March 2008 Archives

'The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago.' - REM, Nightswimming

This month's Daring Baker challenge was hosted by Morven in New Zealand and she chose Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake. Dorie Greenspan's recipes popped up all over the internet last year when this book was first published and it's been on my cook book wishlist ever since. So I was pretty happy to get a chance to make one of her recipes as part of something where I absolutely had to get in the kitchen and do something.

It's funny actually, thinking about life in retrospect, I always associate it with food. Growing up we had a cook at home who did all the 'boring' cooking, so anything my mom or I made was more complicated or a dessert or a cake. I got to mess about in the kitchen and someone else got to clean up. Perfect huh?

When I started dating Nick, my first love, I was a little less than enthusiastic about him. He wasn't my type. I thought he was all wrong for me and that he would break my heart (which he did). He was rather persistent about getting me to go on a date with him though. He called me one evening while I was baking a cake, which needed taking out of the oven. After a few minutes talking, I said 'I'm sorry, I really need to go now, I'm baking a cake', to which he replied 'and I'm flossing the cat' and hung up! I don't know if that was the moment that I stopped being resistant to being pursued but it was pretty funny. He never believed that I was really baking a cake, even after we'd been together a while. Obviously I have no doubt at all that he really was flossing the cat.

Back to Dorie's cake. I enjoyed making this recipe, but I think the differences in ingredients here in Europe vs. the USA really came to the fore in this recipe. First off, I used English baking powder and the cake barely rose, which is why it's two layers instead of four.  The flour was also a problem I think. Even though I used patisserie flour the texture was somewhat grainy instead of the superlight texture the cake should have had.

The buttercream split when I was beating it, and it separated a little on standing, but I think that was because I didn't cook the egg white/sugar mixture long enough over the double boiler. I've made swiss meringue based icing before, but this one was a little more difficult to achieve a very smooth result with. I'll be trying it again though to see if I can improve on it.

Those things aside, this cake actually improved with standing. The buttercream was much lighter than I expected it to be and the texture of the cake was no different on the Friday after baking than on the Monday when it came out of the oven. I especially appreciated the opportunity to use up half a jar of raspberry jam that had been standing in the fridge for ages.

My only complaint is that I ate almost the entire cake on my own! Definitely a thing to make for a group of people or to take to work. I just don't want my colleagues to get too spoiled, especially after the hot cross buns of the week before. And let's be honest, I liked eating the majority of the cake on my own. Not sure about my hips and thighs though ...

You can read other daring bakers' adventures in cake baking over here. See my last challenge here. You can find the recipe here.

'Larger than lifesize we become, great in the eyes of someone.' - A Fine Frenzy, Lifesize

That's a photo of S. looking at the snowball he's making. How happy is he? It was sunny this morning and it's been snowing on and off all day with the sun shining through in between. This morning the kids played and made a snowman while I watched them for a while. Later I talked to my neighbour on the balcony in the sunlight and their dad went to play with them downstairs.

March is an odd month. It's a month that doesn't really know what to do with itself. Neither here nor there. A bit adolescent I suppose. I heard someone say once that in Holland from the spring onwards it's all a buildup to Queen's Day and then just a disappointment. I disagree.

My favourite month is September, when the days have started to draw in a little and the light is golden and faded. In September I feel like every sunny day is a splendidly unexpected gift, but between March and August I'm full of expectations and I don't enjoy them as much as I should. Less expectation, more enjoyment, maybe?

The poetry of Colin Morton sneaked up on me on a snowy afternoon. After I read the first poem, I breathed a sigh and settled in to read the rest.

My favourite because of the way it made me feel is forty-five years from now. I also liked today we both phoned in sick. Isn't that the most romantic thing you ever read?

This one made me sad.

Over Coffee

You say another year of marriage is
another cup of coffee in the morning
~ some kind of addiction
safer to continue than to quit.
Each one requiring a little more
sugar, stops the pain
in the head anyway.

Your bitter smile through steam
is the grimace of boredom
on the fourteenth floor ~ really
the thirteenth ~ boredom
the safest expression you know, each day
a strategy of postponement.

Rising and descending in the elevator

eyes forward clouded with sleeplessness,
you keep escaping your dreams
and finding them in wait around corners.
You could just turn your back, you say,
walk out on the badly played scene,
but life is no technicolor movie
with credits and no debits at the end.

