Family Dinner

Fun times at Superbowl with the Urban Family. Great food, copious amounts of wine and best friends ever.

xo

PS Thanks N for the photos!

A Modern Magical Fairy Tale.

Get comfy my children, I’m going to tell you a story of true magic.

Once upon a time in a slightly grungy city in Australia there lived a young woman called Katie. She was a self confessed trashbag who liked a drink, loved music and had a penchant for anything that made her feel passionate. Most of the time she was a happy girl, she had a family in a sunny faraway land and another urban adopted family that both loved her. But sometimes she felt discontented with hopeless emptiness of life, mostly when she had been cooped up at home too long avoiding the world and procrastinating doing things that needed to be done. Other times Katie saw glimmers of magic.

One May night not so long ago when the sun had sunk behind the horizon early in the evening and there was the sharp chill of winter in the air, Katie felt that magic of the world. She ventured out of her cosy little wooden house filled with her favourite things and into the seedy underbelly of the city. In this part of the world there was a heaviness in the air and the streets seemed darker than they should in the glow of the buzzing nightlife woven throughout. Some people feared this part of the city, others didn’t understand it and some downright detested everything it stood for. But Katie felt more at home there every time she visited, over the years she came to even think that she belonged in this part of the world.

On this night and on this evening her trip into the shadowy part of town took her to a dimly lit bar decorated with crudely painted brick walls adorned with Persian rugs and a long silver bar with specials written behind it in white chalk, stark on black. Katie was there on a very special mission, although she didn’t know it at the time.

There was a band of eccentric musicians set to perform and their posse of family, lovers and friends had come to hear the magic bleed from their instruments. The band and their band of misfit followers had all been busy with their collectively respectable lives and had not seen each other for many months. As she affectionately greeted her friends, Katie felt enveloped into the warm arms of familiarity, as if greeting long lost loved ones.

Together they drank and talked away the hour before the band took the stage. They laughed at stories of broken hearts and failed fishing trips, congratulated those preparing to make grand public declarations of their love for each other and caught up on all the news in between. Katie revelled in the company of her friends and the marvelled at their generosity when she tasted the magic of a scotch handed to her.

As the first notes of the band’s opening song resonated down the long, narrow room, Katie felt overcome with a familiar flood of joy. She has seen the band perform countless times before, in good venues and bad, on nights when guitars were out of tune and nights when everything went perfectly, but she had never seen them play like they did that night. Their songs were injected with new energy, some having being rearranged, while other were simply staple classics. The five on stage each radiated with elation at playing their creations to an adoring crowd, dancing and jumping and cheering along with the music.

Katie was lucky, she had felt moments of magic many times in her life. But as she clumsily danced to the music and sung along with the lyrics, aware that she was probably uttering the wrong words at times, she knew she was watching magic appear right before her eyes.

As the clock struck over into the wee hours, the magic continued to linger. It shimmered in the world until the last of the Alibrandi family closed their eyes at nights’ end, then it evaporated into each of their hearts, where that magical night will live forever.

Or at least until they all come together again.

The End.

xo

PS Photos borrowed from Alibrandi's Facebook page. Thanks guys :)

Vegan Bolognaise = Vegolonaise!

I'm new to this vegetarian thing. I'm not a pure vego, unlike one of my friends who was born and raised without meat and has never even tasted the deliciousness of roast lamb or BBQ pork buns. My other fellow vego/vegan friends are all much more sensitive than I am and after watching Earthlings feel they could never, EVER have another animal's death on their conscience. I feel guilty even admitting this: but sometimes I really miss meat.

I never allow myself to say this out loud. Probably because most of my friends and family thought I was going through some weird hippy faze or a made up detox when I gave up the animal carcasses three months ago. No one really thought it would stick. I can't blame them really, in the past I have ripped a cook chook apart with my bare hands while the soft flesh was still warm, only to shove the drumstick in my mouth and gnaw away happily like a Neanderthal.

Thoughts of never eating mum's Osso buco again or secretly sneaking pork crackling before serving the roast or enjoying delicious Danish Christmas food like roast duck and frikadeller bring so much woe to my heart that I am still not sure if going without these things is worth the principle of not eating meat. But so far I’ve been able to push these things from my mind most of the time because I’m not at home smelling mum’s cooking, my carnivorous housemates rarely cook a roast and Christmas is still seven months away. The meat I miss most of all are my everyday favourites, staples of my meat-eating life, like spaghetti bolognaise.

So when I came across this recipe from the delectable Veggie num num I was pretty excited to give it a whirl and maybe even kill my craving to hoe into the meat again. While I am extremely proud of my efforts over the last three months and have cooked some amazing vego and vegan dishes, this was the first time I tried to make a complete meaty dish into a vegan/vego version, without previous glowing testimonials from friends.

I wasn’t sure how this would turn out, and I was even tempted to ignore the recipe and just make my own up (I was once a kick-ass spag bol aficionado!) But I put my trust in the geniuses behind Veggie num num and was not disappointed. The only changes I made to the recipe was substituting brown lentils for tinned Sanitarium nut mince (available in the health food aisle at the supermarket) as it was already gracing the shelves in my pantry and adding a grated carrot. I also couldn’t quite handle the wholegrain pasta the first time round (I am just not a fan) and used regular spaghetti instead.

