A saving disposition is of course essential to any drive toward self-suffiency. One re-uses all these disposable objects. Net-bags for oranges make good prawn nets. My garden has a serious crop of cut off milk bottles milk bottles doing mini-greenhouse duty. B has been using them too, to make and store broth for the dogs, made from scraps. Fish, chicken, muttonbird... We really, really need that milk-cow. Too many milk bottles and the stuff is expensive.
The key here is of course NOT to be of too saving a disposition. For example not putting on the light while boiling the kettle to make coffee in the still-dark wee hours of morning, but instead using the dim light of the full moon is a mistake.
Or maybe one just shouldn't store fish-and-muttonbird broth in a milk bottle in the 'fridge door.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Clare is here!
Now our whole family is complete, as Paddy's girlfriend Clare arrived this afternoon. All 4 of us were giving her advice and instructions all the way from the airport home. As this is a 2km drive, we all felt we must get the best info over early. Clare had flown from the UK and was naturally feeling tired, so how many of our pearls she will remember is the next question. But we can always claim to have shared the important info on that trip.
Earlier in the afternoon James went for a short 40km cycle, up hill and down dale being all the same, he says, as he cycles 'within himself', still he seemed to really enjoy it. And I think a break from his loving family is probably a good thing.
While collecting Clare's luggage, we saw the carpet we had ordered in the store room, so we fetched that and saved a trip tomorrow. We are hoping to keep the dogs totally off our landlord's fitted carpet by adding another one on top. He is not a 'dog in the house' kind of guy, so we are trying to show that they will not do any damage to his belongings at all.
Dave did us pizza for supper, 'tea', with cheese, tomato and mince for all of us, and seafood, including squid, for all except Paddy. Clare enjoyed the squid, which was good, but she then had to listen to the most amazing stories on how to catch them. I think our first trip to the jetty is going to be either a total let down, or a huge relief!
Earlier in the afternoon James went for a short 40km cycle, up hill and down dale being all the same, he says, as he cycles 'within himself', still he seemed to really enjoy it. And I think a break from his loving family is probably a good thing.
While collecting Clare's luggage, we saw the carpet we had ordered in the store room, so we fetched that and saved a trip tomorrow. We are hoping to keep the dogs totally off our landlord's fitted carpet by adding another one on top. He is not a 'dog in the house' kind of guy, so we are trying to show that they will not do any damage to his belongings at all.
Dave did us pizza for supper, 'tea', with cheese, tomato and mince for all of us, and seafood, including squid, for all except Paddy. Clare enjoyed the squid, which was good, but she then had to listen to the most amazing stories on how to catch them. I think our first trip to the jetty is going to be either a total let down, or a huge relief!
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Hey, chill, dude...
We had our first frost this morning, but the day was clear and so, by lunch time, it was shirtsleeve warm in wind-shelter patch behind the house. Which led James to "Well, you finished the book, and it's nice weather..."
B and I were agreeable - nice weather here in mid-winter should be seized and used. Paddy is frantically trying to finish something before Clare gets in - and as rain is forecast and we don't want Roland wet later than 9.30 AM (he is not one of your fast drying dogs) so Paddy dog-sat and we went beachward - which as this James's idea I ought to have guessed involved diving (he's obsessed with the hand-spear which for the record is like going after antelope with an assegai.
Possible but not very probable. But it is a harmless ambition... well except it means I have to get in the water too.
And get my beard in the zipper.B- very sensibly went to go fishing instead. We'd decided on Sawyer's Bay - an area we've never explored. (There are about 200 kilometers of coastline. Add another 50 for convolutions, islands etc. There are bits, just little ones, I have not seen yet...;-)
The first thing we learned - after the experience of mind-numbing (and toe and finger numbing) temperature of the water - was that we'd made a small error of judgement - like 300 metres, which on a global scale is tiny thing... when you have to swim it through very shallow water in the cold, seeing nary a fish nor abalone nor crayfish - it's a long swim. Eventually I did see a fish. A big flathead. Unfortunately it didn't stay to be speared. We found a Nautilus shell, and then a handful of possibly bream... or something else. Anyway a change from the usual flathead-flathead-flathead or wrasse. And to hades with James and the handspear - I wanted them. So I pulled the rubber on the elderly spear gun (which has never been one of my big success stories, but compared to the hand-spear...
