introducing... one small kitchen

After several months of dreaming, plotting and building (and endless tweaking), I finally felt brave enough this week to send my new little web project out into the world. Introducing... one small kitchen. Yes, it's a food blog. Yes, another food blog. I know. And, more to the point, another blog, when I can't even manage to post regularly to this one.

Friends have been suggesting for ages that I do something more with my photography. Over Christmas K suggested I start my own food blog. I was a bit hesitant at first. Does the world really need more food porn? Probably not. But you know what? That shouldn't stop me from following my passions. Besides, I think I can breathe my own style into it. At the very least it will be a record of the things I like to cook, and of my own journey exploring food. Maybe others will take something from it - and if not, that's okay, because I'm doing this for me. But I've been quite chuffed and astounded with the enthusiastic response in the first day and a bit. (Well on my way to having more Facebook fans than friends!) Thank you to everyone who has left a lovely comment, passed it on, or just stopped by. It's nice to know it's resonating with people!

But the biggest thanks goes to K who kicked me in the butt and gave (and continues to give) a humungous amount of time, web-nerdery and design nous behind the scenes (not to mention endless patience and calm when I have wanted to chuck my ailing computer out the window) to make this happen. (He is also a web-nerd for hire.)

Anyway, if you haven't checked it out yet, please do! I'll be posting a follow-up to the sourdough Easter buns with a slightly tweaked recipe.

Happy Easter! x

a complete day

Life has been speeding along. Nothing new there. A year since the bushfires, and there are downpours here and floods in New South Wales. Work is plenty busy, and there's news on that front just round the corner. I've also been idling away sunny days at the keyboard trying (seemingly fruitlessly) to bend and shape a couple of web projects into being. Lamenting the feeling of another weekend slipping through my fingers, I wondered if maybe I would feel like I'd achieved more if I could finish the sentence, 'a day would not be complete without...'. So. In an effort to check that I'm spending my time where it matters, a day would not be complete without...

cuddles and aimless lovely time with K
yoga, or at least a very quick stretch
a solid walk
making a little bit of art, whether through photography, words, craft-ivity or meddling in the dirt
reading, be it the papers, policy stuff for work, a cookbook or ... lo and behold, that long neglected beast, the book!
and of course, food dreaming, cooking and eating yummy food - accomplished this morning via pancakes with figs, yoghurt and honey... yum!

Feel free to join in...

party days

A rather gargantuan party-ish weekend has caught up with me and I am slicing into my rather massive haystack of sick leave. Last week was busy to the hilt preparing for S’s 50th, amongst all the usual stuff. Since I felt responsible for convincing her of the absolute necessity of celebrating such a hefty milestone – how could the person who, in her fabulous youth, started the Eumundi markets and sailed to India with an international fugitive, let her 50th pass without a bit of a knees-up? – I offered to help out with the food. Thus ensued wads of shopping, cooking, dishwashing and organising by both K and I. Buckets of sand were brought from Tallebudgera to bed tealight candles in brown paper bags. Chairs were carted and fairy lights strung. I made a mega pesto pasta salad from scratch. Plus my first ever quiche and samosas. (Thanks to my long-standing recipe recalcitrance – and the freezer gods – visitors to the 'Hill will be plied with samosa filling for months to come...)

The day before the party, R and J (who I hadn’t properly caught up with for AGES) came over for dinner on the deck. Mainly so they could finally meet K… and both parties be satisfied that my besties/squeeze were not just a psychological dependency I dreamed up. The girls drank a yummy red and talked about the boys. The boys drank German beer. And talked about beer. There was chicken, salad, cous cous. And sticky date pudding. Mmm. Oh. And the day before that was S's actual birthday, so we went to Sakura, the local Japanese, for amazing sushi, tempura and sake. Parteeee!

Since she had friends coming from both ends of the east coast and every hippy haven in between, I thought it would be lovely if S had photos from the evening as a keepsake. Here are some of the more experimental results… and a rather cute look at what happens when two alco-mo-hol-happy dreamers play with a camera :)

brunswick by bus

On the weekend K and I took Alice the bus for a slow spin down the coast. After some months parked by the Tallebudgera Creek, she needed a run. K found a place on Google Maps called Wooyung which begged the question: a seemingly undeveloped stretch of coast between Pottsville and Brunswick Heads. It was my first time travelling in Alice... and I discovered it is akin to being crowned parade royalty - people look, wave and cheer at you, so naturally it's polite to wave back. (All my secret Moomba fantasies now realised!) We discovered why Wooyung is undeveloped: stagnant creek, mosquitoes and pallid drenchings of end-of-the-worldness. There were no powered sites for us in Wooyung, making the short run to Brunswick a no-brainer. There we found a lovely little nook at the end of the caravan park, right by the Cruising Yacht Association, where honeydew smells filled the air. After executing our entry strategy (parking a bus is kind of like mooring a boat, though thankfully a lot less stressful), we went for a walk to ogle boats. I then proceeded to sate my crazy summer food and beverage cravings (Coopers Greens and potato chips followed by lamb and rosemary sausages and salad… mmm!)

