Enough about me and my childhood for a moment which seems boring in comparison to what I’m about to tell you. I should probably tell you more about Mr NQN’s formative years as they make him the mysterious man he is today. As part of a hippie family, Mr NQN and his family lived in the some of the top hippie destinations of Northern NSW. Born in Byron Bay he lived in Mullumbimby, Bellingen, Thora and Rosebank. They lived in converted sheds, buses, teepees, yurts (I’m not making it up!) and occasionally an actual house. Occasionally they lurked into mainstream society. Here is one instance below-when the family thought that they should have a family portrait taken. Note Mr NQN’s father’s carefully groomed hair. Everyone was fancied up that day.
The Elliotts-Mr NQN on the far left (and yes he looks like Justin Bieber at that age!)
The Elliott children ate nothing but raw vegetarian food for the first years of their lives which meant that vegetables, fruit and nuts made up most of their diet. Mr NQN’s parents held jobs at Steiner schools and between stints teaching his father also grew biodynamic bananas professionally. Talk to any Elliott sibling about bananas and their eyes will glaze over, “Dad grew the best bananas…” they would say. It was probably true, most bananas are picked green and then gassed to ripen them but the family would have eaten bananas that were picked when ripe and the sugars naturally and fully developed.
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| January 11th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
So there I was watching Mr NQN play with his new phone for Christmas. In fact over the last couple of weeks, if I glanced at him, he was firmly attached to his second best friend and finding new ways to interact with it. His latest thing was the the sleeping app which monitors his sleep and wakes him up at the best time. He asked me what sound he should wake up to. I channelled his alternative parents and answered,
“The sound of whales making love of course! I can help you record it!” I said excitedly.
I must tell you now Dearest Darlingest Reader, I have no idea what the sound of whales mating sounds like…
But that didn’t stop me from helping him record what I later realised was actual a pretty bizarre imitation of what whales might sound like while they were doing the deed. I mustered up all the energy I had, he pressed record and we got one and a half minutes of me laughing so raucously that I thought I might bring down the walls in between bouts of loud whale bellowing from the deepest of my diaphragm. It sounded more like a very hurt and enormous elephant seal bellowing out “Stelllllaaaaaa” from the inner core of their being – either that or one being simultaneously stabbed and tickled. I may have even snorted with laughter. And halfway through I realised that he could actually use this as really good evidence to institutionalise me. Which made me laugh and moan even louder as well as starting the hiccups.
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| January 9th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
Last year for Christmas I roasted a goose. It was my first time roasting one and it brought back memories of one of my favourite stories when I was young. It was about a goose lady who lived in a farmhouse. She had a flock of geese and one night when it was thundering and lightning outside she brought in her geese from the storm to protect them. I thought that it was a charming story especially as I had only a passing interaction with pets (and you can’t really hug a goldfish, they tend to die when you do) so the idea of having a live goose in a house was something that I dreamed about.
Little did I know that a few decades later I would find out that my mother in law Tuulikki was a goose lady. When I told Mr NQN of my plans to roast a goose he told me of how his mother had looked after a flock of geese when he was growing up. One of them was sick and nursing a broken foot so she brought the goose in to sleep with the family.
I told you they were an unusual family didn’t I? 
He also revealed to me that rather than being charming, the goose was quite frightening to his chubby, tiny four year old self. “They hiss at you you know!” he said. So much for fairytales!
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| January 5th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
Over the Christmas period, I wrote on my personal facebook page that I was making four cakes over a five day period. Not an unnatural state of affairs for me admittedly, but one in which I nevertheless found myself up to my elbows in cake. The cakes were mostly to bring to friend’s or family’s houses. To me baking cakes is therapeutic and like second nature and I love creating sweet objects that will be consumed by appreciative mouths.
Every year Mr NQN tries to get me to learn something new that opposes my predilection for known second nature activities. To the point where I feel like I’m a pet project for him. This year I promised to learn how to ride a bike. Last year it was to learn how to drive. After much resource bargaining (in which he promised to do something that he considered boring for a day in exchange for me taking bike riding lessons from him), we finally arrived at a date in which we had little to do and the weather was good.
I told him the rules, I had had a vastly unhappy experience learning how to ride a bike with an ex boyfriend. He had taken me to a dark concrete car park and I climbed on his enormous bike and two minutes into the “lesson” I sported a huge scrape on my chin (the scar still remains) and grazes on my arms and legs. Yep dark corners and concrete car parks and bikes where your feet can’t touch the ground are not the best way to learn how to ride a bike. So I told Mr NQN that I had to be able to touch the ground with my feet and he agreed.
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| January 3rd, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
It’s the morning after NYE. How was yours? Did you get up to any mischief? Or did you fall asleep by the 9pm fireworks and enjoy a good sleep in the next day? Either way this recipe is one that caters for any gluten free or dairy free eaters because I’m guessing that there are some sore heads out there and the idea of making separate dishes for different people sounds like an insurmountable and possibly loathsome task.
This year, we spent New Years Eve at friends Louise and Viggo’s house in Manly passing it very civilly where the only danger involved eating too much delicious food and dodging stray popping champagne corks. And now that the fireworks have passed and it is now past 3 o’clock on the 1st of January 2012, I have a teensy feeling that this will be a good year because our first small stroke of luck this year was getting a cab home easily (no mean feat on New Year’s Eve) at 2:00am. My first comment of the new year was also one that made me smile broadly. It was on an older recipe, the Beef and Beer Stew with Cheese Dumplings where reader Adriana shared this lovely comment:
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| January 1st, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
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