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Semolina coconut lemon slice

This week’s challenge ingredients include:

Cream cheese: I had one rye bagel leftover in the freezer and couldn’t not eat it with a slathering of creamy smear, strawberries and honey. Life is there to be lived and bagels are there to be smeared. Unfortunately, with a lack of bagels, the cream cheese just sat in my fridge.

Half a packet of fine semolina flour: I bought this when I was making vanilla slice from scratch, because I’m fancy like that. I also made another vanilla slice from a packet mix, which seemed to go quicker than my homemade stuff. Probably because my friends are fools who wouldn’t know a good slice if it slapped them in the face. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

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Shredded coconut: This was also a slice ingredient from months back. I like sprinkling this on my yoghurt, but because it was buried under other stuff, I didn’t know I had it and it went uneaten.

Margarine: I’m usually quite an anti-margarine person. I needed this for gingerbread and hid it at the back of the fridge so I wouldn’t have to look at it every time I went for a glass of milk. But eventually I found it and, even though I think it is mediocrity in congealed form, it still deserves to be used rather than chucked in the bin.

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Coconut essence: I honestly hate myself for forgetting I had this stuff; coconut is the best flavour.

Inspiration:

First off, I had to Google just what the heck one can do with semolina. As it turns out, it makes for a nice cake. I stumbled upon one recipe with yoghurt and coconut from someone who just goes by Layla on a website called GimmeDelicous. It’s called basbousa aka harissa and the pictures made it look like the perfect cuppa accompaniment. I of course tweaked it, because I had to work with what I had and I’m a bit of a loose unit like that.

How to do what I did:

Straight off the bat, I went rogue. I decided to use up the cream cheese in place of the yoghurt or sour cream Layla suggested. I figured cream cheese was close enough. I Googled “cream cheese sour cream alternative” and learned that mixing cream cheese with a bit of lemon juice and milk does the trick.

So I tipped exactly 156 grams of cream cheese into my food processor, along with 27 grams of lemon juice (yes, I’m aware that’s not the way to measure liquid, but I was using scales and this just seemed easier than dirtying a measuring jug) and a tablespoon of milk.

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Then I melted 133 grams of margarine in a large mixing bowl in the microwave. The recipe called for two cups of coarse semolina, but I only had one and a half cups of fine semolina, so I added that. I think the yoghurt/sour cream/vague dairy mix and butter measurements were off too, so I didn’t think it would matter too much.

I next added one cup of shredded coconut, a third of a cup of caster sugar and a teaspoon of baking soda and gave it a stir. Next, I added the yoghurt alternative, two tablespoons of coconut essenceand the zest from the lemon I just squeezed.

I gave it a mix and it turned into this weird, airy kind of dough. I pressed it into a slice tin and put it in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for about 30 minutes. You’re supposed to let it go brown but I think that’s because you’re also supposed to make a sugar syrup to drizzle over the top, which keeps it moist. But I like things slightly undercooked and couldn’t be arsed to make a sugar drizzle, so I ripped it out at the first sign of bronzing.

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I quite enjoyed my first piece, but I quickly realised its dryness made very much a slice rather than a cake. I have a feeling more liquid would have changed this but, to be honest, I don’t mind a good dry slice.

I didn’t have any on me, but I reckon topping this with lemon curd would lift it from an average slice you eat like a Chiko roll to a dainty morning tea item you eat off a saucer with a cake fork.

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Six questions

I wrote this yesterday. I could have posted it yesterday too, but I try to honour my Wednesday and Sunday posting schedule (even though I failed to do so on Wednesday). I mean, you could argue that I was spreading the task across two days in order to manufacture a false sense of achievement. If I both wrote and posted this piece yesterday, I would need to do something useful today in order to not feel like a waste of dwindling resources. But by delaying the “publish” part of the equation by one day, I have set myself up with a free kick of feeling of useful with extremely minimal output. 

Yes, you could say that. Because you’d be bang on.

My housemates are away at the moment, so I have the place to myself. I also had the weekend off work, which is exceptionally rare. I was free and uninhibited by the potential judgement I could face by being exposed to other people. I didn’t have to wear shoes or appear effortlessly cool (which actually takes a lot of effort, mind you). So I did what any wild bit of gear my age would do: bought the Saturday paper and interviewed myself like I was a Brisbane celebrity.