In the morning we discovered Alice had not quite enough grunt left in her batteries to get us away by check-out. So we dutily informed the 12-yo at the desk that we unfortunately couldn’t go anywhere for a few hours, put Alice on charge and took coffees and breakfast-bowls to some rocks by the river and read the paper in the sun. Bliss! Then it was off to the beach for a spell of lolling and swimming.

Accompanied (as has been increasingly the case over recent beachy weekends) by a small boy-pack kicking a footy. This strange phenomenon has seen small groups of not-quite-teenage boys assemble beside us on the beach and engage in a bit of biff - kicking footies, wrestling, etc. K thinks it’s me. Pffff! I reckon they have a sixth dog-like sense and can smell the crazy love gremlins.

We headed back to Alice for a late alfresco lunch of cold sausages and sourdough with leftover tomato-capsicum salsa. Yum! And in a move sure to please the elder Relic, I took out a fully-paid, life-time membership of the Cold Sausage Fan Club.

Bellies full, K gave Alice a turn and she was back in action, putting paid to fantasies of calling work Monday morning to report ourselves "stuck at the beach". Back at Tallebudgera (after people at bus stops on the Gold Coast Highway tried to hail us - apparently this is usual), we did a sweep of Australia on Google Maps, pegging out regions on a big old road-tripping dream across the country. Which was fortuitously followed by the happy Monday discovery that by next March, I will have racked up about six months leave at half pay.

How many ways can a desk-hound say ‘Wooooo!’?

ho fan club

My mate Ren and I have started this thing on Friday nights. We do dinner. Actually we do Vietnamese. Actually we do Vietnamese in West End. Starting in Hardgrave Road, which has at least a long month’s worth of Vietnamese Friday dinners. Last week we gave ourselves a name – the Ho Fan Club, after one of the house specials at Quan Thanh. And too much red wine. And at the encouragement of Ren’s partner J who thought "ho fun" (in a 'chinglish' accent with good-time inflection) was the goods. We also adopted some house rules: one, we order to share; two we always order a tofu dish; three, we always mystery-select a chicken dish (ie, in ‘blindly point at the chicken section of the menu' fashion); and four, we never eat at the same establishment twice.

So we thought yeah, that’s pretty cool. An interesting start to our respective weekends. Maybe we should blog it. And then I was looking at The Age and see that one of their food writers has done the same thing! Except on Mondays along Victoria Street in Richmond. They call their little dinner club 'Good Evening Vietnam' (snooze). And they’ve been doing this for a whole year already!

WTF? Seriously! I mean if only we could come up with these ideas a little earlier. Anyway, I'm sure there's only one Ho Fan Club in Brisbane. And here it is...

the black russians

Got to love a tomato that sounds like the Soviet mob. I remember growing tomatoes in plastic garbage bins when I was a long-haired, bare-footed little person. Actually I should say I remember making dirt tunnels in plastic garbage bins while one of the not-then-relics planted tomatoes in the not-yet-tunneled garbage bin. Anyway, my black russians, which I have nurtured from seedlings (thanks Dad), through a three-state, three-day road trip and three Brisbane addresses, are about to deliver their lycopene goodliness!

YEEEEAAH!

I have looked after these little grommets like a mother-in-training, hauling myself out every night during a swampy Brisbane summer, shagged from work, to water them by bucket. I've hauled them round in my car from house-stay to house-sit to housebound-bliss. Frankly I've never invested so much grunt into a plant before. Well actually that's a lie... but I am not going to flaunt my criminal past here. Anyway, today I made three loaves of sourdough and am thinking the russians will go nicely with that, a little olive oil and some of the purple basil that I have unbelievably managed to sprout from seed and which is now growing like medusa on speed in my little potted garden. A perfect, if hard-won, home made lunch.

mysterious case of the honey pot

A couple of Friday nights ago, I arrived home after a dangerous mix of beer and mojitos and sat on my deck with a friend, courting pain and suffering (slurping down gin and tonics).

I spied something sitting by the back door, which in the semi-dark sozzled-ness, I could neither identify nor get up to investigate.

When I opened the back door on Saturday morning, there it was: a mysterious pot of honey. A rather large mysterious pot of honey. A rather large mysterious kick-ass pot of honey.

I am in awe of these bees, for this is The Most Amazing Honey, with a subtle, round-mouthed sweetness that makes me want to give up coffee and convert to chai, it is THAT good.

