A Haiku

Rosemary's class have been writing Haiku (poetry in 17 syllables, split across 5/7/5). Rosemary's was printed in the school newsletter and here it is for you.

The red earth smells good

Something has been born and died

In its kindly heart.

Flag at Half Mast

We empathise most with people who are people who are like us. The Japanese are not. The most obvious marker of difference to Westerners is their food (which I adore in small doses), but the differences go much, much deeper than that.

Some people, and some peoples, keep their emotions in check because they consider they have more pressing and less selfish matters to attend to. This is not to say they don't feel pain. For me, one of the most enduring images was when a sake factory owner, stoic and deliberate, broke down in tears of relief when he discovered one of his employees alive in a relief centre. He allowed himself a single minute of emotion, pulled himself together, and then trudged away to look for other staff.

Newspapers and Television are stupid. To prey on our fears, they sensationalise. This makes it challenging for us to distinguish relatively minor incidents, such as a worker at a nuclear reactor getting the equivalent of a mild case of sunburn, with a Tsunami that kills 20,000 stone dead.

Below is a photo of the flag at the Japanese Embassy in Dili, Timor-Leste. I challenge any one to walk past this and not feel a lump in their throat.

The Timor-Leste Solidarity Medal

Because I work for forces involved in the contribution to the stability and security of Timor-Leste, and have done so for 180 days, I got a medal. Yay!

This is one of those medals military types get for showing up for work, rather than for "courage under fire" or anything like that. Still, it is nice to have something to leave to the grandkids.

We went to the Presidential Palace, and after a chat with the Presidential Guards (actually, "chat" is not really the word: they don't say much), and speeches from the Australian and Portuguese Ambassadors, HE President Horta dished out the bling.

The Presidential Guards, complete with headdress and machete.

After the ceremony.

Australian medal recipients with HE President Horta.

Some more detail on the medal can be found here.

Again, it is all about food.

There has been cooking for homework. Both Claire and Rosemary have had homework that requires helping with cooking or actually cooking a meal.

Rosemary made Toad in the Hole.

Claire had to be more adventurous. She needed to do two courses, a table plan, a menu and clean up the mess, all by herself.

Presenting the Irvine Cafe

Two course special of Chicken Parmigiana with a green salad and crusty bread, followed by Golden Syrup puddings. She started at six, we sat down at the table at eight. For a first attempt at a whole meal, it was pretty impressive.

Lest you think the cooking in this house is no longer all about me, I cooked a rabbit. At the Farmers Markets on Saturday morning I had been going to buy a chicken from Corey at Thirlmere Poultry (my duck supplier). As he does every time I stop there, he said 'How about a rabbit?'. I like rabbit, but I usually say no. However, I said yes, so we had slow cooked rabbit with chorizo cooked in cider, served with some fresh parpadelle from Wee Jasper Pasta. Yum. (I did have to chop it up, but I have spared you the big knife and dismemberment shots this time.)

About music

I love music. I love singing by myself, with other people, in the car, in the kitchen. But there were a lot of years where I didn't have much music in my life. Once I had children, silence became more important. I valued listening to nothing and would deliberately switch stuff off, not on. Not that the kids' music was not enjoyable - while I can't bear the Wiggles, I have whiled away many hours of road trips listening to some of the great Playschool cds, and then later the music of Sandra Boynton - well crafted and funny to boot.

But it wasn't my music. I don't listen to commercial radio, or watch video hits on TV. I found myself completely out of touch with what people listen to. I have an extensive collection of CDs, collected over the years. But I didn't listen to them much anymore.

Then I bought an i-pod. It is interesting, I have been thinking about writing this post for a while, and then this article in the Sydney Morning Herald caught my eye. It is ten years since the release of the first i-pod and apparently, they may not be making many more of them. I am often the last person to jump on a bandwagon but I will say, I love my i-pod because through it, I re-discovered my love of music. My i-pod, and i-tunes has changed the way I listen to music, because I can browse around, find tracks that I like, which lead me to other things, which is always interesting. I still don't have lots of current music in my playlists, but I've got some and I've got lots of old friends who have put out new stuff that I didn't know about. And it's fun. I can dance in my kitchen to a whole mix of stuff and sing really loudly and embarrass my kids.

So happy birthday i-pod. I will cherish mine and hope that Claire's survives its trip through the washing machine (not looking good though). And in the immortal words of a group from Sweden who make no appearance in my playlists - thank you for the music, for giving it to me.

Home grown, home made

A wet day in Canberra awakes a feeling that something has been missing in our lives for a while.

It is time to harvest the first butternut pumpkin from the garden

and make some soup. A mixture of duck stock from the previously mentioned duck and chicken stock from a box, throw the left over home made baked beans in with the vege soup, turn the pumpkin into pumpkin soup, and there you have it.

The first soup of the season.

Three little words

Duck fat potatoes.

Probably not the words that first came to your mind. Having read often in cookbooks and seen on foodie shows how chefs rave about the use of duck fat in cooking potatoes, I decided yesterday the time had come to use the fat saved from this duck. We had roast lamb for dinner, which of course needed crispy roast potatoes, which I would usually roast in the fat from the lamb. But not this time. I heated the duck fat in a roasting pan and added the par-boiled potatoes. They came out golden and crispy and tasting of so much more than just potatoes. They were rich and flavoursome and just beautiful. They also vanished very quickly. They won't happen often at my table, but they will happen again.