Let's go fly a kite

In the excitement of apple pie and icecream making, and let's face it, eating, I completely forgot we flew a kite on the weekend. As with the new veggie patch, I took on more of a supervisory responsibility than actual flying per se. As in, stood there and provided motherly encouragement while Elly ran with the kite string, and Dave helped him get it off the ground. Still, I remembered to pack it in the car in the first place, fetched it from the car, removed the plastic wrap, and affixed the cross bar and string, so in my book that serves a fairly important facilitating role.

My list, my rules. I'm countin' it. Number 17 - with Elly, make or decorate a kite, then fly is done. Geez, is it the apple pie, icecream and wine, or is that grammar shocking? Now there's only left to say... (clears throat)... to infinity and beyond...

#30 - It’s raining, it’s pouring

It’s perfect weather for an apple pie. The Elly-monster spent this evening at his grandparents house. A perfect opportunity for me to flex some atrophied cooking muscles. Boy this one was fun, and totally worth the hours and mess it caused. I could almost hear my dad saying to me, as he was wont to do, “did you use every bloody dish in the kitchen?” Why yes, dad, I did!

#30 - bake an apple pie from scratch and make vanilla icecream to go with it is done.

I used Poh’s recipe with only a few minor changes. I peeled a lemon and added the rind to the apple mixture to increase the sour/sweet contrast. Used all butter instead of copha in the pastry. The apple seemed to be taking ages to cook and all the tasty caramel sauce kept clumping on the pan, so I added in some extra water then strained most of the sauce from the apple filling before putting it in the pastry. I’d ummed and erred about including the cheddar cheese in the pastry, but my it was lovely. I bought a vintage cheddar, and it adds something really different to this pie. It makes the pastry really savoury, but also seems to create an extra crispiness and flaky bite to the edges. And the savoury/sour/sweet pie combined perfectly with my obscenely rich vanilla icecream.

I used this recipe from David Lebovitz. I accepted his invitation to add an extra three egg yolks to make a total of eight yolks. Mmm, yolky goodness! I couldn’t find the instructions for my icecream maker, so had to wing it. It seemed to take about as long as I remembered, but the result was a little bit runnier than it should have been, although still very very tasty. Seriously, I could eat this icecream until the cows come home. Mooooo!

And on that note, the rest is best in pictures:

greetings from caffeine central

We're not sleeping much at 40-things central, but we are planning and hoarding supplies. For pinata:

Huzzah! It's not for a party, but I shall endeavour to "pinata like mad" instead. And for item #36 - design and make some interesting (not stereotypically girly) clothes for Martha, this:

I’ve also been thinking some more about the meaning of item #36. Now I want to clarify, I don’t have a problem with pink and purple. I don’t care if Martha wants to wear dresses or flippy skirts all year round. In fact, right now she's wearing pink jammies with baby elmo that say she's 'naturally cute'. Any gifts in this vein are gratefully received. But as she gets older I’d like her to have a choice. What’s wrong with all the other colours? And what’s wrong with wanting it to be easy to find clothes that don’t constantly proclaim, after the age of six months, that she’s “cute” or “pretty” or a “princess in training”? Sure she can be a princess. But why is that all she should aspire to? I guess it’s more about my dislike of putting kids into boxes and the implication of limiting their choices. This applies equally to boys.

A few months ago Elliot and I went shopping for pants. I asked him what colour he’d like. He said orange. Well of course he did. And of course he was really disappointed when all we could see were grey, black, and blue. His little lip-dropping disappointment face is something to behold. Happily a few weeks later I did find a source of lurid orange tracky pants - thanks Target and your trusty fleece section! But more often than not, his clothing choices are limited, just as the girls are, to a bland palette. So I shall be amending this list item to say make some fun clothes for Martha and Elliot.

In my effort to clarify what I meant by non-stereotypical clothes I collected a suite of photos which are stored in two folders, “clothes I like” and “what we’re not”. Given you can see hundreds of examples of “what we’re not” at a glance in any clothing store, I’ll limit my examples to these:

which are fairly self-explanatory. Toddlers and tiaras, anyone? I've found, to my delight, that there are a bunch of good sources online for clothes more to my liking. Some, like this store, are explicitly unisex in approach. Their philosophy is one I applaud, that all kids should be free to wear colourful fun clothes regardless of gender. Here are some examples of things in my hurrah you get a tick folder:

So perhaps what I'm talking about is actually an issue of availability and price; the type of clothes that make me despair are cheap and they’re everywhere. This leads me to wonder whether I’m a niche market in this respect. Which I think is a nice way of saying “you're nuts and no-one else cares about the things you do”. Or is this a chicken and egg problem - do the shops stock predominantly girly crap because that’s what parents really want? Or do parents buy this because that’s all there is available at cheap prices? Another issue to explore is that of sustainable and ethical clothing, and what we’re trading off in terms of resources and other (unseen) people’s exploitation to be able to buy mass produced t-shirts for $5 a pop, but that’s a subject for another day.

I have also found some companies, usually small ones created by mothers, who print clothes for girls with empowering slogans. While I think we’re coming from the same place, and I love the advocacy of strong, brave girls, I’m a bit uncomfortable with feeling that I would be using Martha as a wee billboard to advertise my own political opinions. And while I naturally think my opinions are ok, how is this any better than the princess branding juggernaut? You may say though, if I care about this distinction, why bother at all? Am I not just projecting my own preferences onto her by not wanting her to be my principessa all the time? (Actually, that should be her daddy's principessa, according to the t-shirt slogans.) Or alternatively, why not just put Martha in boys clothes and be done with it? At this point I stopped analysing the issue for fear of my brain imploding.

