Canned Heat

When left to my own devices with too many distractions (and a dishwasher), I seem to end up accumulating half-finished (or, for the optimists out there, half-started) cups of tea all over the place. They get cold, they get forgotten, they get replaced with newer hotter ones*. They also make an awful lot of clutter.

While my favourite Emma Bridgewater mug offers a bit of encouragement to remember a cuppa, perhaps a way to keep the contents hotter for longer could come in handy. Especially if it was to resemble a penguin in a sombrero!

Penguin mug from ModCloth

At this time of year, even penguins could do with a bit of added warmth!

* Which is a bit of a slippery slope to get started down...

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What The Wild Things Eat

Whether it’s the skill required to create the perfect disguise, or the surprise of discovering something quite different to what was first expected, I have a definite thing about food that looks like... other food. Because when you think of an ice cream cake, I suspect this isn’t the first thing that comes to mind (although it might be a much more practical choice than the real thing, given Sydney’s current chilly snap*)...

Ice cream cake from Hey Cookie

It’s not just food that pretends to be something else, though. Some penguins will cheerfully dance on tables, dye their hair feathers purple and dream of hooning down narrow cobbled streets on anything from a Vespa to an Aston Martin**. Other penguins find alternative ways to express their wild side...

Where The Wild Things Are penguin from My Dear Darling

I’ve only just discovered the shop and blog of My Dear Darling, who make all sorts of distracting things – best of which are their customised penguins. Oh, how I long for a Sticky Penguin mascot wearing polka dots and brandishing a spatula!

And where are the wild things? The only possible natural habitat for a wild penguin could be the vast and gently swaying expanses of asparagus... in the form of one of Sweetapolita’s ever-more-extraordinary layer cakes...

Asparagus layer cake by Sweetapolita. I’ve shared one of these before, but this is the latest marvel, with eight layers (so there's even more wonderfully fluffy filling in every bite).

* Ooh – a chilli snap! It could be like a brandy snap with extra kick... Now, is that an idea worth pursuing...?
** Those penguins don’t just dress like James Bond, you know...

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Dropping A Bombshell. Or Maybe An Eggshell.

Wearing black and white might be the only thing waiters have in common with penguins…

“OK, fellas, this isn't looking good. Bob, what were you thinking letting go?!”

“But Sam, it's kinda hard to carry a cake when you've got wings”

“I know, I know, but you didn't see me drop the platter, now, did you?”

Penguin print by Avalisa, available (among other places) from All Posters, ice cream cake from One Charming Party, and conversation between penguins imagined by their sticky, baking relative. Sometimes I know just how they feel, too – things have a habit of ending up upside down when you least expect it (and least can afford it). Perhaps all available coordination gets used up on ballroom dancing. Or perhaps baking half a dozen things at once at the witching hour is asking for trouble...

As long as you can be clumsy without an audience, it’s not so bad. And if the results turned out as well as this cake, well, I’d be dropping things left, right and centre – but possibly from shock!

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Down To Earth

Is anything really possible? While hard work, practice and serendipity* can bring many things within your grasp, others seem to defy the laws of nature and physics. But perhaps it’s just a matter of perspective. After all, if penguins can find ways to fly...

Penguin astronaught print from Toni Garcia on Flickr

If these flying penguins wanted to call my place home, I’d be very happy about it...

Penguin mobile from Flensted Mobiles on Design Quest

And, if penguins can fly, surely it can be possible to bake seven impossible things before (or just for) breakfast! Perhaps if a penguin runs fast around the kitchen fast enough, centrifugal force will eventually propel them into flight...

* Or, depending on your personal views and levels of cynicism, good fortune or sheer dumb luck...

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A Safe Distance

According to the sort of bad joke usually reserved for Christmas crackers (and dads), polar bears don't eat penguins because they can't get the wrappers off. If this doesn't make any sense, chances are you're not familiar with the penguin biscuit, a chocolate biscuit similar to (but not quite as good as) a Tim Tam.

But before all those penguin biscuit lovers come chasing after me with pitchforks*, let me distract you with some other ways to keep your penguins and polar bears separated...

Cake from Maris OB on Pinterest

Those little penguins are just too small to clamber up onto the cake, but look lovely hiding on the edge of the pedestal (though it's harder to see that cake bunting from down there). Penguins on cakes aren't so very unusual, but baby penguins are certainly rarer (hopefully not from being eaten by polar bears).

Or you can hide in plain sight...

Miniature icebergs by Atsuhiro Hayashi via Teacups and Rain

These tiny sculptures have a transient beauty a little like clouds - they must be so tricky to make before they melt.

