"Neglect"

Today I have had two conversations with people that inspired today's blog post.

One involved a new mumma to a 4 week old bubby.  We were having the conversation about grabbing a moments rest in the busy day of being a mother.  Particularly challenging when your baby doesn't sleep much during the day.  And the other a gorgeous new friend from kinder.  Both conversations brought up the issue of being a good parent and the inevitable comparisons that we tend to make when we look at other parents we meet. 

It took me back to my first baby and how I was so scared to leave the precious bubby for more than 5 minutes to have a shower for fear of somehow neglecting the poor child and damaging his prospects of fulfilling his potential because he was pyschologically damaged from my neglect!   What the?????!!!!!  Clearly sleep deprivation sets the tone for irrational decision making early on in the piece. 

In fact I was reminiscing about how I couldn't stand the crying so much that I would get out of the shower before I had even rinsed the shampoo out and spend the rest of the day with shampoo in my hair!  Looking good!  What was I thinking?  Not alot clearly......

And now five babies down the track...... how do I react to my crying baby?  "Well excuse me bubby but  I need to shower, blow dry and GHD my hair - oh and paint my face- before you can have my attention!"    

...........aaaah but that is where the magic happens......

On my return the bubby has inevitably, magically fallen asleep. 

Some may say (or feel) this is neglect - as I most certainly felt with my first child.  Now I call it reality.  

As parents we give ourselves a hard time about every descision we make. And mothers especially tend to fall into the pattern of thinking of everyone else's needs before ourselves and acting in accordance.  If we think about this just a little bit- it's not a great pattern to be modelling to our children is it?  

It's good to put ourselves first sometimes. 

I am totally guilty of putting myself last pretty much ALL the time.  I am trying ever so hard to put myself first just some of the time. It is not something that comes easily to me at all.  Let's call it a New Years resolution- only it's not new year (although damn it i wish this year was over!) .........and I hope unlike most new years resolutions that this one last a little longer than a couple of days!

What I have gotten better at since I have had more children is letting things go a little.  

Like not running to a crying child at the very first instance.  

Like not succumbing to every single request that every child demands of me for fear that I will somehow damage their prospects for a fulfilled life ahead because they are pyschologically damaged from me saying no to their ridiculous demands for lollies at 8 oclock at night!

Like having weetbix for dinner every now and then so you can have a rest.

Some people have this idea of me being a Supermum.  WRONG!

If being a supermum means having a tidy house, all the laundry done, folded and put away, dinner planned, always in a good mood, never dreaming of another job and never getting frustrated at the kids- then as my kids would say "epic fail"!  

Click here to go to a previous post to get my feelings on all that kind of unhealthy perfection.

I'm so not a Supermum and then some.......I have bad days where the chaos is a little more out of control than others, days when I wish I was skulling vodka at 10am, days where I wish the laundry was under control,  days where I yell at the kids for totally unreasonable reasons......

I have learnt to choose my battles.  My fourth child has been a challenge- all of you that know him understand!  He has basically made it impossible for me to go anywhere except the necessary places.  Wherever we went he would either scream or run away. Delightful.  He has been labelled the human tornado- for obvious reasons.  Sitting still is not in his genetic makeup and for a just turned 4yo he can run like the wind- and usually straight into oncoming traffic.  Awesome- NOT!

I had to decide for my own sanity how to deal with this.  For me it meant basically not going out during the day.  I had to learn that this wasn't a punishment for me being a bad parent but just the best way to deal with a very difficult child.   I just couldn't stand the judgmental glares anymore.  Behind all this difficult behaviour lies one of the most wonderful personalities.  

I learnt to make it work in my favour and to stop giving myself a hard time.  It's just the way it is.  It's ok- as long as I don't compare myself to other people.  That is the tricky part. 

It's normal.  Normal in a healthy way to have a balance of days where we feel ok about things and days where we feel crap about things too.

Let's all give ourselves a break and simplify things a little.  Lower the bar.  My theory is that if I have low expectations I have far fewer failures.  

Sometimes neglecting things a little gives us benefits that we would otherwise not have received.  It's not all bad.

