I took the kids skiing today. When they came off the slopes, snowy and cold, we sat in the car drinking hot chocolate and tea from a thermos and admiring the view.
Not a bad place for a tea break.
Parenting
Getting over the hump
I am not a knitter. People have been trying to teach me to knit since I was seven years old, to no avail. I’m very crafty in other ways. I weave, sew, quilt and embroider; I was once quite good at macramé (when macramé was “in”); I’ve done quilling and scherenschnitt, basketry and rug braiding, beading and jewellery making. I’m proficient at all these crafts and more, but put knitting needles in my hands, and suddenly I’m all thumbs.
But I’m also stubborn. When my mother tried to teach me to knit, and failed, I tried again. When the neighbour tried to teach me to knit, and failed, I tried again. When a friend tried to teach me to knit, and failed, I tried again. I bought Debbie Bliss’ book How to Knit, and forced myself to knit and unravel, knit and unravel, until I could manage to knit a row without dropping or adding stitches. It wasn’t pretty, and it was a stressful process. I’d finish a knitting session with a sore neck and tense muscles. I made myself a pair of slippers. Then I made another pair, and another, and another, and another. Six pairs of slippers later, I was thoroughly sick of slippers, and still struggled with knitting. I took a break…a ten month break. When I came back to knitting, I had to learn all over again. I tried out some different stitch patterns, attempted knitting in the round, and ended up unravelling most of my work.
Another year passed. My slippers wore out, and winter came. My feet were cold, so I tried knitting again. I had to pull out the knitting book in order to remember even the basic stitches.
But something had changed. After the first clumsy rows, I began to relax. The stitches came naturally. My fingers didn’t cramp. I finished the first slipper in a day. I was over the hump.
As parents, my husband and I regularly have to push our children to get over that hump. Learning a new skill is hard work, and there are precious few rewards at the beginning. Playing the piano, there are many wrong notes, and the songs sound clunky, the rhythm erratic. Making pastry, there could easily be half a dozen dense, oily lumps before the first magical, flaky crust. Juggling, there are a lot of balls rolling away on the floor before they soar effortlessly from hand to hand.
For some skills, the hump is low, and easily surmounted. For others, that hump is like a steep mountain with no breathtaking views until the very top. As a parent, one of my jobs is to push the kids to get over those mountains and not quit before a new skill becomes fun. It doesn’t mean becoming a tiger mom, but it does mean enforcing some discipline in kids who may not want to practice their instrument, because it’s a struggle, and they know they sound awful. It means asking the kids to help prepare dinner, and patiently encouraging them as they slowly and unevenly slice the carrots or mix the dough. It means cheering on the child who comes last in the race, and running alongside her as she prepares for the next one.
Hopefully, if we do our job right, the kids will be able to push themselves over those humps on their own one day.
They might even learn to knit.
Dali would feel right at home…
(Transcript of an actual conversation between me and my daughter)
“You could blog about eyeballs!”
“Umm…the blog is supposed to relate to food.”
“You could blog about vampires, and how they eat eyeballs!”
“But vampires suck blood; they don’t eat eyeballs.”
“Yes they do. They suck the blood, then eat the eyeballs!”
“No, vampires have piercing-sucking mouthparts. They can’t eat eyeballs…Unless, of course, they liquefy them first.”
“Oh.”
Vegetarian Meatballs
“Why do we call them meatballs when there’s no meat in them?”
A fair question, from my daughter one day as I stood in the kitchen making one of the family’s favourite meals—spaghetti with meatballs.
Of course, as vegetarians, our meatballs contain no animal muscle tissue whatsoever. Their effect on the gustatory pleasure centres is comparable to a good traditional meatball, though, so the name sticks.
When I was breast feeding my son (13 years ago!), there were very few foods I could eat without causing him colic. It took eight weeks of round-the-clock screaming for me to work this out, and when I finally got him to stop howling by reducing my diet to nothing but carrots, rice and potatoes for a week, I was loath to add anything back in, lest the crying (his and mine) resume. I needed a source of protein, though, and eventually found that tofu was ‘safe’. The problem was that I wasn’t terribly fond of tofu. I knew it could be delicious, because I’d eaten some incredible tofu dishes made by a friend. I rang her up and begged her to send some recipes. One of the recipes she sent was for tofu meatballs.
Those meatballs (minus about half their ingredients) kept me alive for that year of breast feeding. When I was through nursing and was able to add back into the recipe the onions, mustard, and peppers that would have caused my son grief, they stayed on the menu. They are one of those foods that induces overeating. My husband admits that he refrains from using tofu for stir fries or other dishes in the hope that I’ll make meatballs.
I don’t know where this recipe originally came from, and I would love to cite the source. If you recognise it and can enlighten me, please do so!
Mix together in a large bowl:
500g firm tofu, crumbled
1 grated carrot
1 onion, finely chopped (I sauté the onion first—we prefer the flavour that way)
1 green pepper, finely chopped
¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped
¾ cup finely ground walnuts
1 c bread crumbs
2 eggs
3 Tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 ½ Tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp ground fennel
1 ½ tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
ground black pepper to taste
Form into small balls and place on an oiled baking sheet. Bake at 190°C for about 30 minutes, or until beginning to brown. Serve with a simple tomato sauce over pasta.
