I’ve learned a valuable lesson this morning. Never mess with the knowledge, experience and cooking skills of our pioneering womenfolk.
I say this because today I decided to cook some ANZAC biscuits. I checked the pantry to make sure I had all the ingredients: Butter — check (well, the cholesterol-fighting spread that we artery-challenged middle-agers use). Flour, coconut, oats — check. Golden syrup — check. Sugar — check. Bicarb soda — check. Great! All systems go.
But as I am wont to do (even though experience proves I should really know better) I decided to give the old ANZACs a new twist. Perhaps it was the Scotsman’s daughter in me who was reluctant to use the expensive, sterol-enhanced spread, or maybe it really was a genuine belief that I should not be consuming so much unhealthy fat in the first place, that made me decide to replace some of the ‘butter’ with olive oil. After all, I concluded, it was still wet stuff, so it really shouldn’t make much difference, should it?
I heated the wet ingredients and stirred them into the dry ingredients but instead of glugging up into a sticky ball as required, the ingredients obstinately refused to come together. Thinking it was just due to the strange butter and olive oil mix I conceded that, yes, they will be a bit dry, but we will get over it.
Somehow I managed to squeeze the mixture into kind-off lumps and popped them into the oven, but as I cleaned up the kitchen I made a mental note to never again mess with those early Australian chicks. After all, they’d probably tried and tested many versions of ANZAC biscuits before finally settling on something that actually worked. Who was I to question their wisdom? I, who has had many tragic cookery moments and whose love of cooking is rivalled only by her love of having dental surgery without anaesthesia.
But as I opened the pantry door to replace something, I saw a disconcerting sight. There, sitting on the shelf in front of my nose, was the Golden Syrup! Only THE most important ingredient of the ANZAC biscuit!
Unopened.
No wonder there’d been no glugging! I quickly dashed to the oven and removed the lumps which had already begun to harden, tossed them unceremoniously back into a mixing bowl and smashed them with a wooden spoon. I heated the golden syrup and glooped it into the crumbling mess and WHAMMO: straight away there was ‘glugging’ and I knew I had managed to resurrect the ailing ANZACs. It was truly a moment of culinary magic!
Back into the oven and shortly afterwards out they came, all golden and yummy-looking. In fact, I’d almost go as far as saying they may be the best batch I’ve ever produced. (And the Scotsman’s daughter was quite relieved that she hadn’t just wasted $8 worth of sterols too!)
Yes, those ANZAC chicks may not have had olive oil and sterol-enhanced spreads to choose from in those days so, indeed, the ANZAC biscuit may truly be an artery-hardener-to-the-max.
But the real problem with ANZAC biscuits is not that they contain so much fat and sugar. It’s that people like me, whose cholesterol levels correspond directly with their lack of willpower, are unable to stop eating them!
What we really need is a recipe for “Anti-ANZAC-Scoffing”.
Now THAT, I definitely wouldn’t mess with! Promise.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
The Age of Unreason?
Age is a relative thing. When you are seven, anyone over the age of twelve is grown up. And when you are sixteen, thirty is the gateway to drool and incontinence pads.
As an eight year old I recall being quite relieved when my twenty five year old teacher FINALLY married and had a baby. I feared if she didn’t hurry up, she would be waaaay too old.
When I reached twenty-five, myself, it was quite a different story. I felt young; my life stretched before me and the world was at my feet. Conversely, my approaching-their-thirties siblings seemed ‘mature-aged’ and my parents …. well … they were positively ancient!
Around this time, a relative died at age 55 and I actually thought, “Oh well, he’s had a good innings! “ A good innings? What was I thinking? Now that 50 looms in my not too distant future, 55 is like the prime of youth! At 55 you should be dancing til midnight, riding surf boards and seeing the world, not six foot under pushing up daisies. Goodness, how my perspective has changed!
And what has brought about this sudden interest in our varied perspectives of ageing?
Well, the other day I heard on the radio that a local girl had been invited to join a group of ‘young people’ to meet the Pope. Oh, how lovely I thought. A bunch of teenagers hanging out with the God Squad. I had visions of Benedict XVI, cross-legged in St Peter’s Square in hoodie and jeans, downing a Big Mac and chilling out with the kids.
My vision was short lived. The news report concluded by interviewing the ‘young woman’ in question.
At first, however, I thought they must have mistakenly interviewed her mother, for clearly the voice on the other end of the phone was not that of a teenager. In fact, without even setting eyes on our Little Miss Vatican 2010 I guessed she was somewhere in her late thirties. I was prepared to wager that if she was a teen, then the Pope was certainly no Catholic!
So what was this ‘young people’ thing all about? When I was thirty I was an adult mother of three with responsibilities and a mortgage. I didn’t consider myself to be exactly ‘old’ but to me ‘young’ was anything under 25.