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On this particularly loose Saturday morning, I opted for theCourier Mail, which comes with the Q Weekendmagazine. I do enjoy this publication. You get some long-form journalism, a snapshot of what you should be doing to be considered a cool person about Brisbane and you’re encouraged to buy overpriced crockery and statement necklaces (this week it’s a crescent moon one, which really speaks to me at the moment) to fill the dark void deep within your soul. But perhaps my favourite features are the quick little interviews they do with cultural contributors to the river city.  This weekend it was writer, comedian John Safran and junior sous chef at Motion Dining Qian Cao. I fancy myself a bit of a writer, I see myself as a culinary whiz and I find myself sniggering at my own Instagram feed from time to time, so I feel like I am more than qualified to take the same questions as these esteemed professionals.

So I’ve decided to take a few questions from both interviews and weave them together to create a rich tapestry of my self-obsession. Please, enjoy and feel free to play along at home.

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* I am aware that this looks more like an example of cross-stitching than a tapestry, but it’s really hard to convey a tapestry with my skillset, so back off. 

Who inspired you to get into the kitchen? My mother. I didn’t really like her cooking that much and wanted to make food I actually wanted to eat. I know, that sounds pretty rough. So let me clarify in order to make me sound like less of a big meanie.  She does a mean roast, a cracking fruitcake and her Bolognese sauce is pretty bloody good, but she does the same thing over and over and over again. I get bored and like to control things, so I decided to make my own damn food. Also, she steams the arse out of broccoli, which makes for a really unappealing mush. I actually like broccoli, but I didn’t know I liked it until I ate it in the way nature intended: in solid form.

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What was the first dish you ever learnt to cook? Gingerbread, possibly. Or this stuff call “yum yum balls” which used to be on the box of the cocoa powder Mum would buy. It’s kinda like rum balls, but without alcohol, fruit, or much substance. It’s essentially crushed Nice bickies, sweetened condensed milk, cocoa and coconut. Actually, no, I think it was cornflacks. They were also an off-the-pack recipe special, this time from a box of Cornflakes. My sister used to make them a lot. It’s honey, butter and Cornflakes, from memory. Most people call them honeyjoys for some fucked up reason, but I absolutely think cornflacks is a much better name. Because they’re like Cornflakes but not. I’m not saying I would beat anyone up over the cornflacks vs honeyjoys debate, but I reckon I’d get into a pretty heated argument about it.

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What is your show about? Well, I don’t have one yet, but it would definitely be about me. I mean, I plan on writing it about a small town newspaper and base it on my experiences in Armidale and Clifton and would give interviews telling people that it was about showing how lovely and hilarious and infuriating regional life can be, but you better beleeeeeive that’s going to be told in my voice.

What’s next for you? Well, I’m thinking I’m going to crack open a beer and start making some savoury shortbread for an unofficial function I’m having at a friend’s place tonight. But I could also just find myself twirling my hair and staring off at the grass for a while until my neighbours get back and I realise how much of my day I’ve wasted.

Favourite ingredients to work with? Oats. I think I’ve made that pretty clear in recipes past.

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Strangest request you’ve ever had from a diner? I suppose when people ask for no milk when I’m brewing up a cup of tea. Pretty weird, I reckon. Not the kind of person I would leave my children to in my will. I wouldn’t want my offspring being brought up around that.

Ohhhh good lord, I just turned to the back page and sweet baby cheeses there’s a buttload of great questions that come via a lengthier questionnaire with the bloke who’s Australia’s current Bachelor. I’m going to save that for later. Get keen.

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Intersting…

What are your interests?

It’s a bit of a loaded question, isn’t it? I mean, on the surface, it seems like a question about what people do in their spare time. Hobbies and such. Model trains. Horse riding. Making your own kombucha scum blob that lives in your friend and – probably – feeds off your positive energy which it channels into a secret, mysterious scoby resistance until it’s strong enough to stage a global uprising. It’s an innocent enough question if you’re keeping it at a superficial level.

I’ve decided that I probably need to have a few pre-prepared non-concerning answers ready to go in case someone stings me with it, so I don’t come off as the kind of person who I actually am. I mean, it’s not a lie to say that I enjoy cooking, reading, gardening drawing. That’s factually correct. And, sure, it makes me sound like a middle-aged mum from a posh family with a golden labradoodle and a holiday house, but that’s probably enough information one would need if they asked a “what are your interests?” in a small talk context.

