Tasty Treats

Tomorrow is the Twilight Fete for Charlotte’s school and, having been quite ill in bed for the last three days, I forgot all about it.  So I needed some super-fast fete food that would be cool, interesting and easy to make.  Obviously the usual suspects like pikelets and cupcakes were immediately thrown into the "too hard" basket and immediately discarded.  I also discarded toffee, chocolate crackles and honey jumbles purely because someone always makes them and I swear it will never be me. 

I went digging on the Interwebs for some interesting solutions and came up with the ultra-cool caramel popcorn you see below.  I threw in the Rocky Road as well and dropped them all into ice cream cup cones for a bit of a change from the ubiquitous cupcake papers.  The best thing about the whole lot is that they were incredibly easy and you can pretty much all hook in and help.

Rocky Road

Ingredients

400gm dark chocolate

250 gram bag mixed marshmallows halved

½ cup of shredded coconut

100g glace cherries, chopped.

Large marshmallows

Drop a large marshmallow into each cone to form a base for the rocky road. 

Mix the flavoured marshmallows, coconut and glace cherries together in a bowl.

Melt the chocolate in a bowl in the microwave and stir through the mix.

Heap a pile of the rocky road into each cone and then refrigerate.

Makes about 16.

Caramel Popcorn Cones

Ingredients

300g caramels (I used Columbines)

150g butter

100g packet natural flavoured microwave popcorn

Pop the popcorn in the microwave beforehand and transfer immediately to a bowl to allow the steam to escape and prevent the popcorn from going soggy.  Ditch any unpopped kernels.

In a saucepan on the stove heat the butter and the caramels until they blend.

Be warned, it looks like a mess and feels like it will never come together.

But don’t worry, it will!

Pour the caramel over the popcorn, stir through and then heap into the empty cones.  When the mixture has cooled you can use your hands to shape the ball on top.  

It’s not anywhere near as messy as you think it will be and once the mixture has cooled a little the popcorn will stick better.

Makes about 12.

Voila!  So many tasty treats for the fete in no time at all!

Parenting 101 - Break the Rules

Tonight I am being that mother everyone wishes they had when they were a kid.  The one who turns off the alarm and carts you off to her bed for snuggles, even if you will be late for school.  The one that pretends not to notice when you filch an illicit lolly.  The one who sprays your hair bright pink just because. The one who lets you stay up way past your bedtime so you can help make the goodies for the school fete*.

Charlotte in her PJS with Lambie - ready for some fete goody action

When I was little my mother used to let us stay home with her, very occasionally, on a school day.  And then we’d do the most amazing, fantastic things which would have only been ordinary if we’d done them on a weekend. 

Kids are here to have fun and you won't be a part of that if you're constantly running life to a strict guideline.  It’s worth remembering that sometimes being a good parent isn’t about the rules you make and stick to – but occasionally it’s just about the ones you break.

*  A post on this later.

Evil Enid and Revolting Roald

Recently Charles and I have started reading Charlotte chapter books – starting with the estimable Enid Blyton.  I remember those books being absolutely thrilling when I was a child and no wonder!  As I read The Enchanted Wood I realised that these kids are completely obsessed with fooling their parents into giving them the day off helping out with chores so they can sneak away to the potentially deadly delights of the Faraway Tree.  In the very first chapters they almost get caught in the land at the top of the Faraway Tree and then they slink home, frightened and exhilarated.

“Mama,” Charlotte said at the end of that one, “Do you know what I bet they’re going to do?”

“What’s that darling?”

“I bet they’re going to go home and tell their parents what happened so next time their parents can go with them and make sure that they’re safe.”

Sure, or they could go home, say nothing and sneak away again at the soonest opportunity.  There’s also the small matter of the children’s mother peaceably accepting their obvious psychedelic drug-induced* rantings and dismissing Joe’s absence as “I expect he just wanted to have a sleepover at that queer man’s house”.

Gay times with that queer man.

Roald Dahl was worse but for different reasons.  When confronted by nasty Grandma who taunts and torments the tiny George out of earshot of his parents Charlotte piped up with;

“Mama, do you know what I would do if she was my Grandma?”

“No darling, what would you do?”

“I’d say ‘Your behaviour is unacceptable and your attitude needs adjusting!’”

George, on the other hand, concocts a chemical soup full of literally everything available on the farm and disguises it as medicine which he then feeds to nasty Grandma.

I have a sinking feeling about this chapter book business.

*  Tiny Brownies perched on magic toadstools my butt!

Parenting 101 - Discipline and Relativity

Discipline is relative.  The ominous count of doom may motivate your five-year-old as effectively as a short burst from a cattle prod but it won’t necessarily work on your cheeky “I’m learning to count” almost-two-year-old.

