in pan and toss to coat everything.

5. Top with more pepper and cheese and serve immediately.

Serves 1. Can be scaled up.

cookbook collection in its new home

That's about all for now; the only other thing to share is the newest member of the household:

And to hope that you're having as peaceful and enjoyable of a weekend as she is.

Local exploring

Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to since my last post in early September:

Trying out the VRE station that's five minutes from our house for a day of commuting to meetings in DC - infinitely preferable to navigating traffic!

The VRE doesn't run on weekends, so the station does double duty as the home of our local farmers' market - great local produce and flowers.

Unpacking and renovating continue - at a slower pace now that we're nearing completion on both. Here's a shot of my very old slow cooker (a wedding present) cooking its first-ever batch of Disruptive Bolognese using a mix of farmers' market ground beef and turkey (a resounding hit!). In the background is the recently installed backsplash, the last major piece of work in the (now-complete) kitchen.

Thoroughly enjoying my first proper North American autumn in a very long time with some festive front-door decoration...

...as well as the view from our new window seat - Miss B and I agree this lamppost is like a bit of Narnia on our doorstep...

...and having this view a few steps from our front door is pretty nice too!

When we can tear ourselves away from nesting, we're enjoying having DC close by for fun as well as work - it's kind of amazing to see these iconic buildings pop up in the distance as you wander the city.

And, last but not least - a new recipe to share as I re-deploy a time-honored strategy suggested many years ago by my English friend E: "make friends with cake". In this instance a batch of cinnamon sugar scones, which I brought to share at a coffee morning recruiting parent volunteers at Miss B's new school. I met a few people, and signed myself up for a few things - another rootlet put forward into our new community.

Coffee cake

I've been getting more interested in coffee cake lately, after one of our guests brought a particularly delicious one to the Lasagna Lunch. I've also recently rediscovered one of my favorite flavor combos from my first stint in Australia - rhubarb and peaches - when the first peaches of the season turned up at the farmer's market. I combined them to make a coffee cake which, though I say it myself, was thoroughly delicious.

Rhubarb-peach coffee cake

Dry ingredients

8 oz/240 g self-raising flour

1 tsp/5 g salt

4 Tbsp/60 g sugar (I used my citrus sugar here)

Wet ingredients

4 oz/120 g milk

4 oz/120 g Greek yogurt (for a slightly denser and more complex muffin)

1 tsp/5 g vanilla

2 eggs (= 4 oz/120 g)

4 oz/120 g (1 stick) butter, melted

Embellishments

1 cup chopped rhubarb and peaches, tossed with 1-2 oz/30-60 g sugar

Crumb topping (I used a combination of roughly 2 oz/60 g each butter and sugar + 4 oz/120 g flour)

Heat oven to 350F/180C. Line an 8 in/20 cm square cake pan with parchment paper. 

Make the crumb topping by whisking together the ingredients. (I also added some cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger to the mix.) Set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. In a medium-sized jug, whisk together all the wet ingredients except the butter; add the butter slowly and carefully last, so as not to scramble the egg. Dump wet into dry and whisk until just combined.

Scoop all but about one cup of the batter into the prepared baking pan. Scatter the fruit across the surface of the batter, then do the same with the remaining cup of batter and the crumb topping.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until lightly browned, rotating pan halfway through.

Late winter

Just when I was getting into a regular routine of publishing on Sundays, winter school holidays began and poof went the normal schedule! Here's what's been going on since my last post:

Traveling

Lots of Canberrans go to the snow during July school holidays, but I find the idea of getting away from the cold much more attractive, and that's what we usually do. This year we went to New Caledonia, a Pacific island which is also a French territory. July is the "cool" season, which means temperatures are in the 20C-23C (70F-75F) range - perfect beach (and tropical flora) weather for us, although we did notice several locals wearing puffer coats.

The sunset view from our balcony - a nightly highlight of our visit.

Celebrating

Miss B is 13! I didn't manage a birthday post this year, but we celebrated twice - once with dinner and cake for family and a few close friends (can you guess this year's obsession?)...

...and again a couple of weeks later with laser tag, pizza, more cake, and friends. (13! How did that happen?)

Cooking

I recently tweaked my method for cooking homemade pizza after reading something online that I've now lost track of; my takeaway was to put my biggest cast-iron skillet in a very hot oven and heat it thoroughly for about 10 minutes. Then, remove the skillet carefully and throw in a pizza crust. Stick it back in the oven for about 5 minutes, remove again, and flip the crust. Spread it with sauce, top it with cheese, and put back in for another 5 minutes or more, until the cheese is browned and bubbling. This method has produced the best homemade pizza I've made yet, and I tested it on Miss B and two visiting friends who seemed to agree; of course as guests they were very polite - but they also devoured nearly two whole pizzas among three adolescents, which I took as an endorsement.

