Kitchen Goddess

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With the dogs keeping me trapped in one place for much of the past couple of weeks, I’ve taken to watching episodes of Master Chef.

Last week there was a bake-off between three of the contestants. The brief was to impress Nigella Lawson with a homestyle cake. They had 90 minutes to figure out what to make (ie. know the recipe well enough to just get stuck in), scoot to the pantry to claim their ingredients, get it all done and plate up something fabulous to present to the judges.

It was 90 minutes of cake madness. The stand-out winner (Matt Sinclair) chose to make one of my personal favourites: a carrot cake. He put a slightly different twist on it by baking the cake in two pans so that it would bake more quickly (very cunning) and sandwiching the layers together making up some carrot cake jam he whipped up.  He spread some lemony cream cheese icing in the middle as well, then used the rest of the icing to top the cake before sprinkling it with candied walnuts. It looked AMAZING. No, it looked delicious. Completely delicious – and I really (really!) wancarrot cake_may2016ted a slice.

So, over the weekend, whilst Himself was available to puppy-sit, I tried to replicate as much of Matt’s creation as I could remember. Fortunately I already have a carrot cake recipe that I’ve used successfully many times, so all I needed was a plausible recipe for carrot cake jam.

However, all the recipes I hunted down seemed to either leave out something I remembered Matt using… or include something not in my kitchen. So I improvised and came up with my own variation, which was good fun.

The next step was to make my carrot cake and improvise a lime cream cheese icing. After all, cooking is often about using what you’ve got to hand – and at present we have limes!

As soon as the whole thing was assembled, we hoed into it. Verdict from Himself: “Yum!!” Also: “More?”

I think we can call it a success 🙂

Oh, and after all that, I found the recipe for Matt’s cake on the MasterChef site yesterday! Ah well, mine worked pretty darn well, so if you’d like my recipe-combo to try, please please let me know.

Back to Basics

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A friend of mine (in her mid twenties) recently confessed that when she left home a few years ago she had absolutely no idea how to cook. Growing up in the US, she’d thought that food ‘made from scratch’ involved packet / instant meals, rehydrated and heated. A meal made from individual fresh ingredients was virtually unheard of. ‘Geez, most of the fresh stuff – vegetables in particular – were a mystery to me the first time I saw them in a store.. I’ve learned pretty much everything I know since moving to Australia, especially in the last year.’

Although on one level I found this astounding – my own experience having been so very different – it also resonated with what I hear from other young (and not-so-young) people I meet. Namely that planning meals, shopping for ingredients, and then making even fairly basic food is not part of their worldview. They acknowledge the reality of the concept, but haven’t the skill set to engage with it on a practical level.

Processed foods, generally loaded with sugars and fats, are relatively inexpensive. Sadly, Australia is following the US trend and fast food outlets are becoming increasingly more accessible than stores selling fresh food. The result is that the combination of convenience, instant satisfaction (sugar high) and not having to plan makes them easy solution for many people.

And that’s what basic food preparation is about at its core. It’s not magic, it’s just planning – and experience.

I think it’s super important to provide our kids with the skills to feed themselves nutritious food made from scratch – and on a budget, since the trend in food prices is always on the rise. So here are some basic tips from when my kids were young:

  • I encouraged them to experiment in the kitchen. We started small, baking cookies together. It was fun – and everyone got to eat the results, which they found very satisfying.
  • From quite early on they started to help with basic food prep for dinner (grating carrots, cracking eggs into a bowl and whisking them, etc.). It entertained them and gave them the first stepping stones to managing in the kitchen independently.
  • Praise worked wonders. I found that it built keen kitchen-helpers and – in the long run – very capable cooks.
  • Show by example that making meals from fresh ingredients can be fun, easy and affordable.
  • Recipes need to be simple to start with – not too many ingredients or too many steps, otherwise it’s simply too daunting.
  • Create a recipe folder for each kid and each time they make something, print the recipe and add it to their file for future use. Boychilde recently told me that he still has his recipe file and continues to use it, 20+ years after we started it together. I’m pretty sure DaughterDearest does too  🙂

Having kids in the kitchen is messy and you could definitely do it more quickly and efficiently without their ‘help’ – at least to start with. But in due course they’ll start to pick up skills, knowledge and confidence. They’ll be able to start cooking meals occasionally and make decisions about grocery planning and what constitutes a balanced meal.

It’s skill building for their future – and it’s no small thing.

helping in the kitchen

Dog wrangling

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For my first BlogJune post, I thought I’d write about our current dog-chaos. Last week we finally took MissMolly to be sterilised. It had to be done… she’s almost two, after all, and puppies are not part of the game plan. But we felt a keen – and disproportionate – sense of guilt nevertheless.

She left here her usual bouncy-crazy self  on Monday morning, happy to be off on an adventure. When we picked her up several hours later she was subdued, confused, unhappy and shaking. She was wearing a  cone of shame and her one eye keep drooping shut. All the guilt.

Keep her calm and quiet, the vet said. No jumping or excessive activity for 6 – 10 days, she said. Oh, and no licking of the wound – she needs to wear the cone of shame until her stitches come out… in 14 days.

