It’s high summer in Melbourne and the city is absolutely effervescing with the excitement of Taylor Swift being in town. Her final of three local concerts is tonight and I wish I could say I am going but like so many others we missed out on tickets after hours and hours and hours of trying to secure them. We’ve partly made up for it by watching patchy-screamy live streams on social media (uploaded by kind fans) and watching the Eras Tour movie on Amazon Prime (possibly more than once.)
Last night the kids all came over for dinner and we talked the non-Swifties through the various TS Eras and played random old CDs (The Streets, Drake (!), Soundtrack from The Big Chill) in the backyard during a prep/pre-meal intermission.
The early evening was nice and mild which was a blessing after a mini heatwave earlier in the week. I made a feast, because I have not done that for ages … Since my sister’s birthday in June of last year, in fact, as I just haven’t been up to it health wise. I have been missing it, so I pushed through and am delighted that I did. It was nice to have an excuse to bust out the tablecloths (green and brown vintage stripes for outside and an op-shopped Marimekko-esque vintage floral for inside) as well as my favourite old animal plates and placemats and things.
Inspired partly by this (sadly-paused-but-gorgeous) blog* I made: Ina Garten’s Chicken with Croutons; a pasta salad using some cute little wheel-shaped pasta with a jar of shop-bought antipasto vegetables, a tin of corn, EVO, plus basil and cherry tomatoes; roasted potatoes a la Ina/Emily Blunt; a tomato bruschetta salad (from this op-shopped cookbook) and a bunch of grilled vegetables.
Max (my middle kid) and I sat outside yesterday in the early afternoon and barbecued all the veggies over charcoal on the mini Weber (it’s this one). There was a light breeze and the yard was full of chirping crickets, cabbage moths and curious birds. The neighbourhood was quite otherwise, everyone out or moving around unseen and unheard indoors. It was just so relieving to feel peaceful for a wee little while. Just with the simplest of things and small company. Just content with the way things are.
Please note that I’ve got the hang of the charcoal grill thing at blinking long last. Basically I just layer and light a fire in the BBQ with the bits in the following order: newspaper, natural firelighters (non stinky!), small kindling, charcoal, slightly larger kindling. (Admittedly I can’t ever light a fire without feeling terribly homesick for Tasmania … where many a fire has been lit in shacks and homes over the years … but that’s by the by.)
But back to the BBQ … I’ve been struggling with charcoal chimneys and YouTube how-tos and similar. But if you simply light the grill as though you’re making a regular fireplace fire, it catches so easily and within half an hour the charcoal is white and scorchy, ready to go. So I did that and then Max and I chatted as the veggies sizzled, him turning them and the lifting them into a big bowl to be plated and dressed when the others came. Then we nipped to the mini-mart up the road for drinks and a roll of foil, then headed home to settle back in.
The others came between 5 and 6.30 and we had pretzels and cheese and crackers. Max helped me serve dinner at around 6.30. It was very delicious and colourful and varied, but I have a way of needing everything to be salty and I didn’t add enough salt to mine. Even as I was eating it and realising it. I didn’t want it to be toooo salty and well, yes, I paid the price. I know that sounds stupid but I have a tendency to go too hard on the salt and then I pucker my way through and it’s just not great. Now I’m erring on the side of not oversalting and trying to get used to that. And clearly I’m just messing the whole thing up. (Yes, I’m an idiot.)
For dessert we had brownies and ice cream. I made the brownies at lunch time and they were just the way they needed to be by dinner time. Shiny and firm and chocolatey and good. (I’ll post the recipe at the bottom of this post.) We chatted until not-too-late and then everyone went home and I went to bed and was completely unable to fall asleep. Apparently it was all a bit too exciting for me. I did what I always do I such situations and listened to BBC Radio 4 until somehow it was magically morning and I had indeed managed to doze off.
Apart from the dinner I’ve been having the usual health-prompted quiet times. It’s kind of boring but goodness things could be so much worse than living a small and unwell life. The world is on fire and I am very lucky to be okay and I know that. I promise I really do.
I’ve been making a lot of roasted dinners, because they make more than one meal (plenty of leftovers or bubble and squeak!) and that saves a bunch of energy and money. And, of course (if you know me!), lots of toasty breakfasts with a terrific tumble of toppings and/or fillings to start the day in a comforting way.
I’ve watched a few things (below) which I have liked. Their Finest and Summerland were charming and Kin was gritty and brilliant. High recommend. I also watched a dated but great Irish gangster series called Love/Hate. I liked that too. Please check the reviews before you watch it as it’s not charming and, in fact, very brutal!
Above: Cast of Love/Hate
Do you remember on Instagram I told you about the mama cat and her kittens around the corner from me? The strays? Well the little grey one has gone to live with Rin (my eldest!) and her darling Paul. Someone else has taken the ginger one and the blonde one. They just weren’t there one day when I went to feed them. I know someone else had been plying them with premium cat food each day (they left the containers behind!) so I am assuming that person took the ginger and the blondie to live somewhere nicer than the streets.