Evenings at home are only more memos
you say, in a language of indirection
you are afraid
you have come to understand, and speak,
swallowing your words with that dull
insensitive frown you make
with each gulp of sweetened coffee.

--------- Colin Morton

Read more about Colin Morton here, and buy his books online from Abebooks.

'Cinderella’s on her bedroom floor she’s got a crush on the guy at the liquor store 'cause Mr. Charming don’t come home anymore and she forgets why she came here.' - Sara Bareilles, Fairytale

I heard Sara Bareilles on the radio singing Love Song.

Then I heard Fairytale and I was head over heels.

Go listen.

Now I won't settle for less - Muse, Bliss.

Oh, if I had money, the books I would buy.

I just rediscovered the poetry of Mark Strand. I'm sharing a poem with you here that already appears elsewhere. Go read The Story of Our Lives. Are you reading the book of your life?
The New York Times reviews David Lehman's Best American Erotic Poetry.

 

'I knew I had my mind made up from the very beginning.' - Sugarbabes, Push the button

This song came on the radio today and I was all 'way-hey, I didn't hear this for ages!'

It was charting when I first started at the gym.

Being able to walk on the treadmill at an incredibly slow 5 km/h (all I could do with my level of fitness then) and listen to pop music and watch TMF was a revelation to me. I'd spent so much time being ever so grown up that taking time out to watch music videos under the guise of getting fit was manna. Really.

Speaking of which. I deadlifted 63.5 kilos on Tuesday morning before work. Which, coupled with an incredible amount of upper body weights resulted in me not being able to lift my phone today, let alone push anyone's (or my own) buttons. 

'This little universe between our backs is so beautiful, and colorful, I lean on that.' - KT Tunstall, Little Favours

So last year I made some hot cross buns.  As buns go, they were perfect.

This year I'm making them again. I'll be tripling the recipe to make as many buns as I possibly can.

Some will go with me to work, some will stay home for the kids and some will come with me for the weekend.

Want one?

'I touch the place where I'd find your face' - Snow Patrol, Set Fire to the Third Bar

It's spring outdoors. The trees are that peculiar pinky green they go just before they burst into brash lime green. Such a contrast to the late summer deep thirsty green that looks like it needs a drink, a double, straight up.

I observed these things while standing outside the acupuncturist's office at 7 am. I also observed that it was light and that it would be light when I came home. Then I thought about Robert Frost and how his poems capture nature which reminded me of this poem.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
 
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-------Robert Frost

'When I turn my feelings on, I turn my feelings on inside.' - Spoon, I turn my camera on

1 x trip to the UK = 1 visa required. Multiple entry. Zimbabwean national. 286 euros.
1 x trip to the US = 1 visa required. Single entry. South African national. 95 euros.

2 x days off work to run around to get visas. Annoying, time-consuming, irritating.

Just slightly annoyed with my nationality today.

'I'd like to meet a human who makes it all seem clear.' - Morcheeba, Over and Over

Divorce is never an easy subject. Everyone is invested emotionally around the idea, whether they want to be or not. There are two camps in the divorce argument, the 'you should not ever at any cost' and the 'choose for your own happiness'.

My own parents are divorced, after 25 years together. All I could think when I was growing up was 'Why are you two still even trying?' 12 years on, they spend Christmases together. They are considerably better apart than they were together. Neither has a current relationship.

So which divorce camp am I in? Mostly #2 I guess though I spent a good long period in #1. I think when you've been married once before you tend to want to see if you can make it work the second time at all costs, especially costs to yourself.

I'm getting divorced, because I've decided that some paths are better walked separately, perhaps in parallel because of the kids, but nonetheless separately.

It's been a long time coming. Fear kept me paralysed. I wasn't able to make choices because I feared that I might make the wrong one. I've realised since that any choice is better than no choice at all. I'm the author of my own story and if I want to change the script I can. Anytime I like. If I mess it up, I can change the direction of the next chapter and start again.

It's going to be interesting. No-one thinks they move to another country to get divorced. Now I'm trying to navigate a divorce in a foreign country, where both partners hold different nationalities, as do both children, and where the marriage took place somewhere other than the Netherlands.

'Don't you worry, this will all make sense tomorrow.' - Alison Moyet, Ordinary Girl

Yesterday I watched a woman in a headscarf and a jilbab kiss her man late in the afternoon on the 300 bus.

