I’ve been mute for 3 days so far. Out of the blue laryngitis has struck and I can’t get above a whisper.
My children have been most supportive.
“Mum, I’m going out tonight,” said Evan16 on Saturday afternoon. “Yell if it’s not ok…”
“My, the house is so nice and quiet,” observed Tom21 on Saturday morning. A little later on he was talking to me, then said, “I love this. I can talk at you and you have to listen. You can’t say a thing to disagree with me.”
I had to get Viktoria, one of my team, to do a demo for a woman I work with, while I just sat there and nodded as she spoke. On Sunday I was meant to teach a class of new consultants, but I had to get another group leader to do it. Again, I just sat and nodded as she spoke, occasionally springing up to write something on the white board if I felt it needed saying. Or writing.
I feel perfectly fine. I went to the doctor and she said it was nothing but laryngitis and I’d simply have to wait for my voice to come back. I cough now and then, but other than that you wouldn’t notice anything different, apart from the extreme lack of conversation.
I was in two minds as to whether I should go to work, but I didn’t know how long this would last and I’d scheduled two out of my five periods as film classes anyway, so I went along hoping for the best. With each class I’d walk up to the room. Kids would say, “Hi Ms Frogdancer,:”and I’d nod and smile. Then, once we were in, I’d write on the board, “I have totally lost my voice. We’ll mark the roll with you calling out your names in order of the roll, then we’ll start the class.”
I was pretty amazed. Even my year 9 class, who are normally pretty ratty, were fantastically well behaved. Everyone kept the noise down and did as they were told. I tell you, I teach at a fabulous school. The kids are wonderful. (And I’m not just saying this because my kids also go here!)
I’m here now at 5PM, sipping from a medicinal glass of red and wondering when I’ll be able to talk again. In some ways it’s been nice to be silent, but when someone says something and I have THE BEST witty comeback to say, it’s killing me to have to swallow it and say nothing.
Learn from my misfortune. Go to a loved one and say something funny. Do it while you still can…
Thermomix recipes: Capsicum sorbet and Basil Sorbet One of the newer consultants in our branch is from France and she went back there recently for a quick holiday. While she was there she atended a cooking class and saw how to make these these. I haven’t yet tasted the capsicum one, as I was so busy serving that it all went before I could try it, but I had two lots of the basil one. OMG. So good. I love basil.
By gum I’m enjoying making sourdough! Yvonne will probably be horrified to read this, but I’m not following the rising times for the dough and (so far) it seems to be working out ok.
I made a batch of the dough and left it to do its thing in an oiled bowl with the bread mat on top while I went to see a friend for lunch and then came home and had a nanna nap. I was meaning to make some bread to go with dinner, but that didn’t end up happening. I had an inexplicably lazy day yesterday. At about 5PM I looked at the dough, punched it down (it hadn’t risen very much) and then poured some Shiraz and left it to do its thing overnight. By the way, the shiraz was for me, not for the bread.
In the morning it had risen to the top of the very large bowl and was threatening to take over the world. I divided it in three, put two lots into loaf tins and decided to let them rise for a third time (why not? Let’s see what happens), and I threw the third lot onto a baking tray and made a very flattish free form loaf and threw it into the oven at 220C.
Wasn’t sure if it’d rise, but it rose like a rocket.
Not the best photo, but you can see how much the bread rose by the split in the side. I just had a couple of slices and it’s lovely. The chewy crust, the soft insides… though it still doesn’t taste much of the ‘sour’ taste, which is mystifying me a bit. With a starter that I’ve had going since January (I think) and such a long rise time, you’d think there’d be more of a sourdough tang. Still, it’s a darned nice loaf of bread anyway. I don’t know if the other two loaves will improve by a third rise but it can’t hurt to find out.
Please watch this. It makes me happy as a reader and a teacher.
And now to the lentils! I first saw this lentil bolognese recipe 18 months ago and filed it away for future reference. I popped it on the list of thermomix recipes here and intended to try it Very Very soon. Well, better late than never. As part of my inexplicably lazy day yesterday I didn’t get to go to Aldi, so there was a limited amount of inspiration for dinner. I hopped onto this blog and scrolled through the recipes and came to the aforementioned lentil bolognese. I had all the ingredients, it was quick and was able to be made around The Block’s room reveal episode, so I launched into it. The only thing I added was a dried chilli that I let air-dry from the garden, because we’re used to that little extra hotness when we have bolognese.
Oh my word! It was YUM. I served it over brown rice and it filled the 5 of us up. Really tasty, very healthy, cheap as chips and filling. What more can you ask for? And so versatile… lasagne, tacos, tortillas, pasta…. the list goes on. This is now on permanent rotation in the Frogdancer household, particularly as I bought a 5kg bag of red lentils a year or two ago and I still have about half of them left. I love it when we can eat out of the pantry and garden and it costs us practically nothing. I was a very happy girl last night.
