Tuesday 29 October 2019

Dreams in Europe, October 2019

The magic icecream store

In this dream Em and I are minding three kids who are clearly not our own. One is a teenager and the other two mid primary age. None of them seem to be related either.

We are having some trouble controlling the kids as they run around trying to escape from view. Finally we pull them together and tell them we are going to the ice cream store.

Yay! Ice cream! They erupt in cheers.

The ice cream store had an amazing number of flavours which traverse the stairs going up from the bottom floor. There are so many flavours it's kind boggling, each one has a miniature model of what the flavour is (a mango, a coconut etc) sitting on top and the display looks really adorable.

The kids choose their flavours and change their minds again and again. Em and I cannot keep up with their preferences and when we get to the head of the queue, she accidentally orders a Colgate flavour.

There's actually a Toothpaste flavoured ice cream? I wonder to myself. The other flavours we pick up are apple (served in a realistic apple cone) and matcha sludges. But the toothpaste? I wake up before it arrives.


Jocelyn Glove and the baguette


In this dream I am at a staff meeting with the other intensivists in my department. It looks so ordinary that it feels real. We are discussing mundane things like rosters and meetings.

Suddenly, the peace is disturbed. One of the intensivists comes into the room and tells us that we are about to be arrested, all of us. We gasp collectively and ask what we did wrong, but she cannot tell us.

We all react differently, just as we would in real life. Some are crying silently, others pavpac anxiously across the room.

The intensivist who announced the trouble turns to me and says that there are two things that may help me escape. The first thing is already lost, but the second one is a patient compliment from a patient I had cared for.

Do you remember her? She asks me.

I rack my brains but don't remember her name.

It was a big case, she was very badly burnt. She tells me, but it does not trigger any memory.

Her name is Jocelyn Glove. She says.

Jocelyn Glove, Jocelyn Glove. I repeat to myself but it doesn't ring any bells.

Then the director comes in and says that we must work as a team to overcome this hurdle. This is the typical kind of thing a director says and we all look at each other cluelessly.

He brings a tray of small segments of bread, all torn up.

You must put this back together. He says.
It used to be a baguette.

I stare at the bits of bread, wondering how we can reconstruct the baguette. Then I wake up.


The lost German grandma

In this dream I am standing inside a train station that looks like Town Hall. I look at the display and the next train to newy is in 40min time. I look around for something I can buy to eat.

At that moment I see an older lady maybe in her 70s, looking very lost.

When I approach her to ask if she needs help she is delighted that I spoke to her.

She shows me a picture of a walking stick, very elaborate and high tech looking.

I don't really understand her but she keeps saying ich brauche diese... (I need this)

I decide that she needs to go to Kathmandu to buy it since it looks like an outdoor walking pole. I offer to go with her, saying ich kann mit dir gehen, ich habe viel Zeit (I can go with you, I have lots of time). But she insists I draw her the directions on the back of the tourist brochure she is holding.

After I've drawn the instructions she says thanks and starts walking back towards the station entrance. I walk with her a few steps and hear her gasp loudly at her suitcase which has been opened nearby, its contents spilling out messily everywhere.

She wails and lurches towards it, but she misses the last step in the flight of stairs and falls down flat on her face.

She remains very very still after that and I am concerned. She does not seem to be breathing.

With some effort I turn her body over and there is a single puncture mark between her eyes.

How did she get shot? I wonder, and wake up.


Down jackets and eagles

In this dream I am in a reality TV show and feel very mindful that I am being filmed. I walk past a room where my maternal aunt and grandmother are sitting in relative darkness.

Wanting to get away from them, I duck into the nearest room. It is a challenge station and the challenge is to show people how to wash their down jackets without losing the puffiness.

I don't know anything about washing down jackets so I really struggle. Then I get a text from Em and I think, great I can ask her since Canadians must know about it!

