On the chair: The City Out My Window

My night-stand or bedside table (whatever you prefer to call it) is a mid-century chair in need of restoration.  So actually, it's just a chair.  We have two of them which we* bought via Trademe when we first decided to move to the Coast, because we knew they'd be perfect in our beach house (once we found one).  They travelled in the container down from Auckland ... then lived in the garage because we didn't end up buying a beach house and it was nearly two years before we ended up on the Coast.  Then they lived in the garage again for about another 9 months because they didn't seem to fit in the beach house anywhere.  We umm-ed and ahh-ed about them, but couldn't bring ourselves to get rid of them when they were one of the first steps in the dream.  Plus, they're awesome.

A wee bit of house contents evolution later, they've come inside and found their respective corners while they await me getting around to restoring them.  Which could take a while.  I intended to get it done this year, and it may yet happen, but best we don't all hold our breath.  Luckily, it's taking me long enough that most of the rest of our household contents will have gone through the processes they need to go through (eg. be collected, or chucked out) to get to our permanent look and I won't have a mental breakdown trying to pick the right fabric to have them recovered.  The least dilapidated of the two is sitting just as is, next to my bed, and the other is covered with a crochet rug in the not-ginger's room, looking like it would probably be happy enough if no one touched it at all.  Possibly just as well, for now.

You know, when you think about it, buying old chairs in anticipation of moving is maybe a bit weird.  I even bought the curtains once we actually got to the new house (there were none - our Vendors were pretty special.  They even took the plugs for all the sinks) ... Still.  It worked out pretty well.  And we bought them before everyone else started buying the same sort of frame.  Trendsetters!!  Or not.  I actually bought them because they reminded me of chairs my grandparents used to have.  In a roundabout sort of way.

So, anyway, the chair.  The chair takes care of my books, magazines, and anything else I think I'm likely to read or want to look at when I crawl into bed at the end of the day.  I like the way it looks and I'm sure my books like having a cosy, comfortable place to hang out as well.

One book I collected a while ago that I absolutely love is The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York by Matteo Pericoli.  The book is a collection of hand-drawn cityscapes, illustrating the views that 63 New Yorkers have when they look out their windows.  Writers, musicians, photographers, a former New York City maor, a museum curator, a Tibetan Buddhist Master, a human rights activist (all sorts!), recognisable names and not so recognisable names, accompanying each illustration is the story of what each cityscape view means to the one looking out.  I love having a book that I can pick up, read a page of and put down again, but that still leaves me with a view on the world, a comment on life and on the good things and provides a reflection on progress (be it good or bad).  It gives you a tiny insight into a person as well, I think.  It's a really peaceful book about a place that I expect isn't really at all.

One day I think I may have to collect his work Manhattan Unfurled - Manhattan Island drawn on a 70 foot long scroll.  He has also drawn London, but Manhattan fascinates me more.

Because of this book, I'm absolutely certain, these Eye Spy Coffee Cups at Citta Design are also on my wishlist.  I keep hoping they'll come on sale ... that would make me really cheerful.

Book love.  Stuff love.

(Also, the soda bread from the day before yesterday?  Excellent toasted!)


* ... that we? I can never remember. I actually have a rule book for this stuff on the bookshelf down the hall. I should possibly transfer it to my desk.  Also, this is a bit of an exciting alternative to brackets, isn't it?  The first couple of lines seemed a bit too early to start busting out the brackets.

Wholewheat Irish soda bread

Guess what I'm having toasted for breakfast tomorrow with a cup of tea?  I think I can get a couple of pieces of toast out of what's left ...

Tomorrow I'm probably going to cheat and do a quick fill of the bicky tin with something easy, because I'm kind of (and by kind of, I mean I am) planning to cheat again, probably Friday or Saturday with some tarts I saw on Little Paris Kitchen that I am busting to try (try to make, try to eat).  We need to talk about how I want to be Rachel Khoo when I grow up.  But in the meantime, let me assure you that you are jealous about my bread.  And I'm incredibly relieved that this is one for the 'aced it' pile.

Amen.

Boulcott Street Bistro

A few weeks ago, we went here for dinner and it was amazeballs.  It's a gorgeous little place (that we will be going back to), made even more so on our first visit by the warm yellow light glowing up the path, welcoming us through the door on a miserable early winter night. 

Friends gave us a voucher as a thank you and it was such a perfect thing.  Firstly, we didn't expect it, so that was a gift all by itself (and we love food), but the dinner .... oh, the dinner!  The dinner was sooo good.  I can probably link their menu if I haven't forgotten how to work this thing completely .... here you go! I hope.