Now there is just the very fluffy tortoiseshell mama cat and I visit her each day to feed her. Yesterday she was there with her boyfriend cat. He’s a gorgeous blonde fluffy fellow. They seem to be happy to be free of the kids and were on a date under an abandoned car.
I am worried she has more kittens hidden, so I haven’t taken her home with me. I’m just going to keep checking on them each day and making sure they are fed, for now. (All the rescues are full at this time of year … and also again, we don’t know if there are more fresh kittens nearby which would suffer if we took the mama cat away.)
Above: Op shop finds and a neighbourhood rose
Today I am going to try and recover from yesterday’s busy-ness. That’s the way it goes with my illness ME/CFS. You do anything out of your usual quiet routine and you will pay for it in pain and extreme exhaustion. Good grief. Sometimes you do nothing at all and you still pay. Ugh. But onward …
I’m reading a few great things and they are:
1/ White Women by Saira Rao and Regina Jackson – because overt and internalised racism exists in all of us and current events have made me especially aware of how little I know about the world outside my own privileged bubble. I’m trying to work on that.
2/ The Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy – the first book I’m looking at as part of my Honours year. I got into Honours! I have just finished the first three years of my Bachelor degree (Creative Writing) and am moving on up. My Honours project title is provisionally/currently (are you ready for it?!) : “Snug folk: The role of domestic comfort in character and setting in mid to late twentieth-century female-authored fiction from the United Kingdom and Ireland” and I’m looking at the work of women writers who have often been ignored by scholars because they’re deemed too commercial and/or too female.I’m really excited about it. I get to do a bunch of research alongside generating a creative fiction work around this theme of domestic comfort. I know the title is a mouthful but apparently that’s the way it goes in the academic world. Think Rosamunde Pilcher, Maeve Binchy, very early Marian Keyes … that kinda thing. Maybe you have ideas? Suggestions of other cosy authors that fit the brief? I am all ears.
3/ The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henri which is comforting (but contemporary) and lovely. It’s historic fiction with a wholesome childhood fairytale subplot and I am enjoying it immensely.
and 4/ Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce. I read MOST of this last year via Audiobook on BorrowBox, but I found this copy at the op shop and am going to belatedly read along with the Miranda’s Notebook January Comfort Book Club (hopefully!) The copy I found is slightly water damaged (possibly slipped into someone’s bubble bath?!) but I quite like that.
Now for that Brownie recipe …
Have an okay day, pals!
xx Pip
*(Actually I’ve been inspired by a lot of things on that quiet-yet-lovely blog over the last couple of weeks, reading and viewing wise, too! It’s comfort-filled.)
Above: Brownies! Sorry the photo is not nicer, but this is real life people and I’m so tired.
Pip’s BEST Brownies
Makes 12 squares
360 grams dark chocolate
200 grams butter
220 grams white sugar
3 medium eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
120 grams plain flour, sifted
1 level teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 180 degriees.
Butter a 25cm x 25cm square baking tin and then line with baking paper.
Break chocolate into pieces and melt with butter in a heat-proof bowl atop a pot of simmering water. Stir every minute or so. When melted together and smooth, remove from heat and set aside.
In a large bowl, beat sugar, vanilla and eggs in a large bowl until pale and creamy.
Add the melty chocolate/butter mixture into egg/sugar mixture and mix quickly and well.
Fold in sifted flour, baking powder and salt until just combined. You’ll have a lovely glossy mix.
Pour the mixture prepared baking tin and bake for 30 minutes or until firmish and slightly pulling away from sides of tin.
Cool in tin, then remove and cut into squares.
Recipe provenance: Adapted from a Jill Dupleix recipe published in The Age, March 1997
The suggestion of Susan Howatch ….oh my goodness. Now I have to search the oppies for Cashelmara and Penmarric. I loved those books when I was a teenager.
What a tonic this post is, Pip. I follow you on Instagram, which always pierces through those alienating adverts that are clogging the platform’s arteries. Your Honours research topic is wonderful, those books remind me of my darling mom (gone far too soon twenty years ago), I so look forward to being able to read it once it’s done. Hope you’ll publish or share it if it isn’t available through the electronic thesis databases. Wishing you a very happy and cosy March with many visits to run and that stunner of a grey kitten.
Oops, that should have been *Rin 🙂
I will be sure to share it!!
The grey kitten is now called TONY!
Thanks for the encouragement, Benita. It really does make a difference.
xx
So good to read this Pip! More blog posts please.
Congratulations on Honours! How fab! Well done.
I’m making the brownies today.
I hope you enjoy the brownies!!
We can’t seem to get enough of them … we are walking-talking Brownie-People, pretty much!
x
The brownie photo is GREAT! Thank you for sharing all this. I am grateful for you!
