Category Archives: domestic goddess

it’s on the tip of my tongue

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food potato pete

I have a really sensitive mouth.

Perhaps I should rephrase that. My tastebuds react to pepper, spices and other “hot flavourings” like a mountain forest fire on a 40C summer’s day after a wet spring and a long dry summer. The tiniest, tinniest hint of a spice and my entire mouth burns, my eyes water, nose streams and I gulp for water. The mildest of mild flavourings and the same result! When the rest of the family enjoy a medium spicy curry I am eating plain rice.
I am told that I make quite a good curry, even by Mr FD’s late father who grew up eating curries prepared by local cooks in Ceylon, but I wouldn’t know as I never taste them – not even to adjust flavourings. It would be akin to burning at the stake to me.

My daughters argue that it is because I grew up with a plain Jane cook for a mother. Overcooked meat and three vegetables boiled within an inch of their life was our custom menu. Exotic was making a cottage pie! However, I argue with their argument. I think I was just created a delicate creature and my taste buds are no less sensitive than the rest of my body and soul.

So the fashion in recent years for adding chilli to absolutely everything, even chocolate, has meant my diet has been severely restricted and somewhat repetitive. Is there no thought for the individualism in tastes anymore? I hazard an opinion that it is to hide inferior ingredients – make the horse meat more palatable in case of point.

Another issue is the penchant to sprinkle sesame seeds or poppy seeds atop breads and other foods, as mere decoration. Not enough to add flavour but too many for a person who needs to avoid small tiny seeds like sesame or poppy in their diet to maintain life. It means that if I buy bread rolls I have to cut it in half to exchange a top for a bottom with Mr FD who can withstand a double dose of seeds. It really annoys me when I get to almost the end of my roll, and look at the bottom bottom and see that seeds have collected there in the baking process as well.

You can imagine the fun of bottom sharing when we buy takeout burger! Mr FD always winds up with the extra sauce and mayo as they are always placed on the top too!

So, when I am Queen of the World as I will be one day, one of my first commands will be to do away with “fashionable” blanket food flavourings and give choice back to the eater. Freedom to consume foodstuffs without fear or repercussions – coming to a kitchen near me, and you, soon!

Or a few heads sans chef hats will roll.

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neverland

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7

baby girl

I drove into the city. We moved to the country in late October and already I wonder how I survived living there for the 10 years we did. Saturday morning traffic jams, aggressive Lycra clad men on bicycles and people everywhere. Country Flamingo Dancer wanted to hurry back to her rural retreat immediately!

The only reason I continued on was that Daughter1, just a week away from her due date, has developed raised blood pressure and has been ordered to rest, so mother dearest (I can be nice to my children when I absolutely must) made the supreme sacrifice and went city side to help out for the day.

I got to wash lots of little baby clothes. They are using cloth nappies and of course they are nothing like the terry towelling squares that we folded into a kit style nappy. Today the nappies (diapers) look like disposals in that they had elasticised legs with clips. One nappy they showed me had multiple rows of clips to adjust as they baby grows. Engineering has come to baby world! I warned them that if they every come home and find baby wearing a tea towel it will be because Grandma Flamingo Dancer was defeated by the technology!

I was more in my comfort zone making muffins. I baked cherry muffins and hummingbird muffins for Mr Boy’s work lunches (son in law). I love baking muffins and for these I used daughter’s recipe so there was an element of trying something new, but I was all fingers and thumbs cooking in someone else’s kitchen. By the time I made two batches of muffins and a spinach frittata  for lunch I was feeling more comfortable. But it is odd cooking in another person’s kitchen as it is organised according to their life style and logic, isn’t it?

One of daughter’s neighbours noticed me hanging baby clothes on the clothes line and asked me if the baby had arrived. I explained the situation and we made small talk for a few minutes. Daughter had overheard us speaking and said that was a longer conversation that she had shared with neighbour in the three years she had lived there! Nothing like a baby to bond neighbours!