My garden has suffered a whole lot of neglect over winter.   I normally grow a winter vegie crop but other things took priority for me this year and the vegie bed got left to go wild.

Some plants (like children) benefit from being left to their own devices a little.

I planted a solitary horseradish plant just over 2 years ago and it has THRIVED.  I normally harvest quite alot of it after winter to contain it- it notoriously takes over the garden.  

It is a beautiful plant growing enormous green foliage during spring/summer that dies off over winter.  A member of the Brassica group of plants- really probably my favourite veg are in this group- cabbage, mustard, broccoli etc.

When winter ended I was keen to harvest some of the delectable roots to make various horseradish wonders.

Here are the roots after harvest.  

Once they'd had a good scrub I blitzed them and added a little vinegar, vinegar and salt to taste.

The aroma is divine- but be careful not to inhale too fast......it's potent stuff!

It looks really pretty........

.......and keeps for months in a jar in the fridge.

Today I added some to Japanese mayo and had it on some toasted sourdough with pork rillettes &  fresh aragula from the garden (another plant that loves a bit of neglect!) It was DIVINE!  Simple delicious food at it's best.  

Next on my to do list is to make up some beetroot and horseradish like I find at my local Russian providore and to make my own pork rillettes- food of the gods!  

I have found this great blog that has a recipe...click here to take a look!  Tell me that does not look divine!

Mine are via my latest order from the wonderful Bruny Island Cheese company.  Click here to look at their beautiful website. Truly magnifique!

So let's all promise each other to "neglect" a little and practise putting ourselves first for a bit........and see if we survive and thrive a little as a result! 

 

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Ol' Faves

Recently as the Aussie dollar has nearly reached parity with the USD I have been having a look on Amazon at cookbooks.

I collect them.  Am a sucker for them.  Can never have enough of them.  LOVE them.  Covet Nigella's collection of them.  Do you get the idea?

Actually I LOVE books in general.  I love the smell of old paperbacks.  I love looking at cover design.  I LOVE reading.  I love buying books for my children who I am happy have ALL caught the reading bug.  I have always dreamed of having an ol' fashioned 'library'- you know one of those dark mysterious rooms with a big comfy chesterfield and a sliding ladder to reach the books high up (actually I need one for the books on the third shelf as I am really short- but anyway.....). 

Anyway I hopped on the interweb as I love to do and was in search in particular for Japanese cookbooks.  I have searched for a long time for a Japanese cookbook that gives me more than Teriyaki recipes.  I have found it impossibly hard....so I was excited when I found these.

I did some research and found a couple that I thought would make a good start.  And of course I stumbled upon another book that I HAD to have- you know how much I LOVE dumplings!.

It got me thinking about what my favourite cookbook was.  I don't know that I can answer that as I have phases of cooking.  The weather influences it too.  In winter the old European slow cooked style of cooking takes favour or of course a rich curry.  Whereas in summer more light Asian style food feels more appropriate.

So then my thoughts moved to the most influential cookbooks on my shelf.  The cookbooks that have affected my cooking the most.

I came up with two out of all the hundreds I own.  They were cookbooks that were on my parents cookbook shelf when I was growing up and were the books that I used when I first started cooking 30 years ago.  Copies of both of these cookbooks are on all five of their children's shelves now as adults- as they were also influential to my other siblings.  And now my children are cooking from them also.

It made me smile when I thought of that.  Sentimental....me?!!!  GUILTY YOUR HONOUR

So what are these two cookbooks?

The first is one is Charmaine Solomon's  Complete Asian Cookbook

My copy was given to me by my sister when I moved out of home aged 18.

It contains the first recipe I ever cooked for the family aged 10 which is now a favourite of my children.  Kukul Mas curry.  It is a well loved (read 'well splashed on') page.  This cookbook is still in print after being first published in 1976.  A testament to it's popularity.

The other ol' fave is Ada Boni's Italian Regional Cooking.  First published in 1969.

It has been out of print for many years but all five children from my family have managed to hunt down copies from far across the globe.  I found mine in a gorgeous second hand book shop in Canberra when I was 19 but it has taken other of my siblings many years to find.

