Salt and corrosion

I woke up this morning to feel Sunday and thunder in the air. The thunder was right, but not the day. Mid-week public holidays are very confusing.

I used my day off to make zucchini brownies. I used vegetable oil instead of coconut oil and they worked well. Next time (and there will have to be a next time, as there was another five zucchini today) I'll toss in some toasted walnuts and orange zest for added excitement.

As well as the five zucchini, today's harvest also included two cucumbers and a bowlful of green beans. I could be self-sufficient for about a month, I reckon, provided I could survive an all-zucchini diet.


January

26. If you opened a business, what kind of business would it be?
My long-held (joke) dream job is to have some sort of twee little shop (selling only Golden Age detective fiction, say, or knitting supplies) that is also a detective agency for extremely minor problems. Or being a cobbler! A cobbler... who solves crimes.

Today's haul:



I have plans for a curried zucchini slice and zucchini brownies, and my mother is thinking of zucchini soup. And by then, the next ones will be ready to harvest.

While I'm doing photos, last year, while people were doing sourdough in lockdown, I had a crack at croissants. ( How did that go? )


January

22. How often do you check your phone?
Rarely. In the Beforetimes I hardly ever turned it on. These days, it's on most of the time because my work phone diverts to it when I work from home, and because of checking in everywhere, but I try to ignore it as much as possible. I really do resent its constant demands for attention.

A Christmas story:

At my secondary school, it was an annual tradition for the Year 10 (I think) Home Economic class to make a heavy fruit cake and decorate it with almond icing and sugar work as a year-end project. All the finished cakes were put on display and younger students were encouraged to go and look. So we did, my friends and I, in Year 7. Given the time of year, a lot of the students had decorated their cakes for Christmas, but some obviously had a special occasion in mind and had decorated accordingly. Anniversary cakes, a wedding cake, a couple of birthday cakes with the person's name written in icing on top: Diane, Noel, Julie, Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel. Noel sure was getting a lot of cakes. "Who's Noel?" I asked my friend, but before she could point out what an idiot I was, the older girls behind us laughed at me and, just like that, I had a sudden moment of clarity that Noel was meant to be Noël and his cakes were part of the Christmas section. Can I suggest this festive season, we should all stop and ask "Who's Noel?"

My mother and I had a quiet Christmas at home this year. The past few years we have spent the day on the ancestral family farm, where my mother's 99-year-old aunt lives, to have lunch with extended family among the koalas. Which is nice, but several of the cousins have very different political views to us and like to say so, loudly, which does tend to cast a pall. "You know they'll think covid is a hoax," said my mother, "and I couldn't stand hearing that over lunch. Let's stay home." When her cousin called to invite us, she apparently started, unprompted, on an anti-mask rant, which my mother said made saying "thanks but no" much easier.

This year, I made a bûche de Noël (another one for good old Noel!), using a recipe from my mother's 1989 copy of Australian Women's Weekly French Cookery Made Easy. It was a roaring success; we shouldn't have waited thirty-one years to make it. This is it after frosting, but before the dusting of icing sugar snow and assorted greenery to pretty the plate up.



And now I have a week off, with no plans except reading two books to make it to fifty for the year.

I have spent all day on Zoom meetings. Not much to write about there, so here's a question meme about cakes.

What’s your favorite cake?
When I was little, my mother had a recipe book bought as a fundraiser for something or other. Recipes from the hospital auxiliary or some such. That had a simple chocolate cake in it that we made so often that the book would fall open at that page. So that was clearly my favourite cake at some point.

These days, I think it's hard to go past a good basic sponge. Like biting a cloud.

When did you last have pancakes?
A couple of weeks ago to use up some buttermilk. I had Nutella and strawberries on them.

When did you last bake a cake or a cake-like thing?
I don't make a lot of cakes as a rule, more biscuits (because they keep better) or bread-like things. I think the last cake I made a was a few months ago, a Japanese fruit roll cake, which was pleasingly sponge-like.

What part of your job is a piece of cake?
The first thing I do every day is post the commitment journal, which adds the previous day's orders to the ledger. This involves opening a document and clicking the "accept" button. Nothing could be simpler.

Where have you had a really good cupcake?
I can't remember last time I had a cupcake. My grandmother used to make patty cakes, which were cupcakes but smaller than the ones you get now.
If she was feeling really fancy she would turn them into butterfly cakes, by slicing the top off the cake, cutting it in half, then reattaching with cream. Like so. They were great.

Bonus question: What are your thoughts on icing?
The first thing I wrote was "love it". But then I thought: I don't care for those cakes with beehives of frosting, more frosting than cake. I also don't like really sweet icing. So: love it, as long as it's tangy and in proportion to the cake it's covering.

End of financial year business has been keeping me occupied these last few weeks. I'm not in charge of organising end of year stuff in this job, just doing pieces of work as required; but being in local government, there are a good few more statutory pieces of work required. Plenty to do.

