Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

I'm having such a nice morning!  I've done our fortnight's shopping, and now I'm singing and dancing around the kitchen to the 'Chicago' soundtrack while I put everything away and stack the dishwasher! 
Silly, happy girl!

Well, I finally stopped procrastinating and took my poor car in for a service yesterday.  In th bitter, frosty cold morning I sluiced water over the entire car to melt to ice, then noticed that there was so much crap inside the car tha it looked like homeless people might live in it, so, fingers rapidly going numb, I filled a basket with stuff to go back into the house, and a garbage bag full of actual rubbish, and threw all the apple cores from the small girl's footwell out for the chooks (who fell upon them with clucks of glee).  Now running late I tried to the girl dressed and into the car, but because she is a three year old she can sense urgency from afar and spent fifteen minutes faffing as only a preschooler can faff.
We did eventaully get to the mechanic, and had a really quite pleasant walk back into the city to the bus stop, although by the time we were walking home from the town bus stop (about 1.5 km) the small girl was getting tired and whingy and kept sitting down in the damp autumn leaves with her hands over her face, exclaiming that 'I can't walk anymore, I'm too exhausted!  My legs are too floppy'.  All in all it took 3.5 hours to drop the car off and get home, and later in the afternoon we had to do it all in reverse (leaving the house at 4pm, and those of you with kids can imagine the joy of dragging a tired preschooler out into the stinging cold at arsenic hour).  At the end of which I had to hand over the entire contents of my bank account (which was not large, admittedly), and be informed that they hadn't done the one thing I'd asked them to do (replace the remote controls for the central locking), because they can't do that, it's a job for an auto-electrician.  I tried pointing out that their counterpart in Hobart replaced the remotes last time, but they weren't having a bar of it.

Ah, well.  At least the car is no longer in imminent danger of breaking down due to neglect. 

Today we hae a fun day of playgroup lined up, and this evening I have bellydancing. In between there will be the usual housework, cooking, and a bit of gardening if I feel like braving the cold.  I have cut out and started hemming two of my Invest gifts (the others are drying on the window sill), so there is more hemming, two blackwork borders, and a few metres of cord to do, then garb to mend and make, and ornamental sheilds to paint.

I am deep into the quince jelly process, now.  Fruit has been peeled, chopped, and simmered down to a pulp with a few lemons, then strained overnight through a jelly bag (well, two jelly bags, since I have quadrupled the recipe), and now the pleasingly pink liquid is back in pots on the stove, with copious amounts of sugar added to it, coming slowly up to the boil.  I am ever so slightly annoyed, because as it turns out this is not as difficult or fiddly as I had hitherto assumed and I wish I had started making it years ago.  This puts quince jelly in the smae culinary category as pate; things that Gran makes regularly and which I always thought were tricky, time-consuming, and only truly acheivable by grandmothers.  They had an air of mystique about them, which is rapidly dissapating, and I'm too scared to try my hand at Gran's coffee melting moments because if I can make them as well then all my illusions will be shattered.  Gran's cooking is magical and secretive, and mere mortals shouldn't be able to do it, dammit!  I honestly don't know why this bothers me...

Well, the weather has improved, so I have been able to get some washing done and the Great Underpants Crisis seems to be over.  Apart from that we scabbed a few (but not enough) bricks from the tip, found out that another tip is using all their perfectly good bricks as fill (grr!), and pootled out to the fabulous nursery a few kms down the highway.  This fantastic, rambling, overgrown shop is full of interesting things, and we scoped out some nut trees to plant in the avenue that elads from the lower driveway up to the house (tomorrow we will start ripping out the scraggly old trees, weeding, napalming the ivy, and generally preparing the two strips of garden bed for the new trees).  I think we're going to go with hazelnuts, almonds, and probably a chestnut or two.  Also, I have planted out the two oblong beds under the oak tree with gooseberries on the upper lever and blackcurrants on the lower.  Hurrah!  I will be able to make my own Ribena!  And gooseberry fool! 
*happy dance*
I have made a date with Miss K, to take some sewing around next Wednesday night and actually make some progress on a project (probably a Viking underdress for the small girl to wear to the event on next Saturday).  As soon as my money from the sky appears either buy some linen down here or book tickets to Melb and buy fabric there instead (the excuse reason being taking the small girl on her first plane ride).

