The Tribal Tomato

Weathering the storm

Dusting off Parlour Games for Modern Families

These are strange days with the global crisis around COVID-19 and I’ve been feeling compelled to write it out (as I ride it out).

This is what I’m worried about as we go into lockdown:

• The elderly and vulnerable in our midst getting sick and dying, the health care professionals getting burnt out and ill, and the health system totally collapsing.
• People having to shut down businesses, losing their livelihoods, and becoming vulnerable and destitute.
• People stripping the supermarket shelves and being arseholes to each other because of (an admittedly understandable) fear.
• Getting bored and grumpy and restless and anxious and slightly purposeless as the social isolation measures kick in. This is at least something I can control. Trying to look at the positives, set up rituals, and give myself a stern talking to when I catch myself spiralling down. About to dust of Parlour Games for Modern Families; planning to watch more cheesy movies with the fam that involve 70's music, daggy dancing and bad acting; hope to read lots of books; to keep writing that novel I’ve been talking about for a decade; cook lots of improvised meals from what I have to hand…oh, and keep working remotely and finding ways to be kind to my fellow human beings!

What I’m not worried about:

• Toilet paper – if all else fails, there are leaves, newspaper, soap and water and even rocks (yes, my dad said he used to wipe his bum with rocks out in the fields). I think we will manage if the soft stuff runs out. Amazing what we are choosing to focus on in times of uncertainty…
• Running out of food – been cooking a little extra, shopping a little extra and stocking up slowly and surely for a month or more now – felt a bit strange at first, but now feels like it was the right thing to do. Avoided the big supermarkets and shopped at the smaller providers. Bought staples like beans, canned tomatoes and some rice/pasta. Been cooking up all the odds and sods of vegetables into stocks. Lots of prepared beans in the freezer. Slow and steady.  Hope that by thinking laterally and improvising and sharing and maybe even bartering if all else fails we will be good. If my grandparents survived wars and a depression, surely we can survive a few months (fingers crossed) of adapting.
• Losing touch - phone and internet means we can still talk to the people we love - not the same, but hopefully it will do for the short term.
• Staying active – put the gym membership on hold and enjoying lots of brisk walks by myself and with various members of the family (with smiles and nods to people as we pass each other at a good distance on the street).  Sun and air and movement critical to a strong mind, body and spirit. This one's not negotiable in my book.
• Getting sick – don’t want to be flippant about this but feel strangely resigned that if this happens, my family and I will try and weather the storm. We are doing our best to avoid it, as well as do all the right and sensible things to stop spreading infection but if it happens, it happens...

As I write, I’m reminded of what 4^th Century philosopher Heraclitus wrote, “There is nothing permanent except change”.

And what my beautiful late friend Katerina used to say when she encountered difficulties – “This too shall pass”.

Sending best to all to find ways to weather the storm.

The primal belly

The last time I took belly dancing classes was in the back room of an inner-city pub more than twenty years ago. I remember rushing from work every Tuesday so as not to be late. Many times I would be peeved because the instructor would be very late; at other times she was a little stoned. But that didn’t matter when the music started. As she took us through the moves – diaphragm pops, full body undulations and shoulder shimmies – the day’s stresses fell away. I would feel my thoughts still, the drum beats pulse through my bare feet, my body move of its own accord in a sensual, natural way. It was as if I was returning to myself somehow – a more primal, universal self.

Fast forward and today I’ve taken myself to a morning belly dancing class at my local suburban gym. I’m still rushing; this time to get a load of washing on, shooing my teens out the door so that they get to school on time, thinking all the while about the work tasks I need to tick off when I get back to my home office. Belly dancing is an indulgence. But I know it will make me feel good. And feeling good means being more productive. A ‘win-win’ in business parlance.

 

When I walk into the class, I note the fit-looking instructor. The pile of colourful hip scarves on the stage. And the forty or so people of various ages, shapes and nationalities. Most people in the room are chatting, laughing and already swaying their hips. They’re all barefoot. I make a beeline for a red scarf and once it’s on, and my shoes are off, I’m transported back to the pub. I feel confident. Younger. And a little bit sexy.

As the music starts and the instructor takes us through our paces, I quickly realise that I can’t hold a shimmy as long as I used to. That my diaphragm doesn’t pop as strongly as it once did. And that my joints creak a little when I try a full body undulation.

I look around me at everyone shaking and shimmying, popping and undulating. Several people are laughing. Many are encouraging each other through the unfamiliar moves. I lock eyes with an elderly gent who’s giving it everything he’s got. We smile at each other. Soon, I close my eyes. It’s not long before my head stills and I feel the music beat up through my feet. My body starts to move without thought, without consideration of its limitations, doing its primal, joyful thing. And I can’t help but think that this is the perfect place for me to be. 

