Poem 43 - pancake day

Cake day before lent

Too many past feasts linger 

so I'll have salad

Poem 29

 

Counting calories,

rationing every bite.

Dedication pays

Mango Smoothie

I have heard January in Sydney described as a month long party and, if you are privileged enough, I suppose that is true. School children are on  holidays and the relaxed attitudes start with Christmas. Boxing day and New Year holidays follow and then there is Australia day only three weeks later. It is the time of year that many businesses close so it can be hard to see a doctor or get a tradesman or eat at a favourite restaurant. The days after New Year sometimes feel just a little bit apocalyptic and everything slowly gains momentum  as the month passes.
All of this is reflected in the activities of my church. There was no service on New Years Day, things resumed with a poorly attended service on the 8th and the coffee lady (that's me) decided to serve cold lemon cordial instead of coffee.Today our minister is back on deck after a couple of weeks off and she corralled a few of us to get Christmas decorations put away.
It's a very hot and unpleasant 40°C today so she offered to buy us all a drink as thank you.
I'm usually a coffee drinker but today my head was turned by the promising sound of a coconut and mango smoothie. In my heat addled state I imagined it to be coconut milk with mango. The drink I ended up with was delicious but obviously highly sweetened and containing very little coconut. It also came in a single use plastic cup. I do my best to stay away from sugary drinks and single use plastics so there was a side of guilt involved.
Right now i'm wondering if this confessional post would qualify as "Daggy Mum" fodder. Maybe I should have just made my own coconut mango smoothie and posted photos.

Beauty

steamy new years eve

young lovers making pasta

fans whir, auld lang syne 

Donuts & Cakes

I was at the butchers today and because I was shopping alone the butcher inquired about the whereabouts of my daughters who are often along for the ride.

"They've gone to Bowral for cake" I informed him. (That's 95km/ 59miles)

 He looked surprised for just a second before he said "Well we go to Dapto for hot dogs, we did it once and then it became a thing" (81km/ 50miles)

His next observation: "And Berry for donuts" (128km/ 80miles)

What food do you travel a crazy distance for?

Tsoureki

After I arrive at playgroup every week, I take $10 from the cash box and take a short walk around the corner to see what I can buy for morning tea. The menu is not fixed but I seem to have evolved a system of serving fruit, something sweet, some crackers and cheese. There were crackers in the cupboard and parents bring fruit so I just had to figure out something sweet and choose some cheese.

There were all kinds of specials happening this week, including Greek Easter bread (tsoureki) at half price so I decided to grab some of that. A whole loaf of toastable sweet bread for about $2.50 would provide the sweet treat for the littles as well as something to go with cups of coffee for the grown-ups. It was a bargain I couldn't go past.

Then I saw a new (to me) product: Sesame and Sumac hommous. maybe it was the alliteration in the name or maybe it was the prospect of trying something with sumac but I decided to ditch the cheese idea and get the hommous instead.

One of the grandmas was very taken with the tsoureki and she turned to another grandma near by, asking her to try it. I knew that grandma number 2 had come to Australia from some European place a long time ago and there was a good chance she was already familiar with tsoureki. She graciously took a piece of the shop-bought bread and quietly told me that she makes her own every easter. It takes half a day. She impressed on me the name of the flavouring agent "mahlepi" and we chatted about the long process of raising and kneading the dough. It was a sweet moment of connection for me.

Several people wanted to know where to buy the bread and what was the dip that had the kids so keen to eat. It was a remarkable success, though I could have done without the many, many crumbs that seemed to multiply as they fell!

Grass clippings for dinner, anyone?

Every day my kitchen looks more like it belongs to some kind of health nut. There is alfalfa sprouting in the cupboard with the mugs (it has to be in the dark and there's no room anywhere else) There is sour cream culturing on the windowsill, purple sauerkraut and fermented pear chutney in the fridge and as of this evening there is a bucket of shredded silverbeet on the bench. (Actually it's balancing on the tray of newspaper wrapped free range eggs)

I was at the markets today and the silverbeet looked so glossy and crinkly I just had to get some. The few bunches I picked through all seemed to have, er, insect poo but I wasn't deterred and settled on a less toilet-y looking bunch. Once I started washing it all I found the culprit: a reasonably sized and very alive snail! blech. 

