Ending with a bang

I finally cooked the recipe my sister in law recommended – British Pork & Cider Casserole – last night. It’s from a website called Spruce Eats and it’s INSANELY good. You start off by browning the meat and softening the veg on the stove top, then you transfer the casserole to the oven to slow cook for two hours.

When I opened the oven door to put the casserole in, this happened:

I think it’s a measure of how sucky my past week has been that I just said “oh” and trudged off to get a dustpan and brush.

Then I texted DD and told him to pre-heat his oven because I was heading up to his place.

I’d already been up there earlier in the day, which got off to a picture perfect start. We’d been expecting rain, but the weather was glorious, so DD took me on our favourite ferry ride from Palm Beach to Ettalong. He was keen to get me some fresh air and equilibrium.

I’m always like a five year old when we catch the ferry, hanging over the side of the boat in excitement the whole time. At one point we even chugged past a big rock with about eight seals sunning themselves on it. Bulk fun.

(The above pic also offers a good view of how much my roots have grown out).

The ferry ride was very therapeutic, as I’ve been battling the low-ebb beast recently.

2020 has been a bitch and it’s starting to get me down. At the same time I feel that it’s wrong for me to complain when I’m living my fairly privileged, white, middle-class life.

But the heaviness in my chest doesn’t listen to reason. I look in the mirror and see someone who is old and tired of all the unkindness in the world.

Although … I did a Zoom interview on Friday with the Wine Communicators of Australia that messed slightly with that narrative.

Lynda, the head of the organisation, is based in Adelaide and scheduled the interview for 3pm … I didn’t realise South Australia is 30 minutes behind NSW, so I got to spend a long time staring at myself on screen as I waited for the call to start. I looked soooooo middle-aged. I kept moving the laptop screen around to try to find a better angle, but there wasn’t one.

I don’t think I can bear to watch the interview when it goes live, or share the link with you, not just because it would involve seeing my face again, but also because I’d have to listen to what I said. At one point I started babbling about quolls. Quolls! A bottle shop owner in Queensland had been wondering why his alarm kept going off at 3am, so he kept an eye on his the security cameras and eventually worked out it was a quoll breaking in.

I really wanted to shut up about the bloody quoll, because the video interview was supposed to be about how winemakers can share their news with Drinks Trade … not about quolls in bottle shops … Fortunately I also got my actual message across after sounding like I’d gone completely troppo in home isolation.

When the interview finished, Lynda complimented me on my skin. I can’t remember exactly what she said, something about it being really smooth or glowing. I never hear compliments, my brain always goes la-la-la and immediately deletes them from its memory bank.

But I know she said something nice and I was a bit startled that she had looked at me and admired my skin, not recoiled at my wrinkles. The logical part of my brain tells me there’s a lesson in that, but I’m a very bad pupil.

Anyways, Lynda was a reminder that there is kindness in my world that balances out the shite bits and broken ovens.

I hope your weekend was breakage free and featured some fun in the winter sun.

Song of the day: Split Enz “I see red”