The result was vegan deliciousness that was tomatoey and tasty and was freakily almost exactly like spag bol. See for yourself!


So eager to taste was I that I neglected to focus the camera correctly, but you get the idea.
xo

How To: Make Homemade Body Scrub

This stuff I had lying around the house went from this:

To delectable and effective homemade body scrub below! Perfect to combat the winter scaly skin.

Lately it's been getting a little chilly in Brisbane, and consequently my elbows and my legs have slowing becoming more and more scaly. Luckily, before my skin became so scaly and weird that I morphed into a fish, I remembered I had seen an awesome DIY recipe to make your own body scrub.

Don't get me wrong, I love expensive beauty products as much as the next gal (or well groomed guy) but I don't like the price tags, particularly when you are buying products that are not tested on animals (apparently not inhumanely slathering rabbits with lipstick means the product costs twice as much as one made by torturing animals). So this little project seemed like the perfect solution. Admittedly I was sceptical at how well the scrub would turn out, but after a test run in the shower this evening I am thoroughly impressed. This sweet scrub come through with top marks, and my skin feels soft and ladylike again.

I used:

• A cute jar
• 2-3 cups of raw sugar (or however much fits in your jar)
• 2 tbs of ancient massage oil I had in the cupboard and had never used (you could substitute this for olive or apricot oil)
• 10-12 drops of lavender essential oil, also forgotten in the back of my cupboard (you could use vanilla essence if you were just searching for stuff around the house)

Best of all, you just have to mix the ingredients together well, stuff them in a jar and you're done. This whole thing took less than five minutes to complete! To fully perfect the body scrub, I plan on keeping my eye out in the op shops for a tea spoon with a hole in the handle, so I can attach it to the string and have a little dipping spoon for my body scrub.

Try it, you won't be disappointed!

xo

My Favourites.

Today I fear, I have achieved very little.

I did however, make a brilliant playlist/musical documentary of my melancholy state. Here are a few of my favourite inclusions.

Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in the Dark

Fleetwood Mac - I Don't Want to Know

The Beatles - I Want You (She's So Heavy)

And finally, one of my most played favourites (and always a hit when busting out the old vinyls)

Bob Seger - Night Moves

(Ain't if funny how the night moves, you just don't seem to have as much to lose...)

Enjoy

xo

Vintage Love

I have been wanting Babushka dolls for ages and I spied these at an op shop not that long ago. They are possibly one of my favourite finds. I love their little feet! $7 for pure penguiny perfection!

xo

Stuffed Shrooms of Goodness

This recipe is from Amy. I've been meaning to make it for ages, and it did not disappoint! So delicious and simple, portobello mushrooms topped with a mix of cherry tomatoes, kalamata olives, red onion, feta, fresh basil, lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. Then baked and topped with parmesan cheese. Delicious and (somewhat) healthy!

xo

The Lion says RAAAH!

Because lions represent courage, strength, bravery and Gryffindor and cross stitch is cool.

xo

Women of Letters

As you may have guessed from my post yesterday, I was feeling rather blog-motivated last night. The idea to write a letter was also an inspired one, a little seedling planted in my brain by a bunch of inspirational and intelligent women yesterday at Women of Letters.

This event is curated by Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire and has been running for a little over a year, mostly in Melbourne but with additional shows in Sydney and Brisbane. The basic premise is Marieke and Michaela invite five influential women to write a letter, and each time the theme is different. Yesterday I attended the second WOL Brisbane show, held at The Zoo. The theme was love letters and we heard five very different interpretations from five amazing women.

Patience Hodgson from the Grates wrote to New York City and the amazing co-op she was lucky enough to purchase her groceries from, which heightened by burning desire to move to NYC to an almost unbearable intensity.

Queensland’s first Indigenous Magistrate and mother of six, Jacqui Payne, wrote a moving a beautiful letter to her babies that brought tears to my eyes. Her unconditional love for her children and the wonder with which Jacqui spoke of them even made my friend who is most adverse to reproducing clucky for a moment.

Morag Kobez-Halvorson, a food writer and editor penned a witty and funny account of her experiences with a string of medical ‘professionals’ including a doctor that came to the hospital donned in boardshorts and thongs.

Author Kris Olsson went a little more abstract in her love letter with the alphabet as her muse. She wove an intricate story of the wonder of words, reading and the power those 26 little letters hold. I could totally relate to her muse, as I also have a deep emotional bond with the alphabet.

And wrapping up the show was Kate Miller-Heidke, with a love letter to her twelve-year-old self, full of witty little warnings and life lessons told with her trademark wry sense of humour and quirky quips. (I think there must be something in a name, because I tend to be a tad self deprecating in my humour as well, although I've never recorded a double platinum album, so maybe it's not as funny when I do it...)

