There’s a proper way to eat pasta?

Apparently, I don’t know how to eat pasta properly.  Until a few months ago, I didn’t even know there was a proper way to eat pasta.  If you want to know, I eat it with a knife and fork.  If the pasta is long or… big, I cut it into bite-sized bits with my knife, and fork it into my mouth.  This method has worked quite well for me so far.

A few months ago I went out for lunch with some friends.  We were a crowd around the table, the wine was good, and the conversation flowing.  Then, the girl next to me… I won’t name her… scolded our nice waiter for giving her a knife and fork with her pasta dish.  It always makes me nervous when my dinner companions are nasty to waiters.  Only because I worry that those nice waiters will get back at them by SPITTING IN MY FOOD instead of theirs.  

Anyway, while I was saying a quiet thank you that she had left her little tantrum until after I had received my meal, I was also wondering what she had wanted to eat her pasta with.  Her fingers maybe?  And THEN, she asked for a spoon!  And as I cut my pasta up with my knife, I thought, “Oh great, it never ends does it?  I’m supposed to eat my pasta with a bloody spoon.  A spoon!  How the hell do you eat pasta with a spoon?  God, why am I always coming across new… OK they’re probably old, rules designed to make me look like a plebe with no culture… etc. etc.”

So, I surreptitiously watched my friend twirl her spaghetti around and around in the bowel of her spoon with the tines of her fork.  When the spaghetti was finally all nice and tight around her fork, she put it in her mouth and ate it.  And I thought, OK, I can do that, next time, and forgot all about it until Monday.

I went out for lunch with some friends on Monday.  And my horrified-at-eating-pasta-with-a-knife-and-fork friend was there.  I had forgotten all about the spoon scene when I ordered the rigatoni. Then, the waitress gave me a spoon - damn her - and I realised my predicament.  My first thought was “Shit!  I know how to twirl spaghetti around the bowel of a spoon, but I don’t know how to eat rigatoni WITH A SPOON.” 

I looked around the restaurant to see if anyone else was eating rigatoni.  Of course they weren’t.  So, I started eating with my spoon in my right hand.  It didn’t seem right, so I swapped over and had my fork in my right hand.  Then, I thought “For god’s sake, WHAT am I doing?  Am I twenty years old?!  Do I really care if I’m using my spoon properly?  NO.  And that means I can eat pasta however I bloody well like. ”  And that’s when I put down my spoon and ate the rest of my pasta WITH ONLY MY FORK,.. ’cause I no longer had a knife.

OK, I’ll probably find out how to use my spoon and fork properly eventually.  But, all I’m really worried about right now is that eating pasta with a knife and fork is an offense that will cause me to lose my Italian passport.

The hairdresser

Elina Löwensohn and her gorgeous fringe in the bottom left-hand corner.

Her name is Tamara.  She is about 20 years old, or 19, I can’t really tell.  I just know she’s a lot younger than me.  And she has long brown hair with a fringe.  If I didn’t have a cowlick I’d definitely have a fringe.  I kept the flyer for the movie Simple Men (at left) mostly because I loved Elina Löwensohn’s fringe.  I would get my hair cut in a bob before I grow old if I could have a fringe like hers. 

Anyway, when Tamara asked me “What are we doing with your hair today?”  I threw my hands in the air and said “I dunno, can we just trim two inches off it?”  And she understood what I meant, and didn’t try to talk me out of having two inches cut off, and she combed it into enough sections to satisfy my obsessive-compulsive nature before cutting it.

We chatted about the live snake show in the mall, and I asked if she knew why the three shops out front of the mall were vacant.  She didn’t know, but that was OK, because then she was quite comfortable with CUTTING MY HAIR IN SILENCE… and that meant I could relax and enjoy GETTING MY HAIR CUT IN SILENCE.

What I am trying to say in a long, drawn-out, and roundabout way is that I have found a new hairdresser and her name is Tamara.

How to make and eat afghan biscuits

Afghan biscuits come in all shapes, sizes and gradations of brown. This is what mine look like.

I whipped up yet another batch of afghan biscuits this afternoon.  As I was cuddling up to the heater (it’s really cold today), drinking my tea and eating my biscuits  I decided it was time to tell you how I make them in fourteen easy steps. *gasp*  OK that’s a lot of steps, but really it’s easy.  Give it a go.   

Step 1.  You need to work up an appetite.  Afghan biscuits are an afternoon tea sort of biscuit, so a relaxing morning reading the paper, a shopping expedition or a gossip session with your friend(s) is ideal.  Don’t exercise though, ’cause there’s nothing worse than going for a good long run and then coming home and filling your tummy with a buttery biscuit.  It’ll just make you feel queasy.

