No good smells today

It's heavy rain here at the moment.  Steady, wet rain.  It won't last.  But try telling that to a Cocker Spaniel.  Bennie hopes and prays every morning.  Dear God (also a Cocker Spaniel), please let today be one of those days when I get to go out and sniff dead things.  When I get to track possum scent, pull on my lead and try not to look embarrassed when my owner stops and talks to cows.  Bennie is truly man's best friend.  On our walks when the old yappy terrier comes up behind him outside their driveway and tries to intimidate him, he walks away.  Mind you if said terrier was to have a crack he'd learn how to fly really quick!  Bennie located some baby chicks yesterday and sniffed them to see if they were alright.  He doesn't touch them, he's just showing concern at the constant 'cheep, cheep'.  He gets very stressed when we try to catch chickens for sale.  He doesn't like to see any animal hurt. When our two ungracious felines decide to wrestle and attack each other he quickly gets in between them to stop them. He's better at it than me.  I just yell at them and that upsets him so he jumps to it.  Animals know when you are angry.  He comes over to me when I'm having a rant at the breakfast television programs.  You know the drill, 'OH MY GOD, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?'  So today it's a sad face that will lie in front of the fire (gosh life sucks Bennie!!) with the other assorted pets.  And hope that tomorrow brings good news.

Data intelligence - the sleeping giant

When the phone battery starts to die a little faster you know it's getting to that time where you have to face a telco shop.  I can't say I've ever had a good experience in one of these.  They have a way of making you feel really old and dumb.  They speak at you and ask you questions that you can't answer because you don't recognise the language.  It sounds like our own language but you don't recognise any of the words.  They then stand there looking annoyed with you but satisfied that you are about to part with a regular commitment to a very large sum of money for something that you don't completely understand.  I don't really want much from my technology.  I'm ok with the basics.  I don't have many apps because I don't want to hand over more dosh, remember more effing passwords and because they are something that I don't know exist I basically don't miss out on having them.  I don't need my phone to unlock my front door, turn on my household lights, start my car or drive it for that matter.  I would like it to sweep the kitchen floor but that's not about to happen any day.  My generation and older are seen as incompetents when it comes to the latest technology and whilst I'm perfectly fine with that I'm not fine with the fact that they use it to suck money out of your account on a monthly basis. Something younger generations don't seem to mind.  Whilst my generation invented the technology, we often get wrongly assumed as not being able to adjust to the changes.  What rubbish.  The amount of technological changes someone in their fifties has had to live with is mind blowing.  We were employed as data entry operators on some of the largest and most basic of computer operating systems.  The hard drive was the size of your washing machine and changing the tape drives involved heavy lifting.  Word processing required us to memorise every single short cut and function operation with no look up or data intelligence.  We were the ones that had to be intelligent.  The early word processing machines had a display screen of one line only.  You typed letter by letter across the screen and then when the maximum got to end of the display it disappeared until you printed it out and hoped for the best.  Or went back line by line.  The end result of this and the type writer was that the more accurate you were, the less time you spent repeating the same piece of work. Then when the intelligence came through technology, it made it easier.  And the technology got smarter and smarter.  It became intuitive, collected data and memorised our patterns of behaviours.  Now it wants the keys to your car.  Is anybody worried about this or is it me?

