Books: Andrew McCall Smith

There's no point in talking about each of these four books separately. When an author has four books - FOUR BOOKS - that contain the phrase "crushed strawberry trousers," what's the point in pretending they're different enough to talk about separately??

Seriously, people. Would you honestly get two different people - one an adult and one a small child, unrelated - in two SEPARATE series, both set in Edinburgh (as the narrators frequently state, a city like a village) who are wearing - multiple times each, much as though they've each only got the one pair - trousers the color of crushed strawberries?

And what color IS that? Is it so different from strawberry-colored?

I'm obsessing, I know. But when one reads four books consecutively and finds that they all contain, oh, enough now. I'll try to get over it and talk about the rest of the books.

Which are also much the same.

Over the last week or so, I read 44 Scotland Street and Espresso Tales (from his XXX series), and The Sunday Philosophy Club and Friends, Lovers, Chocolate (from his Sunday Philosophy Club series). Interestingly, in that latter series, the Club never meets, and nor are we introduced to any members of it, other than the narrator. Come to think of it, I can't remember any lovers or chocolate, either. Nor espresso.

The four books share a few traits: very little action, a singular view of snobbish Edinburgh, and a thinly veiled animosity towards the USA and Americans in general. This latter has nothing to do with the books at all; it seems he just likes to get a few jibes in somehow. If his desired effect was to piss off any Americans reading the books, it worked for me. But maybe I'm too sensitive.

(Why did I read these all, if they irritated me so much, you ask? Because I already own them, since they were gifts from my mother, and I'll finish virtually any book I start, just out of sheer willpower. I say "virtually" because I still haven't finished Diamond Age, no matter how hard I try.)

McCall Smith is undoubtably a gifted writer. I have never been to Edinburgh, but feel I would recognize it if I were dropped there blindfolded (where else would you find people wearing crushed-strawberry trousers?). He has interesting philosophical comments to make... he just makes rather too many of them for my liking. I had to re-read whole pages, as my brain fogged over so frequently.

There are no subplots, minor threads, or outside interests in these books. Over two hundred pages or so, someone dies, someone makes an assumption which is proven wrong, and the real killer is identified. If suspense is bad for your heart, you'll be safe with these books.

It's my opinion that he promises side stories now and again and consistently fails to deliver. I'd get more specific, but if you ARE going to read these, I don't want to ruin it for you, and if you're not, you won't care whether Isabelle ever sleeps with Jamie anyway.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series is far superior (and is the reason I read these other books at all). The love the author has for Botswana and its people and traditions is apparent with every word. Sadly, the hifalutin snobbishness he feels for Edinburgh and its artists, and the animosity he feels for America, is just as transparent in these four books.

I'll talk about The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series another day. I've finished three of them, and might as well read all the rest first. Standing on their own, they're rather unsatisfactory, but put together, I feel like I've gotten a full story. Not necessarily good value for money, since you've got to buy three or four books to get the satisfaction of one, but I'm enjoying them anyway. Probably because I'm not the one who paid for them.

Listen To The Nurse, Duncan

I just took my husband to the hospital, and it was totally worth the inconvenience of taking the boys and their pajamas to Ouma's house for a bath, and the hassle of going to the hospital on a public holiday (ANZAC day - we made cookies - see below), and the bother of it now being 9:19 pm and having to yell at the boys to hurry up and brush their teeth after having cinnamon toast for supper.

Because the nurse's verdict was this: "You need to listen to your wife more."

Well, DUH.

See, he's been feeling unwell since Saturday (he told the nurse Friday - he never gives me all the information. You'll find this is a frequently recurring complaint of mine. Ridiculously frequent. Way too frequent. Have I mentioned the frequency?) But I don't think he's sick, I think he's exhausted. He doesn't get enough sleep, what with getting up at 5 am three days a week to cut meat (and 6 or 7 am the other days), working six days a week, and making all those sausages, and then, in an act of supreme brilliance, refereeing a rugby game on Saturday and playing a footy game on Sunday. And when he starts to get run down, he stops eating. And drinking.

So I've been trying to get him to rest - I made him come home after his game on Sunday and lie down (he always wants to watch the next game, but I was a mean, horrible wife, and dragged him home), and I sent him home from the butcher shop on Monday afternoon to take a nap. And I've been making him eat more vegetables (I think he's probably so deficient in some vitamin or mineral at this point that he needs a needle. Preferably a large one. In his butt. By an unsympathetic nurse. But, of course, ALL nurses are sympathetic to his butt. Have you see his butt? You'd be sympathetic, too).