Step 2.  Turn the oven on.  180 degrees.

Step 3.  Make sure you’ve got butter, sugar, cocoa powder, flour, icing-sugar and corn-flakes and walnuts in the cupboard.  That’s what’s so great about this biscuit recipe, it requires simple in-your-cupboard-anyway ingredients.  Except for the walnuts…

Step 4.  Cream 200 grams of butter with 1/2 cup of sugar in a bowel.  Now there may be an easier way to do this in 2008, but I learnt to cream butter 30 years ago… Oh My God, did I just write that, 30 years ago… OK, I’ll deal with that thought later.  So, I think the best way to cream butter is in a bowel with a wooden spoon.  Nice hard butter from the fridge is good.  With the flat of your wooden spoon you mash the sugar into the butter until it starts to get soft and you can whip it around like it’s light and fluffy.  This is quite hard.  Your arm will get sore.  Try breathing into it…  like when you lift weights at the gym… if you do that sort of thing, otherwise, I have nothing.  Of course, you can make this easier by using easy-spread butter, but that kind of takes the challenge out of it!

Step 5.  Sift and stir in 1 1/2 cups of flour and 1/2 cup of cocoa powder.  When it’s all mixed in you should try a little bit just to make sure it tastes alright.  Don’t eat more than a teaspoon though, ’cause you’ll spoil your appetite.

Step 6.  Stir in 2 cups of cornflakes.  But don’t get carried away and stir them in too much.  Just make sure all the flakes are sticking to the mixture.

Step 7.  Smooth some butter in a nice layer onto a biscuit tray.  This will ensure your biscuits don’t stick to the tray… usually.

Step 8.  Spoon the mixture (about a dessert-spoon full) in even-sized mounds onto the tray.  If you see any mounds that look a little bit bigger than the others you’ll have to even them out by eating the excess.

Step 9.  Put the tray in the oven.  In the middle of the oven.  Too low and you’ll burn the bottom of your biscuits.  The icing won’t cover the burnt taste.  I know, I’ve tried it.

Step 10.  Pull them out about 15 minutes later.  Sometimes 17 minutes.  It depends on your oven.  When they’re cool put them on a baking tray.  If one of the biscuits ‘accidentally’ breaks you must eat it.  And it doesn’t count.  I don’t think I need to spell out this rule, I’m sure you’re all familiar with it…

Step 11.  Melt a heaped tablespoon of butter in a pot on the stove.  Then add about ‘this much’ icing sugar and ‘that much’ cocoa powder.  Seriously, I don’t have any specific measures for the icing.  I just put the ingredients in the pot and stir them around until I’ve got a smooth, chocolatey icing that feels like it’ll spread on a biscuit without sliding off.  Just try not to get it too hot, ’cause it’ll burn or go all yukky…

Step 12.  Ice the biscuits according to the sweetness of your tooth.  I mean, the sweeter your tooth the more icing you put on the biscuit.  Just make sure you’ve put enough on so you can satisfactorily press a walnut into each iced biscuit.  When the biscuits are all nicely iced and walnuted you must arrange them on a pretty plate and place them on your coffee table.

Step 13.  Put on the kettle.  Make as many cups of tea as you need,  depending on whether you’re having a quiet afternoon alone, or you’re continuing a gossip session with friends. 

Step 14.  Drink as much tea and eat as many afghan biscuits as the situation requires.

World Youth Day in the city of Sydney

Sydney City is yellow, orange, and red with the colours of World Youth Day.  Pilgrims with backpacks and flags are everywhere. Really, they’re EVERYWHERE. 

You’d think it would be hard to see the non-pilgrims in amongst them all, but not really.  The non-pilgrims are obvious because they’re the ones not wearing yellow, orange, and red.  They’re the ones staring, puzzeled at all those youngsters enthusiastic about catching a glimpse of a man in white robes and red shoes.  They’re also the ones muttering about how they’d better be able to catch public transport… public transport that had better not be held up by any flag-waving pilgrims or popemobiles.

What I imagine being an Artist would look like

There was a time when what I wanted most in the world was to be an Artist.  R. Ian Lloyd’s photograph of Lucy Culliton captures beautifully what I imagined that life would look like.  I would swap the dog for a cat though. 

This photograph is on exhibition (along with beautiful photographs of lots of other Artists’ studios) at the State Library of New South Wales until the 12th October 2008.  STUDIO: Australian painters photographed by R. Ian Lloyd. 