Speaking of my giant cast-iron skillet, I put it to good use again soon after, making a batch of polpette for the first time in far too long - certainly the first time since we moved here 2 years ago. They were very well received at Miss B's birthday dinner; and even though the recipe makes about 40, I'm going to have make another batch soon because we're already running low!

Baking

Holiday in New Caledonia meant daily access to boulangeries and croissants, and going into withdrawal when we got home compelled me to do something I've been contemplating for years - making my own. It's definitely a project for a weekend when you don't have much else on - the recipe I used has you start 36 hours before you want to eat them - but the actual hands-on work was less than 2 hours total. And it was totally worth it, for the eating and the sense of achievement. I'm already planning my next batch.

Today I baked something a little less ambitious: a variation on this cake from Melissa Clark for snacking and lunchboxes this week. It's a simple recipe, but notable because it marks my official initiation as a user (and fan) of the Eat Your Books website - which indexes thousands of cookbooks, magazines, and blogs and allows you to register and search your own collection, and dig into what you have. (Apparently I have 60,000+ recipes on my shelves.)

That's what's been happening here - although before I finish I must note that I feel lucky to have the privilege to focus on these things as a distraction from recent events in the US - and to come from a city from whose response I can take heart and courage. 

Keeping warm

It's July! Term is over, winter holidays have begun, and overnight temperatures are consistently below freezing. Keeping warm in houses built for summer is a high priority.

I was very excited to find this on my trip to Kinokuniya Sydney a few weeks ago; I'm still working my way through it and haven't picked my first recipe to try yet. But looking forward to having lots of excuses to turn on the oven this month. (Recommendations welcome!)

Speaking of excited, we got two care packages from the US in the last week - full of healthy treats, as you can see. The resulting jumping up and down helped us generate some heat.

Hot chocolate season is in full swing, of course. I've topped up my stash of hot chocolate mix (using this recipe), as well as some suitably giant American marshmallows from Costco.

I can't give up on fruit salad just because it's winter, even if I do have to use canned apricots and peaches. (These make the salad more appealing to Miss B, so whatever works, I guess?)

 

This week one of our friends had an impromptu winter cookout housewarming, including breaking in her new fire pit. I brought along the ingredients to make s'mores, and since graham crackers are hard to come by in Australia I made my own - the classic version (on the right) following this recipe, and a grain-free version (on the left) using this recipe.

I also brought this along for us to nibble on while dinner was coming together - a hot spinach dip. I've made this several times over the past few weeks, but I haven't been following a precise recipe - it's basically 1 part sauteed baby spinach to 2 parts a combination of cream cheese, Boursin-style fresh herbed cheese, and sour cream - how much of each depending on what's in the fridge. Add seasoning to taste - salt, pepper, lemon juice are what I generally go for. Bake in a 350F/180C oven for 20-25 minutes until hot and bubbling. Serve with crackers. A good way to warm people up on a cold winter's night.

Hope you're keeping warm where you are - or cool, as the case may be.

Making lemonade

So my long (long looooooong) spell of waiting is over, and not in the way I had hoped - though a number of people in a position to understand it all better than I have just about convinced me that this outcome will be the best one in the long run. I think. In any case, that's really all I'm going to say about it, with apologies for being mysterious. Overall I'm relieved to have the waiting be over, but I've got feelings to process and next steps to ponder. As I do so, I'm continuing to work on practicing meticulous mindfulness - it, along with regular strenous gym workouts, has become a key mechanism for dealing with the 'anger' phase of the process around this drawn-out decision (to say nothing of  my feelings about current events in the wider world).

As I refocus on life here in Canberra, autumn is getting underway. The first of the new season apples are showing up at the markets, so to celebrate earlier in the week I made a personal-sized version of Dinner with Julie's Apple Pie Scones - I still used a whole apple, but it was small, and I halved the scone dough.
 

I got 3 good-sized scones out of it, and it significantly improved my week.

Since baked goods can improve most people's week, I also asked Miss B what baked good she was in the mood for, and she requested Dark Side cookies - "like the kind they would have to lure you to the Dark Side?" So I dug up this recipe from Nigella Express, and these super-chocolate bombs were just what the doctor ordered - or rather the frazzled new high schooler.