The shredded leaves have been salted to start drawing the juices out and tomorrow I will massage them and pack them into a fermenting jar. At this stage it smells like cut grass. Not entirely appetising, I might need to add some cabbage to soften it or maybe it will mellow overnight.

Away from the kitchen I have been developing a slow burning affair with sites where people give away their excess stuff: freecycle and it's upmarket sister, Tushare. It's an interesting world where a bunch of old rice bags are more in demand than a sofa. 

I have saved about a dozen of these bags because they are solid and even have a zip. I knew they had to be useful for something so when I heard about Tushare I offered the bags. They languished for a while but last night a lady from my own suburb joined the site and thought they would be perfect for her scout troop. She messaged about picking them up early this morning and I said I would put them outside. I wasn't in any kind of hurry because things usually sit out there for days but after a coffee and a shower I decided to get on with it and when I opened the door the lady was standing on the road counting houses in confusion! She was delighted to take them, stains, stray rice grains and all! Life seems utterly surreal at times.

“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” 
― George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.

i usually dread it before i leave home and then end up revelling in my regular friday trip to the markets and today was no exception. the sky is sunless and grey, there is a light drizzle and a creeping cold, it would be nice to curl up with a book or a movie but the cupboards were bare so i eventually managed to steel myself and trundle off.
i have many, many times seen on the stalls large bags of partly prepared vegetables: peeled onions and chopped pumpkin, maybe other things if i had paid attention. i always regarded them as a restaurant product and then today i saw a woman pushing a trolley with a bag of cut pumpkin and something about the new context opened my eyes. pumpkin soup without all the work! i saw a new possibility in those bags. the kids love pumpkin soup but it takes so much chopping and peeling that i usually opt for something easier, could this be as good as it looked? i resolved to check out the price. it was $2, TWO dollars, for a bag of prepared pumpkin. i couldn't buy whole pumpkins for under about $4 or $5 and there wouldnt be anywhere near as much of it.
i was still on my pumpkin high when i decided i might treat myself to a handful of prawns. the fish counter was busy and i stood for a long time while some lady negotiated $5 off a $150 box of prawns. yawn. midway through this extremely painful exchange a woman came toward the counter and made a vague,
sympathetic, you-go-first kind of gesture which was weird because there was nobody available to serve us and i had been standing there for freaking ages. i made an equally vague smiley gesture and finally somebody showed up to serve me. except you-go-first-lady made an immediate and abrupt demand for some fish. i stood, slightly gobsmacked but could'nt really do much so i waited some MORE while negotiations proceeded for the $5 off the box of prawns. somewhere in all of this i thought i might not want prawns all tht much but i had waited so long i thought i would just hang in there a tiny bit longer. finally it was my turn. "Could i have about $5 worth of prawns, please?"
"no, i cant do that"
" i dont want them for $5 a kilo, i want $5 worth"
"i know, i wont sell less than half a kilo"

having been educated i was ready to say "ok, i'll have half a kilo" but she had already written me off as a bad deal and was gone, several feet away, making high powered negotiations with some other innocent.

never mind, i have my pumpkin. i should have enough for pumpkin soup, pumpkin cake, pumpkin scones, pumpkin pie and even a curry or relish. i must get to it.

Waiting.......

I am on call now for a birth and while i think i am better at uncertainty than the average person, that doesnt mean i have no concerns.
My concerns are mostly manufactured in my own mind: what if i dont hear the phone and they dont call again? what if they have decided at the last minute that they wont call me? what if there is a traffic jam on the way? will i remember everything i need to? will i think on my feet when something unexpected crops up (and it will, it is birth) if it is long, will i be anywhere near useful at the end? what food do we have that i can quickly grab as i head out?
every night when i get into bed i think i am too tired for a birth tonight, every time my son has my car i worry about getting the call, yesterday i worried that i would forget the address.
today i was asked what food i recommend for labour and i worried that i was being either too vague or too prescriptive (i said comfort foods, complex carbs to start and fast energy sources for the end)
i go on call when a pregnancy reaches the 38 week mark and some babies are not born until 43 weeks (rare but possible) it is a long time to be second guessing ones self but this is the life i chose and maybe i will get better with practice?

