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  • Buttermilk Roast Chicken

    This chicken from Smitten Kitchen is far more delicious than this rather yellow photo makes it out to be. The chicken pieces are marinated in the fridge overnight in a buttermilk mixture, and then baked at a nice high heat, crisping the outsides. The marinade makes the chicken beautifully tender, and given that most of the preparation time involves the chicken sitting peacefully marinading, it’s a nice fast meal to put together.

    ingredients:
    2 cups buttermilk
    5 crushed garlic cloves
    1 tablespoon salt
    1 tablespoon sugar
    1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
    Around 1.2 kg chicken pieces (breasts, legs or thighs)

    Whisk up the buttermilk with the garlic, salt, sugar, paprika, and a generous seasoning of pepper in a bowl. Put the chicken pieces in a ziplock bag, or a large container, and pour the buttermilk mixture over them, making sure they’re fully covered. Chuck the bag or container in the fridge and leave for 24 hours, or up to 42 hours.

    On the night you’re going to cook the chicken, whip it out of the fridge, feeling terribly organised, and heap up the oven to 220C. Pull the chicken out of the buttermilk mixture and into a bowl to drain a little. Either line a baking dish with foil, or grease it lightly, and pack the chicken into the dish. Drizzle lightly with olive oil, then sprinkle with paprika. Bake for roughly 30 minutes for legs, and 40 minutes for breasts, until the meat is nice and browned. Serve with whatever takes your fancy – potatoes and steamed vegetables, rice and salad. The chicken is also lovely cut up cold on sandwiches or in salads the next day.

  • Flowing water

    It has been raining heavily on and off for the past two days, and poured overnight. The lower dam has flooded its banks again, spreading into a small lake in the backyard, and all day a steady stream of water has been rushing down the driveway and the gutters towards it. Our house is down a slope hidden from the main road, which unfortunately in wet weather means that a great deal of water rushes towards and, ideally, around the house, towards the lower dam. Unfortunately in my experience drainage rarely conforms to an ideal, and inevitably the area under the house gathers water and turns into a little clay pit, waiting for an unsuspecting pedestrian to sink their be-thonged foot into its sticky depths.

    I have been inspired into various cleaning and organising tasks, prompted presumably by my pregnancy, which has now reached its halfway mark. I have been tackling the Chair of Doom, the place where for some reason I have chosen to file all our bills, tax related papers and receipts for the past two years. It is a horrid chair, but it is now mostly emptied, its contents either thrown away or filed (actually in a filing cabinet this time).

    Every time the rain stops it sounds as if a dozen water features have been installed outside, water rushing down drains and trickling out of tank overflows. The chooks are hunched in a resigned fashion on their perch, waiting for a little sunshine to dry out their pen, and as dusk falls the frog chorus has started, the “bop bop bop” sound of the pobblebonks joining the longer calls of frogs I don’t know, and the occasional croaking of toads.

  • Thoughts on horses

    From: Alex
    To: Celia; Alice

    P.S I drove through THE VILLAGE [being where I live] yesterday.

    From: Celia
    To: Alex; Alice

    I know. I followed you.

    Well, at least I saw your facebook status indicating you were up the mountain and presumed you went through THE VILLAGE as you put it. I can’t believe you didn’t come and visit me.

    From: Alex
    To: Celia; Alice

    Well, I didn’t know THE VILLAGE was basically at the foot of The Mountain. It really is a village! I was expecting something a touch more suburban, along the lines of Rochedale. I can’t believe you travel so far to work every day.

    From: Celia
    To: Alex; Alice

    Yeah, it’s really not suburban at all. Once I saw a man just having a piss on the outside of the IGA. Although I suppose that happens in suburbia as well.

    From: Alex
    To: Celia; Alice

    So is the IGA the ‘centre’ of THE VILLAGE? I didn’t see much else except for the ‘hotel’.

    I think you should have a horse. Why would you live there and not have a horse?

    From: Celia
    To: Alex; Alice

    Yeah, pretty much. There’s the IGA, the pub and the fish & chip shop. At least those are the things I frequent.