So with super sleuthing prowess, I asked my landlord, who lives next door, about the honey. Ha! It was him! He keeps bees (not here, though that would be excellent for my potted garden).

I have been a bit wary of my landlord, as in not wanting to be TOO friendly, if you get my drift. Someone told me the gifting of honey is a Greek courting tradition. I googled it but couldn’t find anything compelling. But I shall throw caution to the wind and return the favour with some freshly baked sourdough. I on-gifted half the pot and am now extra conscious of keeping my supply lines open!

mayi dupbar*

It's always about the food.

Up early on our day off. Can’t sleep in (damn diurnal rhythms). Pelican’s tech-guru N and I prep pancakes on the barbie with fruit salad, yoghurt and honey (the maple syrup went out in sympathy for the armies of bananas which have fermented on this trip). A lovely long brekky with coffee and tunes.

It’s a fitting start to our Sunday after Pelican's four huge days supporting a group of Hope Vale community members to retrace, by kayak, a sea route used by the Guugu Yimidhirr Aborigines to Lizard Island to collect (you guessed it) food: wild arrowroot and yam, clam shell, sea gull eggs, turtle, wangay, fish, dugong and pigeons. The original inhabitants paddled in dugout canoes from the main camp at Cape Flattery to Lizard, via Rocky Island, South Direction Island and North Direction Island.

Our first night’s anchorage is at Rocky Isle, a protected rookery for Torres Strait pigeons. We have time for beachcombing before picking up the kayakers who will arrive after their first day's paddle. The shoreline is paved with flat white stones and the sand is spangled with driftwood, prongs of bleached coral and manmade flotsam. We return to the boat with the kayakers and an armful of rubbish and rouse a few hands to help prepare the meal: freshly-hooked barbecued fish, jacket potatoes and salad. Camping is not permitted on Rocky so Pelican sleeps with 29 people under her wing.

On day two, the kayakers paddle from Rocky Isle to North Direction Island, which rises like a pudding from the sea. Our mooring there is tenuous, with gusts bulleting the boat, and reefs surrounding us. So after unloading support people and camp gear, Pelican and crew depart for the sheltered waters of Watson’s Bay at Lizard for the night and a quiet meal of ganguruu (kangaroo) and mediterranean vegies on the barbie (with thanks to E and crew for giving me the night off!).

We motor back to North Direction on day three to pick up all the kayakers. With 25-30 knot winds and a messy two-metre swell, some paddlers are not keen on completing the last leg to Lizard Island. With them aboard, we sail back to Lizard and moor at Mermaid Cove, a secluded bay where a rock ledge shelters a lively reef. It's decided that we'll wait to see if conditions ease enough to complete the last leg tomorrow. After a tiring day of loading and unloading people and gear, N and I squeeze in a late afternoon snorkel. Sunlight streams through the water onto bright blue, fat-fingered starfish. Giant winking clams and baby clam nurseries ogle us from below. Neon reef fish duck in and around coral bommies. We stick our heads up just in time to catch a sunshower. As we return to the boat a turtle swims by. What a world! After visiting the shore camp we enjoy a late dinner of baked spangled emperor, rice, cucumber salad and coconut-lime sambal.

Day four and we are three paddlers short. The kayaks must all be returned to Lizard. In the interests of logistics, I, along with two other Pelican crew, put my hand up to jump in a kayak. Not without nerves, as the instructors focus us on how to handle a capsize and our skipper talks about retrieval procedures. Conditions are still rough, with 25-30 knots, frequent gusts and lots of chop, but we're paddling downwind and have Pelican close by. As we launch the kayaks from North Direction Island, an eagle circles us overhead. I'm too busy staying upright to notice, but those remaining on Pelican declare goosebumps. This is the final leg of an historic voyage. After an hour’s paddling, we approach the shallow waters of the lagoon at Lizard, all eight kayaks with sails up, cruising the rest of the way in. A welcome party of three ngowia (turtles) greets my paddle honcho J and I as we are among the first to arrive.

What a journey. Kudos to the kayakers who completed it, and brought to life part of their cultural heritage. It is hard to imagine making this voyage in pursuit of food, as the Guugu Yimidhirr once did.

--

*Yummy food in Guugu Yimidhirr

postcard from cape flattery

At last... back where the sun shines! We are anchored at Cape Flattery, at the southern end of the Cape York Peninsula.

We sailed from Cairns a week ago, arriving that evening in Cooktown for a community sail the following day. We took a group of school students and marine scientists out to the reef to undertake water quality monitoring. After last dash provisioning in Cooktown (including an all-important last icecream for a month), we sailed to Cape Bedford, where we anchored for a couple of days, doing sail training. We've had five Hope Vale fellas aboard for the first week, undertaking training with us towards their coxswains certificates. Great bunch of guys (that's them above in celebration mode as we arrive at Flattery).