Avoid the long haul blueberry

As the official Spring date is less than a week away it's time to go through the large freezer and see what can be salvaged.  During the summer months we pack away for safe keeping the surplus fruit where we can.  At the end of the hot season you can pick up ordinarily expensive fresh fruit for a really good price.  Blueberries are a really good example.  We started growing them and now know that they are a labour of love, in that you can only pick them individually because they all don't ripen on the branch at the same time.  Who wants a dessert with only two blueberries!  When the local ones start to descend in price I take the opportunity to stash them away in the freezer.  I don't buy fruit out of season if I can avoid it, and I certainly never buy fruit with a passport.  I know how bad I feel after a long haul flight.  Imagine how a blueberry feels? Apples are a really good example.  We're fortunate to be in a place in the world that once was a huge producer of many varieties of applies and to a certain degree, still does.  They are disappearing unfortunately as the big shops don't buy them because they say the demand is not there. The difference in apple varieties is staggering.  Some of the old English varieties are only available at market stalls and it's worth checking them out when they are in season.  They don't keep though.  Someone tell the shops that, please.  They become powdery and tasteless if picked too early and ordered to ripen by some sort of gas, they'll be disappointing and er., gassed!  For many years they coated them in wax to make them shiny, now they sit in large warehouses waiting, waiting, waiting for supply chain to send them to market.  That's why they are tampered with.  Fruit doesn't like to sit around and wait to be eaten.  You've only got to look in the bottom of my fridge to work that out.  Was that a passion fruit once or is it some kind of stone?  But at this time of year we wait patiently for the stone fruits, berries and later, much later the apples.  And the best way to work out when their actual season is, is to plant a tree yourself or shop at the farmer's markets.  Our apple trees are only just beginning to wake up and sprout new growth for blossom.  And as for the blueberries, we're hoping for a bumper crop this year.  At least four anyway.

Well they said they just don't like needles...

I like to cook fish at least twice a week.  Not for any religious reason or to reduce another type of meat it's just because I actually really like it.  These days I generally pick one of the ugly species.  The ones that are cheap, have a really ill-thought out name (God, who came up with 'Snotties'?) and are the least attractive.  Generally line caught, out of the ocean with no tampering other than a serious blow to head does me fine.  I used to be a big fan of eating a particular type of farmed fish because I thought, yeah farmed is good, stop depleting the rivers and oceans of this much sought after variety.  There were some reports about enhanced colouring in the farming processes which put me off slightly, but I thought gee, I could probably do with a little colour myself but it got worse.  The reports...not the colour, I'm still deathly white.  I read recently in the newspaper that a particular fish company that farms a type of fish vaccinate them against disease.  GREAT!!  And it's not a case of line up with your fins rolled up for your annual flu shot, I could be wrong but I suspect this vaccination gets put in the fish food and therefore it's in my food.  End of my interest in said fish.  The likelihood of me getting Gill disease is probably still very low even though my immunity may have worn off but I'll take my chances.  It doesn't take an expert to work out that trying to recreate nature is difficult when you want live species at your beck and call on a massive production scale.   The movement of these fish through their natural environments naturally prevents this disease.  And so when farmed it needs to managed other ways.  I get all that.  I just don't want to be vaccinated against it.  Thanks very much.

Room in front of the fire for everyone

As I sit at the kitchen bench writing this, I can feel the cold wind sneaking under the kitchen door beside me.  Wind has many entry and exit points in this house.  Under doors is a favourite and no matter how many stuffed sausages you jam against them, wind always finds a way in.  I can also hear the gentle whining of the hens and roosters at the other side of the door.  Doris hates the rain.  It's bad for her hair. They're asking me to open that door and go out into their feed area and disperse some grain.  On good days it's leftovers like pasta and bacon rind but today I've only got some sad looking lettuce leaves from a Cos that's overstayed its welcome in the fridge.  I feel bad.  I need to go out and feed them but the weather is coming at us sideways.  We've got a series of cold fronts that are being blown up from the south which means it feels like it's come via Antarctica.  The dark grey clouds are zooming across the skyline with curtain trails of rain dropping what looks like sleet being blown in every direction.  Autumn is a crap month here.  I don't know how the blossom manages to hold on with 50+ km winds but somehow it manages - depending on where you've put your trees of course.  We look forward to the coming months when you only need to wear two layers of clothing not three.  And that's just in the house.  Old homesteads are wonderful in summer but in winter unless you've got a Carson to go around and light a fire in every room that has a fireplace, you'll have an enormous electricity bill or you'll just stay warm in one room and complain about the others.  My dining room sits in between the warm wood fire heated living area and the frost bitten hallway that has leaves blowing down the carpet runner.  We don't dine in there, particularly during winter as it would be more suitable to hanging meat than dining right now.  And as I work from home my entire days (and nights mostly) exist around the confines of a rectangle rug in front of a fire shared with two cats and a cocker spaniel.  And if I open that back door right now, that will also include at least 8 chickens.