Yes - did I mention that Miss B is now in high school?! To be fair, it starts in Year 7 in Canberra, but still.

In other cooking experiments, I had a sudden hankering for san choy bow the other night, so I decided to whip some up. I didn't bother looking up a recipe, I just winged it (wung it?) with what I had on hand.

My version consists of chopped onions and mushrooms (and a little smoked salmon too) sauteed with oil/ginger/garlic/chili, with a sauce of 2 parts soy to 1 part fish sauce/sugar/lemon juice/sesame oil/sriracha, topped with chopped scallion/spring onion and slivered almonds. Wrap in lettuce leaves and have some rice alongside if you're a carb fiend like me. Proper san choy bow recipe here (turns out I wasn't that far off!).

And last but not least, here's some actual (as opposed to metaphorical) lemonade:

After my weekly farmers' market run this morning, I did some prep cooking - restocking my personal pantry for the week. On the right you see my coldbrew coffed brewing. On the left, my copy of Genius Recipes open to the One-Ingredient Whole Grain Crackers, which I made with a rice-quinoa blend I'm trying to use up. And in the middle, my re-gifted T2 tea infuser* brewing up a concoction of citrus zest and juice and mint and maple syrup to add a twist to my daily Green Tea Fizz.

*Sidebar story: the friend who re-gifted this to me handed it over with the declaration that she couldn't be bothered to use it, but that she was sure I'd figure out something interesting to do with it. I decided to take that as a compliment and a challenge; it took me a few months, but - voila!

Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

Ten things

The waiting continues...and I've been working hard at practicing meticulous mindfulness. It's been going pretty well, aside from a couple of weeks where the US election combined with solo parenting to send me into an anxiety tailspin. (The election was one of the things I was waiting for, and to say I was not happy with the outcome would be an understatement on the order of describing Australia as a place with one or two possibly harmful critters.)

But. Life marches on, and I must focus on the things I can do even in the midst of feeling helpless and at the mercy of events over which I have no control. So in that spirit, here's an update of recent-ish happenings.

Going back to early September - a tiny birthday cake for a visiting colleague of DP's who has become a family friend. He made the long trek to Australia for the second year running to guest lecture in DP's program, and I found out that his first full day in town was his 66th birthday. So we surprised him when he came over for dinner.

In late September, we went to the US for our planned family visit; for me it was five cities in just under three weeks. One of the highlights of my trip (and my year) was a long-planned sisters' weekend in New York, with all of us together on our own on a trip for the first time in a very long time. It was a memorable and spectacular trip, in part because of visiting places like The Frick Collection.

Our final city in the US was a 36-hour stopover in Dallas to visit our good friends who live there. We really enjoyed visiting the Dallas Arboretum's Pumpkin Village - a clever and creative use of winter squash, and I couldn't stop giggling most of the time for thinking about this. (Warning: NSFW language!)

Then back to Canberra, swapping autumn color for spring in bloom and harvesting lemons and rosemary from the garden.

Two weeks after we got back from the US, I was off again - this time to Seoul for my organization's annual meeting. It was a productive and positive week overall, but it makes me a little sad that this is pretty much the only picture I managed to take outside of the conference (it's a little mall made up entirely of small shops run by local craftswomen and -men).

Back again for the tail end of October; settling in to nearly three months with no overseas trips scheduled, and starting to see some real signs of spring - encouraging enough that I have revived my cold brew coffee habit, making it in my French press and then storing in a repurposed Chianti bottle. (Classy, no?) My standard ratio for coffee (hot or cold) is 7g of coffee per 100ml of water; cold water for cold brew, and let it brew for at least a couple of hours. Chill in the fridge overnight, then serve over ice with a hefty splash of milk and a dollop of maple syrup to sweeten.

The end of October also means Halloween, and a sweet treat to celebrate it. This year I made ghost cakes for Miss B - basically a chocolate cupcake, topped with a gloopy pile of vanilla buttercream frosting and suitably decorated.

Moving into November and real spring weather - a good opportunity to host our first outdoor Sunday lunch of the season and invite a few friends over to share it with us.

And speaking of a few friends: this weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving in Australia, with a buffet turkey dinner for 60+ friends, colleagues, students and their families. An epic undertaking achieved with a lot of lists and a lot of help, and one to make me remember to be grateful for all the things I have.

Which today include the luxury of having to do not much of anything except eat pie, bask in the afterglow of yesterday, and figure out what the heck to do with all these leftovers.