Kitten-mother guilt and the perils of packing

Packing for a short holiday is difficult at the best of times. There is so much to manage and one rather small space/weight allowance to manage it in. You want to take enough in order to have choice and to avoid washing, but not so much that the suitcase busts open when you lug it off the airport conveyor belt at 3am. There are a variety of occasions to factor in - you want to be outfitted for everything from dinner with the grandparents to dancing and drinking though til 3am in an underground club. This is before weather considerations too. Try packing for New Zealand when the weather forecast advises everything bar snow.

Now add a mildly clingy not quite kitten (catten?) into the mix. Pulling down the suitcase from the top of the wardrobe yields a little skittishness. Opening the draws and removing items in bulk is met with more resistance.

Fairly sure that the logic here was 'if I get into the draw, then nothing can come out of the draw'. And what kind of callous person wants to disturb a sleepy feline? This kind - the kind that is due to make a flight in a limited number of hours.

Out of the drawer, my furry one.

Next tactic was for catten to get into the suitcase. Each item I packed was dragged out by her Royal Furriness, by the teeth, and taken under the bed to be clawed. Cue guilt. Obviously, being larger, I won the game in the end, but not before catten had clearly signalled that she knew that I was abandoning her for a week and thoroughly disapproved, and henceforth was withdrawing all affection.


Suggestions for packing include...

Try to remove pets before packing, otherwise you find yourself reminded of them all holiday (specifically - every morning, when you endeavour to find an article of clothing that isn't furry). Leaving your pet with clucky in-law types should be a satisfactory outcome for all parties///Don't listen to your partner when they suggest that you share a suitcase - they will only fill it with dirty laundry. Literally. It is my sad duty to confirm that, yes, all the pretty things that you packed will smell like feet///Roll things instead of folding them, you'll fit more in///If in doubt, pack it. You might not wear it, but you won't spend all holiday thinking 'if only I had brought (insert item here)'///Leave space for bringing home the lovely new acquisitions.

Imagine that - and if you can, take a holiday

You know that you need to take your annual leave (or maybe sick leave...?) when you start seeing Mighty Boosh characters in the discarded packaging on the floor of your office.

So the Polaroid-developing kinda kills the clarity and vivid colour of the plastic, but I swear to you that from my desk, it looked like Vince Noir's freakish creation, Charlie Bubblegum.

From this angle, you can even make out a vague head, with eyes and a beaky dried out bubblegum mouth, atop the mountainous slug-like body.

"Charlie is genius, right, he's made from a million old pieces of bubble gum. Imagine that."

Coffee: a love story

My love affair with coffee went suddenly cold today.

We have withstood many trials, coffee and I. Lectures from the moralising and recently decaffeinated, iron deficiencies, the realisation that at $4 each day for a year I was $1460 further away from my next escape. Upset stomachs and sleepless nights couldn't separate us. Wikipedia's entry on coffee that noted the discovery of rodent carcinogens in roasted coffee didn't put me off for more than a few hours. I always went back.

In the end, it was the barista that killed my buzz. After I had shared a happy moment with a latte today, I got up to leave the caffeine den. I paid at the counter, said thank you and good bye and the brooding barista turned around and mouthed across the machine, 'I love you'. Usually sarcastic, he seemed devastatingly sincere.

I love(d) coffee. He makes great coffee. (Apparently) he loves me. But, this inner-city girl doesn't worship at the temple of the barista. I'm in it for the caffeine.

T2, here I come.

A feat of daiquiri proportions

It's wonderous what a group of over-confident drunks can achieve.

Look Mum, no hands!

You too can achieve this kind of science with the right amount of daiquiris. This recipe is a mish-mash of suggestions from a range of cocktail lovers and what was available in the cupboard.

You will need...

Fruit of your choice (mangoes or strawberries are the classics)
Lemon or lime
White rum (Bacardi or similar)
Dark rum (Bundaberg or similar) and/or Cointreau
Ice, and heaps of it
Sugar syrup* (or, a cube or two of palm sugar dropped into the blender each round works nicely)
Bitters
A sturdy blender

*250g of sugar into 500ml of water, stir over heat until dissolved, let it cool.

The how to...

Wash and chop the tops off the strawberries. Best to do this all in one go at the beginning, particularly if the bartender plans to join in the drinking.