I'm not about to start growing wheat

I've been using a bread maker for a while now.  It's one of those things that can divide people.  They were a kitchen gadget that went out of favour for a while but the later version is as easy as it gets.  Unfortunately the difficult part of bread making for me is finding bread flour.  The big shops with the long aisles only have bread mix.  And after reading about the unlisted ingredients in bread mix that so wonderfully stop it and me from going mouldy, I'm a bit reluctant to go down that hidden additive road with them.  Is it me or is it getting harder and harder to source food ingredients that haven't been tampered with? If we've got the situation where ingredients, no matter how small don't need to be listed what hope have we got?  Teeny tiny portions of bad stuff might have zero (proven) effect on our health for one portion but we generally are habitual feeders and return to the same product time and time again.  And we actually care what shit they put in our food chain.  I try to take responsibility for the stuff that goes into people's mouths around here but it's an ongoing battle.  The dog eats the cat food which is very bad for him, Minnie our outdoor cat that lives inside by the fire, eats our food as well as her own which is not good for her as she's already overweight, the chooks are constantly sneaking the dog food and the ragdoll cat won't eat any food that's been in a bowl more than 5 minutes.  When did food for survival become so hard?  According to a well known vital organ foundation they state that how we prepare meat and poultry and fish can make a big difference as to whether we are healthy or not.  This is true in some aspects, and that deep fried shoes would taste good if the batter was just right but what about getting the product to us that's healthy in the first place.  The problem is we just do know what funny stuff has been added before we even get it so we're buggered before we start.  Well at least I know I won't go mouldy any time soon.

No fake sleeping in my house

One of the big supermarket chains announced yesterday that they had their own brand of fruit mince pies out on show for early Christmas shopping.  Allegedly caused outrage everywhere.  Of course.  It's normally September you know.  But seriously, if people didn't buy them, they wouldn't put them out.  We can't purchase our way out of this one folks.  A bit like the bowling ball girl.  Whatever television program I seem to be watching of late contains the same ads for every ad break.  I've seen the girl with the bowling ball trying to sell me a mattress topper so many times I'm beginning to wonder if we've actually met somewhere.  She drops that bowling ball on the bed at least ten times per hour along with her colleagues who ham up some of the worst pretend sleeping ever seen on television.  It's annoying and I wish she'd go away.  I'd even buy one of her mattresses if that would mean I would never have to see her and her tossing and turning friends again.  But there lies the problem (no pun intended).  People do.  The bowling ball girl is only replaced by the pillow people who also have a bowling ball for some reason and again, these ads are on high rotation to nudge your mind into actually considering that purchasing the super sleeper foam thing will not only give you better than fake sleep, it will make them go away (plus postage and handling).  It appears to be very expensive foam but who am I to judge a bowling ball.  So if it's not foam sleeping solutions, it's slicing and dicing gadgets that do torturous things to vegetables.  How many of these plastic bits are tossed into the back of kitchen cupboards or landfill?  I often wonder how many of these gadgets get returned.  Perhaps they are recycled.  Into foam of course.  Or bowling balls?

