Young Bucks and Magpie Girl

LAST NIGHT Your JoC Fairy made risotto.

So earlier in the week, I made a menu, checked the pantry and fridge, made my weekly shopping list, blah blah and one yaddah to boot. But one menu item gave me pause. It is one my young Kitchen Jedi, Jasmin (Better Than Yarn AND Knitmore Girls, A Certified Jenius), plunged into with the Joy of Cooking: Risotto. GingerMan and I made it as a Couple's Dinner on Valentine's Day, pouring stock and stirring together, adding fresh tarragon and mushrooms to be rewarded with the most heavenly, creamy delicious dish on a cold Monday night. I thought I would branch out, and so delved into The Stacks upstairs to find two Jamie Olivers, three Nigella Lawsons, two Julia Childs, and save Jamie's ......., and the JoC, not a lot of variety, and in some only honourable mention. It was only that night, as I returned with my groaning sacks of booty that I spied Marcella Hazan's required text on Italian Cooking. Bah.

While delving I felt a....something. A Something Undefinable, or nearly so, until I made it to the second Jamie after the third Nigella (she *promised* I would be a Kitchen Goddess!) and heard a wistful sigh emanating from my own self. The sigh of one relishing a bygone era--HA!-- the late 90's! When we were young, daring pirates; when we boldly snatched the kitchen knives and recipe cards from our ancestors as our own cutlasses and treasure maps and RAAAMPAAAGED!!! through the kitchen! We were gorgeous, cute, sexy, perky! There were (artfully choreographed) photos of us in action-- Jamie impish with shaggy hair and silly grin, grilling fennel and prawns in aluminium foil on the beach between rides on the surfboard. Nigella with her thick wavy chocolate hair and dark eyes at the open fridge at midnight. Spooning golden custard from a vintage pudding bowl, she exhorted us to indulge and lavish ourselves and our families in the those things we thought belonged to a bygone era but were really--just a whisk and a dollop!--so very simple.

In culinary terms, we were sleek young veal, juicy in our prime, and as I sat there on Monday, searching for inspiration in braised rice I felt a bit more like aged venison.

GingerMan may be gainfully employed/delightedly entertained and diverted with A Powerfully Playfully Lithesome Electronics Corporation, and as such we may have a house and a couple of cars and a purse and some pockets full of A said C's -PPLE stuff. Not on a churning basis, mind you. We're full of it (erm...yah) mostly because we hold on to the old stuff a long time. But ooohhhhOOOHOHOHOHOHOOOO, what to my wondering eye did appear in my Inbox this morning? The new iPad. In White. With an awesome cover that Comes. In. Colours. Be still my little Magpie heart, didn't that just perk me right up??? Two cameras, portability, cuteness, power? I SHALL RULE THE WORLD!!!

Or at least this bit of it. I now leak my own high-security development concept, coming to a Blog AND Podcast near you: Soon, I will be recording a bi-weekly podcast with segments based on subjects promised in my first blog entry last week, PLUS videos on cool stuff like: Making a White Sauce and The Kind of Trouble That Can Lead To; Makeup Maven and Hair-rific Tips; Beginning Housewisery the Olde-Fchool Waye, Otherwise Known As: Giver Yerself a Damn Break, Girlfriend/Dood.

So! STEAL MY BUTTON! COPY MY ADDRESS! SHARE ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER! And keep coming back, we're going to have a LOT of fun running amok!

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