Happiness again

Here beginneth the 2011 annual blog post about Christmas puddings. Each year, I make them later and later: we have just taken them out of the bain-maries this morning, but they are ready to go. I toyed with experimenting with a new recipe, but decided not to mess with perfection (thanks, Vogue Entertaining Guide of the mid 1980s whose cover has now been ripped away after so much use: maybe this year I'll make the sweet potato souffle once more), and the only little variation was to bring out the flavour of the grated orange peel by using Cointreau instead of the last dash of brandy, and we'll take the bottle to flame them with on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We have also just bought a two million year old Wollemi pine (complete with its own certificate) in a pot to decorate.

This time last year I asked people to spare a special thought or wish for my friend Hypatia. I visited her briefly in Cambridge in April. She looked fragile, but was taking small steps forward. She's now back teaching and writing, and while there's still a way to go, she is still facing in the right direction, as far as I can see. 

In previous years I blogged about the ritual of making the puddings, and the year my father came and helped me skin the almonds and mix up the puddings when I was too weak to do it on my own. This year, I got Joel to help me, and we happily squeezed the gleaming pearly white nuts out of their warm wet skins, shooting them around the inside of the bowl.

Later we all sat around drinking tea. We are still celebrating Joel's VCE Year 12 piano result (nothing wrong with an A+, in any language, especially when it was really not expected); we had Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" playing, and the cats were madly chasing each other around the house to that long, initial build-up in "Tusk"; and this time it was Joel who had one of those little rushes of happiness, so clearly associated with home, with security, with family tradition.

Hard to write this kind of thing without sounding complacent and self-congratulatory. What I'm aiming to do is to treasure those moments when they come, not take them for granted.

Here I am again

Apologies, folks, for the break in transmission. It's been an incredibly busy couple of months. Though as I always maintain, blogging really isn't about having the time, or not. It's something more to do with mental and social energies, which have been pushed and strained somewhat over the last year. I have now finally given my last talk for the year, though, and am starting to think about winding up at work. I'm taking a couple of weeks' leave from Monday week, so that's a week in which to attend a symposium, finish marking some late-submitted work, catch up with my graduate students, and finalise some budget stuff for the Centre.

I've moved in to my new office, which was then painted and re-carpeted around me. I've started looking at furniture catalogues for some comfy chairs, and will look forward to making it a beautiful place. Photos will follow next year when I've got stuff up on the walls, and all. The office is lovely: light, bright and big. It has fans, air-conditioning, and windows that open, as well as lots of cupboards and shelves.  Our first post-doc has arrived and has started work, and our second arrives in January, so the Melbourne hub of our Centre is feeling real, and populated, with two wonderful new appointments to help with (a) the administration and (b) the education and outreach aspects.

The last talk was at the International Medievalism and Popular Culture symposium in Perth, the last event of our four-year grant on Medievalism in Australian Cultural Memory. And what a way to finish! One of those lovely events where no one is a keynote, and everyone is a plenary. About 45 folk listening to fifteen papers, none of which went over time. I'll write more about my own joint paper another time, perhaps. John Ganim, Nick Haydock and Eileen Joy braved the horrors of the half-world trip (and the spectacular Perth thunderstorms that messed up everyone's trip home), and Andrew Lynch held it all together with a light touch that put everyone at ease.

Even so, I am already planning a new year's resolution, which is to stop taking on too many things. Even though I cancelled two talks in September when I was just too sick to write them, let alone give them, I do still feel I took on too many things this year, with the result that I don't feel I did them all justice.

We are now being invited to submit the details of our publications to the dreaded research database. This is a pain in many ways. First, the system is incredibly unwieldy and time-consuming. Second, so many things follow from it: automatic calculations of one's teaching load, study-leave entitlements, etc.  Third, my two articles scheduled for this year haven't appeared yet. It is ridiculous for this to matter (they'll both appear in January, I think). One of them, at least, will have a 2011 publication date. But again, it's ridiculous that this is going to matter. Anyhoo, I have turned down a couple of things this year, and I have to keep doing that till I am back on top of things, and to make sure I leave enough time to do things well, not just meet the deadlines.

