Sunday 30 June 2013

Pumpkin Pancakes: When Vegetables Collide

I absolutely love it when food looks messy 
and still looks good. So my serving suggestion: 
put a couple of pancakes on your plate, drizzle 
golden/maple syrup all over in errant patterns 
and throw on some stewed apples on the side. 
For the final pièce de résistance, slap 
a few dollops of whipped cream on top 
(make sure it makes that slapping sound 
as it hits the pancakes), look at it, 
slap on some more, and voilà!
My inner-American is showing.

An errant remark from a colleagues about how cheap pumpkin is right now (89 cents) had me dreaming up Thanksgiving menus and kitchens filled with the scent of cinnamon and clove.

Although I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin, I've had good success with recipes including this strange ingredient. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake...why not pumpkin pancakes? I jumped on Google and found what I was looking for right here. Have I mentioned I love Allrecipes?

So...
The verdict: Light and fluffy pancakes which are surprisingly filling (I was only able to eat 3 in one sitting). I especially love the bright orange mac-and-cheese colour of these puppies.

Best accompaniment: Stewed apples and whipped cream (don't you dare reach for that aerosol stuff...go for the real thing). I even cheated a little and added more veggies to the mix in the form of chokos to the stewed apples. Healthier breakfast, yes please. See below for recipe.

This would be great for: Chilly winter mornings, those who are homesick for American Thanksgiving-cuisine and people who think pancake stacks are beautiful.

Here's my recipe for Stewed Apple and Choko. I hope you weren't expecting exact measurements. Don't worry, you can't get it too wrong:

Ducky's Stewed Apple and Choko
2-3 tart apples, large cubes
1-2 chokos, skinned and cubed
Couple of lugs of butter (real butter, not margarine)
Approximately 1/2 tsp cinnamon
Roughly 1 tsp brown sugar
Some grated orange zest (optional)

Chuck it all in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and cover. Put the heat on low and sweat the mixture while you're making the pancakes. Stir every so often if you remember. The stew should be falling apart and ready to be served just as you're cooking up your last pancake.

Saturday 29 June 2013

Cheap Thrills #2: Create a Fake Band

In general, fun stuff is only as fun as you make it. So it's probably best to suspend any pooh-poohing that might be lurking in the corner of your soul before you try this one. Otherwise, you'll probably just have a terrible time. So shut up and grab a pen!

I ended up doodling Chad's album cover 
while he was composing his salsa/trip-hop 
number on GarageBand.
1) Get your Band Name
Go to Wikipedia and click on "Random Article" on the left-hand column (or you could just click here). The header of the article that comes up is your band name. Mine was "Gandaki Zone".

2) Get your Album Title
Go to The Quotations Page and click on "Random Quotes" on the left-hand column (once again, you can just click here). Scroll to the last quote. The last 4 or 5 words of that quote is your album title. Mine was "Being Left 50,000 Pounds".

3) Get your Album Cover
Go to Flickr and click on "Explore" (magic link here). The 3rd picture is your album cover. Mine, perhaps appropriately so, was a picture of some hip-hop dudes making the peace sign.

4) Now What?
Get your creative juices flowing by writing a couple lyrics to your fake band's award-winning song. Or if you're a muso, try pumping out a couple of measures from your album (GarageBand is kind of fun for this).

This activity gets some extra hype if you do this with someone else. Along with the strange feeling of being five again, both of you will probably bust out into some "I'm-so-embarrassed-we're-doing-this-thing-but-it's-actually-kind-of-fun" giggles at some point in time. And nothing brings people together like shared vulnerability!

Thursday 20 June 2013

A Re-Cap

Acro(batics) is a weird thing. After a huge spike in the first month of realising what I could do, I suddenly had one day where I could not do a handstand against a wall. No matter how much I threw myself into it, I'd come down again without even hitting the wall. It got to a point where I was actually wondering if I just had too much hair and if it was throwing my balance off.

I stopped trying (handstands, not acro) for about a month.

Today, after too much white flour and pizza, I told my lazy butt to get up there and do it again. And so I did. Again and again. The photo looks terrible but I'm really celebrating (as much as possible while upside-down). The feeling of talking yourself out of self-doubt and experiencing success must be pretty much on par with doing something for the very first time. It's not over yet!

Thursday 13 June 2013

The Office

Apple cinnamon muffin and a cappuccino:
the perfect companions for the morning's work.
Riding the lift today with a cappuccino in one hand and a cinnamon muffin (x3) in the other, I was struck by how much I love my desk job.

When people hear the phrase "desk job", there seems to be an automatic reflex involving gagging and profuse statements that they could never settle into one. I know because I'm one of those people.

As a kid, I used to dream of being a daytime dancer and then, when the sun set, I'd change out of my leotard and become a night time detective. Having a desk job was nowhere on the horizon.

And yet I have to admit that now I love office culture. I love all the trappings that come with it: the coffee, the chats between cubicles, being able to festoon my area with my own brand of decor, the faint resemblance to being in an airport lounge. For me, it evokes the better scenes from "You've Got Mail" or "Julie and Julia". I like being able to churn through tasks accompanied by my morning toast, and just as equally love being able to leave it all behind at the end of the day and still feel satisfied.

Being "all grown up" now, I've become aware of how rare it is to really enjoy what you do and that makes me even more determined to love wherever I am. Maybe one day, I'll start yearning for that dancer/detective career again. But for now, it's enough just to be content.

Saturday 8 June 2013

The Walking Dead

Scenes like this just look better on TV.
Someone just needs to say it. As non-parents, we sometimes feel like we're surrounded by zombies. And not the get-up-and-run-after-you kind. No, it's usually the moaning, shuffling variety that we're confronted by. I won't go into anymore details just in case I run the risk of turning into the moaning sort myself.

On the other hand, I found myself incredibly and pleasantly surprised today by my friends. Maybe even a little inspired. These friends of mine (who I should probably add are a couple) have been some of the most adventurous jetsetters we know. So I was a little nervous to find out that they were expecting a kid. From what parents tell me, the words "adventure" and "children" don't usually sit well together.

We finally caught up with them after several months of them settling into parenthood (I'm really fast-forwarding the story here) and were surprised to find out that they were taking a trip to Christchurch pretty soon. On further conversation, we found out that this was a "practice trip" for them taking their kid on a series of flights around the world. 

"Wow," I said, mostly to Chad. "That's like what we want to do." For the first time in my life, I found myself admiring parents for more than just how much they could get done on so little sleep. For the first time, I was an outsider looking in. And I liked it. It gave me hope - hope for a new breed of parents who don't have to look like the walking dead; who look and feel healthy; who are both a 100% parent and a 100% human. 

I came away feeling so happy for my friends. And feeling genuinely happy for someone else is just about as good as feeling happy for yourself.


Friday 7 June 2013

Cheap Thrills #1: Pineconing

Free stuff. Oh so good.
There's something satisfying about collecting cheap, useful things. Even better when the cheap, useful things are free. So I've decided to start a new tag called "cheap thrills" in case anyone else shares my fetish.

Today on a damp autumn day with dog in tow and multiple plastic bags, I embarked on a pineconing expedition. Nevermind that I already have a fruitful pinecone tree in my backyard. This is beside the point.

What is the point? Finding an even bigger pinecone that the last one you picked up. Returning home with a bulging bag of free stuff. Enjoying the fruits of your labour when you have a roaring fire to sit by.

And the bonus? Seeing my hyperactive 9-year-old "puppy" exhausted and happy on the couch.