Bit of a perk for me to sit in on most of the training and beef up my boatiness.

On Tuesday we sailed north to Cape Flattery, where the Hope Vale community will set up camp on the beach over the school holidays. This will be the base for a whole bunch of activities, including digital storytelling (there is a whole media tent with computer editing facilities), a kayaking trip following a traditional dugout canoe route to Lizard Island, music and dance workshops, basket-weaving, spear-making, turtle and dugong research... and of course sailing!

Sailing north from Cape Bedford, we had a bumper catch off Low Wooded Isle, a favoured fishing spot of skip's which always provides. Northern bluefin tuna, spotted mackerel and coral trout: five in all. We have since feasted amply on sashimi and barbecued fish, rice and salad.

The only food issues so far have been frostbitten greens and fermenting fruit. Since we are quite remote and catering numbers are a bit 'fluid', I've been swallowing my tongue every time I see space appearing in the fridges! Have also been helping with meal planning for the community camp – up to 120 people for three weeks with only eskies, a simple woodfire grill and gurramah (underground camp oven) to play with. Luckily there is a cook in charge of the camp kitchen (I had been wondering!) and he used to be a chef in the navy.

Today was our first community sail at Flattery, with the marine scientist involving Hope Vale kids in seagrass monitoring activities. Privileged to have a traditional owner aboard. We are learning lots. Many dugongs sighted, one curling up through the water close by the boat.

Will write more soon - my battery's dying!

potatoship to the camembert moon

Two weeks before departure for Cairns. Less, actually.

From my bolthole in the virtual Antarctic (aka southern Gippsland), I can’t quite grasp the subtropics. My disbelief starts somewhere around my ugg boots. And tapers off around my beanie. T-shirts and shorts sound about as appropriate right now, as, well… flying to the moon in a hollowed-out potato.

[Gah! Potato rocketship + moon-as-cheese = brain preoccupied with stodge! I know those moon mythologists have dibs on Swiss but I'm going for camembert. White rind. I think it works. Mmm, camembeeeerrt…]

Which brings me to my next challenge: getting my head around summer food.

To explain. I’m joining Pelican again (as cook) for a project with the Hopevale Aboriginal community. The itinerary goes something like this: Cairns-Cooktown-Cape Flattery-various islands-Cooktown-Cairns. Four weeks, a bit of sail training, a splash of kayaking, some turtle/dugong monitoring, digital storytelling, traditional craft-making... and boatloads of cooking.

So. I’m kind of hoping my kitchen mojo reappears. Soon. And in summer mode. About a month ago, some kind of evil winter slump repossessed my food inspiration. So I’ve been getting by on tofu stir fries and steamed vegies. Which I love. But not in a daily way! I suspect the mojo walk-out was in response to the freak-it’s-cold/regional-food-supplies-are-crap/why-am-I-in-this-puposeless-pit blues.

Am also hoping the four-hour flight triggers a reversal of hibernation-lethargy and reinstates former physical glory in readiness for the slog that is four weeks of creating food-love bounties from a rockin’ sweatin' galley.

But I guess this is all small fry. I'll be shootin’ for the camembert.

nuts

I’ve just returned from two days at Churinga, where the Relics and I lunched last week. Churinga’s guardians are part of the WWOOFing fraternity and had invited me to come back for a bit of hands-on. I was told I’d be planting walnuts. Naturally, my rose-coloured urban brain imagined me begloved, kneeling in dirt, sunshine beating down, digging a few holes with a trowel and asking, ‘What next?’ with the satisfied glow of a woman who has just planted walnuts.

Naturally, it wasn’t like that at all. What it was like, was plotting an entire orchard of walnut trees. No, cancel that. A plantation of walnut trees.

Two of us spent the best part of one and a half days measuring and staking out where 50 walnut trees should go on a very large, steeply sloped, bracken-covered plot of land. We couldn’t even get a proper line of sight since there were trees to be felled. We got 26 in the ground. There were no trowels in sight. Clearly, I still have a way to go on this urban to country curve.

But for now, you can call me Walnut Queen.

old-school cool

When Safeway publicly apologises for its short supply of brocolli due to extreme cold weather, when the entire world around you scarfs sausage rolls for lunch, when the best thing about waiting for a train at Flinders Street is the passive ingestion of potato cake/salt-n-vinegar smells… perhaps it’s time to ditch that halo and get thee some old-school comfort.

Sometimes in life, the only correct answer is:

1. Risone with tuna and loads of melted cheese. My conscience was lurking from the sidelines so I had to put some green things on top – freezer peas are old-school good.