She held his hand; otherwise they didn't touch, except for the lips and the clasped fingers, clenched tightly.After the kiss, they leaned back and gazed into each other's eyes. A gaze so powerful I could feel it from my side of the bus. At the stop before mine they stepped off the bus at my stop and walked into the distance, not touching. She demure, him aloof.

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I drove, half-asleep today at midday, from where I was to where I am. The sun shone for a while. I listened to the radio, but I couldn't tell you what was playing because I didn't really hear it.

Later, I visited the apartment I'm going to move into in August. The owner, who is Portuguese, made me instant coffee with milk powder and heaps of sugar to drink while we viewed the flat.  I was transported immediately to my boarding school where we premixed instant coffee, milk powder and sugar and then ate it out the jar instead of making coffee with it.

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I visited the flower shop where I used to work to talk to my ex-boss, and, coincidentally (there are no coincidences) my other ex-boss and her husband came in to discuss the flowers they are ordering for the re-dedication of their wedding vows. Surrounded by the scent of paper whites we discussed divorce, while they pored over books of wedding flowers.

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I lay in my bed with Seb and read some of The Dark is Rising after he finished watching the rugby. I talked on the phone and heard things I wanted to hear. I ate strawberries with yoghurt. I have The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle next to my bed to read in a minute, but I really want to be reading We Need to Talk about Kevin. I might read nothing at all. When faced with what I must do and what I want to do I rarely choose either option, preferring to flee.

-------------------

I'm giving it 100%. Because anything that's worth doing is worth doing well. Right?

'Blow out that cherry bomb, for me.'- Spoon

Take a look for yourself.

Listen to You got yr. cherry bomb. Watch this.

Told you I was abbreviated. Back tomorrow. Be good.

My week has been one of run around, work, go to meetings, have sick kids, try to train at the gym, and fail badly to get enough sleep. With one exception - one night out to do something fun.

I went to dinner with a friend at Praq in Ouderkerk a/d Amstel last night. I love Praq. We both had the lamb knuckle with cassoulet, and bread and butter pudding and appelbol with cinnamon icecream for dessert (and shared, just a bit). It was fun, a corner seat to watch people and giggle (a lot), and then the walk into the cold night air later on.

Work is great. Lovely colleagues, and it's fun. Still, I'm looking forward to the weekend. An awful lot.

'Girl, aint no kindness in the face of strangers' - Bruce Springsteen, Human Touch

Charlotte did this a while ago and I was thinking that I have a lot of things left unsaid. Classic passive aggressive with assorted neuroses over here. Anyone notice?

So now I'm saying them:

1. I wish you wouldn't be so very hard on your kids. They're beautiful children and they do their best and they love you. It breaks my heart.
   
   
2. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me to pick up your boy from school that day. I regret that our friendship ended over something so stupid, especially when both of us needed (and still need) a best friend so badly.
   
   
3. I really do appreciate everything you do for me. I'm just not very good at showing it.
   
   
4. It's just all terribly sad. I feel so stilted and I have nothing to say, but I am sad too.
   
   
5. Being a big girl is difficult. I understand how alone you feel, but if no-one had ever told me how to get my head around it I would still be a big girl too. My acupuncturist is Gerrit Bijlsma. His phone number is 020-6438686. Please phone him and tell him Ash sent you. He will make space for you.
   
   
6. Even if we both just walk along the same path for a little while, it's still a good experience right? I'm starting to understand the value of not mapping out one's future in advance.
   
   
7. Yes, I speak Dutch better than you speak English.
   
   
8. Thank you for telling me not to be insecure, but really, it's not something I can change overnight. If I could don't you think I might have done it already?
   
   
9. I value your opinion but I'd prefer you to keep it to yourself. It is your opinion after all.
   
   
10. No, I don't want to come to church with you and I certainly don't wish to be born-again. I'm quite happy with the once, thank you.
    
    
11. Darlings, I feel like I'm failing you every day. I wish I could be perfect, for you. More how I think you would want me to be and less how I am.
    
    
12. Don't fucking tell me how I should feel! You have no idea.
    
    
13. I really didn't mean for your hamster to die in my desk back in 3rd grade. I've felt eternally guilty around small furry animals ever since.
    
    
14. When I pushed you away it didn't mean I didn't care. It's just a reflex I have.
    
    
15. I love you. Really. I do.
    

'Wise men say only fools rush in.' - UB40, Can't Help Falling in Love with You

Time Out's guide to London's most erotic writers is interesting.

Anyone else have metafilter in their feed reader?