My sister in law recently took hold of a copy for my brother as a birthday present.  She has been waiting two years for a booksearch place to find her a copy.  They went together to collect it.  It was a surprise- he thought he might be going to collect a new industrial coffee machine (my siblings also share my passion for coffee) but was not the least bit disappointed when it was a copy of 'Ada Boni' - as we all refer to it!  It's a very special book.

 It is separated into the regions of Italy and contains very few pictures- and the ones it does have are of that fabulous styling of the era...take a look.   I LOVE!

This was my 'go to' book when Mr.10 bought the tripe from the market. (Click here to go that post.)  I knew it would help us out.  It did & it was delicious.  A reminder that good old fashioned simple cuisine is so often the best!

Do you have any cookbooks that are ol' faves or new faves for that matter or perhaps one that has influenced you?

I would love to hear about them.

And today I share an ol' music fave:



Join me on my journey......

Lovely Ladies

The last couple of weeks in Melbourne have finally seen the sun come out again after a very cold, very long & very wet winter.

This year for the first time the weather really affected me.  As some of you know our family suffered an enormous tragedy and the winterness hit my heart hard.

I didn't blog, I didn't facebook, I didn't tend my vegie patch and I didn't really have my doors open....well they are always open but there wasn't too much traffic except one very dedicated friend who warmed my heart when I needed it most.  Bless you- you know who you are. 

For the first time I really got to understand the term hibernation.  My mum has referred to me as "B" since I was little - a referral to my childhood nickname of Bunzi & also to being her little Bear.  I certainly lived up the Bear bit this winter.  I'm still a bit growly sometimes.........but on the whole on the mend.

As you may have read in earlier posts,  I am the proud owner of 7 lovely chooks- I refer to them as my "girls" or the "ladies".

I love having chooks.  I grew up in a suburban house with chooks.  We also had pheasants, ducks, quails and for a while some Guinea Fowl too.

I wanted my 5 boys to be able to grow up having chooks too.  Chooks are also the most wonderful pets for young children.

I wanted Bantams.  For those of you who are unfamiliar- full size chickens are actually VERY big.  And for some kids a bit daunting.  They also inflict a bit more substantial damage on the garden than the delicate little feet of Bantams.  Their eggs are also smaller.   We have a mix of Japanese, Silky and Pekin Bantams (the fluff balls in the pics).  I dare you not to love them.

As my kids are quite little I thought they would get more joy from the bantams and that we could get more of them.  The children adore them and are often in the coop sitting with them on their lap.

When friends come over it is such a treat for most of them as few kids of that age get the opportunity to come close- and when they find an egg- the joy is wonderful to watch.

I looked into getting miniature pigs last year too- but decided that I really needed to be living on a farm to give them a good life........one day!   At the moment I just a have a "pretend" farm in suburbia.

Our girls- like me- are also very happy to see the sun come out again after winter.  Chooks also go into a sort of winter hibernation....well they stop laying anyway.

They have started laying again and are the most productive they have ever been- which is lucky as my boys are eating more and more eggs!

Here is a pic of Henny (my favourite- a Japanese Bantam)  laying in unison with Fluffy (a Silky Bantam).

My last post referred to the wonders of Weet-Bix for dinner when us busy parents get a case of "I can't be stuffed-itis".  But I am also a BIG advocate of the 'eggy dinner'.   Both of these options are FABULOUS!  Both very nutrititous and quick.

My now 7yo has been making his own scrambled eggs since he was nearly 4 and my 12yo makes a killer omolette.

Interestingly he went off eating eggs for years but wanted to cook an omelette for my mum.  And after cooking it he had a try and voila he loved it and cooks them regulalry now.  He also cooks PERFECT poached eggs. YUM!

We can easily go through a dozen eggs at breakfast between the 7 of us.  Yes, sometimes we need to buy some to keep up but nothing beats the ones from our own girls!

I also try to grow as much produce as I can.  I am realistic abut this.  I am a ridiculously busy mother of five young boys (who somehow manages to make time to write).

I am very aware of how much work it takes to achieve living sustainably.  What I feel strongly about though is giving my children an awareness and a sensitivity to their world.  An awareness that fruit trees don't produce the peaches we enjoy for a small period in Summer all year long just as the chooks stop laying. 