strolling back in time, modernly

once upon a time i dreamed of a semi self sufficient life. and then i realised that i, in fact we, were confined to a standard suburban life. it wasnt a bad realisation, who wants to work a veggie garden and slaughter chooks, anyway? who wants to work that hard when a trip to the supermarket will fulfill the needs of the family with regards to food and cleaning products, toiletries and innumerable trivial but urgently "necessary" consumer goods?

then i stopped working (ie for money) and i browsed the web way too much, which led to the no-poo (no shampoo) experiment, which for what it's worth, i was having some success with. then i wanted to try a hair "straightening" system and it has a matching shampoo so the no-poo experiment was ditched for the time being, in favour of the hope that compliance with the system would bring newly smooth and manageable tresses. it worked for a while. i will be working my way through the shampoo for a while.

the next stage of my stroll back in time was when i suddenly got to be excessively irritated about paying over $5 for a fairly average loaf of bread. i bought a bread maker for $70 and i use bread mixes which take no effort except for dumping the flour from a pre-measured bag into the tin with some water and a spoon of yeast. they cost $2 a loaf. the bread is as good as or better than the $5 supermarket loaf. i have yet to perfect the slicing process but i estimate i have an extra $15 a week in my pocket. for that i can deal with crooked slices.

after a brief teething period with the bread maker i was feeling pretty darn pleased with myself. making bread at home is easy, could yoghurt be just as good i wondered? enter the $20 yoghurt maker that makes a lovely smooth, thick product. i doubt that i'm saving anything on that because at around half the price of shop bought stuff, i've stopped rationing it as i once did and i reckon they are eating at least twice as much!

not only am i saving some cash but i dont have to go to the shops as often and you have to be happy with that! there is less plastic in the recycling bin and most of us are still enjoying the novelty. the kids come home from school and ask what my latest weird project is, they roll their eyes and give me a hard time so dont tell them i'm going to try my hand at yogurt cheese sometime soon, will you?

what i'm thinking about these days

life goes on, the same as always but different: i keep trying to build my profile as a doula and i think i am succeeding in creating an online presence, people do sometimes refer to me with questions about babies and children, but it isn't translating into work.

i've written a couple more blog posts for a parenting magazine, one about vaccination and one about....well, about waiting i suppose. i'm happy to do it and i've had nice feedback and heaven knows i like nice feedback but it doesnt put crowns on teeth, shoes on feet or food on the table.

my husband isnt working at the moment and is contracted not to discuss that situation so i guess i wont, except to say it has all been a bit of an adjustment. we are living on savings and my question is, for a normally conservative person, how much more conservative do i need to get? or do i just go on my normal way and work on the theory of abundance?

i continue to shop at sydney's major fruit & veg market most fridays and i enjoy that; if i was a bit less reserved i would ask some of the stall holders if i could take their photos. each and every one of them is larger than life, my absolute favourite is a guy who wears a hat made from apple cartons, i laugh every time i see it but now that autumn has arrived i wont be seeing it until next summer.

i've managed to lose some weight, not sure  how much because i dont really know what i started at but it is at least 3kg which is great. if weight loss was linear i would be on track to lose 10kg this year but of course, weight loss is not usually linear so we will see what we will see. i have become a lot more aware of what i put in  my mouth and that is a good thing. i'm considering it all to be a win.

the family has expanded by a factor of two rabbits. honey and django are sisters, 9 weeks old, rather adorable, permanently hungry and razor sharp of claw. the name honey is up for review. rabbits are a delight, even when they make ribbons of one's skin.

my visits to the immigration detention centre are at a temporary standstill due to a ham fisted and ill advised attempt to supply contraband. i did know at some level that alcohol was not tolerated in that place but i didnt really think about it. my six week exclusion will end just in time for my birthday. it's all a bit silly considering that my identity was not even verified at the time, it could have been one of my many enemies setting me up. it's all tragically funny or funnily tragic. or something.

