September vibes

 

Miss B came home for a visit for the last part of August, and went back over Labor Day weekend to start her third (!) year of university. (The cat does not approve of this arrangement.) DP’s semester got underway in mid-August, but Miss B's exit, plus changing the calendar to September, makes the back to school/impending fall vibes inescapable for me. The temperatures here have cooled off enough to leave the windows open during the day, and maybe even pull on a blanket at night. The other morning I woke up wondering why I didn’t have a comfortable chair in my room. So I pulled this one out of the basement, moved it upstairs, and embellished it with some me-made comforts. An instant life upgrade using what I had available; an ongoing encouragement to use limitations to spur creative problem solving, and to take regular breaks from the daily onslaught. 

Four months

 Well, that was an unplanned hiatus. Here’s a quick recap of key events since my last post:

The month of June was dominated by a two-week trip to England which was a combination of work and holiday. We were mostly in London, with excursions out of town on the weekends. The highlight of these was a trip to Oxford, our former hometown and Miss B’s birthplace, where we caught up with various friends and revisited old haunts. These included my favorite place, the Covered Market, here still sporting some yarnbombing to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee, which had happened in May.

Speaking of Miss B, the theme of July was some big life stuff happening for her. One thing involved her being away for most of the month, on a three-week pre-college course that enabled her to delve into her love of history and start getting a taste of university life in an extremely historic location (as well as help her parents start preparing mentally and logistically for the next phase).

She finished up right at the end of the month, just before a milestone birthday. Luckily not yet too old for a themed cake though!

We kicked off August with our final major event of the summer, our annual jaunt to the coast. This is our fourth year at Cape May, and we love it as much as ever - plenty of sun, lazing by the ocean, and New Jersey farmstand produce. 

My cooking highlight this year, to make the most of some great local tomatoes, was a MacGyvered focaccia. I made the same basic bread recipe that I always make, then after letting it rise I gave it the focaccia treatment - i.e., spreading it in a baking pan with lots of olive oil, poking dimples in it with my fingers, sprinkling salt on it, and then baking it. It was yummy, and since then I’ve continued to work it into the regular bread rotation. 

This rotation has gotten more regular as August shifted into September, because along with other transitions, I’ve made some changes to my work commitments which I’m hopeful will allow for better balancing of priorities across multiple areas of life. 

I posted a picture of the pillow on the left on Instagram a few weeks ago, describing it as “turning anxiety management (handstitching) into home decor”. Ideally (among other things) I’d like more of the handwork and less of the anxiety.

I'm not quite at this point, but it's something to aspire to. More to come soon, I hope, and that your anxiety is minimal and your contentment maximal in the meantime.

Day 330

Sorry I went quiet there for a bit; most of January felt like walking through a dark tunnel of anxiety. January 6 was a realization of so many things I’d been worrying and catastrophizing about for the past 4+ years. I watched in rage and horror as an insurrectionist mob stormed the US Capitol building. They climbed walls, broke windows, looted offices, defaced public property, and threatened the safety of every single person in the building. They wandered around the building for hours, brandishing Confederate flags, taking selfies, and displaying their total, malicious disrespect for the home of American government and the greatest symbol of our constitutional democracy. 

They did all of this with apparent ease and little visible opposition from the law enforcement and security agencies that are normally on display at any event in Washington, DC. For anyone who witnessed the highly visible law enforcement presence on display and bristling with gear and weaponry in Washington DC and across the US during last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, the security forces in place appeared unprepared and even vulnerable - a stark contrast and one that raises unavoidable questions about the people in each group and how they and the possible threats they pose are viewed by our law enforcement and homeland security agencies. 

So I’ve been feeling anxious - how could this serious threat have been so poorly evaluated and planned for? And angry - how can this toxic white privilege be so visible to some of us, while others claim not to understand what we are talking about? And despair - how can this country move forward in any meaningful way when our society is so divided that we are effectively living in two different realities? And dislocation - how can we even think about moving forward with anything at all until we have addressed what really happened on January 6, and what it means for our country? 

Hello 2020

The proudest accomplishment of my staycation: learning to crochet granny squares.
Afghans for everyone!

Home On Monday we all returned to our regular schedules after a two-week holiday break. After spending a week in Boston over Thanksgiving, we didn’t travel anywhere, and it felt almost decadent to have two weeks off with no major commitments other than catching up with friends and family within a two-hour radius, seeing movies, and sightseeing locally. I even had time on New Year’s Eve to sit down and work through a guided reflection on 2019, and sketch out my intentions for 2020. If you’re interested to do the same as 2020 starts to crank up to speed, here’s the link. I found it a worthwhile exercise to put the past year in perspective and prepare for the one that’s coming. I revised my New Year’s Resolutions, which over the past couple of years have followed a numerical format that I wrote about previously. Framing them this way helps me to stay on track and keep them present in my mind:

1 handmade project/month - see picture above of my first one in progress!