The elderly rubber promptly broke. I wacked myself in the chest, but that was that. And by the time James and the hand-spear got there - there was nary a fish to be seen. Ah well. We swam on to B, who had caught nothing. And so, as there were lots of those nothing available back where we'd come from, I tried to talk to her only my mouth was numb... and then six or seven yards past James (about 15 yards out, standing up, waist deep)
A dolphin (sorry no camera in the water)
B shouts points and waves - and James decides it's a grey nasty she's telling him about and bolts towards us -not looking back. By the time we managed 'Dolphin'it slipped away again. We stood on the rocks and watched two of them, possibly the reason we'd seen so few fish. Anyway, as they say back in South Africa, 'lelik is niks, maar stupid' so we got in and swam after them. Didn't of course get anywhere near them. Got to the next rocky point, which was slightly deeper and rougher, and had the inevitable wrasse, and a few abelone (Poor B had caught nothing, and had slipped and fallen hard) and some stripy fish that nearly gave me a heart attack - or at least James vanishing after them around a rock did(which I thought was pomonitory, but was actually an island with a narrow channel to landward - with a high wall - in which he chased fish).
We always keep tabs on the other diver... and I lost him. I hauled out onto the rock to look and couldn't see him behind me or to seaward(he must have been just in the lee of the rock I was standing on) and yelled (yes, even underwater it works - and we're not diving with tanks - free diving with snorkles - come up to breathe.) I yell frantically and B starts running from 100 yards off, waving her arms about. I'm trying to work out WHAT she's waving about - whether I need to dive in, and just where she's pointing - when James appears to LANDWARD behind me - out of his channel. So all was well. James found a couple of abalone, and we walked back. The boy had already passed the stop shivering point, young idiot. Anyway, all was well except B is sore from slipping and the deep freezer didn't benefit a lot. Oh and I saw a wombat, walking back. We were walking back, not the wombat, he was standing shaking his head at us, saying 'morons'.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
You mean... someone doesn't like fermented shark meat?
Hákarl - an icelandic 'delicacy'(Why do you think I made one of the main heroes in the Heirs of Alexandria series an Icelandic warrior... The book, by the way, is finished, finally today.) AKA - fermented raw basking shark, which is just plain toxic fresh, and smells like it is supposed to be used for industrial floor-cleaning is perhaps one of the extreme examples of cultural food acclimatisation (and eating it is supposed to be sign of manliness! (hur, gung ho. I c'n drink ammonia.) and like many things (Surströmming and Kusaya spring to mind - yes I have come across both. I'm a foodie who worked with fish) it's one of those love it or hate it things. And people get very very heated about them...
While not, thank heavens, in quite the same league as Hákarl, muttonbird tends to have the same reputation. For islanders who have grown up with it, well, it's a delicacy. Many incomers - and some islanders - won't even have it cooked in their kitchens swearing the smell lasts for six months or so.
Let's be frank(incence) it's... fairly powerful. smoky-fishy. Um well, very fishy. Okay since you press me VERY VERY pungent. And, er, enduring. I'm not willing to give it 6 months, but outside cooking is prolly not a badly thought-out idea, because you will smell it in bed. Tomorrow, unless you have a good air-extractor.
Curiously, the meat itself is not too fishy. Just the fat, and there is a lot of it. Very full of all those omega three fatty acids. The best answer is to barbeque it. And as the book was finished I decided the time had come to test how Islander my family were. Of course the downside of this is that Australia is very like South Africa in many cultural ways, but some ass introduced the idea of cooking on gas barbeques instead of a 'braai'. For a South African he-man to admit that he cooks on gas... well he's more likely to have one of those little handbag-purse things the French seem to consider manly, and to tell all his friends he loves going for a pedicure and facial as they talk over the Rugby. Or as likely as an Icelandic skald to tell you hates Hákarl. Even the likes of me who stopped worrying about what his fellow men thought of his masculinity thirty years back, wouldn't touch one except to fry eggs and bacon on... because, frankly, they fail at the basic reason for cooking over a fire - which naturally is the cremated bits and flavours from the wood-smoke or even charcoal ( I cheat and mix the two, but purists swear by various woods. I might too, if I was that pissy, or had the option, maybe). You might as well cook inside on a stove as on gas.Yes, there is a fire risk. And there is taste disaster. They're convenient IMO, but nothing like as nice as the real thing. But I think I have found the closet reason for this use of gas. A lot of products in Oz lead SA by a country mile, but every now and again you find something they screwed up here... and lead contender outside of Telstra (with a special mention for exceptional achievement to the Eastlands Mall Telstra shop in Hobart as the single worst shopping experience I have ever had) has to be these things called 'heat beads' which are to a good briquette what the hardness of a marshmellow is to steel bar. Okay, grumble, maybe just what we got on the island and they're just wonderful everywhere else. I lit these. And then I lit them again. Then I 'phoned the Fireys and told them not to panic, Victoria wasn't on fire, just 30 heat beads in a safe stainless steel container on concrete with 5 yards of wet grass around them... were doing the smoke-dance of a Chinese brown coal fired power-plant... each. It took a good 40 minutes to put out the same amount of heat as a car cigarette-lighter - by which stage the average pyromanic South African would be singing his eyebrows off with a douse of meths or petrol (adds that je ne se quoi to your cremated meat.)
