Wednesday, April 18, 2007
from mouse to baker to boot >> from the pen of boot
I found the meme that ‘mouse sent to Bake along with her lovely long response over on Prepare to Meet Your Bakerina. Consequently, Bake was kind enough to ask me some surprisingly insightful questions and, as I have no blog to call my own, ‘mouse was good enough to lend me the keys to his house to answer her questions. Why didn’t I ask ‘mouse for the questions? I have no idea, except that I found the trail at Bake’s so that’s where I asked for my questions. Or it could just be all the chocolate from Easter affecting my brain. If you’re insane enough to be willing to let me ask you 5 questions (which you must answer honestly), just leave a note here at the ‘mouse house. So, here we go.
1. How did you and the lovely Grud meet?
How we originally met is not so interesting a question as that of how we re-met. We met each other through work, so nothing terribly exciting about that. However, we met quite a number of years ago and, somehow, fell out of touch. No bad blood - not a bit, just life, trundling along in its usual way and incidentally splitting the path of two good friends. I had been temping at Grud’s work and when I left I guess that was, somehow, that.
However, some years later at another temp job I had to call for some help with my work and while chatting to a young man on the phone I mentioned my name which he then mentioned to a woman he said could help me. To which she replied something along the lines of “Who? Did you say [boot]?! Really?!” The kind, if bemused, young man relayed this to me and I said similar things and he eventually got the two of us on the same phonecall.
The rest is history. Since re-uniting our friendship, we’ve both found paper trails in our homes, evidence, if you will, of how close we had felt to each other. I’ll never understand how it is that life can do this to you (or how you can do it to yourself). I’m just grateful, so very, very grateful, that it didn’t end in the ‘first round’. We got a second run at being friends, truly good friends. And what a wonderful friend she is. What a beautiful person.
Or, to quote grudknows:
“And I love you too.” :-)
2. Is there a food you despised in childhood that you love (or even just plain like) as an adult?
So many that I can’t count them. I was an obnoxiously fussy child. Probably the most amusing one is vegetables, given that I’m a vegetable-loving vegetarian nowadays.
As a young child I found out what meat was made of (see those cows, the beautiful ones with the deep soulful eyes, yes, love, that’s dinner) and refused to eat any meat. My poor suffering mother did her best, but any meat she couldn’t disguise well enough didn’t get eaten. Sausage rolls and sausages made it under the radar - after all how much meat is in these things anyway - but not much else.
Unfortunately for my mum, I also hated vegetables. I would hide them in the clean washing, squish them underneath the gap on the bottom of the plate, use a spoon to try to force them into the drain in the kitchen or laundry sink; anything other than actually consuming them. I pretty much survived childhood on fruit, Vegemite sandwiches and mashed potatoes. Clearly mashed potatoes have no relation to vegetables in the mind of an eight year old. After all, you can make sandcastles with them.
As an adult, I totally embrace vegetables in every form, excluding parboiled to a uniform shade of light grey, which is how they used to be served when I was young.
I actually think that hating so much food as a kid turned out for the best as an adult. It left me so much to fall in love with as I grew up. As a teenager, I began to meet, socialise with and, sometimes, do volunteer work for people from different cultures. I was exposed to food I’d never tried before and decided to give it a go. A Russian woman I worked for paid me back by inviting me to the dinner table each night I was there. She introduced me to so many new flavours that my tastebuds didn’t recognise some of the vegetables she was cooking up. Some Italian friends showed me the most amazing concoctions and taught me the simplest, freshest principles about food. Through these and other friends I was introduced to different ways of cooking, but more importantly to the thought of exploration with food. That attitude has stayed with me ever since.
As far as individual foods go, I guess the most surprising one to me is peas. I utterly loathed these as a kid, unless, of course, they were covered in honey and stuck on the side of a butter-knife. All grown-up, I presumed I still wouldn’t like them, especially when you consider frozen peas cooked in the “boil until soggy” method. It wasn’t until I bought fresh peas in the pod that I realised how delightfully delicious they are and how good they smell as you open each pod. When I shell peas only about half ever make it into the cooking pot. I still can’t abide frozen peas, but why would I bother when I’ve got these scrummy fresh peas ready to do my tastebuds’ bidding.
Quite some years ago, I also didn’t like olives or fresh cooked tomatoes (on their own, not in anything), but I’ve kept at them and persistently tried them again and again and now love both of them. I definitely think you should never give up. Even if your tastebuds revolt, just keep going back. They’re resilient. They’ll make it one day. If there is a vegetable I’ve not tried before that I don’t like on first tasting, I consider it a duty to my tastebuds to learn to like it.
3. What would you like to do on your next trip to the U.S.? (We know, of course, that there *will* be a next trip to the U.S. :)
I certainly hope there will be a next time, but the last trip was a complete surprise, so I truly don’t know. Lets keep our fingers crossed. You never know what life might throw at you.
Obviously, I’d like to meet up with my Scrine-friends. How we arrange this, since you’re all spread across the damn country, could be an entire adventure in itself. What I’d love is for them to show me the heart of their home. The places and people that make where they live a place worth staying. The things that make it a home. On our last trip, we covered a few of the more touristy things, but the places that I got to know better were ones where we visited friends (who showed us around) or the one city I had most time in and was able to just take my time and walk around.