I took a nap today (after we went to a friend's fabulous birthday party - it was her four-year-old son's birthday, but it was fabulous - champagne, etc), while he watched television. I keep telling him to eat - things like dry toast and Weetbix, you know? Sensible things. And he tells me he HAS eaten (and I find out when he's talking to the nurse that no, he didn't have breakfast like he told me he did).

So while I'm asleep, he decides to take my advice and eat. He's weak, lethargic and nauseous, as he has been for five days now. I know he needs more than food, but it's a start. But remember, I'm asleep. He eats leftover beef stirfry and what he calls "eggnog." Are you ready for this? It's milk, sugar, and a raw egg, all mixed together.

And he feels really sick. Huh. Imagine. And he makes me promise not to tell the nurse he ate it. LOVELY NURSE KATE, MY HUSBAND DRANK MILK, SUGAR, AND A RAW EGG BEFORE WE CAME IN TONIGHT.

His blood pressure, blood sugar, pulse, oxygen levels, and bowel sounds (poor lovely Nurse Kate, having to listen to my husband's bowel sounds) were all fine, though his wee showed dehydration (lovely Nurse Kate had the other nurse check his wee, which was fortunate for me, since I would rather have checked it myself than had her sully her lovely hands with my husband's wee). They decided that he wasn't in acute distress, and that they couldn't really justify calling the doctor (the doctor on call tonight is in Katanning, 30 minutes away), but that he needs:

1) to go to the doctor tomorrow, and
2) TO LISTEN TO HIS WIFE MORE

Australia has wonderful national health, but I'd have happily paid for that piece of advice.

ANZAC BISCUITS
a recipe from my friend KateTheVet, which I have modified for my family's unique dietary requirements. Thank you, KateTheVet!
125g butter, melted
3 tbsp Karo syrup (melted in the butter)
1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup dextrose
1/2 cup fructose
3/4 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup rolled oats.

Mix. Bake at will. Edges will burn - perhaps from all the butter? More likely because the dextrose and fructose make the mixture a different texture than it should be. The second batch worked out better: I poured the whole mess in the middle of the cookie sheet and baked it like that. Only the edges got burnt. Next time I'll do them in a dish like brownies, so there won't be any burnt edges. Yummy! Yippee for ANZAC Day!

The Essence Of Leander, A Six-Year-Old

We've lived in this house for five happy months. Oh, blissful homeownership! I know it's been five months today, because another mortgage payment drifted out of our bank account like a wisp of smoke.

A couple of weeks ago, I downloaded Back of My Car, by Ryan Starr, a song I loved from Rockstar: Supernova (oh my god, did I LOVE that show). I haven't heard it since the show was over in, what, October? September? I tried to get it soon after, but it wasn't at iTunes yet, and I just thought of it again the other day. I was in the living room, the TV was on, some permutation of boys was playing on the floor. The song started playing on my laptop when the downloading finished. Leander looked up and said, "That guy was on TV."

Today, I switched on the light over the stove, a light I have switched on every day for the last five months. A light that generally stays on as long as we're at home, since the stove is in a fairly dark corner of the kitchen (I have to justify it, since my husband is such a cheap bastard that he switches lights off WHILE I'M STILL IN THE ROOM). Leander said, "COOL! There's a light there! Wicked!"

His wife is going to live in a state of complete and total frustration.

Armpits And Crotches

Libra (makers of feminine hygiene products) kindly provides reading material for those days when I forget to take my book with me to the toilet. Sometimes I even leave the sticky-paper-covers next to the toilet so my husband has something interesting to read when it's his turn. Some of the "Odd Spots" (what an insane name for anything linked to menstrual, um, leakage) are less interesting than others. However, one of today's Spots caught my attention:

Perspiration has no odour. Bacteria causes the stink.

Or perhaps it was phrased slightly differently. The point is: my armpits don't stink! It's just the bacteria in there that stinks.

See, I have this issue with antiperspirants. If I use them, I will have Alzheimer's by the time I'm 55. I read this years ago, and Wikipedia agrees (okay, so they take a mildly neutral stance on it... but I have a phobia here, and I'm not letting go of it just because Wiki is a wimp.)

It's the aluminum. Or, as it's pronounced here, "Al00-min-ee-um." My body will absorb the aloomineeum and it will cause me to forget who my own children are.

