The Best Band in my world

I think everyone has a band or an album that marks a turning point in what they listen to and how they 'view', hear and appreciate music. For me, the band is Wilco, and the album is Yankee Wilco Foxtrot. I remember vividly my first bitterly cold Easter in Wellington, when I trudged to the Paramount (I think) to see the doco based on the recording of that album. Filmed entirely in black and white, it made me fall in love with Chicago, Jeff Tweedy, and the album even more. The album itself is so richly layered that even now, after craploads of listens, I pick up little nuances, hidden sounds, and get the same somewhat-wistful-but-mildly-uplifting feeling I got when I first heard it. Actually, I think when I first heard it I was probably a little astounded. But now I get the aforementioned feeling.

I actually got to see them play live when I was in London, at the Shepards Bush Empire- a brilliant venue. They are just as good live, but with more wit.

One thing that the doco showed was the gradual fallout between Jay Bennett and the rest of the band. He did seem to have a definite personality to him, and from what I can gather the animosity continued between him and Jeff Tweedy- Jay sued him for breach of contract around the doco last year. And this weekend Jay Bennett died, age 45. He was involved with my other favourite Wilco album, Summerteeth too, so I just wanted to acknowledge him here... even though I am more of a Tweedy fan if truth be told.

So, in honour of his passing, a few Wilco links-slash-videos:

I am Trying to Break Your Heart


Jesus etc - probably not one of my top fives, but I found this lovely little cover by a Swedish band - in Swedish. Norah Jones also does a cover, but I decided a Swedish band was far more Exotic than an American.



And, finally, the Wilco website. You can listen to love recordings, and marvel at the Camel on the cover of their next album.

Happy listening! And RIP Jay Bennett.

Cooking with Steph - the grovel recipe

Let's not talk about how lame I am in my blogging. Just make this, eat it, and thank the heavens I started blogging again.

I don't know if it is because I am getting older, but I really am an advocate for top quality baking products. I don't give a rat's arse if you go for the cheapest tinned tomatoes, but my lord you can taste the difference between a great quality cocoa or chocolate, compared to a crap one. I recommend the Green & Blacks cocoa, which you can get in NZ from Homestead Health (not that it is healthy at all). Try it in the saucy bit of a simple Edmonds Chocolate Self Saucing Pudding - nom nom nom.

One other note on this recipe: the biscuits. The original recipe I found called for Shortbread, but I used the Farmbake Hokey Pokey Biscuits, which were pretty rad. I guess you could get all fancy and make your own biscuits to use, but if I make a nice batch of biscuits there is no way in hell I am smashing that up! It's worth experimenting with types of biscuit I reckon - let me know what you try...

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you
CHOCOLATE CRUNCH HEAVEN

Ingredients:
1/3 C cream
450g dark chocolate, chopped (the darker the better baby)
130g butter, chopped up
250g biscuit chunks
Top quality cocoa powder, for dusting

• Line one of those narrow loaf tins with baking paper.
  
• Melt and combine the cream, chocolate and butter on a low heat, stirring constantly. If you burn it, it will taste like pants.
• Chuck your biscuits in to a mixing bowl and gently stir in 2/3 of the chocolate mix.
  
• Put this in to the tin, then pour the remaining mix over the top. Tap the tin on the bottom and the sides after to remove any bubbles.
  
• Pop in the fridge to set for around 3 hours, or overnight if you can handle it - basically until it is set.
• To serve: invert the tin, remove the slice, dust with some good cocoa & cut in to slices. Pop your knife in to a cup of hot water before slicing for a nice smooth cut.

Don't think about what is in it, and savour every melting bite!

Back after a bit

I just spent the week at the boyfriend's apartment, which also ended up equating to an unbearable slow internet connection - it appears that Te Aro gets way better interwebs than Berhampore. So, I haven't blogged for a bit. Bad blogger. I also decided that my last entry was perhaps a bit too academic wank - I was hoping to be far more irreverent.

So next entry will be of best buys of the past month. All bargains, of course! A girl can't resist a bargain in these recessional times...

A Wellington powerhouse in 2nd hand clothes.

