May Favourites
My favourite things, including events, books and food, from the month that was.
Events
A first Birthday party - the daughter of friends of mine turned one recently and her parents organised a lovely bug-themed celebration, including a ladybird cake, in the park on a sunny Saturday. It was a lovely chance to catch up with friends and soak in some sunshine.
Election night - my partner and I had a fun evening watching the ABC’s coverage of the Australian Election results on 3 May (yes, we are nerds). It was a fascinating night as the result gradually and then very quickly became clear. As someone who cares about climate change, human rights and social justice, it was a relief to see Australians elect a fairly centrist government when the alternative was something far more dangerous. It’ll be interesting to see what this government is able to deliver over the coming three years.
Hosting my Mum, brother and sister-in-law for dinner - Mum was down visiting for a few days in May and my partner and I hosted her, my brother and sister-in-law for a yummy Middle Eastern feast. We made a bunch of different components - spiced chicken drumsticks for the meat eaters, cauliflower steaks, Puy lentils, roasted potatoes, roasted pumpkin, roasted carrots, yoghurt sauce, flatbreads, tzatziki, marinated olives and marinated feta.
Foundations of Disability Leadership training - my employer has supported me to do this eight week training through the Disability Leadership Institute. I’ve had three weeks so far and it’s been such a nice experience to be in a training environment where everyone shares the experience of being a disabled person in the workplace. While a lot of what we’ve covered has not been new to me, it’s still felt valuable to have these things reinforced and cemented in my mind.
Self-care action
My unexpected self-care action for May was kicking a soccer ball around the park with my partner. I used to kick the footy with my brother at the park sometimes and enjoy it, even into adulthood, but it’s been many years between kicks.
My partner plays soccer so a couple of times now we’ve been out together for a kick, including one afternoon after work. It’s been really fun and is great exercise to run around after a ball. I suspect this will be a bit of a fixture throughout Winter.
Hikes
After a deluge of rain one night, I headed up to New Town Falls the next morning in the lingering drizzle. It’s a very familiar hike, but it’s been dry up there for a long time now and I was really keen to see what effect the rain would have. It was a pretty magical hike: low cloud gave everything an ethereal quality, the rivulet was increasingly pumping as I climbed towards the falls and the falls themselves were restored to a beautiful flow. There was also some awesome fungi out.
In an illustration of how quickly conditions can change, the causeway over the rivulet which I’d walked across no issues on my way up was covered in five centimetres of quickly flowing water by the time I arrived to cross back an hour and a bit later. I wound up with wet socks and shoes but was lucky crossing was still possible.
Food
Labor landslide cauliflower - on election night, my partner and I made a delicious meal of spiced cauliflower steaks served on a bed of rustic, cheesy mashed potatoes with some oniony, garlicy Puy lentils. We have now given this dish the title of Labor landslide cauliflower, given the election result. We made a variation on this dish the following day – the same spiced cauliflower steaks, since we’d enjoyed them so much, but this time served them on millet with a lentil, cucumber and olive salad and a tahini-yoghurt sauce. We have since made even more cauliflower steaks and they’ve been added to our rotation of meals!
Sushi bowls (pictured below) - a friend mentioned to me a while back that her and her partner sometimes made sushi bowls for dinner. The idea obviously stuck in my brain and came back to me in May with delicious results. We cooked and seasoned sushi rice as the base, then added a whole bunch of toppings: protein (marinated and seared tofu for me, fish for my partner), a carrot and ginger salad (grated carrots mixed with finely grated ginger, rice vinegar, salt and sugar), sliced cucumber, sliced avocado, shards of nori sheet and homemade furikake seasoning (a combination of sesame seeds, chilli flakes, salt, sugar and seaweed). I’d highly recommend these as a delicious, healthy and fairly easy dinner.
Fried rice - this was a really easier dinner one night and lunch the next day. We made an omelette, removed that from the wok and chopped it, then added a mix of vegies to stir fry (onion, carrot, celery, corn, possibly others), followed by aromatics (chilli, ginger, garlic), cooked brown basmati rice, the chopped omelette and some sauces (soy, sesame oil). We each ate this with a protein of our choice (tofu for me) and a sprinkle of sesame seeds. It was wholesome and tasty.