I’d like to see more of the quirky and small places. The second-hand bookshops, the favourite bars and coffee-shops. The places that people live. However, this is how I feel about visiting anywhere. Any country town, any city, any country.
Specific to the US, I’d love to be able to visit Cape Canaveral. It still astounds me that I was alive in an era that men landed on the moon. On the moon. I don’t truly have anything specific I’d want to see there, because just being near there would be so amazing. Obviously, once at Canaveral, I’d like to be able to visit the Kennedy Space Center. Hell, yes, I would. However, anywhere near it would probably keep me breathless for weeks.
I can still clearly remember, as an adult, having my nose pressed against a piece of perspex that surrounded a moon rock. The moon rock was temporarily visiting Australia and was housed in an exhibition in the Powerhouse museum. I can’t even remember how long ago it was, but I can remember all the detail on the surface of that little rock. It had come from the moon. The moon!
There are also a few commemorative places for long lost authors I’d like to visit, but if they are as difficult to find as was the birthplace of Edgar Allan Poe, then I may need to drum up the help of the locals. I did find, when looking for ‘things to do’ in the US, that it was quite hard to find the stuff that I considered of interest. E.A Poe, you say? Never heard of the fella.
Oh, and lots of museums. Of course.
4. Have you ever read a book that made you laugh out loud in public?
Absolutely! There are so many, it would be hard to choose one. However, anything by Terry Pratchett will often get me laughing out loud on the train, as I walk along, in a doctor’s waiting room, or in a coffee shop on my own. Pooh has certainly caused me to smile whimsically, which garners a different reaction to outright laughter, but one nonetheless enjoyable.
I like books that make you laugh out loud in public, if only that they cause you to end up in conversation with people. One time, when sitting in a coffee shop reading, I think, Guards! Guards! I had a woman sitting at another table come over and say “Excuse me, but I just have to know what you are reading.” I invited her to sit down, she did and we had a good old chinwag.
I particularly enjoy reading silly books when in miserable places; a hospital bed being the most obvious. It’s much better if visitors find you cheerful when they turn up, as they’re more inclined to stay longer. This trick doesn’t always work, but it’s worth trying. Besides, it’s a nice anathema in those times when you have an excessively complaining patient in the bed next to you.
The most fun in reverse I’ve had with this is a woman with vision impairment in the next bed who was playing audio books and this saved me from reading my own. Who knew audio books could be such a useful combination of sharing, thriftiness and entertainment.
I have actually laughed out loud when walking along a footpath reading, but people are generally driving by as this happens, so that’s hardly worth mentioning. Although, maybe it’s worth noting that a friend of mine thinks it’s weird that I can read while I walk. I’d never thought anything of it until she pointed it out and now I don’t know if I’m a singular individual in this pursuit, or if she just finds me odd. Possibly both. It’s not like I walk across busy intersections with book in hand, just along nice long quiet stretches of road. While laughing.
5. You are at a school fundraiser where a bake sale is being held. You have exactly enough money to buy either a pair of stickjaws or a lamington.
Which one do you buy?
This choice is amazingly easy. Lamingtons all the way.
Now, I do love my lammies, but the choice was easy because I’d never heard of the term ‘pair of stickjaws’ before. I googled for references to it and one or two Australiana forums had mentioned it as sticky, chewy toffees. Damn. If I’d known that, I would have chosen the stickjaws. I so love home made toffees. One of the aforementioned forums said that they didn’t know how stickjaws were made, but I’m pretty sure there is no secret, you just undercook the toffee, possibly accidentally. One of the best articles I found was from the UK and is noteworthy as the recipe for Mothers stickjaw toffee calls for “Aunt Auggie’s damson jam”. Considering that it is the same Bakerina who asked me these questions that introduced me to damson jam, this is a fairly weird find. The recipe also calls for ‘“Other ingredients various and mysterious”, so I think I’ll have to make some of this soon, just to see what mysterious ingredients I can think of to throw into the bubbling pot.
As a young girl, I think my favourite toffees were actually just the humble brown toffee in a little patty pan. No things stuck in it or on it, no special colouring, no special shapes, just a big ol’ lump of sweetness. I can still taste it.
Now, lamingtons, on the other hand, I know inside and out. I would hesitate to purchase the lamingtons at this imaginary fundraiser if I felt they had merely been plucked out of a processed pre-packed plastic container. However, if they were the real thing, I’d be in boots and all.
The real thing, in the opinion of my eight year old’s rosey memory, should have been so vigorously soaked in chocolate sauce that it has penetrated to the very heart of the sponge square. This same-said sponge cake had better be light, soft and, well, spongey. There needs to be just enough desiccated coconut to coat the rectangle, leaving an even pattern of yummy, dark brown, with snowy white flecks. Hopefully, if you’re very lucky, you’ll find a chocolate and coconut ‘clot’. A delicious lump of excessive chocolate sauce that never escaped the sponge square, but was instead lumped together with a chewy knot of coconut. These clots can’t be made deliberately; they’re one of nature’s bounty. If you find a lamington like this, eat it straight away, lest small children follow you home and steal it from you.