I’m not really a sticker person. Or an ornament person. Or newspaper, foreign food, party, bike, risk, phone, boat, music, candy … errr, I digress … aaaaaanyway … when we said bye to the guys at Saturdays Surf, Josh gave me a bunch of their stickers. Which I loved, but had no idea what to do with. I thought for a fleeting second that I might put one on my white MacBook … but really secretly wanted to stick them up around Wellington and take photos of them to send back to the Saturdays guys. But it seems that our poles and bins and signs are sticker-free so either people don’t think to go around defacing with stickers (find that hard to believe given the defacing graffiti that’s all over the city at the moment) or the council removes them pretty quickly. I guess the latter is likely, which probably means it’s illegal – ‘defacing public property’ or some such.
But being the rebel that I am (*cough*) I’m braving the world of trouble that awaits and stuck a sticker today! I probably shouldn’t be bragging about it on my blog and posting a photo of it, but I love the photo!
I know the sticker isn’t going to last long but it was worth it for the face-cracking smile it gave me (which was in response to seeing the sticker and remembering the pole outside Saturdays in Crosby Street and not that I’d just been very naughty and probably broken the law … honest)!
Got out onto a beach on the Kapiti coast yesterday – not in celebration of summer coming or anything (it’s not really yet) just to breathe some fresh air. It was chilly and nice to be in a big wide space for a while … although one guy was there sitting on a log with his laptop so we didn’t completely escape things we normally see every day!
I tried to get an arty shot of Kapiti from ground-ish level for Project 365
But when The Mister drew in the sand
I liked the look of this as today’s photo and memory … awwwww
When asked “Have you made your cake?” at this time of the year there’s no need to qualify which cake, especially if the question is from Mother (she asked me this evening when I rang for her birthday). She means Christmas cake. That long held tradition (I guess around the world but certainly in my New Zealand life) of making the Christmas cake (or fruit mince) at Labour Weekend. I still have the book out with my cake recipe in it from last weekend when I went off on a rant about tradition dying away (another sign of middle age (EYEROLL)) and even though I think writing in books with pen is naughty, I love that I’ve written in this particular book. Between that and the move to recording everything on my blog, I can track my Christmas baking for the last 15 years … with just one year unaccounted for … am still trying very hard to remember … 2004.
Years 1995 – 2003 Christmas cake, per the Australian Woman’s Weekly New Cookbook (with inscription from Mother inside from 1987)
The photo I took for Project 365 today (number 300 it turns out!) was of a small bunch of flowers stuck in a park bench on Lambton Quay … one of those hand-picked bunches with a bit of tinfoil around the end, probably stuffed with a wet tissue like kids often do. It wasn’t exactly abandoned but you had to wonder about it’s story. Was it an unwanted/embarrassing gift that someone stuffed between the slats after putting their bag on the bench and ratting through it for something hoping no-one would notice the disguised opportunity to ‘nicely’ ditch the flowers; was it an attempt along the same lines as the Outdoor Knitters to beautify the city on a sunny morning; or perhaps a social experiment by someone to see who noticed it there and stopped to take a photo … ?
We’ve got a bit out of sync with the coffee beans lately – all because we were out of town one Saturday and unable to get them from Customs Brew Bar and then a long weekend full of baking meant we drank more coffee at home than normal. So The Mister had to go down to Customs on Tuesday morning to see what they had … we knew Ralph’s Brazilian wouldn’t be an option as they’re the quickest to sell out at the weekend. However, he recommended Guatemalan Palhu Estate. After the last time I tried beans on our Supreme Friend’s recommendation and I reported back to them that the coffee tasted like a banana skin in the compost, I thought I better pay closer attention this time. I even sipped the espresso just after it came out of the machine before turning it into a latte. So from espresso to last drop of latte, as the coffee cooled, here’s my range of flavours:
molasses
that savoury flavoured edge that a caramel toffee often has
Marmite
flax
cup of tea (eeeuuw gross, I hate tea, so it was a rather unpleasant ending)
Even after all that cooking yesterday and our big walk this morning we found some energy to make chicken and leek pies for dinner – with little love hearts on top – awwwwww!