It's fun to browse, and full of obscure yet riveting topics. Just look in March 10. Corsets and an etch-a-sketch clock! What's not to like?

'But to you, I give my affection, right from the start.' -  Joan Armatrading, The Weakness in Me

The other day, when I was looking for Small World online, I found Underwater Amsterdam. Fab website, look at all these restaurants I can visit. Been to four on the list, de Bakkerswinkel, Bazar, 11 and of course Small World. Didn't like 11 at all! The food was overpriced and horrible. I was there for lunch when I went to the Andy Warhol exhibition and I wasn't impressed.

I liked Bazar, but I really need to go again to write a real review and of course, there are so many many others. Week before last I went to Vinomio. That was nice. An excuse to drink (and eat) because food goes with wine, or so they say. It's one of those 'be there to be seen' places, which kind of alarm me, and I didn't taste the food so I can't comment. Guess I might just have to go back and see if food really does go with wine. What do you think?

This weekend I went to Casa di David in Utrecht with a friend. Lovely lovely food, wonderful company. I had an amazing ravioli, can't remember what my friend had, but I know I wasn't sharing mine at all! It's in a beautiful location, just along the Oudegracht. To enter the restaurant you walk through thick velvet curtains which somehow makes you feel like you're entering some kind of medieval chamber. Very romantic. There's even a house cat who purred and wound herself around my legs when I went to the bathroom and then refused, haughtily, to come any closer to me after that.

I start work tomorrow. Expect abbreviation.

'cause it takes something more this time than sweet sweet lies' - David Gray, This Year's Love

About how it felt beneath my hands, its purple shape; oblong, oval, ovoid, aubergine.

All those descriptive aubergine words; they make you say 'oh'. And 'Oh'. And 'OH'.

This is not that poem.

'so let's get down and freaky baby' - Paulo Nutini, Loving You

Paulo Nutini will have to entertain you. I am doing that virtual break thing this weekend, combined with a weekend away. Went to see Sweeney Todd, being less of a delicate flower, slightly tipsy ...

Go listen to Paulo.

'But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads, they say I've changed, well something's lost, but something's gained in living every day' - Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now

I'm going to stay with someone this weekend and I was thinking today about what to take with me and all I could think of was food.

'Why don't I stop and get that fab strawberry cake from the bakery up the road' and then,

'Prosecco is wonderful, let me get a bottle' and it didn't stop there.

Soon I'd bought most of the inside of Parti. Then I started thinking of what I could make to take with me. Like I can actually plan to make food to take to someone else when I have a family to cook for as well and a new job starting on Tuesday? Hello?

What actually happened, subsequent to buying all the snack supplies in Amstelveen, was that I started to think about the way I perceive the relationship between food and affection and how inextricably intertwined they are for me.

I grew up with my grandmother for a lot of my childhood and she only ever expressed her affection via food. She baked, she cooked, she made you clear your plate to show that you loved her back. As a result I was a hefty kid.  It also made me into one of those very same sorts of people. A 'let's feed you to death and you'll know that I care' kind of person.

'Try this chocolate covered nougat.'

'Have some of this, it tastes fabulous.'

'Try this - you'll love it.'

And the disappointed look when the other person doesn't love the thing you love, and the way they backtrack when they see your crestfallen expression and they say 'well, it was nice really. I quite liked that. I promise.'  .

I cooked spaghetti and meatballs for dinner tonight after I haven't really been cooking for a long time. Well, I haven't been cooking as in haven't been cooking all of the really intricate stuff I used to make. It's not surprising that they're called 'labours of love'.

Tonight's meatballs were bought instead of laboriously home-made. The sauce was my own, tomatoes, red wine, basil etc. It wasn't complicated as food goes, but I'd taken my head out of my ass long enough to cook so I was pretty pleased with myself. Then we're at the table and one of the boys takes a bite of one of the meatballs and says 'well, I don't really like this that much but I'll eat it because it makes you happy, Mama.'

I had to contain my sudden knee-jerk horrified reaction. Horrified once because he said it wasn't nice and I made it, dammit! and horrified twice because he said he was going to eat it all because it would make me happy.

He was going to eat it anyway because it would make me happy!

How sad is that and what am I doing to my kids? Setting them up for a lifetime of food being the way to express their emotions? Isn't this how you get eating disorders? (That was a rhetorical question.)

