Icicle Frosts, Chestnuts, and When Daikon Attacks

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Hannah

This past week in Canberra has been freezing.

No, literally, it’s been freezing. The fact that we’re expected to tumble out of our snuggly bed-cocoons on a -6 degree morning has seemed like a cruel trick of the gods. After losing all feeling in my hands one morning while scraping the near-impenetrable frost from my car windows with an American supermarket loyalty card, I have stubbornly decided that, for the rest of winter, I shall no longer participate in such dangerous manual labour. Instead, I shall enjoy fifteen minutes of reading in my car while the engine warms up enough to defrost its own diggity windows. Hah! I win!

However, as if to make up for its icicle mornings, Canberra offers up a wealth of stunningly gorgeous, sunny, crisp-shining winter days. Bitter mornings turn, within hours, into endless blue skies, creating days that beg to be delighted in via market adventures and sunny walks with dear friends.

This past weekend, my wondertastic friend and blogger-extraordinaire Helen had a whirlwind visit to Canberra, and asked for my company during her free time on Sunday. Along with her I-can’t-even-comprehend-their-level-of-kitchen-magic friends Mr and Mrs Pig Flyin’, we met at the Southside Farmers Market for chatting, tasting, and meandering. I rekindled my love of roasted chestnuts, bought many Pink Lady apples, and then had the crikey scared out of me by the largest daikon I’ve ever seen.

Photo courtesy of Helen

(Margaret, I dedicate this photo to you and your desire for more of my nincompoop moments on this blog.)

Later in the morning Helen, Mr and Mrs Pig Flyin’, and I headed to the Old Bus Depot Markets, where I confused my stomach by following up a thousand flavoured nut samples (seaweed and wasabi macadamias, oh yes) with chocolate soy chai tea, honey, blue cheese, and fiery-hot chilli sauce samples. I also convinced the three Sydney-siders to partake in Canberra’s ye olde Mulled Wine, which is delicious.

After farewelling Helen with a hug and much happiness to have seen her face, I picked up my beloved E.Moonbeams for a long-overdue catch-up. I have missed E.Moonbeams with all my soul this past month, and dearly wish that, on some alternate plane, we could forever be making coffee, heart-talking, and cavorting together.

As that alternate plane doesn’t exist (to my knowledge), E.Moonbeams and I must settle for regular rendezvous instead. I would like for these to always happen in places of beauty like the Yarralumla Nursery (top photo), where we can drink coffee while sitting in the sun, and then walk across bridges and lakes and golf courses while talkinglaughing. It is important to have days like this to remember how glorious life can be.

Life is also glorious when you get to experiment with intoxicatingly-perfumed cacao butter (thank you for the gift, dear Margaret!), but that’s a story for another day.

My Great Big Swirling Whirling Announcement

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Hannah

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I’ve been wanting to write this post for several months now. Wanting to, needing to, meaning to, but scared to.

I delayed writing this post because I kept expecting everyone to tell me I was being ridiculous. I’ve spent all year scrutinising reactions, waiting for someone to laugh, to scoff, to say that I should remain safe in my cozy cocoon.

That I shouldn’t be closing my eyes and flinging myself off a cliff with nothing but the hope of finding a current of swirling air to hold my weight and carry me to glittering shores.

That my savings should be used for a house deposit; that I shouldn’t be breaking up with lovely men on account of kisses feeling like promises I can’t keep.

But, you see, a funny thing happened. Every time I talked to people who love me and know me, all I heard was support and excitement. When I started making excuses and stepping backwards, I was gently (and sometimes sternly) pushed forward again.

E.Moonbeams pointed out that you can’t jump off a cliff while keeping one leg on the edge as a precaution. Doing so is physically and metaphorically impossible.

So I’m leaping.

Next week, I’ll be handing back the master keys at work, shutting down my office computer for the last time, and trying not to think about the lack of future payslips.

The week after that, I’ll begin clearing out of my place, taking only my most cherished possessions back to my parents’ house for safekeeping.

And then, on the evening of August 2nd, I’ll be stepping off a plane in New York, feeling the dizzying, giddy, breathlesschoking, overwhelming, exhilarating, terrifying joy that comes with having cut off ties to day-to-day routines back home, and having only wildjazzydancing adventures before me.

