Which I will tell you about as soon as i’ve apologised for my extreme lack of blogging. Again, i’ve been noticeably absent from the interwebs for several months. Unlike the last few times, I had some very legitimate reasons!
Reason #1. was the craziness of extra work on top of my normal load so I was working a normal day then going to do a second lot until 9pm four days then all day saturday. This resulted in be being utterly exhausted to the point of zombification and unable to cook, blog or do anything that constitutes normal living.
Reason #2 was the impending wedding of my beautiful big sister.
I won’t be posting lots of photos of the wedding as they involve many people who don’t want them shared, but I will show you some pics of the wedding day breakfast that I organised for my sister. Partly because everyone likes nice food and champagne, and partly because it would look good in the professional photos! I’m also going to whack a few pics of me in there because i’m a big narcissist and this is my blog. Hah!
so here is the breakfast table
we had some pink bubbly, and left the Veuve for after the wedding. No one likes a tipsy bridal party!
Can you see the cute little Laduree sugared almonds?
so after the wedding we broke out the tea.
Then the champagne!
And the cupcakes and macarons and Haighs chocolates. Nom nom!!
But lets rewind to earlier in the day. A great deal earlier….
it was a VERY early start
but it was very much worth it as the wonderful hairdressers and makeup artist transformed this
to this!
Here we both are, all prettied up
Sorry for the dark pictures. These clearly aren’t the professional pictures!
Let me leave you with one last picture though that was taken by me, of my beautiful sister in the car about to leave for the church.
Time passes. We get older, and this year saw me approaching the grand old age of 25. However, with the impending arrival of this number I have been hearing increasingly about an interesting phenomenon. Ever since I read about the concept of the ‘Quarter Life Crisis’ I have thought about my 25th birthday with a curious combination of concern and excitement. As far as I can gauge, the Quarter Life Crisis is a result of Gen Y’s predilection for indecision and general faffing around before getting down to business. Apparently after spending years studying at university we get out into the workforce and realise that we hate our jobs and in fact want to go back and study something entirely different. We then have a bit of a melt down while realising that we have to take a significant pay cut and either have to move back home or continue living at home while we redirect our lives. This is often accompanied by a major relationship meltdown/marriage crisis/body clock crisis and a slow realisation that we will never again fit into the clothes that we fit into in our teens. Depressed yet?
Well, I hate to be the optimist but my 25th birthday earlier this week was accompanied by none of the above. Instead, I feel quietly content in my career, my relationships and, well, I am a little flabby but only because i’ve been eating so much amazing food over the past few weeks. So on that note, let me share with you some of the lovely happy things that happened on my birthday.
First, the cake.
Amazing creation bought from a bakery in Five Dock by my co workers.
Not only does it look amazing and say my name, but inside it is cake and icecream! Hooray!
Second, the cake.
Hang on, rewind, ANOTHER cake? You bet!
This one purchased by my mum from the Pure Gelato shop in Croydon Park. Another ice cream cake, this one was chocolate and hazelnut and absolutely delicious! Well worth the flab.
Then there were some chocolate cupcakes. As in, chocolates in the shape of cupcakes! Also delicious. I was also given a box of the most delicious chocolates in the world, Haighs’ Violet Creams which silly me didn’t take a photo of. Oops.
I received many beautiful gifts, although I only took photos of the food related ones to post here. The boyfriend gave me a beautiful set of mis-matched tea cups and saucers and hostess apron which should all get their own post soon(ish). His family gave me some lovely serving dishes and the Country Show Cookbook pictured above. Lucky we recently bought a new bookshelf to house the ever growing collection of cook books! My mum also gave me (among other things) the two other cook books above, The Birthday Cake Book and Zumbo by Adriano Zumbo. The former has given me many ideas for future cakes while the latter have given me much food for thought but has left me in abject terror at the prospect of actually attempting to make one of these magnificent creations. Watch this space!
Which leads me to my last picture which is pretty cool…
Mr Adriano Zumbo himself! Who I met at The Lakes while watching the Australian Open Golf Tournament. One of my idols and all time favourite chefs Who would have thought it? I almost fell off my chair in surprise! Just as charming as he is on tv, he was very gracious and lovely to talk to. Although I didn’t really do much talking.
I was a little bit star struck.
So, all in all, it was a pretty damn good birthday but i’m still stuck on what I should be doing for my quarter life crisis? I feel like I shouldn’t let this opportunity for legitimate drama pass me by. Do you have any suggestions my lovelies?
I don’t like change. I think I may have said that before on this blog but i’ll certainly say it again. Perhaps I should qualify that statement, I don’t like change that I can’t control. But this life is a funny old thing and I have come to realise that some change can be good. So changing seasons, while I can’t control them, is something I can at least anticipate and therefore does not fall into the category of change that I don’t like. Now that it is really feeling like Spring (with a little bit of Autumn and Summer thrown in to boot) I can enjoy the changes that are going on around me.
Exhibit A: Beautiful flowers
Aren’t they beautiful? Dodgy shots aside, they were given to me by some departing students and they bloomed in my kitchen for weeks and weeks. Vibrant and pink and fragrant and generally representative of everything that is good in the world. Good choice!
