Recipes, old and new

So here's a confession: after about twenty years of not doing much in the kitchen as far as cakes are concerned, I've been baking again. A good friend who heard about this from an email I sent her, offered to send me an easy recipe for a berry cake. Which she did. Kind of. She sent me the online link.

Ah yes, as the mother of a friend of mine discovered, you can find any and every recipe you can dream up or name on the internet.

But me? Truth to tell I was kind of disappointed. And you know why? Because I get a kick out of using my old, hand-written (although sometimes also typed-out) recipes in my special 'cooking clips' file. Somehow this brings a connection to the person who originally gave me the recipe. There's my mother's one for scones, another from her mother called 'Nannie's sweet scones'. And yet another, recalling early childhood days: 'Sunshine's pancakes'. There's my sister-in-law's 'Penny's Lemon Loaf' as well as 'Plain cake', a wonderful standby when I want something without icing that will last for a few days if not a week.

My favourite chocolate cake to bake for birthdays and other special occasions came from a long-ago acquaintance called Barbara. I wonder what became of her. Then there's Joan's Granola, which I make all the time. This came from my recently-deceased aunt, my mom's youngest sister, who insisted on giving it to me even though I declared I would never get around to using the recipe!!

Lastly, I have a hastily-scrawled recipe from an old friend I got to know because our first-born daughters were six weeks apart in age. When more babies came along, we were kept pretty busy; and so the recipe for a quick chocolate cake from Delia begins:

'Into your mixing bowl, hurl two eggs...'

Hmm. I don't think you'd find anything like that on the internet. ;-)

Another take on 'Summer Good-bye'

I don't know about you, but I'm somewhat conflicted right now. It's hard to say good-bye to those lazing days of summer, but man, am I happy to have my drive back. My mind is firing on all cylinders again, focussing again, and very soon I'll be publishing some ebooks. Better still, the ideas are flying in like geese from further north. And yes, some of them are squawking!

So, forgive me if I'm brief, but today other writing matters are calling. Catch u again soon!

The Fading Days

I succumbed to a summer cold...
Was I mourning the loss of a season?
Even though the flowers still bloom
and leaves hang green,
rustling in the cooler breeze?

Yes, the air is different.

Change.

What does it demand of me?
How about: let go of lethargy?
Get down to business, Nan,
Take hold of life,
Forget the dreamy days of summer.

What to wear?

This morning I spent some time and energy on thinking about what to wear. Yes, the weather is changing, so the clothes I've been flinging on are no longer the obvious choices. In general, when it comes to deciding, I stare at my closet and go through a few questions in my mind:

What will the temperature be?

Pants or skirt?

and then the most difficult:
What do I feel like wearing?

Ah yes, there, in that last, lies the rub. And there I can empathize with Daisy, my latest heroine. She has a shopping addition which threatens all she holds dear in the world. So she has to learn to deal and overcome it. As for me, I'm holding off going to the sales. The urge to acquire something new will soon fade!

Some authors like to write in their p.j.s The occasional few get dressed up as if for the office. Me, I'm somewhere in the middle. It's not good for my mental health if I feel too slumpy. On the other hand, I don't like to be formal. But it's nice to feel nice, don't you think?

Cat days of summer

We've had company over the last couple of days, so I've taken the chance to stretch out in the sun, enjoy smelling the flowers and generally to soak in the loveliness of these late summer days.

And as usual, having company means visiting places in our city where we haven't been before. This is one of them, an old walled garden, English style.

Walled gardens have a special fascination for me. This began years ago when I was a student at the Royal Ballet School and our dormitory looked over a sunken rose garden, with a statue/birdbath similar to this in the centre. The grounds were a wonder and a delight, and had been designed by famous landscape architect Capability Brown.

At one time in my life I even dreamed of owning a walled garden some day, but now I'm content with a wooden fence!

Here's another pic for you to enjoy. This garden is maintained by volunteers and I was interested to see what a colourful show you can achieve with quite simple, easily-available and grown plants.

Nice, hey?

Frugal me?

So, Sadie the cleaning lady (see previous post) requires plentiful mugs of tea, which she likes to drink out of this:

Which comes courtesy of a dear friend back in South Africa, and originally manufactured in Australia (modern life, hey?)

Being of a frugal turn of mind (mostly) she decided it would be a fine idea to brew a pot of tea, remove the tea bag at an appropriate time, and then keep the tea warm under this wonderful cosy:

Given to her by another wonderful friend, this time Canadian, and knitted from recycled, unravelled wool sweater. (Isn't this chicken fine? Guess I've got a bird theme going here)

With the tea made, and the pot covered, what does Sadie discover? Ummm, that in order to actually pour out a cuppa, she has to remove the cosy again!