The two houses are very close together and neighbour’s two young children seem to cry night and day, and have kept Daughter1 and Mr Boy awake on many nights, so they are looking forward to the revenge of having their baby keep the neighbours awake. Yes, she is my daughter and I trained her well.

alice

Life really is a cycle. It only seems a little while ago I was washing baby clothes for Daughter1′s birth, now I am preparing them for her daughter. I developed severe blood pressure and spent the last month of my pregnancy in hospital. I had to lie on my left side the entire time, and I was only allowed to sit up to eat my salt free food or to shower. I seemed to have a blood test almost every day.  Then her birth ended in an emergency caesarean section as the cord had become twisted around her neck and she was in distress. I have never done anything by halves and if there is an exception to the rule, just call it Flamingo Dancer! Hopefully, Daughter will be spared any and all dramas.

Since moving to the country I have become a dog person easily manipulated by her pet, and now I am about to be a grandmother, the best grandmother that ever was of course, but still a grandmother.

Never say never, you just never know where life will take you and how much you will change…

“The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.”
― Johnny Depp

 

Augie likeness

a celebration of things to come

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sandwiches

It is difficult to enjoy a baby shower in 38C, but thanks to the invention of air conditioning we made a fantastic success of it! Today was the baby shower for Daughter1 and it was a splendid occasion, even if I do say so myself, and I obviously have!

I rose early and made a platter of finger tea sandwiches, before driving to the city for the celebration. There were cucumber squares and tomato triangles, different cuts to signify safe for vegetarians, plus chicken, egg and lettuce, as well as asparagus and cream cheese fingers. I also found an old recipe for mock chicken in the Day to Day Cookery book I had in year eight home economics class. All the recipes I found online to link to here have herbs added, but the D2D recipe only uses salt and pepper. I added an extra egg to thicken it a little more for sandwiches rather than to use as a dip. There were only crumbs left at the end of the tea, so I assume the sandwiches were a success! The chicken was not mocked – oh, I am hilarious tonight!

Now that everything old is new again, and “vintage” cooking in the style of Grandmama’s day is fashionable again, my old recipe books are quite handy. I also have a couple old one’s that belonged to my mother, and one from my mother in law. I gave away towers of cookery books when we moved, but the old and true books made the move with us again. Maybe my grand daughter will cook from them one day too!

Flamingo Fenella Flamingo Group

a slow realisation that my role description doesn’t include providing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow

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Christmas red 1

I love Christmas, I really do, but I find the constant demands for me to be nice and considerate so damn exhausting. 2012 has been an exhausting year anyway, what with starting at yet another new school as a teacher librarian (thankfully this is now a permanent gig and I no longer have to be new teacher in the staffroom) my Mum needing to go into care, Daughter2 moving to the other side of the country, and let us not forget (and who could anyway) selling out city house (and the Buyers from Hell) and moving to The Village and a starting a country life.

I really wanted this Christmas, our first in the Flamingo Dancer Nest on the Hill, to be a happy and memorable time, but it started to stress me out. The thing that tipped me over the edge was my gift wrapping struggles with a pair of scissors that were blunter than a round rock and a roll of sticky tape that made me realise that should the day ever arrive where I needed to tape plastic over all windows and doors to keep the poison gas out, I would have no hope of finding the end of the tape roll and so may as well just throw open the windows and doors and breath deep. I have never held up any hope of sharp paper folds on my gift packages anyway, but as I gnawed my way through the sticky tape it dawned on me that I didn’t have to create the perfect Christmas for everyone. I probably couldn’t no matter how I wore myself out.

No, it is not my role to gift everyone in my life, and especially those gathered around my table. the perfect Christmas; that was the job of each and every person present. We make our own Christmas good or not so good, okay, good or bad. We each have a role to play, and it is not up to any one individual,  to “make” Christmas for another. As a mother it has taken a very long time for me to reach that realisation, but better late than never, I have.

And you know what? I think this was one of the best Christmases I have ever experienced! I relaxed, threw away the quest for perfection and went with the flow. It was wonderful, and I think, that from the comments made by others, that they felt that way too. No more guilt, no more anxiety, and a whole lot more fun.