But, obviously, there are a lot of other things that interest me. That is to say, there are a lot of other things that hold my interest; that absorb my attention in such a manner that I lose all awareness of time, space and whatever Russell Crowe is banging on about on Twitter.

If I were to be completely and totally honest about my interests, I would need to include the following:

My split ends: I can spend an inordinate amount of time inspecting at the ends of my hair. I mean, split ends make your hair look like you’ve been using them to scrub bathtubs, but I get some serious satisfaction from seeing the damage my careless lifestyle has done to my one beauty. They flare out in stands of twos and threes and, when I’m really lucky, I find a hair with several – yes SEVERAL – ends fanning out like a tiny plant root. This hobby of mine means I’m rarely bored and relish stops at traffic lights.

The piece of glass that has been embedded in my foot for a decade: While helping clean up after my eldest sister’s 21st, I stood on a piece of broken glass. It wasn’t a huge drama but it was more than just a rogue shard, so it warranted a trip to the  medical centre, where they cleaned out the wound and gave me a slightly-larger-than-average bandaid to pop over it. As far I was concerned, the glass had been flushed out. But, some time after the wound had healed, I noticed something too hard to be made from my soft, fleshy body in the scar. I picked at it and, after some dedicated digging, pried out tiny piece of glass. It was a thrilling pursuit and, much to my delight, the glass seems to keep coming to the surface. Even today, the day before my sister’s 31stbirthday, I can pick at my foot and know there’s a reward waiting for me, entombed in my skin.

Myself: Obviously. I mean, I write a personal blog and my favourite pamper day activities are seeing a psychologist to talk about myself. As honest as it would be to say “I’m actually really interested in working out why I can be such a cunt sometimes and seeing if I can blame any of it on formative childhood experiences so I don’t have to take full responsibility for my shithouse personality,” while scooping out a double serving of wombok salad on my paper plate, I’d really have to pick my audience.

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Brown rice risotto

This week’s challenge ingredients include:

A bag of brown rice: I usually buy the microwavable rice because I have extreme performance anxiety when it comes to cooking rice on a stovetop. I currently have bigger issues to tackle than overcoming my fear of cooking rice the old fashioned way, so if I don’t use this in a risotto context, it’s going into a bunch of balloons to be made into stress balls.

A wine bottle filled with frozen chicken stock: Yep, I’m a grown up who makes stock and drinks wine. I mean, I only made stock once and the wine I drink is trash, but still. I made this after roasting a chookie months ago and promptly forgot about it.

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Goat’s cheese that had a questionable tinge to it: I bought one jar of marinated goat’s cheese ages ago and kept the oil once the cheese was gone. I would then buy cheaper cheese and marinate it in the leftover oil, because I’m thrifty like that.

One thawed chicken breast I needed to use before it went bad: I have a terrible habit of overzealously thawing meat when I haven’t properly planned my meals. I’m getting help.

Here’s how to do what I did:

Slice one chicken breast into thin pieces in a vague diagonal motion. Sprinkle a bunch of salt on to a plate and lay the raw chicken atop it and cover with more salt. This is some last-minute tenderising which may or may not do anything, but at least you’re trying.

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Next, slice the white chunk of a leek, going right up until it gets to the mid-green part where the leaves start to fan out. Set aside in a bowl.

Slice one large onion and dice three or four cloves of garlic. Set aside.

Then, slice about 300 grams of mushrooms – I used the white button ones, but I guess you can use any non-poisonous fungi you prefer. Set aside.

By now your chicken should be slightly tenderer than it was before. Usually you need to salt those baes for a few hours, but this recipe takes long enough as it is, so that’s going to have to do.

Heat a large frypan on a medium to high heat, then chuck in 20 grams of butter, letting it melt and brown a little. Drop in a glug of olive oil then a good squeeze of minced garlic from a tube. Once that starts sizzling, lay the chicken in, being careful not to overcrowd the pan, and brown on both sides. Set aside in a bowl so you capture all that garlicky chicken juice.

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Add more butter and oil to the same pan with the crusty chickeny bits before tossing in the whitest bits of leek, garlic and onion. The heat should be low to medium at this point.