The fruit & veg have seasons too.  Who knew!   It's a lesson that can be taught in your backyard.  It is certainly not a lesson you can teach at the supermarket where you can buy red tomatoes all year round- ok so they don't have any flavour and apparently they have been bred to have an outer skin of leather- but they are there nonetheless ALL YEAR ROUND!  And we buy them .......hmmmm. 

This winter I just wasn't up to it and so I let the vegie patch go.  It made me sad to see it in decay but I just couldn't do it. 

The spring has arrived and I am feeling renewed.  We are lucky to live on a fairly large block.  We moved here 3 years ago and it was previously owned by the same family since the house was built nearly 100 yrs ago and was largely in original condition.  What that means is that it has lots of outdoor shed type buildings and large areas of lawn.  I was happy with that as I am not into the kind of soul-less order of most renovated homes- suits some doesn't suit me.

We have worked slowly at getting rid the lawn (totally unsustainable- our British ancestry is obviously taking a while to shake off in this regard!) and replacing it with natives, herbs a plenty, vegetables & fruit producing trees.

Down the driveway we have planted a peach, a plum and a nectarine.

 We have blood orange, olives, a lemon & kaffir lime trees in large pots and I have bought some dwarf varieties of peach and nectarine- I have put them in half wine barrels.

Gardening is such a great family activity.  Is there any more joy than feeling mud in your fingers and feeling worms writhe in your palm?

It has helped the kids expand their palate too- they WANT to try the produce they have helped grow.  Some of the kids new faves are beetroot, eggplant (such a pretty plant)  & silverbeet.

We try to buy heirloom seed variteies from the Digger's Club.  If you live in Melbourne you should visit their property at Dromana. Such a  wonderful experience and a great example of how beautiful a vegie patch can be.

I'm going to go all Molly Meldrum on you and tell you to "Do yourself a favour"- go buy a Chook and set up a vegie patch- it will give you and your family untold joy.


Click on these links to read about keeping chooks and buying some fruit & veg:
 http://www.frugavore.com/
http://www.bookachook.com/
http://www.daleysfruit.com.au/
http://www.diggers.com.au/

Join me on my journey.

here's what we are listening to today:

Fussy eaters

It is most parent's nightmare........serving food to our children every night.

It is something I have given a lot of thought.

Why is it that after all the things we do quietly all day long for our children that we tend to judge ourselves solely on our children's reactions to what they are served and what they will eat at the end of the day?  I do suspect it has something to do with tiredness but........

Parents are the worst judges of their own behaviour and definitely give the Catholic church a run for their money when it comes to guilt.  Our minds flurry with self directed insults.......see list below and see if any have crept into your head sometime. 

• "I am such a bad parent- my children won't eat (insert any number of food types here)".

•  "If only I had made my child sit at the table until they finished their dinner when they were a baby they would be eating whatever I served now."

•  "I wish my child ate like (insert someone else's child's name here who you once saw eat something your child won't"

• "I dont know why I bother to cook dinner only to chuck it in the bin"

We all know the list could go on........

As you know I have five young boys- aged 12, 10, 7, 4 and nearly 2.

 I have asked all of the things on the list and many many more over my time as a parent.

I used to give myself SUCH a hard time over what my children would eat.  I am the most guilty parent going around who judged myself entirely on dinnertime success.

I look back now and ask "What the???"

I can laugh now especially as my fussiest eater whose diet was solely peanut butter sandwiches (at least they were on wholemeal bread!) and green apples is now my most adventurous eater.  He is 10.  He is the one who so excitedly dealt with the gutting of the sardines in a previous post.   He is the one who when we go to the market seeks out the items that are challenging for most adults and asks if we can buy it and cook something.  Last market trip it was tripe.  He loved the way it looked.  Food aversions aside it is a beautiful thing!

Anyway little Mr.10 cooked it up according to a traditional Italian recipe and we shared it with our extended family. Delicious.  All but 2 of the 9 children at the table devoured it.