    I don’t like horses. What would I do with a horse? They are not useful.

    From: Alex
    To: Celia; Alice

    Horses are an excellent method of transportation. And they are cute. How can you not like horses?!

    From: Celia
    To: Alex; Alice

    I got bitten by a horse once, on the stomach. I have held a grudge against the entire species ever since.

    If I was going to have livestock I would have a goat or a pig. At least you can eat them. And they are cute. Horses are just biding their time, waiting to bite your tummy.

    From: Alex
    To: Celia; Alice

    On the stomach?! How is that even possible?? This could only happen to you…

    Goats are cute. Mum had one when she was little. I think you should get a goat. And magnum baby [being my unborn child] can pretend it’s a pony.

    From: Celia
    To: Alex; Alice

    Well, it was my friend’s horse. I already disliked horses, mostly because every other small girl of my acquaintance adored them. And I was glaring suspiciously at this horse, called Rusty, waiting for it to do something objectionable. My friend told me not to be ridiculous, and that Rusty was perfectly friendly. And at that, Rusty’s eyes began to gleam, he dribbled a bit, made an evil screeching sound, and then leaned down and bit my stomach. It bruised me. I said something to effect of “friendly my fucking arse” and my friend then claimed it was my fault for being afraid of him. I personally don’t see what good an animal is if the moment it senses fear it attacks. That’s not my idea of a nice domesticated pet.

    From: Alice
    To: Celia; Alex

    That is so awesome that you presented your belly for the biting. Keep magnum baby well clear of any equines from now on though. Don’t want him/her coming out missing an ear or a nose.

    I love horses. Except for Shetland ponies. Not that they count. They are the dregs of the horse community.

    From: Alex
    To: Celia; Alice

    What a strange place for a horse to bite. You’d think he’d go for your hair/face/arms but no, it was the tummy. Were you wearing a midriff-bearing top by any chance Ms Powell?

    I love Thoroughbreds, Arabians and Missouri Foxtrotters. Clydesdales also hold a certain charm for me.

    From: Celia
    To: Alex; Alice

    I have no idea why that devilish animal went for my belly, I suppose it was temptingly plump. Although actually I was a slender child, so that doesn’t really explain it. And I was in primary school, I very much doubt I was baring my midriff.

    How dismissive Alice is of Shetland ponies – there are many miniature horses around THE VILLAGE Alice, and sometimes they have foals which I find rather endearing because they are so tiny. And incapable of reaching my stomach. Once I was riding my bike and stopped to say hello to a miniature horse next to a fence. “Hello little horsey!” I squeaked in falsetto tones. “Who’s a little horsey? Is you a little horsey? Yes you is!” It gazed at me blankly and proceeded to do a huge steaming piss, which was really quite an eloquent response considering its mental capacity.

  • Incubation

    One of the chooks has gone broody. On the weekend she was determinedly sitting on the eggs she and her fellow denizons of Chickendome had laid that morning, and stayed there rather than adventuring out in the garden with the others when I opened the door to the pen. A fairly pointless endeavour, given that we don’t have a rooster. I left her there for a bit, then went and lifted her out of the nesting box and removed the eggs. She stomped outside in a bit of a huff, then started scratching around and went and joined her fellows. Later in the day however she’d left them and returned inside to the nesting box, this time carefully incubating some straw.

    I’m not sure how to cure her of this habit, apart from hauling her off the nest every so often and hoping that she realises that no matter how dedicated she is to sitting in one position, she’s not going to get chickens out of it.

    It’s raining heavily and relentessly today and I always worry about the chooks in this sort of weather. Half their pen remains dry, but it’s not much space to scratch around in and I imagine them being rather bored during the day, staring dolefully at the pouring rain and watching the rest of their pen turn to mud.

  • First day

    We came back from five days visiting family in Melbourne and spent some time together in the garden over the past few days – mowing, pulling out fallen fences and ripping up lantana. This year will bring so many changes for us and I think we both feel the impetus to organise and arrange the property. And remove lantana, that bloody stuff. At least it has fairly shallow roots, its one saving grace.