Be kind to yourself by giving yourself permission to fail, and you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams. It also makes being nice a little less burdensome!

labelling a Linen Nazi

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Picture No. 10164893a

Our friend Leendadll was blogging about a label maker the other day, and I made the following comment :

When we first got our label maker we labelled everything that couldn’t run away from us. It makes me feel so superior seeing all this neat labels. I think I was channelling some 1950s housewife at the time. Luckily, I got over it (I think Mr FD hid the label maker as he was afraid he would wake up and all his body parts would be labelled. He does sleep naked as we know.)

What is it about label makers, that as soon as we females have one in our hot little hand we reach some new zenith of organisation and feel the need to label everything we own? Even things we can clearly see what they are.

I mean, it is one thing to label pantry containers, but what made me label a shelf where I stacked the tea towels? As the only person who placed the tea towels in the linen closet was I afraid that I would break ranks and place, heavens forbid, a hand towel there? Or a small hand saw? Like I don’t know what goes in my own linen closet?

Maybe I thought the dementia was going to set in overnight and I wouldn’t be able to identify a tea towel and might risk using a pillow case to wipe my dishes. If I wiped my dishes that is, because I have a dishwasher, thus puzzling myself even further as to why I felt that it was so important to label the shelf position of my linen.

Was I going to become a Linen Nazi if I threw caution to the wind and broke ranks to place a tea towel with the face cloths? How would I have punished myself? I think it was during my High Anxiety phase when I was still under the allusion that I had to be the perfect housewife as well as work full time.

I even sent Son out on a cold evening to the office supplies store to buy more tape, so as not to interrupt my labelling tempo. He was wise enough to know not to step between his mother and her latest obsession, and on his return poked the box of tape under a door as he fled back to his room like the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The label maker briefly surfaced during our recent move, and I fondled it for a few minutes, long enough to ascertain that it was empty of tape. I think a little like someone living with a Russian Roulette player, Mr FD may have taken the tape out for my own protection and his body parts.

However, I am wise enough to know now that a labelled linen closet does not make a happy home, and if my tea towels sometimes canoodle with the aprons (proof of The Superior Baker Who Rises at Dawn to Bake for Her Family phase) on the odd occasion, the world won’t come  to an end.  I know my happy median is not  having the contents of the closet fall onto my head and feet when I open the door, and not having to unpack an entire shelf to find a pillow case. I’ll just rely on the old grey cells to remember where the tea towels are. We all need to walk on the wild side sometimes.

Though I wonder if label tape sticks to dogs…

a list of hopes, wishes and delusions

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There are just fourteen school days until the end of term, and then just over six weeks of holidays stretch before us. Now that we can whiff the scent of year’s end it is becoming more difficult to motivate ourselves to take on new projects, or finish old ones. Everyone is so tired, and the hot weather doesn’t help.

I can, however make wish lists of holiday intentions, for hours on end. The one big goal is to have everything unpacked and in its place before the start of the new school year. I would like boxes unpacked by Christmas, but I am not pushing the out of sight, out of mind areas such as inside cupboards. Some will get done as I unpack, but the linen closet is basically staying unpacked as we have just taken out the linens as we require them. It pays not to be a new towel/bed sheets every day time of person (I know they exist, but thankfully have never encountered them to date. I may have to hit them with a stick if I did!) Sloth has its own rewards!

In my mind’s eye I picture two symbolic activities that will herald the end of the moving era.

The first one will be the planting of two large planters that will aside the front door. The door faces west and the area becomes very hot, and so I am thinking of planting lavender. Hopefully it will be a delightful scented entre to our home. Remember, this is my fantasy ending. They will grow perfectly, and it will be like a scene out of one of those movies where the heroine finds a villa in Tuscany and while planting lavender in her garden meets the local tall dark and handsome and falls in everlasting love. All I am asking is for the good looking lavender to survive!

The second imagining is less fraught. Picture the fabulous Flaming Dancer, hair perfect, sitting on the patio, which faces north, sipping tea and looking across the rolling expense of our kingdom; Augie romping before us on the green grass. Obviously this calls for a not too hot and dry summer so that the grass doesn’t shrivel away before my eyes. It also calls for someone else’s hair. I have the perfect tea cup though, large china cup and saucer, botanical design.

I am sure life will be perfect and complete then. Life can always be tied up with a bow, can’t it? Well, at least on one’s own wish list!