But I have the answer. There is help at hand
Enter....
The muttonbird.
Bloody 'eck. If there ever was a good reason for cooking over a gas grill it's got be the effect of muttonbird fat on heat beads. The flames got about 3 feet high. There is NO WAY I am cooking these things inside a house on a gas stove for 'elf an safety reasons -- and you all know how I deeply approve these nanny things. Anyone who is dumb enough to cook these near naked lights indoors deserves the house to catch. And the happy South African habit of beer marianade-fire douse would have lots of sour faces and empty beer bottles. You could run a truck on muttonbird fat I reckon (I'm tempted. The delight of driving the exhaust scent down a city street... or stopping next to your friendly traffic policeman would almost be worth it.)
There is of course one dire danger cooking them outdoors. It is the so called 'hot dog' AKA Roland who decided that muttonbird fat was just the most decious thing in the entire universe and was so frantic to get at the splatter that I was terrified the droplets on his back might combust.
The dogs LOVE muttonbird. They cleaned the concrete. They got a broth made from the bones and scraps on their blocks and voted it wolfed down, and the braai - flames and all - had to be guarded. They sat and drooled at us cooking.
The cats feel that anything that combines their best food - fish, with their second best - fowl, has to be a win. But please do not cook it!
James had an uncertain start, and then got into it, and ate one and a half, and Paddy ate ?4 well, lots.
For the record, it's MUCH nicer over charcoal - even these rubbish heat beads - than it was over gas. More of a flambeaux hassle to cook, but worth it.
While not, thank heavens, in quite the same league as Hákarl, muttonbird tends to have the same reputation. For islanders who have grown up with it, well, it's a delicacy. Many incomers - and some islanders - won't even have it cooked in their kitchens swearing the smell lasts for six months or so.
Let's be frank(incence) it's... fairly powerful. smoky-fishy. Um well, very fishy. Okay since you press me VERY VERY pungent. And, er, enduring. I'm not willing to give it 6 months, but outside cooking is prolly not a badly thought-out idea, because you will smell it in bed. Tomorrow, unless you have a good air-extractor.
Curiously, the meat itself is not too fishy. Just the fat, and there is a lot of it. Very full of all those omega three fatty acids. The best answer is to barbeque it. And as the book was finished I decided the time had come to test how Islander my family were. Of course the downside of this is that Australia is very like South Africa in many cultural ways, but some ass introduced the idea of cooking on gas barbeques instead of a 'braai'. For a South African he-man to admit that he cooks on gas... well he's more likely to have one of those little handbag-purse things the French seem to consider manly, and to tell all his friends he loves going for a pedicure and facial as they talk over the Rugby. Or as likely as an Icelandic skald to tell you hates Hákarl. Even the likes of me who stopped worrying about what his fellow men thought of his masculinity thirty years back, wouldn't touch one except to fry eggs and bacon on... because, frankly, they fail at the basic reason for cooking over a fire - which naturally is the cremated bits and flavours from the wood-smoke or even charcoal ( I cheat and mix the two, but purists swear by various woods. I might too, if I was that pissy, or had the option, maybe). You might as well cook inside on a stove as on gas.Yes, there is a fire risk. And there is taste disaster. They're convenient IMO, but nothing like as nice as the real thing. But I think I have found the closet reason for this use of gas. A lot of products in Oz lead SA by a country mile, but every now and again you find something they screwed up here... and lead contender outside of Telstra (with a special mention for exceptional achievement to the Eastlands Mall Telstra shop in Hobart as the single worst shopping experience I have ever had) has to be these things called 'heat beads' which are to a good briquette what the hardness of a marshmellow is to steel bar. Okay, grumble, maybe just what we got on the island and they're just wonderful everywhere else. I lit these. And then I lit them again. Then I 'phoned the Fireys and told them not to panic, Victoria wasn't on fire, just 30 heat beads in a safe stainless steel container on concrete with 5 yards of wet grass around them... were doing the smoke-dance of a Chinese brown coal fired power-plant... each. It took a good 40 minutes to put out the same amount of heat as a car cigarette-lighter - by which stage the average pyromanic South African would be singing his eyebrows off with a douse of meths or petrol (adds that je ne se quoi to your cremated meat.)