The organisation I work for was nominated for a Wellington Gold Award. This is exciting, but not as exciting as the fact that the theme for the awards evening is India, and that the best dressed person there wins a trip for two to India - cue plotting to win. A friend of mine suggested that Savemart in Porirua had a whole heap of Saris, so Lotte, Bel and I were chauffeured by the Boyfriend for an afternoon at one of the 2nd Hand clothing meccas. The saris numbered one, and looked strictly Sari daywear, but I did three things for the princely sum of $30 and I like them so much I'd like to show you a couple of them... I was going to show you all of them, but I do have one question. How the hell do all these 'look what I wore today' blogs take photos of themselves? Do they have a maid that does it for them? It's not that I'm technically inept, but me and my camera struggle.

This is my rockabilly red dress. I like the little cherries where the straps meet the dress. It has a brilliant A line skirt on it... I just have to find a place to wear this to now!


This particular purchase was again because of the fabric. It is actually a dress, but it's a bit tight on the old Walker bum and thighs, so I'll be making it in to a top. It is just waiting for me to get to it in my sewing pile.

The neckline is pretty cool, huh?!

I have to admit that this post was partly inspired by Sea of Shoes. Except I don't get given Prada bags for my birthday. Normally just a Farmers bag (with something inside it). Thanks for leading me to her, Kate! And Bel and Louise - she didn't post on her blog for ages, either. So there. Not that I am looking for an excuse...

Lunchtime Conversation.

B: What's the difference between "inform" and "educate"?

Me: I think to inform is to say the what, the where and the who, and to educate is to cover the why and the how...

After dwelling a little while on the BBC mantra "To Inform, Educate, and Entertain", I've decided that the most satisfying Theatre I see does this too. And books. And films. But maybe not ALL films.

Agree? Disagree?

(we had lunch at the Kiwi Pub on Allen Street, formerly the Courtenay Arms. It is really good there! Go try the Kiwi Burger if you eat the cow)

Cooking with Steph, Week Two.

How do you improve on a Roast? Is it possible? It was a cold Sunday, and there were some sad looking vegetables that needed some love lingering on the Kitchen counter and in the back of the fridge. someone had to think of them, and that someone was me. So this Sunday meal was an Italian/Moroccan bastard vege stew, with home baked focaccia and Rice Pudding for dessert.

I love a good stew. It is hearty, healthy and goes with my favourite carbs incredibly well, that being freshly baked bread or mashed potato. My mum used to make a casserole just about every Wednesday night in my Primary School years, when she worked the afternoon shift at the hospital. So NEVER call a stew a casserole, or I might not eat it. It has taken me years to get over that, but I am getting there slowly. I don't think she ever makes it any more either.

It is only this year that I have started to bake bread, partly because of my new friend the Breville Bread maker. It is the most basic breadmaker you can get, but it is a real winner. The only reason I got one is because I was using a breadmaker the first time ever, and poured water right through the poor machine. Cue going to Moore Wilsons to pick up a new one to grovel to my boyfriend with, thinking he would hate me forever if I broke this machine of carb greatness. Then miraculously he put his (broken) one in the hot water cupboard for storage, and it arose from the dead (excuse the yeast like pun). I got to keep the old one, and use it just about every week, and I'd like to use it more. I totally recommend them!

Rather than list exhaustively the vegetables that were saved from a rotting death, I'll continue to share with you the dessert recipe. Much more exciting! Rice Pudding is one of those things that oozes comfort. The gluggy soft rice and the custardy gloop it sits in is yum. I'm quite besotted with spices at the moment (a spicy chai latte for me please!) so I poured a crap load of cinnamon, nutmeg and five spice in to this recipe, but you can always take that out and pop in chocolate chips that melt through, or something like that. There are also some recipes around for rice pudding you literally bake in the oven, but they take AGES - about the same time as a roast. So I guess this is probably a modernised version...

Cuddly Rice Pudding
(adapted from ButterandSugar.org the photo is taken from there too - thank you!)

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup of Arborio rice - that's the stuff you use for risotto. Mmm. Risotto.
3 cups of water
4 cups of low fat milk
2/3 cup of sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence (or a whole bean if you are flash)
1 tsp cinnamon - or to taste
pinch of salt
2 eggs
1 cup raisins, dates or other dried fruit (optional)

Bring water to the boil and add the rice, stir occasionally until the rice is almost entirely cooked.

Add the milk, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and pinch of salt. Return to a simmer until most of the milk is soaked up/evaporated.

In a small dish, beat the egg and add a 1/4 cup hot milk to it a tablespoon at at time. Stir the egg mixture into the pudding and cook on a low simmer until it coats the back of a spoon (about two minutes).