Half fill the blender with ice. Add two cups of fruit, the juice of half a lemon or lime and palm sugar or a splash of sugar syrup. For the alcohol, it should be one part dark rum or cointreau to two parts white rum. It's really up to you how strong you want it, as a guide, we used six to eight shots of alcohol per blenderful. Dash in some bitters and blend.

Serve and repeat. You'll know you've had enough when there is a visible sediment-like build up of strawberry seeds at the bottom of the glass. Or when you start tunelessly belting out Beatles songs, adjusting the lyrics where you see fit.

P.S. A couple of weeks ago, I put up a post about hangovers and suggested cures. Having now truly experienced this agony, identifiable by intermittent groans interspersed with 'I will never drink again - Ever', and listening to my flatmate reverse-daiquiri in the backyard for two hours, I can now personally vouch for the soft drink method. I'm not a soft drink person, but I highly recommend the lovely organic NZ brand, Phoenix. They make caffeine-free cola and a really delightful ginger beer.

P.P.S. Mutant strawberry.

On wire

Last weekend, when taking a wander around my neighbourhood, I came across a new take on the 'shoes on wire' phenomenon. Fruit and vegies. Strung up and slung over the wires.

First, a little apology for the poor quality of these images and the rambling tangent driven blog that follows (I'm a little distracted by the promise of daiquiris). The zoom on my camera wasn't really up to the task and I couldn't get very close to the wires. These grapes look almost furry at this level of zoom. Also a little sexual, in a mutant kind of way, although I don't think that has a whole lot to do with the zoom function.


That said, it seems very close is not such a good option. This bat - let's call him Adam - seems to have been lured in by the apple and made the rather unfortunate choice to spread himself out over two wires. He has been hanging upside down for over a week now and I am fairly sure it is safe to pronounce Adam an ex-bat.


I haven't quite come to grips with why people throw shoes over wires, let along fruit and vegies. Urban Dictionary and Urban Semiotic both suggest that it is an American street code for 'drugs available nearby' - this being why sometimes old sneakers strung up by their shoelaces get called 'crack tennies'. This vaguely gritty explanation seems to have gained traction of late as we're all turning wigger, getting our Baltimore on with HBO's latest offering, The Wire. Surely there's a Stuff White People Like blog coming on that?


Continuing in the urban vein, 'shoefiti' is said to mark gang turf or to commemorate the death of a gang member. The Harris Farm-like quantity and variety of fruit and vegies on offer on this street would amount to a massacre. It is also apparently a superstitious thing; hanging the shoes of a dead person should enable their spirits to walk higher and/or protect their previous dwelling from haunting. This seems to have some resonance in film - remember that scene in Tim Burton's Big Fish, when Ewan McGregor's character Edward Bloom visits the aptly-named town of Spectre, where everyone's shoes hang across the power line and they all dance around, distinctly barefoot and dead?


Wikipedia offers a range of less ominious/exciting theories around the why of shoe tossing include silly drunkards, mean school kids, a celebration of almost any rite of passage, military personnel marking the end of training or service and disposing of unwanted shoes. The internet was less helpful with theories for fruit and vegies on wires, although I suspect that one of the guys who works at the local cafe has it right - 'the Nike habit has become too expensive'. Or perhaps we can blame freegans gone rogue, coming up with such an oversupply of food from dumpster diving that they are now decorating our streets.

Last word about all things 'on wire'. If you've not seen the documentary about the thrilling and illegal tightrope walking adventures of Frenchman Phillipe Petit, Man on Wire yet, now is the time. At least, now is a good a time as any.

The 'Magic Garden' killer

Over the weekend, another potted herb plant passed away under my (apparently negligent) care.

My green thumb only seems to operate sporadically, at best. By seem freak of chance the mint is plentiful and the rosemary is thriving, the chives continue to shoot skyward and the cat grass is well attended by the kitten (what other marker of success could there be for cat grass?). Yet the basil (who up until death received as much attention as all the other plants, I'll have you know I spread my negligence equally) rather suddenly shrivelled up and died.

I'm yet to try to grow flowers, unless you count a brief love affair with the science experiment-cum-educational toy, 'Magic Garden,' as a child [For all of you who just squealed/wet yourselves with nostalgic delight, you can relive the cherry blossom glory. Magic Garden is still around! You can buy it on the internet, here, and I'm guessing also at any kid-oriented science store].

