Originally published by The Clifton Courier, August 12, 2020

Last time, I wrote about making butter. I cut myself off half way because of word limit reasons. I jump back into the journey about halfway, making reference to the notes I was keeping along the way:

I’d written a time stamp at 11.25pm, but underneath it was blank. I think this was because I was lost in the cream.

You know in fantasy movies when mystical priestesses look into the fire and they can see the future? When they see messages from the sprit world in the flames?

That’s what I was looking for.

The beige mass kept changing its form with the rotations of the beaters, but the folds never morphed into formations with meanings I could comprehend.

It had only been about 10 minutes, so I knew I had to be patient; absolution was coming.

11.30 stiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiil cream

who ami what am i?

what os yellow?

After 15 minutes, I had expected to see some change in the cream. To see some yellowing. Something. Anything.

I was losing faith, you see. I was confused. Sometimes I thought I saw a glint of yellow in the cream, but the bowl was yellow and it was possible the yellowing I was seeing was a mere reflection of the bowl. A milky mirage. I had my doubts. About everything. What I was doing. Why I was doing it. Just who the heck I thought I was. It think it was about here when reality started to slip from my grasp.

The next entry is not time stamped, but it’s clear this is when I noticed the POWER BOOSTER button the mixer. I figured it was worth a try.

The roar of the mixer was immense, but the effect was minimal.

I think the only way to properly document the passage of time from here in is to provide my raw notes, which describe a descent into madness in just 38 words:

11.37 STILL NOT BUTTER

11;44 WHAT THE F—

11.47 OI MATE

11.52 THIS IS A JOKE

I HAVE A DAY TO GET ON WITH HERE

11.58 AND IT IS ONLY JUST BECOMING UNPLEASANT CREAM

12.03

OI MATE NAH

At this point it had been nearly 45 minutes of beating at still no butter.

I’d lost faith. I’d posted video of my progress on Instagram and I was getting messages of concern. One friend told me her devastating tale of futility in trying to whip unwhipabble cream. Another asked if it was low fat or UHT cream.

The container said “no less than 35% fat”. This shouldn’t be happening, I knew it.

But my housemate told me I’d come too far now, I may as well keep going.

Something in me snapped and I removed the cream bowl from the bigger ice bowl to get a better grip. I started beating furiously with the POWER BOOSTER function. Flecks of dairy flew around the room. The fury was palpable.

Then, at 12.13, the first signs of splitting appeared.

Ready to finish it, to end it all, I powered on and suddenly there were enough clumps to lay my workhorse of a mixer aside.

Heaving and hand still buzzing with phantom vibrations induced by handling an overworked mixer motor for nearly an hour, I scrunched the lumps into a pale yellow ball. At this point it was 12.16.

I put the lump in a sieve sat it over a bowl and rushed into my room for a video session with my psychologist. The session obviously was not set up with the intention of unpacking the ordeal of butter making, but turned out to be an extremely well-timed opportunity to examine where I was at mental-health-wise.

After a stiff cup of tea and a good talking to, I salted the butter via some therapeutic hand squeezing and Instagrammed my hard-fought victory.

It’s only now that I’ve stopped and reflected on my long, tormented journey.

Now, I had thought my tiny mixer was the reason for the lengthy butter making process/ordeal. I thought that it didn’t compare to the power of the large standalone mixers Father Vlad and Todd had. But as I sat down to write this, I started to question my whizbang ice bowl method. I just Googled whether you should keep the cream cold to make butter. And here’s the first line of text that came up:

“If you make butter with cold cream, it still works fine but will take considerably longer to separate.”

I think I need another cup of tea.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, August 5, 2020

I recently made my own butter.

I’d watched a YouTube video of a guy called Todd explaining how to do it. And, look, you don’t really need a recipe for it.

It’s just mixing cream. That’s literally all it is.

This Todd fellow said it would take between 15 and 20 minutes of mixing until the cream splits and then you’re left with gunk and juices – which is to say, buttermilk and clumps of butter. You then yank the butter clumps out of the cloudy water and squeeze it into a ball. Then you change the mixing method slightly to squeeze the buttermilk out of the butter so it doesn’t go rancid.

But Todd, as helpful as his video was, didn’t say anything about salt.

I’m a big believer in salted butter. Unsalted butter is deeply disappointing, devoid of soul and, in my eyes, nothing short of an abomination.

So looked around for advice on when to introduce salt to the mix.

Thankfully, my answer came in the form of the Orthodox Christian Cooking Show. You could say it was a higher being guiding me to that particular video, but you could also say the video’s title contained the right combination of key words to be given top billing in my Google search enquiry.

Father Vlad tried making butter in the same way Todd did, working the salt in at the end. He also tried adding the salt to the cream at the very beginning, but found the salt sided with the buttermilk and abandoned the actual butter. His conclusion was that adding the salt at the end was the best method.