When we started all this bean-counting, and evaluation of journals, etc., a few years ago, I always swore I wouldn't let it get to me. But little by little, it has crept up on me, so that I do count the number of publications and "points" accruing to my CV.

Still, today was lovely. I made beetroot and raspberry borsht; and artichoke frittata for a birthday lunch; did a huge pile of ironing, straightening out the world; and had a sleep on the couch. Tomorrow I do the final check of the index of the book (proofs are already on the way to Philadelphia) and get to work on the next chapter of the next book.

So, hello again, blog: it's nice to be back.

Christmas, St Agnes and Hypatia

About four years ago, I blogged about making Christmas puddings with my father, because I was too sick to stand and cut and grate and chop and mix and beat and stir. Two years ago, I blogged about feeling much better, and being able to do it on my own. This year, I'm a little late in making them, but am hoping a liberal extra dose of St Agnes's finest will make up for this in flavour.

Each year we stir and make a wish. And while a wish is supposed to be secret, I'm writing to invite my readers to make a virtual pudding wish. The puddings are currently boiling and simmering away. It's too late to stir them, so it won't hurt if you add your wish in the comments box.  I'm hoping you might think about adding a word for my friend Hypatia, who is having breast surgery on Tuesday, rather sooner, and more radically, than either she or her oncologist had hoped for. She is such a fierce thinker, is Hypatia, and so keen to get back to work and be with her students and colleagues, but she has a few trials to undergo first. So I hope you might, in even just one word, wish her courage or health or strength or concentration or peace or calm: whatever you would wish for yourself should this ever come to you. And even if you don't want to log on or write anything, please spare her a thought or a wish or a prayer or a blessing.

I realised a moment ago the tremendous irony, serendipity or unconscious convergence in my mention of the not-particularly-special brandy, St Agnes's, that I used in the puddings, since many of the legends of St Agnes describe how this third-century Roman martyr had her breasts torn off with pincers before her eventual beheading. She is now the patron saint, among other things, of breast cancer patients.

I can't find a text on line, and don't have a copy at home, either, but I do recall the thrill of reading Lampedusa's account of the little St Agnes cakes —  white icing and red cherries? —  in The Leopard, too.

Well, it's just getting weird, now, so to bring you back up into my world, here and now, here's a clip of the fabulous Ben Winkelman trio. Ben here is playing keyboards, but we had the CD of him on piano and this track filling the house as we breakfasted and as I tied up my puddings. Ben gave Joel half a dozen lessons before he headed off to New York to make his fortune, so we think of him as ours, of course.

New Year's Eve

Pavlov's Cat has a To Do list for this very hot New Year's Eve in south-eastern Australia. Top of her list is "Pull oneself together," which made me laugh.

Things aren't quite that bad over this-a-way, but my list is not dissimilar.

I've made one batch of oyster pies; one more to go. Last night I made a crab mousse, a summer pudding and an enormous dish of tira-mi-su. Paul is cooking up an absolute storm: just keeps coming up with one amazing-sounding dish after another. This afternoon I'll be rolling bits of bacon around prunes for devils on horseback, and providing cold drinks to the "band" practice: bass, lead guitar, drums and J on keyboards. They know each other pretty well, and some of them have played and jammed with some of the others before in school and other groups; and the drummer has already cut his first CD with another band. Even if it's a little rough around ththe edges, it'll be so nice to have live music.

We've been doing a new year's eve party for ten years now (though we skipped during the summer of radiotherapy in 2006). We have it pretty much down to a fine art. The tables and plates and glasses are all out; lights are being hung around the garden, and I'll float little candles in the fishpond so long as the howling winds don't make it impossible. It's 34 already, and they are predicting 38 in Melbourne before a change comes through with thunderstorms. So we might end up inside.