Now because I’ve again made myself feel like a humourless feminist mother, and what’s worse, one who’s bleated on about what are aptly referred to as “first world problems”*, I’d also like to share a few other sites that are supporting the empowerment of girls around the world:

• Girl effect
• Oxfam
• Girl store

* (which is not to say they aren’t important or serious issues, particularly if we delve into the area of sexualisation of girls at ever younger ages, but I can’t seriously spend too much time worrying about pink ruffles and not feel like a pillock when there’s: sexual slavery, forced marriage at twelve, abandonment of girl babies, genital mutilation, rape routinely used as a weapon of war and suppression of dissent, girls being denied an education, gender-based violence in the home etc etc bloody etc)

my little scientists

Very much enjoyed this week's TED talk, recommended by my sister Cath: What do babies think?

Am always fascinated by the different experiments they use to test at which age certain developments occur. The little kid testing out his hypotheses is lovely to watch.

Mixed bag of shopping

In case anyone was wondering why I want to highlight role models for Martha, here's a nice illustration. I don’t go out of my way to be a humourless feminist mother, honestly. Sometimes this stuff just comes to you, like when buying Martha a rattle. Now I have no problem with little girls wearing pink. I pop Martha in her wee pink bodysuits with a smile. Her room is fairly pink. Some of her clothes are even a bit on the frilly side. I also expect there’s going to be some of this in the future:

And maybe this:

When it happens, I'll deal. But really, this?

And this?

While the boys get this:

And this:

Toy companies, the concept you're pushing here is not my imagination. It is, as your packaging says, easy to grasp. Because girls accessorize, while boys do? I’d like Martha to be a little bit older before we start telling her to limit her aspirations. You'll be getting my cranky humourless feminist mother letter of complaint shortly.

On the happy side of the shops, there was this:

And because I’ve lost another 2kgs of preggie weight I get to celebrate with something frivolous. As the Lisa Hannigan CD I’m eying off hasn’t been released yet, you guessed it, there's this:

Whee! Now I don't have to return it I can be a real nerd and watch all the season one commentaries. And finally, something from Mr Postman to make us all smile:

Armchair activity

Those with wee bubs would know you can hold a squalling infant in one arm and and surf the ‘net with the other. Fortunately this means when I don’t have time to actually do things I can still research. As I mentioned in an early post, sometimes the planning is as much fun, if not more, than the doing. Also it keeps me away from the often insane world of internet forums and losing an hour of my life reading bizarre threads that explode with righteous anger over topics such as, “what do you tell the checkout chick when she asks your two year old if she’s started her Santa list yet, but your family doesn’t believe in Santa?” Seriously, I did not make that one up. The arguments that ensued, in all sorts of delightful directions, were astonishing. "How dare she address a young child directly", and "I'm tired of being oppressed by thoughtless well-wishing from adherents of the dominant religion's festivities" among them.

Here are some notes on my armchair progress:

#30 - bake an apple pie from scratch and make vanilla icecream to go with it

This week, instead of buying new food, I am eating my way through the contents of our freezer to make room for the bowl of the icecream maker, which needs to be chilled over night. I know, heroic sacrifice, isn’t it. We’ve been getting eggs each week from Aussie Farmers Direct and are building up somewhat of a stockpile. Seems a good time to make some rich custard, yes? That or go on an omelette binge. Was also inspired by a lovely looking apple pie on Poh’s Kitchen the other night. She was visiting King Island, the isle blessed by the gods of dairy, and made a pie crust with cheddar cheese in the pastry. Excuse me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard. May replace the copha with butter though.

It occurred to me yesterday that this might be a nice excuse to invest in a spiffy new pie dish. Found something that fit the bill at the General Trader but I may wait and see if I can pick something up second hand instead. When I was eying it in the shop I had one of those anti-consumerist moments where I wavered between “ooh, pretty”, and dithering over whether it was right to spend $15 on a ceramic pie dish just because I liked the red and white polka dot pattern. Decided my decision making skills were impaired by lunch-time hunger so left the momentous choice for later. This is the kind of thing I’m coveting.

#12 - record some of the songs I’ve written

Looked into external microphones for my Macbook pro. Given I was indecisive about a $15 pie dish, and these shiny gems are naturally more alluring and expensive, am taking up kind offer from Matt to borrow his to experiment with and see if that’s the type I’m after. Have already done some tests with Garageband recording vocals alone and was pleasantly surprised at the results.

#29 - make Martha a book about inspiring women I have met or read about

Many ideas in the shower this morning about where to take this one. (Does anyone else like to think in the shower, or is it just me? No? Okay.) I’ve started a mental list of women I want to include. Thinking about the look and feel, have decided to use this program I have on the Mac Mini to mock up a comic book style layout, with two facing folios per woman. Hopefully will get a chance this coming week to get some more ideas down on paper. Am also planning to write to some of the still-living women to see if I can get some responses to specific questions to include. I figure this is always worth a try - during my PhD research I contacted a wide range of people for help and there was only one who sent a curt and unhelpful reply, which seemed to assume that somehow my research on the particular questions I’d asked her had been limited to that one letter. Marg would be amused to discover who she was... a school-time favourite, I believe? Needless to say, she is not in the book.

cue lightbulb above head

OK. So that was actually pretty easy. Now I'm quite fond of Bernina foot no. 5.