Mama:  Up to your room for a nappy!  Now please.  James! One…

James: *grinning cheekily* Two! Three!

The Importance of Being Me

I was in line at Coles this afternoon when a lady with a trolley full of kids looked at the glossy front of a magazine and sighed.

“God, I wish I was her,” she said, nodding to indicate whatever glam celeb was frolicking in a bikini on holiday with her hunky man. 

She must have caught my perplexed look.

“What?  You’ve never wished you were someone else?” she asked.

I had to think about that because I genuinely never wish to be anyone other than myself.  But it wasn’t always like that.

When I was five I was engaged in a hero-worship crush arrangement on a little girl a year or two older than me called Trisha White.  Trisha had gorgeous blonde hair that she liked to flick and tuck behind her ear.  She lived in a beautiful house in the posh Greenleigh Estate, had a lovely big room, fabulous clothes and was the much-adored youngest of three and only girl in her family.  She had the best clothes, a casual, carefree attitude and I admired everything about her.

While I wouldn’t use the hot tap at all because I’d been told repeatedly not to, Trisha would rinse her fruit using the hot tap and shrug at my concern.  “It isn’t hot straight away,” she said, “it takes a little while to heat up.”  I admired her bravery and her knowledge but I wasn’t going to do it.  She was braver than I was at most things, more flexible, coordinated and, in general, better and prettier in every way.

She also had a wonderful family.  She had two older brothers who, to her disgust and my goggle-eyed admiration, would cart her around against her will, tickle her, chase her and in general fawn in that clumsy way that older brothers do over their smaller sisters.  One of the older brothers could break dance like nobody’s business.  When he busted out the moves at the local blue light disco everyone cleared a circle to watch the moves we only ever got to see on television. 

Trisha was aloof and unimpressed throughout his performance, especially when one of his moves involved pretending to play with her face and acting like his hand had come away covered in goop.  I would have been thrilled that he’d acknowledged me while he was the centre of everyone’s attention but Trisha was cool.

Her parents were awesome too.  While most adults would skip over my presence, her mum and dad would always acknowledge me, talking to me like I was a grown up and really listening to the answers I gave to their questions.  They were affectionate and close with their kids and both of them were young, vital, funny and involved in all of their children’s activities and interests.  Yep, there didn’t seem to be much reason why you wouldn’t want to be Trisha White.

A few years later people were all talking about Trisha in hushed voices because she’d been hit by a car and was in hospital.  Without going into details, she’d suffered head injuries and the surgeon had shaved all of her beautiful blonde, flicky hair – except for a beaded hair wrap that she’d recently had done.

I remember thinking then that when she woke up she’d be unimpressed about the hair but Trisha, I was sure, would tuck the remaining beady thing behind her ear while the rest of her hair grew back and she would still be infinitely cool and effortlessly pretty.

Except that little Trisha White never did wake up.

I can still remember what I thought and how I felt when I learned that she’d died.  Adults never give kids much credit when it comes to death and grieving but Trisha weighed heavily on my mind for a long time. 

I couldn’t accept that she was gone.  I obsessed over how her family would be without her.  Would they keep the photos of her or take them down, knowing they would never be updated?  Would her parents still be so engaged with younger people?  Would they all still seem so happy and vibrant?  Would her brother still break dance?  In my childish heart, of hearts, I knew things had changed irrevocably for them and that it never would be the same again.  I was crushed on their behalf.

I remember too how it felt to suddenly stop wishing I was Trisha White and start being down-on-my-knees grateful that I was just me instead.  Trisha was loved, admired, missed, wanted and treasured more than ever, I was sure.  But I was also sure that Trisha would have given up just about anything I’d previously admired about her to have what I had instead – a life where she got to grow up and do anything she liked.

I still think about Trisha White from time to time.  Whenever there’s something I’m not good at or can’t do I always think “Trisha could have done it” and then I’m okay with the fact that I can’t.  She is my constant reminder that I’d rather be me than anyone else – even if they are prettier, smarter, faster – whatever.  She taught me that it’s okay to strive to be a better person as long as you accept your limitations and you’re also happy with who you are. 

I have not seen Trisha’s family or heard of them for many, many years and I don’t know how they are or how they remember their little girl.  But I will always remember her as the pretty, bright little girl I so badly wanted to be.  Her life was far shorter than it should have been and she definitely didn’t get a chance to do all of the fantastic things I know she would have done.

But she did manage to teach me an extremely valuable life lesson that has kept her fresh in my mind and heart for all this time and probably for all time yet to come.  

