Wicked Good

You know you're excited about something when you start counting sleeps.

So I must have been really looking forward to going to see Wicked because I'd been counting sleeps ever since L gave me the tickets for my birthday. Yipee! Fabulous show. Yipee! Yummy dinner beforehand.

We had an amazing dinner at Gingerboy. It's only a tiny restaurant, sitting maybe 50, but the walls and ceiling are like a bamboo screen with a starry night behind it. I got lucky and took the bench seat, but TJ had to put up with the prespex wonder chair that did nothing for butt comfort.

This photo is from The Age because I left my camera behind.

We had big tall fruity cocktails to start with, followed by scallops with crumbly stuff and coriander on top, son-in-law eggs (battered and deep fried egg with yummy chili dip) and then a really good duck curry. Really good. I mean, I have a problem eating duck for the same reason I have a problem eating quail and lamb - they're so cute. I don't want to eat anything I would normally fawn over. But I'm ashamed to say, it smelled so good that gobbled it down and then chased coconut rice all over the plate trying to get that last little bit of fragrant sauce. Then it was onto the dessert platter and before we knew it, it was time to roll off to the theatre.

But no.

Wait.

How can I not tell you about the desert plate? I love this (now old) trend of a little bit of everything on the desert menu carefully lined up on a long plate and plonked down between the two of you. I can never choose which desert to have, and it only ever ends in a growly husband when I poach off his. So, on the plate:

1) sticky black rice w mango and jasmine tea icecream (7/10)

2) tofu cheesecake w crispy sugary thing on top (10/10). Both of us had read this on the menu and said 'blerk, no WAY are we ordering that' and yet it was divine. Smooth and cheesy in a way tofu should never be. Or should always be. One or the other.

3) pear and cinnamon pancake with red bean icecream (3/10) - This was my choice if I had an individual dessert, but it was very ordinary. Sue me, but redbean icecream should be a redder, and beanier. Don't give me Asian Lite!!

4) vanilla and apple dumpling (4/10) Was Tony's individual choice, but again, was a little disappointing in a chewy, apple wrapped in dimsum pastry kind of way.

5) white chocolate cold pudding (8/10). Really a pannacotta, so as such, very yummy. However don't make the mistake of saying to the waiter 'the pannacotta was nice' because their reply will be something like "it's not pannacotta because that's not asian. It's a cold pudding."

To which *I* say - if you simmer up cream, sugar, vanilla then add gelatin, you can *call* it whatever the heck you want -- it's panna cotta. I almost wanted to kidnap the 'cold pudding' and take it back to its Italian heritage at Pelligrini's, but then their creme caramels might have taken offence. So I gobbled it down instead.

So as you can see, it was piglets anonymous and tight trousers after the Gingerboy adventure, even after the waitress told us we'd been 'circumspect'. I'd hate to see indulgence!

Then onto Wicked, which was fabulous. Clever use of the original story and I was entranced the whole way through. We had amazing seats that only L knows how to source (how does she do it?) and the night zoomed by.

Go see it!

Go eat at Gingerboy under the starry bamboo sky on a clear perspex seat. You won't regret it.

The new mantra for the treatment of characters

So I'm stuck with my darling beautiful book and I can't seem to move through it. Every paragraph feels like a page, every page a scene, every scene a book of war & peace proportions. You get the picture.

And I *love* revising my manuscripts, too much, really. Improving my sucky first draft is often more rewarding than getting the pages done in the first place. But right now, ack, I don't know, I'm bored.

And initially I'll blame anything but the scene. It's daylight savings and being unable to get up and do my pages. It's my desk, which is an old kitchen table and has never felt conducive to writing, it's the headache I can't quite seem to get rid of or maybe it's work and the fact I'm so tired when i get home that all I can do is beg TJ to make my dinner and pop me into bed.

But eventually I realise what I'm actually bored with is the scene. Ho hum, they're in a carriage. Ho hum, they arrive at a beautiful London townhouse - blah blah blah - haven't I read this a hundred times before? Yawn.

So could somebody please send a note to my characters and tell them they have to start spicing things up or i'm going to fall asleep at my keyboard? And if they could do a few things that are just WRONG, that would be good too. I don't want them treating each other all nicey nice. I want them to arrive at the London townhouse and find themselves in quarters little better than the housekeeper. I want my heroine to arrive in London only to witness the one things she's most frightened of. I want the long anticipated visit to the dressmakers not to happen, but for them to get a wardrobe of cast-me-downs that don't fit.

Hold on! I feel less bored already. Excuse me while I go write.

Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen. I have found my new character mantra.

Hanging my hopes on a zucchini

I'm sure I knew how to cook. There are recipe books with pages that stick together to prove it.

