where's my sofa?

I made extremely good cupcakes last night (no particular occasion - except that it had *finally* cooled down enough for baking to be possible and I finally had a weekend when I wasn't sick). I found dark agave nectar at the organic greengrocer recently, and have been itching to use it - so I decided to make the allegedly diabetes-friendly vegan chocolate cupcakes from 'Vegan cupcakes take over the world'. The recipe suggested putting in orange essence, or something else I can't recall and which I also didn't have. I considered my spearmint and peppermint essences, my lavender oil and my raspberry flavouring, and finally decided that chocolate and agave nectar deserved a New World flavouring, and added a shake or two of cinnamon and another couple of shakes of chilli powder. And then topped them with vegan chocolate ganache.

The effect was fascinating. The cupcakes turned out a little dry - I have not previously cooked cupcakes in this oven and it turns out that they do *not* need the full cooking time, or even four minutes less than that - and at first I thought the flavour was a bit disappointing, but actually it creeps up on you - you can't taste the chilli or cinnamon at all, but after a bite or two, you start to feel a lovely warm heat from them - not uncomfortable, even for a wimp like me, but sort of providing a feeling that you are eating cakes warm from the oven, not at room temperature. Or something. I'm definitely going to have to make them again, and measure my chilli this time (and maybe add a little more cinnamon).

In garden news, I attempted to use my seed raising kit last night, and we shall see what comes of it - I've planted tomato seeds (speckled roma) and heirloom capsicum mix, and another heirloom capsicum, so either they will all sit there and never germinate or I will be absolutely overwhelmed with seedlings in a couple of weeks. If the latter, this journal may be offering free seedlings to all comers.

And today, just in case nothing comes up at all, I went out and bought basil, parsley, strawberry and tomato seedlings. Just a three of the latter, one of which is a hanging one, and the other two of which I intend to plant in big pots just outside our verandah and train up the trellis. I'm hoping that if I draw the flowers through onto the verandah, then the tomatoes will grow under cover (but still with sunlight) and they won't cook on the vine in hot weather as they did last year. Maybe. As for the strawberries, I will be simply happy if I can get any of them to produce fruit. I never have before...

And that's about it from me. We sang for the catholics tonight at rather a nice Confirmation service. I'm still trying to work out why the Bishop sometimes wears a mitre, sometimes a skullcap, and sometimes goes bareheaded, but that's just me. Not to mention the fact that he looked as though he belonged on a tarot card, which just goes to show that I would make a terrible catholic, I suspect. Also, I'm fairly sure that when I was confirmed, the white dresses were long, not knee-length or shorter (young people these days...!). And the questions the bishop was asking suggest that they learn very different things in Catholic confirmation classes to what they learn in Anglican ones, which is also interesting. Still, a very nice ceremony, and I liked the way they made a point of having as many of the confirmees as possible do readings or lead prayers and such during the service. And we did sing rather well for four people who hadn't seen most of the music until two hours before the service...

Anyway, my vegetables must be marinated and ready to grill now, so that makes it time for dinner - we're having tomato salad, bread, grilled haloumi, and eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms, capsicum and onions marinated with garlic, rosemary, oregano, mint, lemon juice, white wine and red wine vinegar and then grilled. I'm feeling hungry already...

A beautifully constructed site exploring Choose Your Own Adventure books.

So I'm trying to find some likely rounds online for my little Christmas choir people to use as a warm-up next week.

This is not as easy as it sounds. My little Christmas Choir don't much like singing in German, and I doubt they would appreciate Norwegian either. And so far, everything I have found online is either a) in German, Swedish or Norwegian b) too high or c) really, really filthy. Or occasionally d) too high *and* really, really filthy. And, of course, it is always possible that some of those in category a) are also really, really filthy and I just don't understand them, which means I can't override the objections of my anti-germanists in the choir and just use the foreign language songs anyway, because there *are* quite a number of German and Swedish speakers in the Institute, if not in the choir, and, well, I don't think we should go there...