Harvest

As I write this my children are sucking down very cheap, sweet strawberries, a steamer full of pears destined to be pulped for iceblocks is hissing away on the stove and a box full of plums is waiting to become a year’s supply of plum sauce for our small family unit.

It’s this time of year that I miss life on a farm the most.  The mornings are crisp, the days are still bright and warm and evening brings fog and chill.  Harvest time. 

Anyone who’s ever lived on a farm and grown their own food will tell you that harvest can last almost all year.  But there are definitely peaks and troughs.  Spring is one of the busiest times for farmers but it’s not necessarily the time when they eat best – that time would be now.  Stone fruits.  Berries.  Pumpkins.  Leeks.  Everything worth eating is ready for harvest now. 

I’m a huge fan of stone fruits.  If my husband shared my love of peaches there would be crisp, sweet pie shells, loaded with fruit and the tiniest sprinkling of brown sugar and cinnamon.  Poor man’s tart – nothing more than a quarter of a sheet of puff pastry generously smeared with mascarpone, topped with sliced peaches and again the sprinkling of brown sugar and cinnamon.  Preserved peaches, permanently golden and suspended in syrup.  Peach halves baked, their centres full of ricotta mixed with cinnamon and honey.

This year I thought I would miss out on plum sauce.  I didn’t find anyone with a plum tree who had spare ones going and the shops never did sell them cheap enough to justify buying them.  Then yesterday they were $4.50 a kilo at Coles – the cheapest I’ve seen them yet and the gentleman at the fruit shop urged me to grab them because it’s been a bad season for plums and it would probably be the cheapest I’d see them. 

I don’t like buying from the supermarkets.  When I was a teenager I worked on an organic farm as a jillaroo.  The produce was incredible – so much better than what you get in a supermarket, if not quite as uniform, shiny and huge*.  Every Friday my boss would take a van full of succulent fruit and veg around Canberra, selling a huge variety of produce to the finest restaurants. 

When I asked him why he didn’t just sell it in bulk to the supermarkets and save himself a long trip, he explained that the price a supermarket would pay per kilo was less than he would pay me to pick it.  The restaurants paid a lot more and they weren’t fussy about the containers it came in either, so grateful were they for good, organic produce at cheap prices.

This is foremost in my mind when I ask the Coles manager whether he will give me a discount for buying 10 kilos of plums.  He is appalled I bothered to ask.

“Coles doesn’t negotiate price,” he sneers and I shrug and leave it.

Today I visited the markets where the wives and mothers of the grocers still make their own preserves and sauces.  I asked about plums for saucing and was instantly given a box of close to 10 kilos for $20. 

“Very sweet,” I was assured, “And perfect for sauce.  You need more?  Come back quick, the season’s nearly over.”

These days the scale of harvest activities is not as large for me as it was on the farm.  We buy what we need and make it into what we will use.  On the farm it was a dash to get as much as we could while the getting was good and transform it into something we could use and/or sell throughout the year.  Jams, sauces, preserves, wines and liqueurs. 

Back in those days things were far more raw than life is now and the seasons were measured, not as much by calendar as by the feel of the weather and the produce that was growing.  I felt a closer kinship to the pagan calendars back then.  Beltane for the start of the year with the cleansing fires, the birth of new things.  And Samhain, the harvest festival at the closing of the year when the hours of daylight began to dwindle.  A more natural way to mark the passing of time than the counting of days.

Nothing brings those days back now like this time of year when the cool morning air reminds me to start preserving for the year ahead.

*  Genetic refinement, wax and over-watering.

Parenting 101 - Composure While Disciplining Your Child

It’s always important to compose yourself before you reprimand your child.  If, for instance, your daughter has just punted a massive bouncy ball halfway across K-Mart you don’t want her response to, “Charlotte that’s not funny and you shouldn’t do it”, to be, “If it’s not funny, why are you laughing Mama?"

Definitely not the stern face of discipline you’re striving for.

Not Everything Has to be 50/50

Occasionally I feel quite hard done by in the domestic division of housework.  Then Charles will manage something disgusting, usually child or dog-related, without a moment’s hesitation and not a single word of complaint.  I feel better for at least the next three days.

Tonight it was something totally unidentifiable in the ensuite sink.  We don’t go in there often so it had had time to evolve.  I reckon he removed it only days before it grew legs and walked out.  Bleugh.

Westfield Carpet Fiasco

Dear Westfield Designer,

I don’t know what possessed you to put carpet down in the main thoroughfares of a mall.  I suppose you thought something along the lines of, “I need something stylish.  Different.  Avant garde.  Something that will really grab people’s attention.  Ooo, I know!  Carpet!  In a mall!  I’ve never seen that before!”