Cover with plastic wrap to avoid the pudding forming a skin if you are leaving it a while, or serve warm.

Leftovers are good for breakfast, little sweet treats in tubs for work or anything you like really. It is way better than the canned stuff!

A sternly worded letter.

Dear Busdrivers of Wellington,

I would appreciate it if you would refrain from givng me the death stares, or saying something derogatory towards me when I ask to travel three to four stops.

I am not a fat lazy cow as you seem to be suggesting, rather a young woman who happens to have a strictly limited amount of energy at the moment, in comparison to my peers.

I do not wish to hold up the bus by telling you the vaguaries of my condition, rather simply get to wherever I want to go without overtiring.

Best Wishes,
Miss S. Walker

P.S - Maybe you should just focus on arriving at Bus Stops on time, huh?

The demise of a decent channel on the box.

I am not an overtly political person. Yeah, I have my political leanings, but all in all, I think as long as everyone in our beautiful country respects each other and gets a fair say in everything, then we should be sweet. This, however, was shattered by the news I heard last weekend: that the TVNZ Charter is to be abolished under the National Government.

SAY WHAT???!!!

Back in my student days, I was not just a Theatre major, but a Media Studies major too, and I vividly remember studying Public Service Broadcasting. Famously, the BBC was set up with the Mission Statement "to inform, educate and entertain", which I reckon is a fair whack of what Public Broadcasting is about. It is paid for by the people, thus it is made for the people. Without the idea of Public Broadcasting, it is almost possible to see that local programming in NZ would have made way for UK and USA TV galore. Imagine how that would have impacted on our nation!

Yes, the Charter is not working as planned, but could we not, rather than scrapping this idea all together, look at what was, and eliminate what wasn't? It this just giving up a bit too easily? What worries me the most is that everyone knows that National seem to have an underlying agenda for privatising some of our S.O.Es. And I think that by taking away TVNZ's duties to the NZ tax paying public, the government is weening us off this S.O.E so that they can sell it in their next term in Government. It's nice to see that the Greens agree with me. And once they start our country back on the slippery slope of privatisation, I just get nightmare visions of the U.S Health care system. And that would be bad. The idiot box is coming to New Zealand.

Cooking with Steph, Part One.

My flat has recently started buying food and cooking together, in fact two Sundays ago - I can tell you this so specifically as Sunday is my night to cook. Previously, I had never really cooked any main meals for my flatmates, just dessert, so my night kind of automatically became a 2 course affair. I quite like cooking, but I prefer baking or making dessert, so having to think up and create a tasty, nutritious, filling meal for a 'family' of six is tricky. I thought I would share with you my meals so far.

The first Sunday I made a roast. Not one, but two Chickens were sacrificed, along with potatoes, pumpkin, beans and some stuffing balls (the first time I have made them!). Oh, and gravy (Packet mix though. What a lazy bitch). For desert there was an Apple Crumble. This, dear readers, took me almost three hours to make, and made me realise that roasts are far from easy - I mean, you can chuck a bird in the oven, but then you have to time out the veges! I ended up taking out the potatoes and microwaving them as my clever boyfriend suggested after I neared tantrum state. Back they went in the oven so to make me look like an authentic cook. Stuffing balls were not in the chicken so that our sole Vegetarian flatmate still got to try. By sheer fluke, shoving a few quartered onions up the Chicken's orifice made for some good flavour, and lovely roasted Onion too. Another observation - you need a giant oven to cook everything at once! All the veges ended up crammed together with the stuffing balls as I tried to squeeze in the crumble...

I knew the Apple Crumble would be a winner, as it has been a staple crowd pleaser of mine ever since my older brother brought a Spanish Rugby player to our house for dinner when I was about 13. He looked at me with a hot hot European smile (my first. Blush.) and said in a mildly drool-worthy accent that it was the best he had ever tasted. I have been making it in the hopes of finding a way to such a hot man (eg. through his stomach) ever since. I never measure it out, but here is my sort-of-recipe for you.