Right…

Then the vet looked at MissM and grinned. Perhaps, in her case, a gentle walk around the block from day two might be a good idea to get rid of some of her energy, she added, but keep her as quiet as possible…

So how does one keep a hyper-active Doberman quiet, calm and not jumpy – particularly around a four month old puppy who just wants to play? The very concept pushes the bounds of belief to the limits. In Molly’s case, it’s like saying flip the on/off switch – and she’s very resistant to the ‘off’ position.

In the end we’ve spent several stressful days keeping her on lead at almost all times. This is our way of trying to limit her bursts of crazy-wildness to some extent and separate the two dogs when necessary. It’s more-or-less working – although it feels like mostly less at times and involves an awful lot of dog – 26kg of dog – trying to cuddle up in my lap. All day.

Only 5 days to go…

Trapped!

Rising to the challenge

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June’s on the horizon and with it comes BlogJune. I had no idea what this was until a couple of weeks ago when a friend asked me if I’d be interested in participating. It turns out to be a group event that started on Twitter in 2010. Someone tweeted that they’d be blogging every day for the month of June – and invited people to join them.

It sounds like a good way to ramp up my writing, so I promptly signed up. Then I started stressing about committing to one blog post a day for an entire month… It’s been something of a challenge to (more oTeacup blog topicsr less) keep to my self-imposed contract of two posts a week, so the thought of one a day is just a little (!) worrying.

I considered asking my readers what they’d like me to write about, and then working with whatever came up. But writing to someone else’s script each day could be tricky, so I had a rethink about where to look for writing prompts.

This is about when I realised that there’s a topic list on the sidebar on my blog, created from tags I’ve used in previous posts. This seems as good a place to start as any, so I’ve chosen seven topics that appeal to me the most (today, anyway). I’ve allocated a topic to each day of the week, and I’ll aim to repeat them in that order. I’m almost looking forward to it…

Why not sign up and join me on my month of blogging?

Finally in print

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After publishing my epic tome as an eBook a few weeks ago, I decided to go the whole hog and also make it available in print. So, as a new kid on the block, it seemed like a good plan to hunt down some appropriate how-to info,  layout guidelines and a book template.

Pro-Tip: For anyone setting out on the formatting journey,  I’d suggest you check out sites like the book designer for some really helpful pointers instead of reinventing the wheel. Do this before you start your layout decisions as it’ll save you time in the long run.

I confess I’m a kick-the-wheels-and-double-check-things sort of person so, once I’d uploaded the formatted text file and added my fabulous background cover image to one of the Create Space (CS) cover templates, I went ahead girdle_layout checksand ordered a proof copy of the book. I wanted to be able to recheck every page for errors and to actually see what people would be spending their dollars on before I went live with publication. Besides which, the idea  of having a physical copy in my hands was very compelling 🙂

When it arrived about 10 days later it was so shiny and book-like and real that I got a major case of the warm-and-fuzzies just looking at it (and still do). In some ways simply holding it in my hands was enough, and I could have called it a day right there. But the whole point of ordering it was to check for errors – and I’m really glad I did.

Considering how much time and effort I’d put into the layout, I was (very) disappointed at the number of issues I appeared to have either overlooked or been unaware of – and was grateful to have the opportunity to fix them.  Most were minor, largely to do with the joy of using a Windows product, and simple enough to correct. My biggest newb mistake was my margins. I’d selected 3cm all round, but realised that it’s really much more visually pleasing for the top and bottom margins to be slightly different (to each other). For a print layout, it’s also important to have the inner (gutter) margin wider than the edge margin – unless you’re intentionally providing space for reader annotations!

Pro-Tip 2: Be sure to order a proof copy of your book and go through it meticulously. Check everything while you’re about it, since the gremlins seem to have a bad habit of sneaking the odd gotcha in. When you find issues, tag them with post-it notes and then go back to the electronic version of your document and resolve each and every one. Note: this takes a while and is best done when mind and eyes are fresh – not at 2am when the puppies are finally asleep and some quiet time is finally available!

Asleep at last!

Once I was satisfied, I uploaded the revised file for conversion and this time launched the online review option. To my surprise I found that CS appeared to havevery ‘generously’ introduced a few additional anomalies to the layout, such as adding in a couple of blank pages and losing my page numbers on even pages. This was irksome, but gratifying in a way since it confirmed my suspicion that many of the layout errors I’d found in my proof copy (coincidentally, missing page numbers and the insertion of several blank pages) were externally inflicted.

After triple-checking the master document – and even printing it to pdf – it was obvious that the errors visible on the online viewer weren’t of my making. So I shot off a query in to CS. The reply was illuminating, if disappointing:
“The interior reviewer is an automated system, so when you upload your file it goes through a slight conversion which from time to time does not translate very well. As you have indicated that your original manuscript on your PC does not present the issue, I recommend converting this file to a PDF and thereafter upload the PDF document… I have found that a PDF document translates better on the interior reviewer.”

I’ve an idea that this is CS for ‘oops‘ or even ‘we messed up‘ and ‘try this instead.’

The conversion to high quality pdf was not without its own minor host of issues, and the online help from CS was of limited use. Fortunately the comments on the community forum, on the other hand… were useful, and I’ve finally had confirmation from Amazon that Girdle of Bones is now available in paperback. And there was great rejoicing!

Girdle_paperback