Went on a big 1 hr 45 min walk up and over The Terrace and around the waterfront this morning – town was pretty quiet and despite the huge hill at the start that took our breath away it was great to walk some streets we hadn’t in a while. Even in the drizzle!
All that remained in the back of the pantry was one jar from the 2008 batch and even though probably well preserved in brandy it looked a little dry so we set about getting the ingredients for a new batch yesterday and we’re now the proud owners of 5 new jars, just sealed up now.
We had a massive day cooking yesterday and that’s when we did all the mincing after a trip to the supermarket for the ingredients. I worry that traditions are going out the door in our mile-a-minute lives … I think we’re in the 3rd phase of my Christmas Baking Lifecycle …
Phase 1: The early years
Many years ago, whether shopping for dried fruit for a Christmas cake or fruit mince for pies, I’ve not been alone in the dried fruit isle at Labour Weekend before. These first few years it was always a bun fight of housewives for bags, pens and lots of eying up each others concoctions in the Alison Holst scoop-your-own-fruit section – much weighing out a colourful array of sultanas, currants, dried cherries, apricots, peel and nuts. I always appreciated the scales – very smart thinking I thought, especially for someone like me who never bakes with dried fruit except at Labour Weekend.
Phase 2: The convenient years
Last time I stocked up for Christmas fruit mince in 2008 I noticed that there were significantly less housewives and many of them had picked up the handy pre-packaged supermarket bags of Christmas Fruit for their cakes or pies. No more hand-me-down family recipes calling for carefully measured this and that. And no more carefully measuring either – the help-yourself scales had disappeared by this time as well, and those of us left sticking to our worn reeipe from the Australian Woman’s Weekly New Cookbook (with inscription from Mother inside from 1987) eye-rolled each other as we traipsed back and forward to the spotty teen-aged boy who was getting increasingly annoyed by us popping bags on his scales and then whipping them off again to go away and take out or put in to get just the right amount.
Phase 3: The token years
So now we’re in the token years, the just in time years, the self-deprecating years, where I was alone with Alison’s bins of dried fruit and nuts (and a spotty teen-aged boy at the scales) – this year there will be cries of surprise from housewives when they realise it’s Christmas again and tear into the supermarket after work one night to grab extremely overpriced yet very trendy packets of mini fruit mince pies from Aro Bake because they should have some Christmas baking on hand for neighbours and family who might call around for a bit of Christmas cheer. And anyway, Aro Bake make much nicer ones than anyone could at home themselves anyway.
Like martyrs we embraced the Christmas spirit – minced our fruit, ‘whoopsied’ in a measure of brandy, stirred it up with a kiss and a wish, sterilized jars, made labels and ferretted the hoard away in the back of the pantry.
I’m not really one of those people who can easily let the day unfold, especially not Saturday – although I like the idea of just letting the day take you where it may I do like a certain amount of planned activity, just to be sure that things like coffee beans have been stocked given that our coffee bean suppliers aren’t open on a Sunday.
So yesterday while breakfasting at Gotham, I never thought my uttering ‘I feel like making cupcakes’ would lead to an entire day in the kitchen.
We were quite amazed at all the things on the go for just feeding the 2 of us!
We minced the fruit for the 2010 batch of Christmas fruit mince for pies at Christmas (well The Mister did & I handed him what needed to be minced!)
We made cupcakes – vanilla coffee cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting (I was horrified that the recipe called for 2kg (yes KG) icing sugar … we only had 400g … however having a preference for more cake than icing we were happy with the light coating and they still looked good … and tasted fantastic!)
We made some pork & plum stew invention served with (what I call) warmed coleslaw … not that it tastes like that, it’s something adapted from Mother … just without the fennel at The Mister’s request!
Today The Mister received a delivery at work, from He-Man! Our Tweet4yourtee wardrobe increased by 2 more items as a ‘Master of the Twitterverse’ set was delivered to him at his desk – he had no idea and I had to keep the secret that the delivery was coming and that one of the Masters of the Universe characters was doing the delivery! I’d gone around work and got various people organised to video it, including me, and Tweet4yourtee are using it as part of their social marketing … with me giggling in the background and all.
The Mister was very surprised and was a great sport! I giggle every time I watch it!
