Peaches, grapes and figs
Late summer, last of the backyard harvest (Diana mini, Kodak CN 400)
Thought for food
30
Jan 10
Of comic significance
I experienced a lovely incidence of happenstance on Friday during my lunch break, while I was browsing at an arts bookshop. The assistant asked if I needed help, and on a whim, I asked for books on comics. I used to draw/write comics and have been thinking about them lately. “This one’s good but it’s a little wordy”, said the assistant, pointing at Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics. I had to laugh cause I knew the author back when I lived in New York, and this was pretty much my experience: good, wordy.
We were talking on the phone one evening and since I was cooking some chili, I said, hey, why not come on by and we’ll talk while we eat. The conversational agenda was pretty much entirely indie rock (it was the early ’90s after all, and we were both working at music magazines). But by the end of the evening, my head was absolutely overflowing. He is one smart cookie and his mind runs waaaay faster than mine. I mean, I was and remain a big ol music fan, but I distinctly recall wondering that night if I was in the wrong line of work.
But you know what, if I found out he wrote a book about indie rock, I’d buy it in a minute, and so I didn’t hesitate to buy his book on comics. I figured if he knows as much about comics as he did about music, it will be a good read. And he does (no surprise), and it is. I am enjoying it hugely — it is delightfully opinionated, completely readable, and just plain fun. (I find myself wondering why art criticism can’t be like this? Why must it inevitably be surrounded with such dastardly abuses of language?)
Anyway, I am thinking about something Douglas wrote: that while comics culture may seem weird and unknowable, this is (in a nutshell) pretty much just defensive behaviour; the community of comics readers is by and large welcoming if you just show the medium a little love. I found this true: I knew nothing much of comics when I started creating them, but this was enough to make others who were more knowledgeable want to share with me what they knew. (How else would I have found Gregory?) And, it is plain to me now, this was true of indie rock back in the day. I was just too busy being youthfully insecure to publicly express my enthusiasm. That would have been, y’know, unkewl.
This book also tells me something about the author that I couldn’t have appreciated back in the 90s: his mind is overflowing with ideas, and what I mistook for I-don’t-know-what over a tiny kitchen table in Queens was actually generosity. I’m glad I at least had chili to share.
(Forgive me while I repost the following — it just seems appropriate.)
How to make chili
2
Feb 09
Can’t stand the heat? Get it out of the kitchen
Now that I’m relatively acclimatised to the extended heatwave we’ve been having, I can see one of the positives of this weather: my family eats healthier.
To help keep the kitchen cool, I tend to prepare food that’s fresh and lightly cooked food or, better yet, raw. (Also, and more about this in a minute, local.) And, to avoid multiple trips to the market in the heat, very little goes to waste.
As I was finishing my early-morning shopping at the local fruit & veg shop last week, a delivery of freshly baked crusty bread arrived. Even in the heat, the smell of fresh bread is powerful. I bought two loaves. We ate one at dinner that night, and the other quickly mummified on our counter in the next day. (Between the heat and preservative-free recipe, the bread didn’t stand a chance.)
But dry, hard bread is great for bread salad. Saw off the crust (and, if space permits, freeze the bits for awesome croutons when soup weather comes), hack the bread into smallish chunks, and then toss with squashy tomatoes, ripped-up basil, and a few glugs of olive oil plus one of white balsamic vinegar. Salt & pepper, then toss roughly with your hands, and set aside until dinner. Or do a Nigella and tuck in straight away.
Now, about the locally grown angle. I was able to make today’s bread salad using mostly ingredients from within 20 km (15 miles or so) of my home. All the rest (including the oil, vinegar and even the wheat from the bread) make it under the 100-mile mark.
South Australia is an amazing place for eating well and eating local—and I was extremely pleased to see the national newspaper acknowledge this in an article on the weekend: ‘Apart from the south of France and parts of Italy, South Australia is unique in the range of produce available within a relatively short distance.’
In spite of the heat, I do feel lucky to live here. Now, if only we could get Queensland to share the water and stop growing cotton with it.
25
Jun 08
Lookie, lookie, ice cream cookie
As my favourite maths teacher used to say. Dunno why. But I *did* finally start to get maths in his class.
I digress. Already! I’m just here to mention a site overhaul. I’ve been tinkering, messing around, swearing a lot, begging for tips & tlc from web-oriented friends (you know who you are), and I’m pretty pleased with how it’s looking. What do you think?
Also, here’s the sketchbook page: chili! (One of my favourite things to cook, evah. Mainly because I could do it in my sleep.)
9
Jun 08
Tis the season
Autumn inspires me. Winter too. Even in Australia where winter is often gloriously sunny, cool and crisp, full of colour. (Kind of like, um, Autumn.)
What I want to do in cool, colourful, crisp weather: stay indoors and make things. Especially sweet things. And for sweet, handmade autumn things, you canNOT go past apple pie. Easy peasy to make, too.
I’m not a homemade pastry person. (Or I wasn’t until I read David Herbert’s Cheater’s pastry in the Weekend Australian on Saturday. But I will have to try that later and get back to you.)