Lucy Culliton, Hartley, New South Wales, 3:07pm, 24 January 2004 (Copyright of the State Library of New South Wales)

What happens when I finish work at 4pm

Today I bought a pair of knee-high boots.  I’ve never owned a pair of knee-high boots before.  They’re black and look a little like riding boots.  Not fuck-me boots.  I think they look classy.  Eddie thinks they look like gumboots.  Wellies he called them.   

A little later on, Eddie told me my new boots were nice.  I may have been moping about him not really liking them.  Then he asked me how much they cost.  I said “Um.”  He said “That much?”  I said “Guess.”  He said “$90.”  I said “… I’m just gonna go and brush my teeth.”

A haircut

A friend told me I should get my hair cut short this week, and in reply I had a mini temper tantrum.   It may or may not have gone something like ”For god’s sake I know it needs a trim, but it’s not THAT bad.  I am NOT getting it cut SHORT, and I am not getting a Posh Spice haircut, I’ve done the bob a MILLION times and I DON’T WANT TO DO IT AGAIN… until I’m old.”  And he may have said something about me being a DRAMA QUEEN.   

I don’t admit to being a drama queen but, I do admit that my relationship with my hair when spoken out loud sounds like a tragicomedy.  My hair is the tragic main character that is brought to ruin as a consequence of my inability to make regular appointments with a hairdresser.  The comedy (a dark sort of comedy) is my ridiculous, ”I should get my hair cut”, internal monologue that starts up six weeks after every haircut and goes on until I finally get my hair cut again, three or four months later.

At this moment, my hair is about three months past its last haircut, full of split-ends, and kind of dark at the roots.  Every week I say to myself, “I should get my hair cut this weekend… maybe I should call and make an appointment with the hairdresser up the road… damn, why can’t I remember the name of that salon?  I’ve only been walking past it every week for the last two years…” and it goes on and on in that vein until another week goes by and I still haven’t had it cut.

So, with my own internal monologue going on, the last thing I need is to hear someone else’s opinion.  Especially when that opinion is for me to get a short haircut, which everyone knows is way more high-maintenance than a long haircut.  God, I’d have to start my internal monologue after two weeks instead of six…

What married couples talk about over dinner

While we sat in Cheung Sing BBQ House waiting for our vegetable laksa and short soup with roast duck to arrive tonight, Eddie said “I learnt something interesting about chillers at work today.”  When Eddie starts a conversation like this it means I’M going to learn something interesting about chillers too.

Tonight I thought I’d get in first.  So, I said “OK, you can tell me all about your chillers, but first, I’m going to tell you all about how I found a 2nd reading speech at the Law Courts Library today.”

So, I told Eddie all about hansards, subject indexes, and bills, then Eddie told me all about evaporators, refrigerants and cooling towers… THEN we ate our vegetable laksa and short soup with roast duck and walked home.

New Zealanders and their pottles of chips

Pottles of chips

There are words in my vocabulary that tell just as well as my accent that I am a New Zealander.  I thought I knew them all.  Chilly bin, jandals, dairy, and bach are some of those words.  Today, while I was chatting to some friends I discovered a new word.  

It was when I told my friends that I had a pottle of chips for lunch on Saturday.  They looked at me blankly and I said “I know, I know, chips for lunch, horrible aye?”  But, they said “POTTLE, what’s a POTTLE?”  And I said “What do you mean, what’s a pottle?”  Then they said “God you’re weird, pottle’s another one of those New Zealand words like chilly bin isn’t it?  What is it?”  I said “I can’t believe you don’t know the word pottle!”  But, I explained to them that a pottle is a small, round, cardboard container and agreed that it must be another one of those New Zealand words.

When I got home tonight I told Eddie that Australians don’t use the word pottle, like it was a strange thing.  Eddie looked at me sideways and said “POTTLE, who uses the word pottle.” I said “you’re kidding me right?”  And he said “No, nobody uses the word pottle.”  And I said “But, I use the word pottle… and I’m sure there must be other people that use it too…”  And he said “…That’s ’cause you’re a South Islander.” 

I’m not sure on that last point.  The part about only South Islanders using the word pottle, but I do know that when I did a quick google search for “pottle of chips” there were only 14 results and they looked to be mainly from New Zealand websites.  So, now when you hear someone asking for a pottle of chips you’ll know they want those chips in a small, round, cardboard container and you can be fairly sure they’re from New Zealand.

Learning Italian my own way…

On the advice of Miss Expatria I bought a packet of post-it notes today and spent this evening labelling our house with Italian words.  With help from Babel Fish, my bookshelf is now called a scaffale per libri and my teapot is a teiera.  But my favourite word (so far) would have to be wardrobe.  My wardrobe is now called my guardaroba.  I like it because it makes it sound like Italian wardrobes do more than just contain your clothes.  They guard them too…