The wasteful generation

There was an article in Saturday's paper in the weekend magazine section about a young woman enjoying the pleasure of growing and producing her own food.  She said something along the lines of enjoying the less commercial aspect of putting food on her table.  The term sustainable living gets tossed about a bit too much these days but I take my, one of many hats off to these people.  It's a lot harder than it looks.  Growing anything in the middle of a Tasmanian winter is hard enough and even the most die hard of sustainable advocates can't live on turnips for ever.  My veggie patch is a sad state of affairs with only rhubarb and a tiny parsley bush able to hold on through the frosty mornings.  Living sustainably unfortunately means a number of things these days.  It's lost a bit of its meaning with everything from sustainable clothing (ok?) to sustainable toilet paper - really!  Our grandparents invented sustainable living to get through the depression.  Food rationing and lack of just about everything drove them into a waste-not mindset that would be a great challenge for many today.  Having limited butter, flour and tea would be hard for those of us who bake and struggle to get out of bed without a cuppa, for others it wouldn't even rate a mention.  Particularly if you've never baked a scone, a pancake or heaven forbid, put the stuff that looks like butter on your toast.  Convenience food and packaged, highly processed pretend food give us convenience at a price.  It's expensive.  It's not a healthy option and it puts profits into international boardrooms rather than local farms.  I was watching a documentary on the 50th Anniversary of Woodstock (the music festival) last week.  I wasn't old enough to relate to this generation at the time (I was too busy establishing the toddler fundamentals).  Some of the footage showed the festival goers talking about living a more peaceful and commercially free life. I think we could learn a thing or two from this.  Unfortunately we've become the wasteful generation with every inch of our lives wrapped in plastic and tossed away.  We've been convinced convenience is more important than everything even though part of our social argument is about preserving the planet and saving important species from extinction, we hear very little about extinct varieties of food.  The amount of fruit varieties lost to supply chain efficiencies must be massive.  Not to mention heritage animal breeds that live healthy and longer lives that are no longer bred in preference to the mass produced quick kill option.  We can't have both the convenience and the good conscience as well.  We have so much to learn from our older generations about living sustainably.  Unfortunately they are also running out of time.  I want to share that feeling of joy when you grew it, preserved it, baked it, all from your own efforts.  If I could have a sustainable diet that was only jam, parsley and rhubarb I'd be in business today.

Murder

A slight drizzle this morning sent some of the hen clan into the workshop.  Not put off by power tools or petrol they stay in the dry and inspect for any lonesome insect or dropped dog food pellet.  They're a big fan of the dried dog food.  No matter what I do to move them away they always come back.  It can't be good for them.  And I don't want that passed through the food chain into my eggs thanks very much.  But for now they're just interested in staying warm and dry.  If I left the back door open I would easily find a few sitting around the fire amongst the collection of assorted indoor pets casually arranged around the living room.  If there is ever proof of reincarnation, I'll plead right now not to come back in my next life as a rooster.  They get a rough deal.  They never get a day off and are frequently dispersed for just being a rooster.  We have many as we're not the type to murder anyone on our farm so as a result you can hear the sound of crowing at just about every hour of the day and night.  Quite ok if you don't live cheek by jowl next to your neighbours.  And there lies the problem.  People dispatch roosters because they make noise.  Jeez, if that's all they do!!  A neighbouring property did exactly that recently only to leave his hens wandering around with no one to protect them, point out food and set boundaries for other predators and roosters.  As a result no doubt, and exactly what has happened before, one of our maturing gentlemen will wander over one moonlit night and serenade and woo and before long they'll have a rooster.  Although, if the rumours persist that it's a bit of a chook Midsomer Murders next door, he might encourage his girls to move in here.  But I just don't need any more, truly.  We're all full here.

Natures freeloaders

I've declared it Spring.  Don't bother with calendars. After freezing rain lashed us last weekend I opened the back door to a slightly milder feel this week.  The almond trees have again put on a magnificent display of blossom and waft you with fragrance as you walk past.  The chickens are starting to deliver eggs again after a seriously long period of unauthorised absence. The familiar garden birds that whip in and around the trees are now seen with twigs in beaks for nest making and major home renovations.  The first year we were here we heard a fluttering of wings coming from the chimney in the bedroom.  This is a chimney that's been sealed up for years. The fluttering was a bird no doubt -we thought it was caught in there.  Unfortunately that's the sound we hear at this time every single year.  It's Starling nest building time.  Probably my least favourite bird those darling Starlings crap all over the front of the house and windows, and have the cheek to set up a nest in the same place every year.  We go from the sound of mad fluttering wings, most likely the sound of the kids rumpus room being installed, to the sound of cheep, cheep, cheep as little beaks demand food from the warmth and comfort of a fully converted Victorian chimney.  The cheep sounds drive Max crazy.  He sits there staring at the fireplace wondering if they are going to burst through at any minute.  The smartest thing to do would be to wait until they are old enough to move out, get their licence or whatever, and seal it up.  Easier said than done with an old verandah that contains enough entry points for an entire village of indoor/indoor Starling retreats.  Sometimes you just have to live with nature.  A just wish it would stay out and be with nature rather than bringing it indoors sometimes.  Nature owes me a lot of unpaid rent.  Don't get me started on Possum.

