Monthly Archives: March 2009

Just a little bit of paradise….

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Generally speaking I don’t like chocolate and can happily turn down chocolates, cake or slices and biscuits with no problems what so ever.  I mean… there’s a box of chocolates that I was given for Christmas that I opened last week and there’s two chocolates eaten from the box so far and I have no desire to go eat the rest of them because they’re really just too sweet.

There are however, some things that are just too yummy to exist and as such can not (and probably should not) be resisted if one is to maintain some semblance of mental health.  One of these particularly therapeutic items is the White Chocolate Raspberry Creme Brulee they make at the 2 Small Rooms… or at least they used to make it there  🙁    But don’t despair…  we have their cookbook (silly, silly people selling their recipes of deliciousness for the measly sum of $35)  and here ’tis…

2 Small Rooms White Chocolate Creme Brulee

100gm white chocolate grated
300ml cream
8 egg yolks
100ml castor sugar
2 vanilla beans

6 tuile biscuits
castor sugar
2 punnets fresh raspberries
icing sugar

Split vanilla beans lengthways
Heat cream and vanilla beans gently (do not boil)
Whisk together egg yolks and sugar, add cream slowly to egg mix whisking continuously
Heat gently over a double boiler until mix reaches a custard consistency (25-30mins)
Stir in white chocolate until disolved
Place bowl over ice to cool remove vanilla beans after scraping out seeds into mix and stir gently to remove air bubbles
Spoon mix into ramekins and allow to set.
Lightly sprinkle castor sugar over the top of the ramekins
Spray with a little water and burn sugar with a blow torch until golden brown
Stack raspberries on side of plate and dust heavily with icing sugar
Prace brulees and tuile biscuits on plate and serve

Anyone got some time over the weekend to come cook?  Oh and do you happen to have a handy blow torch in the shed?

A perfect ten…

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Next month will be my tenth wedding anniversary and I’ve been thinking a lot about what the last decade has bought us… both the ups and the downs.  Between car accidents, back pain, infertility, IVF, resultant depression from both, the stress of losing a parent to an insidious disease like MND, losing jobs, and being separated from some of the people we love it unfortuantely feels as though there’s not a lot of joy in the rear view mirror.  Well other than the Small Child of course 🙂

My married life has not turned out the way I had expected.  I do not have the family or the home life I guess I had been raised to anticipate.  We’ve got the mortgage and the dog but there’s been no 2.5 kids for me and the white picket fence is in serious need of repair because I spent our building fund (several times over) on IVF medical bills and I’ve not exactly been a big contributor around here with my less than stellar ability to work.  So no this marriage of ours doesn’t even remotely resemble the pictures in the brochure….

Mr K and I seem to have spent the last ten years discovering how very different we are from each other on so many issues.  Some of them frivolous like food, sports, tv shows, politics and hobbies… and some of them important like IVF, child rearing, intimacy and dealing with family issues.  At this point I think we couldn’t be more different if we tried.  Sometimes it seems so much easier to see our differences than it is to find any commonality between us….

He likes football – why grown men get wrapped up in it I don’t know.
He enjoys playing golf – I fail to see the appeal entirely.
He likes rice cakes – I can’t stand the way they squeak on your teeth.
He’s a cat person – and I think they’re skeezy diseased little creatures.
He enjoys skit comedy shows – I occasionally deign to be in the same room.
He likes crazy arse sprinkles – I can’t understand his sprinkles for the life of me.
I like opera – he’d rather stick himself in the eye with a fork.
I enjoy guacamole – if I offer it to him one more he might just throw it in my face.
I love reading classic literature – he hasn’t an appetite for it at all.
I want to do work on the weekends – he’d rather a coffee and a newspaper.
I like hotted up cars – he wouldn’t know (or care) how to do an oil change.
I love foreign films – he dislikes having to read subtitles.

And yet for all those differences I feel truly fortunate to have met you Mr K… fortunate that you didn’t fight me when I hunted you down, fortunate that you wanted to make a life with me and very fortuante that you have held in there for the long haul no matter how painful, draining or unorthodox that long haul has turned out to be.  I know I am truly lucky that you accept me as I am – warts and all… and I know I’ve got some pretty hard to deal with warts.  I’m demanding, challenging, single-minded, confrontational, argumentative, burdensome, pained and sometimes downright useless.