    We started the new year eating croissants, and then trying to pull the ute bullbar back into position after I had a little disagreement with a concrete post. We were mostly successful, and I am determined to stay away from concrete posts this year. They’re no good for me. Or the car. And that should be a nice easy resolution to keep.

  • Alphabetical

    There seems to be a basic instinct in all young children who visit our house to make high pitched screeching noises and run after the cats, who roll their eyes and belt in the opposite direction. Ella was a bit shy when she came to visit us last weekend in our unfamiliar house, but that didn’t stop her from engaging in a bit of cat chasing.

    Each time we have children come to stay I realise how very un-child proof our house is. It felt terribly unfair to constantly tell Ella not to do things, so on Sunday morning Naomi and I lolled around on the couch and watched Ella methodically pull books off the bookshelves and hand them to us triumphantly. I took the opportunity to re-alphabetise my fiction, which might seem like a pointless sort of thing to do, but when you have a lot of books and your husband is moping around the living room asking for something to read, it makes it easier to locate one of the two or three authors he likes to read.

    Ella also quite liked the chooks, who followed her around as she toddled about in her very tough little bare feet. I feel that I’ve done a good job socialising these chooks – they follow me around the garden, put themselves away at night, and lay lots of eggs. I have been rewarding them with rotten strawberries. Best chook parent ever, that’s me.

  • Strawberry Cake

    Strawberries are cheap and plentiful at the moment, and I loved the look of the Strawberry Summer Cake on Smitten Kitchen, with the juicy caramelised strawberries on top dribbling through the cake. I actually used a sugar substitute that my sister-in-law had given me (decanted into a container, so I have no idea what it was), with a couple of spoonfuls of the blue gum honey that Naomi bought us from Mapleton, because I wanted to get some of its beautifully caramel flavour in the cake. The original recipe sprinkles sugar over the strawberries before baking, but I drizzled some of the honey over them instead.

    You’ve got to really cram the strawberries on top of the cake, even if it feels like there’s too many. They basically turn into jam – soft and gooey and melting into the cake. It’s delicious eaten while warm, and pretty easy to put together for morning or afternoon tea.

    ingredients:
    6 tblsp butter, at room temperature
    1 1/2 cups plain flour
    1 1/2 tsps baking powder
    1/2 tsp salt
    1 cup sugar
    1 egg
    1/2 cup milk
    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    1 1/2 punnets of strawberries, cut in half
    2 tbsps of honey or sugar for sprinkling

    Preheat the oven to 180C, and grease a fairly deep pie dish or cake tin. I used a square pyrex dish.

    If you’re not lazy, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. (If you’re me, you’ll dump them separately into the wet mix at the end). In a large bowl, use electric beaters to beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Mix in the egg, milk and vanilla until just combined, then gradually do the same with the dry mixture (or the flour, baking powder and salt) until it’s just mixed.

    Pour the mixture into the pie dish. Arrange the strawberries on the top of the cake, pushing them a little into the mixture and cramming them closely together. Sprinkle them with sugar, or drizzle with honey.

    Bake the cake for 10 minutes, and then reduce the temperature to 160C and bake for about an hour, until a skewer comes out clean (of the cake mixture, not the gooey strawberries).

  • Brains

    While my brother and I live in (roughly) the same city – well, he lives within it, and I live 50ks away – we don’t spend a lot of time together, so it was nice to spend some time hanging out with him on the weekend. I asked for a coffee, which he didn’t have, so he offered me some kava which was steeping away in a coffee plunger looking brown and sludgy. “Is it nice?” I asked doubtfully, and he said it tasted how it looked, which was entirely accurate – gritty and sourly unpleasant. Then he taught me how to play The Decemberists’ Down by the Water, which I hadn’t heard before. We recorded a fairly crappy version of the song through the sophisticated method of lying a mic on a table and sitting around it. Given that it’s a directional vocal mic, I thought the balance and sound were surprisingly good – my slightly out of tune ukulele and the uncertain harmonies I was singing, not so much. I really like how our voices blend together, although I suppose that has a bit to do with genetics, rather than our magnificent vocal skills.