Once the onion starts going translucent and soft, add one cup of brown rice, stirring slightly until it also goes translucent. I don’t know if this is important or not, but it was what the Arborio rice packet says to do when you make risotto with that stuff, so I assume it’s the same deal.

Add one cup of stock, stirring gently until all the liquid is absorbed.

Now add all the other leek choppings, along with another cup of stock.

Once that’s absorbed, chuck in those mushies and another three-quarters-of-a-cup of stock because that’s all I had left.

I’m not going to lie to you, I’d started drinking wine by this point and was watching TV, so I covered the pan and let it sit for a while – I can’t say how long because I honestly cannot remember.

Once the rice has soaked that up, add half a cup of cheap red winefrom the fridge. Chuck the lid back on and watch another 20 minutes or so of TV. After that point, the dish should look suspiciously like red wine vomit, bubbling away.

If your rice isn’t soft enough, add more wine to the mix, stir and let sit for another 10 minutes or so. It’s totally fine – brown rice needs its me time, and so do you, honey.

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Once you’re happy with the squishiness of the rice, grab three cubes and a few crumbly dregs of goat’s cheese and stir into the mixture.

Slop the delicious goop into bowls and serve… yourself, after pouring another glass of wine.

If you want to completely recreate the recipe, I recommend enjoying this dish curled up under a blanket with a scented candle burning while watching The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina.

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Cranberry chai drops

In case you missed out on the previous instalment of the never-ending chain of unnecessary and self-indulgent musings, I’ve set myself a challenge to cook stuff using the leftover ingredients I need to clear out of my fridge and pantry. I compared it to Ready, Steady, Cook,except, for some strange reason, no television network is broadcasting it. So I’m giving it to you in written form.

This week’s challenge ingredients include:

Half a jar of cranberry sauce:I used this for Christmas Day snack offerings, which were turkey snags, brie cheese and cranberry sauce shoved into mini dinner rolls. The flavours were all there. It was a classic festive combo that can’t really go wrong… except it wasn’t all that popular. I guess it was because I cooked everything the night before, which meant the cheese melted and then solidified again and the beigeness of the sausages made these things look like decaying finger mini hotdogs. I feel they would have been a hit at a house party at like 1am.

Dried cranberries:I bought these for a homemade stuffing and would eat them sporadically with a handful of nuts, but had gone off them for a while.

Vanilla chai teabags:These were an impulse buy one a grocery run before going to a weekend getaway. I didn’t even open the box on the trip but I eventually tried one and found the vanilla flavouring too… chemical-y.

Important notes:I think the biggest takeaway message from this one is that cranberry sauce is not really a sauce, it’s a soft jam and could easily be spread on toast. But that’s a lot of pieces of toast to dedicate to just getting rid of some cranberry goo, so I decided to clear it out in one fell swoop. The plan was to make jam drops, based on my oaten scone things as the biscuit.

Here’s how to do what I did:

The first thing to do is get one cup of milk – I used cow’s milk but, by all means, use soy or almond or rat milk if you prefer – and tip it into a small saucepan. Then rip the paper off three or four vanilla chai tea bags and add them to the milk. Turn the heat up to a low to medium level, and let the aromas waft in a way that make you feel super wholesome, because there are few things more wholesome than gently warming milk on a stove top.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. I used the fan force setting, but you probably know your oven better than I do, so listen to your gut when it comes to preheating.

Next, get out your food processor and blend three cups of oatsinto a grainy meal. Tip this into a mixing bowl and add three teaspoons of baking soda.

Next, add a teaspoon each of ground cinnamon and nutmeg, because those were the spices listed on the cranberry sauce jar. I also added a nervous shake of allspice into the mix, because I apparently can’t handle a recipe without the stuff.

Then rub in exactly 30 grams of butter into the mix with your fingers. You could probably add more butter, but that was all I had left in the fridge. Obviously, I went out and bought more though, because I can’t actually live without a steady supply of butter on hand.

Next, throw in two tablespoons of brown sugarinto the warm milk until it dissolves.

Tip the milky mix into the bowl, stirring with whatever implement you prefer. I used a spoon, but anything stick-like will do.

Freak out that the mix is far too watery to be clumped into biscuity-balls, and chuck in exactly 63 grams of dried cranberriesand another cup of oats.