Steph's Cack-handed Crumble
Ingredients (I usually just do this by eye, but if you really need measures, here you go):
1 Cup flour
1/2 Cup Rolled Oats, some sort of Museli, or LSA (Linseed, Sunflower & Almond seeds, all crushed up together)
1/2 Cup brown sugar (or any sugar really)
50g Butter
2 teaspoons Cinnamon or the like (or as much as you can handle in the warm spice stakes)
A handful of chopped nuts - I like slivered almonds or hazlenuts...
Apples, Pears, peaches (even tinned if need be!) - whatever fruit you have shitloads of

1. If you are really trying to impress, then first boil up the fruit with a little bit of water and some vanilla. This makes it all mushy and yum - and if you have any leftover it is good on cereal.
2. Mix up all the dry ingredients. You might want to soften the butter, then crumble it in to the dry ingredients. It should feel a bit like the consistency of potting soil
3. Spread the fruit on the bottom of some sort of oven proof dish, then the crumble mixture on top of that. Pop in the oven at 180 Celsius for around 20 minutes, or until golden.
4. Serve with Vanilla Ice cream, and/or whipped cream. Yum!

This went down a treat with the flatmates, and meant the pressure was on. I'll tell you what my sophomore dishes were soon...

The outcome of Saturday

Sigh. So I didn't get to Nikki Patin's gig, despite my excitement. There are a few reasons for this, which all sound a bit lame really, but if you look at it with a tinge of the Glange in your thoughts then it sweetens it up a bit - I am pretty broke, I was tired, and it was cold and rainy. How apathetic, you shout! Are you channeling Aucklanders and their attendance at the Auckland International Arts Festival, you cry! I blush, turn my head slightly, and rue the day I got the ant-social bug.

She did, however, perform one of her poems on Caffeine and Aspirin for us which left me somewhat satisfied that she is absolutely wonderful. Apparently The Women's Bookshop is stocking her book, The Phat Grrrl Diaries - I had a look at it and it is brilliant. Once I'm not so broke I think I might order myself a copy as a treat.

I did, however, get a very good sleep and have woken up all cozy, with the wind blowing outside and Autumn slinking it's cold rainy arse in to the Wellington atmosphere. Pants to that, but at least the Italian Festival is on today, which should warm me up with some Mediterranean goodness...

Oh my goodness, I've found a new Beth Ditto.

And I get to meet her! On Saturday!

One of the perks of being on Radio Active's Caffeine and Asprin radio show about one Saturday a month (10am-1pm NZ time, in case you want to listen) is meeting cool people who aren't performing at my workplace. So, when I saw there was a Def Jam poet on the schedule this week I was so excited, and that just gathered speed when I read more about her, especially her Auckland show here.

I'm going to admit something here, for better or for worse - there are two performance mediums I would dearly love to try out: Performance Poetry (ala Jill Scott, Erykah Badu and Ursula Rucker), and Burlesque. Well. Not only does Nikki Patin do all of these, but she also does it addressing issues close to my heart - body image and sexual assault on women. Yusss. Good lord, maybe she'll become my mentor. That would be so cool.

If I could figure out how to put a YouTube video in here, I would (anyone want to send me a tutorial?).

Needless to say, I'll let you know what she is like in the flesh post Saturday... Who wants to come to her performance at Happy on Saturday?

Sensei, is it to the left or the right first?

So, I went to the launch of a mentoring scheme today. I originally went a little tired and grumpy, and incredibly cynical as to the potential success of this scheme - a bit shit of me, I know, but it is one of those things that has seemed to grow after almost a year in my job - a cynicism of people who say they are going to do something, yet don't quite explain HOW. Anyway, that could be the beginning of a rant, and i'm trying not to do that on this blog (too much)...

While I was listening to the 5(!) speeches, one of the speakers asked us to consider who we would consider our mentors. The rebel in me immediately thought "I don't need a mentor, I did it all myself suckers", to which the quiet reasoning geeky masters grad retorted "you ignoramus, you have had heaps!" - and it started me musing on what determines a mentor, compared to someone inspirational? I mean, Chloe Sevigny is a style inspiration, but it's not like we've sat down and chatted over a flat white (Chloe, if you're reading this, let's totally do coffee if you find yourself in Wellington, NZ). So who was my biggest mentor mentor? You know, the make-a-real-difference-to-my-life one?



This woman. Claudia Wysocki.
A little Mr Miyagi styles I guess - It sounds a bit boring to say that your School Principal was a mentor to you, but for me it is the geeky truth. Good ole Wysox figured out early on what made me tick, and made me realise literally anything is possible if you can talk your way in to it, and back it up with action. I doubt any other principal would let a High School student be in charge of a $3,000 budget to run their first ever Stage Challenge, or let a 16 year old run riot in the School office organising an interschool Theatresports competition, but this woman did. Take a bow, Clauds.

