long-toothed hinterland dweller

Taking the bull by the horns

I bought the outfit yesterday - the M-O-B one for the wedding in three weeks.  I had been trying on dresses and separates for more than four hours when the sales-girl pulled some new stock out of a box.  She held up one she thought might appeal and it did have some possibilities.  It was just on closing time so I pounced upon it and mustered up the energy to drag on one more thing.  It had more promise than anything else I had seen that day, but I was too tired to think.  'Take it home', she said, no doubt keen to get out of the place.  'Try it on properly at home and see what you think.'  'You can bring it back if it's not what you want'.

'Yay!'  ' Done!'  I was thinking as I slapped down my bankcard.

It's now the next day and I haven't yet had the courage to put it on, fearful that it won't be right and I'll be back to square one.  Even if I decided it will do, it's far from over yet; there are still shoes and a bag to find.  But at the moment I feel there's one big load off my mind.

Key lime pie venture

Yesterday I made a key lime pie.  I had promised to provide a dessert for a family dinner and had just picked some limes, so, being devoid of any other inspiration, it seemed like a good idea.  I had no idea what a K-L pie was when I started out, as had neither tasted nor seen one, but knew it was an American favourite.

I began a search for a recipe on the Internet; what is a Key lime anyway?  We have three lime trees growing in the garden – a West Indian, a Tahitian and a Kaffir.  Which of these is the Key lime?

Soon I knew more about limes and lime pies than I had bargained for.

Fact #1 - A Key lime is the West Indian one – small and yellow when ripe.  [Our ‘Key’ limes are not yet yellow, so are still unripe, but the Tahitian limes are ready to pick.]

Fact #2 - Any kind of lime juice will do in a key lime pie.  The other ingredients for the filling are simple – eggs and sweetened condensed milk.  [This is my kind of recipe.]

Fact #3 –  Traditionally the filling is not cooked, but  these days cooking is recommended because of the risk of salmonella in raw egg. [Will definitely go with the cooking.]

Fact #4 – There are several other recipe variations – with or without a meringue topping [definitely with!], with or without coconut [Mmmm could be rather nice] and with or without green colouring [no thanks].

Fact #4 - The pie crust should be made from crushed Graham crackers.  [What’s a Graham cracker?  I have an idea it is the same as our Sao biscuit.  Better check.]

Then came an entirely unexpected diversion.  If you don’t already know the fascinating story about Mr Graham and his crackers I suggest you read it some time.  But by the end of the story I was still unsure of what might be the local equivalent of his cracker.

So, I click on to the Nabisco website – Graham crackers of every shape and flavour there - and a photo of the ‘original’ which was oblong and apparently made from whole wheat flour and sweetened with honey.

Off to the supermarket – maybe if I read some labels, something will jump off the shelf and identify itself as a Graham cracker in disguise. Perusing the shelves was an interesting exercise – just about every biscuit (that’s the Aussie term for both cookie and cracker) proclaimed itself an ‘Original’ – that is, excepting for the few that had NEW * * emblazoned across their packets.  Came home with two different Originals, chosen as possible substitutes for the G. crackers.  Which to choose? 

I went for the Nabisco Premiums and prepared to start cooking.

I decide on a hybrid of 3 recipes – the filling of one, the meringue topping from another and the crumb base of a third.  Bad move. Pretty soon, as well as juggling a basin and 3 cups containing cracked yolks, whites and whole eggs, I am shuffling print-outs of the three recipes.

Finally everything is assembled and I am ready to proceed with the 3 step cooking process.

[I will skip this part which took about ¾ hour.]  …………..

I am pleased to report that there was no disastrous outcome.   The crust was a little crumbly but otherwise the pie turned out perfectly - extremely rich, but quite delicious.  And lime juice aside, the recipe is exactly the same as the one for Lemon Meringue Pie passed on to me by my mother - but we mostly used a shortcake pastry base for ours.

Finally, I have a query if there is a helpful reader out there.   What exactly is a Graham cracker?

Getting decked out for the big occasion

In four weeks our second daughter is to be married.  Like her older sister, she has decided on ‘the full catastrophe’ – a ceremony, bridal gown, attendants, flowers etc, etc., followed by a formal sit-down breakfast. 

This poor mother-of-the-bride is not looking forward to the big event with unbridled enthusiasm.  Getting dressed up for formal occasions has never been my cup of tea. ‘So what will you be wearing?’ people have started to ask. To date I’ve made only two desultory attempts to find an outfit befitting the occasion.  The experience so far hasn’t been encouraging.  Trouble is I have no-one really, on whom I can depend to give me the necessary push in the right direction   - or even better, to accompany me when I muster up the courage to slink into one of those confronting little salons.