Curse yourself for overcorrecting yet again, before crackingan egginto a clear glass, to check for half-formed chick foetuses.

Lightly beat the egg by fishing out a small shell fragment with your finger before stirring it into the mix.

By now, you should have a goop that’s firm but not impossible to manipulate into clumps. If not, you could either add more milk or oats until you get the consistency you want, or just eat the mixture straight from the bowel in front of an episode of Keeping Up Appearances. Who am I to judge?

Roll the mixture into balls and use a small spoon to create little wells in the clumps.

Scoop out the contents of half-a-jar of cranberry sauce, dropping the festive jam into each hole until you’ve used it all up.

Bake for seven minutes before rotating and baking for another 11 minutes. Once they get slightly browned, they have the structural integrity to contain the cranberry sauce and can safely be removed from the oven.

Allow to cool slightly before hoeing right in, because the jam will be pretty hot.

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Ready, steady, clean out the fridge

Originally published by The Clifton Courier July 24

Last time I took a holiday, I prepared a bunch of columns before I left to ensure I could still irritate the fine township of Clifton even while I was out of the country. I wrote a bunch of ramblings that somewhat resembled recipes, which weren’t exactly time sensitive and, therefore, could be described as timeless. Classics even, at a stretch.

This time I plan on employing the same strategy, but with a mundane little twist to spice things up slightly.

I’m moving house before I leave and I have a lot of items on my shelves in the fridge and pantry to clear out before I take off. There are half-finished items that I can’t really justify taking with me to my new digs, but can’t handle throwing away. They’re still good; just opened.

So I’m setting myself a challenge to create appetizing and hopefully entertaining recipes using the stuff I have leftover in my pantry and fridge. It’s kind of like a low-budget Ready, Steady, Cook except I have no time limit and I’m allowed to drink wine while I do it.

So that’s what you’re going to get for the next few weeks, you lucky, lucky duckies.

But before I get into these questionable recipes, I have to acknowledge the ingredients that cold not be saved. These items were in a container I took home with me from Armidale, stored at my parents’ house while I was in Sydney and, for some reason, thought I would use when I moved back to Brisbane. As you can imagine, they are well past their use-by dates. Most of them are half-used, waiting to be turned into health slice or bliss balls or something equally as annoying, but that wasn’t to be.

Bee pollen: Yep, bee pollen. It was, at one stage, one of those super trendy superfood things. It was the kind of stuff influencers used to sprinkle on top of smoothie bowls. I have no idea what it was supposed to be good for or how it was supposed to transform my life, but I thought it would taste kind of honeycomb-y. And despite someone who puffs up like a balloon when stung by a bee and gets hit pretty hard at hay fever season, I thought bee pollen would be a goer. Don’t worry – it didn’t cause an allergic reaction. In fact, it was the opposite; it was extremely underwhelming. It had the texture of Nescafe instant coffee and the taste of old flowers mixed with boring dirt.

Cacao powder: Another superfood thing that was supposed to make smoothies pop. It didn’t. I don’t care what anyone tells you, cacao is not just as good as chocolate. It’s chocolate’s very dull cousin.

Black chia seeds: I would put this in my smoothies, but I never really understood why. They’d always clump up and get stuck at the bottom of my container, so I probably never ingested enough of them for my bod to milk their benefits.

LSA meal: This was ground linseed, sunflower seed and almond meal. I’m not sure why I bought it, but I imagine it was for sprinkling of some kind. According to the packet, it’s high in fibre, so that was obviously the drawcard. I love fibre. Fibre is my jam. But this stuff clearly wasn’t.

White quinoa: I do eat this stuff but I found it very intimidating to cook. I guess because you’re supposed to cook it like rice. I once tried to cook rice in a saucepan and nearly burnt the arse out of the pot. That incident has apparently traumatised me to the point of only ever cooking rice in microwavable sachets. I know, it’s pathetic.

Almond meal: Most of the stuff on this list is just wanky superfood dust that I didn’t like but couldn’t justify throwing away because it was so exxy. But I do like cooking with almond meal; it makes for delicious, dense cakes. I think the problem here was that, because it was covered in packets of crap I was in denial about buying, I simply didn’t see it. It had a weird smell by the time I realised I had it and I had to let it go.