YOU ARE SO KIND !!!
x
Is DE Stevenson too early for you? She was writing into the sixties. There are also a couple of Mary Stewart books which might fit the domestic fiction niche – Thornyhold, for instance, though it isn’t one of her best. Susan Howatch? Joanna Trollope? Mary Wesley? Hope you will keep us informed about your research.
These suggestions are going on my list and THANK YOU for them.
I will keep you informed here. I am determined to overthink less and blog more this year.
Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment, pal.
x
Hi Pip! I really love twentieth century British female writers too, so I have some recommendations (I’m sure you already know about most of them, but these are some of my faves). Richmal Crompton (not the Just William books, her novels for adults, such as Merlin Bay – I’ve read a lot of them and enjoyed them all), Stella Gibbons, Rumer Godden, Elizabeth Fair, Jan Struther, Ruth Adam, Romilly Cavan (I absolutely loved Beneath the Visiting Moon), Dodie Smith, Angela Thirkell – so many more! Some of my other favourites are probably outside your focus (earlier 20thC) like Elizabeth Von Armin, E Nesbit, F M Mayor, E M Delafield, Sylvia Townsend Warner, but wrote some of the most important women’s novels with a domestic focus that influenced the post-war authors (such as Lolly Willowes and Diary of a Provincial Lady). Ugh, I’m pretty obsessed so I could ramble on, but I won’t. You’ve probably heard of these, but the Furrowed Middlebrow blog is the source for all the info you could ever want, Dean Street Press publishes a lot of middlebrow books, there’s Virago of course, Persephone, and the British Library Women Writers series. I particularly love 20thC ghost stories, where supreme cosiness gets rattled a bit! It’s a genre dominated by women and often used as a subtext for feminist themes (like The Yellow Wallpaper, but that’s American). There’s a really good book called Monster She Wrote about these authors. Not sure if I can provide a link? This talk by Elizabeth Crawford about the Furrowed Middlebrow authors might interest you. https://youtu.be/g-GYXUR17s4?si=yJZcfLPeZtoD1OEh I hope some of that is useful! While I’m here, I just want to say, I really empathise with you and your health struggles because I’m in the same boat. Thanks to chronic heath and mobility problems, my life has narrowed somewhat, and I can no longer make the feasts for friends and family on the same scale that I used to; cooking for people has always been such a joy to me, and now I can barely manage it for myself sometimes. Worse still, my creative work has been affected by, in particular, a degenerative eye condition, but I’m still hopeful for an improvement. So, I just want to say, I understand how difficult it is to push through. It feels like wading through treacle a lot of the time – completely exhausting. But it’s trying to move through it, and not giving up that is most important, isn’t it? ?
Gosh. It has taken me a while to come back here for some reason … and when I did I find this amazing comment. THANK YOU! So much good information here, some of it I am familiar with, but much of it I am not, so THANK YOU again. So kind of you to spend the energy to help me with my work. I had my first group tutorial last night (3 hours long!) with 4 other Honours students. Three are writers and one is a visual artist and the other left early so not quite sure what they are doing. We had to do a little oral synopsis of our Honours plans and it was great to hear about others’ work and speak about my own with others and the Honours coordinator. I’m so excited about the year ahead and I hope I can keep my energy and enthusiasm up. Careful planning is likely the key.
Sorry to hear that you are in the same boat as me. Gosh it’s so frustrating but I guess also a way to learn about ourselves and the world. To be honest I’d prefer to learn less and do more, but that’s by the by.
Anyway, just thanks again for such a valuable response to my canvassing for ideas. It’s so appreciated. Stay as well as you can and see you here very soon with more chatter.
x pip
Love this Pip. Sounds like you needed to have some normalcy in your life with your usual suspects that you love and feeding them all the good things. That feeds your soul, I’m sure. xxx
this is just the most delightful and snug, comfort read Pip. I think your honours sounds really interesting.
I love it when you pop into my inbox, i miss your comforting words and calm life tales.
cheers Kate
Oh, I forgot to say, I think I’ve read most of Maeve Binchy’s books, I adore them. I think early Cathy Kelly books might be along the lines of what you are researching. My mum used to read an author named Catherine Cookson but I never got on board with those., I was more into Susan Howatch as an early teen. I’m trying to think of all the authors I read back in the 90s or early 2000s….. Sheila O’Flanaghan, Jane Green, Monica McInerney & of course Marian. Oh, Joy Dettman too!
Lots of comfort in amongst the hard things
Oh Pip, do you miss the kittens now they are gone? Such cute little things.
And I know I always tell you this but your life always looks perfect. And I don’t mean in the Instagram, filtered type of perfect but it looks like the type of life that would make me happy. All the colour, yummy food & good things filling your days. I can only imagine what it is like living with ongoing pain but you always seem to make the most of things.
Big love x