His favourite foods now are the most adventurous of all of my five.  Hot curries, cheese (especially from Bruny Island Cheese- and the stinky, gooey and blue are his special faves), offal, weird and wonderful fruits (custard apple his current fave) don't put him off anymore.  Don't get me wrong- he doesn't eat ALL things by any means but he will try whatever is out in front of him- even things he has tried time and time again and doesn't like.  He still won't eat most tomato based cooked sauces- and when you think about it this rules out a lot of food.  No spaghetti bolognaise for him- CAN YOU BELIEVE IT????!!!! Have you ever heard of a child who doesn't LOVE it?? He just has cooked pasta with parmesan cheese instead.  Despite what you think- very healthy in itself and  no effort for me.

Why did I expend so much energy giving myself a hard time on something that in the scheme of things in fairly insignificant.

I have mentioned on a previous post about my children being very different.  Well of course they are!  Think about it like putting five of your friends together in a room .  You would never expect them to be the same would you?  Well either are my children....thank goodness.

Maybe this is where we find it so had to serve a family dinner that everyone eats.  We have an expectation that everyone eats the same things and enjoys it. For me there are five little people's food tastes to cater for- no mean feat to find meals that they all eat.  Why, when we happily accept that personality is unique, do we expect that our palate is not?  When you go out to dinner- do all your friends order the same thing? I doubt it.

OK- it is all sounding as scarily like I am leading to cooking five different meals. NO WAY!

I'm going to let you in on a mind blowing secret of mine! You know what liberated me from the stress? Brace yourself...........

I GAVE UP!

I didn't give up serving dinner but I gave up expecting them all to like the same things.  And I gave up expecting all five of them to eat the meal put in front of them.  Don't get me wrong- you can hear the screams of delight in the next neighbourhood on the rare occasions that they all do eat the same dinner! 

As a child growing up in a family of five kids also it was the same for us.  We liked different things.  It became especially apparent when we all started having to cook for the family (I was 10) once a week.  Mum knew that the only way to get us cooking was to let us choose what we wanted.....mmmm ham steak and pineapple anyone?? Ooops! But her theory worked. All five of us are now keen cooks.

I already loved curries and I still cook the same curry now that  I cooked as my first meal for the family.
It came from the Asian cooking bible- Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian cookbook.  I am happy to say this is one of the few dishes that my children all eat (and one of the few with cooked tomatoes that Mr.10 eats).

It is a Malaysian chicken curry.  As a beginner I forgot to add one of the ingredients (there were quite a few!) that first time (coconut milk) but  I have to say I still prefer it without.
Click here for an adaptation of Charmaine Solomon's recipe.

One sibling had a special love for porridge.  Porridge it was for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Actually I am being unfair........sometimes he had weet-bix.  My mum decided it was a battle not worth waging.  He was growing and healthy.  The irony is that as a young adult he trained as a chef and is now a wonderful cook with an adventurous palate. 

I cook one dinner for my kids and those who don't like it can serve themselves Weet-Bix....but not until they have at least thanked me for my effort while I mutter "You little bastard do you know how much effort I have gone to?" under my breath! 

A while ago one of my most precious friends taught me a trick to deal with all tricky situations and here is where it comes in very handy.  "Put it in a bubble and blow it away".  Very freeing indeed.

I know now that my stress about mealtimes came from a place where I wanted my children to love the things I did (food especially)- but what I forgot was that for me it is the act of sharing that is important not the food itself.  More than anything I don't want them to grow up finding being at the table anything but an enjoyable experience. 

Can I say all this now because my older children have given up their food anxieties?.....that I don't think I can answer but giving up the stress was good for me and I know that that was DEFINITELY good for them. 

Sitting at the table at the end of the day is lovely.  We light candles and somebody chooses music.  It is generally not too stressful and pretty enjoyable.  Sometime it is a full blown disaster- but hey I have 5 kids!

So tonight when your kids kick up a fuss about dinner- break out the weet bix, open the wine kick back and stop beating yourself up.  After all when you think about it there aren't too many adults out there that are still eating weet-bix for dinner are there!

*Cheers*

We are often listening to this at dinner........

Long time no post

After a 3mth hiatus I am poking my head out of the cave.