Mind you, it is nice to know how the song about 'My man John has a thing that is long / My maid Mary has a thing that is hairy *' actually goes, after hearing about it so often in the past. Still, I really don't think I can use it for my work choir, even if Purcell did publish it in his The Catch Club, or Merry Companions, along with the song about Celia and the Spinet, and a remarkable variety of filth in musical form. That particular catch is by John Eccles, and I regret to say it only goes downhill from the opening lines.

Ah well. At least I have managed to find Dona Nobis Pacem, and I still have my German rounds book, from which I can copy out and translate things if need be. But I am a little taken aback to find such a trove of choral smut under such a respectable name as Purcell... Though it is amusing to see that anecdote about Sir Walter Raleigh and the maid in musical form (along with all sorts of other unedifying anecdotes - it really is a delightful book, just not suitable for work).

*it's a broom handle and a broom, you filthy degenerates, so you can stop giggling and wash your minds out with soap. Or sweep them with a broom, as the case may be. And we won't think too much about alternate meanings for the word case, either.

I want a whole garden of stripey vegetables! I want these beetroots, and I want the tricoloured carrots that have an outer ring of purple and then a ring of red and a core of yellow, and I want the red and green striped rhubarb, and naturally I want this eggplant, or perhaps all of these ones, and really, who would not want zebra tomatoes in three different colourways, and do I even need to mention how much I covet this five-colour chard?

I am positive God - or perhaps Gaia - always intended vegetables to be lurid. My garden certainly will be, if I have my way...

Stripey vegetables aside, there is something deeply pleasing about the notion of having an entire veggie patch that contains *only* vegetables in unexpected colours...

I've been doing serious gardening in the disgusting stuff they've been calling weather around here. It all has to be done between sometime after 6:30pm (when it finally gets cool enough, ish, to be outside) and 8:30pm, when it gets dark. Which means dinner has been very very late too, of course.

Nonetheless...( Cut for far too much gardening )

In other news, I am currently absolutely livid about something that really doesn't belong in a livejournal post, even a locked one (which this isn't, of course, because I don't really believe that anything is actually private on the internet, and I'm not going to fool myself into thinking it is), and have just sent the most strongly-worded email of my entire existence. I don't know what, if anything, it will achieve, and I'm a bit scared because I hate confrontation, but it would be irresponsible and unfair to just walk away without at least giving the people in question an opportunity to explain themselves and also not do that again. Though just walking away is unbelievably tempting at present. I am running out of time and patience for this sort of nonsense, and after all, il faut cultiver notre jardin...

I'm not carrying an umbrella today. Or a coat. Or even a jumper or shawl.

You know you want to.....

A small, but fascinating study of the unofficial folk nomenclatures of Lego parts that evolve in a household.

MrsMadProfessor is wearing a T-shirt today. The slogan reads:

"Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes"

Sometimes, there is more than one...

(sometimes, this journal feels like one seven-year-long eyeroll...)

So it's going to be revoltingly hot all week, to match the fact that it was revoltingly hot all weekend. This, aside from being horrid in itself, is a right pain in the neck when you have to actually come up with healthy lunches and dinners, because there is no time when you can do serious amounts of advance preparation when it is not hot. I'd actually prefer alternating days of 20 and 40 degrees to this endless 30-degree vileness. At least I'd be able to cook on the 20-degree days and eat leftovers in between. Also, I'm out tonight and Thursday night but not eating out, which adds to the difficulty level...

The result of all this is that, hot or not, I spent most of yesterday cooking or preparing food to eat cold during the week. As a bonus, we got a surprise visit from orgelcub, who then had to stay for supper, of course, since I rarely get to feed him now Shakespeare is on hiatus. Because I am terribly pleased with myself, herewith our menu up until Thursday evening: ( And because I am merciful, herewith an LJ-cut )

But wait, there's more! In addition to insane cooking, I also embarked on a bit of gardening (this is what happens when I actually manage to be healthy for a whole weekend after two months). Andrew has been clearing the bricked area, and I cleared the weed-haven down the side of the house, and have now planted lots of shade-loving plants which I trust will shortly out-compete the weeds. So we have violets and impatiens and some nasturtiums in the bit where it might get sunnier - none of which are really visible from anywhere, but it will make me happy to know that there are flowers rather than weeds. I've also purchased some sun-loving rockery plants to plant in the gravel around the watertanks, as well as some prostrate rosemary for the same area.