The woman whose maternity leave I was covering has returned. I assumed there would be a handover period like I had when I started, gradually picking things up, but I had forgotten that, of course, she already knows the software and procedures and such. So we had a week's overlap while she got her bank access restored and I wrapped up a couple of small jobs that were quicker to do than explain to someone else, and that was it. I now sort of float, doing special projects for various people: last week, reading twenty-five contracts to apply a new accounting standard for grants revenue for my boss, next week I'll be running reports for the auditors, the week after I'll be working with our IT guy to sort out some issues with the council-run caravan park's banking. Lots of variety.

Way back when I started this LJ, I was working for the council's IT department, running a government-funded community internet skills program. Back then, the council had taken over an abandoned factory to use as a business incubator, and there was a computer lab and all the council's computer servers there as well, even though the IT department itself was in the main council building. So I worked in a sort of outpost, just the computers, the servers and a small office containing me and the guy who looked after them. And sixteen years later, I'm back at the council, and my old office-mate is the IT guy I'll be working on the caravan park project with. Time is a circle.

Alistair was attacked by a dog when we were out walking the other day. I saw the dog, a spaniel with a collar, not one I've seen before, trotting down the other side of the street earlier. It went up the hill and I forgot about it. At some point it crossed the road and came back down the hill, because suddenly it was over our front fence snarling and Alistair was bouncing up and down on his leash like a spiky, spitting rubber ball. I shooed the dog enough to get it back out on the street and managed to catch Alistair and carry him, coiling like an eel, inside. No injuries (other than to his dignity), but he spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the sofa and looking put out.

From Monday, masks will be compulsory here in Victoria. For everyone now, not just in the Melbourne outbreak hotspot. My mother has been busy, making us two each, and some for her non-sewing friends. She's had to stop now, as she's out of elastic, and that's the new shortage in town. Not a scrap of 3mm elastic to be found.

What else? I made these cheese scones yesterday. I don't know about perfect, but they're pretty good.

July books read

* The Case of Alan Copeland - Moray Dalton (1937) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

* Rope's End, Rogue's End - ECR Lorac (1942) ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

* Spring Magic - DE Stevenson (1942) ★ ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

This week:

1. I discovered the existence of lamington-flavoured chips. I read a review online that described them as "chocolate flavour with a potato aftertaste". That is surely something no-one has ever asked for.

2. I went out for lunch with some people from Old Work. It was the last week for the Accounts Officer who was made redundant at the same time as me. She spent her last day printing life-size photos of her head and sticking them all around the office: on the wall behind her desk, on the back of the bathroom door so she'll appear in the mirror above the hand basin when someone's washing their hands, stuck to the back of a cupboard so it looks like she's peeping over the shelf. (She brought news of the former colleague with a brain tumour: apparently it was removed successfully and she was out of hospital three days later.)

3. The electricians finally came and installed ceiling fans in the bedrooms and computer room. They were supposed to do it before Christmas but were delayed. The electrician left his teenage apprentice to do most of the work, returning later in the day to check it, and it seems Jack the apprentice likes a chat as much as my mother, because I got a detailed description of Jack's life when I came home from work: what football team he plays for, what football team the electrician plays for, Jack's thoughts on the rash decision of Kieran, the other apprentice, not to finish the apprenticeship and work on his parents' farm instead. All the important news. Alistair, on the other hand, did not enjoy the electricians' visit, particularly when they were up in the roof. In fact, he had a bad day all round, as my mother's brother G popped in for a visit from South Australia. Uncle G is a burly man who loves cats; Alistair does not like humans who are not me or my mother. My mother described a battle of wills, with Alistair on the back of the sofa looking grumpy while Uncle G ruffled his fur, saying, "Puss-a! Puss-a! Puss-a!"

Today:
1. I walked over to the shop to buy the newspaper and noticed that one of the houses I had to pass, with a garden full of gnomes and cement lanterns, has a new statue: a life-size zebra in the middle of the lawn.

2. I went to Old Work's annual Australia Day second-hand book fair in Port Fairy. I used to go to it before I started working for them, so it seemed churlish not to just because they made me redundant. Port Fairy was packed for the long weekend, so I had to park a couple of blocks from the venue and walk the rest of the way. I had to pass the civic green where some sort of Australia Day ceremony was happening. A man was giving what sounded like a very boring speech about a local quarry and how it had sent Port Fairy bluestone all around Australia.

3. I read this story about a grieving pig.

I have a job interview (for that accountant job at the council) on Monday. That was fast. I am torn between wanting it, and feeling bad that if I get it, I'll probably have to finish earlier than planned and that would be letting my current finance team down. Perhaps I should hold off worrying about that until it actually becomes an issue.

