Finally I got round to attend to my Dedes and I made good progress on the sequel to “Life of an Artist”. I can tell you as much: Skeleton felt sorry for poor L’Artiste who was still stitting in the corner crying. She brought him his tunic back and convinced him to have another go. For the rest of the story you have to wait… I hope I will have the film finished by tomorrow.
Last Saturday we had another Dede Workshop where we created an impromptu film. Impromputu in the sense that the people who attended had to come up with a story. The only hint they have are the puppets I select prior to the participants arriving. No Devil this time! He is on his well-deserved holiday. Instead we had a pretty classic Punch & Judy cast, bar Punch and Judy. Without Devil it took the participants a while to come up with the story, but once they started acting it out, the storyline got fast and furious. If you can’t follow it entirely… don’t worry, you can trust me, there was a happy ending. Nasty Cool Cat has been imprisoned by Bobby the policeman and King and Chamber Maid live to this day.
Unlike the previous films, this one needed a little explanation at the beginning. My friend Cath and I are now wondering if we should adapt the story for a live puppet show.
Hope you enjoy it.
I overheard a conversation between Pig and Professor, who are preparing for St Patrick’s Day on Monday. They said it’s the celebration of the world famous Irish patron saint of all drunkards. Professor tried to trick Pig into asking Witch to reveal her recipe for making alcohol from water, yeast and sugar. He is adament this recipe has to go into Witch’s new book anyway, as it is terribly important to the survival of a poor artist. Totally out of character, Pig was thinking on his feet and pointed out that Witch is a teetotaller. No chance!
Witch was cursing and swearing today. Not because her cooking didn’t work out, but because the sky was over cast. She made pita bread for lunch and usually, there is no problem to take the photo right there in the kitchen. The sun shines brightly on the kitchen bench an illuminates the product as in the images on the previous days. Not today… The sun has gone on holiday, and while the pita bread puffed up nicely, the photograph looks flat. Tomorrow we will have a storm and Witch already decided that on a cold windy day she has to make flakey pastry and a yummi pie. I wonder what she will do for a photograph…. Meanwhile all the dedes are happy that she will have to cook pita bread again to take new photos. :)
Right, Foreign Correspondent, delivered his questions to Witch last night. Needless to say, Witch ignored them. She left three photographs at the bottom of the stairs, as proof that she can’t be bothered with answering questions at the moment.
These are her latest concoctions: Crumpets, No egg pasta and Water wafers.
Witch never got as much attention as yesterday. All the Dedes waited by the oven and wanted to inspect the result as soon as the timer went off. As if they had never had a bun baked by Witch before! Witch got quite protective and shooed everybody away. We weren’t allowed to taste them until they had been photographed. As I told you yesterday, Witch is usually one to throw things together and if you ask her for a recipe she can’t tell you. Much to my surprise she was very consciencious yesterday and noted every step along the way. Here is her transcript:
The main incredient in this recipe is patience. While it actually doesn’t take much time to prepare, the dough will need a lot of time to sit around and rise. If you try to take a shortcut, you will end up creating rocks rather than buns. I would recommend trying the recipe first for a Sunday morning treat. Prepare the dough the night before (maybe in the ad breaks when you watch TV, or if you don’t watch TV, you can tend to the dough whenever you make yourself a cuppa).
3 cups of high grade flour, 1 cup of warm water and 1 teaspoon of dry yeast.
Bake for 20 mins. And that is it.
Don’t ask me if you can freeze the dough or the buns. I never had to. They are always eaten as soon as I make them!
Here is a picture gallery of the process: when the buns were rising for the last time on the tray, then the cross cut into the surface to illustrate what I mean, and of course the final result.
Last Friday I finished Lizzie’s film (Lizzie is the pink one in the middle). It is now awaiting music and a last edit from the script writer. This is a project I started last year together with an Australian therapist, who I met at a puppet workshop in Melbourne. The film is to raise awareness of Lipoedema, a condition that is present in 11% of the female population, and it will premiere at a conference in Auckland in three weeks. I will show it in due course on the blog.
Now that one major project is finished, I asked what we should do next and it turns out that two puppets are already working on new projects. L’Artiste has to create a set of new puppets for a nutritional blog that Garden Guru Dee Pigneguy has just started. If all goes to plan, L’Artiste’s puppets will be present at the launch of Dee’s new book in the Takapuna Library next month. He has shown me his ideas on paper and I love them. L’Artiste is a very quiet worker and an extremely reliable guy, so I am pretty sure we will see his creations soon.
Witch, who is into nutrition as well had an idea of her own. She has always been a strong believer in cooking everything from scratch. She doesn’t buy bread or spaghgetti from the shop. She makes it herself and along the way she experiments with all sorts of ingredients, like buckwheat grouts or teff flour. Most of the time she can’t repeat what she cooked, as it is all chucked together, but anything she cooks is a treat. I can’t ever remember her presenting us with something ineditable. The weirder the better. Unfortunately the Dede household is pretty strapped for cash at the moment, so fancy ingredients are off the menu for a while. Instead of moping and complaining that she can’t fulfill her job description as the supplier of nutritional food, she decided to turn the shortcomings into a challenge. She is working on a recipe book with the working title “The artist’s survial cook book – 101 meals made from flour and water“. We discussed her draft yesterday, and while I have to admit she is cheating a little, (she uses, in fact, a handful of ingredients in different combinations) I am totally amazed at how many different things she can conjure up with those few really basic ingredients. On top of it, none of them seem to be very time consuming. (Oh sorry, yes, flakey pastry does take a bit of time, that’s why we only get it on very special occasions.)
The books starts off with the basic of all basics: Bread buns, which she is baking for lunch today. I asked her to take photographs and maybe we can have the recipe on the blog as a teaser tomorrow.
Thank God it’s Friday. At least that is what Foxy Lady seems to think. We have to give the little printing press back today. So Foxy Lady was frantic all week, day and night, coming up with promotional material and printing flyers. It is starting to pay off, slowly but surely. However, the poor little thing is totally exhausted now. I am not surprised.
Sidekick, the alien, was very keen helping Foxy Lady in the beginning, but the novelty wore off quickly and he wandered off home. Cath O’Brien has send me this image of her creation. He must have felt pretty smug about his achievements last week.
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