2. Butter-licious jaffles with baked beans. From a can.

3. Hot chocolate. With a choc royale on the side.

4. Peanut butter on toast. Forget chicken soup. This is the old-school antidote to just about anything.

5. Nanna blanket. Hottie. Couch and ... (still thinking old-school?) the Sesame Street Classics DVD set... which I won from the very cool folks at Three Thousand! It came today!

An excerpt from their review: "A mood-disordered green hairy homeless person hanging out with a gay worm, a bird who lives in a vacant lot in Harlem, hallucinating that his best friend is a woolly mammoth, children going home with a strange man named Bob for "milk and cookies". A monster smoking a pipe while hosting a TV show - then eating the pipe."

The inhumanity of it is that Bird et al will have to wait, since I must make a hastily arranged day-swoop to Melbourne tomorrow - a seven-plus hour return trip. I will be a mood-disordered green hairy homeless person by tomorrow night.

ding! dong!

The orchids are out, the wood ducks are a-nesting, the mornings are lighter. This can only mean that winter is on its way out. Ding dong to that! Both rain tanks are full and I harvested my first handfuls of coriander – planted from seed aeons ago – for a bowl of pho ga. Small things worth celebrating. I thought I would do so by sharing some recent finds/surprises:

1. Cousin J’s home-made bircher muesli, replicated by me but not as good as the original. Oats, dried fruit, water, fridge. Genius!

2. Yacon: like a crunchy, super-sweet potato. Perfect for my fave fast food: bowl of steamed veg.

3. Kangaroo simmered in a dashi-soy-mirin-sake combo with stir fried vegies and brown rice. How did I get into my fourth decade (ARGH!) before tasting dashi?? Probably the same way I left it until my second last day in Vietnam to discover jackfruit.

4. A 100% Shetland wool jumper in the throw-out bin at the opp shop, 50 cents. Hooray for the regions.

5. A sheath of dusky meringue light falling on the peak of St Paul's Cathedral with the boldest, thickest rainbow I have ever seen arcing over the building's side. Lines of people taking photos. Me? No camera! One of those 'I don't have my camera so I'll just have to appreciate the moment' moments.

6. The tax office rocks. These words are a meaty surprise, no? They have just rescued me from taking another slice off the top of my acorn stash. Never before have I witnessed the heaving cogs of bureaucracy work so swiftly in my favour. Never.

7. Someone I used to work with has packed up his family for instalment two of We Do Love to Sail Around the Med. Their modus operandi seems to be work for six months; sail for six. I do like it very muchly!

8. Natasha Pincus interview in the winter issue of Dumbo Feather (call me a nerd if you will, I'm rationing my reading to prolong the joy) which has made me think even more deeply about callings and creativity. Anyone seeking Purpose Angst resolution should read it. Though it may cause further angst. But you’ll be much better informed. Or something like that.

9. Always smile when there are cameras around. You never know when a previous employer will stick your mug on a website banner.

10. Who the? What the? Gggghhh! Mwow. I was dreaming about moths and celery stalks...



How cute is he with his face all twisted like that? And I am posting this after cleaning two puddles in one day... one of which I unwittingly pushed a broom through and walked in. Ick! Either I am extremely forgiving... or I find this photo highly amusing.

the mc-what?

I use web-based email. I know: pleb. Anyway, it’s free, I've had it forever and I find the celebrity gossip - that I must dedicate half an eyeball to as I log in - mildly amusing.

This afternoon though, I almost inhaled my chai when I saw an ad for McAfrica. That’s right, McAfrica!

As in, the continent with more starving people than anywhere else on Earth! Brought to you by the corporation almost singularly responsible for promulgating a 'food culture' (much licence taken) resulting in mass rates of obesity in the west.

But why McAfrica? Are they using zebra patties? Is this a cunning new alliance with World Vision to get those of us with half an iota's flea of a social conscience through the automatic doors? Perhaps I’m clinging to stereotypes of place-based poverty. Anyway, I was compelled to investigate (note to relics: this is precisely why we’ve exceeded our download limit every month since my arrival).

Like any McInteraction, I felt instantly sick and regretful. (The site has apparently been revamped, and is all wobbly and intuitive.)

Anyway, there are no zebras in the patties (though I doubt there’s much real cow in them either, despite the listing of 100% beef in the ingredients list, which I’ve always thought to be a more innocuous way of saying ‘we use all the parts of the cow’). Apparently what makes this burger a McAfrica is that it’s “dressed with an exotic African sauce of mayonnaise and spices”.

Spices? What spices? Mayonnaise? Isn’t that a European condiment? Granted, the French influence in African cuisine is strong. But when were burgers ever part of a traditional African diet!? I’ve been to one African country and there were lots of pastries (hail the French), lots of tagines, not so many burgers. (Though I did pass one McFoodhall on my two-week Moroccan circuit.)