I don’t know yet exactly where I’ll go or how long I’ll spend in the United States. I don’t know whether or not Canada will grant me the working visa I’ve applied for. I don’t know whether health issues or an unforeseen event will change the trajectory of the dream I’m dreaming, right now, sitting here on my rose-covered bed, telling you.

But I do know this:

Here, today, tomorrow, these are my only. These are what I have, what I know, what I am. These are my pockets of time, mine, and I can’t breathe without knowing I’m doing all I can to live them utterly, utterly, mine, my only.

I also know this:

I’ll be at Amber and Matt’s wedding, and before then Amber and I will sit on her kitchen floor during the witching hours, laughing and whispering as we eat spoonfuls of dessert.

I’ll be in Utah, hiking and bantering with someone who came into my life through serendipity. Thank you, serendipity.

I’ll be seeing my Lisa, my darling, again in Toronto, and I might just stay. (The lure of a welcome dance dessert party is too much for me to resist.)

As for the rest? The other months, the next year? I don’t know. I don’t know where life will take me. But I’m not going to be afraid anymore. I’m not going to let anxiety over something going wrong prevent me from embracing what I’ve already put in place.

So here is my announcement, my dream, my happening (oh, please let it happen!):

Wayfaring Chocolate is getting back to wayfaring. And I can’t wait to take you with me.

P.S. If anyone knows of a couch in New York that would like to welcome me into its arms in early August, I’d be more than happy to acquiesce. (I’m very generous that way.) In fact, if there are any couches in any cities that would like me to visit, let me know! I could even bring Vegemite, if asked nicely.

Raw Vegan Pumpkin Cauliflower Rice, Happy Lights, and Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Hannah

As many of you have noticed from the tenor of my words, life has been stresspants lately. I’ve been working through weekends and until midnight on weekdays (with evening breaks to make dinner and multiple desserts) and, while I still have to knock out another report by Monday equivalent to the 45-pager I sent through on Friday before dealing with the other deadlines that piled up last week, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Thankfully, there have also been little lights in the tunnel. Here are my Happy Lights.

A soy cappuccino at Koko Black, chosen because it comes with real dark chocolate rather than chocolate powder on top.

Do you know what I wish? I wish adult-sized babycinos existed. Then I could order a long black and an entire cup of froth on the side. ALL THE THINGS.

My eponymous-sweet-tooth-sisterfriend Hannah sent me a pouch of black salt all the way from America, simply because I’d never tried it. That lady is all kinds of lovely, and the message she wrote to me on the back of her Christmas card made my heart soar.

Speaking of lovely ladies:

I miss Jeniqua. I miss her greatly. Luckily, the emails we write and the tales she tells of her wild adventures in America and Europe lift me up and inspire me.

Back before Jeniqua abandoned me, we found some old-school advice on how to give a party and enjoy it yourself! No thanks; Jeniqua doesn’t need party advice.

At the bottom of this truly horrendous cheese shortcake (what?!) photo lurked the slogan: “Keep them fit every day – the cheese protein way!”. So there’s that.

Speaking of horrendous [night-time-no-light] photos:

Raw vegan pumpkin cauliflower rice (pulsed in a food processor with miso paste and cashews) topped with zucchini in a tahini-pepper-lemon dressing.

Which I followed with more Trader Joe’s Chocolate Sunflower Seed Drops than I could count, and that’s saying something because I took Maths ALL THE WAY TO YEAR 11.

Before I go any further, hey Mum and Dad! Look behind you! A distraction!

Now that my parents aren’t looking, I can tell you that this photo shows exactly where I am right now, writing this post as I house-sit for them. I have everything a girl could need: Ugg boots scattered on the floor next to a bottle of mineral water, thermal socks on my feet, dogsy beneath my legs on the couch, and my laptop on my lap (oooh, in the photo I’m editing one of the photos in this very post! How very meta of me!).

After I took the above shot, I spent ten minutes snapping photos of my sleeping dog’s face from mere millimetres away. The photos made me laugh so hard I cried a little bit.

I’m so lucky my dog doesn’t read this blog. She’d never forgive me the indignity.

Question Time: What’s one of your Happy Lights this week?

Delirious Unicorns, Serious Desserts, and Floating

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Hannah

So, here’s the thing. I’m exhausted. But we’re all exhausted sometimes. So we keep going, because it’s the only option, and eventually breathing becomes easier again.