I think.

I seem to remember loving cooking and adoring whipping something up for T for dinner.

Didn't I??

Hard to say, because my cooking mojo has been gone now for so long that I think a toasted cheese sandwich is 'special' effort. Nothing is turning out right.

Most dinners look like I have attention-deficit-disorder. Just look at them and you *know* I wandered away from the kitchen and got distracted by shiny things. Meat is overcooked, vegetables grey or just non existant. And everything is boring. Boring with a capital B.

Maybe it was the Tasmanian adventure. Maybe it was the kerfunctness of the fridge on return and complete lack of dollars to replace it (hey, paying a mortgage and rent is HARD). But recently I can't cook to save myself.

This has been going on for months.

Then last night I'd had enough. We had our monthly crit meeting and I'd said I'd bring a cake. Big chance to step up to the plate. The cake plate that is.

So I remember the lovely Keziah telling me about a foolproof cake recipe that everyone LOVED at her place recently. So armed with a zucchini and some mixed spices I tried to save my cooking career.

And it was YUM. No strange lumpy foreign pieces in the middle, just a dense spice cake with a lime dressing that I could've downed a whole bowl of. So THANKS Keziah and thanks Delicious Magazine...

zucchini & pistachio spice cake with lime frosting
Serves 10-12

¾ Cup (185ml) sunflower oil
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup (75g) unsalted pistachios, finely chopped, plus ¼ cup (35g) slivered unsalted pistachios to decorate
½ cup (60g) almond meal
2 cups grated zucchini (about 3-4)
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground mixed spice
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1½ cups (225g) self-raising flour
½ cup (75g) plain flour
Lime frosting
180g unsalted butter, softened
1¼ cups (200g) icing sugar, sifted
250g cream cheese, softened, chopped
Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lime

Preheat oven to 170°C.
Grease a 22cm springform pan and line base and sides with baking paper. Using an electric mixer with whisk attachment, beat the oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla until thick. Stir in chopped nuts, meal, zucchini and spices. Sift over soda and flours, and stir to combine. Pour into pan and bake for 70 minutes or until a skewer inserted in centre comes out clean. Cool in pan for 20 minutes, then turn onto a wire rack and cool completely.
For frosting, use electric beaters to beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. With motor running, gradually add cheese, beating well between additions. Add zest and juice and beat until smooth. Using a bread knife, slice the cake into two rounds and set aside top. Spread a third of the frosting over the bottom half, then replace top and spread cake with remaining frosting. Decorate with slivered pistachios.


From delicious magazine February 2007.

One hour later

USB of Great Suckiness

Dear USB stick,

I did love you.

A friend gave you to me and she had taken great effort to personalise you.

I put a ribbon on your arse so I could find you easily. It was aqua blue and I used to cut the small fraying inches off the end so you would always look glamorous.

You had a Gb of memory, more than enough for my pesky briefcase of writing back up.

I always treated you well, pushing that stupid ‘safely remove your hardware’ button to stop you freaking out.

I fretted over you, often driving back home to make sure you were always with me.

So WHY, WHY?? did you have to kamakaze from my handbag to God knows where? And I say God knows because i'm sure He watched me tear the city apart looking for you.

Where you are not:

• Under the bar chair at the casino where we drank champagne last night
• In the car
• Floating in the Yarra
• Still plugged into my work pc
• At the convention centre
• At the Royal Rose where we had birthday dinner with Freya
• On the street outside her house
• Chewed by Oliver
• On the 5^th floor of the car park in the spot by the elevator

I know you did this on purpose. I have any number of crappy lipsticks in my handbag, much the same size as you, that NEVER go astray. After much soul searching, I can only come to the conclusion you are a faithless piece of hardware. My love was enduring and strong – while you just took the chance to leave me behind for greener pastures. I hope you find what you're looking for - mp3s, DivX, .jpgs - all those things I never offered you with my boring pile of .doc files.

I am sorely disappointed in you. I thought you were different.

Robyn

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway....even if you ruin your mascara

It was conference time again for Romance Writers of Australia! Fun fun stuff, with the always inspiring Barbara Samuel, all time favourite Jo Beverley and new favourite Margie Lawson. I had excellent light bulb moments in Anna Campbell's deep POV workshop, and hung on every word of Jennifer Kloester who has to be one of the foremost authorities on my favourite subject - Georgette Heyer.

But I didn't learn as much as I normally do because I was busy stressing about the fact I was MC at the awards night. Wrap me up and call me scatter brain, but I couldn't string a coherent thought together until Sunday morning, and by then it was frankly too late.

