Life: November 2007 Archives

Overloaded. Time to take out all these thoughts. - Cassette, AI.

So it's that time of the year. Except this year I want to beat the shit out of the Christmas cake. Yes, really. It's a tradition that doesn't fit with me anymore, and yet I feel compelled. Compelled! Freaking compelled to make a Christmas cake.

As I write the fruit mixture is boiling, the oven is ready for the three hour bake-a-thon, the ingredients are gathered. The search for bicarbonate of soda took me half an hour only to find the package staring me in the face.

Fruitcake for Christmas is a redundant tradition, having been overtaken by the Kerststol and it's cousins the Paasstol, the anytime-I-feel-like-it-stol and other assorted continental treats.

Why am I baking this cake? Can anyone tell me? Do I sound angry? I'm not really angry at the cake you understand.

I'm angry at the tradition that keeps me making something that no-one really wants while I try to hold onto a little bit of the past. The same tradition that kept my mom making Christmas cake and mince pies in the scorching heat of an African summer, while we melted on the verandah.

The same compulsion to hold a little bit of my past intact pushes me, forces me, into the kitchen. My memory serves up heady reminders of the past. The taste of brandy, fruit and nuts, gathered all year from wherever, usually South Africa, in times when it was sometimes impossible to find a fresh fruit, let alone dried ones.

I try to recapture that, try to force the memory, but reality, in it's bleak dust-coated pyjamas, pushes my recollections further away from me.

After all that,you still want the recipe? I have to admit it's an excellent one. 

Christmas Fruitcake Recipe

450g mixed raisins and sultanas
50g finely chopped candied peel
100g dried cranberries
200g coarsely chopped Medjool dates
100 ml cognac
100 ml freshly squeezed orange juice
15 ml bicarbonate of soda
5 ml mixed spice
200g unsalted butter
150g roasted almonds
200g dark brown sugar
4 medium eggs
100g plain flour

1. Soak the fruit overnight or for a couple of days in the fridge with the cognac and orange juice.
2. Preheat the oven to 150C. Grease a 20cm (8 inch round tin and line the bottom and sides with oiled baking paper. Note: if your tin is bigger than 20 cm your cooking time will be shortened!
   
3. Make a collar of brown paper for the outside of the pan using a double layer of brown paper and tie it in place with string.
4. Tip the soaked fruit into a heavy based saucepan, add the butter, half a tablespoon of the bicarbonate of soda and the mixed spice to the mixture and simmer for about 20 minutes stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Allow to cool.
5. Beat the eggs until frothy in a large mixing bowl.
6. Using the food processor process the almonds until coarsely chopped, tip out half and continue to process the remainder into ground almonds.
7. Sift the flour and remaining bicarbonate of soda together in a large bowl and add the almonds to the mixture.
8. Add the cooled fruit and the beaten eggs to the flour and nut mixture and mix evenly.
9. Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface.
10. Bake for 3 and a half hours or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
11. Leave the cake to cool in the tin and then remove it from the tin.
12. Using a skewer lightly poke the surface and sprinkle the cake with brandy.
13. Wrap firmly in greaseproof paper and then wrap in foil and keep in a cool dark place until ready to decorate.
14. You can feed the cake every week with a few drops of brandy or sherry.

 'How long before you screw it up? How many times do I have to tell you to hurry up? With everything I do for you, the least you can do is keep quiet. Be a good girl, you gotta try a little harder. That simply wasn't good enough to make us proud.' - Alanis Morrisette, Perfect.

Yes, I promised I wouldn't whine. I wouldn't whine. I wouldn't whine.

Three posts in and, uh, I'm whining.

Sorry. Suck it up. Or stop reading. You have a choice. Me, I have to live it and I have to write it.

No-one told me it would be this hard.
Wake up at sixthirty, dress the kids, leave at seventhirty, drop the kids in the pre-school care, rush to work, get there at eight.
Work all morning, with half an hour for lunch, at my desk, for reasons unknown.
Work all afternoon. Have a two o'clock dip that lasts til four.
Leave at four. Drive impulsively fast to fetch the kids from wherever they are (two different possibilities), go crazy fast to the gym, work out like a maniac in the hour I have.
Rush home.
Cook dinner, clean up.
Watch tv, write, be online. Do the PTA, plan the food.
Try and fit my life into the four hours before I go to bed at ten, if I make it there by then.

Now this is where that little voice tells me:

'Suck it up. Or stop working. You have a choice.'

And the other little voice says

'Wait, you don't.'

Hah.

I would like you on a long black leash. You can bring me all the things I need. - Soft Cell, Sex Dwarf

When I was a girl I wore high heels.

Stilettos.

I had a boyfriend who loved me to wear heels, stockings and suspenders.

In bed.

There was a mirror...

OK, OK, enough.

Back to the heels.

Add 3 inches to 5 ft 11 and you get a whopping 6 ft 2. How many men do you know who are 6 ft 2 and up?

So I toned it down, and I stopped wearing heels.

I wore sensible shoes. I had my winter boots. Charmingly flat.

I had my summer shoes, sandals, very mommy. Ballerinas. Crocs. I even wore shoes from fucking Ecco. You know the ones? Flat, granny, cream coloured, lace-ups. Granted they were necessary because of the achilles tendonitis I had (and still have).

But, they jump-started me into a shoe revolution.

I talked to my physio and we agreed that I will never wear ugly shoes again. Never ever ever. Shake your head with me. Never never.

So the shoe shopping started. First I bought some boots from Duo. They're knee high but they're flat.

I thought, 'Oh, I won't manage heels every day so I'll just have them flat.' Oh woe. They're flat!

I started gently. I bought some of the new boot pumps. They have a sedate 2 inch heel. I bought some ankle boots. With a princess heel I think it's called. Still not really a heel - 2.5 inches. They were practice shoes.

I call them the 'Can I still walk in these after 15 years and kids?' shoes.  The 'oh my god, I'm not going to fall am I?' shoes.

My practice shoes are well-behaved.  They request tights, but the tights they ask for are black wool, brown wool, warm, comfortable, bound to sag in the crotch at the first wash.

Not sexy. Far from attractive. Practical. The kind of tights that say 'you'll wash me by hand on Wednesdays'.

I want sheer black, 10 denier holdups. The kind that tear if you roll them on wrong. I want purple with white polka dots, I want purple and black stripes, black fishnet, diamonds, patterns.

Tights that say, 'Rip me off, throw me away. There are no consequences.'  Tights that beg, ' Where are my 5 inch heels? Where are the mirrored heels, my naughty boots?'

The practice heels are retired. They've graduated me from their class. I'm ready for 5 inch spike heels.

These shoes are in the driver's seat. The rest of me is just along for the ride.