But of course I have overlooked the Baby Boomer Factor. After all, if there’s one thing we BBs hate it’s to lose control. Thus ageing is not on our agenda. No, instead we have simply reinvented the standard stages of maturity to suit ourselves. ‘Old’ is becoming the new ‘young’.
‘Young’ is everything up to and including whatever age we Boomers currently are, and ‘old’ is anything beyond the next twenty years. We reserve the right to revisit and manipulate this to suit our egos and lifestyles, so be prepared to see 80 as the new 50; 50 as the new 30; 30 as the new 18; (16 as 16 - some things don’t get any better) and pre-pubescent tweenies will be the new toddlers. Babyhood will be retained in its current form, mainly because babies don’t give a toss about getting older (in fact they quite like being babies) and besides, going back to the womb might be a bit tricky.
So, anyway, I guess I don’t need to worry about the crows-feet or saggy bits that are coming my way. After all, thanks to our ageless Baby Boomers, these are about to become synonymous with eternal youth. In fact, it will be so cool to be wrinkled, all the kids will be wanting turkey-necks for Christmas. Their mantra will be ‘Old dudes ROCK!’ and we will approach our twilight years happy in the knowledge that we’ve still got ‘it’…..
……um….that’s if we can remember what ‘it’ actually is….
As an eight year old I recall being quite relieved when my twenty five year old teacher FINALLY married and had a baby. I feared if she didn’t hurry up, she would be waaaay too old.
When I reached twenty-five, myself, it was quite a different story. I felt young; my life stretched before me and the world was at my feet. Conversely, my approaching-their-thirties siblings seemed ‘mature-aged’ and my parents …. well … they were positively ancient!
Around this time, a relative died at age 55 and I actually thought, “Oh well, he’s had a good innings! “ A good innings? What was I thinking? Now that 50 looms in my not too distant future, 55 is like the prime of youth! At 55 you should be dancing til midnight, riding surf boards and seeing the world, not six foot under pushing up daisies. Goodness, how my perspective has changed!
And what has brought about this sudden interest in our varied perspectives of ageing?
Well, the other day I heard on the radio that a local girl had been invited to join a group of ‘young people’ to meet the Pope. Oh, how lovely I thought. A bunch of teenagers hanging out with the God Squad. I had visions of Benedict XVI, cross-legged in St Peter’s Square in hoodie and jeans, downing a Big Mac and chilling out with the kids.
My vision was short lived. The news report concluded by interviewing the ‘young woman’ in question.
At first, however, I thought they must have mistakenly interviewed her mother, for clearly the voice on the other end of the phone was not that of a teenager. In fact, without even setting eyes on our Little Miss Vatican 2010 I guessed she was somewhere in her late thirties. I was prepared to wager that if she was a teen, then the Pope was certainly no Catholic!
So what was this ‘young people’ thing all about? When I was thirty I was an adult mother of three with responsibilities and a mortgage. I didn’t consider myself to be exactly ‘old’ but to me ‘young’ was anything under 25.
But of course I have overlooked the Baby Boomer Factor. After all, if there’s one thing we BBs hate it’s to lose control. Thus ageing is not on our agenda. No, instead we have simply reinvented the standard stages of maturity to suit ourselves. ‘Old’ is becoming the new ‘young’.
‘Young’ is everything up to and including whatever age we Boomers currently are, and ‘old’ is anything beyond the next twenty years. We reserve the right to revisit and manipulate this to suit our egos and lifestyles, so be prepared to see 80 as the new 50; 50 as the new 30; 30 as the new 18; (16 as 16 - some things don’t get any better) and pre-pubescent tweenies will be the new toddlers. Babyhood will be retained in its current form, mainly because babies don’t give a toss about getting older (in fact they quite like being babies) and besides, going back to the womb might be a bit tricky.
So, anyway, I guess I don’t need to worry about the crows-feet or saggy bits that are coming my way. After all, thanks to our ageless Baby Boomers, these are about to become synonymous with eternal youth. In fact, it will be so cool to be wrinkled, all the kids will be wanting turkey-necks for Christmas. Their mantra will be ‘Old dudes ROCK!’ and we will approach our twilight years happy in the knowledge that we’ve still got ‘it’…..
……um….that’s if we can remember what ‘it’ actually is….
Saturday, January 8, 2011
A Modern Christmas Tale
T’was the night before Christmas and all over the house not a sound could be heard, not even a mouse.
Well okay, maybe a mouse, but not the kind of mouse you’re thinking of. Not the ‘eek eek’, furry kind, but the kind that moves the cursor on my computer.
Frantically typing a late yuletide article got me thinking about how different the very first Christmas might have been had it occurred in the modern age.
First of all, it strikes me that the Great Universal Architect probably wouldn’t have wasted a whole supernova in an effort to attract the attention of the Three Wise Men (climate change and all). Surely he would have just Tweeted about the imminent arrival. The guys, in turn, would have punched the street directions for uptown Bethlehem into their latest ‘Nav Desert Man’ technology and sped towards their destination in a trusty Commodore V6 with mag (or was that Magi?) wheels and subwoofer.