2 outside events/month - book club, work meeting, civic activity, volunteering: anything that will get me out of my home office and encourage face-to-face interaction with other humans

3 minutes/day meditation - this is a fixture as I'm still working on achieving this consistently, but see the benefits when I do

4 books/month - 1 fiction, 1 nonfiction, 1 children’s/YA, 1 cookbook - last year I pretty consistently managed 1 fiction and 1 nonfiction, so I'm adding a bit more to the structure

5 30-minute exercise sessions/week - another fixture I'm still working to achieve consistently

6 pages/week of creative writing - I've committed to getting up 45 minutes early to make this happen, as I'm pretty confident based on past experience that it's the only way it won't get pushed aside for something else

7 hours/month on personal admin/financial maintenance - mundane but necessary, especially as I want to continue to focus on improving financial health and literacy this year

World I would be remiss if I didn’t put my own personal focus during this period into the context of larger events which marched on, festive season or not. The two countries that were (and are) on my mind the most are the US and Australia, both contending with epic existential crises on such a scale that they are likely to leave one feeling paralyzed with horror and despair. If you, like me, feel the need to take some kind of practical and useful action, a couple of suggestions:

US: Swing Left is coordinating a range of efforts targeting the critically important 2020 election cycle, ranging from making donations to writing postcards to getting out and canvassing.

Australia: This blog post, shared originally by one of my Melbourne friends, has some excellent practical advice about how to help - and how not to. Useful for anyone who's paying attention, either in Australia or from overseas.

Food I was re-reading Ruth Reichl’s My Kitchen Year over the break (her memoir of the year after Gourmet magazine folded and her Editor in Chief job disappeared along with it), and was struck by this comment:

“...there will never be a time when terrible trouble is not stalking the earth, and I began to see how important it is to appreciate what you have.”

(And, I feel compelled to add, recognize what a tremendous privilege it is to be able to do so.)

It can often feel frivolous to focus on food and festivities when there is so much terrible trouble in the world, but I think they are also at the heart of what we are talking about when we say things like “preserving our way of life”. Franklin Roosevelt talked about the Four Freedoms when much of the world was neck-deep in World War II, fighting to secure those freedoms for a large chunk of humanity. Plentiful, nourishing food that we can cook and share with those around us makes good times better, and provides solace - sometimes the only solace - in times of trouble.

I’m going to try to spend more time here in 2020. I wish you and yours all the best for the coming year.

Happy 2018

It's already 2018 in Australia, and in a Christmas-vacation-week fit of inspiration, I've already come up with a list of manageable (and measurable) resolutions/goals for myself. I'm applying one of the lessons I learned in 2017 from reading this fascinating book, and publishing them here as a way of providing external accountability for myself.

1 new recipe/week - to broaden my cooking horizons (and provide RL blog fodder, I hope).

2 new books/month - I spent a lot of 2017 escaping reality by doing what a friend calls "comfort reading" and what I call "re-reading all my favorite books." So this year I'm tackling the very large piles of unread books which have been collecting next to my bed, in my living room, behind my desk...(note: cookbooks don't count). I'm also open to recommendations.

3 minutes meditation/day - the next step of meticulous mindfulness.

4 fasting days/month - I tried intermittent fasting about 5 years ago and found it had a positive effect on my eating habits generally. So I'm going to try it again this year, aiming to start with one day a week. (Maybe some new recipes from this also!)

5 30-minute exercise sessions/week - linked to #4; I've been managing to do some form of dedicated exercise 3 times a week pretty consistently for the last 5+ years, and have found it beneficial for both my physical and mental health, so I'm going to try to bump this up.

6 pages creative writing/week - some for here, and some for destinations TBD.

I'm planning to update on my progress here monthly. If you're looking for external accountability too, feel free to share your 2018 plans/goals/resolutions too.

Happy New Year!

Autumn shenanigans

One day I will post an update that is not a round-up of pictures since the last time I posted; but today is not that day. So here's what's been happening around here lately:

Travel

To Melbourne for a friend's 60th birthday party, where we helped make drinks and lunch for 40, then sat on the lawn (till it started raining) to drink Pimm's and champagne and east roast beef and salads...