But I have the answer. There is help at hand
Enter....
The muttonbird.
Bloody 'eck. If there ever was a good reason for cooking over a gas grill it's got be the effect of muttonbird fat on heat beads. The flames got about 3 feet high. There is NO WAY I am cooking these things inside a house on a gas stove for 'elf an safety reasons -- and you all know how I deeply approve these nanny things. Anyone who is dumb enough to cook these near naked lights indoors deserves the house to catch. And the happy South African habit of beer marianade-fire douse would have lots of sour faces and empty beer bottles. You could run a truck on muttonbird fat I reckon (I'm tempted. The delight of driving the exhaust scent down a city street... or stopping next to your friendly traffic policeman would almost be worth it.)
There is of course one dire danger cooking them outdoors. It is the so called 'hot dog' AKA Roland who decided that muttonbird fat was just the most decious thing in the entire universe and was so frantic to get at the splatter that I was terrified the droplets on his back might combust.
The dogs LOVE muttonbird. They cleaned the concrete. They got a broth made from the bones and scraps on their blocks and voted it wolfed down, and the braai - flames and all - had to be guarded. They sat and drooled at us cooking.
The cats feel that anything that combines their best food - fish, with their second best - fowl, has to be a win. But please do not cook it!
James had an uncertain start, and then got into it, and ate one and a half, and Paddy ate ?4 well, lots.
For the record, it's MUCH nicer over charcoal - even these rubbish heat beads - than it was over gas. More of a flambeaux hassle to cook, but worth it.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Nearing the book end
Let's keep it short because I am just two short chapters (and some edits) from the end of this book. And yes, I've just written another DRAGON'S RING style piece which - althought this story ends, will have readers demanding the next. It wasn't entirely planned that way... The characters did by themselves.
It's been raining and been good weather for it, and I got enough sleep to have the brain running well, and now all we need is to get back to Odessa (aka Hacibey) and Venice.
More real adventures tomorrow... promise
It's been raining and been good weather for it, and I got enough sleep to have the brain running well, and now all we need is to get back to Odessa (aka Hacibey) and Venice.
More real adventures tomorrow... promise
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Is the adventure over?
B and I were talking last night about how the following for Flinders Family Freer has slowly grown. B was saying well, it would taper off now. The beloved beasts are here, adventure was over, no one would be that interested any more.
I profoundly disagree about the adventure being over (not sure about the growing interest not tapering). There are so many more things still to learn about the growing and foraging our own food. Then we'll eventually have the scary adventure of trying to buy ourselves a home of our own. This is going to be tricky as I'm a author - mediocre to rotten and very erratic income - which tends to make bank managers turn pale. Yes, we make church mice seem profligate wastrels in living carefully, and we do have some money from the sale of Finnegan's Wake left. But dogs and cats took a lot of that, and moving (us and our rock and furniture) a lot too. The Island is a delight in many ways, but transport to here adds a premium. It's not something that can't be beaten, but at fifty I'm back where where we were at thirty, only marginally wiser and a lot more creaky. Not planning to let it stop us -- as long as I can keep writing and selling, we'll make forward progress. And who knows - the big one might be next (maybe even the book of how we came to Flinders). With books there is always a chance. Story over? I don't think so. Besides... I am a sort of chaos magnet, and even in a bucholic idyll - if I'm there... there will be storms, disasters and misadventures, strange creatures from the depths, stranger meals, beasts behaving badly and me learning ineptly how to do all things from pickling olives to making mead, or keeping a milk-cow to how deal with possums. And of course B to keep me semi-sane and sensible, and the beasties to love us and throw spanners in the works.
So what do you think?
