Be your own first audience

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My parents read to me when I was little – which is probably where I learned to love stories. More than that, I learned to love the spoken word. I find a beautifully narrated story the most fabulous entertainment imaginable. The combination of a well modulated voice and a rousing tale is right there at the top of my ‘best things ever’ list 🙂

Fast forward to when I was at uni. There I noticed that academic prose tends to be littered with the sort of language that professors and tutors require – but which doesn’t make for easy narration. I chose to avoid that as far as possible, reading my essays and assignments out loud after writing them so that I could get a sense of how they sounded.  My goal? To achieve words that scan well and can be read out loud without awkward pauses. This often required cutting out unnecessary words and/or complex language in order to express my thoughts more efficiently.

I’d type and scribble – then read it all out loud – then tweak what I’d written until it sounds right. Then I’d do it all again. It made me think about what I’d written differently. Hearing the words gave them different meaning, helped me to understand my research differently and make linkages I might otherwise have missed.

My postgrad supervisors enjoyed this aspect of my monthly reporting. We’d all sit down and get the social niceties out of the way, then I’d ask them ‘Are you sitting comfortably…? Then let’s begin’.  Flipping open my journal, I’d read my report to them as a story – a compilation of my research activities, thoughts and analysis over the past month. And they’d sit back and enjoy it. Afterwards we’d have a discussion about the research, but no session was complete without story time. It was enormous fun and we all remembered a great deal more about the project from month to month than we might otherwise have done.

This way of being flowed through into how I structured my thesis and, later, my memoir. It’s how I choose to write (for fun and profit).  The dogs have never been much of an audience, really, but they’re very patient with my ramblings… Perhaps they know that as my own first audience I will also always be my harshest critic?OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Creative mundanity

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I’ve been thinking about creativity, about the creative activities I’m currently engaged in (writing, knitting, mosaic, rug making, cooking) and how much I enjoy them. The one thing they all have in common is that they each offer me the opportunity to do things differently. In every instance I can choose whether to follow a script / pattern, to use one as a guideline, or to create something from the ground up. Whichever option I choose, everything I make is new and different and hasn’t been made before – at least not by me.

On the other end of that scale is what I consider the least creative pastime imaginable: household 450px-Wooden_clothes_pinchores. Somehow floors always need vacuuming, beds making, laundry washing, loos cleaning (etc) – and it’s a little tricky to come up with new and exciting ways to get these done. Emptying the washing machine today, I remembered my mother-in-law once telling me how she used to look back at her washing line with pride. She said it pleased her to see how sparkly clean the washing was and how nice it all looked in colour-coordinated sections…

I was young and the best response I could muster at the time was a smile. Perhaps it was the only response possible in that situation. It probably wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to tell her that her comment made me feel sad for what I perceived as the narrowness of her life – or to tell her that my feeling on looking over my shoulder at a line of washing is generally just one of relief that it was done and hung out. Again.

But was Ma-in-law actually trying to teach me something? Could she have noticed something of my newly-stay-at-home-mum frustrations and been trying to help? Perhaps she was using the laundry as an example to show that one can take pride in doing the simplest and most mundane of tasks well – and that no task need be inherently objectionable, particularly if viewed pragmatically.

With hindsight – and the knowledge that she was an kind, intelligent and creative woman – I feel it likely that the laundry comment did indeed have some deeper meaning along those lines. It’s also probable that this and other subtly delivered messages from her over the years are an example of what is now referred to as intergenerational learning. I was very fortunate to have her in my life and feel quite sure that she helped me to understand that aspiring to do something well, no matter how insignificant or repetitive that thing may be, is worthwhile in its own right – and can even be fun 🙂

Images sourced from Wikimedia Commons:
File:Wooden_clothes_pin.JPG

 

The last of the winter harvest

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Yesterday I roasted the last of our sweet potato harvest to enjoy with our mid-winter feast. When we all sat down to consume vast quantities of vegetable soup, Moroccan lamb tagine, chicken in white wine sauce – and sweet potato, I was intrigued to discover that whilst most people there enjoy eating sweet potato, not many knew just how easy it is to grow.

To be honest, I didn’t either until relatively recently – but since then we’ve grown and harvested two very successful crops and haven’t looked back. As simple gardening goes, this is a real winner.