...to Hobart with my best friend from Boston, who came to Australia for the first time to attend a conference, then stayed on for a week to goof off with me. We wandered Salamanca Market, visited the Cascades Brewery, did lots of walking and talking and had lots of good food and drink (including these tiny pancakes doused with raspberry sauce from a market stall) - a fabulous weekend.

And an impromptu weekend to my always-favorite destination - the beach - to kick off the April school holiday.

A headline from our travels - no comment.

Crafting

I finished a craft project! One that's been on my list for a loooong time - I made a doona cover (that's 'duvet' in Australian) for Miss B's bed, using some inherited bed linen and handstitched seams with yarn from my embroidery stash.

Inspired by my success, I have also finally identified and organized a place for my sewing machine, after 3+ years of it languishing in a box.

Easter

The usual four-day extravaganza of cooking and eating, plus this year's experiment, at Miss B's request - hot cross buns, modified to her specifications (chocolate chips instead of fruit, buttercream icing crosses on top).

And here's the obligatory photo of the brunch spread - on our new kitchen table, which DP and I assembled together without filing for divorce afterwards!

Also I thought you'd like to see the mixed-message Easter spread on display at my gym to kick off the holiday weekend.


 Autumn

The leaves are changing color in Canberra - I love that I get to have my favorite season here, even if I'm forever disoriented by having it happen in April.

So I even did a little flower arranging to bring the autumn colors indoors.

Back outdoors - Miss B and I took part in our local March for Science last weekend....

...and this weekend a friend gave me a bag full of limes from her overloaded trees. What to do with them? Lime curd? Lime meringue pie? A giant pitcher of margaritas? Ideas welcome!

Hope all is well in your worlds, and that I'll have another, shorter update soon!
 

2017 so far

Not long after I published my last post, we headed out for New Year's Eve and possibly the most Canberra activity there is - climbing the Parliament House lawn (while we still can!) to watch the fireworks:

Canberra has two sets; we watched the 9:00 ones and were all home and in bed well before midnight.

A few days later we were off for our annual beach holiday - a week of sun, sand, and as much floating in the ocean as I can fit in.

Then, as usual, the day after we got back from the coast I set off for my annual trip to London for work meetings - an intensive week, followed by a relaxing weekend in my old stomping grounds in Oxford, including cooking a Saturday night spread for my hostess and our other visiting friends.

I also got to peruse the cookbook section of my favorite Oxford bookstore, and flirted once again with the idea of getting involved in a relationship with sourdough starter. But I can't commit....

...and always end up reverting to my tried-and-true bread recipe. These days, it's my go-to gift for other people's houses; when they tell me not to bring anything, this is what I bring.

Also as has been usual for the last few years, I was overseas on my birthday, so when I got home I made my own cake - which looks rather small and overpowered by candles here.

It was nice to come back to summer weather and summer fruit after a week in frosty England...

...get back to the regular kitchen routine, and try some new things. I've been working on making my own flour tortillas lately, working off this basic recipe...

...I also made homemade gnocchi for the first time, using leftover mashed potatoes and this recipe from River Cottage Love Your Leftovers. They were a rousing success...

...this chocolate fudge bundt cake, not so much. Tastes great, but half the cake stuck in the pan despite copious greasing. I think in future I'll stick with this one.

And this week's flower selection - hydrangeas from the farmers' market (with special guest provided by Miss B).

Before I finish, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that all of the above are examples of my continuing to try to focus on positive aspects of daily life and practice meticulous mindfulness. It's all part of my ongoing attempt to grapple with, among other things, the uncertainty and anxiety engendered by the current state of affairs in my home country, and the knock-on effects and similar trends abroad. This article has confirmed my fears, but also bolstered my courage, and I share it for anyone who may be in similar need:

A Clarifying Moment in American History

While you wait

Nearly four years ago I wrote a post about how stressful I find waiting, at a time when I found myself in a state of limbo, awaiting significant outcomes over which I had no control in my personal, professional, and national life.

Well, here I am again - and it doesn't feel as though I've gotten any better at being zen about waiting. Possibly even worse, at least at the moment, compounded as it is by grief. My current strategy is something I call "meticulous mindfulness" (or would "mindful meticulousness" be better? I can't decide), by which I mean that I am trying to focus on the things that I want to accomplish each day, and then trying to give each of those things my full attention. In the short term, when I can accomplish it, it stops the hamster wheel in my brain from spinning; and in the long term, I hope it adds up to a period of sustained accomplishment and satisfaction, rather than one of fruitless frustration.