She isn't at the School anymore, and I think her and her partner moved to Nelson, but my mum used to bump in to her occasionally and without fail she asked about me. The last time I saw her she had had something like some of her intestine taken out for anti-cancer purposes. She said it was pretty much just like a compulsory tummy tuck. Kudos to that! It makes me want to get in touch and write a heart-warming letter.

And then there are all those friends who you talk to about stuff, and those people you look up to. Not that you usually come out and say "Will you be my mentor?" - it just sounds a bit little kid like to me. Then again, how else do you do it? Hmm. Brain conundrum.

Who do you consider to be your mentor?

Oh, and while I was looking up Miss Wysocki, I found ratemyteacher.com - oh the hilarity! Look up all your old teachers! If they are still teaching, they've been bitched about on line! It feels like the ultimate revenge on all those teachers you hated. Brilliant.

I'd hate to be a teacher though...

the saviour of lip balms

I just ran out of Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour cream, that bastion of multi-purpose cosmetics, and being a cheapskate right now I decided to go back to my favourite lip balm - Carmex. It's like that tingly Blistex in a tub but is American and was invented about 70 years ago. Thing is, I didn't want a tub. And low and behold, I spied perfection in a click-stick at Homestead Health today for the princely sum of $5.30...
Apart from the tingliness which is my favourite thing about this stuff, I LOVE that they've kept the original packaging for the brand. Isn't it great?! And it is all nice and friendly to animals.

Their website is pretty cool too. As per usual, I headed to the shop to have a look - if I had anyone corporate to buy for, I would so buy them a tie...

the glange.

Ask my mother, and she will tell you that I don't tend to do things by half. Unfortunately this also seems to extend to my health. Over the years I have had mysterious viruses, broken a myriad of bones and suffered from migraines and hayfever galore. And now I can add Glandular Fever to the list.

I always considered "the glange" to be something you get as a teenager and I can vaguely remember people at school disappearing to recover. Weirdly enough I don't think we were ever warned about it, Meningitis was the big warning disease then. My friend Anna and I made up a song about it - "Meningitis - look out! Meningitis - watch out!" it sounds way better out loud. Trust me. Anyways, turns out you can get Glandular Fever as an adult (much like Meningitis) and as luck would have it, when you do get it as an adult, you get it worse.

Hmph. Guess who got Glandular Fever in the Christmas holidays?

Perhaps this is why I'm starting to blog again. The glange has sucked me back in to a vortex of infantile slash elderly behaviour... naps are paramount, late nights are out, and the strongest thing I can have to drink is a good strong cup of tea. If you had asked me at the end of last year, I probably would have said that this would be great! Naps! Tea! What luxury! Ah dear. Take away the luxury factor and these things, dear reader, become a trial. A necessity.

Anyway, part of the bummerness about the disease is that I'm on part time wages, so I turned to the interwebs rather than a whole host of specialists for help with my recovery. There are ebooks written on the subject! Nuts! One woman recommends an organic vegan diet, but then that would go against the advice I got of eating an egg a day, as the yolk has all sorts of goodness. Then I heard no dairy, no gluten, no sugar. And then I read a whole lot of supplements including some very pricey glandular-fever-specific ones...

And that is when I made up my own ideas on what I can realistically handle! I'm eating as much wholegrain and fruit and veges as I can; no caffeine; as little sugar as I can handle (but wow Hot Chocolates are great!); and a host of supplements - Vitamin C, echinacea, Olive leaf, and I am on the hunt for something called 'astralgus'. Oh, and lots of water. But we should all drinks lots of that stuff anyway.

And then lots of rest, which is actually the hardest thing of all! Let's see how I go...
Any other hints you can think of?

third time lucky

I was on the phone yesterday to one of my best friends, Louise. I make this a statement in itself as we hardly ever talk on the phone, and everytime we do talk it is great. Now, I always know what Louise is up to thorugh her blog, and little comments on Facebook and the like, but she bemoaned the fact she doesn't have the same deal with me. So here we go.

This is (embarrassingly enough) the third blog I have tried out for size and I am sure you can look up my other ones through my profile. Needless to say, I hope this one has a bit more longevity...