Maybe the trick to keeping the penguins safe from the polar bears is to eat them up before they get the chance!

* I really mean people who love penguin biscuits, but penguins who love biscuits in general might be getting jumpy as well!

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Keeping Cool On Australia Day

The Australia day holiday isn’t really long enough to get away terribly far unless it bookends neatly with the weekend*. Much as I wish it was longer, there’s something fun about a mid-week day off. So many options for small pootles – wandering to a beach or a park, maybe having a gelato, catching up with friends and maybe ending with a batch of baking, or just a snooze in a shady spot with a good book. Lovely!

But if I had longer (and bottomless pockets), Antarctica would be one of my dream destinations. And in the middle of a Sydney summer**, it’s even more appealing. So this cake seemed like a perfect fit for today, with its holidaying penguins...

Penguins on holiday cake from Threadcakes

The sheer scale of the cake (or cakes, as each penguin is a separate cake, not just the polar bear) is quite astonishing. A total of 17 individual cakes*** assembled with 8 batches of buttercream, hand carved, and with the ingenious addition of rice krispy treats (now there’s something to do with them) to form the smallest penguin and some of the other details.

A bit like an iceberg, it’s what you don’t see that really (polar) bears some thinking about...

Happy Australia Day – hope you find a fun (and tasty) way to keep cool!

* Surely the spirit of patriotism would dictate that a three-day weekend is, if not quintessentially Australian (after all, plenty of other places get three-day weekends as well!), at least a very good idea, and a surivival target after the post-Christmas flatness (when you wonder when you might next get a rest).
** Even if the usual public holiday murk-or-bucketing applies...
*** And I love that they made almost every single component from scratch and not just out of packets - so amazing!

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Bubbling Over With Kitchen Experiments

Heston Blumenthal’s used one to make “champagne” – with suprisingly effective results (apparently in the kitchen it is possible to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear – or at least to crumb and deep fry one to crunchy and golden effect). But did you know that the penguins were getting busy with the fizzy first?

Sodastream Penguin via Seltzer Bottle Info

I’d love it if it was possible to have a drink that was slushy and fizzy... unfortunately you have to give up one to get the other, it seems (well, you do in the sort of chemistry I remember). Unless you get the slush and the fizz from different places, but much as it can be delicious to put sorbet into sparkling wine and so on, there’s a two-partedness to it that just isn’t quite what I have in mind.

Chin-Chin Laboratorists via The Urban Grocer

Although thinking about combining different fizzy elements brings up the possibility for a savoury version of an ice cream float (or a spider, depending on where you come from). Some sort of sparkling soup or stock, with a sorbet that dissolves into it and adds another flavour. The initial thought was of the fizziness being chilled, but perhaps it could also work with a hot liquid (to dissolve the sorbet more rapidly, and create a contrast). I suspect either that Heston’s been there and done that already, too. Or that it would just make an interdeterminate gloopy and entirely unconvincing mess. Perhaps both*.

Somthing to think about for any molecular gastronomists, maybe...

* Because Heston definitely offers proof that the initial baking fail can be a necessary stop on the route to culinary impossibility and seven impossible things for breakfast. Or perhaps he knows the answer all along, and just likes getting a Mythbusters element into the kitchen...

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Catching Your (Sticky) Penguin

To catch your penguin, you need a very large net. A netless or unnetted penguin is prone to escape. So a penguin currently lacking the biggest net of all, an internet*, is most likely right now basking on the deck with a trifle-fed-cat (like a corn fed chicken, but much friendlier and very furry) on her lap, snoozing through the trifle-eating cat’s mum’s recipe book collection. Or potentially has decided to have at least one summer in which she realises in advance the wisdom of not trying to change her legs from their usual shade of white, and is holed up in the kitchen, finding accomplices to sample new varieties of brownies.

Consequently, the next few days will involve a few things I prepared earlier, (firstly) because I figure everybody else is probably off basking, snoozing, cooking or otherwise up to fun things and has no inclination to lurk and read blogs and (b)** because I’m still recovering from preparing scheduled posts for Every. Single. Day. of the now not-so-recent honeymoon. Nope, I can’t believe I did that either. Five and a half weeks of pre-scheduled posts. Madness. Curable only with vast amounts of baked goods.

So, here is a small distraction for your general amusement... “Polar Bear Green Tea”, so called by the Food Librarian, via whom I found it...

Trader Joe's Candy Cane Green Tea via The Food Librarian

It’s a nice mental picture when suffering basking in all that summery weather that we’re probably having***.
 