I have learnt alot during my time away from Blogland; about myself, my friends, about the world.  I have had some of my beliefs affirmed and some shaken.

I have been lucky enough to make some lovely new friends during these months.  Together we are working towards learning to live with the sadness that the immense loss of a baby brings, whose time amongst us was just beginning.

During this time the single most important belief that I hold was most certainly affirmed.  People are all that matter.  And particularly the people that you love. 

For those of you that read my blog you will know that this is what drives my love of preparing food.  It is ultimately the sharing of the food with people that I care about that is what I love.

Over the last few months I have had some of my old (& new friends) in my home sharing coffee, tears, sadness, laughter, food and love.

It has been the amounts of coffee that have been being consumed that drove me to investigate roasting my own beans. 

It should be obvious by my title header that I am passionate about coffee,  so I am not really sure why it has taken so long for me to think about home roasting the humble bean.

To be honest I didn't realise it was so simple and so much cheaper- I go through about a kilo of coffee beans a week to give you some idea of how much coffee is made at my place!

Once again thanks to the wonderful world of the 'interwebgooglenet' there is a stack of information on home roasting. 

So off I went on my new adventure.......I am HOOKED! And the result is soooooo much better.  I am happy to say I have not bought a pre roasted bean from the shop since I started and the end result is of infinitely better quality so I can't imagine myself settling for store bought beans again.....

My friends who have joined me in drinking a bowl of my home roasted beans assure me they also think it is pretty darn good.

It has been good for me to have a new project and I am especially happy with how delicious it is.

I felt kind of embarrassed at first that I had no idea what a green coffee bean looked like......I have been drinking good coffee all my life.  I was lucky enough to grow up in  a house that had coffee brewed in the iconic stovetop 'Atomic' coffee machine.  I have taken a pic of mine for those of you who are not familiar.  A magnificent example of beautiful design if nothing else- the simple elegance of form & function at it's best.

Have a look.......

During the 70's there would have been few homes that were lucky enough to be drinking good coffee.  We had gorgeous Italian neighbours across the road whose home had the wonderful smell of a mixture of stovetop coffee and tinned tuna cooking in homemade tomato passata. Alot of 'Aussies' would have found the smell repugnant- I found it comforting.

I guess our house also smelt of brewed coffee although I didn't realise at the time as I was just living in it.  It's funny isn't it how every family's home has a unique smell.

I was so scared of moving out of home and having to drink instant coffee that I picked up my own Atomic (the one in the pic above) at a trash'n'treasure for $2 when I was 14- a few years before I moved out of home- now that's forward thinking!   It is still going strong- although nowadays I just use it when we go camping as I have an electric benchtop machine like most Australian homes.  Did you know that Australia has the highest per capita domestic espresso machine ownership in the world? (stupid fact for the day!)

I have to say though that owning a good coffee machine is not all it takes to make a good coffee.  I have had many bad coffee's made in good machines.

Good beans are ESSENTIAL.

Here is what they look like when they are green.....who knew!

What I learnt is that the green beans really have a surprisingly unpleasant smell- kind of like raw wheat. Who could imagine that roasted they are soooo different!  Who was the genius that discovered that roasting these beans and making them into a drink could give so many so much joy! I will need to do some reading on who this genius was.......

Here is what they look like roasted:

Once roasted they take on that heavenly smell we coffee lovers crave and the sound as they fall around your hands all glossy and gorgeous!

And here is the brew........oh so delicious.  And I have to say fresh roasted beans that are ground just before the coffee is made is beyond compare.

I have found a new love of an old friend.........
I like to drink my coffee from a bowl. I find the way it warms my hands comforting.  I like to share my way of drinking it with my friends.

I am happy to say that after a few months of being in hiding.....my door is open again for friends to drop over and join me again. The coffee is on!

Here are some links if you want to investigate further....

http://www.sweetmarias.com/instructions.php
http://www.coffeeco.com.au/altcof/altcoffeepage11.html
http://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/3557/A_Trend_Is_Brewing


Today I am listening to new music from Howe Gelb......another old favourite of mine.....really good to drink coffee to!!

Join me on my journey.