On closer inspection, it appears the "African sauce" is actually “Harissa Mayonnaise”, though what makes it “Harissa Mayonnaise” is indecipherable from the ingredients list, which between all the numbers, refers to chilli puree and vague listing of “spices” and “herbs”. So by waving the "exotic" wand, they’ve absolved themselves from giving any particular reason why this maketh an African burger!

At 2000 kilojoules and over 40% fat, they should load up a few plane-fuls of McAfricas and set off for Zimbabwe, where inflation is running at 100,000 per cent (or was in April, according to AFP) or to Sierra Leone where the cost of rice has risen 300 percent. Just aim the plane somewhere at the continent and you're bound to find a country that's been affected by food/fuel riots in recent months/years.

My investigation got stranger and stranger. The Olympic colours billowed across the website burger. Marketing spiel attests to this being a “Limited Edition Olympic Games Burger” (sic - and sick too).

Daft I may be, but the link to the Games is lost on me. If they had half a bland marketing brain at their global disposal, they might’ve dreamed up some sort of - just thinking wildly here - Chinese dish, perhaps served in a cute cardboard takeaway box. Which, benefit of the doubt etc, I’m sure they’re saving for the actual Games and working their way there with a continent a month or something midly strategic.

Anyway, sorry for ranting, I just had to share.

sunshine good, freeloading bad

The sun came out this week. On consecutive days! After days of icy chill, rain, hail etc, I cushied on my bedroom floor, ugg boots against sunlight sneaking in through the window. I cushied on the verandah, sans uggies. And remembered what it felt like to be outdoors without thermal assistance.

I frolicked outside with dirt, lettuce, parsley, coriander, rosemary, chilli, thyme. I even poured a very unseasonable glass of sav blanc, a little celebration to accompany an improbably perfect lunch of leftovers: potato, zucchini, feta and dill polpettes with risone (I want to kiss whoever invented risone, the most perfect pasta to eat with nothing but olive oil and fresh parmy). Accompanied by green leaves with grapefruit and kalamata olives.

Bliss, I tell you.

Sunshine also made me reflective. Have been feeling a bit hopeless lately about the quest. (You know, the quest, the all-consuming search for meaning/fulfilment beyond the desk that occasionally involves some form of income.) The freelancing thing is proving v demoralising, especially as a pitch to one of the section editors from the (formerly?) reputable metro daily resulted in … two of my ideas (one of which was fresh fodder, largely uncovered to date by any media outlet) appearing in their online version two weeks later. Gives new meaning to freelancing...

Freelancing: verb, to give away sale-able story ideas and then impale oneself on own sword upon seeing ideas in print, with someone else's name on the byline.

Am channelling all the Buddhist detachment I can muster. And yes, it could have been a coincidence. But grrrr!

Anyway, since the editorial gods are not going to play (or play fair), I’ve decided to direct energies craft-wards. Landing in a cold/flu quagmire this week, I turned the bedroom into a craft den. See here,

feather deckled notebook (from reclaimed paper & fabric)

My floor is mere cellophane offcuts/rogue cotton wool fluffs away from resembling a kindergarten play-room.

Am also working on some photo cards which I’m hoping the local gifty-type estabs will snap up. See here,

I’m quietly hopeful for a little success, quest-wise, once we’re over the solstice hump.

poo to stupid utopian food fantasies

It was written in the previous post: too good to be true. And so it is.

After the best part of a morning’s labour making bread and the verily-anticipated mushroom soup, I spied little white worms in the pot.

Argh! Maggies in the mushies!

cannot sufficiently describe the devastation.

or capitalize

to hell with punctuation too

Like every brilliant romance I’ve ever had, it’s ended in tears. And no, it is not better to have loved and lost. Do you know this means they were probably in the pizza too, and now doing god-knows-what in my gut?

It’s back to huff-and-puff forest walking for me. And eventually, when I get over my loss, stupid-market mushrooms.

hooray for wild foods (ode to the fungi-licious)

Over the past couple of years I’ve heard grand tales of wild mushroom harvests at Bingi. Of platefuls of black-eared goodness gathered from the forest. Of such quantities that after eating them fresh, stewing and freezing, stewing and freezing, the surplus was (horror!) given away. Each year I’ve salivated from afar. So naturally, I’ve dreamed about mushroom season since arriving here... two months ago (more horror!). I was convinced the first fungi would flourish the day I uprooted for Tassie. And that I would again be left pouting. By the grace of the wild food gods, I was wrong.

Enter, my current lust, the forest mushroom. The season has burst, big-time. Every afternoon for the past four days I’ve been mushrooming. Yesterday’s bonanza: two trays of too-good-to-be-true, russety helmets:

Days have vanished in ode to the ‘shroom. Aside from the ritual gathering, there’s been much daydreaming about how to eat them. On stoneground wholemeal pizzas with thyme, pinenut and pecorino was a good start. Now, for the perfect soup recipe...