Exhibit B: Beautiful flowers growing in the garden
Planted of course by the mothership who likes to get up at incredible hours in the morning to potter around and make the place beautiful. I, however, cannot be trusted to keep things like these growing. In fact, the only reason Exhibit A lasted so long is because the mothership watered them. I didn’t realise that you had to continually refill the vase… oops…
Exhibit C: Gorgeous artwork
After attending Alan Somerville’s new exhibition Sagacity held at the wonderful Glebe gallery Salerno Gallery I was mesmerised by the sketches of ballet dancers and flamenco dancers. These sketches were done by Alan in preparation for his more time consuming sculptures (which are equally amazing) and I could not leave without making sure that this baby was coming home with me. Please forgive my terrible terrible iphone shot, I will make sure to do this art work justice when I get it home. Just take my word for it, it is absolutely stunning.
Exhibit D: Packages of books in the mail
I went crazy on Book Depository a few weeks ago and bought an enormous stack of books to wade through over the Summer break. A mix of classics, favourites and books that came highly recommended I have already finished my first book and am devouring my second. Hooray for literature!
Exhibit E: The purchase of a vintage tea cup, saucer, entree plate and sugar bowl
I did quite a bit of road tripping in the last holidays and ended up in the Souther Highlands town of Robertson. Here my friend and I visited the many antique stores and I came back with this beautiful set. The pattern is Wedgewood ‘Runnymede’ and I am very much in love. I defy you not to be.
Exhibit F: Passionfruit Souffle with Banana and Mango Sorbet and creme chantilly
AND
Exhibit G: Valrhona Chocolate Mousse with Mandarin and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
What would this post be without a homage to at least one thing sweet and delicious?
My boyfriend and I recently dined at Guillaume at Bennelong to celebrate our anniversary. The entire experience was magnificent and it was a wonderful evening. I am not a fan of taking photos of the food i’m eating at a restaurant but when these desserts came out, we couldn’t help ourselves! Delicious, fruity and rich, they were both impeccable and were a perfect way to round off the evening. I was particularly impressed by the helpfulness and professionalism of all the staff from the lady who took our reservation to the continuously beaming waiter who made us feel like we were the only two diners in the restaurant who were important. What an evening!
So, my lovelies, although this post was meandering and not really to the point, I promise I will resume normal transmission soon. What are some of the things that you have been enjoying lately?
For so many students this week marks is the end of high school and the beginning of the rest of their lives. While I finished high school many years ago, this is a little bit of a special time for me as I farewell my own two amazing Year Twelve classes. And when I say ‘special’ I mean it in both ways:
1. It’s wonderful to be part of such an important moment in the lives of these extraordinary young men and to have seen them grow and develop over the past year
2. I turn a bit ‘special’ as I totally forget everything I want to tell them about how proud I am of them and how I have absolutely no doubt that they will do amazing things. Instead I just demand more practice essays. Sorry!
Before I unload all my sookiness, have a look at these cute bunnies!
As a fairly new teacher, seeing a Year Twelve class go through to finish the HSC is much more emotional than I expected and I really didn’t realise just how attached I had become to my classes. I think that this has been heightened by the fact that this is my first year teaching boys and first year at this particular school so my classes have been integral for helping me find my feet and settle in. I often found myself relying on my older students to teach me the culture of the school and help me figure out exactly what I should be doing!
The last few weeks of school are always a bit of a whirlwind and because of various timetable changes I never got to have a proper ‘last’ lesson with my Advanced class . To tell you the truth, I feel like Spencer Tracy in the last scenes of Father of the Bride. Remember the part where his daughter is all married and busy at the reception? And he isn’t able to really talk to her and tell her how proud he is of her because there are so many people around and so much going on? And then she leaves with her husband for her honeymoon and he is sad that he never got to see her off properly? Yes im a sap, yes im a sucker, yes I feel that way about this class. I am just so proud to see the wonderful, intelligent young men that they have grown up to be. Words fail me (and the irony of me being an English Teacher is not lost here!)
I was lucky to have a farewell lesson for my Extension class, and here enters the baking part of this post. The students found out about my blog midway through the year and since then I had promised to bake a cake for our final lesson. However, as these students are particularly great, it was necessary to up the ante. Thus, The Bake Off was born. The theme was ‘Textual Dynamics’ (which was the elective that the boys studied this year and roughly concerns looking at film and literature that challenges societies values regarding authorship, text construction, gender, history etc… and does so in a particularly ground breaking or creative way). I have to admit that I was particularly nerdy and planned my idea weeks in advance. What eventuated was…
Textually Dynamic?
One of the texts studied this year was a novel by Italo Calvino called If On a Winter’s Night A Traveller. A highly unconventional novel, the opening of this book goes a little something like this:
“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, ‘If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller’. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade.”
I wanted the cake to look like the magnetic poetry kits that you can get to go on your fridge and re-write the opening to be more baking appropriate. I used the Magnolia Bakery Vanilla Cake and filled it with musk buttercream.
Tah dah!
I really didn’t have any expectation that anyone else would bake but was happily surprised to have THREE other entries!
Jack and Nathan’s take on the Salvador Dali melting clocks
(perhaps otherwise titled “The Sponge Cake That Wasn’t”?)
And Dan and Pat’s amazing brownies. I really had no idea that these boys had such hidden talents in the baking arena!
To my Extension boys, you have been such a source of energy and creativity this year. It has often been a relief to see you all after some particularly crazy junior classes, particularly in the afternoon! The intellectual depth to our discussions has really blown me away and it has just been such a privilege to have been able to teach such insightful and generally amazing students.
This has been a rather text heavy post, so if you made it this far though im very impressed! I really just wanted to say thank you to all my Year Twelve students and tell you all just how proud I am of you and how honoured I am to have been able to teach you this year. Good luck in your final exams!
it was a VERY early start
