More Internet Hassles

Well, James spent 6 hours fighting bigpuddle - the world's worst internet provider - into doing 3 minute job last night. We're online again as a result. Sadly that - and telstra are what we have to have here. I just don't get this company - surely hiring half a dozen competent techs would be a lot cheaper than outsourcing to somewhere - where I suspect they pay peanuts - but the job takes 200 times as long as need be?

Pads and Clare flew back to the UK yesterday - should nearly be there by now. It was a close run thing as the plane was delayed in Lonnie, and they only had two and half hours... before the delay. Anyway, they scraped in, and all is well that ends well. We miss them already.

The wind is really roaring and howling and shrieking today (just as well they're not flying now) and we - Barbs and I fly tomorrow. Barbs is going to a Scottish Dancing workshop/course near Shepparton tomorrow, along with the wife of one of the local pilots. I'm going for the ride, and to keep the pilot company flying back... weather permitting. Right now, it isn't. This morning it REALLY wasn't. We had hail - enough to make a white shroud across the ground. It dropped the temperature by about 5 degrees in five minutes - I am very glad I wasn't fish farming any more, or keeping angora goats.

I've rigged an old infra-red light to try and warm the potting soil so I can get some melons and watermelon to germinate - with a short warm growing season here, getting them up, big and going fast is vital. I'll transplant them into my hot-boxes - via Jody-suggestion I have made some small portable 'cold-frames' which I can move very easily. I hope this way I can get them to a reasonable size before summer starts. I've also filled our next planting tank with old sheep manure and soil from the shearing yards. If the hot-system works the capsicums will be next.

Oh, we have had our first artichoke, and first few asparagus (I'm only cropping off our 3 year old crowns - but the rest are growing vigorously.

Mussels

When times are bleak... cook supper. Nothing seems quite so dire outside of that meal you didn't feel like but discovered you were starving when you got to. One of the forager/ self sufficiency fellow's greatest friends is humble bivalve - mussels, oysters, clams (pipis!;-)) and razor-clams. Unlike fish or squid, or crabs or spiny lobster or prawn, they're not not feeding or moved away - especially the first two as they grow on hard substrates. If you can manage a tide-table you can probably collect them, unless the sea is really really really thumping. They're a lot more versatile than people realise - Like corgettes (zucchini , baby marrow AKA the reason why you lock your car when you visit me in summer (so they don't get put in your vehicle quietly)) you can get quite inventive about the ways to turn them into dinner. Oysters are great in steak and kidney pudding (they were traditionally part of this, when oysters and kate-and-sidney were poor people's food) and mussels can be used as part of everything from rissoles to stir-fry. I always freeze some for hard times - steam them open, de-beard them, and then return the meats to the cooking liquid plus some extra water - it needs to be slighty salty. I put the bowl with a small plate on top to keep the mussels down into the freezer, and take it out and bag it later. Like this they'll keep for months.


So this was tonight's supper - about 50 mussels, 4 rashers of bacon (normally this would be our own bacon, but life is too screwed up for that this winter) a bunch of tiny asparagus from the garden (Asparagus are a great crop for self-supporting too -- take lots of initial work and nothing much after that) some flat-leaf parsley, a red onion, and - for things not out of the garden/ made by us, olive oil, flour, and a bit of sherry and white wine and some milk from my neighbour. And rice. A roux made with the flour and the fat from the bacon and then made into delicate wine/sherry flavoured sauce with those and the milk - add mussels to exchange flavors, add bacon, pour onto the rice (laced with onion sliced v.thin cooked very slowly in a drop of olive oil in a closed cast iron pot (as cool as the the stove will go) until soft and translucent and then flashed at heat to caramelise the natural sugars). The asparagus I added to the top of the steaming rice, for about 4 minutes. The flat-leaf parsley adds some colour and flavour, and must be put on at the last to retain colour and release scent as it cooks slightly on the hot food.