So, armed with the wisdom of Todd and Father Vlad, I set about my quest.

I decided to take notes of the process. But my notes look like an edgy, angry form of contemporary poetry. I also recorded some videos, which could be likened to performance art.

So what’s below is not a recipe, but a creative journey I embarked on. There will be times when I refer to my notes, which will be sprinkled in here and there in an italicised font. The notes are time stamped, because when I set out to make this, I wanted to know roughly how long it took me.

Here goes:

I knew it could take a little more time for me to make my butter because while both my buttery mentors had large, powerful standing mixers, I had a little electric hand mixer with mini whisks.

So instead of sentencing myself to standing all that time in the kitchen, I grabbed an extension cord to allow me to use the mixer while seated on the lounge room floor and got myself comfy. I read something in the comments about keeping things cold, so I grabbed a large bowl, put some ice in the bottom with a bit of water, then put a smaller bowl inside that bowl. Then I tipped the cream into that smaller bowl and began to mix.

It didn’t take long until the cream got to that delightful whipped state. You know, the pillowy peaks that look so soft you want to cocoon yourself inside them like a cherub sleeping on a cloud (except your body heat would quickly melt the cream, making you all sticky and embedding your skin with a musty, hot milk smell).

I was thrilled to discover the bowl with the cream in it was spinning on its own accord in the ice water bath I’d made with the bigger bowl, meaning I didn’t have to spin the bowl to make sure all the cream was being mixed evenly. I felt like a kind of a genius, actually. Rather than having to splash out on a mixer that rotated the bowl for even stirring, I had created a low-fi thrifty version.

My first note was recorded at 11.17am.

By this point it had been a few minutes and I was staring down the barrel of the mixers, seeing the bottom of the yellow bowl come into view for a fraction of a second between rotations. It was hypnotising, but my hair falling dangerously close to the whisks gave me visions of being scalped by a kitchen utensil, which soon pulled me out of my whippy stupor.

11.21 stiiiiiiill cream

At this point, I wasn’t expecting the cream to be butter, but I was hoping for a bit of reassurance I was on the right track.

I looked into the bowl of white clouds looking for answers. I wanted to see the whirls of cream twist and whirl into a sign.

But all I saw was cream.

Tune in next week to see how all this pans out.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 20, 2020

Ok, so if last week’s column didn’t make me seem like an… interesting person to live with*, this one might make that clear.

* I mean, I’m not always Housemate of the Week, but I AM technically always Tenant of the Week… because my housemates are also my landlords and  I’m their only tenant. 

I was talking/ranting about the volume numbers on TVs and radios and other things of that digital nature. Basically, the number HAD to be either a multiple of five or an even number.

And, look, I thought there was a bunch of other people who think like that, but now that I’m thinking about it, the only people I know who do that too are very closely connected with my family. This makes me think that perhaps my family has infiltrated their brain to influence their behaviour. I remember having this conversation with a friend about why she did it and she was like “oh, because you girls do it”. It’s obviously quite concerning that we could have that much influence, but also interesting that if we had such influence, this is how we chose to wield that power.

Anyway, there’s a few other related behaviours that I’ve noticed I engage in which might fall under this “it sounds like it’s not a big deal but it actually is a big deal, thank you very much” umbrella.

Clearing the time off the microwave clock once you remove your food: Failing to do this just seems quite reckless to me. Say you put something in the microwave for a minute but take it out after 46 seconds. You’re left with 14 seconds on the clock. It looks like that microwave has unfinished business. It looks like you’ve removed your item from the microwave prematurely for stirring purposes and you intend to put it back in for the remaining 14 seconds. But you don’t. You’re done with the microwave. But you don’t let it know. You just leave it there, with 14 seconds to go. I mean, isn’t that hurtful and confusing for the microwave? And what about the next person who comes to use the microwave? They have to clean up your digital clock mess. I mean, they either have to wipe those remaining 14 seconds or add them to their total cooking time. No. I think once you’ve finished with the microwave, you close the loop, clear the clock and let everyone move on with their lives.

The toilet lid must always be down: I’ve spoken about this before and I will speak about it again, but you gotta contain the filth of a toilet by shutting the lid when you flush. I’m going to introduce you to something which you might wish you’ve never heard of: toilet plume. It’s a term that describes the invisible vortex of particles that shoots up into the air when a toilet is flushed. And because there’s a whole lot of… yuck that goes into the toilet, it’s pretty sickening to imagine tiny particles of that yuck spewing out of the dunny inside this plume of air. This is especially horrifying if the toilet is in the same room as the bathroom, and you picture the yuck particles landing surfaces throughout the room. I mean, that means your innocent toothbrush could be sitting on the sink minding its own business and be hit with an invisible wave of yuck. I know shutting the lid is an extra step in an already laborious process, but I think the two seconds it takes to shut the lid is absolutely worth it.