i'm having a bad run with my back at the moment, i've probably been to the chiro five times already this year and i have a wicked stiff neck again now. i want a personal chiropractor and i keep suggesting it as a possible career path for my kids but they just roll their eyes and talk of music, science and cake making.

aside from all of that, what i think, feel and experience is all the normal stuff: what will i make for dinner? why are we out of milk? is there fresh bread for tomorrow's sandwiches? why are there four used tea towels in the kitchen? why doesnt anyone but me notice when the bins need emptying? all the big questions, you know.......

peaks & troughs

my life has taken on a new rhythm these days. there is a rush to get everyone fed and out the door in the morning, i settle into my chosen pace for school hours (usually slow) and after school i drive the kids to their various activities, do dinner, shop or whatever needs to be done. it's a peak and trough kind of existence and i'm happy with that.
on a different level, i have some troughs wondering whether i will ever work again because as much as i loved my doula studies, love watching birth videos, love reading birthy books and am dead sure i will be a great doula, i have to get some clients. i have had a couple of leads but pregnant women seem not to answer their phones very consistently. then again, i dont answer the phone consistently and i have no distracting hormones or nursery make-overs to blame.
spending a lot of time at home is a peakish thing, i am delighted to be available to deliver forgotten lunches or  assignments, visit the lost property department at the bus station, shop for fresh fruit and veg at the markets rather than the supermarket and generally have a relaxed and rich kind of a life away from the sense of desperation i felt when i was trying to please bosses who couldnt be pleased. i miss the social contact of a regular working life but that small trough is a minor price to pay balanced against the psychic pain of being disapproved of every single day.
in a strange little twist my facebook feed has become full of human rights posts relating either to refugee issues or to freedom of choice in birth. i have always been a supporter in theory of human rights but not had any active involvement. i still dont have active involvement  but i am surprisingly a step closer. it's not something i ever imagined for myself and it has all come about in a short period of time.
i continue to visit the detention centre and feel comfortable there. one of "my guys" cooks lunch and a few of us eat together. i feel it a privilege to break bread with them, even more so when i realise that the menu is set well in advance. prawn curry was last week's offering and this week will be chicken biriani.
one detainee always calls me "sister" i'm not sure whether that's to save him trying to remember an unfamiliar name or if it's a mark of respect but i have to say i really like it. i feel that i am really trusted and i am honored  to have such a position but i discovered, too, the responsibility of that trust when one of those men admitted to me a history of domestic violence. he was unapologetic about his actions and his manner of explaining triggered some uncomfortable feelings for me, for a  moment i imagined that i could never visit him again but just as quickly as i thought it, i realised that i could not abandon this man who obviously knew nothing better.

the peaks and troughs of my daily life have changed from a meaningless, extreme roller coaster ride to an exploration of faith and personal values and it all feels so much more fruitful....or potentially fruitful.....or some other poetic and worthy statement.

if you have time to take the slow road, please do. everyone should try it.

a portrait of our chef in detention, as displayed on the refugee art website. this man, a stateless, minority rohingya  from myanmar  has spent three years in villawood and a total of six years of his life in immigration detention. he is now very concerned for the welfare of his people as the rohingya people face a new wave of genocide in the violence that is sweeping western burma.

Let me spin your eccentricities

My buddy Nick is over there at "Nick here and Now" asking about where to find the divide between "eccentric" and "normal" and apart from saying that normal is a cycle on a washing machine i thought i might analyse some of the things Nick and/or I might do that are viewed as eccentric:

• coloured socks are flamboyant
• unusual clothes are expressive
• leanings to socialism show compassion and a sense of justice
• vegetarianism is environmentally responsible and compassionate
• feminism is the only way
• disinterest in sport is a minor variation
• unusual musical choices just say a person is an independent thinker
• naturally greying hair is honest
• interest in natural therapies is taking advantage of all the options

as far as i am concerned, displaying my eccentric or even lunatic side just gives other people permission to explore theirs. we are all be happier and healthier if we just relax about who we are.