Banish the winter blues!
It’s a drizzly, dark day. The whole family slept in this morning (well, apart from me), and they still all rose before sunrise. It was a day to either stay in bed or do something to banish the winter blues. So I made lemon cupcakes iced with bright yellow flowers—my kitchen is sunny, even if the sky is grey!
The original plan was to teach my daughter some cake decorating techniques, but we discovered we were out of confectioner’s sugar, so I made a buttercream frosting instead of a quick frosting. That took a lot longer than a quick frosting, and by the time the frosting was ready, a friend had arrived to play. Since all the cake decorating equipment was already out, I figured I’d have some fun, even without my daughter. (She did manage to stop playing long enough to eat a cupcake).
Birthday Cakes Past
For Throwback Thursday, I thought I’d post some photos of a few past birthday cakes, just for fun.
2010: One of a long series of “flower” cakes requested by my daughter.
2010: The Earth was my son’s request.
2011: My daughter’s colourful paintbrush cake.
2012: The girl requested a surprise animal. This was my first attempt at using leaves as chocolate moulds (for the ears).
2013: A dual birthday party cake–the spice cake owl was for my son, the chocolate log, for my daughter. I had always wanted to make meringue mushrooms…
2014: After the 2012 success with chocolate painted leaves, I used the same technique for flight feathers on the LOTR eagle. Unfortunately, it was a blazingly hot day, and the wing tips melted and sagged within an hour.
2014: The swan used more chocolate painted leaves—white chocolate this time, which managed the heat a little bit better than the dark chocolate (though the icing holding the wing to the body did not). It was also my first, not so attractive, foray into marzipan (for the beak).
2014: My marzipan, cake, and candy triumph—Smaug was the joint birthday party cake. Tail, neck, head, and legs sculpted from marzipan, clear candy wings and jewels studding the treasure pile.
Girl
Girl.
She walks tall,
Plans,
Creates,
Loves,
Laughs.
Considers,
Debates,
Decides.
Imagines,
Does.
Is.
In the space given to her–
The space too small
To hold all that is
Girl,
The space with limits,
Rules,
Expectations that do not meet hers.
Expectations too low:
Strength,
Independence,
Endurance,
Brains.
Expectations too high:
Beauty,
Popularity,
Helplessness.
Make way.
Make space for her.
Space for steely resolve.
Space for sweat.
Space for skinned knees and
Dogged determination.
Because Girl
She walks tall.
She
Is.
Teenage angst
What do you mean I’m too young?
I was in my office, trying to focus on work when her insistent voice broke into my consciousness. Estrella, one of the goat kids, was whining loudly and incessantly. I stepped outside to see what was wrong with the normally quiet girl.
She was standing in the middle of the paddock. Her head wasn’t caught in the fence. Her sister and her mum were nearby. She hadn’t injured herself in the three hours since I was last in the paddock.
Ariana came bounding to her rescue, and her little tail gave a vigorous wag.
I sighed.
Estrella is in season. She’s the last of the three kids to start cycling. The other two have had their days over the past few weeks. Each cycle is heralded by vociferous maaa-ing.
At eight months old, the kids are too young to breed—though they’d happily get in kid, their bodies still aren’t fully developed, and it would cause them trouble. My old girl, Artemis, is now retired from breeding, though to hear her talk, she’d gladly visit the buck, too. Only one of the five goats in the paddock is at breeding age. She’s just come back from three weeks with the neighbour’s bucks, so I’m hopeful she is in kid.
But with four unmated goats in the paddock, and a cycle of three weeks between seasons, there’s going to be a lot of whining in the paddock this winter.
With two children in the house on the cusp of puberty, the whining indoors is almost as bad. I am surrounded by hormonal animals, all wanting something they don’t quite understand and cannot have.
It’s enough to make me dream of olive trees. They would look nice in the paddock. I love olives. And they don’t whine.
Guest Post–Figs
Today’s post is a guest post written by my 11 year-old daughter about the figs she picked and processed today:
Last week I ate a fig for the first time ever. We have one fig tree. It started looking the most decimated of all the small fruit trees, but now it’s the only one that has given us fruit.
I noticed the figs were being eaten by birds so decided to pick one and try it. It tasted sweet and somewhat like Neptune’s necklace (a seaweed), but unlike Neptune’s necklace, it was quite tasty.
Today we picked the rest of the figs because the tree was getting frosted. We then boiled them and put them in a syrup. They are meant to be let sit for three weeks, but now they taste like somewhere between a fig and a sweet gherkin.
Best compliments ever
My bread can’t compare to these beauties of Ian’s.
“Ugh! Their house smells like wet dog!” commented a friend’s sassy teenage daughter about a mutual acquaintance.
“I don’t want to know what you think my house smells like,” I teased.
“Oh! Your house smells wonderful! Like fresh bread and cinnamon!”
____________
“Is this homemade, too?!” asked Son’s Friend #1 in astonishment.
“Everything here is homemade!” answered Son’s Friend #2 with glee.
Robinne Weiss 