In my love-state I've been marvelling at the perfection of wild foods: nourishment superior in every way to the tasteless offerings of industrial agriculture. These are poor-man’s truffles. Picked and eaten same day. I walk and breathe fresh air to gather them. Consequently I meet the locals (who invite me to extend my rounds to their paddocks). No carbon emissions, chemicals, fertilizers, cleared land, water diversions, embodied energy or waste. And what was that about a free lunch?!

Am fully aware of my near-delirium over the mushroom thing. (No, they are not magic.) As with most little joys, there is a flipside. Given my current, subversive, sucks-to-the-dominant-consumerist-ideology thinking – and to further illustrate the complete bureaucratic stupidity of the current paradigm, in case you needed more evidence – I will add that gathering wild foods from public land is illegal. In fact, gathering anything from public land is illegal.

Rather than coil and rant about the abject wrongness of this, I will continue to simply appreciate that which graces the roadside!

[Disappears down a dirt road in full swoon.]

the new peasant economics

Why is it that time and money exist on parallel planes? It’s like some evil economic quantam scale where you invariably have a rude abundance of one and a dearth of the other. It's also like a Snuffleupagus and Mr Hooper scene (never the twain shall meet). Whatever, the imbalance is stress-provoking and anti-life.

Since joining the ranks of daytime gadabouts (ie, adequately furnished with time), I’ve noticed a peculiar change in my activities...

Fire. I am besotted with it. After rousing from bed and feeding the cat, my first priority is to light the woodstove. Throughout the day I feed it, poke it and monitor its behaviour like a new mother. This is because it is both a brilliant heat provider (do you know how close Gippsland is to Antarctica?) and the cooker of our hot meals. Hail the woodstove. You are my new god.

Tools. The pyro preoccupation has led to a parallel interest in the chainsaw. Yes! Last week I wielded death in my hands, surviving Chainsaw 101 and Kickback 102. I figure it’s probably good to know how to use the thing, just in case wood supplies here run low. Which is not likely to precede melting of the polar caps, but anyway…

Bread. As noted previously, I’m on an upward sourdough curve. After mastering the folding in and low-knead techniques, I’ve cracked the flour:wet ingredients ratio. Breakthroughs that resulted in a loaf which doesn’t digest like stone. Next assignments: Tibetan barley bread and ginger bread…

Herbs. While the elder relic plays in the vegie garden, I’ve begun my ‘I will never buy herbs from the supermarket again’ campaign. Cuttings from E going well. Seeds sown but yet to sprout. The sun’s return would help. (I might have also thrown a bunch of random vegie seeds in a pot – my competitive streak lingers despite the change of postcode/lifestyle.)

Handicrafts. Object of my fascination Mystic Medusa promised an answer lurking in a clogged-up cupboard. To offset further goading from one of the relics, I began sorting through boxes of old school/uni work. The mega-deed ended in a craft session (and a disturbing flashback to my youth) as I sat on my bedroom floor making notebooks out of photocopied waste. If the question was whether I will ever need to buy another notepad again...

All other incarnations of food not already covered. Have swanned into role of house chef. Food prep enthusiasm has returned in full, courtesy wads of time to dream and create. Of recent note was a black-eyed bean, tomato and spinach curry with minted yoghurt and coconut rice. Didn't sound all that appealing when I tried to describe my vision to the diners. Verdict? They did rave. And I would serve it with girlish glee to a table of me and David Wenham. In other food news, an order for lamb roast has been received for mothers day.

<$ Since I’ve been watching it like the woodstove, I’ve noticed how much of it I waste. I’ve been paying monthly salary packaging fees since last September… without actually earning a salary! The car also caused acute haemorrhaging last week – I still can't talk about it but have regained my composure after a weekend of wine and 100 kinds of dairy that I can blame on visiting brother and T. And of course, every single recurrent expense I have was recently ‘adjusted in line with CPI’. Bah! Grrrr!

All these activities have been bubbling alongside the vision quest, which of course is to (*closes eyes and clicks heels thrice*) creatively fund my continued existence in this new part-time, fire-starting, tool-wielding, cultivating, crafting, baking mode (where creative = on my terms and legal).

Gordon Bennett! I’ve joined the peasantry!

baking and being

In his amusing yet highly-evolved ‘How to be Free’, Tom Hodgkinson suggests 'just being' is a good way to discover one’s true vocation – that which one is passionate about and can earn money from, outside the manacles of 'career'. A stint with no distractions, just free-flowing life.

As self-indulgent as this sounds, this is where I find myself now. Just being. For the first time since Life After Desk began roughly eight months ago.