Thermomix Recipe: Almond Butter and Apple cookies. Sounds easy, tasty and reasonably good for you. I wonder if the boys have eaten all the apples?
Look at this mysterious object! It’s a lemonade from my lemonade tree in the chook pen. I bought the tree from one of my forced trips to Ceres when David19 was attending a seminar at the Distance Ed school all the way over in the unreasonable suburb of North whatever-it-is and ever since it started sprouting these fruits I’ve been wondering when to pick them. They stayed green for MONTHS, but suddenly with the drop of temperature they went yellow. My enormous intellect is telling me that it’s a sign….
I wonder what they taste like?
Here’s a chook, just to prove I still have them. All but one came out to greet me this morning. I figure Mrs Crankypants is either broody or dead. I didn’t have my chook run shoes on so I wasn’t going to go in and check. Later when I muck out the hen house I’ll find out. When she’s broody she’s even crankier than ever, so I’m not sure which outcome I’m hoping for. Is that a bit selfish?
Here’s my next mulberry crop. I ate the whole crop just after I took this photo. It’s still in a little pot on my front porch, but maybe by next Spring it’ll be planted…?
R
Ryan18 came staggering out a few days ago, having stayed up late to watch ‘Game of Thrones’ on his computer. He knows I haven’t seen this series, but he also knows I’ve read all the novels. I had to ask a few delicate questions to see where the storyline was up to, because there’s nothing worse than being a spoiler, but we reached an understanding and then the conversation was ON!!! I’m so glad my offspring are old enough to talk about REAL lit. Even if they get that lit from HBO and a computer screen.
Last weekend I made sourdough bread using this recipethat my new customer Yvonne sent in the comments. It was delicious. (Hers is still better than mine, but I’ll get there!) I’ve just started step one again this morning. It’s a lot of breadmix and the thermomix needed some manual help with the stirring, but now it’ll all be fine. I think Yvonne halves the mixture when she makes hers, but my boys are far bigger and hungrier than her family! Evan16 will be rapt that I’ve started the whole sourdough process. He’s getting right into it, but we’re finding that time constraints means midweek sourdough making is a bit too much of an ask. It’s turning into a weekend pursuit in the Frogdancer house. I think there’ll be a hearty soup or stew to go with the bread tonight, if I can keep one loaf away from the hoardes of barbarians I spawned. It’s like watching an army foraging off the land as they come into the kitchen looking for snacks. Nothing edible remains. Except fruit. Even then the fruit bowl isn’t always left untouched…
Here’s my Italian parsley crop under the lemon tree in the front yard. I have pots of parsley growing as well, but this little patch has really taken off. It’s not my favourite, though.
This is. A seed from Blogless Sandy’s parsley took root and grew in a crack in the concrete. Somehow, I like the attitude of life against the odds. Plus it tastes good when I’m watering the pots in this corner.
For your listening pleasure: the vocal track from ‘Under Pressure’ with David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. Fantastic.
Look Bek! I have 10 or 11 saffron bulbs coming up now.
Received a text while I was at the 12 months interest free customer’s house a couple of nights ago. It was from another customer who bought back in January. She has a 3 year old moppet who is as cute as a button. Here’s the text:
“Frogdancer, I’m peeing my pants laughing. I just sent Annie to the naughty corner and said, “Right, you’re there for three minutes” and she stomps off and goes, “on speed 2?”
This sad looking wicking box is an experiment. It’s my lemon balm box. It was looking very manky towards the end of summer so I cut it back and then buried most of the cut-back bits under piles of compost, as the soil had compacted over the year that the lemon balm had been in there. Bev told me that lemon balm was as tough as old boots, so I thought I’d see if it would push up through the compost and regenerate. I didn’t want to lose my lemon balm altogether though, (Bev gave it to me when we first went to her food forest; it has sentimental value), so I left a couple of sticky-up bits towards the sides. You can see that the lemon balm is growing thickly around the sides now, but nothing has come up on the middle. This wicking box is going to look a bit like the top of a monk’s head come Summer time.
Finally, my over-planted wicking box full of silver beet. I know I’ve put too many plants in here, but I figure that if I keep on pruning them they’ll be fine. I came out here last night in the dark and picked some leaves to use on our home-made pizzas. I couldn’t see a thing and had to pick the leaves by touch. In the harsh light of morning it all looks a bit sad, but they’ll bounce back with a bit of worm-wee tea!
Oh!! Almost forgot to tell you. I did an update of my grocery spending spreadsheet. From Jan 1 – May 31 my average weekly spend has been $100.05. This includes everything from the supermarket, butcher, feed store (hens) and takeaway. Pretty pleased with this. The spreadsheet also helpfully informed me that if I spent nothing else on food for the rest of the year, my average weekly spend would be $44 or thereabouts. I floated the idea past the boys but they didn’t seem all that keen to jump on board….