OK, back to the kitchen; and cleaning up the laundry: somehow I don't think I'm going to get to the ironing today.

And... a Happy New Year to all.

I blame masterchef

... for the decision last night, after I had come home from a meeting at the school about Wilderness Week in December, to help Joel make gnocchi. He said he was going to cook while I was at the meeting (Paul was out), but I think he slightly underestimated the time it takes to boil potatoes and knead dough, etc., and hadn't actually started when I got home at 8.00. Anyway, we had a great deal of fun, made a great deal of mess, and made a couple of discoveries. First: you don't want to make the gnocchi too big, or they become a bit too solid. Our gnocchi were getting bigger and bigger, and I explained to Joel that scribes often wrote in larger handwriting at the bottom of the page (oh dear: not letting that teaching moment go by!). And second: that we are not immune to the influence of this most-watched television programme.

We didn't watch it all the way through, but we certainly watched the final. We now give instructions to each other about "plating up", and like other annoying television watchers all over the country, give "positive criticism" to each other's cooking. Hilarious.

Mind you, there was a lot of guff written and said about the popularity of this programme, and the way it provided wholesome, family entertainment all could enjoy, when obviously the main points to make were

1. it brought families together around the television, not the dinner table
2. the real fun was the thrill of schadenfreude: whose sorbet is grainy; whose pie crust has collapsed; whose fish is not cooked.
3. it still encouraged the reality tv horror of encouraging us to like and dislike people on superficial grounds (Chris's stupid hat; Poh's beautiful pink cheeks; Julie's tears).
   

The great irony is that in Wilderness Week, the year 9 kids all head off to various hiking and camping trips for a week. Joel's five day trip to Wilson's Promontory (sleeping in tents at Tidal River and doing their own cooking, with three big day hikes) is one of the lighter treks. One of the mothers was ascertaining there'd be fresh water so the kids could soak chick peas during the day. Joel's friend's mother and I just looked at each other. But maybe after masterchef, they'll all be making gnocchi down there. Actually, that reminds me of a lovely thing I learned in Italian class: gnocchi is of course a plural, but if you want to tease someone, like calling them a noodle, you can call them a gnoccho.

And what do I want to learn now? I want to learn how to temper chocolate. But even just saying the phrase is a good deal of the fun here.

Three-day event

Chez nous, making Christmas puddings is a three-day event.

Day One: buy brandy and fruit. Sultanas, currants, raisins, apricots, figs, ginger, peel, cherries, dates, and a handful of the prunes soaked in port I keep in the pantry. Chop and soak.

Day Two: assemble other ingredients: butter (I can't abide suet; and there are vegetarians in each family, anyway), sugar, flour, spices, eggs (free-range, collected by hand from under the chickens who laid them in the nests at the Ceres co-op), carrot, breadcrumbs, orange rind, lemon rind, almonds, beer and more brandy. Mix with fruit, and get assembled members of the family to stir and make a wish.

Day Three: pack into bowls,



Wrap with layers of foil and tie with string; then juggle various saucepans until you come across this extremely satisfactory arrangement for the two big ones.




There's a third smaller one in a saucepan bubbling away on the stove now.

Every year I make three: a big one each for Paul's family on Christmas Eve (his parents, aunt and uncle, brother and sister and their partners and children), and one for mine on Christmas Day (my parents and sister).

I have blogged about making the puddings earlier, under much more difficult circumstances. Very good, this time, to feel healthy and strong and able to stir with ease. I'll try and remember to take a photo at Christmas and update: this recipe makes a very rich and dark pudding, which we flame with hot brandy, then serve with lashings of brandy butter and fresh berries and cream. The little one we are supposed to eat mid-year, in mid-winter, but last year's is still lurking in the fridge. I checked it yesterday and it looks fine. Must find an occasion to eat Christmas pudding soon...