Sadie, the Cleaning Lady

This morning, in honour of a guest who'll be visiting for a few days, I'm the cleaning lady.

Hey, nice to know I'm a lady for a few hours, even if it does mean cleaning toilets and vacuuming.

So there I was, giving our bedroom a 'going over', as my nan would have said. I have one of those vacs that follow you around on a lead, sort of like a reluctant dog who every now and then refuses to move.

Under a window, I found a dead fly lying (not flying, duh!), so I whipped off the carpet attachment, sucked it up and slid the carpet beater bit back onto the stick. Yes, it gave a click. No, it didn't stay put. Instead, it slipped off while I was vacuuming under the bed. I'm sure you can picture what came next: me, lying on my tummy, reaching to retrieve it.

Sheesh, sometimes I think I should star in a reality comedy show.

However, apart from the satisfaction of a spruced-up house, I have now reclaimed a single, knee-high stocking and a paper grip. ;-)

Notebooks: Do you love 'em?

So I was chatting with a guy who used to be a neighbour when we lived back in Toronto. He lost his wife to breast cancer some years back and has now remarried. He's moved in with his new wife, but I heard that he hadn't sold his old house.

"You haven't got rid of all your stuff, then?" I asked.
"No."
"What about when you're gone? ."
"Oh," he answered. "My sons can deal with all that. They might as well have something to do."

This, to lead you in to what I was doing last night: going through old notebooks and, actually, a pile of new ones too.

The thing is, I'm starting a revision of one of my romantic comedies in hopes of getting it out in October, because yes, it's kind of a Halloween story. I thought perhaps I'd find the notebook I originally used for its writing and hoped there'd be some free pages so I could carry on. Unfortunately, not. Although many of my notebooks sport empty pages. Some of them only have a page or two written on. Some are full.

These last present a problem. Shall I simply leave them for some poor soul to go through after I've passed on? Or is it better to get rid of them now?

They're more like journals, which means they contain writings and poems that I haven't keyed into the computer. Once I've published a book I tend to throw out the notebooks. But it's still hard.

And -- confession time -- I'm kind of a collector of notebooks. I specially like the European ones from England, Italy and France. And I love a cover with a design to it, as well as bright, glossy colour. Maybe this is the reason why I'm unlikely to abandon writing by hand?

Cartoon characters

Wow! Well, if you're wondering what happened between Mothers' Day and now, I'd say... Summer! And it's been a glorious one. Lots of lovely weather, plenty of rain that often fell over night (just like in that Camelot song), so I've been enjoying the garden and generally being outdoors.

Anyhow, the other day I glimpsed a question in my sipping like a bee around the web. This was: What's your favourite cartoon character? For me, coming up with an answer is as impossible as being asked 'What's your favourite colour?'. Nevertheless cartoon characters started to pop into my mind shouting 'choose me! choose me!'. And I thought well, maybe Calvin and Hobbs, although they're two, and even though I only found them after coming to North America.

As a child I read voraciously, and that meant comics too. The name that comes to mind is Little Lulu, but really I'd pretty much dive into anything that came to hand. And I also remembered that there was a kind of tradition back in Olde England that we'd buy the latest Giles annual compilation every Christmas.

So maybe the complex answer is that favourite cartoon characters change with us as we grow older. Because (now here comes the confession!) the strip I'm most likely to smile at these days is 'Pickles'!!

You got a favourite to tell about?

Thoughts on Mother's Day

It's Mothers Day, and so I've been sending love and gratitude to my own dear mother, and thinking about all she did for me. Perhaps the greatest and most valuable gift was that she empowered me to become the person I'm meant to be. (Okay, okay, I'm still working on it!) My question to myself this morning was: How did she do that?

First of all, there was never a hint of an attitude that seems to have been around in North America. I mean, the 'who do you think you are?' kind of thing.

My mother gave me options and opportunities. This doesn't mean she enrolled me in as many activities as could be crammed into my week. No. Rather, she paid attention to my inclinations on an intuitive level. So, even tho she had to go to work in order to pay for them, she gave me dance lessons - ballet and Spanish. Piano lessons, even though I was a bit of a dunce there. A private education in a religious environment (i.e., a girls' school run by Anglican sisters, but with a staff also of lay teachers) because of my love of learning. And of course, plenty of books to read.

But truly, she didn't force anything that didn't 'fit'. Working from a place of trust (a great empowerment of its own) she allowed my brother and me to find and follow our paths in life, and respected our choices.

She provided an aesthetic environment in our home and a garden filled with trees and flowers where I could play, dream and dance to my heart's content.