American snow is softer

‘The first person to see snow gets $5,’ says my husband. It’s a cheap shot to raise the energy levels in the car, but it works. The kids perk up, start paying attention.

It’s grey and misty up on the mountain; even the denuded trees look cold. Our 14-year-old would prefer to be in her bed, still fast asleep. Our 12-year-old is a bit more animated – the only time he has seen snow was when it came out of a snow machine some years ago. For the past two months he's worn us down by reading out the snow levels each day. We knew we had no hope when he started checking the mountain's webcam . The snow was coming down and we had to go and see, in his words, the 'real thing'.

The $5 bet is the cheapest part of the day. It’s still early in the morning, and we have parted with more than $250 – for petrol and chewing gum; hired gear and fees to get up to the mountain; a vanilla slice, jam donuts and coffee. And there’s still lunch to be bought. Last time we were here, I packed sandwiches; I remember looking longingly at other diners as they hoed into their hot chips and pies. This was comfort food weather. No cold sandwiches for us this time.

I’m the first to see the snow – just a glimmer up at the top of the mountain, only a little lighter than the grey landscape around it.

‘It’s not fair,’ complain the kids. ‘Dad meant spotting snow on the ground.’ They’re pissed off that I saw it first.

A little later, ‘There’s the snow on the road – I’m still the first to spot it!’ I gloat. 

‘That’s not snow,’ says the 12-year-old. ‘It looks like dirty soap suds.’The soap suds get more prolific as we head up the mountain.

We get to the car park. My son digs his hands into the mounds that have been pushed to the side of the road, expecting the snow to spring back. It’s hard and icy. ‘American snow is better. It’s fluffier. Softer.’ He says it reverently, as if the snow he’s seen in B- grade Christmas movies is a warm, cosy entity; a whole different species to this friendless variety.

He repeats his mantra when we join the many thousands of snow seekers at the top of the mountain. He calls it out as he crashes roughly over the unforgiving bumps of the toboggan run. And he repeats it as he grumbles his way up the mountain towards the lookout.

‘It’s cold. My gloves are wet’. He wrings them and the water runs down his pants leg. ‘American snow is definitely better.’

By this time, my patience is running thin. The anticipated hot chips were lukewarm. The din on the mountain was deafening. And the run down the slope painful. I can’t move my neck – I heard it crack after coming down too hard over a bump on the toboggan run. I mentally add an appointment with the physio to the tally of today’s expenses. Is it too much to expect a little gratitude when we’ve spent all this money so that our 12-year-old can experience the snow, in all its pristine, fluffy glory?

‘American snow is NOT softer. It’s NOT better. It’s just as cold and hard and wet as this snow is here. So get over it and start having a good time!’

There, I’ve said it. I stomp off. From the corner of my eye, I see him give his gloves a final wring. Put them back on. He soon veers off the path to find the spots among the trees where the snow is deep , where he sinks in over his knees. He invites me in. I too sink down into the soft, soft snow. Before long, he’s making snow angels and throwing snow balls and doing all the other things that, in Australia, one has to pay good money to do.

On the way home, he says, ‘Thanks for taking me to the snow Mum and Dad. I had a great day. But I still think American snow is softer…’

 

The Croque-en-bouche

I swore every year I wouldn’t do it again.

Why? Because weeks afterwards, I would find crusted chocolate icing underneath the bench top. Electric blue fingerprints on a corner kitchen tile. And dried butter cake residue stuck fast to the blender that I had been too tired to clean up on the day.

The Book was to blame. According to this blogger, who is cooking her way through it, there are 104 cakes in it. Yes, you know the one: The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book.

We would take it out a whole month before each of our children’s birthdays. They would pore through it, pointing to the cake with dollies sitting in jelly, or the train with its quaint lamington carriages. Gently, gently, I would steer them to the cakes I thought would be easy to make. Not so gently, they steered me straight back to the ones that required electric blue food colouring and intricate decorations that didn’t seem to sit on the shelves of our local supermarket. And the clean-up afterwards; it didn't bear thinking about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

But what joy this little yearly ritual bought them, and I couldn’t find it in my heart to say no when they asked again and again for another homemade cake. And so, each year, on the kitchen bench our children sat, among the chaos of ingredients – and they helped to stir and decorate with their sticky little fingers, all the while fighting over who would lick the bowl. And even if we strayed a little (or a lot in some cases) from the bible of children's birthday cakes, they didn't complain.

But then something happened when my daughter was 12.

She asked if she could make her brother's birhtday cake. All by herself.

I confess: I felt a twinge of loss.

And a sense of relief.

She’d taken the baton.

And I was relegated to the sink.

Our now 13-year-old daughter is quite the baker. This year, she and her friend even offered to make the cake for their bestie’s birthday party.

I reached for The Book.

But she reached for another. I shuddered.