In short, sweet potato is easy to grow, provides an attractive ground cover relatively quickly, and makes a great substitute for potato and/or pumpkin for household consumption. The runners produce edible leaves, very tasty roots and, as a member of the morning glory family, also graces your garden with lovely blossoms.

450px-Ipomoea_batatas_002The plants grow best in a sunny position, but I’ve had reasonable success in semi-shade as well – so don’t let that put you off. There’s plenty of detailed information available on how and where to grow sweet potato, but it’s not even slightly tricky: cut the end off a sweet potato – plant it – water it – watch to see the shoots come up and spread – it’s like magic. Once you have established plants, you can take cuttings from those and plant them directly into the ground and watch them grow – more magic  🙂

We have a whole new crop planted in our verge garden and are looking forward to future garden bounty.

Images sourced from Wikimedia Commons:
File:Ipomoea batatas 002.JPG

Some smiles to round out the week

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glovens_june2016

Things that make me smile:

  • Glovens (mitten-gloves) completed, crocheted in multicoloured 100% wool – hands now warm and toasty.
  • Meeting my work deadline for a quarterly print run
  • Jam success – and several jars sent to new homes 🙂
  • Mid-winter gathering of family and friends – so much tasty food!
  • Toasting marshmallows over open fire using new toasting forks invented by Himself for the occasion. We have leftover marshmallows…
  • Email from Amazon informing me that books sales really happened:  “This royalty payment notification is for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) sales recorded in the AU Kindle Store…”

The first jam run

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Having (accidentally) picked about 6.5kg of cumquats this week, I feel obliged to try to put them to good use. Phase one is a jam run, using my standard cumquat jam recipe – tried and tested many times with excellent results. This has used up 3.3kg of fruit, which means there’s still a giant bowlful staring at me balefully – waiting to be used. I used a further 40 cumquats this morning creating a version of the Anna Gare cake I mentioned in an earlier blogjune post – it smells fabulous and I’m not at all sure it’s going to last until our mid-winter feast tomorrow night…

Cumquat hazelnut cake

This is my jam recipe (with comments). It works, it’s tasty and it uses up cumquats 🙂

  1. pick your cumquats, wash them, slice them in half and prise the (oh so many!) pips out (be warned, this step takes a while – and if you have any little cuts or cracks in your fingers, you’ll know ALL about them!).
  2. make sure you save the pips (this is important).
  3. weigh your fruit. for every 1kg of fruit, add 1.5 litres of water.
  4. leave the fruit to soak overnight (yes, this is important: do it).
  5. cover the pips (the ones you save in step 2) with water, cover and leave for 12 – 24 hours (also important).
  6. transfer you fruit/water mix into a large stock pot (unless, like me, you soaked it in one to save time)
  7. bring the mix up to the boil slowly
  8. strain your pips into the mix, maxing sure you maximise the amount of goo (pectin from the pips) you get in whilst also avoiding any pips going into the mix
  9. simmer your fruit for about an hour or until the skins are soft
  10. pop a couple of saucers in the freezer – you’ll need them later
  11. measure the fruit mix and add 1 cup of sugar per cup of fruit mix (white sugar results in prettier jam, but I’ve used raw sugar and it makes no difference to the taste).
  12. you now need to return the mix to the heat and stir it until the sugar’s all dissolved – don’t bring it to the boil yet!
  13. once the sugar’s dissolved, then bring the mix to the boil and keep it at a rapid boil (uncovered) for 40 – 60 minutes > basically until the mix jels if you test it on a cold saucer. Mix should be at about 105C (mine went a bit over that last night, so the jam’s a bit darker in colour than usual).
  14. stand for a few minutes, then pour the jam into hot sterilised (dry) jars.
  15. we pop the lids on the jars and tighten them while the mix is still hot to ensure a good seal

You now have many jars of jam (we made 28) — and your visitors will also start to look nervous as they try to ward off culinary gifts 🙂

By the by, if your fruit isn’t  all completely ripe, the pips will probably be a little underdeveloped and may not provide sufficient pectin. I decided to add a sachet of Fowlers Vacola Jamsetta last night (first time I’ve used it in cumquat jam) to compensate… and the results were spectacular. The jam overflowed across the top of the stove – very suddenly, unexpetedly and dramatically! Not much lost, but a hell of a job to clean up.

Note to self: for future reference: turn the heat off before adding a commercial jam setter – and add it slowly…

cumquatjamtime_23jun16