I've sort of given up on vegies for this year, because I'm probably too late to plant any of my seeds, but I am hoping to dig up the (dead) broccoli this week, mulch the area and plant some bean seeds and some tomato plants and basil. I'm also hoping to revive my herb patch which has pretty much died because I spent so much time being sick and not thinking about the garden that nothing got watered and it all died when Melbourne suddenly decided to do Summer.

Also, I cleared the whole table yesterday, and dealt with scary fridge stuff. I am now feeling somewhat knackered, but I think it was worth it.

In other news, choir went well. I didn't sing as well as I did in rehearsal, but then, I never do, and at least I didn't sing poorly enough to lose all my self-respect (though I did have a huge crisis of confidence immediately afterwards), which was a good thing, since my parents, my brother and his girlfriend all came along to listen. They enjoyed the singing and were apparently surprised and impressed at how much my voice had improved (well, my mother doesn't really do impressed, but she did seem appreciative, and somewhat taken aback because she said I always had a high little voice, and here I was doing butch male alto solos), which was nice. Oddly, the meeting, while awkward, was pretty non-stressful. They did repeatedly express an interest in hearing more of our singing, so I'm encouraging them to come along to the Advent Carol service, which is always beautiful and underattended, and they are very keen to come along to Christmas Eve at Our Lady of Gold Lamé, possibly with rather more extended family than I'm sure I want to deal with. Though at least it's a nice, structured environment in which to deal with them, which can only be a good thing...

I'm not really known as a bird spotter, but I've just seen this on the BBC website and the first thought that struck me was...



...that's a really big fucking owl behind Her Maj, there.

*

I'm not really disrespectful.

I was nurse in charge of a ward full of mentallers today and every single one of them were silent for two minutes from eleven o'clock this morning. This is such an achievement for one of my women in particular, that I actually documented it in her notes today. I've never known her to be silent for two minutes, other than when she's asleep.

Respect was due and paid.

*

Not really by my brother though, from whom I received a text at 11:01am (fortunately my phone was on silent) which read:

Q: What do you call a woman with two cunts?
A: John and Edward's mum.

Funny, though. :)

And what's his story?

Serious or frivolous answers gleefully accepted!

I just wanted to point to this.

The Boston Globe have a weekly feature called The Big Picture, which spotlights stunning large-format images from around the world. Always worth a look.

This week, they featured thirty-five jaw dropping images of Mars from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

GO.

Because not only was dinner spectacularly good, it was also weather appropriate - one of the things I detest most about hot weather is that it makes cooking into a penance, and once one has spent any time in front of a stove or oven, the last thing one feels like doing is warming oneself further by eating the products.

We had:

- hummus with roasted peppers and cumin seeds, as well as coriander, spring onions, and the usual lemon, tahini and garlic (I roasted the peppers earlier in the day), served with toasted pita (ditto) and celery sticks (because we have too much celery). Definitely the nicest hummus I've ever eaten, and in fact we eventually had to just put it away because we were not going to have room for anything else at the rate we were going.

- moroccan carrot soup, which is a glorious (and exceedingly lurid) concotion of raw carrots processed very very finely and mixed with orange juice, lemon juice, and a pinch each of sugar, cardamom and ginger, and then chilled in the fridge for a few hours. Tasted very fresh and sweet and sharp and fragrant and almost but not quite too much - I think it would be ideal in a somewhat smaller serving as a palate freshener between courses.

- fattoush, which when I make it involves a bunch each of coriander, parsley, mint, spring onions and rocket, with tomatoes and cucumber and a little lettuce, more toasted pita bread, olive oil, lemon juice, lots of garlic and sumac. Very fresh and delicious and varied and just generally good tasting.

It was all deliciously flavourful and complementary (somehow the coriander and mint in the fattoush managed to echo the soup, which had no herbs in it at all, so that they seemed to belong together), and healthy, and surprisingly filling, and blessedly cold and refreshing after an unnecessarily hot day. Oh, and also vegan.