She flicked through it, a whole month before the party. And again in coming weeks. She spoke to me about the possible choices. Was I listening? Only in that I'm-too-busy-cooking-dinner-and-not-really-concentrating-kind-of-way.

Finally, she decided. 

As the date drew near I looked over the ingredients. I read the pages of instructions.

And I decided that Zumbo's croque-en-bouche was impossible.

 

But it was too late. Her heart was set. 

Almost three dozen eggs. Vanilla beans.  Two tubs of glucose syrup. And more. Sixty dollars later, we were ready to start. I drew the line at unsprayed chemical free flowers and a croque-en-bouch cone. That was going too far, even for a budding pastry chef.

The party was at 6.30pm. The girls met in our kitchen at 9am that morning.

They piped and baked the choux pastry. They whipped the crème patisserie. They set the caramel base. They boiled the glucose syrup. They burnt their hands in the hot toffee. And at 5.30, it was like the frantic last minute on Masterchef; while one was building the tower, another was sticking on decorations. As the girls went off to put on their party gear, sweaty and exhausted, I was madly wrapping the whole creation in angel hair, not caring any more how much sticky toffee mixture was making its way on all the surrounding surfaces.

I drove the girls and the cake, balanced precariously on a nervous lap, to the party. The guests ‘oohhed’ and ‘aaahhed’ in a suitably enthusiastic fashion. And my daughter and her friend looked so proud. They set out to conquer Zumbo's Croque-en-bouche. And they did.

But guess who still had to do the dishes?

 

10 Valentine's Day tips from a ten year-old

Last year, my husband, daughter and I were talking with our then ten-year-old son about relationships, marriage and the like. Despite maintaining that he would never get married, our son did feel he was in a good position to dispense advice for people going on a first date. My scribbled notes while we were having the conversation have resurfaced in a recent filing frenzy. Here they are:

Emmanuel's tips for going on a first date

1. Never mention bad stuff like your dad's farts or a disease

2. Let her start the conversation first

3. Listen

4. If you talk about a hobby, and she doesn't seem intersted, move on

5. The restaurant shouldn't be first class because you'll have to wear a sports jacket, and not third class because that's bad. The restaurant should be second class.

6. Think before you speak

7. Always be yourself because if you move in with her and you change personaility, she may not want to go with you

8. Never mention ex-girlfriends

9. Try to stay off the wine because you might get drunk

10. Pretend you are speaking with someone you speak with everyday - relax.

Wishing you a happy Valentine's Day!

Image by George Mifsud

Milk or Milo?

Emmanuel in Syracusa by George Mifsud

It wasn’t all fighting and escaping to the comforting embrace of the newspaper these last school holidays. We finally shed our grumpy winter skins and took walks to the library and went on bike rides and lazed around the spring garden. We even managed to slow down enough to create space for some deeply existential discussions. Like on the day when our nine-year old son asked (and expected answers) to the following questions:

 

Would you rather be:

• purple or blue?
• a triangle or a square?
• a stick or a stone?
• an ant or a blue whale?
• here or in heaven?
• a knife or a fork?
• a digital, or an analog, clock?
• tsunami or fire?
• a cloud or the sun?
• rich and evil; or poor and good?
• milk or Milo?

If only someone could have pressed the 'stop' button on the clock; I wanted to preserve the milk-or-Milo moment forever.

The Gnocchi Grinch

For the last decade or so, we have had gnocchi for dinner every Thursday night. It’s a family ritual/bonding/comfort kind of thing. Any suggestion of change on my part has met with heated resistance from our children. 'Get back in your box you Gnocchi Grinch' is the subtext of their more vocal protestations.

People often ask if we make our own. We don’t. Mostly, we buy a ubiquitous brand from the supermarket. At best, we buy it freshly made from our local market. Slathered in passata, it’s passable.

In keeping with our newfound Make Pasta, Not War motto over the holidays, we invited our neighbour’s kids over to make gnocchi. The idea was that their parents would visit to taste the results later that night. I imagined eight people happily tucking into homemade gnocchi, perhaps with a salad and baked vegetables as a side.  A no-frills dinner party.

The day before we executed this brilliant plan, I spoke to a friend of Italian background, whose mother makes gnocchi. I was somewhat perturbed to find that making gnocchi is a hit-and-miss exercise, as it often disintegrates at the boiling stage. And this was coming from a seasoned nonna. Should I have a back-up plan? Yes. Did I have time to shop for and cook an alternative meal for two families? No.

That night, my daughter and I looked up numerous cookbooks for a recipe. It was decision time: Eggs or no eggs? Semolina or flour? Baked or boiled? I was astounded at how such a deceptively simple little dumpling could be so complicated.

We went with the recipe for dummies. Stephanie Alexander’s had only flour, potatoes and salt. The process seemed simple too: just boil potatoes, run then through a potato ricer or food mill (read grater for those of us whose kitchens are gadget poor) and mix with flour and a sprinkling of salt.