And as conscientiously as I squirreled in preparation for this time to ‘be’, actually doing the ‘being’ is fraught with anxiety. For while I’m studiously ‘being’ I’ve got one eye on all that hard-earned, which is rapidly ‘going’. Which does not help me figure out how the hell I can 'be' in a way that is fulfilling, ongoing, self-supporting and contributes something remotely worthwhile to someone/something somewhere.

So here I am, trying to ‘be’ without money angst, when along comes an opportunity to boat-sit. For the next week I’m in a waterfront house on two hulls. In the centre of Melbourne. With the tram at my door. And the Vic Market a short walk away.

Oh-my-god-why-did-I-ever-leave-this-town?

Delaying the invincible lure of bookshops and 'discovery wandering', I spend a morning trawling the market. Back on the boat, I unload my spoils. These include a small slab of salted Warrnambool butter to accompany my first ever batch of home-made sourdough – a rye. After five days of compliant stirring and waiting (in Gippsland) for my sourdough starter to ‘be’, I realise I have a showdown on my hands. The boat’s oven is notorious: it knows only one temperature – hell.

Despite my constant coddling, the loaf burns on one side. Given the oven situation and my cookbook’s caveats about expectations and learning curves, it’s a passable first try. Respectable crust, cakey texture and a proper sourdough taste with a definite rye-ness about it. Served warm and buttery with swiss browns and organic wilted baby spinach. Mmm! And I didn't spend anywhere near six bucks - the going price for a decent loaf - on it.

[Am also looking forward to dipping the bread into a bowl of soup nirvana - cauliflower, cayenne and coconut milk. Made this last week with an 80 cent cauli on the Yarram IGA throw-out table. It ranks as one of the year's meal highlights.]

Thus I will continue baking and being... and dreaming about the next meal… and trying not to worry where it’s coming from!

“Career is just posh slavery.” – Tom Hodgkinson

Joy to the world (and the pain of uninterrupted sitting)

I’m back!

After two months I’ve been reunited with laptop and 24-hour internet connection.

[Chorus of angels appears]

Have also been taking Vittoria intravenously.

Whilst idling over hilarious blogs.

And ingesting intestinally-threatening quantities of real cheese, olives, red meat and all kinds of not-white bread… and sushi from James Street markets… and field mushrooms on sourdough with mmm-gooey fetta and truffle oil from Cirque… but I digress…

So once the important business of essential-foods-I-haven’t-had-for-two-months had been fully rectified, I:

a) went back to bed and slept for a very long while

b) unpacked my things and pretended to be the Christmas angel, dispensing souvenirs like snowflakes to all within a five-mile radius

c) got in my car and drove from my former home (Brisbane) down the east coast (1,886km, if you’re wondering) to my almost-former home twice removed (parental home in Gippsland), somehow managing to stay on the left despite wanting to walk everywhere on the right, whilst throwing around credit cards to petrol station attendants and hoteliers like bloody Santa, as the business of uninterrupted sitting for two and a half days wreaked further trauma on my very-neglected lower back.

One hundred thousand dong for choosing C (since I'm at it anyway), obviously the least appealing option after travelling for two months straight, living out of a backpack for eight, being ‘homeless’ for a year, etc. (Speaking of milestones, kudos to me for staying off the dreaded cigs for over a year – a feat of increasing difficulty whilst on the backpacker circuit, as throngs of sleek twenty-something French/Dutch/German girls blew sexed-up smoke ringlets while I nursed my beer, reminding myself that my glory days of inconsequential bad behaviour are over.)

My reintegration with the western economic system is also proving a thorny beast. Almost swallowed my tongue when I had to fork out $64 for a three-star motel in Taree (ie, nowhere). This was after bargaining (a new learned reflex?) down a hotelier in Kempsey from $85 to $50 for a room, which I thought still too ridiculous for mortal consideration and drove on. Foolishly. If it wasn’t for still-fresh bruises from overnight buses in Vietnam, a complaining back and other things I need to remind myself of (see above), I would’ve unfurled a blanket in the back seat of the Hyundai.

Perhaps my problem is acclimitising to two-dollar bungalows with views like this:



A second chorus of angels appeared when I reached Gippsland, which is about three hundred degrees cooler than Vietnam. Yay. Two days ago I unpacked my things. And haven’t contemplated moving since.

PS Thanks to J and L for the bed, extended car-minding and exquisite anticipation of food needs. And to R (the cat) for putting up with a stranger in Her house during the day.

A note about photographs. Here are some. The rest are coming, along with a remedy for automated hyphenation and a classification system. Two months of travel = a shirtload of photos = a truckload of sorting, thumbnailing, uploading, uninterrupted sitting, etc.