As for the Holy family, rather than staying in a stable, they would have logged onto Wotif and secured a 5 star room at the ‘Grand Sands Hotel and Birthing Unit’ complete with complimentary champagne on arrival, a continental breakfast and a gift voucher from Holy-Bubs-R-Us.
Not that Mary would have been very interested in brekky or gift vouchers. She would have been too busy browsing Ebay for a Post-Baby-Ab-Buster, catching up with her girlfriends on Facebook and texting her mother (in between contractions).
Joseph, apart from acting as Mary’s ‘birthing coach’ would be checking his mobile for the latest cricket scores, watching the big Nomads v Kings game on the huge flat screen TV and listening to Carols by Candlelight on his iPod.
Oh wait, perhaps that’s not exactly historically accurate. Carols by Candlelight might not have been invented at that stage, given that the subject of the carols was yet to actually arrive. A minor oversight on my part, but suffice to say that Joseph would have had plenty to amuse him (if the imminent arrival of the saviour of the world weren’t enough, that is).
Of course the whole event would have been filmed in digital living colour to ensure that every moment was saved for biblical posterity (movie rights pending) and/or posting on YouTube.
The Three Wise Men (Micko, Stevo and Davo) would have been milling around taking photos with their iPhones and helpfully making e-lists of really useful things to do with Myrrh and Frankincense. And, as no animals are allowed on the premises without EU accreditation, the donkeys and cattle would be banished to the nearby Happy Hoofs Pet and Ghecko Resort. This would be a relief to Mary as they generally make a hell of a racket with all their braying and lowing. Not to mention the stains on the Berber carpet.
And as the big day ends, Mary pops the little one into his crib, cranks up the Bob the Bedouin crib mobile and the Hark the Herald infant intercom. She then phones room service for a gourmet dinner and a good bottle of red.
Joseph enters the date in his Blackberry because he’s lousy at remembering birthdates and anniversaries and they all settle down to, what they hope will be, a reasonably Silent Night.
(2 a.m feedtime notwithstanding).
Well okay, maybe a mouse, but not the kind of mouse you’re thinking of. Not the ‘eek eek’, furry kind, but the kind that moves the cursor on my computer.
Frantically typing a late yuletide article got me thinking about how different the very first Christmas might have been had it occurred in the modern age.
First of all, it strikes me that the Great Universal Architect probably wouldn’t have wasted a whole supernova in an effort to attract the attention of the Three Wise Men (climate change and all). Surely he would have just Tweeted about the imminent arrival. The guys, in turn, would have punched the street directions for uptown Bethlehem into their latest ‘Nav Desert Man’ technology and sped towards their destination in a trusty Commodore V6 with mag (or was that Magi?) wheels and subwoofer.
As for the Holy family, rather than staying in a stable, they would have logged onto Wotif and secured a 5 star room at the ‘Grand Sands Hotel and Birthing Unit’ complete with complimentary champagne on arrival, a continental breakfast and a gift voucher from Holy-Bubs-R-Us.
Not that Mary would have been very interested in brekky or gift vouchers. She would have been too busy browsing Ebay for a Post-Baby-Ab-Buster, catching up with her girlfriends on Facebook and texting her mother (in between contractions).
Joseph, apart from acting as Mary’s ‘birthing coach’ would be checking his mobile for the latest cricket scores, watching the big Nomads v Kings game on the huge flat screen TV and listening to Carols by Candlelight on his iPod.
Oh wait, perhaps that’s not exactly historically accurate. Carols by Candlelight might not have been invented at that stage, given that the subject of the carols was yet to actually arrive. A minor oversight on my part, but suffice to say that Joseph would have had plenty to amuse him (if the imminent arrival of the saviour of the world weren’t enough, that is).
Of course the whole event would have been filmed in digital living colour to ensure that every moment was saved for biblical posterity (movie rights pending) and/or posting on YouTube.
The Three Wise Men (Micko, Stevo and Davo) would have been milling around taking photos with their iPhones and helpfully making e-lists of really useful things to do with Myrrh and Frankincense. And, as no animals are allowed on the premises without EU accreditation, the donkeys and cattle would be banished to the nearby Happy Hoofs Pet and Ghecko Resort. This would be a relief to Mary as they generally make a hell of a racket with all their braying and lowing. Not to mention the stains on the Berber carpet.
And as the big day ends, Mary pops the little one into his crib, cranks up the Bob the Bedouin crib mobile and the Hark the Herald infant intercom. She then phones room service for a gourmet dinner and a good bottle of red.
Joseph enters the date in his Blackberry because he’s lousy at remembering birthdates and anniversaries and they all settle down to, what they hope will be, a reasonably Silent Night.
(2 a.m feedtime notwithstanding).
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