Thinking about catching penguins also reminded me of a post I loved reading earlier this year, from Garance Dore, about Cooking Your Garance. She writes with such a fabulous sense of character (making it terribly unfair that she’s hilarious and stylish... but she sounds so lovely that you just can’t begrudge it at all!).

* It’s only just after Christmas, what do you mean I can’t tell awful jokes?! I’m sure there were much worse than that in your Christmas crackers...
** Especially for the trifle-eating cat’s mum!
*** And I hope, for all those who bask a little more than I do, that my pre-emptiveness (pre-emption?) hasn’t jinxed that summery weather...

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Lock Up Your Trifles...

...Because there’s a gluttonous penguin in town. Well, actually there’s a gluttonous penguin out of town. Visiting the trifle eating cat and his parents. And intent on frustrating the trifle eating cat’s trifle eating tendencies – at least until a penguin has eaten an adequate sufficiency*!

So, while a penguin climbs happily out of the rabbit hole for a few days, to chatter, pootle, bake, play with the trifle eating cat and lurk in hammocks, there will be some scheduled distractions for Penguins & Parentheses. And, perhaps, some plotting of bigger and better mousetraps to return with next year.

But, before that, what could be more fitting for a penguin in the silly season than this...

Trifle-eating penguin (or is that penguin eating trifle?) from Simon Drew via Chris Beetles

There are penguin prints to be had in abundance, but a penguin with trifle? A penguin with trifle and trouble balancing too much at once? Perfection!

Have a very merry Christmas, and I hope you have much trifle and many happy penguins!

* Which, contrary to rumour and conjecture, is possible. It just takes a lot of trifle. Or guilt. But preferably, guilt with custard...

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The Night Before Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas my penguin gave to me...

Twelve diners drumming (on the table),

Eleven cakes with piping,

Ten bores with bristles,

Nine penguins dancing,

Eight milk bottles,

Seven owls (just seven?),

Six roasted chickens,

Five golden pastries,

Four wobbling jellies,

Three French badgers,

Two turtle bars,

And a pelican in a pear tree

After the edible, decorative and sometimes just random stuff disguised as the (slightly modified) twelve days of Christmas, which increased in number to match an often disorganised and sticky penguin increasing in speed of running about madly... tonight is a Night Off. In Capital Letters, no less.

Tonight is not so much the splat before the squee, as the start of a gradual build-up of festive squee-ness. The Penguin Wrangler and her family are hosting Christmas Eve dinner, which is a source of great excitement. I’m sure nobody would be so untoward as to drum on the table, though, and we may be one or two more than a dozen in number. Perhaps, if not a baker’s dozen then, a penguin’s dozen (an extra one in case a batch doesn’t go to plan, and an extra extra one in case it does, to enable sampling).

So, before winding up in real life, and winding down activity a little in rabbit hole quarters, here’s a small Christmas thought...

Maybe it wasn’t really three wise men... maybe it was a long line of penguins...

Penguin paper cut by Ian Penney via Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

Happy Christmas to you and all your penguins!

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How The Fairy Penguins Got Their Name

Do you remember in fairy tales how there were the fairies that came at the birth of a baby (usually a princess... for some reason, princes rarely attracted fairies) and bestowed virtues and graces on the new arrival? And then Malevola would turn up, uninvited, and start handing round the curses to accompany the canapés...

Well here’s something that never quite made it into the traditional version of Sleeping Beauty and all those others...

Picture: "Fairies, Penguins and a Baby" by Rosa C. Petherick from Cafe Press

All those fairy godmothers that brought gifts to the baby... penguins, all along. And that’s why there are fairy penguins. They don’t just live at Phillip Island; that’s just their retreat for when the christening season ends.

Perhaps adopting a penguin for a new arrival would be a way to give them a little more unusual godmother, and bring them luck. Or perhaps it’s just a good excuse to adopt a penguin of your very own!

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The Incredible Shrinking Penguin

I think I’ve finally figured out what the problem is. I think I’m living in Alice In Wonderland, where there are mysterious foods that make you grow smaller. Unfortunately for those of us not living in parallel universes, there are only foods that make you get bigger... if there are cupcakes that shrink you, I definitely want to hear about them (buttercream or not!).

Picture: Crafty Dogma on Flickr

Figuring out how to read about, cook and sample food without, as it was so beautifully put, resembling a penguin pregnant with a panda*, is a challenge I have yet to conquer. Perhaps, as well as the penguin of death, there is the panda of over-indulgence.

This might be the only possible solution...

Picture: GioPhotos on Flickr

* The logistics of how this might come to pass are something I don’t want to contemplate. At all.