Dessert will be a sundae of mangoes, raspberries, mint, strawberry puree and vanilla icecream, which is not vegan but will be equally delicious.

I defy any virus to defeat this many vitamins and antioxidants in their freshest and purest form.

Actually, I don't defy any viruses. I think I've had my share, and I don't want any of them feeling they have to rise to the challenge...

Also, I get bonus points for getting Andrew to eat a salad as the main part of dinner. I think this meal will be seen again quite regularly if the weather keeps behaving in this revoltingly Adelaidean fashion.

Um.


Astonishing.

Not so good - didn't get the middle school job. I'm going to talk to some senior staff on Monday about next year and my workload. Feeling reasonably positive all things considered.

Good - My xkcd and Hijinks Ensue books arrived, along with my t-shirt. Awesome.

Odd - this:


Yeah. There's a series of those.

You're welcome.

We're doing Orlando Gibbons' verse anthem 'See, see the word is incarnate' this Sunday.

I can't express what a gorgeous piece of music it is. ( But apparently I'm about to write several hundred words trying )

http://www.theage.com.au/national/medical-centre-collapses-20091104-hxa3.html

Just near my place!

We saw The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus today.

Then we saw Up.

Cos we felt like it.

Both were great. Liked Dr P. very much. Lily Cole can act, in addition to her proven looking ethereal abilities. Best Gilliam film in quite a long time.

Cried at Up. More than once. Lovely film.

I totally win the MasterChef challenge in which you have to make a gourmet meal out of what happens to be in your fridge and freezer, without going to the shops...

I had:

- half a small pumpkin
- half a small and very sad looking cauliflower
- rather a lot of good tomatoes
- some blue cheese, rapidly getting bluer
- some mint, which on closer inspection still had quite a lot of good leaves
- two apples
- two onions, one very sad
- lots of garlic
- some frozen mushroom and nut burgers (homemade, of course)
- milk
- various herbs, spices, oils, vinegars, etc

(pasta, rice and other grains and legumes are forbidden for the purposes of this exercise)

I made:

- cauliflower in blue cheese sauce (an impartial judge might describe this dish as 'blue cheese sauce with cauliflower, but I think we can let this pass)
- onion cups stuffed with mushroom and nut mince, roasted
- roasted pumpkin, onion, garlic and apples, with olive oil, rosemary and thyme
- marinated tomato and mint salad with balsamic vinaigrette

I find it highly amusing that I have ended up with something quite so gourmet out of the necessity of a) using up my veggie box vegetables and b) not going to the supermarket because I mucked up my budget this fortnight. Oh, and c) not eating either beans or pasta again today, for we have really had quite enough of both these things recently..

It's probably a good thing I get paid tomorrow, though. This meal looks as though it will be rather rich... and I'm running out of tins of beans and tomatoes...

On a lighter note, there's a bird outside my window, doing arpeggios. They are actually pretty much in tune, except that the bird can't quite hit the high note, so that you get these three perfectly tuned trills followed by a ghastly screech and a return to the fifth.

It sounds an awful lot like me trying to do the Queen of the Night Aria, for which I do not, alas, have the voice...

la-la-la-SCREEECH-la... la-la-la-SHRIEK-la... (one can supply the last three notes from memory).

I am not sure whether the bird is a mimic who has learned the tune from me (we had mynah birds in Adelaide who liked to mimic the phone, the alarm clock, and trucks reversing into the driveway) - in which case it is clearly my duty to sing it more often, with strong attention to the last three notes in the sequence, which the bird clearly has not learned yet, or whether this is his natural call and he just happens to be more tuned to the classical octave than the average bird.

I suspect the latter, to be honest. But just in case, I think I'll see if I can find any of Papageno or Papagena's arias to learn, once I get my voice back properly.

After all, it's only fair to give the budding avian musician something thematically appropriate - and ideally, within the proper range - to learn... and it's possible that Andrew is also tiring of my attempts to reach a note that is never going to be within my range...