So: this morning, I woke up early for Sunday, slightly jetlagged after returning from my second trip to the US in two months (this one, a family trip, was the one I had been planning to take this year). I lay in bed and thought about what I wanted to do with this unexpected block of time. Did I want to stay in bed and read, enjoying having nothing to do after three weeks of non-stop activity (including stops in five cities)? Or did I want to tackle some task on my monster To Do list?

I split the difference - I read for a while, and then I got up to bring my blog up to date. Here's some recent happenings, aside from what I've already told:

An impromptu family trip to Perth and the southwest corner of Western Australia during July school holidays that almost didn't happen, between DP's travel schedule and my father's hospitalization. But it did, and I'm glad we managed it - as well as this, which was on Miss B's must-see list: sunset over the Indian Ocean. Our last night before we flew back east, we went down to the beach in Fremantle and sat there to watch it happen.

The saying goes that in the midst of life we are in death, but the reverse is also true. My father died five days before Miss B's twelfth birthday, and I flew to Boston the day after. We had a family dinner and cake on the day with a few close friends, and with the help of some of the aforementioned meticulous mindfulness I was able to give Miss B the cake of her twelve-year-old dreams, even if I didn't manage a birthday post.

And to continue the theme: my oldest sister's birthday was the day after my father's funeral, and for my gift I made a birthday dinner, for her and all available family members. For dinner we had spaghetti al'amitriciana three ways: the standard version, as outlined in this post; a batch made with gluten-free pasta, for the GF contingent; and a vegetarian version for the birthday girl, substituting fried halloumi for the bacon. For dessert we had her favorite treat: birthday pie. I tested out Nigella's GF Pie Crust (a smashing success, even made under sub-optimal conditions in someone else's kitchen) and made maple-blueberry for the birthday girl (who doesn't eat refined sugar), and peach-raspberry for the non-blueberry fans.

That takes us up to early August...more to follow soon.

Ten things

Ten things of note since my last post:

 
1. Breakfast on the deck, possibly for the first time since we moved in last August. (Note that said breakfast is leftover Oat-Fruit Bars – following the rule that if it includes oats, it counts as breakfast food. Also applies to crumble.)

 

2. Cleaned off my desk to give me the space I need for the final push on another major work project, which launched online at the end of February. (Lucky for me we had an extra day this year!) 

3. Looked up how to make a gin fizz after we finished re-watching The Jewel in the Crown, where they appear to be the main source of hydration for most of the characters. I haven’t made one yet, but soon! (I have, however, christened my Moscow Mule mugs, and now one lives permanently in my freezer.)

4. Made a zuzagna – a lasagna with zucchini noodles instead of pasta. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t stellar either – I need to fiddle with it some more before I post a recipe.

5. Giving thanks for my evaporative cooling system. Are you familiar with this method? The main benefits from my perspective are that they add some humidity to Canberra’s arid air, and that you don’t have to keep all the windows closed. In fact, you shouldn’t, so you don’t have that hermetically-sealed freezer feel that I hate about air conditioning. I’ve been especially glad to have it in the past few weeks, when Canberra temps hit a record-breaking 38C/100F at least once – the highest late-February temperature documented since record-keeping began. 

6. Trying to keep up with my tomatoes, which are attempting to branch out from the two raised beds and take over the back garden. I didn’t even plant the ones in this picture – they appeared spontaneously and are producing golden cherry tomatoes by the dozens! 

 

7. Refreshing my memory of the Hunger Games trilogy, since Miss B held me to my promise that she could start reading them when she got into Year 6, and then promptly found all three in a used bookstore.

8. Getting familiar with Spotify. (Yes, I know I’m way behind on this.) A group of my coworkers does a challenge during Lent every year, called 40 Days of Open Listening, where each day we get a randomly selected album which we’re supposed to listen to with an open mind. I’ve been getting the emails for a couple of years, but this is the first year I’m actively participating. My latest discovery is the Triffids, who I’d never even heard of – I’ve decided they’re a cross between the Waterboys and Arcade Fire, in a good way.

9. Making a test batch of homemade cereal: I based it on this recipe, which only has 3 ingredients - oats, oil, and sweetener. I used half canola and half olive oil, and maple syrup instead of honey, and instead of using the oven, I made it in the slow cooker so I wouldn't have to worry about burning it. It took a couple of hours on high - I just kept cooking it until it smelled toasty and delicious. It tastes so good I daydream about when I'm going to eat it again.

10. Admiring my backyard lemon tree, which is covered in growing lemons. (Roving Lemon has a lemon tree! How meta is that?)

That’s the news from here. Got any to share?