You have to wash up as you go: This isn’t so much about being anal, it’s about avoiding work later on. I mean, I really don’t enjoy washing up. I will significantly alter my methods to avoid creating more washing up. But I know that dirty dishes are unavoidable. So I make a real effort to clean things as I go when I’m cooking a meal. Because once I sit down and tuck into a bowl of yum, I want to be able to fully relax. I don’t want to have the knowledge that there’s a sink full of washing up waiting for me once my eating is done. I want to be able to forget that dirty dishes are a fact of life and that we’re all on a never ending cycle of preparing food and cleaning up for all eternity. So I do tend to take over the whole kitchen when I cook and will clean any dishes in sight while waiting for my food to cook, which can come off as quite passive aggressive when your housemates’ dishes are in the mix. Thankfully, they’re well-versed in my quirks and, as far as I know, don’t take it personally. They also haven’t asked me to move out yet, so I think I’m justified in saying that I “seem like an… interesting person to live with” as opposed to “seem like a nightmare to live with”.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 22 , 2020

I’m not a particularly superstitious person.

I’ll walk under ladders. I’ll open umbrellas inside. I mean, I won’t crack a mirror because I don’t want to release the spirit of the demon entombed inside it and unleash evil in the world, but that’s got nothing to do with keeping bad luck at bay.

I mean, I’m already pretty lucky – I was born in Australia and just so happened to be cut out of a woman who was already in a great, loving family and, despite my middle name being a little less than trendy, I think I ended up with the best name out of all my sisters (however, I was recently informed by someone who read an alarming article forecasting that Danielle would become the Karen of 20 years from now because there’s so many Danielles out there around my age – and me having a double N would be extra Karen energy because I would sassily say “ah, actually sweetie, it’s a double N”).

I’ve never won a meat tray, but I know I’m a lucky person. So when I do things that could be considered superstitious, it’s not so much about luck.

It’s something I can’t quite put my finger on.

It’s a bit about my upbringing. It’s a bit about habit. It’s also something that is best explained by quoting one of the greatest fictional legal minds this country has ever seen: it’s the vibe of the thing.

* Yeah, so I used a new pen for the drawings and I shan’t be using it again. In case it’s not crystal clear to you, this book says “Australia’s constitution: It’s the vibe of the thing!”

Some people might think that my insistence on having volume settings on either even numbers of multiples of five is superstitious. I mean, I get quite agitated when I’m in the same room as someone who turns up a TV and leaves the volume on some heathen number like 27 or 19.

It makes my skin crawl.

If I don’t know the person that well and am trying to slowly reveal my true self to them in gradual form, I won’t spook them by speaking up. I’d prefer for my true ways to encroach on them bit by bit so they don’t realise what they’re dealing with until they’re in too deep – like a slowly rising tide creeping up on an innocent sand castle just trying to live its life.

But it’s also very, very hard to just leave the volume on that disgusting number.

I can feel that 27. It screams inside my head. It’s like tiny hermit crabs scuttling around angrily under my skin.

I mean, when it’s just me in control of remotes or dials, I adjust the number to be either a multiple of five or an even number without thinking. It’s hardwired into my brain to the point that I don’t notice it when I’m on my own.

It’s pure habit.

And it’s only when I’m with someone who doesn’t confirm to this way of thinking that it becomes obvious to me.

I try to remember why I’m this way, because it feels like it’s always been part of me. I have it on good authority that one’s brain doesn’t stop maturing until about 25 so now my brain is hard and brittle, like cheap old plastic cup left out in the weather for a few months. But when I was younger, my thought cauldron was soft and malleable, ripe for moulding by guiding hands. Both fortunately and unfortunately, those hands were often those of my eldest sister.

She was always bringing home glamorous cool girl ideas to pass on to us girls – crimped hair; saying “talk to the hand” with a sassy roll of the wrist; Hanson. I owe her a lot.

I have a feeling she picked this up somewhere from one of her cool Year Seven friends and insisted on enforcing a strict evens or fives regime in the Maguire household. And, just like the Hanson poster she glued to her bedroom wall, it stuck.

But now I think it’s more than just coercion converted into habit.

Because I like the vibe of fives and even numbers.

Five is a fantastic number and it’s everywhere you look: five senses, five vowels, five Spice Girls (Victoria Beckham may not have gone on the last tour, but she’ll always be a Spice Girl in my heart). And even numbers just work. You divide them up and they’re never alone. There’s always a partner for the other number.

Odd numbers – besides fives – just feel wrong. Chaotic, even. I don’t know how to explain it, but odd numbers just seem like dodgy people.

Of course, you can’t explain this to someone you don’t really know that well, so it’s best just to enforce strict control over volume settings at all times. I mean, they may think you have control issues, but that’s clearly much better than the truth.