Hey Plain Jane

Chicken, recycled scupture

Originally uploaded by michelle3duk

2.8 metre tall chicken made from recycled materials. Materials include wood, yellow pages directory, gloves, fabric, plastic bags, coffee tins, juice cartons, coffee cup lids and cardboard packaging.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michelle3duk/

recycled yellow pages. I like it. (as I quietly eye off the use by date of our own yellow page phone book) Papier mache stuff is so much fun.

Originally uploaded by Cristina Grueso

How unexpectedly compelling it is to place a portrait of The Wolf next to The Girl. It’s like a snapshot just before the climax of the story. We all know what the tension is!

I was almost going to call this post ‘Good versus Evil’ but it is no such thing. Both parties are innocent in their own world, it is just that their worlds have different rules.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fairycatcher/

I may be the last person on planet Earth who is not yet switched on to muffins.  Although I’ve been known to quaff the odd Double Choc Mocha chip or Banana Maple Pecan number, I’ve never thought ‘oh yeah…muffins’ in the same way I might think ‘oh yeah…cheesecake’ or indeed ‘oh yeah…fudge’.  I’ve always been slightly of the opinion that one should hold off on the muffins entirely until a really good cupcake comes along. There seemed to me to be no sense in settling. I feel the same way about bagels when perfectly soft and flavorsome rye rolls exist. 

But I have changed. A bit.

I’ve come across Gloria Ambrosia’s The Complete Book of Muffins; a terrific little book that modestly sets out recipe after recipe of the most extravagant and superior muffin recipes I’ve ever read. There is not a single photograph in sight, and yet this book completely grabbed my sensory imagination. I suppose that is a mark of how good the flavour choices are. I note that Gloria Ambrosia (what a great name, incidentally) is among other things a practising Buddhist, and her bent is partly focusing on the nutritional value of her recipes. Muffins and nutrition; now there’s a thought combination not often spoken of.  Even in Australia muffins are more often associated with coffee, being decadent lumps of  mostly sugar-plumped treats.

The book has soooooo many good recipes. The flours chosen are often wholegrain or non-gluten, the sugar content is mostly delivered in fruit puree or concentrate (more fibre, vitamin and lower GI than plain sugar), and the emphasis is on the wholesomely adventurous, exploring all these very lovely new super-foods commonly available here. So far I’ve tried the “Roasted Red Pepper, Rosemary and Herbed Cream-cheese Muffins”, the “Easy Living Southern Pecan Muffins”, the “Double Choc Chip Muffins”, which is made with whole wheat flours Jack never suspected were there and the “Thanks to the Tropical Sun Muffins”, which features fresh mango puree and chopped papaya. Lordie! I am stunned. And I’m dying to make the Chai Tea Spice Muffins and the Carribean Sweet Potato Gingerbread Muffins and the Spanakopita Muffins and the Almond Cardamom and Fig Muffins and the….sigh.

My Roasted Red Pepper, Rosemary and Herbed Cream Cheese Muffins

It’s been a furious four months, up and down that highway to school and back twice a day. 46 kilometers all up for the two trips daily there and back. The road gets no easier. The drivers get no less tetchy and idiotic. I am no less aware of taking my life to the edge every time I drive it. In short I loathe the task. I find prayer helps.

Jack’s made heaps of new school buds, won an award for “being a good friend”, and he seems okay with the whole school gig. I, however, have learnt that a good teacher is a rare find, how hard it can be to keep the attention of a group of five year olds let alone teach them. 
Jack’s teacher is a wonderful woman; plain spoken, calm, decisive, warm but not effusive.  She is every bit the type of bookish and wise owl type one always hopes will teach your children. On occasion I have helped out in the class. They encourage parents to do this, perhaps to instill in us the true and correct understanding that teaching five year olds is a real art. My stints as volunteer teacher’s aide have been fraught events. Kids are great but on masse they form mini tsunamis.