The next day, with eager young charges by my side, I read more closely: ‘With one hand, sprinkle potato with some flour and, using the heel of the other hand, work it in. The skill is to be as deft and quick as possible.’ I look at the kids. Could they be deft and quick? Maybe ‘cute and clumsy’ was more within their skill set. My daughter doesn’t help: ‘Mum, this isn’t going to work’, she says with conviction as we start mixing the flour in.

‘I need a little bit of positive here’, I snap back. Is it too late to get to the supermarket to implement plan B? We persevere. The kitchen turns into a sticky potato/flour zone but the kids are having great fun.

We manage to turn out four trays of ill-formed dumplings. Later that day, our neighbours come over. While the adults have a glass of wine, the two older kids cook the pasta in batches. We watch proudly from the couch. The verdict? ‘Absolutely scrumptious,’ says this Gnocchi Grinch.

You too can create such light and velvety gnocchi from Stephanie's recipe (we didn't use the burnt sage butter sauce, but this also sounds delicious). Bon appetit.

Parlour Games Chinese debut

What a hoot - Parlour Games for Modern Families is now out in China! Check out the wild cover...

A Playful New Year

A Happy New Year to all. May it be filled with laughter, lovely company, great food and good health.

The season to be jolly is now giving way to the season to be resting. And playing. Which is opportune because if you didn't get it the first time around, a new edition of Parlour Games for Modern Families is out now. It's a bit smaller, a different colour, and cheaper too ($24,95). It's still jam packed with  games you can play without a trip to the shops for more stuff. Click on the pic in the sidebar if you would like to order it from Readings bookshop - it's one of their recommended reads.

And if you have an iPhone or an iPad, it's now available as the app '50 Fun Games for the Whole Family' ($5.49).  This means the rules for our top 50 games are fully mobile. One user has already given it five stars which is most exciting:

Brilliant!  by Carly Smith

"I'm laughing out loud just reading how to play these games! Can't wait to try them. Great layout, simply explained instructions, and using the spinning wheel to pick a game is a nice touch, if a little sensitive.  Plenty of games in here, but also hoping that more games from the original book might become available to the app at some point.  Good price for the content."

So if you are pressed for entertainment that involves real people using their very own brain and body power, check out the new edition of the book or the app. Happy playing!

10 saucy shared foods for the bedroom

It's grim and cold outside. The doona beckons. You may or may not have someone to share your bed with - no matter - sensual food experiences are equally lovely when you share them with yourself. Here's ten saucy ways to share food with your partner (or yourself) for warm winter fun:

1.Tea -  Aromatic, spiced, heart-warming tea. Ditch the functional mugs; go your most delicate cups and saucers; your most extravagant tea pot.  Try something fresh, like mint and honey; or ground ginger root, lemon and honey; even a few leaves of sage. It is reputed that in Ancient Greece wives welcomed returned soldiers home with sage tea to encourage sexual advances (once wonders why they would have needed any coercion after being at war...)

2. Toast  - Preferably smeared in aphrodisiac morsels such as avocado, asparagus or fig jam in dripping-down-the-side quantities.

3. Chocolate cake - Say no more. Not for the faint hearted. If you're counting calories, maybe you shouldn't be reading this blog at all.

4. Honey - A quick fix to perk up any lagging sexual appetitie. Symbolically, honey defies decay. If you don't want to eat it, consider wearing it.

 5. Oysters - So  it's a cliche, and your bed is likely to smell a bit fishy, but oysters are de rigueur in a list like this. Apparently they are high in zinc,  which helps with testpsterone production. Ancients take note.

6. Champagne - Preferably of the chilled, very expensive variety, but a $7.95 bottle from your local supermarket can work just as well if you use your imagination. One forgets the price after the third glass.

7. Rocket - A bit left-of-centre I know, but it's got three things going for it: it's growing in our gardan at the moment; it's fiery; and the Roman poet Ovid called it salacious. Reputedly, it was sown arount the statue of the ancient god of sex and excess, Priapus. Another Roman poet had to say:

'Hail, Priapus, near thee we sow

To rouse to duty husbands who are slow.'

Those ancients really did need a lot of help (and they didn't even have television and internet - what was their excuse?).

8. Truffle oil - Drop it onto some pasta, add it to sauted mushrooms, or simply use it with some carrier oil and massage your partner wtih it. Then gobble them up.

9. Coffee - To heighten the senses and wake the body - add your favourite liquer and a dash of cinammon for a more exotic experience.

10. Chocolate sauce - As Nigella does saucy very well, why not use her wicked chocolate sauce to dress your partner (such a waste to use it on the brownies). The perfect bedroom desert before you have to get out of your warm bed, have a shower and throw the sheets in the washing machine. 

Bon appetit!