All the stuff I can't remember

Today we hosted both sides of the family: it was my mother's birthday lunch plus my inlaws wanted to see how much the kid had grown since January (a lot, he know has teeth that bite!). This meant me and the husband were madly cooking/cleaning last night. I shouted at him that he had sabotaged my decorating intentions for the spare bedroom (allegedly the kids room, but we use it as a study because the kid doesn't actually need a room to himself yet). Really, I just had decorator's envy after visiting someone who has a folder titled "My dream house", which gives an indication of how motivated they are to have a cool and funky house. Plus they've been living in it for 8 years, so have a big heads up on me. 

 A took it fairly well. He was up at 7am finalising a new decor scheme for the bedroom and hallway shelves, making a more concerted effort to display our favourite/beautiful things that are actually in the flat, not still in storage. It's silly, I know. Probably the highlight of the weekend was cooking together. Cooking together, in the kitchen, just takes me back to Year 8 and Home Economics. I look back at this compulsory class, made up of a mixture of the two Year 8 classes, and wonder how seriously I took this class, given it was just an experimental way of them filling time for a low maintenance year group. Did I learn anything relevant at school that year? It was a non-subject, where I was only required to follow a recipe within a timeframe. By the end of our first class our teacher had decided Jono was not to be trusted and required supervision, which ended any notion she had of providing instruction to the rest of the class (the more she "supervised" Jono, the better he got at sabotage). We had to hand up the homework book at the end of the term and she graded us,  how she could come up with any grade, given that she never interacted with us and all she could assess was how well we'd cut and pasted the recipe. I find it kind of insulting that teachers even bother to try and assess students for such pointless subjects. It was also confronting to realise that I was "smart", but totally crap at subjects that required the support of your parents (to procure ingredients/items/resources or to debrief you on the bigger meaning). 

 Another thing A and I discussed was culinary stages. In my mid/late 20s, I finally decided to learn how to cook, but limited my education to breakfast meals. I could poach and scramble eggs, put together a brunch menu to impress, list the best breakfast cafes in St Kilda or Adelaide, on my return. I just overdosed, took way too seriously the idea of breakfast as a meal, now I'm more interested in learning how to make vegetable meals, really feed the family on a good budget. Food connect has been great, getting boxes of bulk seasonal vegetables: made pumpkin and feta pie; vegetable gratin; cabbage and zucchini with herbs; pear pie; baked peaches. A says that you go through culinary stages and that the food he cooked, when he was wooing me, was a past stage. Which is sad, because I loved what he made: cherry tarts, pumpkin and coconut milk curry soup; rabbit pie; roast chicken. I fetishise those former meals. Soon I have to start feeding the kid solids. What a hassle. Cooking for an extra person. But given he has 2 little teeth coming through that he is trying to bite me with, breastmilk isn't quite as eas anymore. Got a good video of the kid trying to do push ups and then doing multiple rolls across the carpet, which is his way of flagging to us that he's going to be an early crawler. He is so adorable.