My strategy is to leave the dreaded task until time is on the short side, thereby ensuring that the final decision will be necessarily quick and hopefully, painless.

Notwithstanding my personal agony, we, the brides two parents, are more than delighted about our CM’s coming marriage.  Both the timing and the choice of partner are exactly right. Although she and her intended live in far off melbourne, we have had the chance to get to know him - and heartily approve.

There was some interesting discussion during their visit this Easter, on the merits of a woman retaining (or not) her surname.  I told her that I wished in retrospect I had elected to keep mine, and had hoped that both my daughters might have retained their names.   But it is not to be. It seems that we managed to bring up some very traditional children. 

Even the choice to be legally married is a sign of arch-conservatism these days.  Of the similarly aged children of my friends and family, probably half have decided to dispense with the nuptials. I don’t know that it matters a great deal any more.  In some cases these are couples who are perhaps being realistic about their chances of staying together, while for others it’s sheer economy that deters them from a big public knot-tying.

I still say I would prefer to attend a dental appointment than play a role in a wedding, but on the bright side, I do look forward to meeting our prospective son-in-law’s family.  They sound an interesting lot and I want to know just what they are like if our daughter is to become one of them.  Also, it will be nice to see CM all decked out in something feminine and pretty – and quite a change from the power suits and the faded jeans.

Easter entertainment

It was a full day with a get-together of all the family yesterday on Good Friday and so I was planning an early night.  Once again it didn't happen; I caught the beginning of the Messiah on television and became hooked.  It was a version filmed in 2001 that I hadn't seen before and much more interesting to view than the usual staged choir version.   The program guide referred to it as a documentary: 

• DOCUMENTARY - MESSIAH:   Handel's famous oratorio ‘Messiah' provides the framework for the American photographer and filmmaker William Klein to examine the role of the Bible and religious iconography today. Images flash across the screen as we listen to the oratorio and Klein takes the viewer through from Christ's birth to his crucifixion and then resurrection.

As always, the rousing music got me in and I sang and hummed along with the various choirs.  Afterwards I sat down at the computer and what was to be my early night eventually turned out to be an early morning.

This evening the television offerings were abyssmal and I thought it would be a chance to watch a DVD 'classic' I had purchased months ago.  So after dinner we both sat down to revive old memories as we watched the film version of the sixties musical, HAIR. 

In actual fact, neither my husband nor I have any nostalgic memories of those heady flower powered sixties.  We both spent the entire decade as drop-outs from civilzation, living and working in the back-blocks of Papua New Guinea.   We were effectively cut off from most of contemporary western culture during that period - the theatre, movies, art, fashion and worst of all, the media.  Televison was not available and all we had was what we managed to pick up via the crackly short-wave radio set and an irregular supply of stale newspapers. 

On the really isolated outstations, reading matter was in such short supply that we would carefully smooth out and read the sheets of newspaper that wrapped our weekly grocery orders.  Cartons of used paperbacks were traded, and traded, and traded again until the books were so brown and dog-eared they almost fell apart.  Our LP collections (now referred to by the kids as 'vinyls') were our major source of entertainment - that is when there was a power supply to play them, but I recall there were some very good battery operated players about.

By living in PNG we missed a whole era of movies, shows and TV programmes that took us years to catch up on our return to Australia.  HAIR was one of those shows that slipped by.  I had bought a recording of the music back in my New Guinea days, and from the constant playing got to know the music and lyrics well, but we didn't see the show until it was revived by our local theatre company in the nineties.

Now we've seen and heard it once more.  And I loved it!  And the singing is every bit as rousing as in Handel's Messiah.

The joy of a ripe tomato

My Dad grew the most wonderful tomatoes.  He was a manual worker, but when he came home from work, even on the hottest of days he would remember to tend his tomato bushes.  Here he is back in the nineteen-sixties with a basket-full, just picked and quite ripe, ready to eat.  In those days we hadn't heard about basil, or olive oil or balsamic vinegar.  We ate them with nothing but plenty of salt and pepper - mostly fresh, but sometimes grilled or fried with onions.  Tomatoes would be served with everything, and when there was not much else around they would be served alone for dinner, fried on toast.  Whenever there was a glut, out would come the preserving jars or the preserving pan.  I still remember the raspberry jam Mum used to make using tomatoes and a bottle of raspberry essence.

Perhaps my tomato-based childhood is why they are a comfort food for me now. There are not many days that I don't eat one or two. In our humidity we don't have a lot of success growing tomatoes, but they can always be bought, and at times local, vine-ripened ones can be had as well.  If they are not quite ripe I always leave them to sit on the bench, sometimes for up to a week, until they are properly red and juicy. I can never understand why restaurants and cafes need to serve those tasteless, hard, insipid pinky-green slices of tomato with an otherwise acceptable salad.  Ripening them is easy enough to do and they look and taste so much better.