Oh, many are the quinces.  We have just collected all the fruit off a neighborhood quince tree, and I'm pretty sure there is now more than my own bodyweight of quinces sitting in bags in the dining room.  So.  I will need to sort through them and separate the ripe ones from the green, lay the green fruit out somewhere to get some sun for a few days, and start processing the ripe fruit tomorrow (actually, tonight, in the form of honey-roasted quinces for dessert).  On the list:  quince paste, quince jelly (if I can muster the patience), poached halves fruit for bottling, and I think I'll also have a go at pickled quince as well.  Yum.
Right now, though, the whole house is filled with the flowery scent of quinces, and with the smell of chicken and sausages cooking in the oven with sage and onions. 

Dylan Moran!  Dylan Moran!

*big deep breath*

We went to see Dylan Moran last night.  He was so funny I almost died laughing, even the bits after the interval, when he was significantly drunker and the brogue was so broad it almost obscured the actual words.  Truly, I had breathing difficulties.  Then, on the way home, we stopped at the all night bakery in Westbury for hot drinks, and my love bought me a little slab of chocolatey something layered with chocolate stuff with more chocolate on top.  Dylan Moran and chocolate.  It was a perfect night out.

Now, however, I am viley, achingly, pitifully sick with some sort of coldy-fluey-plaguey miserableness, complete with raspy sore throat, and since that is what family is for I am driving to Hobart this afternoon to inflict it on mine.  Oh, also because it is Easter and WE ARE NOT AT FESTIVAL, so one does feel obliged.

We gathered chestnuts on our walk this morning!  I love living here!  Not many left on the ground because the vile teenagers were throwing thm into the river (!), but I will go back tomorrow to see what the wind has blown down for us.  Perhaps I could make the small girl her first conker, and then there's marrons glaces, chestnut stuffing for fowl, honey and chestnut semi-freddo, yum!
Right this moment, however, I'm stewing fresh, local rhubarb to make crumble for dessert after our Sunday roast!  Hurrah!

There's something in the adage "easy as pie". 
I've got an egg and bacon pie in the oven, and it really was the easiest thing in the world.  10 minutes to make the pastry, then another 20 to roll it out and assemble the pie (pies, actually, since I made a large one for myself and my beloved, and a small pie for the small girl).  It would have taken longer (and cost more) to drive to the supermarket, buy a premade pie, bring it home, and heat it up.  The reason I have become a baking devotee is not because it's cheaper and easier than the ready-made option, however.  Rather, it's because I find it so infinitely soothing.  Rubbing the butter into the flour reminds me of being back in my gran's kitchen, watching (and then, later, helping) her make lard pastry for her meat pies.  Rolling out the pastry and putting together the pie makes me feel almost inexpressibly centred and calm; it's closer to meditation than I get doing deep-breathing or yoga.  But the crowning moment, the one that never fails to lift my heart, is taking the golden, gleaming pie out of oven.  There is no culinary experience so uniquely satisfying as the sight and smell of a pie you have baked yourself. 

Apparently.

I have friends in Canberra with a very new baby, an they're all having (very common) adjustment issues.  I gace them a pep talk and told them I would fly over for a weekend and be a nanny so they can get some sleep...

I went into th curiously fabulous shoe shop in town this morning, for to pick up my layby (darling moss green suede heels with little ribbony strappy ties across the instep), and saw Boots.  Oh, Boots.  Knee high black (or brown, but meh) leather, with a zip and *important* elasticised expandy inset thing, but oh, also a double row of ornamental button all the way up the front.  *Weeps quietly* I wish I had smaller feet.  They might have the larger size in the Burnie outpost, but they're quite a narrow fit so there's very little chance they'd fit.  Oh, Boots. 

Without the small girl in tow (blessings upon preschool, yes indeed!) I also grabbed my chance to visit the Antiques Emporium (has many fewer actual antiques than the name suggests, but is always interesting to browse through and has a good, well priced secondhand book corner).  I emerged almost a hour later clutching a very old copy of Baroness Orczy's 'The Scarlett Pimpernel', along with 'Fragile Things' (short stories from the wonderous brain of Neil Gaiman), and Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road'.  And now I shall have a nap, get the washing in, pack our bags, and head south (via school to pick the small girl up).

Huzzah for a day off.