Here is one I didn't prepare earlier

Max never misses an episode of Delia Smith's Cooking.  It could have something to do with the fact that I watch WAY too many cooking programs - or perhaps he just likes her  cat.  I'm sure there is some syndrome associated with the ill effects of watching SBS Food more than any other channel.  I noticed for a while there I was 'plating up' my food and wiping the edges with a cloth before serving.  Sad.  Like everyone who watches these programs we watch and think hey that's a great idea, I should try that one day.  Unfortunately however I never remember anything past the ad break anymore.  I've tried to write recipes down but because of the editing and the magic of television it's never quite the same.  That magic doesn't translate past the wrong size baking dish, the five missing ingredients you left off, the fact that it's a commercial oven and you don't have a team of kitchen hands to help you clean up the crater of burnt substance that won't lift off the wrong sized pan.  I've many years later come across my television recipes that are written on the back of envelopes, telephone bills (when they were just telephones) and scraps of conference note pads.  There is usually a few ingredients and about three words for the method.  Mix, bake or shove in oven with other ingredients.  But it looked so simple when Nigella did it.  I'm often left there wondering, after having proudly put my magic dish in the oven why there is a container of unopened ingredient left on the bench. Oops.  Just for once when they stick that finger into the bowl, lick and declare a precocious 'yummy', I'd like to see someone fess up that it takes bloody awful and they need to start again.  Ain't no magic in that I guess.  The worst offenders are the ones on the beach, on the top of a cliff, in the middle of a lush green paddock that pull out a parade of about twenty ingredients that would be as hard to find as the paddock they're standing in.  If you followed some of these recipes, you'd be rocking up at the BBQ with a trailer loaded with a bunch of unheard of ingredients.  Those, so very set up scenes of outdoors cooking amongst some of the country's spectacular views are great viewing for scenery but pretty unlikely you'd be bringing along a Kitchen Aid in your backpack.  I'm yet to see a Sherpa prioritise a mortar and pestle amongst the life saving essentials.  At least Delia understands.  She's got a cat.  They can pick fakery a mile off.

My best friends right now are chickens

It did occur to me recently that my best friends right now are actually chickens.  I can't see that this is a great state of affairs.  I'm living on an island with my husband, we're perfectly sane and capable of making friends (without feathers) but some days, poultry will do fine.  August is for me, a completely shit month.  Every year since I moved to Tassie I've been hit with a bout of bronchitis.  Barking like a dog for weeks on end leaves me depressed and exhausted.  The weather is equally depressing and exhausting with grey skies, wind gusts and a push to get the temperature into double figures.  The idea of staying in by a crackling wood fire sounds romantic, and is a novelty for the first few months but by August you're completely over the ash, the constant need for kindling and the fact the you've been living in the confines of a two metre carpet mat shared with two inert cats and a bored Cocker Spaniel for too long.  So for a reprieve, with any glimpse of a parting through the clouds and some sunlight, I'll grab a cup of tea and sit on the church pew out under the verandah.  I'm always joined by my goods friends.  Doris loves to chat about her day.  It's a bit of a one sided conversation but it doesn't put her off.  She just thinks I'm a bit limited with my excitement about her efforts of the day.  None the less, friends are welcome on the church pew and we look to the sky for some sun.  A few home baked crumbs from an excuse to use up some eggs never goes unwelcomed and I find myself a little richer for having such good company.  As I look out the kitchen window right now I see my friends are waiting for me.  Will put the kettle on.