Since we don’t live by politics alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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The fridge is full of home-made camembert, fetta and ricotta. There is freshly baked bread. The cupboards are stuffed with home-bottled tomato sauces, relishes, marinara and passata. Home-grown pumpkins are under the sink. Mushrooms growing in a cool, dark place. The shed is full of home-brewed stout, cider, ginger ale, hard lemonade and pale ale.
And firewood.
When the apocalypse comes, I’m ready.
Mercurius
Your cup runneth over.
Any Tomato relish recipes you would recommend?
That’s not the Mercurius I have a picture of. Have you been ingesting some other homegrown herb?
I saw @TheFallingJoys first Sydney show in fifteen years on Friday. It also featured Jodi Phillis and Trish Young from @CloudsThe.
@2 I have to find some recipes sorry. That is why the cupboard is full of tomato relish…
@3 — Homegrown parlsey, chives, lemon balm (makes great pesto!), coriander, oregano, rosemary and thyme. Your “picture” is your own concern. Nothing but clean living and pure thoughts here!
The Antarctic has reached out to the Granite Belt the last few days – but we’re snug as the veritable bugs in rugs. Watched Spencer Tracy in excellent 1958 adaptation of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ on TV while sitting by the fire… strangely apposite. I’m still mostly bedridden post-surgery, but this is great weather for it
Pumpkin soup, sourdough bread and dandelion tea, anyone?
@5, after our stoush on population growth I was left with a very different picture of you. Would never have expected you to be invoking an apocalypse. Clean living and pure thoughts? Yeah right.
All those home produced goodies are amazing in today’s world. Where do you find the time and where do you source the primary ingredients?
SG – homegrown doesn’t necessarily mean grown around your own home ….
Look I know, speaking ill of the dead and all that but frankly reading Derrida is not the best way to pass a mild sunday even in the middle of winter, well almost the middle anyway (9 days to go).Which got me thinking, they should move the june long weekend to coincide with the soltice…and we could all dance around fires and toast marshmellows.
btw, where is Mark? I’m not fooled by his name appearing as the author, he hasn’t made a substantive post for some time (since the 11th of May to be precise).
Speaking of “where is x,” I condemn the lack of condemnation threads around the joint
@7 — Again, your “picture” is your concern.
Source? — diggers.com.au
Time? — No kids. Weekends.
@1 – hope you’ve got plenty of ammo.
I’m impressed by the home made Camembert, Mercurius. Particularly if you made it yourself.
Camembert and coffee are the two things I’ll miss the most in the world of next Tuesday.
Mercurius, you are keeping your marinara sauce in cupboards? Refrigerated cupboards, I hope. If not, please please check that sauce very carefully before use…
@14 Marinara sauce is, traditionally, fairly “standard” tomato based pasta sauce, vegetarian, in a preserving bottle. It got the name ‘marinara’ because Italian fishermen could take it out on their boats for long trips at sea, it was convenient and quick to throw over a mountain of pasta, and it would still be safe to eat (presumably with a little bit of their fresh catch thrown in at the last minute).
I have no idea how the cream-based seafood ‘marinara’ sauce got that appellation.
@1 Ammo wouldn’t help me any, Razor. I am yet to locate the local rifle club, which seems to be very…informal…around here. So I’ll have to bribe the zombies horde with home-made camembert instead!
Yes, in this case ‘homegrown’ does mean grown around my house, and it does mean made in my house. Otherwise I would’ve said “Hey! Guess what! I just went and paid well over the odds for stuff someone else grew in their garden, and made in their kitchen, which I could’ve made myself if I could be arsed, but it had a sticker that said ‘organic’ and ‘penguin-safe’ on it, so, like, WOW!”
But DI(nr), there’s nothing particularly impressive about it. It’s deceptively easy to make soft cheeses. Remember, people managed to do it with stone age and medieval technology…Having a cave in Normandy helps to keep the temperature stable, but if you don’t, a discarded polysterene fruit-packing box will suffice.
Naaaah. We have fetishised food and kitchen technology to the point where many simple foods seem to be a dark art beyond our ken — whereas you’ll probably find your grandmother used to make the lot at home without once feeling the urge to blog about it! If more boys took home ec at school, we wouldn’t be in this pickle (sic)…
I have just figured out which way that volcanic dust cloud is blowing. Initially I thought it was across the Pacific, East/West but that didn’t compute with prevailing winds over the Southern Ocean. In fact, it is blowing West/ East so it has to blow over South America, the southern Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and approch Australia from the west. Amazing !
Mercurius, the only time I ever made cheese (except, of course, for paneer), I attempted a hard cheese made from goats’ milk. The mice got at it before I did (and gave up in disgust). Just as well – I don’t think it would have been very nice.
@17 Yes Wantok I wondered the same thing. My thought process was actually the reverse of yours. I thought “that ash must be blown by the jet stream, across the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Naaah…. couldn’t be…too far! Is there some sort of eddy that would bring it east-west towards NZ?”
Then I remembered that it’s pretty much the same distance either way…the Pacific is so @#$%@% huge.
@18. Wow. Those mice were harsh critics!
Not in a position to be picky, I would’ve thought (although we had goats and chickens with the attendant spilt feed).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000166/Chile-volcano-seen-SPACE-spits-sky.html
http://www.allchile.net/chileforum/topic6111-132.html
http://www.wjla.com/pictures/2011/06/electrifying-fiery-photos-of-chiles-puyehue-volcano/puyehues-snaking-ash-trail-from-space-3986-258.html
“I have no idea how the cream-based seafood ‘marinara’ sauce got that appellation.”
In Italy, ordering pasta alla marinara will get you a seafood sauce in a tomato base.
There may be some part of Italy I’ve never been to where the Italian-American habit of using the term for a plain tomato sauce has some authentic basis, but as far as I know it’s only in the US (and Australian outlets for US fast food franchises) that it’s used this way.
Quiet day dipping into Alan Frost’s new book, The First Fleet. The real story. Mainly looking up Robert Ross.
Had a long phone call with a friend.
The cat woke me this morning by playing with my eyelashes. He’s stuck in the house as it’s been bucketing down for 24 hours and I guess watching someone in REM is the most exciting thing going.
Razor, what weapon would you recommend?
Sunday was a glorious, blue day in Melbourne’s West, not a trace of the volcanic ash here. I drove down the road, chanelling my inner little horsey girl, to Werribee Park and the Melbourne International 3-day event (X-country stage.) The obstacles weren’t as humungous as the one I remember going to a few years ago but they were still pretty huge. Marvel at the horsemanship and the exquisitely fit, tuned horses. Hardbitten old countryman types competing against slips of girls. Men and women on equal terms, competing in a top level event which requires long-term dedication, skill, planning and bucketloads of courage and nerves of steel. And as spectacular as anything.
Went to see if it was reported anywhere in the news. Nah, nothing as usual. I really hate our AFL/horseracing obsessed media sometimes. So boring!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000166/Chile-volcano-seen-SPACE-spits-sky.html
Graphics on where the plume will spread to
http://www.allchile.net/chileforum/topic6111-132.html
@14 yes, that occurred to me a bit after I posted, so I have a tomatoey face…but FDB’s right too – the pasta always but always comes with seafood.
Anyway, Mercurius, your pantry sounds lovely. When the weather is a bit warmer I shall give serious consideration to a bit of grassroots food.
FDB, Elizabeth David says the pasta sauce alla marinara is Neapolitan, and that the tomatoes in it are barely cooked. Italian Food was first published in 1954.
Chicken wing stock, sundry veges, a lovely aromatic wintery feeling.
Arborio rice, crunchy vege topping, pudding, yum.