    Later I had dinner with a friend at Piaf at South Bank, where we shared snails and lamb’s brains for our entrees. I hadn’t eaten either before and didn’t particularly take to them. Not so much because of flavour, as I thought they both simply took on the flavour of what they were cooked with, but the texture of both was fairly unappealing. Particularly the brains, which were softly slippery, and as I swallowed I kept thinking about my own brain, and people eating my brain out of my skull with spoons. I am not an adventurous eater when it comes to offal. And clearly I am also a drama queen. I don’t feel the need to consider my limbs when eating a leg of lamb.

    The rest of our meal was fantastic though, and then we wandered along the river for a while and watched a laser light show, while I checked my phone occasionally and updated my disinterested dining companion on the rugby score as Ireland unexpectedly beat Australia. We then went and found a cafe to order dessert, and a couple of enormous long blacks which were served in bowls, with a cute mini milk bottle on the side. I was rather taken with the novelty of coffee-in-a-bowl, but it was an idiotic choice of beverage, given that it was my first coffee of the day and consequently I was cheerful and brightly alert until after midnight when I forced myself to try and sleep. No more novelty sized bowls of coffee for me. Not at night, anyway.

  • Night life

    The bootcamp instructor I spend my time with on Saturday mornings persists in jogging lightly along beside me while denigrating my running style. Probably with good reason. “Keep plodding along!” she shouts at me cheerily, while I gasp for air, and try and communicate with my eyes that I am not plodding, I am gliding, is she blind?

    I am a terrible runner, and I haven’t done any regular running for a long time. When I was on my last fitness kick, I eventually worked up to being able to jog for 5ks without stopping. Once I was able to do that I apparently decided that I had ticked running off some invisible list, because I promptly stopped and did away with all the work it had taken to get there.

    It took me 38 minutes to jog 5ks, with a couple of walking breaks, listening to a podcast and wearing my very attractive reflective ankle straps. The route I take starts on a downhill slope, which is a bit of a cheat I suppose, except that I have to run uphill on the way back. The moon hadn’t risen tonight when I was out, so I went fairly slowly along the road, only veering off the bitumen when a car came along. A guy on a horse came past and startled me when he said hello – I hadn’t noticed him until I was right next to the horse (well, it wasn’t wearing attractive reflective straps, after all).

    There’s a fire burning somewhere tonight – the glow of it was reflecting orange off the clouds and there was a strong smell of smoke. Those glowing clouds are always a nasty sight to see on the horizon when you’re driving home at night, and you live surrounded by dry eucalypt forest – you do pointless mental calculations trying to figure out whether you’re driving towards it and how far away it is. This fire still seems to be a fair way off – I’m going to be optimistic and presume it’s some sort of official burning off, rather than something more worrisome.

  • The game

    We watched a bit of rugby while we were in New Zealand, mostly because there always seemed to be a provincial match on TV whenever we turned it on. And I found myself becoming interested in it, despite a lifelong indifference to similar sports. I think it was nationwide enthusiasm for the game, and the general excitement over the world cup. The safety announcement on the flight over was world cup themed. On the news, a bloke being interviewed on the street about the snow storms tugged at his All Blacks jersey and said it would keep him warm.

    I entered a very predictable tipping sheet in a workplace competition, and have been watching the games that are showing on free to air tv (which will be mostly just those involving Australia) and keeping an eye on the online commentary for the other games. And Twitter of course, home of many a sarcastic remark during the England v Argentina game. I continue to find a lot of penalty calls confusing, but given that half the time the commentators seem to join me in that confusion, I think that’s probably alright. I attempt to cover up the fact that I have no idea what’s going on by making a disgusted grunting noise and shaking my head a bit, which could be directed at the ref, the other team, the vagaries of fate… I’m sure it’s very convincing. They’ll be asking me to commentate any day now.