i tell my kids i can spin anything, go on, tell me your eccentricities and i'll see what i can do?

eclecticism strikes again

since my promotion to housewife extraordinaire i have been doing the fruit and veg shopping at the major sydney markets, open to the public on a friday. i have searched the internet for a photo i could steal but my fave pics are unstealable so instead i'll recommend you take a tour with this blogger who i will now be bookmarking. the photos are more than atmospheric. 


at the markets today, after an absence of two weeks, i got a little carried away and came home with a lot of brightly coloured, anti-oxidant rich, sensual looking food. i have plans for slow cooked beetroot, pumpkin soup, ratatouille, fresh from the bowl mandarins, banana sandwiches on soft white bread  (white bread has it's uses) rocket salad and mushrooms in butter and garlic. and i'm excited about it all. in my imagination i am Nigella.


the baby whose birth i will attend as a trainee is due in under a week and all the major players agree that a saturday, pre-mothers day appearance would be nice. i'm not sure how the bairn would be feeling about that, i guess his compliance will be measured by whether or not i get a call  in the wee hours tonight.


tonight! i could be attending a birth tonight! or any day soon. it's scary and exciting all at once and i have had to review my mobile phone habits to be sure i am contactable. never more will i be able to say it wasnt charged, turned off,  left in the car, dropped under the bed or in any other kind of unoperational state. 


my very first ever solo client visit was yesterday and in the scheme of things i think i did a good job but i'm noticing that my filter needs some minor tweaks: i almost blurted out something scary about prolapsed cords, thankfully i caught that one and i could have been a little more finessed and eloquent on other matters......


life isnt a dress rehearsal though, is it?


have a brilliant weekend, all

It's nearly One am....In The Morning

and yes, the "in the morning" is redundant, that's why i put it there! i'm relaxed and chatty and thought i would do a post regardless of the hour.

I finished my Christmas food shopping today, spent a minor fortune in my favourite fruit market come deli. I have become so caught up in silliness that i havent been to that shop in a very long time and i wonder why on earth not. It's a fantasia of good, honest stuff: vegetables and cheeses and biscuits and pasta......
we have a box of my favourite mangoes: calypso; we have halloumi and feta and peaches to grill with brown sugar, we have mushrooms and zucchini, potatoes to roast, broccoli and asparagus. we have turkey and camembert and the makings of punch.

we also have my katten, oscar, soon to be mum & dad's cat. she will provide Christmas-day-pouncing-on -wrapping-paper entertainment. i rescued oscar as a two week old kitten, crying and drenched on a rainy day, no mama in sight. she nearly died of flea anaemia and cost me another minor fortune but she is now seven weeks, doubled her weight, behaving like a cat and worth it? you bet!

i have gifts for all but my wee nephew, as a male he is already impossible to buy for, even at the age of three and the local toy store has closed it's doors. there would have been something there for him but now there is a scourge of the earth dollar store.

i seem to have left the grinch behind, which is easy really, when one is blessed as i am. the greatest gift for me in this season of gifts is the knowledge that the universe truly is unfolding as it should. i dont always like it but who likes whats good for them?

i thank you for keeping on reading and commenting, even when i rudely neglect to reply. i cant explain why i do that except to say that life has taken on a different rhythm lately and a girl has to roll with the punches.

thank you, thank you, thank you for your input to my blog and my life. i wish you joy today and enough other days to make the crummy ones worth fighting through.


" The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness the prisoners" Isaiah 61:1

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. ~Katharine Whitehorn

I am feeling particularly grinch-like right about now.

The proliferation of Christian imagery that is to be seen in society at this time bothers people who dont relate to it and I am disappointed that anything related to my faith bothers anyone else. I feel the same about that as I do about the stolen generations; that is that I have no personal responsibility for the issue but as part of the group which caused the offence I wish things were different.