Much like today, at the footy, when two of them started punching each other in the head and I pretended that I had no idea whose children they were. Since when do my precious angels punch each other IN THE HEAD? It was funny at first, when Eddie tackled Leander (on the sidelines, this is), and I shouted, "HIGH TACKLE, EDDIE. YOU KNOW BETTER." There were audible snickers from nearby cars. But then they started punching each other IN THE HEAD, and I had that snicker-proof that there were other people watching as my children punched each other IN THE HEAD. Less funny.

Where was I? Oh, crap; the antiperspirant I used in college must already be taking hold.

Holy tangent, Batman.

"Crap" here in Australia is bleeped out on television shows. I should point out that they can say fuck, shit, bastard, asslick, and twat. Though they don't say "asslick" so much, as they're not really that inventive. They can show surgical procedures, as well as full-frontal nudity (after a certain time at night, though nobody's factored in the point that they go by Sydney time, and we are, what, two hours earlier? So at 7 pm, when my children are fully awake, we can stumble across the Wonderful World of Sex. Winkie alert!)

But don't say crap. THAT would be indecent.

Back to the smell of my armpits, though. I don't wear antiperspirant (because I might lose my mind), which isn't too desperate, since I don't work in an office, and my boss (me) is used to the smell, but there are days when SOMETHING is called for. I shave my armpits, and I scrub really, really hard, but that whiff lingers gently.

So I'm going to heed the information given by my sanitary protection, and take the antibacterial soap into the shower next time (next time being, of course, in a few weeks, after I remember to buy some) (whoa, though, I WILL be showering each day in the meantime, lest ye wonder), and see if it helps. I'll keep you posted.

How To De-bone A Chicken

In our butcher shop, we make what we call a spatchcock chicken (a spatchcock is actually a small bird, but we call our partially deboned chicken this because that's what they were called in South Africa when we bought them there. And who are we to call them what they are, which is butterflied chickens, when "spatchcock" is good enough for SAers?)

So here's how you do it:
1. Cut the chicken open by splitting it down the breast. Splay the chicken out flat(ish).
2. Slice between the breastbone and the breast meat down to the edge of the ribs.
3. Slide your fingers in there, and pull the ribs away from the chicken's torso (do chickens have torsos?). Slice the meat at the edge of the ribs.
4. Grab the ribs-and-breastbone section and rip it towards you (away from the body of the chicken) to break the joint, and slice through the joint there. Discard this bony waste.
5. Repeat on other side.

Okay, now, see step 4 above? The part where you rip the joint open? THAT is exactly what it felt like when my husband body-checked me across the butcher shop yesterday.

I should point out here, before you report this to the local police (who will then do nothing with the information, as they've done whenever my shop has gotten broken into), that this was an accident. Peta, who owns and operates the Country Kitchen next door, saw the whole thing, through her tears of hilarity, and will corroborate Duncan's innocence. However, it was an incredibly poignant moment for me.

Duncan's a brilliant rugby player. He's a natural athlete, absolutely amazing to watch. He's also big. I've heard many, many opponents talk about being tackled by Duncan, and I understood it was something to avoid, even though he's lost loads of weight (that he couldn't afford to lose) since taking over the butcher shop. And approaching forty.

But in that moment when I actually WAS tackled by Duncan, I had a split second where I realized that I have always wished *I* could be that brilliant athlete, and another, immediately subsequent, split second where I was grateful that I'd never been that brilliant athlete, and would therefore never get tackled by someone like Duncan. Theoretically, of course. Because one doesn't imagine that one would get rugby tackled in a butcher shop. By one's husband.

See, what happened was this: We buy boneless mutton, in boxes, from a local abattoir, about twenty minutes' drive away. It's a family run abattoir, and when the women come into town to do their shopping, they deliver the meat. So these two women (is it worth mentioning here that they were young and thin, as opposed to me, not young and not yet rid of the weight I still carry from our youngest son? Who is nearly four? Duncan says that's not a factor. I say, well, then, what the hell WAS the factor that caused you to decimate your wife? Because there'd better be one) each carried a heavy box of meat and struggled with the door to the butcher shop. I was closer, so I immediately stepped around the cutting table to open the door for them. But Duncan, well on the other side of me, threw down his knife and checked me right into the boards on his way through me.

And he didn't even notice. Thankfully, Peta, who was also in his path, escaped injury, mostly likely due to the fact that she was doubled over laughing at the spectacle of me scrabbling to catch my balance against a fortunately placed chair, and was therefore out of his direct line to the door.