There were two serious highlights to the night - divine lamb shanks and crazy good pork belly entre aside, the green beans with basil butter reduced me from intelligent (sort of) conversation to one continuing yummy noise pretty much until they were gone.  I also may or may not have ended up eating them directly out of the dish they came to the table in, instead of putting them politely on my plate first.  And then there was Al's dessert which killed me.  It. Had. Candy. Floss. On. Top !!  Possibly I shouldn't have been as thrilled about this as I was, but I totally was.  The steamed chocolate pudding was so bitter it was as though it'd barely been broken down from the original chocolate (which is a very good thing).  That was my take anyway, on coming up for air from my creme brulee.  Imagine Homer Simpson making drool noises.  There you go.

We were a bit unsure about the inability to make dinner reservations since it's in the city and we're on the Coast (ergo, driving an hour to find we couldn't get a table would've given us a very big sad indeed), so we headed in early giving ourselves plenty of time in case we needed to wait for a table to be free.  We didn't, which was awesome, although it did mean we were done by about 7.30pm.  Woops.  Nothing like standing outside the restaurant at 7.30pm feeling just a wee bit silly that we were heading home, probably to have a cuppa and be in bed by a reasonable hour (sorry Boulcott Street Bistro, but your coffee was truly horrible.  I'm not even convinced there was actually coffee in my coffee.  I did order a decaf though which probably did deserve a level of punishment, but I was given to wonder if it wasn't decaffed by leaving all traces of coffee out (I know decaffed isn't a word.  At least I don't think it is.  Maybe it is.  It should be though - it's a good word)  (Oh.  Decafeinated is also a good word.  That's embarrassing) ).

So, focus.  Neither of us were ready to be going home, but headed there anyway because neither of us also wanted to find somewhere else to go.  And there's always a big risk that the place you go (unless you know where you're going) won't be as good as the place you've been, and it'll take the awesome edge off the night.  So, home we headed.  And made it as far as the Raumati Social Club.  HA!  The husband felt like a beer, and I felt like erasing the terrible memory of my earlier coffee.  Bada Boom.  We drove past on the off-chance and hastily grabbed a park where there wasn't really a park.  I'd forgotten but the Kapiti Musical Festival was on and the Social Club was one of the venues so it was well open and we were able to slouch down into warm jackets at a table outside on the sidewalk.  I got coffee that made everything alright again, the husband had beer, we caught up with new friends and we got to sit out of the rain but with front row seats to watch it come down as the streetlights shone through and  people wandered backwards and forwards across the road between our cafe and the one over the road.

The coffee that made everthing alright again.

This was pretty much our view for about two hours, as the rain came down and tunes played behind us, and it was brilliant.

Baking equipment happiness

At this stage I've been able to go through Global Baker, choosing recipes that don't require any specialised equipment or equipment that I don't have ... or recipes that involve dough, because I despise dough.  It didn't used to be that way, but my Global Baker journey is becoming littered with the corpses of failed doughy things.  It's torture because usually the only thing wrong is dough failure, but the tastes and smells are amazing.  I'm left imagining how wonderful it could have been while I have a cry into my cup of tea and bust open the vanilla wines.

But, equipment.  My pattern is go to through my book, pick recipes that I want to try before others (usually because they look easier than the other recipes because I am that person and I never learn, and because my failure rate with this book is really beginning to disturb me), make sure I have what I need to make them or else add the ingredients not to hand to the grocery list and go from there.  I'm inching towards the recipes that need me to also collect equipment though, and so I'm starting to take note of what I'll need along the way so that I can put that on my wish list. 

I mentioned to the husband the other day that I want to try mooncakes (I'm very fond of a fruit mince pie, and these are fruit mince mooncakes.  I also wonder if it would be possible to make lemon curd mooncakes.  We will find out.  If not, I can just eat the lemon curd and no harm done) but I'd need a mooncake mould.  I did a half-arsed search online through the usual baking equipment avenues I take, but came up blank.  Paying no attention whatsoever to the big picture in the book of a mould laying next to the finished mooncakes (probably because it wasn't at all what I envisaged when thinking of a baking mould either), I was to be honest looking for your bog standard pressed tin or whatever mould.  Like a madeleine tin.  Bless.  I did say it was a half-arsed search.

It's nothing like your bog standard anything, however.  It's a whopping piece of carved wood.  And absolutely beautiful.  A couple of days after logging 'mooncake mould', the husband was in an Asian grocery in town and came across one and it now lives in on the mantle because it just does not want to be in a cupboard.  So, mooncakes are on the menu as soon as I get some fruit mince for my first run at them (and lemon curd for my second).  I will make fruit mince in due course (there's a recipe for that with the recipe for the mooncake bit), but since dough of any description is intent on killing me just now, I'm going to concentrate on that in the immediate.  Plus, the forward to the mooncake recipe says you can buy good quality fruit mince 'for an easy life' and I'm all about the easy life right now, so I'm taking that as a pass.  And I have the flu so I'm feeling unbelievably lazy.  I don't know if it's because I'm getting older, or because the germs go through some kind of vicious mutation process as they pass through the small children before getting to me, but it seems to hurt more these days.

