Winter shenanigans

Winter is in full swing, complete with lots of recent gloom and damp in Canberra. A good excuse to try various antidotes, including:

Knit! I started trying to re-teach myself to knit about 2 years ago, and I am delighted to say that this week I taught myself how to cast off, and I finished this scarf. It's a bit rustic-looking, but it's the first knitting project I've ever completed and I'm proud of it - especially the buttons, which I added for design interest and which actually work. Miss B has already requested one of her own.

Sew! I'm continuing to work through my double-sided kitchen cloth project - here's my latest effort. I particularly like these fabrics, both separately and together.

Cook winter food! I had a ridiculous amount of leftover mashed potato in the fridge at the end of the week, and I was too lazy to make gnocchi, which had been my first plan. So instead I made a potato gatto (one of our longstanding Secret Dinners), which is great comfort food on a cold night.

Get out of town! We've had a trip to Sydney booked for this weekend for months, and I was hoping for the usual dramatic difference in temperature and weather between Canberra and...pretty much everywhere else. It was warmer, but not any brighter for the most part. Undaunted, we hit some of our favorite spots and tried out some new stuff as well. A high point (in every sense) was our early-evening walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge, complete with stunning views.

Our objective in crossing the harbour was to visit an American-style burger joint, Batch Burgers & Espresso, at the foot of the bridge's north side in Kirribilli. It came highly recommended from fellow expats, and was totally worth the walk - hands down the best burger I've had in Australia.

The walk back was even better, giving us a birds'-eye view of the final weekend of Vivid Sydney, especially the Opera House:

My iPhone camera does not do it justice - if you click on the link above you'll get a much better idea of the effect.

And last but not least, my favorite winter activity and the reason for our Sydney weekend - ice hockey! We got tickets to see the USA-Canada Ice Hockey Classic, the first time in a looooong time (3+ years I think) that I've been able to see professional-level hockey live. It wasn't the NHL playoffs, and I'm pretty sure I haven't infected Miss B with the hockey love, but as far as I was concerned it was worth the trip.

Presidents' Day

Not Presents Day, as some people who shall remain nameless would like you to think.

Miss B and I have spent most of this holiday weekend laying low: trying to kick this horrendous head cold that we've both had for most of the past week; avoiding whiteout-induced multi-car pileups on I-70; and watching as much Olympic women's ice hockey as possible (okay, that last part was mostly me).

I didn't give too much thought to Valentine's Day, what with DP being away and the fact that I don't care too much about it in the first place. But Miss B woke me up with a card that she and DP had picked out before he left, and reminded me later that I had rashly suggested cupcakes as a suitable commemoration of the day.

So we made some. Even though our current kitchen has no mixer, which means I did all the mixing by hand, alternating a big purple silicon spatula and a whisk. (How's that for an expression of love?) Miss B helped me decorate them (the jimmies were her idea) in colors suitable to the occasion.

They look pretty good, don't they? I can't wait until we can both breathe again, so we can taste them, too.

Cupcake recipe here.

Winter Classic

One of the things I missed about the northern hemisphere while I was in Australia was Boston winter. Yes, you read that correctly: cold, snowy Boston winter. Not, I hasten to clarify, damp, grey, raw Oxford winter, of which I had more than my fill in the years I lived there; but Boston's snowstorms and short days and wind chills are ingrained in my biorhythms.

Besides, winter has its compensations, the biggest of which for me is ice hockey. And if I can't be playing it (which I can't, since my kit is in a box somewhere on its trek from Canberra to Kansas), then I'll take watching it any day. But especially today, because today was the Winter Classic.

The Winter Classic is a fairly new but already beloved National Hockey League tradition, where one regular-season game is played outside, usually in a baseball or football stadium. It started in November 2003 as the Heritage Classic in Edmonton, and from 2008 has been played on New Year's Day, each year in a different city. This year's game was held in Boston, featuring the Boston Bruins versus the Philadelphia Flyers, at Fenway Park, the legendary home of baseball's Red Sox. I had been secretly yearning to go ever since I heard the announcement, but I had also looked at the ticket prices, which made me feel faint. I got busy with the move and Christmas, tickets started selling on eBay in the four-figure range, and I organized plans to watch the game on TV.

But I had forgotten to factor Santa (and his elves, some of whom it turns out we're related to) into the equation, and last week DP and I found ourselves the recipients of two coveted seats. This morning I bundled myself three layers deep, as if I was going skiing; we dropped Miss B off at my sister's for the day; and off we trekked to Fenway Park, surreally decked out in Bruins black & gold for the day and full of boisterous, exuberant fans in hockey shirts and tuques. The temperatures were fairly mild (no wind chill!), the atmosphere was great, and the Bruins even managed to win the game at almost the last possible minute--a pretty fabulous introduction to 2010. I hope it's a harbinger of things to come.

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year, and a 2010 full of good things!

Team dyamics

My ice hockey team has made the women’s league playoffs, much to my surprise. I’ve just been informed that I’m not eligible to play, because I joined the team too late in the season to play enough games to qualify. I have mixed emotions about that, after spending the last three weekends playing road games in, around, and beyond greater Sydney, including a trek all the way up to Newcastle (260 mi/460 km from Canberra). (Driving ten hours to play two hours of ice hockey is all part of the scene in women’s hockey—and probably plenty of other sports as well—but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get old.)

It'll be interesting to see how my team does, because the ranks have been a bit thin since I’ve been around—we haven’t managed two full lines for any of the games I’ve played, which, if you’re at all familiar with ice hockey, means a lot of ice time for the six to nine skaters who do show up. (I had mixed emotions about that too.)