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A Secret Ingredient

There have very probably been far too many cakes just lately, if there can be such a thing. And today, there are some more - little penguin cakes...

Picture: Cream Puffs in Venice on Flickr

I was very relieved to discover that they are so called because of the dark / light colour contrast, rather than any sorts of novel and unthinkable ingredients. And they are so pretty, too. Although I don't remember finding any penguins in Venice...

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Perky Penguin

In bygone days of youth, before things like Red Bull existed, there were (entirely legal, though not terribly sensible) ways to keep energy levels high during (relatively) short stints of running-about-like-a-loon. They included any (and, in times of serious need, all) of guarana tablets, utterly ridiculous quantities of Diet Coke* and undiluted shots of red (or, when under real pressure, green) cordial. Fueled by as many gummi bears as could be consumed while dashing from A to B to Z to splat!

Hence my potential excitement at this recent discovery of what penguins drink when attempting to stay awake and alert...

Picture: Guarana Antarctica, photographed by Brigadeiro

* Oh, those dark days before Coke Zero...

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Spring Cleaning

Sometimes, you start running out of space in the cupboards, but there just isn't quite time to do a proper spring clean yet. So you squash everything in a bit tighter, and keep going. But then, sooner or later, not one last thing can be squeezed in.

It's a bit like that with thoughts, too. At the moment, there's no room for even a tiny small penguin. There needs to be a no vacancy sign... or one of these...

Necklace: Melanie Favreau at Supermarket

Sometimes you need the mental equivalent of a wheelie bin. Or a space bag, perhaps.

Those extra thoughts are just going to have to take a ticket for now, and wait for some of those penguins to go on holiday, or to sleep, or for a few other thoughts to escape...

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Travelling Light...

When somebody tells me I can’t (whether that’s in the sense of mustn’t, oughtn’t or - worst of all - wouldn’t be able to) do something, it’s like a red rag to a bull bolshie cow... Except it appears that an exception has at last been found...

Penguins do not travel light. Penguins like to make sure they are covered for every eventuality, unlikely occurrence, conceivable detour or one-in-a-million random requirement. And have a choice of outfits to wear. So, much as I’d love to be one of those light-footed types casually swinging a squishy leather overnight bag as I skip past the baggage carousel, with the fluorescent lights sparking off my golden hair, my silk scarf fluttering gaily in the frosty air-conditioning and a waggle of beagles left helplessly in thrall in my wake, this is unlikely to ever eventuate.

Picture: Fancy and Fondant on Etsy 

This one is, I think, far more appropriate for a waddling penguin huffling down the endless corridors common to all airports, trying not to drop a trail of extra magazines behind her and worrying that she forgot her cardigan and that she didn’t eat her apple and will thus be accosted by a boggle of beagles...

Picture: Fancy and Fondant on Etsy

This is when I also realise that penguins need bigger beaks... rather than small beaks that make a lot of noise...

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Pick A Peck Of Pickled Penguins

Tonight, there is partying. Large partying. The sort of party that requires a penguin to have a cup of tea vast quantity of Diet Coke and a preparatory lie down. Not necessarily in that order. And perhaps a small morsel of something to eat. To avert anything like this resulting...

Picture*: Crafty Dogma on Flickr

And, like many of the best parties, this one will involve a good quantity of the usual suspects. And, most likely, some fairly unusual ones as well...

Picture: Crafty Dogma on Flickr

Penguins often find that kicking up their heels results in tripping themselves up (it's those short legs, you know). But that isn't going to stop them trying. Even in the highest of high heels.

* A recent discovery and, you've been warned, there are many more that are likely to feature on here in due course. Most likely under excuses as thinly veiled as today's... It's (almost) as addictive as the Fox and the Polar Bear. Almost!

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Pensive Penguins

How do I make sure that I remember...