When the conference co-ordinator asked me to emcee my first reaction was unadulterated fear. But along with it was the kind of excitement that I know always means I’m on the right track. That bubbling joy and ‘this is going to be fun’ feeling. I really love the awards night, celebrating everyone’s hard work and the beautiful stories they create. We sit there like a big family that hasn’t been together in a year (probably because we haven’t been together in a year) and talk and laugh and generally have the best time. So if I could be a bigger part of it, then all good.

At the end of the day, emceeing is a really simple job. But boy did I plan my little heart out for it. I’d covered for every little thing that could go wrong. Luckily I didn’t need to use any of it, but having it there made me feel better. And after some jitters at the start where my biggest fear was that I’d succumb to ‘little lamb’ voice, I really did have the time of my life. The bubbling joy and the ‘this is going to be fun’ feeling had not let me down.

There was only one little problem I didn’t foresee. Because I’m so unco with mascara and the more makeup I put on the closer to Krusty the Clown I look, I’d asked the lovely Mia Hawkswell to come do my hair and makeup for me. All good. Looking fantastic, made up to the wazoo and feeling glamorous.

And then my crit partner Carolyn Comito won the Emerald. She’s such a talented writer and her manuscript ‘Her Majesty’s Spy’ is absolutely brilliant. I admire her in so many ways. She’s dedicated, she’s focused and she deserves not only this award but the big fat book contracts that should follow. And when I think about much she deserves this and how her two beautiful children and husband are at home waiting to hear how mummy did – of COURSE I start crying. And all that smoky and glamorous eye makeup starts to puddle up.

Then and editor came and plonked herself down next to my other crit partner Chris (who won the prestigious Romance Writers of NZ Clendon Award last week). Without a pitch or query letter in sight, the editor asked Chris to send in whatever work she has. I cried even more because Chris writes books that wrap around you like a warm blanket and we know that, and we’ve known it for years, but it seems now that everyone else is catching up and her future sparkles like a sparkly thing.

So CC's crying, Chris is crying, Keri's crying, Freya was all teary too so what the hell hope did I have?? So I’m dabbing away at my eyes with my napkin (sorry Langham, there’s one you’ll have to turf) and hoping my voice doesn’t warble.

It was a great night and not because it was the first time I was brave enough to get up in front of a hundred and fifty people and be myself, but as the night Carolyn and Chris made me so proud I almost burst out of my little white bustier.

In my news from the conference, I pitched my book to an editor and was hugely excited/relieved to hear she thought it was an original concept and would love to see some chapters. Woo hoo! Not only that, but she went above and beyond and gave me some ideas on how I could ramp up the conflict. Editors! We loves them! Revisions we loves them less because they make us sweat but if I get a better book from it, i'll roll up my sleeves and do the dirty.

We should've burned stockings not bras

I have SO had enough of pantyhose. I know, I know, all the injustice in the world and I reach boiling point over a layer of sheer something I use to cover my legs. It seems wrong somehow. Shallow. Inconsequential. But I am reserving the kind of loathing for stockings that I usually have for animal cruelty and the girl that comes into work each day with a different fur item on (no, I do NOT care if they were your grandmothers!!!!).

But back to pantyhose. Firstly, they do NOT keep you warm in winter. Not even vaguely. I'm not sure if this was ever used as a selling proposition, but my mother always used to tell me to go put tights on because I'd freeze otherwise. Newsflash Mum - I'm still freezing. Yesterday i stood at the tramstop completely certain I had tucked my skirt into my pants, so cold was the arctic wind up my leg tunnel.

Secondly, what in the history of fashion do we pay so much for for so little return?

• Monday - buy stockings - ladder stockings by my second coffee

• Tuesday - buy stockings - rip a massive hole in the butt of them yanking them up. Figure I can get away with this and wear them anyway, even though hole gets bigger as the day progresses

• Wednesday - Wear a pair I picked up at the Bonds Factory Outlet for 3.95 (marked down from 19.95, which is my only excuse for not hearing the alarm bells). Put stockings on. Think to self 'hmmm, these are a little inflexible." Stockings look lovely on the leg, but unfortunately only cover half my butt. As the day wears on and I make the fatal mistake of walking around, the stockings fall down...
  down...
  further...
  until I am forced to penguin walk to the toilets before they drop to my ankles.

• Thursday - figuring there has to be a better way - go to specialised stocking shop and invest in a pair of thicker denier fishnetty numbers. Feel very sexy and urban until I realise my massive calves turn the fishnets into something more akin to a fish trawler. Unsexy. But at least they last the entire day with no mishap.

• Friday - get smart and wear pants.

Really, 'get smart and wear pants' should have happened on Tuesday - but nobody every said I was a fast learner.