Here are the tomatoes waiting for us tomorow.

Household creatures

There are no cats at our house.  For a start I am allergic to their fur, but even so, there are more than enough creatures in and around our home to keep us occupied, fascinated, amused and exasperated on a daily basis.

The most obvious are the birds in the garden – over 30 different species we totted up once, without any trouble at all, and I am sure there are many more. The ones we know best are the kookaburras, magpies and butcher-birds that arrive on cue each day at four hoping for some scraps of raw meat. We enjoy that time each year when they bring along their babies to be introduced to the system.  Then there is the pair of plover that consider our garden and the one next door, their personal domain.  She has a once-broken leg that set at a weird angle and left her lame, so she often chooses to fly when her mate prefers to run.  Yesterday a pair of rosellas perched on the bird bath for long enough for me to take a photo, while last night a lone owl quietly flapped onto a pole near the pool to watch me swim.

There are possums in the trees, bandicoots under the bushes and water dragons in the rock pile.  I must say that I have never observed any particular expression on the faces of any of these creatures, but I like to observe their behaviour all the same.  And I like it that none are dependent on me for their food or shelter.  Maybe one day we'll have some chooks or ducks again, but we are very conscious of the level of care they will require.

Our only livestock now are the 10,000 tiger worms that recycle our food scraps and fertilise the garden.  Other garden helpers are the goannas and lizards that live on garden bugs, and the snakes (some quite deadly) that keep down the population of mice and rats.   The butterflies, bees and dragon flies each have their part to play as well.  Inside are the small geckos and house lizards that live under the frig and the dishwasher and feast on tiny insects and stray crumbs.

Then there are those we class as PESTS – cockroaches under the sink, termites in the walls (hopefully all gone now after a VERY expensive extermination and home renovation process), weevils in the pantry, spiders on the ceiling, and ants in the pot-plants.  If we leave the screen door open for two seconds there will be flies in the kitchen and mosquitoes in the bedroom – patiently waiting to feast on a bare arm as soon as the lights go out.   

So we certainly don't have need for a dog or cat. 

FIVE THINGS FOR TODAY

Maria Gracia at Get Organized Now has an inspiring  discussion forum going this month – one of her readers told of her practice of recording each day her list entitled: ' 5 things I am grateful for'.

She wrote:

    'It sounds like most of us are having a tough winter--colds, flu, ice, snow, moves, jobs...Blah!  Several years ago I started writing down 5 things that I was grateful for at the end of the day. I got away from it a bit.  I'd think it, but I wasn't writing it down. I figured this would be as good a place as any to start writing again. Anyone want to join me?'

Why not, I thought – so here goes for today:

THINGS I AM GRATEFUL FOR ....

1.     The weather right now is perfect. It's good to get outside and enjoy it. I just swam for half an hour and feel on top of the world.

2.     Today I put in a long hard day at my job, but there are at least three people who will gain from what I did, and that feels good.  I have another big task to start tomorrow, but I am lucky to still be able to work

3.     A husband who likes to cook and right now is preparing something mouth-watering and Chinese for our meal this evening.

4.     That my sister finally has e-mail and now we can share our thoughts, plans and photos every day if we want.

5.     We get the new living-room chairs delivered tomorrow - and we found a very good home for the old ones.

Well that took longer than I thought, because I had to resist the temptation to write things like -    'I am grateful for my health and well being - and also that of all my nearest and dearest'.

I think that the spirit of the exercise demands that it be about things that apply specifically to today. 

I'll try keeping it up for a while.  Mmmm - can I find another 20 minutes or so at the end of my day for one more thing?

My own blend of herbal tea

Herbal tea making is one of several pleasures I have discovered since entering the leisure years of my retirement. Although I grew up in a household of tea-drinkers - the only choice being between Bushells, Lipton or Amgoorie - once I left home, coffee soon took over as my drink of choice.  I became a coffee addict for the next 40 years.

Then on a trip to China, some years ago, I found myself enjoying the gentle fragrance of green and jasmine teas.  I bought them to use very occasionally at home.  Later I began growing culinary herbs and this lead to experimentation with their use as tissanes and teas.

Now I take delight in deciding each morning which blend I would like to brew.  Mostly it is a simple weak black tea livened with a snip or two of peppermint, but some days I have a yearning for something a little more exotic.  My garden provides the most amazing array of leaves and plant parts to choose from.  I have 14 different mints - all in pots to keep them from taking over the garden beds - in the photo are peppermint, spearmint, basil mint, hung cay, ginger mint and Vietnamese mint (laksa leaf). 