• the leaping feeling upon waking up and realising that it was The Day, combined with the ‘oh...’ feeling that you weren’t there waking up in the same place
• the sheer ordinary-but-amplified-to-feel-extraordinary-ness of pottering out for breakfast and eating (perfect) porridge at my local. And their amusement at my response when they asked what I had on the rest of the day
• the pleasedness of having bothered making a Proper List the night before when the time came to make sure that nothing had been forgotten
• the excitedness to see you unexpectedly, followed by the superstitious horror that I had
• the colours where the sea and the sky met when I looked out at the ocean from the busy peacefulness at the hairdresser, and the squish-pop of perfect juicy blueberries thoughtfully brought along by those who always think of the importance of snackages
• the quiet thoughtfulness of a very careful and all-too-brief shower
• the unexpected hilarity of (other people’s) Hollywood tape
• the sheer number of times that ‘squeee!’ was uttered during the course of the day
• the leaping feeling of being ready to go
• the way time sped up as my friends walked ahead of me, and then slowed down beyond all possibility as I walked in
• the look on your face and the calmness of reaching you
• the words that we, and other people, said. All of them. Every single one.
• the greatest feeling of certainty I might ever have lived
• the unexpected hilarity of penguins going kerplop and the joy from not knowing everything in advance
• the clear crispness of the afternoon that balanced on just-barely-not-too-cold
• the silly faces made by others so that I stopped worrying about looking like a startled marmot
• the relief of a pair of very small penguins sitting serenely somewhere other than Honolulu
• the nervous energy of dance costumes, directions and olive pits and realising that not all performances are about the same thing
• the feeling of we-really-did-this-and-it-really-does-feel-different every time I caught sight of the ring on your finger (and how it made all the skittering madly about beforehand suddenly completely immaterial and entirely worth it)
• the food, and whether it was really that everything I consumed all day was the best version of itself I’d ever eaten, or whether the day itself made that inevitable (and how many lemon brûlée tarts I might need to try before I can answer that question)
• the never-to-be-exceeded and completely superlative mirth that a children’s story and a collection of hand puppets can produce
• the enjoyment from finding that people had Had Fun (in capital letters, no less), and it making all the skittering madly about beforehand even more worthwhile
• the short-skirt-long-jacketed departure with more stuff to carry than should be sensibly attempted
• the view from our window of the lights around the bay
• the guiltless satisfaction of sampling both flavours of cake at some alarmingly early hour of (technically) the next morning
• the leaping feeling from the day ending with the two of us exactly the same, and also entirely different

How do I make sure that I don’t forget a single tiny second of the best, most important and most unexpectedly fun day I could possibly imagine? How do I stop worrying about the prospect that, little by little, tiny snatches of the minute specificness of it all might slip away and be lost? How do I not let it turn into an amorphous mis-remembered blur?

Picture: returntogodsgarden on Flickr

Maybe by writing these wonderings down they will stick in my mind like pins put snugly into a pincushion, but with the only piercing feeling coming from how astonishing it was that something so many people do could be so much better and so very different in the best possible ways than I’d thought.

Maybe by sending these very small but loomingly enormous rememberings out into the ether like messages in bottles that might come back to me, but that record something just so that the permanence of it existing never disappears.

Maybe by quietly thinking of those moments when something happens to remind me, and by looking for the bits of those days everywhere that can make them resemble it...

How do I make sure that I never forget?

Picture: Lady Hazel on Flickr via Gatekeeper on Tumblr

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True Love Means Never Having To Say Harrumph (Well, At Least For A Day)

If you decide to search for “harrumph” in Etsy, you will come across The Big Harrumph. Which is definitely on the list of the best store names ever. Today, while there is highly unlikely to be any harrumphing, it was The Big Harrumph that said it best...

Picture: The Big Harrumph on Etsy

It’s perhaps also a day to share the picture that made me realise that one of the reasons I love Totoros is because of their distinct similarity to penguins. Not sure how something resembling a mixture of an owl, a rabbit and a cat can also look like a penguin, and yet it definitely seems to be the case...

Pictures: Magic Bean Buyer on Etsy (they also have a Flickr)

But perhaps the most appropriate thought to end on is of, yet again, the Fox and the Polar Bear. Whether true love happens despite ourselves, because of ourselves, is born of friendly rivalry, or of a united front against completely bonkers raccoons is perhaps a bit too big a question to answer (especially for a day sans harrumphs). The important thing (as Rose Franken said), is that "anybody can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly."

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Sisters Are Doing It (And Eating It)

On the last night of being an officially single penguin (well, unmarried penguin is more accurate – it’s been a while since there was singledom in these parts!), there are few things better than some relaxed time with good friends. Well, hopefully there’s also some chicken soup, but that’d really just be an added bonus.

Back when I first discovered the Fox and the Polar Bear, I found this picture, and it instantly reminded me of an almost-also-married sporty friend. In the days of our misspent youth, we’d end up coming back from whatever we’d been to, giggling madly and eating Coco Pops at some utterly unholy hour before keeling over until a more civilised time of the late morning.

Picture: the Fox and the Polar Bear on Flickr

So it seemed an appropriate picture for today, together with a big thank you and general woo hoo for girlfriends. Not that the blokes should be overlooked, just that sometimes, only Coco Pops and mirth after midnight will doo... tee hee hee hee...

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