As if we weren’t inspired enough, after each of the women read their love letters aloud, the audience had a change to pen a letter of their own, on the stamped post cards left like little presents on our seats. We really should all write lovely letters more often, and I hope those who I sent letters to yesterday enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Needless to say, by the end I was absolutely in awe of these women and their stories. I hope when I grow up I can make the same kind of clever observations and pen loving letters and stories that make others laugh and cry and feel, like I did yesterday.

If you ever have the chance, do yourself a favour and check out Women of Letters.

xo

A letter of love and neglect.

Dear Blogland,

Let me begin with my sincerest apologies for abandoning you. I know it doesn’t make up for the weeks of neglect you have been feeling, but I’m sorry. Please, don’t take my neglect too personally, my little cyberspace lovechild, I promise it’s not just you I have been neglecting. In fact I’ve been a bit shit all round lately, rarely making my bed, washing my clothes only when I run out of clean undies (and sometimes even stretching THAT), living off instant macaroni and procrastiviewing my way through Seinfeld (am up to ‘The Pothole’ episode 16, season 8). I know it’s no excuse, but life has kind of gotten away from me over the past month and I’ve felt a little bit bogged down (probably in my own filth and laziness) and uninspired.

Since I visited you last, Blogland, a lot has happened. I’ve spent much of my time furiously pumping out assignments at the last minute and handing them in within the hour of the deadline (which is actually more impressive than my usual practice of MINUTES before deadline). I’ve also been agonising about critiquing my peers’ short stories each week in class, especially a particularly horrible Mills and Boon-esque tale about a playboy Brazilian and desperate girl that featured sentences were so cheesy I could have slapped them on my sandwich for lunch.

Aside from my academic angsts, there has been some good things happening, Blogland. I’ve spent some lovely sunny Sundays at the Gold Coast with friends. Yes, one such day was actually spent indoors painting over the multiple foul shades of blue in Jackie’s rumpus room, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. There has also been copious amounts of wine consumed on my back deck between my friends and housemates, sometimes ending in drunken high fives while sitting around the turntable blasting old favourites on vinyl (NIGHTMOVES!) and a chorus of ‘THIS SONG IS AMAZING!

I went crazy one Saturday night, but not in the way you think, Blogland. My girlfriends and I went out and ate delicious dessert for dinner at Freestyle in West End. Imagine, JUST dessert for dinner! Maddness!!

I also helped another dear friend celebrate a milestone birthday, even though she doesn’t look a day over 23. (As we are frequently told everywhere we go together. I think the boys my age like her a lot better than me.)

And I said goodbye to another old dear friend, Beatrice. She was my first car and a beautiful beast that gave me freedom and independence when I needed it the most, as well as sweet toned biceps from her serve lack of power steering and rubbish turning circle. I hope your new owner loves you as much I did, Bea.

I fell in love… with blues music. I went to Bluesfest at Byron Bay for the first time and saw an amazing array of musicians including classic blues legends like B.B. King and Mavis Staples, who while watching, my wry brother said ‘I feel like I’ve been converted to Jesus and I love it’; guitar prodigy, Derek Trucks, and his amazing band; Elvis Costello rocking out resplendent in a pinstriped suit, floral tie and spectacles; Imogen Heap, a favourite of mine since the old days of high school teenage angst; bands I had never head of that blew me away like Fistful of Mercy made up of Ben Harper, Joseph Arthur and Dhani Harrison (that’s right Beatle George’s son!) and Robert Randolph and the Family Band who rocked the pedal steel guitar to places I didn’t know possible; topped off with three amazing Australian women: Washington, Clare Bowditch and the always witty, illustrious and incredibly talented, Kate Miller-Heidke.

BB King

The Derek Trucks Band

Kate Miller-Heikde

Imogen Heap

Elvis Costello

But most of all, on the last day of Bluesfest, Lachlan and I spent seven hours (SEVEN HOURS PEOPLE!) staking out a spot right up front, metres from the stage to see one of the biggest icons of the ‘60s. He’s a musician, poet, activist and artist, a legend, a rolling stone, the man, the freewheelin’ BOB DYLAN! Best of all he played two of my favourites ‘Don’t Think Twice it’s All Right’ and ‘Ballard of a Thin Man’. Being metres away from Dylan was a once in my lifetime opportunity and also totally worth standing there all day waiting for him!

Dylan

(PS Parents: BEST EASTER EVER!)

So as you can see Blogland, while the first part of the last month was a bit le shite, life has been plodding along nicely and things have been happening. New, exciting things, and old familiar favourites like Saturday night at Tempo watching Brooksy & Co last weekend and a picnic in New Farm Park in the autumn sun.

All in all, I suppose it’s been a pretty eventful last few weeks. But I did miss you, my dear friend. I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long, but I have been thinking about you a lot, and I’ve been feeling that deeply ingrained Catholic guilt about leaving you alone for 26 days. I promise, I’ll never do that again (and if I do, I will think of an even craftier way to apologise than a heartfelt letter!) I might not always show it, Blogland, but you are very important to me.

I hope you can forgive me, my beautiful cyberspace lovechild.

Love always,
Katie
xo