For now, pick your favourite pastry, line a nice big deep ceramic dish with it, and then fill it up with peeled slices of tart apple—about six big apples in total—that have been tossed with liberal amounts of cinnamon and sugar, plus a few pinches of finely grated lemon zest and plain flour.
Layer the slices in the dish until they’re mounded higher than the rim.
You can pop it in the oven now or top it. I’m definitely not a two-crust-pie person: a covered pie keeps the light under a basket. But a lattice made from leftover pastry is purty.
Bake for about an hour at 350F/180C. Serve warm, with sharp crumbly cheddar cheese on the side to shock the daylights out of your Aussie family—or to make a Yankee girl feel right at home.
20
Apr 08
Spot the difference
I met M-H, aka WittyKnitter (or the Sydney Godmother?), and her partner the other night. I love it when ‘knitting friends’ (as my kids call them) come to Adelaide! We get to be all proud of our little town and its lovely offerings (like Good Life’s organic pizzas and Wilkie Estate’s organic wines on this particular occasion) and of course I get to drag out my knitting and bore my family silly. (M-H is lucky in this respect, as Sandra is a knitter too.)
We had a great time, ate well, laughed lots and kids behaved reasonably well. And for non-knitters reading, here’s where the story ends for you. Here’s where you’ll start to get bored silly.
Sandra had left her knitting in their apartment but M-H had hers (some fetchingly simple toe-ups in Lorna’s Laces Pioneer colourway — you don’t need to do much but knit that stuff to make it look sweet) and I had with me 1 3/4 Merino Bambino bedsocks for my daughter.
Mine are top-downs, and as we compared heels/toes (as you do), M-H pointed out that although our short-row toes looked similar, hers used a version called the Sherman toe, which I’d never seen. They were a bit neater-looking and — for me this was the kicker — they don’t require that crazy purl-three-together-through-back-loops manoeuvre that I’d been using. (I mean, I love the short-row toe, but *that* I could definitely do without.)
So, fast-forward about two hours, and I’m home in front of the computer, having looked up this how-you-call-it, Sherman toe (with pictures here) and I’m finishing off the socks without any yarnovers. Wow. Simple. Sweet. The nice thing, for me, is that you can (as with Priscilla Gibson-Roberts’ version) work them with top down socks. This is good as I still prefer an elastic cast-on to a sewn cast-off (which I find finicky to work and, more important, never feels as good to wear).
From this picture, I don’t think you can pick the diff. Think I’ve got me a new technique! Thanks M-H.
4
Nov 07
Rice Dreams
Water, water everywhere. Especially in talk around any town in Australia. People practically come to blows over it, and opinions run hot. What about suburban gardens? Or the ever-verdant golf fairway situated next to a mucky brown lake bed? Then there’s farming. Specifically, rice.
I support locally grown Australian produce wherever possible, but I draw the line at rice, even ostensibly well-managed Aussie rice crops and I don’t buy the Australian Ricegrowers Association website’s assertion that ‘To suggest that rice should not be grown in Australia would be to suggest that no food or fibre should be grown in our country.’ My suggestion is that no flood-irrigated crop that depends on a large, shallow lake for its very existence should be grown in western New South Wales.
Apparently some sneaky pollies think rice is fine where it is. From the Age yesterday:
Rain drain: secret Snowy water grab
Water meant to safeguard Victoria’s electricity supplies has been traded off to NSW rice growers in secret multimillion-dollar deals with the Snowy Hydro corporation.
Snowy Hydro Ltd and the NSW Department of Water and Energy are accused of jeopardising the future of electricity outputs, the livelihoods of other irrigators and environmental flows to the Snowy and Murray rivers for the sake of short-term profits.
The revelation of the secret sales comes as a cross-state deal on the Snowy River made by two former premiers threatens to tear apart the already frayed relationship between the current premiers of Victoria and NSW.
17
Oct 07
Food for the time-poor
Four ingredients? That’s do-able. I’m curious to see if this cookbook bends the rules at all (does salt count?).
2
Jun 07
Meat the neighbors
Just returned from big vegie conference in Sydney—’Vegetables claim centre plate’. Shocking how much kerfuffle goes on around the growing of vegetables. Sort of amusingly shocking how the meat and livestock industry are very aggressive and don’t really want to share the plate. How did it get to be so that when you order a main course in a restaurant, you must pay extra for the vegies on the side? And no matter that they are $8 a serve and the main is over $30, you feel that this is expensive and so don’t buy them?
We ate one night at a Darling Harbor steakhouse, because, y’know, we were meant to eat it—and you can see the delightfully subversive Sam Neill TV advert that previewed at the conference below. He’s rather menacing for a product spokesman, which I frankly enjoy. (Also love the inclusion of the dreadlocked female neighbors peeking up over the fence.) And seriously, who doesn’t salivate when their neighbor is cooking meat on the barbie?
I was the only one who did not order a 300g+ Filet Mignon wrapped with bacon and garnished with butter. This was in part because I didn’t want my plate to include garlic potatoes. I wanted mash and did not want to pay $8 for a dish of potatoes. But also—300g? That’s a lot of food. So I had the Petite Fillet of beef, weighing in at 160g. The vegies dominated.
Interesting food link for today: Rebecca’s pocket and the cheap food challenge. I wouldn’t mind going vego one day. But I would miss the odd steak.