After a painful evening, I checked my story with Peta (he really did tackle me, right? I'm not blowing an innocent brush-past out of proportion, right? Right and right), who still found it hysterical this morning (she's not completely heartless. She apologized for laughing). She reckons the youth and fitness of the mutton-bearing women has to have been a factor. My mother-in-law (who didn't witness this event, but still nearly wet herself laughing when I told her about it), sagely and soberly shook her head and said, "I learned lo those many years ago that the wife is at the bottom of the list."

My husband, however, insists he was just worried about the mutton. But he has singularly failed to emanate sufficient remorse from his pores. His reply?

"You know my pores are blocked."

In Honor of Kurt Vonnegut

My favorite Kurt Vonnegut quote, because I've said practically the same thing so many, many times:

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
Kurt Vonnegut, "Cold Turkey", In These Times, May 10, 2004

CNN reports that Kurt Vonnegut wrote "at least 19 novels."

He's an American icon, people. You're telling me nobody at CNN actually went to the trouble of COUNTING his novels? Seriously?

Wikipedia lists fourteen novels. Hm. But if you count all the titles (because some novels were published under different titles), there are 19. Fourteen novels, nineteen titles. CNN, are you listening? He was 84 when he died. His last novel was published ten years ago. YOU HAD PLENTY OF TIME TO GET THIS RIGHT.

Brown Easter (An Original Recipe)

When I try to read after playing Ponturu, my eyes make little lines between all the words. Sudoku, you'll be getting a call from Shannen Doherty.

Easter was fun. Duncan took the kids to the butcher shop to get bacon for breakfast, and I put some stuff out on the verandah for them to find when they got home. Of course, they got home around 11 or 12, or something, and they'd already thoroughly searched the yard, the porch, the world while I'd been in bed trying to ignore them and the dog and the dog's incessant barking. So we had to talk them into going back out to look around. I can't remember what we did last Easter, or the Easter before that, so I have no idea what Oliver expects (on the subject of Easter, or anything else on this earth).

Oliver got out on the porch and shouted, "There it is! I found it! Easter poop!"

(We have a puppy. Did I mention the puppy? I should mention the puppy, before you start wondering about poop on the porch.)

Oliver then found Easter rocks, and an "Easter dead rat," which, I hasten to explain, was just another Easter rock. He has a vivid imagination. There might be poop on the porch, but I assure you there are no dead rats in the agapanthus. (Agapanthi?)

Or live rats. No rats at all, I promise.

Eventually, they found their Easter baskets, a term I use loosely to describe the Glad containers holding their purple Easter poop candy and their Brown Easters, which I loosely based on an Australian recipe for White Christmas. We read their new Dr. Suess books, and I tortured Oliver with his new tickle frog (a small Mary Meyer finger puppet I bought at their outlet, oh, about seven years ago), and eventually Leander got over his disappointment at ONLY getting candy specially developed for his enjoyment, a book and a Dockers armband (well, wristband, but he loves to have a band around his bicep, and it's an adult-sized wristband, so it will fit there and maybe replace the green bias tape he was given to wear at the school's swimming carnival to denote which faction house he was swimming for. Well over a month ago. He can't find the shoes he wore this afternoon, but he hasn't lost that crappy little piece of bias tape), and came back in time to hear that green eggs and ham could, indeed, be eaten in a boat.

They all liked their candy, though Oliver wouldn't eat the purple poop. There's cream cheese in there, and I can tell you from my own experience that that there is a acquired taste. I didn't eat cream cheese until I was 33.

Just in case you all want to try making purple poop or Brown Easter, I'm including the recipes here. That CSID website says they're tracking around six hundred kids world-wide. The odds of also having life-threatening allergies probably severely reduces the audience for this kind of recipe, but about a year ago I'd have maimed kittens for a few recipe ideas to entice my starving child to eat. He'd just been diagnosed with CSID (which is a story for another day), and suddenly all our "safe" foods had to be taken away. The only control he had over what he could eat was to refuse to eat anything. He was skinny to start with, and there has been nothing in my entire life that cut me so deeply as watching my five-year-old son become anorexic. Not even the sight of those earless kittens wandering around in tiny pools of blood.

I'm giving you both recipes at the same time because you really need to make both of them. Not just so you can use a little of the extra Copha from the first recipe in the second one, but because these two delicacies are best enjoyed together. You know: you try one, and it's okay, then you try the other, and you think, "Oh, yeah, THIS one is good." And then, in a couple of seconds when the Copha becomes reality in your mouth, you think, "Hm, actually, that first one was better, really." Take a bite of that one. Yup, it definitely enhances the one you're not eating.