I also have an enormous problem with the K mart wishing tree. People buy things (probably from K mart) and put them under the tree for an under privileged child and their motives are honorable but K mart or whichever retailer the gift is purchased from are raking in the profit from the good intentions of the populace, a populace who are already handing their hard earned to the retailers at an alarming rate. The gifts are not targeted, who knows whether there are more Barbie dolls given than girls to play with them (and yes, boys can play with Barbie if they wish but realistically most people wouldn't give Barbie to a boy) there may be too many gifts for 5 year olds and nowhere near enough for ten year olds. It's just a logistical nightmare which encourages waste.

Then there are the gift catalogues where you buy a goat in a developing nation and give a postcard featuring the goat to your intended gift recipient. Dont bother doing that for me, please! If you want to give me something for my own pleasure I will be very grateful to receive it and if you would rather give someone a goat by all means give them a goat but please dont give me the picture of the goat and pretend it's a gift for me because it's not. If you want to make a stand against the commercialism of the season I will support you all the way but giving pictures of goats (or chickens, toilets, taps or sewing machines) is the cowards way.

As a Christian it is a struggle to find a meaningful spiritual message for the season because it is so easy to get caught in the rush of parties and carolling and gift buying and turkey and ham and decorations......

So I am left with the question of how best to remember and celebrate the birth of history's greatest lover?

Reluctantly I have to say the first step would have to be giving up on the grinch.

collie goes to costco

costco opened in sydney last weekend, literally creating front page news and stopping traffic.
all reports say that it's much cheaper than the big two supermarkets, or any other australian supermarket for that matter so off we went this afternoon for a sticky beak.

here's what i bought:

• huge bag of salad $5 this was only a tiny bit more money for double the quantity i would get if buying the same thing elsewhere. it gets a tick.


• 60 pack of toilet rolls $22 the toilet paper was worse quality than i would usually get and cost less but i think i could get a similar deal in the local shops if they had a good special on.


• 3 pack of sensodyne toothpaste $20. i saved about 30% on this, even compared to the very best specials. another tick.


• 1kg strawberries $9 this time of year 1kg of strawberries would be closer to $15 but i wouldnt buy more than a $4 punnet, so on this one costco changed the economics of the whole deal.


• 2.5kg 90% lean beef mince (ground beef) $25. great price for top quality, now we will see what kind of eating it makes.


• huge bag of chips $6 this one was a request from a chip addicted daughter, normally she would get the much smaller $2 pack. i count this as a loss.


• roti, pack of 30 $10 exactly the same product at the same price i would pay locally.


• 2 big jars of moccona coffee $30 slightly cheaper than the same product on a super awesome special. a win for me.


• big jar of organic peanut butter $5 a much better product than i usually get at a slightly higher price.


• 2 gourmet baguette $7 fantastic bread that was worth the money but i wouldnt normally buy it.


• large jar of biscuits $3 pretty standard product and price, i might have saved $1 or $1.50

so, if i factor in the $60 annual membership fee, the cost of petrol to make a 90 minute return trip, the time, the crowds and the impulse buys going to costco is probably not profitable so far.

i was amazed to see how many people were buying huge trays of pastries and while i love a nice pastry i dont consider them to be something you buy in boxes of 20. it's one of those situations where the retailer has changed the economics of the purchase in their favour. who needs 20 pastries for $15 ? (or whatever the deal was) unless one happens to be hosting a big breakfast it's just too much of the wrong food.

the massive big banana bread for $16 was the same. i was dying to buy that banana bread, i could just taste it toasted and buttered and so could the girls but when in the past have i ever bought $16 worth of what is essentially cake? only for birthdays, thats when.

liam drew my attention to the possibility of extra waste which exists when people buy in bulk and dont eat the food before the due date, another pitfall to watch. he also pointed out the blank faces of many shoppers, caused by the narcotising effects of mindless consumption?

and the big test: will i be back? yes i will. i still need to justify my $60 membership and there are some great deals to be had. if i go in there with the idea that it's all a bargain i will lose big time but if i go in there with some caution and some savvy i can probably save some dosh and have a few unaccustomed luxuries. i just need to remember that "nothing is cheap if you dont want it."