Unfortunately that line of thought didn't extend to consideration of why no one else had boldly gone where you were planning to go.

Dearest Westfield Designer, I would like to challenge you to push a trolley laden with a family’s weekly shopping and two small children – preferably armed with soft serve icecreams – across your wretched experiment all the way from Coles to my car.  Then we’ll see how great you think it is.

That is all.

A Measure of Wealth

After my recent search for navy blue track pants failed to find anything suitable I headed out to the Spotlight sale and scored three metres of navy blue polar fleece for the princely sum of $12.  And since the cold weather is already making its presence known I decided to whip the first pair of pants up this afternoon so we’re not caught short by early frost.

Charlotte was completely thrilled with how soft and warm they are and extra delighted that I’d spent an hour making them just for her.

I couldn’t help but reflect on a story my mother told me when I was six while she made me a new party dress.  She said that she used to be quite embarrassed to wear home-made clothes to school because it showed that they were poor.  It’s ironic.  In these modern times my daughter is proud to wear clothes made by me because it means I spent time making them for her.  In today’s time-poor society, that’s quite a measure of wealth, even amongst five-year-olds.

Advertising for Children 101

When your children are born “Parent” is the first thing you become in an ever-growing list.  Peace-keeper.  Teacher.  Nutritionist.  Doctor.  Psychologist.  You become a jack of all trades.  Fathers who never have sewed a stitch in their life suddenly master perfect, tiny stitches when teddy’s head gets ripped off.  Mothers who are squeamish at blood cluck soothingly over their tots while cleaning up their skinned knee, applying the Betadine and kissing the whole sickly mess better.

You may not know it yet but parenting will also thrust you into the bright, blingy world of marketing.  Unfortunately you won’t be mixing it with glam supermodels – rather all you’ll see is the gritty side of creative invention geared at selling your product.

Recently I acquired Jessica Seinfeld’s “Deceptively Delicious”.  It’s an interesting little tome geared around hiding vegetables in foods that appeal to children.  In our house we don’t really have the veggie battle – the kids are pretty good at eating their fruit and veg, they just rotate their favourites so fast we don’t always keep up.

But contained within the cookbook were tips from other mums including one who gets her three-year-old to believe plain yoghurt is an awesome dessert by giving her a shaker filled with rainbow sprinkles and letting her top it with a shake or two before eating it.  I personally think this is parental brilliance at its best.

I am not a parent that likes to battle my kids.  I don’t like the “because I said so” reasoning of yore and I don’t like shouting them into submission.  So instead I’ve become the worlds greatest advertiser.  We do not eat high-fibre vegetable pasta.  We have “Rainbow Pasta”.  It isn’t a sub-group of the fruit family called a grape, it’s Mother Nature’s very own high-energy sugar balls.

We don’t stop with food.  For Charlotte I used to get her into her clothes by mimicking a commentator at a high fashion show;

“This season you too can step out in the latest design from Mama’s House of Fashion.  Charlotte is going to demonstrate for us just how cute a denim skirt can be when effortlessly teemed with striped pippies* and a rock-star T-Shirt…”

And for James I get him to wear his shoes by pretending that if he doesn’t his “piggies” will escape and run all over the place and we may never find them again.

The kids love it.  A dose of crafty inspiration and a fair whack of the totally ridiculous and you can get them to do almost anything.  Which comes in handy for those sticking points that every child has.  For Charlotte, it’s usually food related and top of that list is breakfast.  She doesn’t like it.  She’d rather skip to 10am and eat a delicious snack than sit down and consume something as dreary as cereal or toast (and our kids are not even aware of the high sugar breakfast alternatives like fruit loops, honey smacks and pop tarts and we plan to keep it that way).

Breakfast consumption is where I have to be at my creative best.  Previously I have persuaded her to eat the hated Weeties by pretending that her Daddy’s on a mission to steal them so she won’t grow any bigger or stronger.  It worked for about a week and then I had to change tactics.  Again.

But recently Charles hit on what has become a rather lasting technique for getting the toast into our reluctant epicurean and I thought I’d share it.  It is brilliant in its simplicity.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Tower of Toast.

Take four pieces of toast and cut the crusts off each piece.

Slice each piece into three “soldiers”.

Construct your Jenga-style Toast Tower of awesome.

Collect your smile and your thumbs up from the nearest kidlet.

*  Our own little take on stockings.  Get it?  Pippy Longstockings?  Pippies?