This year one of my resolutions/goals was to make a gingerbread house for Christmas. Aim high, you know? I have spent this afternoon doing that. I have tasted the leftover bits of gingerbread and they're all right, but I don't think I'll ever be a builder. My side wall snapped in two when I was trying to stick it to the front façade with royal icing. I put it away in a fit of pique and ate the Smarties I was going to decorate it with instead. I'll try again tomorrow.

I have words, random words, written down as reminders of what I what to write about, but I have writer's block about where to start. Perhaps I should do this entry in pieces and assemble it afterwards.

I have a week of leave, which has been welcome. With time to think I have come up with potential solutions for three minor office issues that have been niggling at me. Imagine all the problems I could solve if I had more than a week off.

I also planned to finish knitting my cowl this week. So far I have knitted exactly one row. Still, I have four days left, so perhaps I will get there yet, and have a couple of weeks of winter left to wear it.

In contrast to the Christmas card vision of winter as white and sparkly, winter here wears green and brown. I can tell it's coming to an end because now other colours are appearing. My mother put some miniature daffodils in a pot and they are out, fifteen of them outside one kitchen window, raincoat yellow. I bought a big bag of tulip bulbs labelled "shades of blue" and planted them in the garden outside the other kitchen window and the first of them are out too, mauve-pink and purple-red.

I have been to the library. I saw that the gate to the children's section was open while they prepared for story time, so I wandered in to have a look at the YA section. I have to wait until someone else opens the gate, because my secret shame is that I struggle to undo the child-proof catch. And then I had to hope no-one shut it while I was in there, because, well, what if I couldn't get out again?

Back in the easily-entered general section, I borrowed a book. Back home I discovered it had someone's bookmark in it. We have self-service book borrowing now, which scans the barcode and issues a receipt with the due date. Easier for the librarians, I imagine, but I do miss the leaf at the back with all the previous due dates stamped on it. Now there's no way to tell if this bookmark was left in a book returned yesterday or last year. This was a religious bookmark, with a quote from Psalms on the front and written on the back in an old lady's writing was To Ken with love from Valerie XX. I'll give it to the library information desk when I return the book, just in case Ken has been looking for it.

Last week I went to the local theatre, which had a double bill of two one-man plays, both about the life stories of a relative of the playwright. The first one was a man who opened an old cupboard in his grandparent's garage and found that his grandfather, an amateur brass band leader, had left reel-to-reel recordings of his music and musings to be found after his death. The second was a Gunditjmara man (Gunditjmara being one of the local First Nations) telling the life story of his (I think) great-great-uncle, who went to Gallipoli in the First World War and then came home to be, predictably, treated appallingly.

And this week I have been to the theatre again. Is there no end to my cultural appreciation? Yesterday my mother and I took the ungodly early train to Melbourne to see Come From Away, the feel-good musical about September 11. Which is a glib comment to make, but honestly, f-list, if you get a chance to see a production of it, go. It's just that good.

The City by the Sea, excitingly, now has four trains a day to and from Melbourne, so we were able to catch the early evening train and get home two hours earlier than previously. There was still time to walk to the station via Haigh's Chocolates to get a snack for the trip home. I was very tempted by the chocolate fish, but I bought a bag of scorched almonds instead. The thing about Haigh's is that after you pay, they always offer you a sample of that day's showcase chocolate. Yesterday it was milk chocolate cashews and they were so good I immediately regretted the scorched almond purchase. So that's next time sorted.

A grey and lazy Saturday. At least, it was grey when I went into the supermarket this morning, but I came out to an apocalyptic black cloud. And then it started to rain and it was just grey rain, not the end of days at all.

Which was good, because after the supermarket I had to make my fortnightly visit to the pet supply shop. This week the RSPCA cage had a family of four kittens, eagerly watched by a little boy and his father. The boy poked his finger gently through the mesh and one of the ginger kittens poked it back. The boy told me, "My cat bites, RAR!" so I said, "Perhaps it's a tiger."

"Yeah," he said thoughtfully, and went back to playing with the kitten.

The shop was also hosting a socialisation visit from two of the city's Maremma dogs, which live on an island in summer to protect the penguins. I got to pat Amos, who is a good boy.

Back home, I warmed the house up by making a chocolate and raspberry biscuit recipe that turned up on Pinterest, which turned out to be very nice indeed.

Oof, I am exhausted, f-list. I had a full list of things to to at work, but I didn't get to any of them, what with little emergencies here and there. I've been hopping up and down on the spot. Lots of movement not going anywhere.

I was looking back through some old LiveJournal entries to find out when a particular thing happened, when I came across a mention of last year's Masterchef Australia. One contestant had just made something he called "lettuce water", which is still... quite a concept. Not an appetising one. Not one that's caught on either.

I'm going to start knitting my new cowl this evening. Or not. I'm very flat.