Purple Easter Poop
a recipe by amy
60g Copha
125g cream cheese
1/2 cup dextrose
1/4 cup fructose
1 cup desiccated coconut
extra desiccated coconut for topping
food coloring

Melt Copha in microwave (use defrost). Blend together all other ingredients. Poor in Copha and mix well. Add red and blue food coloring, in large quantities (there's a reason other recipes measure food coloring in "drops" as opposed to "teaspoons." Use your discretion. Originally, I had envisioned pretty pastel Easter lumps. The dark purple grows on you, though).

Keep stirring until the Copha cools a bit, and then scoop them into little mounds. This is the only time a Pampered Chef tool has ever come in handy: I have one of those little mini ice cream scoopers. Top with extra coconut and refrigerate until hard. Store in airtight container in refrigerator.

Brown Easter
another recipe by amy
250g Copha (actually, cut a extra chunk off the Copha you used for the purple poop and add it to this recipe)
2 cups sugar-free, organic, horrible puffed rice
1 cup desiccated coconut (you should be sensing a theme by now)
1 cup full cream powdered milk (get the calories in those kids any way you can)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 cup dextrose
1/2 cup fructose
1/2 tsp vanilla

Melt Copha in microwave (using defrost). They say you're supposed to chop it up before you melt it, but that's just making more dishes. The whole chunk will melt just fine. Eventually).

Mix everything else in a bowl (or, I don't know, a hat. Why do people always say to mix it IN A BOWL?) Add the melted Copha and mix well. Line a baking dish with aluminum foil and pour in the mixture. Mush it down firmly. Refrigerate until hard, and then break into pieces.

Happy Easter, everyone.

What's With The Eggs, Isaac?

Fig Newtons don't have eggs. Why do all the recipes I find have eggs in the Newtons? Why do all the recipes on earth have fricking eggs in them?

I'm not opposed to eggs. Not at all. Especially since two years ago when we learned they were no longer violent killer allergens (for us, for our six-year-old son. For others, they are still violent killer allergens). For us they are now simply hanging-over-the-toilet-for-45-while-the-antihistamines-kick-in allergens.

I need a Newton. And I can't go to Price Chopper and buy some because my local Price Chopper is 11, 669 miles away (not an estimate - I checked), and also because I can't digest the sugar in them. Figs are one of the few fruits with very low amounts of sucrose in them, but neither Leander nor I really want to eat the figs. I want the Newtons (Leander is blissfully ignorant, happily for him).

I'm really not into this whole Easter thing. What with being anti-religion and all, and now with the sugar, the eggs, the nuts, the carcinogenic poisonous "may leek out of your butt" chemical sweeteners. But before, in my stupidity, before the CSID, before the Outback, when I thought I was so clever with the Easter, I conditioned my children to hear Easter and think little-plastic-eggs-with-mini-oreos-inside. Poor planning. Very poor planning.

So I've just made (very, icky, dark) purple copha (google that one), cream cheese, and coconut mound-things, and "White Christmas: as modified by Amy to be brown and made with horrible organic puffed rice things I swore I would never make my children eat." I have sugar-substitution down to a fine art (use the same amount of dextrose, and add half again as much fructose, increase the liquid a bit, and LEAVE OUT ALL SALT - don't ask me why, just DO it), so actually, they're not bad.

They're not Easter, but then, I'm not down with the rising of Christ. So... fitting, I suppose.

But the Newtons. I'm sad about the Newtons. I found a recipe for Honey Newtons that doesn't have egg in it... but it has a cup of grated CHEDDAR CHEESE. WHAT GIVES? I love the lactose, but not in my Newton.

I am sad. I will make the brownies, and the brownies will cheer me up, but the packet of dried figs on my counter will mock me.

In Which I Am Keanu Reeves and You Are Sandra Bullock

We just finished watching The Lakehouse, which my mother brought for us when she was here last month. We never watch movies - or any television - together because we work too much and have too many children and because my husband only makes time for the TV when there’s rugby on. But he got home from making the sausages, ate his porterhouse roast (which was, incidentally, at least as good as customers keep telling us it is), and still had time for a movie. Granted, it’s now 1:25 a.m. and we’ve both got to work in the morning, in spite of it being Easter weekend, but hey, it’s a holiday.

Anyway, I’m Keanu Reeves, only without the stubble (most days) and the being in love with Sandra Bullock no matter which movie they’re in. And without the surfing. I can’t surf.

Living here is like being two years behind the rest of you, only not in Chicago. I know it’s not Chicago because I haven’t even seen a catalog from Crate & Barrel in three years. It’s not the same online, because the toilet is too high to comfortably hold my laptop on my knees.