James Learns a Cake-Related Lesson

Today as I washed up at the sink Charlotte tugged on my shirt and rather dolefully said, “Mama, how come James gets cake and I don’t?”

Given that the last time I baked was a week ago and my small family polished off that cake in under 24 hours, I was pretty confident there was no cake available for him to have.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sweetie, there isn’t any cake,” I said absently.

“Then how come James is eating some?” she asked.

I finally turned to look and my small cake-addicted son was right behind me clutching a chunk of used coffee grounds he’d dug out of the bin and gagging while black saliva dripped from his mouth.

Today’s lesson:  Not everything dark and crumbly is Mama’s delicious chocolate cake.

Princess Clean and the Clutter Monster

When it comes to kids I have been amazingly blessed.  Given the often cat-dog like nature of the relationships Charles and I had with our own (now adored) siblings, I felt sure my parental karma would serve up double doses of everything we used to do to each other.

Instead I was gifted two beautiful kids who, despite having personalities as different as night and day, get along famously.  Mind you, a lot of that is owed to Charlotte’s infinite patience when it comes to her brother.  She is extremely tolerant – often long past the point where I would have whacked him.

He, in turn, abuses her shamelessly - pouncing on her, body slamming her while she’s watching television, stealing her best food and toys and generally being a nuisance.  His only answer to her reprimands is a cheeky grin and an assault-like tackle-hug.

Charlotte is quite a clean little pussycat and likes her room to be neat.  She often cleans it, making her bed and carefully sorting her toys.  Recently after a fairly intense cleaning session I realised that the deafening silence had lasted longer than the usual 30 seconds.  Silence in our house usually means some diabolically naughty plan is afoot and I have ten seconds to deactivate the child killing, house-levelling time bomb they’re diligently working on.

This time it was not meant to be.  Charlotte was stomach-down on her neatly made bed quietly colouring in and James had managed to create a mound of mess in the middle of her floor and was deeply involved in his own cluttered play.

“Are you guys all right in here?” I asked.

“Yes Mama,” Charlotte sing-songed.

"Ya," James nodded.

“Are you okay with James in here?  I know you’ve just cleaned your room and he’s gone and made a big mess."

She grinned indulgently, “I know Mama, but he just looked so cute while he did it!”

Where Did All the School Uniforms Go?

This Summer as school approached we attempted to buy Charlotte a school uniform as cheaply as we could.  It wasn’t easy.  Her sneaky school has been rather devious with colour and pattern selection and the aqua coloured shirts, jumpers, hats and interesting check dresses can only be purchased from them.  I looked everywhere for plain shirts in a similar colour that I could embroider the school logo onto with my sewing machine.  So while everyone else in Canberra is buying plain coloured polo shirts for $6 and generic blue and white check dresses for $20 at Lowes I am forking out $50 for a dress and $25 for a polo shirt – albeit with a screen printed school logo.

The one area where the price-gouging fell down was in the pants and skirts area.  Plain navy blue anything is the order of the day.  Pretty standard and almost always available – I was cheering.  Except for some reason this year they weren’t available anywhere.

Four weeks before school started I managed to score the only two pairs of size 6 navy blue shorts in Kmart.  Nay – the only two pairs of size 6 navy shorts in Canberra.  I was assured that while “we didn’t seem to get much in we’ve been told there’s more on the way.  Six weeks of religiously checking back and I’ve still got bupkis.  Target and BigW have been just as hopeless.

Fast forward to March and I decided that now that Canberra mornings are getting crisper than refrigerated Granny Smith apples, it’s time to invest in some black stockings to go with Charlotte’s school dress and some navy blue trackpants for when the colder weather really hits.  Unfortunately Kmart failed me again.  Their tracksuit stand was filled with bizarrely coloured garments that fell neatly into the category between “pretty enough for casual wear” and “school uniform”.  Worse, the socks and hosiery section revealed no stockings of any kind.

Locating a Kmart store person to find out if I was merely late to the party or whether the real stuff hadn’t arrived yet I was reliably informed that that’s pretty much it although “we’ve been told there’s more on the way.”

I eyed Mr Kmart Drone carefully and asked how business in the children’s clothing business was going anyways.

“Well,” he replied, “we’ve cut our prices dramatically and yet we’re still not moving anywhere near as much stock.”

I asked him whether it had occurred to them that there could be a correlation between low sales and failure to stock anything that remotely looks like a school uniform.

It literally looked like a lightbulb went off in his head.  With something like 10,000 school kids on the Northside alone you’d think that someone somewhere would have figured out that plain-coloured clothing suitable for school uniforms might account for a fair whack of business.  Apparently not.  *sigh*  Back to the school uniform shop for some $40 slacks.