Value for Effort Recipe 8 – Satin Icing

I’ve never been a fan of butter cream icing. It isn’t the miracle decorating medium it is made out to be – it is difficult to spread, is either too stiff or too sloppy, collects crumbs and breaks your hands when trying to pipe it. It also needs heavy machinery to make, especially since I consider sifting icing sugar to be the number one most tedious kitchen chore. I just toss the butter and sugar into the Kenwood cake mixer and turn it on high for a very long time.  No lumps survive force 10 pulverisation.

I have tried other icings, Royal icing is nice for biscuits, doesn’t work for three dimensional Barbie cakes. I have tried Italian Meringue, aka 7 minute icing, although it didn’t take 7 minutes to make (it was more like 12 anxious minutes watching beating egg white and boiling sugar syrup trying to make friends in my cake mixer) and my children hated it, which disqualifies it for the Value for Effort certification. It also covers your kitchen in a fine, but irritating, layer of stickiness. I have finally found an icing that works for me. I like to call it satin icing because the texture is smoother and creamier than buttercream, it is easier to work with, stays glossy and luxurious and is just generally much nicer.

Value for Effort Recipe 7 – Miracle Pasta

Maybe I am guilty of a bit of hyperbole here, but if I had headed my post “Spaghetti with Marmite” you would have gone “Yuck” and moved on. I saw Nigella Lawson making this the other day on TV. At the time I thought it was well below her usual standard, but even if I wouldn’t trust Nigella with my life, (she traded in her first husband while he was still on his deathbed), I would definitely trust her with my lunch. This hardly even qualifies as “Value  for Effort”, the effort is negligible, but since my children’s eating habits are inversely proportional to the amount of effort I put into their meals, this is a real winner.

Off the radar

My little flight screen tells me I am at 35001 feet above sea level and over the exact place in Africa where my geography fails me. Malawi, Kenya or is that Tanzania? Although I can see Mount Kilamanjaro over there on the left, my internal radar tells me that I am in a submarine, heading for very deep water, with the waters closing in over my head.

A better way to spend the afternoon

There was an important rugby match on today. I think. Maybe it was yesterday. Either way I have something far more refined to talk about at work tomorrow. When someone mentions the Springboks I can sneer at them poshly and say, “well, if Gillespie had followed through on that long pass during the fourth chukka I am sure we could have won.” You see, I spent the afternoon at the Polo.

I don’t usually spend my time in such rarified company, but occasionally I am called upon to be a good wife and mingle with the bank’s clients and their skinny blonde wives.  I am quite good at making natural shyness and social dysfunction look like aloofness and disdain, so I usually fit right in.  Staring off into the middle distance while holding a glass of champagne and wearing a hat is also something I am quite good at and since no-one was crass enough to mention the rugby I would have had a chance at conversation, except I know even less about Polo.

An Education

All the good child raising books, (and there are a lot of bad ones out there), suggest that you tackle the tricky sex talk when it comes up in conversation, rather than sitting the poor unsuspecting tots down and regaling them with a birds and bees lecture. However, sex is not an everyday topic for two small girls, the opportunities, between hair, shoe and mealtime crises,are few and far between, so when the subject does come up, one has to jump in quickly before the prescribed opportunity passes.

Running Scared

I was told by someone at work the other day, that I can not consider myself a true South African until I have run the Comrade’s Marathon at least once. We have an office member who was heading off for this patriotic event, hence the conversation. Now I consider myself reasonably patriotic, but I have never thought that dying for one’s country was noble or necessary. I vote, I own a vuvuzela and south african flag wing mirror covers, I encourage my children and my co-workers to embrace multiculturalism in a peaceful and productive way, I buy South African and I haven’t emigrated. But run the Comrade’s Marathon, no – I’d rather move to Perth. The premise upon which this argument was presented to me is, “You have to try everything once!” but since my own motto is, “don’t run anywhere unless doing so will save your life,” I put up a bit of an argument. Apparently, according to my new moral source, anyone can run the marathon, with about 6 months of training and a strong will to survive, even I could do it.The marathon is apparently run by a handful of serious athletes and an immense field of amateur dabblers whose only ambition is to make it in before cut off time. (I know several serious runners who haven’t done the Comrades and have no intention of doing so, claiming that the damage done to the body over 89km (56 miles) would put an end to their everyday running careers.)

Packed Off

I have a dread of packing. I have googled this at length but haven’t been able to find an official name or term for it. This makes me feel very alone. Unlike some of my other little issues, I cannot simply avoid it, like my aversion to worms, which I cope with by avoiding unnecessary burrowing around in the garden, or my early fear of swimming which I overcame by taking lessons with a kind and nurturing teacher. Several times a year I have to face those yawning empty suitcases and confront the fact that I have to fit everything I need from a large and untidy house into a compact and controlled space.