 

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The garage sale

Originally published by The Clifton Courier July 17, 2019

I’ve decided that I need to have a garage sale.

I’m getting ready to go on a cheeky international jaunt with my sister. But before I take off and sully the good name of my country, I also have to move out of my current place.

My lease runs out while I’m away so I’m shifting to a different side of Brisbane where I will have access to more of my mates, almost exclusive use of a bathtub, and may just get away with starting a compost heap in the backyard. I’m really looking forward to it.

This means I won’t have to pay rent while I’m away or lease out my room to some stranger who might not put things back in the exact spot they belong. It’s a real scheduling win.

But this means my final days before I fly out will involve a lot of packing of gear I was supposed to get rid of earlier this year, but was too busy being fabulous/watching Gavin and Stacey to do so.

Now it about weeks out and I have to act.

I’ve managed to sort my large inventory of stuff into two categories: Things I Absolutely Should Not Keep and Things I Probs Don’t Need to Keep. The former needs to go.

I know I have the owner’s bias, but I feel like there’s a bit of a value to these unwanted possessions I’ve collected over the years. I mean, there’s at least $48.60 worth of gear I’m just sittin’ on.

It’s not junk; everything still works. The glasses still hold liquid. The plates are still viable surfaces from which to eat food. And the vast collection of old jeans I’ve cut into high-waisted shorts still make you look just yeah-I’m-dressing-for-myself-not-you-mate enough to allow you to enjoy a filthy $3 basics session with your friends without being bothered.

Surely someone out there wants to pay good money for the weird stuff I’ve amassed.

I don’t really want a bunch of strangers nosing around, judging my life’s possessions and it would be pretty inconvenient for my current housemates to give up the driveway for the morning, but I think a garage sale is the best way to go. People can just rock up, check out the stuff on face value and, hopefully, offer my more than my asking price for the sweet, sweet loot.

I mean, there’s the laziness aspect of not listing items individually but I think that, if I opted for a sale method requiring me to write descriptions for my “stock” I’d be too honest. And while honesty is the best policy, my strand of it is a terrible, terrible marketing strategy. I know this because I tried to sell an armchair when I was in Armidale and got zero takers. Here’s a snippet the ad:

“Like leather but nowhere near as luxurious, this armchair covering makes you question your morals. Not because you’re picturing a calf having its skin peeled, but because you know you nestling in the sweat stains of strangers shouldn’t feel so good.”

See? I’m just not good at sales – I find it very hard to lie and I have a tendency to highlight the negatives even when I’m trying to be positive.

Here’s a sample of the descriptions I’d write for my gear:

Mirror with golden plastic unicorn detailing: This item is completely unnecessary and barely functional, as the unicorn detailing covers much of the mirror. Would recommend for decorative purposes only. Best suited to someone extremely extra with a limited budget and no aversion to tackiness.

Mint green plates with scratch marks: Look, these aren’t special, but they’ll do the job. You’re only eating food off them, aren’t ya? You’re not putting them in a display hutch or anything. Whatta you care what they look like?!

A bunch of tiny bottles: These would have been great for parties like a year ago when mini bottles and paper straws were in, but they’re not all that trendy anymore. Also, I picked them up from the tip shop after they were clearly dumped by a bottle supplier and they didn’t come with lids, so you can’t even seal them. You could probably use them for plants though?

An ex-rental copy of Centre Stage: This movie is extremely cheesy and includes a Jamiroquai song, but I promise you it’s good. My favourite scene is where the ballerinas break in their new shoes.

A marital arts self help book: I don’t understand why I have this and neither will you. I recommend keeping this on your shelf for years before gifting it to your least-favourite cousin in your family secret Santa.

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How to get things done

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 10, 2019

If you want to be really productive at a bunch of things, concentrate on just one thing that you really, really don’t feel like doing.

Because as fabulous as will power and motivation is, the thing that really kicks you into gear is good, old fashioned avoidance.

I’ve just had a super productive afternoon and I have nobody to thank except my ability to put things off.

That thing I kept putting off was writing this column.

Believe it or not, sometimes it’s difficult for me to rant about absolutely nothing of consequence with zero stimulus to provoke me. I know. I usually have a cauldron of rage to rely on when things get super dull, but I wasn’t even able to draw on the repressed anger bubbling away inside me after an extremely minor inconvenience.