OPINE (‘one pack (of wrappers) is not enough’) dumplings (pictured below) - my partner had the idea of doing a dumpling night and towards the end of May, that’s what we did. We bought the wrappers but made our own filling from shredded tofu for me/minced chicken for him, grated carrot, finely chopped cabbage and spring onions, soy sauce, sesame seeds and sesame oil. It took a bit of time to chop everything and then again to shape the dumplings, but they cooked quickly and were absolutely delicious served with a homemade chilli, soy and black vinegar dipping sauce, hence my partner’s remark that buying one pack of dumpling wrappers had not been enough.
Fiction books
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
This was the book club book for April. It’s got a lot going on: time travel, comedy, romance, power games. It was a quite the ride. Some strands of narrative were perhaps a bit underdeveloped, but overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable read.
Set in the near future, the protagonist is a British civil servant who begins working in a new government ministry as a ‘bridge’ to an ‘expat’ – an expat being someone from the past who has been brought into the present and a bridge being the person tasked with helping them to adjust to the world they find themselves in and report on their progress.
She is paired with Commander Graham Gore, also known as 1847, a man who died on Sir John Franklin’s tragic Arctic expedition in 1845. A lot of the novel’s comedy comes from how he and the other expats go adjusting to the trappings of modern life. But not everything in their adjustment is comic, far from it, as they discover the history separating the world they knew and the world they now live in (eg the Holocaust).
The more time Graham and his bridge spend together, the more they are inextricably entangled with one another. At the same time, the true nature of the time travel project starts to become clearer and our protagonist bridge is forced to make difficult choices about where her loyalties lie, who she can trust and what she does next.
Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo
I received this book as part of our book club Christmas book exchange but didn’t get stuck into it until May. I was excited because it’s by Evaristo, whose book Girl Woman Other I adore. Mr Loverman has a unique premise - a seventy-four year old male protagonist, Barrington (Barry to his friends), who’s been married for years to Carmel, with whom he has children and a grandchild, who has also carried on a secret relationship with his best friend Morris for sixty years.
Barry’s kids have grown up and he’s sick of sneaking around behind Carmel’s back and being constantly criticised. He resolves to leave her and finally make a life with Morris. But it’s not easy to undo sixty years of hiding who you are and pretending to be something else.
Barry’s story is great insight into the lives of Britain’s older Caribbean community as well as the impact of a lifetime of homophobia and prejudice on older queer folk.
Non-fiction books
Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict into Connection by John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman
This is a really useful book by researcher and clinical psychologist couple John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman. It provides a lot of great, research-based advice on how to have difficult conversations successfully – how to ‘fight right’. They talk through some basics such as conflict styles, then provide five key strategies for how to ‘fight right’, then provide an extremely handy quick guide at the back.
I really like the way they combine the research with their own experience and examples of couples they’ve worked with. This really helps to bring the theory to life. I also appreciated their realistic perspective on conflict – it will happen, but it’s an opportunity to get closer to each other. Some of the tips are somewhat obvious and are things I was already doing (yay), others were new to me and have been added to my toolkit. I wrote a reflection on how to handle difficult conversations in romantic relationships, informed by my experience and the research in this book which you can read if you’re interested: How we have difficult conversations.
TV show
For me, this is a rewatch, but it was something I thought my partner would enjoy (I was right) and something I was very up for rewatching. It’s at once funny and deeply emotional as we follow the lives of our teenage main character Ben, his four siblings and his parents, whose marriage is on the rocks. It’s also a great portrait of the life of a non-white family in Australia and the bias and discrimination they face, and a fabulous look at growing up as a not straight, not cis teenage boy.
Music
Lorde
Lorde released a new song in late April and another in late May which sent me back to her music. I’ve been listening to all three of her existing albums, particularly enjoying Melodrama. I’ve linked a couple of favourite songs below.
Podcasts
My podcast listening continued to be a lot of current affairs content following the Australian election.
There was one other podcast episode I want to mention, which was an episode of The psychology of your 20s called How to make your life more fun. It’s got some great tips. I feel like soccer in the park and the experiment of making dumplings are two good examples of fun from my life recently.
Willow moment
Poor Willow managed to injure herself in May so it wasn’t the best month of her life, but the cold weather did mean some nights she got wrapped up toasty warm in a blanket which I think we both enjoyed - her because it’s comfy and cosy, me because she looks so cute in her blankie!
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Thanks for being here!
Let’s make the best of it,
Emma