“The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.”

Samuel Johnson.

stormy weather, that’s what we have

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As I sit at our dining table, a spectacular light show plays out in the night sky before me.  It has been a weekend of severe electrical storms. Tonight there were reports that were my brother lives, out on the Darling Downs, hail the size of softballs were falling. Brisbane experienced a wild storm this morning.

 

As we are west of Brisbane now, it passed over us first. The winds and rains started just as I was due to drive out to The Village hairdresser. For the first times in my life I cancelled a hair appointment due to weather!

 

The real problem was that I couldn’t I couldn’t remember the name of the salon where I had booked, as I had made the appointment on a whim as I left the post office next door. The receptionist had offered me a card but I hadn’t bothered, which is odd for me. I normally collect the things like confetti as I always alter the time in my head between making the appointment and the designated day! This time I prided myself on remembering the time, but alas I had not remembered the name of the salon.

 

Who would of thought that in a town of less then 3,000 people there would be three hairdressers in the same segment of town, all stretching from one street corner to the next, with the same street address. Well, okay you might have, but I didn’t! So I made a guess and dialled one, asking if I had an appointment with them, and she was polite enough to not use a tone of voice as though I was a complete idiot. Now, that I think about it, it is probably not unusual in this small village (hey I can say that, turns out at least half would be distant if not close cousins!)

 

So, I toughed it out and asked for the name of the salon nearest the post office and she was kind enough to tell me. My defence is that it did not actually have the words “hair” or “beauty” in its title, so no wonder my searching didn’t turn it up.

 

Like a complete woose I cancelled my appointment because it was raining! There is no undercover parking in this town, so there! And it could have hailed. It did hail in some places. Just not here.

 

I did make an appointment for next Saturday, which brings its own worry as well. I am used to being told what time is available and if I ever cancelled an appointment due to ill health, it was always difficult to get another one before the month was over. This time she said it was no problem fitting me in, and in fact I could choose my own time. Harbingers well. I am soothing myself with the notion that they are new to the town too, and hence still building up clientele.  Right? Please say, yes…

 

Daughter2 in Perth and I were going to skype bake our Christmas cake, but I was busy having anxiety over cancelling my appointment only to see the sun break out about fifteen minutes later, and I figured it was rather bad style for Daughter2 to watch her mother perfecting her Christmas brandy drinking habit on Skype, so she was kind enough to allow me to bake along (I did promise to bake her a cake of her very own when I fly to Perth in the new year with her)

 

So the christmas cake was baked – the first big test for our “new” old oven. It appears to have performed perfectly, the cake cooking in 2 hours at 160C. It is a fruit cake, where the dried fruit is soaked in brandy before mixing. I basically follow much the same recipe each year, depending on supplies and state of mind.  I always add extra brandy in the fruit steeping process as I figure the extra alcohol will fix anything else I do wrong. It is always consumed in short shift, so I can only guess I have got away with slight discrepancies so far!

 

I love my new kitchen. I had a big kitchen in our Brisbane house, but this one is probably larger, except for the pantry area; but it means I have more work

 

 

thinking inside the kitchen

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In recent decades much has been written about the male domination of science and innovation, and my feminist mindset has always replied “yeah, that is because she was kept uneducated and pregnant in the home.” I still feel that to be the major cause, but in the short weeks since our move, and our continuing  existence living out of boxes, I have started to wonder about another cause : women’s adherence to what is “right”.

Take the humble egg slide for an example. It has form and function, if not beauty, but it performs its designated task to perfection.

However, what happens if one is cooking eggs and one cannot immediately find an egg slide? A woman (me) looks for the nearest like tool – a cooking utensils that is flatish or at least a tool that is designated for cooking.

 

Not so the man (Mr FD). He goes straight for the silver cake server. Open drawer, there it was; an item not made for cooking, merely a dainty, SILVER implement that has form, function (serving) and beauty. The man (Mr FD) has no self doubt, qualms or regrets. He uses the said silver cake server as an egg slide, not once, but twice. Indeed, until the woman (me) makes extra effort to locate the correct egg slide in the box marked kitchen utensils (drawers)  and places the silver cake server in a faraway place (probably never to be seen again and certainly never again used for cooking eggs!).