Horrible mooncake mould photo is courtesy of my ipad, because I have no idea where the camera is.  And I couldn't take decent photos on that either.  (also, it's about 40mm thick.  Seriously whopping).

Heavens above, it's May

I had great plans to be much more organised and relaxed, but you can take this as confirmation that I have managed neither.  I really have no idea how people do manage it.  Some people seem to be machines.  Me?  Not so much.  Maybe I need to take a run at organising everything, and then just start drinking (to either relax after the fact because I managed to organise everything or, failing that, to forget that I haven't organised everything which will then lead to relaxing)?  Organised works ok if I make plenty of lists and stop long enough to plan out what I need to do and by when (no, it doesn't, I'm lying.  I keep hoping it will but generally I end up, week by week, just tranferring my lists onto the new week page in my diary and then adding to them, while I run around in circles trying to work out what I'm supposed to be doing and wondering why none of those things involves crossing something off my list), but I'm beginning to suspect that my mind and body are incapable of relaxing.  I'm horrible at managing the stuff I want to do, around the stuff I need to do.

Maybe it's small children.  Can I blame them?  I'm sure I can.  It feels like I should be able to.  A few days ago, I was sitting down enjoying a cup of coffee in a state of complete bliss (no, I wasn't, I'm lying again.  I think I might have been accessing my work email with one hand while trying to chip spaghetti remnants off the dining table with the other (there's a good reason our kitchen table top is a spectacularly strong laminate-on-wood), inhaling said coffee in bursts and waaay faster than is seemly.) when the not-ginger wandered inside carting one of those Cookie Time cookie buckets filled with dirt from out the back.  This dirt is brilliant.  I'll remind you that we live on the Coast, so it's actually more sand than dirt - it has the same dirty effect as dirt, but it's so fine that it spreads spectacularly.  So anyway, there she is wandering up the hallway and I look up from whatever it is that I am doing in time to register the bucket, the dirt, and that she has just tripped over her own feet, as the contents of the bucket goes sailing across the living room.  I have no idea if my children are especially talented and inventive when it comes to mess, but they do it very well and very often.   Thank heaven for black carpet and an excellent vacuum cleaner.  The yellow and white wool chevron rug ... slightly different story  (yes, I did buy a yellow and white wool rug, knowing full well it would be sharing a house with the husband and the children.  Live and learn.).  Organisation pales in the face of it all.

Still, in the midst of this, I have maintained a feeling of guilt over not progressing my Global Baker project and so here you go ... my latest attempt.  I have a feeling it could take me the better part of a decade at this rate to get through the book, but get through it I will. 

Chocolate custard gloves.  The chocolate custard bit is awesome.  The glove bit needs work.  I'm fairly sure it was too dense.  It came out more like a risen pastry, and Dean (via Twitter) was so kind as to confirm that they should have been more bready (well, he said they should be bready, which I felt meant that what I'd made should have been more bready.  He did also say they looked excellent though - win!).  Still, no hardship to give those a go again at a later stage.  There's not much I'm nailing first pop out of this book.  I just keep reminding myself when I'm in fits of despair, that it IS about the learning.  And one thing that apparently I'm completely crap at is dough.

I need to go and hunt down some pics of the little ginger and the not ginger.  They're big.  Getting bigger all the time.  I enrolled the little ginger in school the other day (I know, right?  One minute he's being mixed up in a lab ...), and he starts school visits in just a few months.  There was a bit of an awkward moment on the phone as I was giving details to the school - they asked me his date of birth and I had to get the husband to roll up his pants leg to confirm I had it right, which I didn't (if you don't know the husband or I and that sounds very odd - he has the kids' birth days tattooed up the backs of his legs.  It comes in handy.  Earlier this year I caught him turning in circles trying to read the dates to put in his diary).  Oi.  The lady on the other end of the phone, bless her, took it in stride with only a bit of a snigger.

Pics - this is a real favourite in the meantime.  They're always ending up in the sea in their clothes.  Every time we go to the beach they get told a hundred times that they're not to go in the water and generally, this is what happens after they've solemnly agreed.

And this came back with the kindy photos.  There were so many lovely shots to choose from, but this one ... so much love.

Heh.  My kid alright.  That's his I'm-not-allowed-to-call-you-an-idiot-so-I'll-give-you-this-look-instead face.

The not-ginger in a cage.  And her hair looks like that all the time.  It's not even remotely unusual.  If I try to put it up in a ponytail, she will tear it till it comes out (often with a fist full of hair as well).  So, I just brush it in the morning and what happens from there, happens.  The crazed look suits her well though.

Slightly less crazy looking to make up for the craziness of being in hospital for, pretty much, teething.  (Transient sinivitis (which may or may not be spelt right) as part of a chain-reaction to cutting a canine.  Not joking)