Elsewhere I have the common garden mint, chocolate mint, apple-mint, lemon balm and bergamot.  For a lemony flavour I use lemon thyme, lemon grass or lemon verbena - sometimes with a twist of orange or mandarine peel.  Rosellas make a sharp brew and ginger a hot one, while cloves and cardamom will add some real spice and rosemary or pineapple sage make for something more pungent.  The number of subtle blends to be made by combining two or more herbs, are endless.  I took some ideas from the Chamomile Times website, where I also learnt more about the art of tea making.

I must not forget to add that the Australian lemon myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) makes a refreshing cold drink, while its cousin the aniseed myrtle (Backhousia anisata) makes a sweetly aromatic bed-time cup.

I'm off to make myself a delectable cuppa right now.

Choosing a last resting place

I am just back from a trip interstate to see my elderly, unwell mother.  It seems that having a visitor gave her a new lease on life.  From being almost bedridden in the weeks before, she was suddenly up and about and fussing over her hair and her jewellery and wanting to know where ‘we’ would be going each day.  My two sisters who have been caring for her, having carefully prepared me for what might be my last visit, were embarrassed about the sudden transformation.

Never-the-less we all took pleasure in her cheeriness and spent the time trying to plumb her memory for names and snippets of information to add to the two biographical lists we were creating – the first, ‘A Hundred Things About Our Father’ and another one, 'A Hundred Things About Our Mother’.  It was a wasted exercise – her most common response to our questions being, ‘I have no idea what (or who) you are talking about.’  But there were many light moments - the familiar dry sense of humour was still there, and also the bluntness and contrariness we knew of old.

One morning we took her on the familiar little pilgrimage to a nearby spot in the bush where we had together scattered Dad’s ashes more than seven years ago.  Adamant that he wanted to be privately cremated with no ceremony and no marked grave, Dad had left us with a dilemma.  Eventually we compromised by taking his remains to a spot we knew he visited often – usually to gather bags of earth rich with mulch and rabbit droppings for his garden.  Each time we stood beneath the spreading branches of what we referred to as ‘Dad’s tree’, Mum would declare that when her time came she would be joining him in this quiet and peaceful spot.  This time we took a dusty bottle of one of Dad’s home brews that we had found tucked away in a shed. It was no longer drinkable so we sprinkled it ceremoniously on the ground.  We noticed the hollows and scratchings and the numerous droppings that indicated that the same tree was also shelter for a family of kangaroos when no-one was around.

As we each took a few moments to commune silently with Dad’s spirit, Mum stood by with her walking stick looking bewildered and demanding to know why we had come to such a ridiculous place.  ‘This is where we put Dad’s ashes, remember Mum?’ said one sister.  And I added gently to remind her, ‘This is where you want to come when it’s your time – to be with Dad’.

‘No I don’t!’ was the immediate response.  ‘I’m not coming out here, it’s far too lonely.’  ‘Put me in the cemetery where there are plenty of people around, and there are visitors and flowers.’  We three daughters were dumbfounded.  ‘So you don’t want to be cremated now, Mum?’  ‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘I want to be in town, in a grave at the cemetery with people and traffic going by.’

Thoughtfully we made our way back to the car and helped Mum with her stick into the back seat.  ‘Well that’s that’, she said, ‘This place isn’t much fun’. ‘So where are we off to now?’ she asked brightly.

Consider the lilies

It has been a week busy with work and various worries over family and friends, and the days have slipped by without a chance to get back to this page.  On Thursday I went to visit a friend in the nearby mountain village of Tamborine.  There was a pleasant lunch and a stroll along the Gallery Walk. 

As always I came home refreshed by the crisp air and  the scenery in this village full of vibrant floral landscapes. The altitude allows for the growing of garden species not possible where we live on the sub-tropical coast.  The meandering rows of picturesque houses surrounded by trees and tangles of colourful shrubs bring such pleasure that the mind begins to slow down and discard all the niggling anxieties.

Sometimes I seek out a plant nursery to browse, but this time there was a private garden stall with a home-made sign - 'Cottage Garden Plants'.   One of four treasures I brought home was this datura, just 12 inches high, but already with a single rich purple bloom.

What is it about a growing flower that can so affect the soul?

Finding places for new plants is getting harder - and now that we are in drought again it's often safer to keep them for as long as possible in their pots beside the tap.  But eventually it will be planted out on the bank beside the pinkish one, yet to bloom.

Then there is that beautiful apricot one I will also have to find . . . .