And that, dear reader, is one reason why women have had so much difficulty being innovative and creative: we stick to those damn rules, and a cake server is going to do what a cake server  is going to do!

I have broken from the mould though. For years I have been horrifying our daughters with such examples of wild abandon as storing a piece of cooked silverside roast in a lettuce keeper!

And that, dear reader, is why I am the Flamingo Dancer!

Augie takes over

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16

Moving day was the nightmare that was. Monday was an incredibly hot day, and towards the end we ran low on energy, but the dramas with the buyers continued when they requested a pre-settlement inspection on the day we were moving out.

We had four moving men, two moving vans (we had to use mid sized trucks to be able to negotiate the driveway) and the buyers: husband, wife and child spent about an hour and a half inspecting the house. The final complaint was that the weep holes in the brick work were too wide, to which Mr FD replied, “Mate, I’m not rebuilding the house for you!” Even the agent told him he was being ridiculous. I just wanted to ram the end of my floor mop up his … but instead went to the farthest end  of the house.

And, AND he asked if we had to connect the electricity for them! I repeat, he asked if we connected the power for him! At this stage, I was ready to turn his head into a Halloween pumpkin, but the realtor sensed murder was about to en enacted so he managed to finally scoop them out the door. It was at this stage I decided I would leave the family bathroom tub in need of a dust…

Then our bank didn’t have the settlement documents ready for the booked time, and settlement had to be delayed for a half hour, which could have allowed any party to pull out, but eventually it was done, but the bank didn’t follow along the lines of our understanding, so there are still some issues to work through! Further reason to distrust banks, in my opinion.

The moving men, were congenial and made every effort to work carefully, but as the day wore on and they grew tired their care factor shrank and so all the carefully marked boxes got moved into any, and every, room, so now we have to search the entire house if we need anything specific. I spent most of Tuesday walking in circles trying to sort boxes and locate items that it seemed important to one of us that we find immediately.

My sister arrived with dinner and I could have kissed her feet. We now live only 10 minutes apart, in different towns but a very easy drive, so we can see more of each other. Sister brought Mother Flamingo Dancer to our new house on Tuesday morning, and though Mum had great difficulty getting out of the car, and negotiating the two inch rise into the house she appeared to enjoy her visit. I now live about 4 streets away from her care facility.

I ventured out to buy groceries in the afternoon, and had to drive passed a road side fire. Even though I drove to the opposite side of the road, the heat from the fire was intense through the closed car window. Luckily, the fire burned away from the road and so it had moved on a bit by the time I made my return trip.

Augie Dog moved in late Tuesday, and as Son  had to go out that night, Mr FD and I were left at home to moan about our aches and pains and dogsit Augie. Augie is 10 weeks old and he likes to chew things; poop and wee. He is so cute though that we all melt despite the mess. Of course, Son and Mr FD have poop patrol which was my condition, one of my conditions to agreeing to a dog.  Augie trots behind me as I wander the house looking for lost things, until he is exhausted then he flops and sleeps, while I still wander the house looking for lost things. The boxes, I must add, do work a treat to keep Augie boxed into the areas where he is allowed.

Third day in our House on the Hill, Son walked outside to find a brown snake sunning itself on the stone steps leading to the top terrace, which was going to be Augie’s patch and where the clotheslines is situated. Son watched as snake slid into the stone wall face. I went to phone the local snake catcher, whose number I already had stored, but despite messages left on his office phone and mobile, twenty four hours later I am yet to hear from him. Note to self not to rely on the advertised snake catcher.

I also called the pest control man, who said that he didn’t really handle snakes and to call his wife who had some numbers of people who did. So, I phoned his wife and she gave me two mobile numbers. The first snake man said he would really like to help me out, but he is was in Western Australia until December, by which time we both agreed he probably would not be able to help us. The second man was an hour’s drive away until the end of the day, and if the snake wasn’t in my house wouldn’t come until day’s end. So again, he was of little use. Pest control man phoned back to say he was now just down the road and would come to have a look, which he did, arriving with a steel rod with a hook (stick envy, here people) to pick up snakes. Naturally, by this time the snake could not be sighted, no doubt deep within the wall, and providing the pest control man with a “city slicker” story to tell his mates.