I’m pretty annoyed; usually I’m ruminating over something I spin into a yarn. Think of the carols they blast at the supermarket at Christmas – it’s like that but instead of songs about joy and bells and plum-based desserts we never eat, it’s a loop of things like “since when did people start calling ‘utes’ ‘trucks’ – what has our country come to?!” or “yeah, I was a nasty little snot in Grade 9, I absolutely deserve a good toe stubbing”.

But when I sat down to write earlier today, everything shut down.

I stared at the blank screen and my head flooded with the white noise you used to get on analogue television. I couldn’t get anything down.

And this really made me mad, because I wanted to get it done so I could finish the final 20 pages of the Jane Austen book I’ve been binge-reading and find out if the bookish, dignified young heroine shines despite her inferior circumstances and lands the conveniently rich and handsome man of honour. I had no idea which way it would go. I mean, the suspense was killing me.

I wanted so badly to put this column to bed, but I had nothing. So I avoided it.

While I usually just stare at the wall or smooth my hair between by thumbs until I fall into a trance when avoiding something, I decided to get other stuff done instead.

And look, it’s dangerous to say that procrastination is a great strategy for productivity, but it kinda is. I mean, you get a lot of things done… just not the thing you were hoping to get done.

Here’s the stuff I did while I was avoiding writing this column:

A sweaty, sweaty workout: it can be hard to motivate yourself to stay on a treadmill. But for every minute you’re running on a conveyor belt to nowhere, that’s another minute you don’t have to do your assignment. And that’s one heck of a carrot to dangle in front of your sweaty ass.

Unloaded the dishwasher: I didn’t even have to do it, there was another draw completely empty. But when I unload the dishwasher, I can put things away the way I like it. And that’s a victory I cling to.

Made a risotto I didn’t even really feel like: Yep, I opted to cook what might be the most demanding, time-consuming stovetop dish for dinner. I mean, it’s a piece of piss to knock together but you do have to do a lot of stirring and encouraging and hydrating – looking after a sloppy mate going back on the prowl at the pub after a messy breakup. I used brown rice too, which took even longer.

Vacuumed the kitchen: There were a few flakes of onion and garlic peels on the ground and, as a firm believer in a shoes-off household, I feel like you should be able to walk around barefoot without getting crud stuck to your feet.

Vacuumed the rest of the house: Because the vacuum cleaner was already out and if I had to put it away – the worst household chore of them all – it may as well have been worth it.

Mopped the kitchen and my room: Having grown up with a carpeted bedroom, running a mop around my living quarters is a bit of a novelty. I do like the extra zing of cleanliness it adds. And I think that everyone would be a bit better off if I didn’t have carpet in my room – that red ink and latex stain from when I was working on my edgy Year 12 art statement* may have made it look less like someone lost a limb in my room.

* About abortion, no less.

Finished my column: By tricking myself into doing other stuff instead of writing my column, I was able to come up with enough column fodder to write my column.

I feel like a bloody genius.

Please excuse the crassness of my illustrations – I drew them on the plane and didn’t have any water to activate the wonder of my water colour pencils. I just painted them using my fingers and some melting ice from a Starbucks iced tea.

However, I did this while at the Louvre, which makes this shit art… art. Voila!

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This one did not

Leaving on a jet plane

I’m flying to Europe in a few hours and I’m having some thoughts.

Of course, when I say “thoughts”, I mean, confronting jolts of fear that have aftershocks in my guts. I’m not really scared of flying, but I do have some niggling anxieties I feel as though I should get out of my system now, in the safety of my parent’s house in case they manifest into a brain fart that makes me say something that you really shouldn’t say in an airport unless you want to get escorted out by armed officers.

I’ve obviously got the major fears swirling around in my head – plane failure, kidnapping, air pirates – but it’s the tiny finicky details of Euro travel that have me a little jittery such as:

Getting a yuuuge phone bill: I had perhaps one of the most first word nightmares a few weeks ago about this. I don’t really remember the details but I was in Europe having what appeared to a be great time and, at some point, I remember that I didn’t turn dat roaming off my phone. I don’t recall how the rest of the nightmare unfolded after that but I did wake up with my stomach absolutely knotted with fear, fear of an exorbitant phone bill. Like, no one wants huge out of pocket bills, but I feel this one would be one of the hardest to swallow because the blame lies squarely on you and the only benefit you would get from all this data roaming would be being able to see the most up-to-date posts from your distant relatives who enjoy posting life advice with pictures of those little yellow minions for some reason.