unexpected outcomes

well, the benefits of the big trip have started and i havent even left yet. or maybe it's not a benefit...i've been trying (trying IS the operative word) to stockpike australian candy to take to sweet toothed friends stateside. i buy two packs, eat one, go to the shops again, buy two more, eat more, decide to buy more, settle and then decide it's nowhere near enough. can anybody ever have enough candy? really?

i was here googling images of sweets so i could put a post together and i saw some creative ways to use musk sticks. who would have thought of cutting them into pieces to decorate cup cakes? even more clever was the picture where they used a musk stick as the holder for a meringue "lollypop"

and the pictures of cherry ripe were surrounded by pictures of cherry ripe slice...if i was feeling creative i could try making that for the gang but then again, if i was feeling creative a pavlova would be the thing to make, wouldnt it? i feel a job coming on......

if you get bored with food, you better go and play around on facebook

at a party tonight, (my sister's, if you want to know) we were talking about food and food being my favourite one of my favourite subjects, i was having a grand old time. i mentioned how crazy it is that we who live in the western world, with an embarrassment of riches, seem to be the ones who eat badly. how crazy it is that we will pay money to learn to eat less! my friend, jenny suggested that in the places where poverty is known people will make more effort to make good food. i hadn't thought about it in those terms before and was momentarily bamboozled but of course she is right. if poverty is a daily companion there is no money to spend on frivolous pursuits so it would make sense that a necessity would also be used as a creative outlet, it would mean that if there is enough money to put good food on the table it will be treated with some reverence, it will be treated as a luxury or a privilege. no poor person is going to be producing show-offy dishes that cost a fortune, they are going to do a simple thing and do it as well as possible. broadening the argument a little, i have been known to get on a soapbox about the way people i listen to every day resent paying a fair price for their everyday essentials. they want cheap food, cheap petrol, cheap clothes and cheap utilities. they want these things to be cheap so they can have more money to spend on entertainment, travel, flash cars, bigger houses and expensive hair -dos. there is nothing wrong with wanting those things, i like them too but i think that as a society we tend to make mistakes with priorities. i think that one of the reasons we eat rubbishy food (and i am not going to pretend this is a simple issue) is because we lose sight of how fundamental our food is. familiarity has bred contempt. if more of us occasionally wondered where our next meal might come from we might have a whole new attitude. we might eat more seasonally, we might eat less, we might eat more vegetables and think of creative ways to reduce waste. we might eat more like the chinese or the greeks or the italians.

i have a couple of days off and needing a new pair of shoes i set off to the shops. well, shoe buying can get a bit complicated and i didnt see any obvious choices so i abandoned the mission in favour of a bit of a window shopping wander and quickly discovered that my current jacket fetish is becoming out of hand. (long term readers would remember my white dress fetish, i may have mentioned others, they are new each season) the trench style looks nice but would i like a classicly styled trench or a military one, what's the best length to get? and why are they all in such practical colours? i didnt see anything i would consider actually wearing for under $80 and my faves were all over the $100 mark......i did as i always do in such circumstances, decide i've managed this long, i can manage a bit longer without it. wouldnt want to get something i'm ambivalent about! i stopped in the fabric store and looked at pattern books in case inspiration struck there and it was nice to sit and leaf through the latest offerings from vogue, simplicity and my old fave, burda. all shopped out i made my way to the cafe i regard as my home at the shops. i was a little disappointed that i couldn't have a booth. the booths are much too big for just one person at lunchtime so i understand but i do love them, they are like a little rampart from stress! a coffee and coconut bread went down very nicely and i was intrigued to watch the woman next to me. her banana bread was not accompanied by butter as would be usual and the next moment i looked around she had jam all over it and was slipping a jam jar into her handbag. what preparation for a simple cup of tea, how habitual must be her life! she also used a fork to dip the bread into her cup of tea. there are no such ceremonies with me, i just gobble the whole lot up, licking butter from my fingers and cappuccino foam from my lips! last stop was the greengrocer where i actually managed to find some fleeting enthusiasm for cooking as i bought gnocci and the makings of a vegetarian sauce. after all the pleasures of the trip, what with fashion and fabrics and food i couldnt resist a couple of figs. i look forward to those. what are you looking forward to?