After the craziness of last week, I hoped this week would be calmer. Instead, there have been extensive meetings and a twelve hour workday that involved getting to work early, flying to Melbourne at midday, running a consultation until 8pm, then getting four hours sleep before flying back to Canberra the next morning and going straight to the office where the phone was already ringing for me the instant I stepped through the door.

That night, I went to gospel, and when I sang I felt like I was inside my voice but my voice was not connected to my body and I was spinning, floating. When I drove home, I kept getting distracted by the unicorns that were pulling my car-chariot down Northbourne Avenue. They had glittering tails, and they were real. I swear, for a few moments, they were there and they were real.

I take dessert seriously.

Also, I’d like to say that when a person has had four hours of sleep and everyone is saying that they saw the Transit of Venus and You Have To See The Transit Of Venus It’s Now Or Never You Won’t Be Here The Next Time Venus Transits You Have To See The Transit Of Venus, that person can’t be blamed for going outside and looking directly at the sun. I just wanted to see the Transit of Venus. I didn’t expect it to hurt so much.

When I think of everything that must be done in the next few weeks, my chest feels tight.

Very seriously.

But even when I’m sitting in my car crying for absolutely no reason except that I can’t seem to stop, life is beautiful. Because Alinta crafted me a beautiful birthday card and Fiona sends me texts about sunshine and Lisa creates sparkles in my soul with her emails and, in Melbourne, my brother came to visit me in my swanky hotel room and we lay on the floor side-by-side talkingtalkingtalking and these were the highlights of my week.

Another highlight was the video about the baby pig and the oatmeal, because it’s too much. It’s too much. I can’t even cope right now. It’s too much.

Very, very seriously. (I had no idea, but Mum took six photos of me with this dessert. In each one, my head gets closer to the plate. She laughed a lot.)

I think I need to go watch the baby pig video again, and then curl up in bed to read.

After feeding my unicorns, of course. They eat only Sturt’s Desert Roses picked under the light of a new moon whilst Simon and Garfunkel’s The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) plays from an old-school boombox.

Hannah out.

Dorothy Porter, Cold Drip, and Giggles Galore

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Hannah

Free chocolate at Koko Black

When I recently asked for poetry recommendations after showing you a poem by Pablo Neruda, my mother responded by giving me The Bee Hut, a collection of poetry by the late Dorothy Porter. Oh, how it sears into me. I’m only halfway through, but I see echoes of my own thoughts and rhythm in Porter’s free verse, and her words, images, and meanings dance beside the swirling choices currently speeding towards me in life.

Here’s just one of Porter’s poems that I’ve found myself rereading this week:

II. What a Plunge!

After Woolf

This morning the street
stings
like salt in a happily healing
wound.

A memory breaks under
your ribs
and plunges you
in turbulent sweet water.

Life is so dangerous,
but this morning you can take
the wave
right to the sparkling shore.

You can bear knowing
the street will one day dump you.

* * *

Not everything in my life, however, is centred on thoughts and possibilities catching in my throat. I’m spinning from intense conversations to silver moments of peace and solitude to rapid-fire repartee with friends such that we cannot speak for laughing.

There’s been cackling with E.Moonbeams over Upside Down Dogs.

Brunch with Christina at Farmers Daughter, where we were given free samples of the café’s new cold drip. It was beautifully smooth and strong, but the highlight was when Christina picked up her glass of cold drip with its enormous ice cube, took a sip, and screeched “IT’S COLD!”

Oh, Christina.

Chatting with Deb, who never fails to make me laugh while also, somehow, always creating opportunities for me to make incredibly inappropriate jokes that she then quotes me on for her status updates. Mum, if you saw that on Facebook… I apologise. I swear, we were only talking about chlamydia in the context of koalas.

After performing at the Governor General’s Open Day, we got more cream than scones.

And sometimes, when I’m missing Jeniqua with all my heart, I think about all the things that made our friendship as strong as diamonds. Like chocolate.

You see, this is Jeniqua before chocolate.

And this is Jeniqua with chocolate.

This is me without chocolate.

And this is me with chocolate.

I rest my case.

Question Time: What do you think of cold drip coffee? Gimmick, or delicious?

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