The message is a picture of a cathedral dome. When I look at it closely, it is not possible for anyone to take a photo like this. It is so close to the dome that the picture must have been taken in flight.

Then I realise that she must have turned into one of the long distance eagles that racked up a huge phone bill due to unexpected adventures to Kazakhstan. I laugh in the dream, and wake up in real life.



Saturday 5 October 2019

In My Kitchen: October 2019

I have really enjoyed the last few weeks, emerging out of the chilly weather. I worked a lot in September but interspersed it with heaps of music and baking.

In the garden…
The very last of the baby bok choy was harvested.
On the day I pulled every last stalk out of the ground, the pile stood so high that I thought it was a man (the Bok Choy Man) sitting on the chair.

It took me ages but I stripped all the stalks of bok choy and ended up with a huge bag (maybe 1kg) of bok choy leaves that I ate shredded in salad every day (every meal, practically) for two weeks. 



Here it is with some simple but delicious dal. Sometimes the simplest things are the best in life.

The warming of the weather means the coriander is coming to an end too, though I did still eat a heap of coriander every day in September.


Baking projects...
It was moon festival this month, and I decided to have a go at making Shanghainese style moon cakes stuffed with a savoury pork filling.
The pastry was quite a pain (had to make two types of dough – an oil dough and a water dough to mix together) but in the end the flakiness was worth it. 


The insides were so juicy and hot that I burned my mouth when they first came out of the oven!

In more news from Barney, here is a beautiful loaf with particularly lovely holes.

I’m fortunate to have sourdough most mornings for breakfast. My friend who always sends me pictures of avo on toast from various cafes inspired me to make this one – avo, cheese and spicy beansprouts. If I may suggest, that is the best fusion avo toast ever.

These are just about the most adorable things I’ve made for a while – cute little sourdough pumpkin buns stuffed with dark chocolate chips. They came out of the oven soft and moreish, pulling apart to delicate strands. The string to get the pumpkin shape was pretty fiddly but it was well worth the effort!

Onto the Food and Music series
I went with the Merewether ensemble up to the Gold Coast for a music weekend. What fun that was! We were just about the most eclectic collection of musicians ever. There were the traditional instruments like piano, violin, viola and cello. But we were joined by a variety of recorders, a saxophone, a trombone and random percussion instruments. Of course we all had a go on the didjeridoo cos that’s really traditional chamber music! One of us brought a piece for piano 8 hands (that’s 4 people sitting at the same time on the piano bench) which became the theme song for the weekend. We also had the rare opportunity to play 2 piano duets!
Our gracious hosts made this divine slow cooked lamb shoulder one night for dinner, filling the house with incredible smells as it roasted in the oven, served with a zingy salsa verde.

Of course Barney came for the ride too, here he is on the plane reading the safety instructions


These delicious parmesan scrolls were eaten one night with some wonderful piano duets – the Peer Gynt suites by Grieg (just about my favourite piano duet music), the incredible Fantasie in F minor by Schubert and a lesser known work – Lebensturme (Life’s Tempest), and for a dessert a sweet little sonata by CPE Bach.

My string quartet had a wonderful reunion sans Barney (I was working too much that week). We had the most succulent salmon and crispy roast potatoes, along with fresh veggies and salad. This feast was enjoyed with all the violist's favourites - the Beethoven string quartet Op 18. No.4  (probably the quartet for our group), a mash through the first movement of the Brahms String quartet Op 51 No.1 & No.2, and the other all time favourite, Schubert's Death and the Maiden.
It was the violist’s birthday and we took the chance to indulge in this wonderfully rich chocolate cake. I switched the candles around while the cellist was looking for matches… How do you know we are all getting old? The cellist thought she’d developed dementia and the violist thought her eyes needed checking. Only the other violinist picked up immediately that I’d been up to mischief! Who knew that we could sing Paphy Dirtybah instead?

I'm sending this to Sherry who hosts the In My Kitchen series. Thanks Sherry!