Magic Garden was the ultimate in kitsch for the nineties child . You mixed water with crystals and poured the liquid over a cardboard tree, and a couple of hours later the cardboard branches would 'flower' (some brightly coloured powdery substance that clung to the branches, apparently non-toxic) and you would have a miniature cherry tree. All together kids, in hushed and reverent tones: 'Science'. Simple, you would think. Not for this Godzilla. I went storming in with my fat kiddy fingers and prodded the thing, and all the flowers fell off and disintegrated.

But I digress. This latest lamentable loss - what will lasagna or homemade pesto be without basil! - makes me think that now is not the time to upgrade to flower growing. I'm not sure where this potted philosophy stems from, but I've always thought that responsibility is best taken on in stages. The logic goes something like this...if I can keep pot plants alive, then I can have a pet. If I haven't killed the kitten in the next decade, then I might be an okay human-mother too. Flowering plants seem the next step up from pot plants. Unfortunately I seem to have gotten a little ahead of myself, having adopted a kitten when I am still not sure how it is that I am doing in the herbs. Watch out, pussycat.

Fortunately, my neighbours seem rather more adept at the whole gardening bit so you and I can get our flower fix this Spring by taking a peek at other people's blooming success (with not a trace of bitterness or garden envy)...

An entire wall of orange flowers. Rather greedy really. They've probably taken up the entire allowance of flowers per postcode. Clearly the reason that my plants are dying.

A bit flirty really, a splash of colour peeking over the fence. I bet they are hiding all of their best blooms on the inside.

One in three.

Resolving the banana issue

As a small person, aged about 5 or so, I had a playground accident that left me with a serious aversion to eating bananas the normal way.

We had one of those play frames that had a slide, a swing and some other bits and pieces contained in it. I quite liked sitting backwards at the top of the slide, with my legs resting on the rungs of the ladder, gazing at the tall sky-scraping poplar trees that lined our back fence and contemplating the kind of things that five year olds do; were there enough spangles on my dance concert tutu? How did my Barbie dolls feel when I had finished playing with them and stuck them in a dark, airtight container? Did my neighbour notice that I wasn't actually listening to his battle strategies, but leafing discreetly through a nice Disney princess story instead? It was a nice place to chill.

One life-changing day, I sat in this happy place eating a banana and swinging my legs. The heels of my shoes were bouncing off the rungs. Swing-bounce, swing-bounce, swing-crash. My feet tangled in the rungs, and my body tipped forward until my forehead rather painfully connected with the bottom rung. Since then, bananas eaten the regular way bring back a disconcerting sense of concussion. I can eat them sliced on my breakfast, blended in a smoothie, mashed into baked goods, but just not whole.

A little embarrassed by not having grown out of this odd borderline phobia almost twenty years on, I hadn't shared this anecdote with my boyfriend, who buys a bunch of bananas every week. They start their life in our fruit bowl with a lovely waxy yellow skin. A couple of days later they are streaked brown and black. A few days on again, and the kitchen smells entirely of banana. Any longer and fruit flies start to swarm. This has been going on for a number of years now, we are in a constant state of banana oversupply. I usually catch them at the overripe stage and turn them into banana cake/bread/muffins, or freeze them for baking later.

This recipe for banana and walnut muffins started as Tess Kiros' recipe for banana bread; I have altered it to suit me.

You will need...

3 large bananas, mashed
2 eggs, beaten
100g butter
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup plain flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 warm milk (soy or rice milk work quite nicely)
1/2 cup walnuts (you can use any nut you like, or chocolate if you prefer)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon maple syrup (optional)


The how-to...

1. If you keep eggs in the fridge, take them out - when baking it is best to use eggs at room temperature. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Grab a magazine and a lemon Calippo, put on a hat and go bask in the sun for a half hour.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together using an electric beater. Whilst still beating, slowly pour in the oil.
3. Add the mashed bananas, beaten eggs, vanilla extract and/or maple syrup to the butter mixture, and whisk.
4. Sift in the flour with the baking powder and a pinch of salt.
5. Warm the milk and stir into it the baking soda. Once combined, tip this into the main mixture. Add the walnuts and stir the mixture until just combined.
6. Spoon into muffin/friand tin and cook for about 12-15 minutes (if you are making large muffins you will need longer, probably 20-25 minutes). They should be crisp and golden brown on top, and a clean knife/skewer pushed into the centre of the muffins should come out clean.

Enjoy - they are particularly good with butter when they have just come out of the oven.

Banana crisis averted.

Hello, Spring!

Nothing says September 1 like the first blooms unfurling on stark branches in front of a clear blue sky.