Thermomix recipe: Leftover Almond meal. For those planning on making the almond milk from the link I left last time, how about making almond flour with the leftovers? That’s what I love about the thermomix: no waste! This post also has a link to masses of recipes you can make with the almond flour, including some paleo dishes. Sadly, not a thermomix blog but easy enough to adapt. Enjoy!
Argh!!! I put in the photo and the thermomix recipe and I was all set to write something, but then the phone went and it was a woman wanting to buy a thermomix on the 12 months interest free (which closes on Monday.) Well, what was I to do??? It would’ve been rude to put her off. Now I’ve got 5 minutes to get out of the house, so I’ll post this flimsy thing, hoping for the time over the long weekend to write a really meaty post, full of triumph, heartbreak and the joy of owning chickens.
Given this, I must look like something the cat’s dragged in. Exam time. Reports time. The business is hotting up. It’s all go! go! go!
Not that I’m complaining. Life’s pretty interesting when it’s busy.
My year 9 classes had their exam yesterday so I settled down at my desk after lunch to start ploughing through them. Exam marking can be pretty tedious but the upside is that every now and then someone will write something that makes you laugh. Imagine a roomful of teachers quietly reading exam papers, pens in hands ticking/crossing/writing spelling corrections in total silence… then every now and then someone will give a guffaw or a chuckle and then share.
My contribution? The year 9s had to analyse a piece of persuasive writing and one of the earliest tasks on the exam was to correctly identify which sort of persuasive writing it was. According to one of my students, it was a letter to the auditor.
(Well, as one of my colleagues said when I read it aloud, “It IS tax time!!”)
This was the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning.
I had the afternoon off today. I left work and it was raining. So I swung by the supermarket and bought the fixin’s for tomorrow morning’s demo, then came home and switched on the heater and read the rest of the last L.M. Montgomery novel she ever wrote, “The Blythes Are Quoted.” Then I made a few phone calls and cuddled the cat. A perfect end to the day would be never having to set foot outside till I leave for the demo tomorrow, but Ryan18 has a guitar lesson at 5.30 and the chooks need more pellets so I’ll have to drag myself out into the cold again. (Hmmm… maybe a quick nanna nap might be in order before I leave?)
Thermomix Recipe: Risotto Arrabbiata (or Ham and Tomato risotto)
I made this before my team meeting on Monday night and the boys DEVOURED it. There was a smidgeon left in the thermoserver so I had it for lunch the next day. So good. I made mine with 280g ham instead of the bacon, because that’s what I had in the freezer from the Christmas hams I cut up and freeze every January.
I have to confess that this tickles me a lot more than it should. It’s nonsensical really. Who cares if a bottle of perfume gets fully used up?
As it turns out… I do. I’ve never forgotten visiting someone years ago and seeing a basket FULL of opened perfume bottles in her bedroom. There must have been about 20 of them in there. She said that she used them according to the mood she was in, which on one level I understood… but it was the sheer number and waste that snagged in my mind! There’s no way she’d use any of them up and it seemed a bit ridiculous to me. Use 3 or 4 – not 20!
I’ve always had one, or at the most two, perfume bottles on the go. When they started to get low, I’d pass them across to my sister to give to the girls. They could have fun spritzing themselves with French perfume and I could get started on a new scent. But in the last couple of years my sister has taken the girls overseas a couple of times so I assume they’ve now got their own duty-free perfume they’re using, so I kept on going with this one… the last perfume from Phuket.
It began to be a bit of a quest. I’d spray it on every morning then look at the level in the bottle. How long would it be till it’s gone? Would I get another month? Fortnight?Is it against the rules to put an extra spray of scent on? Hey…. I find my fun where I can, ok?
Anyway, it won’t be long now! And once the Allure is used up I have a choice. Mum and Dad gave me some Elizabeth Taylor ‘Diamonds and Sapphires’ perfume the last time they went to Bali. I bought some Chanel no 5 when I was in Honk Kong. It’s still in the bag.
Which one do I open????
(And by the way… the ‘Allure’ perfume is guilty of false advertising. I’ve been using it for a couple of years and I’m STILL single! It hasn’t lured anyone in!!!! Am slightly outraged by this fact….)
Molly doesn’t care. She’s taken to sleeping in the clean washing basket by the back door. Just the thing for an old lady! She’s warm and snug and she gets to keep an eye on what’s going on.
The year 7s and 8s are doing wide reading assignments at the moment… how much fun would it be to have them select a book like this and have them read it?
Want to book a Thermomix Demo anywhere in Australia?
Feel free to contact me on frogdancer01@hotmail.com
If you live close enough; I'll come and do the demo for you. If you live far away from me, I can put you in touch with a consultant in your area.
Also feel free to talk to me about becoming a consultant. I'm happy to show you want it all entails and to help you if you feel it's the business for you. Personally... I love it!
