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.

It's what Canberrans do...

When a long weekend arrives, we leave the city in droves and head for the South Coast. Most Canberrans stop at Bateman's Bay or a bit further on, but we are intrepid travellers - we go for at least three hours and end up here.

Beautiful Mystery Bay, just south of Narooma.

A holiday cottage with a view of the sea from the deck.

Lots of rocks and rockpools for climbing and investigation.

A great spot at the end of the beach for swimming.

Sand for sliding down and sandcastles

Other beaches to explore (Pooles Beach and 1080, both in the Eurobodalla National Park) where we saw a sea eagle. There were great meteorological conditions to be observed as well.

We love Mystery Bay...

What makes you happy?

Saturday morning at the Farmers' Markets.

Coffee in my new keep cup (thanks to the MCEC), a salted caramel maccaron...

and the return of the best pork and fennel sausages, not to mention the italian chicken sausages from Formicchi smallgoods - we ate the last of the stash from the freezer a month ago and have been hanging out for their return.

It doesn't take much to make me happy!

Colour and movement

It seems I've been posting a bit lately about how I love Canberra - I guess part of it is that there is so much great stuff on here at this time of year. The Balloon Festival (again, one of my favourite Canberra things) to me shows how great Canberra is at putting on the big civic event.

It's free, it's easy to get to, you can get breakfast, come in your pajamas, bring your dog, park for nothing.... like so many other Canberra events.

Roll out of bed before dawn, help the kids scramble into their clothes, make some coffee and hot chocolate and throw some muffins in a basket (or simply check the wallet for wads of cash - not my preferred option).

Then ten minutes in the car, pausing only for the motorcade of presumably the Polish or Indonesian ambassador (couldn't remember which way the red and white went), there you are at the balloon festival, to see the sun and balloons rise together.

I love it!

If you don't see me around, come and check...

I might have been strangled in my bed by the marauding pumpkin vine that is trying to break into the house.

Needless to say, the vege garden is still going strong, with lots of yummy tomatoes, lots of pumpkins coming and gorgeous basil and thyme. What fun.

Milestone

I thought I had the only child in the world who would go through life with an intact set of baby teeth. Hooray, hooray. I was wrong. There was wobbling this morning, there was blood, a little bit of improvised surgery with a tissue, and lo and behold, the tooth fairy will visit tonight. Judging by the wobble on the tooth next to it, it won't be long before there is another visit.

Favourite day once again

Well, I must have had a blog for over a year now, because here I am writing about our favourite day of the year, Sculpture Garden Sunday. I love the National Gallery of Australia and I really admire the way they are trying to reach out to families more, with the 'Family Room' as a part of all their big exhibitions - we had a great time in the Ballet Russes one, playing with all the different foam shapes they had in there. I think making art accessible and normal for young children is a big part of their charter, and I told the nice lady who surveyed me on Sunday so. I gave her my mobile and email address so if their director of education wants a chat, he can have one.

As always, there were the usual wonderful construction, creation and artistic stations set up under the trees and around the sculptures by the lake. I have always loved the sculpture garden and have very vivid memories of coming to Canberra on a primary school excursion and being transfixed by the model of Rodin's Burghers of Calais.

This year I let Claire roam free. Needless to say, she headed straight for the clay station with Teffany who runs a holiday program we sometimes attend. Dragon eggs were the order of the day here.

Steph let the inner colour muse run free on her painting, looked up at the sky through a triangular sky scope (so did I) and dabbled in a bit of clay too.

Rosemary arrived a bit later and got creative with the dragon eggs as well.

I had an interesting internal debate with myself about whether children should be allowed to climb on the sculptures. Yes, they are works of art, in a gallery, like a painting. But they are also tactile, solid structures which beg to be touched, sat upon and slid down. Is appreciation of any sort better than none? Do you understand a sculpture more if you can't touch it or engage with it? I haven't sorted that one out yet and if the director of education ever does ring me, I will engage in the debate with him.

However, debates aside. I love Sculpture Garden Sunday. I love that it shows kids you don't have to be proficient at something to enjoy it, that you can spend a day outside getting dirty (you can always tell the first timers because they show up in good clothes) and it's fun, that it's ok to try new things and make stuff just because you want to. I love it that I can be sure of seeing the same friends there every year, that I may only see once a year now. As far as good use of public money, I think it doesn't get much more worthwhile that this. Thanks to the National Gallery of Australia for a great day.