I’ve stuck pretty well with my plan of not paying too much attention to any simmering factionalism or drama I might notice along the way—although with so few players showing up, most of the locker-room griping has been directed at the many players who have been MIA during the second half of the season. So mostly I just show up, keep quiet, act pleasant, and skate my shifts.

But I did bake for my teammates last weekend. It was our last weekend of regular-season play, and we had a long drive. I figured it was a good excuse to bring treats. And these have oats in them, so you can pretend they’re healthy. People who do sports like that in a treat.

Oat-Fruit Bars
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks!
A big part of the adaptation is experimenting with different fillings, since the original calls for apricot jam, something I am unlikely ever to have on hand. I’ve made them twice in the past four days—one batch for the team and one batch divided between home and DP’s office. I may be making them again this weekend. They’re that good.

1½ cups/210 g all-purpose/plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1½ cups/120 g old-fashioned/porridge oats
1 cup/200 g packed brown sugar
1¾ sticks/200 g butter, cut into pieces*
1 10-12 oz/~300 g jar good-quality jam or equivalent**

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Grease an 8 in/20 cm square baking pan.

In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients except jam. Spread one-half of the mixture into baking pan, pressing firmly into corners and into an even layer. Spoon the jam over the mixture in the pan, then smooth with the back of the spoon to cover the mixture as completely as possible. Cover with the rest of the mixture; press this lightly to form an even layer.

Bake for 30-40 minutes***, rotating halfway through, or until light brown. Cool completely in the pan before cutting into bars.

Makes 16 2 in/5 cm bars.


* The blog entry for these says only that it’s better if the butter isn’t ice-cold, but I found the mixture pretty dry and crumbly made with cold-ish butter. The second time I made these, I used soft butter, and I liked the consistency better.
** I used a fancy French raspberry fruit spread (sweetened with fruit juice) for the first batch, and homemade apple butter for the second batch. Both worked great.
*** My oven, which runs slow, took 40 minutes and more both times, and I still wasn’t convinced they were done, so you might need to experiment.

Challenge outtakes

Just in case you’re thinking it’s all sunshine and flowers and effortless production and consumption of deliciousness 24/7 here at Casa Roving Lemon, I thought I’d share a couple of less-than-stellar moments during this past month’s Cookbook Challenge:

1. Zeppoli I was gunning to make it to five recipes this month for once, and the fifth one I had bookmarked was zeppoli—an Italian sweet treat made with fried dough. I read through the recipe, and thought, “Oh, that’s just bread dough. I’ll just use the bread dough I have in the refrigerator.” Completely ignoring that a) the recipe had a much higher ratio of yeast to flour than standard bread dough; and b) I’m always trying to achieve more of a country-bread, slow-rise, chewy tang with my bread dough. This second fact, in particular, gives you pretty much the opposite of what you’re looking for in zeppoli, as I discovered when I bit into one. They tasted pretty much like tiny, fried sourdough rolls. With powdered sugar on them. Not my finest effort. (Not that that stopped me from eating them all.)

2. Broccoli Note to self: if you are fortunate enough to have a child that happily eats her own body weight in broccoli when you produce it in the normal way (or, rather, the way that’s normal for you), don’t change things. Don’t suddenly roast the broccoli and present it to her like that. She will say things like, “Mummy! It has brown stuff on it!” and “Mummy! I don’t like this brown stuff!”. She will try to claw off the brown stuff. With her fingers. She will make faces and gag theatrically and try to scrape her tongue clean. No matter how much you like the broccoli (and I’m sure you will), believe me, this will interfere with your enjoyment of dinner.

3. Dining post hoc(kily) I’ve eaten cold cereal for dinner at least four times in the past month, usually after hockey. By the time I’ve finished training, schlepped all my kit home on the bus, and taken a shower (since the rink does not offer such sissy amenities as hot water), I’ve got no energy left to turn on the stove, even to heat up leftovers.

But, as you can see from the photo at the top (crappy as it is), we still make the effort. Those may be Deep-Fried Sugar-Frosted Mini Dinner Rolls, but, who cares, we’re still gonna decorate ‘em. With cachous! (That’s Australian for what we in the US call “those little silver balls you stick on cakes”.)

Frozen water

Well, it took nine months, but I’ve finally ticked off the only item remaining on the To Do list from my very first post: earlier this week, I went to my first training session with the Canberra women’s ice hockey team. The rink and facilities are (how can I say this kindly?) well-used; it looks as though I’m fixing to be the oldest person on the team; and I’m feeling pretty rusty after more than two years off the ice (by far the longest I’ve gone without skating since I started playing in high school); but despite all that, I felt so happy to be back in a hockey environment.

When I finished my last active season two years ago, it was in such an atmosphere of drama that I honestly thought I was ready to quit hockey for good. I’m glad to discover that’s not quite the case. I think an entirely drama-free team might be too much to hope for (I’ve never found one of those yet), but most people I’ve met so far seem friendly and laid-back, and I reckon I’m going to be too busy for the remainder of the season (between bouts of wheezing) trying to remember everyone’s name to notice if any factions or dramas are bubbling below the surface. It’s not much of a strategy, but it’s the only one I’ve got for the moment.

Oh, and once again I’ve underestimated the athletes in my adopted country, expecting the women’s team to consist largely of North American expats. Nope—pretty much everyone is Australian.

I wonder if they’ll like homemade cookies as much as the poms did?