Recently, at a visit to a book club where I was invited to talk about and discuss my novel 'Cape Town', one of the women asked me an interesting question. This was: did you have a sheltered childhood? The first answer that sprang to mind was 'no', simply because I was allowed quite a large measure of independence. But the world was a very different place in those days, and my answer could well have been 'yes'. For example, news of wars and/or natural disasters, the latest horror story, wasn't disseminated quickly and widely as it is today. So in that way I was sheltered. And I'm grateful for it.

Lastly, once I expressed a definite direction I wanted to go in, I benefitted from a large amount of level-headed encouragement.

Thanks, Ma.

The granola mistake

If you met me, the likelihood is that you wouldn't immediately realize I'm very granola. That is, I mostly only wear natural fibres, I live green as far as I possibly can, and eat organic foods (better yet, bio-dynamic). Years ago my aunt gave me a recipe for homemade granola, and although adapted somewhat, I use it all the time. How it goes is this, I bake the mixture of rolled oats, sunflower seed oil, syrup and honey in the oven, usually in the evening when I'm not busy with writing.

I leave the mixture to cool overnight. In the morning, my husband puts the rest together: raisins, sunflower seeds, chopped nuts and, usually, flax seed. However, he was a bit sleepy the other day and instead of the latter, he added a handful of poppy seeds. These I'd asked him to buy, having the intention of baking a poppy seed cake.

Well, I didn't know he'd made that mistake. After eating breakfast, I felt decidedly weird, a little disoriented, and my head ached. Same thing the next day. When I complained to my husband, he smiled and 'fessed up.

Seems like opium isn't a good thing for me to ingest. But we had this full bottle of granola on our hands, and we like/need to be frugal. What to do? Seeing as my husband wasn't affected in the least, he's offered to finish that lot. And last night, I made myself a new batch. Whew!

A wail of a day

So here was yesterday's plan:

Morning:

Get up early to take my husband to the train station. He'd travel almost four hours to Toronto, catch the train up to Richmond Hill where he'd have a meeting at the Rudolf Steiner Centre. He's one of the people who does Waldorf Distance Learning for prospective teacher training students.

Afternoon:

Fetch grandson from kindergarten, usually a forty minute drive away. Take him home and stay with the family for dinner. Promised is a roast, seeing as my husband is not eating red meat at the moment, being on a health diet. Also, haven't seen the family for a while, so it's a double jammy: delicious meal, and time with loved ones.

Evening:

10 p.m. Pick up husband at the train station.

Right. So I delivered him at 7.35 a.m., which gave him about five minutes to spare.  Soon after nine, the phone rings. It's the woman who co-ordinates the Distance Learning Program. "Is he there?"
"No, he's on the train."
"Oh noooo," she wailed. "The venue is closed. Our meeting is cancelled."

I emailed him, phoned his cell, had to leave a message. Half an hour later, he calls back to say he's aware of the situation, "but if I'd looked at my emails five minutes earlier, I'd have been able to get off at Kingston."

Unfortunately, the train was an express. So he spent eight hours travelling, with a short stop in between for a bite of lunch. A healthy one... or as healthy as you can find in a Food Court!

Meantime, snow had been falling steadily since 8 a.m. My son calls. "I have four-wheel drive. Better that I do the pick up. But you're still invited for dinner."

Hope springs eternal, as we know.

But.... come 4.30 I've seen and heard what a mess the roads are. How slippery. Not a good idea to drive an unnecessary 25 kilometres. So the dinner plans were cancelled and I had to find something to cook for myself.

The good news is, I managed to pick up my husband at 6.50 p.m., only five minutes late because of the slow-moving traffic, and only sliding on those slippery roads about a dozen times.

Whew!

Our awareness of time

Usually, driving in my car, I have the radio on. And there are certain programs on certain days of the week that I especially like to listen to. This was the situation the other day when the announcer announced that 'now you can listen in to this program any time you like'.

Immediately I thought, 'Wouldn't that take away some of the anticipation and pleasure? And even, take away a bit from my awareness of time?' I remembered back to my childhood. At 5.15 on most weekdays (i.e. when I wasn't at ballet) I'd be listening to 'Sooooooperman!!!!' To some extent the progression of my afternoon was defined by those fifteen minutes of listening.

So we are emancipated more and more from our awareness of time. I'm thinking more daily and weekly rather than monthly or yearly. We can work in the artificial equivalent of daylight for as far into the night as we wish or need, and I'm sure you can think of many other examples.

This morning when I woke and enjoyed the sunrise I thought, 'Thank goodness for that.' And the sunset. These two can still define our daily lives, and I'm grateful whenever I see them.