I profoundly disagree about the adventure being over (not sure about the growing interest not tapering). There are so many more things still to learn about the growing and foraging our own food. Then we'll eventually have the scary adventure of trying to buy ourselves a home of our own. This is going to be tricky as I'm a author - mediocre to rotten and very erratic income - which tends to make bank managers turn pale. Yes, we make church mice seem profligate wastrels in living carefully, and we do have some money from the sale of Finnegan's Wake left. But dogs and cats took a lot of that, and moving (us and our rock and furniture) a lot too. The Island is a delight in many ways, but transport to here adds a premium. It's not something that can't be beaten, but at fifty I'm back where where we were at thirty, only marginally wiser and a lot more creaky. Not planning to let it stop us -- as long as I can keep writing and selling, we'll make forward progress. And who knows - the big one might be next (maybe even the book of how we came to Flinders). With books there is always a chance. Story over? I don't think so. Besides... I am a sort of chaos magnet, and even in a bucholic idyll - if I'm there... there will be storms, disasters and misadventures, strange creatures from the depths, stranger meals, beasts behaving badly and me learning ineptly how to do all things from pickling olives to making mead, or keeping a milk-cow to how deal with possums. And of course B to keep me semi-sane and sensible, and the beasties to love us and throw spanners in the works.
So what do you think?
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tired but here
Well, the settling process has inevitably been a little hard. The Animals I will say are all universally pleased to be here, and delighted to be with us. And I think understandably a little insecure, although despite all the horror stories they seem to be OKay so far (and I was told by several people that cats just don't do quarantine - ours seems to remember us and quite frankly be less traumatised than the dogs. They all do need a lot of attention, but are straight back into their old ways... well, all needing a scratch or notice on average every thirty seconds, which I hope will slack off soon. Last night was restless in the extreme with Roly just not settling. I've had about 2 hours sleep which hasn't helped the book finish. And we've had sets of dog-and-cat visitors all day. We went to the winter Solstice Scottish dancing/ singing do last night (not the night I would have chosen. Can't these celestial bodies show ANY consideration?), which was... energetic (just to watch!) Fun too. James stayed in and fire/cat/dog sat, and shortly after we got in, we discovered Robin-cat was missing. Frantic inside and out search ensued.
HUH. Madamoiselle had decided to sleep INSIDE the cupboard and now that she was comfortable, was not coming when called (that seems to be the main difference - which won't last - the cats now come when called. The right cat to right name. Bizarre!).
Little Robin-cat was admittedly so appreciative of liberty and people and above all CARPET she was actually doing the tail quiver. Bat (once he'd punished us - about 2 hours) was doing the leg-weave, and climbing up your legs. La Duchesse was rising up and head butting. All she wants to do is sleep ON people, Barbs being first prize. Poor B had all 3 on top of her this evening. I am of course a bad man, because I won't have them on the table while I am cooking.
Dogs... well Pugsley says it is really time he was boss dog and he hasn't had to share space with anyone for a while. Wednesday is being smarmy goody-two-shoes (as if I could be fooled). And Roly, is well, Roly. Happiest when sitting on you.
Poor baby, he is very thin. But they're all so obviously happy to be home, to be loved
Oh and they are determined NOT to be left behind ever again. Paddy was trying to lift James's bicycle out of the truck - and 3 dogs and bicycle was probably even funnier than 3 men and boat.
HUH. Madamoiselle had decided to sleep INSIDE the cupboard and now that she was comfortable, was not coming when called (that seems to be the main difference - which won't last - the cats now come when called. The right cat to right name. Bizarre!).
Little Robin-cat was admittedly so appreciative of liberty and people and above all CARPET she was actually doing the tail quiver. Bat (once he'd punished us - about 2 hours) was doing the leg-weave, and climbing up your legs. La Duchesse was rising up and head butting. All she wants to do is sleep ON people, Barbs being first prize. Poor B had all 3 on top of her this evening. I am of course a bad man, because I won't have them on the table while I am cooking.
Dogs... well Pugsley says it is really time he was boss dog and he hasn't had to share space with anyone for a while. Wednesday is being smarmy goody-two-shoes (as if I could be fooled). And Roly, is well, Roly. Happiest when sitting on you.
Poor baby, he is very thin. But they're all so obviously happy to be home, to be loved
Oh and they are determined NOT to be left behind ever again. Paddy was trying to lift James's bicycle out of the truck - and 3 dogs and bicycle was probably even funnier than 3 men and boat.
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