So, just how did you enjoy that cupcake? Please, have another. No, I insist! What do you mean you don't want one? What do you mean you're full? Oh my god, you don't love me. I'll just curl up and die. Right NOW!

'There there baby, it's just text book stuff, it's in the ABC of growing up' - Imogen Heap, Speeding Cars

I'm so lucky. So so lucky.

• I start a new job on Tuesday with everything I wanted: a really nice boss, at Schiphol (12 mins on the bus), nice environment, a good salary, and there is Starbucks! Should have seen me gulp that mocha latte yesterday, drink three coffees in my interview and then shake for a few hours afterward.
  
  My attitude toward my career has changed. I'm ready to give it 100%, even if it means losing some of my other commitments.
  
  
• I have daycare four days a week! I called the daycare where the kids used to go in the mornings, and Peter, the owner said 'coincidentally, we have just had a cancellation for 3 children for Tuesday and Thursday'. I know who the three children are too - they're the ones we went to the beach with last week. Ingrid, the lovely lady at the other daycare gave me my Wednesday back too, so I only have Mondays where I need to rely on my network of friends.
  
  
• For every ending, there is a new beginning. Really. There is. You just have to believe in it. Read this.
  

'It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away' - U2, Beautiful Day

... no kids on the blog ... but isn't he beautiful?

We disco bowled (bowling to disco music with smoke machines and strobe lights and fear of epilepsy) today with five of his friends.

He's really 8 now. It's a big number isn' t it?

'I never realised, how badly I needed to be surprised.' -Sara Melson, Happy Endings

1. celebrate an 8 year olds birthday (done and almost done, just wait for the disco bowling)
2. have a virtual break (can I really do it?)
3. bake something (and try not to eat it all)
4. wake up somewhere else (a weekend away)
5. watch more easylaughs (because we all need to)
6. read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle (bookclub)
7. plan meals for a month (necessity for when I start work again)
   
8. have a mexican (just because)
9. watch a movie. this one. (take a deep breath)
10. be less of a delicate flower (because you know, sometimes being a delicate flower is well, boring)
    
11. eat more prickly pears (had some today, and I want to do it again, right now)
12. listen to more Sara Melson (because she's fab)

Nice list huh?

'you make me smile' - Colbie Caillat, Bubbly

Isn't this song sweet, and so happy? Overplayed of course, but nonetheless sweet.

I went for acupuncture yesterday and my acupuncturist did a whole lot of stuff that stimulates the limbic system and therefore the emotional centres of the brain.

Is that why I'm so hap-hap-happppppy?

Maybe.

 

'I hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain ...' - Sheryl Crow, Sweet Child o' Mine

Oh my baby boy, you are 8 today. I still think of the very first time we met, your hands clasped together, your blue blue eyes looking up at me, your tiny naked body slippery wet against my breasts.

Happy birthday my darling.

I love you.

'Then sometimes again it seems that all I have is worry, and then you're bound to see my other side' - Cyndi Lauper, Don't let me be misunderstood.

While I was in Amsterdam on Friday I walked the Negen Straatjes and found Nieuws.

I love kitsch and in this shop there is so much kitsch. Heaven, really!

I bought Son #1 a paper robot kit for his birthday (which is tomorrow) and was so tempted to buy huge quantities of other kitschy stuff.

Considered buying this bag. Wanted one of these too, aren't they cute?

**You can find Nieuws at Prinsengracht 297, 1016 GX, Amsterdam or look at their website.

'They call me the wild rose...' - Nick Cave & PJ Harvey, Where the Wild Roses Grow

Yesterday, before lunch I went to see Millais at the van Gogh museum.

The poetry trail was a stroke of genius! You can listen and watch on the website, or you can download to your ipod and walk around the museum and actually look at the paintings and listen. The John Donne poem, The Autumnal, combined with the painting it inspired, Lingering Autumn, all golden brushstrokes made me gasp. This excerpt from the poem is famous, but no less beautiful for it's fame:

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace

         As I have seen in one autumnal face.

Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape,

         This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape.

If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame;

         Affection here takes reverence's name.

As usual, I liked the pieces that are not the main focus of the exhibition, like the sketches, more. There is a whole section of the exhibition devoted to the sketches and commercial illustrations of Millais. Once the poetry trail was finished I listened to Leonard Cohen and the music blended seamlessly with the pictures. His Take This Longing and The Eve of St Agnes together. 'Oh take this longing from my tongue'.

A century apart and yet emotionally so close.