Losing my passport: I am genuinely terrified of this. I’ve had my passport in my travel backpack for weeks. I know where it is, but my head isn’t convinced. I’m just going to check it now.

Inadvertently sparking a international terror incident: What if my coldsore cream is also a corrosive substance? What if the jumper I washed yesterday and dried in the wintery wood smoke tests positive for explosives? What if a Facebook group I liked back in my uni days has gone real extremist in their views?

What picture are they going to use if the plane goes down? I don’t take a lot of selfies, but when I do, they’re always shithouse. My Instagram account is mostly pictures of my Dad being… Dad or Mum being sweet or something about tea. I think the most recent one of me where you can see my face is one where I have a pickle up my nostril. I think, if anything happens to me, I’d like for the picture of me shoeless, wearing a wine-socked dress with an armful of sausages in the Bunnings carpark. It’s on my sister’s Instagram account.

If I don’t get arrested or maimed in a crash or decide to change my identity, I’ll try my best to post old columns regularly. But please don’t hold it against me if I’m too busy being tres fabulous to post stuff.

Catchya!

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This one did not, Three things

Three things I wanted to do but didn’t

On my desktop have several – SEVERAL! – Word documents with half-baked column ideas I’ve abandoned but pledged to return to. One day, they’ll come in handy, I tell myself. One day, when I’m really stuck, I’ll use them.

Well, today I was really stuck.

I was supposed to post something yesterday, but I went home from work sick. I’d been so productive the last few days that I think I just conked out. I felt like an over-steamed stalk of broccolini – limp, soggy and probably not who you’d want to see behind the wheel of heavy machinery.

I managed to walk gentle slope home, where I sluggishly peeled off my street clothes and cocooned myself in the comfort of my musky pyjamas. I tried to muster the willpower to post something on this blog, but I just couldn’t. After catching up on The Handmaid’s Tale and two episodes of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, I couldn’t even handle that. I  started watching TV. Oh yeah, like actual television, as in the ridge-didge, free to air TV, not a streaming service. I yearned for something comfortable and familiar and with less definition. Thankfully, The Nanny came on.

While today I perked back up again in the morning, I felt as though I hit a wall this evening. I wouldn’t say full over-steamed brocc, but at least one that’s been sitting out a little too long. I’m no good. But I wanted to post something. And not just a reheated column, but something new. Some fresh content.

But you wouldn’t trust a wilting vegetable to have much personality, even if it is a trendy hybrid that Paris beautifully with salmon. I couldn’t exactly go composing something searing or sassy in that state.

So I decided to try to pilfer my desktop for some half-baked ideas that could quickly churn into something passable as a post. Not only would I have content but I would be clearing my desktop of clutter – and a to-do list double whammy like that might just be the spark I need to get me through the next few days.

What I found was a document titled “goals I have for myself”. I remember thinking I would continue to add to this list, but I never got around to it. That seems to be a theme going on here.

See a koala: There’s a nature reserve near my place which is apparently crawling with koalas. A bloke I spoke to once told me he’d seen them like 60 times over the space of a few years. I decided that I wanted to see a koala and aimed to go bush walkin’ like once a week until I achieve my dream. I haven’t been in months. I’ve been busy?

Get my hat looking all scrubby for next year: The Clifton Show has an old hat section where people enter their character-stained hats. They all told stories of long days, lewse nights and a whole lot of adventure. I wanted to have a hat like that. I wanted to live a life where my headgear gets reflects my wild ways. However, in the months since I made this pledge, I haven’t worn my hat once. I haven’t filled it with biodegradable glitter for sparkle showers or used it as an ice bucket for tinnies or even worn it in a private chlorinated pool. I’m a disgrace.

Watch Lemonade: I mean, I know the general storyline – infidelity, anger, gold dresses, baseball bats, empowerment and all that. I know the songs. I know Beyonce and Jay Z are still together. But I wanted the full Lemonade experience. Meanwhile, Beyonce has released another album, birth two offspring, rented out the Louvre and voiced a cartoon character and I still haven’t caught up.

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