But my love for you is built on a deep and abiding respect for you as a person, as a husband and as a father and nothing could ever alter that…
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Tea… Tee… Ti… “T”

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Given my somewhat dubious mental state of late it’s no wonder I’m finding it ever more difficult to think of positive things to write about.  I had abandoned my alphabet a while back but decided forcing myself to try and keep thinking of nice things was a good idea.  So here I’m trying hard to come up with some things I like that start with “T” and very creatively the first thing that comes to mind is “Tea”.  Yeah… I’m really on top of my game here…

List of 10 Things I Like That Start With “T”….
1.   Tea – there’s something wonderfully civilized about a nice cup of tea
2.   True Love – the ‘I love you, dirty secrets, warts and all’ honest sort of love
3.   Train travel – the motion of a swaying train is so sensual
4.   Tattoos – well executed custom designed personal tattoos… not flash
5.   Typing – the most truly useful thing I learned in high school.
6.   Tudors, The – fantastic show… I’m absolutely loving it
7.   Thesaurus – I like not using the same words over and over
8.   Teachers – they’ve got a hard job and they should be treasured
9.   Terriers – Caesar our Aussie Terrier is a wonderful little guy
10. Thunderstorms – Big, fat cold raindrops falling on your face after a sweltering summers day and the energy of the lightning and the sound of the distant thunder can be exhilarating.  Going out in a storm and getting soaked to the bone then coming in to get all warmed up… you can’t buy that feeling.

Toilet doll crocheted

I mean … honestly!

List of 10 Things I Hate or Dislike That Start With “T”

1.   Trifle – cake and jelly and cus-tard oh my.  Bleurk
2.   Trespassers – personal property or personal space – am often territorial
3.   Tea cosies – little woollen tea cosies? oh dear – grandma alert
4.   Trinket boxes – you’d be hard pressed to find anything more useless
5.   Toilet paper dolls – crocheted Barbies for the loo… i don’t get it
6.   TV theme songs – don’t change them half way through, it pisses us off
7.   Thimbles – hate using thimbles they seem to make me all thumbs
8.   Therapists –  mainly the psycho-babble ones… grrrr
9.   Two Faced – represent yourself honestly & expect the same courtesy
10. Toilet humour – I’ve never quite seen the appeal of poo and fart jokes.  That scene in Something About Mary where the guy gets his penis stuck in his zipper?  And then there was some other teen movie where the toilets exploded and some chick had shit raining down all over her?  I can’t stand that sort of humour and actually find it insulting to my intelligence.  It’s not witty, clever or amusing – it’s purile, banal and utterly aimed to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
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I bet you’re itching by the time you finish reading this…

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Fucking nits… just the thought of them makes my scalp crawl.  I remember when I was a kid if anyone at school was itching the nuns would quite literally send them home.  We used to go camping a lot on Stradbroke Island when I was a kid and at least one of us (my sisters and I) used to get sent home after every camping trip  because we’d be itching our heads – from sand fly bites.  It used to annoy my Mum because we’d get sent home but there’d never be head lice, just sand fly bites.

If only the Small Child current itches were from sand fly bites! I REALLY hate nits even the slightest little bit of itching  and I’m checking for head lice.  I have just spent the last hour or so treating the Small Child for the fifth time this year.  I am getting so frustrated with this.  Each time I’ve seen him scratching his head and found lice or eggs in his hair I’ve had to fumigate the poor little bugger with disgusting anti-nit potions that stink to high heaven (God help you if you get it on your hands it makes them stink for the next four days!).  Then I check his hair every day for the next week before the second treatment goes on – and I’m not just going over him with a fine tooth comb… no I’m making the poor little fella sit still in bright light while I go over his entire scalp with tweezers and a jeweller’s loupe!

We’ve done this twice already this year.  He’s been scratching and I found lice and they got treated properly and we’ve totally gotten rid of them twice.  I’ve bought him new a school hat and lectured him about letting other people put his hat on or playing with other people’s hats.  I’ve told him not to lay down beside the other kids at school or put his head too close to anyone else’s head… and yet here we starting all over again with bloody round three!   They just keep coming back!!!   There must be at least one kid in his class whose parents just don’t give a shit.  We didn’t have a single incident with head lice last year but this year it seems never ending. 

I hate nits and I’m so absolutely paranoid about head lice it makes me twitch…. mostly because if I end up with them I’m in BIG trouble.  Trying to get rid of nits is tedious enough but when you’re hair is over 3 foot long… that is so not something I want to have to deal with!!