I also managed to emasculate Mr FD in the process (my job here is done) by calling in another man to handle the snake. Mr FD’s knee pain had driven him to find comfort on our bed and so I hadn’t disturbed him at first snake sight, so when the pest control man arrived, Mr FD had to prove he knew how to live with snakes. Son and I just wanted to live without snakes, but of course that isn’t going to happen. Did the damn thing have to appear the first week, though? The previous owner left a note instructing us to “keep the door from the garage to the house shut at all times, as there are snakes about!” Any further proof required to convince us was provided by the discarded snake skin hanging between the branches of a tree on the terrace.

The telephone company had no record of our application to connect a phone service, so we are relying on mobile phones and ipad for communication. It also means no cable television, but there has been little time for that anyway.  The ensuite shower bath creaks when we stand in it, and if it wasn’t a ground floor bathroom I would be worried, but we have always had plans to remodel it. A plus was the discovery of a brand new white shower base in the garage, which will fit perfectly, so one win!

A small kangaroo, or it might be a wallaby, as we haven’t been able to sight clearly through the trees as yet comes to eat in our garden each morning , so I am thinking the vegie patch might require a fence, as well as Augie needing  his own yard.

So three days in we have had fire, pestilence and no technology. Welcome to life in the country!

into the finishing straight they go, Flamingo Dancer leading by the neck…

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I am just so over this moving thing. Night after night I go to bed, expecting the Fairy Moving Mother to arrive in her magic moving van during the night and whisk me away to our new House On The Hill, but everyone damn morning I wake up in the same blue bedroom, and to make it worse, with the same damn Mr FD beside me. The only box thath as moved in the night is the one that Mr FD fell over in his race to get to his side of the bed before the light goes off (and if you believe that lie, maybe you should be the next special envoy to the middle east). He usually falls over them as he crawls out of bed to the bathroom in the night.

Monday is M for moving day; out to the moving van, off down the highway and up the hillside drive to go into the new house. We are getting to that stage where energy is running low, panic is setting in and things are getting thrown into boxes. It was a stage I had prayed we would avoid, and I did actually sort some of the boxes that had been stored in the garage from out last move in 2002 when we ended up doing the same thing, but it hasn’t been helped by Mr FD’s self-professed “complete denial” that there was actual hard yakka (work) to be done. He really does believe in the Fairy Moving Mother!

Our new fridge and washing machine are being delivered today. I don’t get to play with them until we move, as they are staying in their boxes until then. I assume they will be in boxes. The washing machine that we borrowed from MIL will be deposited back on Saturday. She no longer leaves her care facility for home visits, but we shall keep the peace and return the washing machine, that no doubt we well be called on to sell on her behalf when the house is sold in the near future. The new machine is much bigger anyway.

We had to buy a new fridge as the shelves cracked in our present fridge. I didn’t think it would groan through the weight of another Christmas feast, so it is being delegated to the garage as a drinks fridge in summer. The present drinks fridge in the garage is being assigned to the footpath for the scrap metal merchant. Strangely enough it became a drinks fridge when its shelves cracked also. I don’t know what we do to fridges but we do seem to have a knack for breaking shelves. Mr FD doesn’t climb in to frighten small children or anything, well, as far as I know. The new fridge has tempered glass shelves so we are hoping for the best. Maybe it needs a camera just to keep a habit on what Mr FD gets up to when I am not there – he has always been intrigued by that little light that goes on and off when the door opens and shuts. Now that I think of it, the little light stopped functioning in both old fridges years ago. What does he get up to?

It is all those kinds of things that require thinking and organising that weasr one down, not just the packing. Logistics. Decisions. Communications. BUYERS (did I mention that they wanted to bring forward the settlement date to suit themselves? They wanted to settle before the weekend, not on Monday. Our lawyer said no, knowing it was impossible, without even asking us. I am sure it was to get out of paying another week’s rent). Anyway, this time next week, I shall sit on my front patio (deck, porch whatever you call that outdoor thingy area in your country) and take a photo of my serenity to share with you.

I just have to remember which box has the camera in it…