An extraordinary story

From the TED talks



From TED.com: "Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment."

We bought a sofa

Today, Bear and I bought our very own very first, brand spanking new sofa!


(photo courtesy of the Myer catalogue)

In this colour!



(It's actually much lighter in colour than it shows up on my monitor)

Super exciting! We are now waiting on the 6-8 weeks for them to make and deliver it. >_<

Also, the fabric itself, despite feeling soft and lovely like suede-made-of-cloth (if that makes sense), is apparently teflon-coated during manufacture, so stains will slide right off it! Wondrous!

Night time fooding

I am nocturnal again, and I have embraced it.

On the days where work people schedule morning meetings and seminars, I stagger through the day zombie-like and muted, but otherwise, it's grand! Like a secret life in the quiet night.

So I made stock at 1am tonight. With the carcass of a bought roast chicken and carrots from the garden, the usual onion and celery, a slightly old piece of ginger, a long red chilli, several cloves of garlic, a small bunch of sage, two bay leaves and a sprinkling of black peppercorns. I wondered if the sage and bay leaves would go along with the sort of asian-y ginger and chilli, and it was fine! I think the trick with chicken stock is to leave some meat on the bones, otherwise you're just waiting for the flavour to turn up and it doesn't.

The stock was done in 45 minutes and was gloriously rich and flavourful. Yum! And then I made spicy chickpea soup with it, by adding in a can of chickpeas. I made this once with dried chickpeas and I think the truth of it is that I have not the patience to soak or cook the buggers long enough. I also added some cumin to taste, and whizzed it up with the scarily powerful metal whizzy stick. Bear is usually the whizzy stick technician in our household, and I see why now, because I dirtied up two (two!) otherwise clean pots to get the right depth of liquid to prevent the stuff splashing everywhere. Of course by the time I was done it had splashed everywhere anyway, but whatever.

I heated it up again to simmer for a bit, then took it off the heat and added the juice of half a lemon. To taste. And then, for the hell of it, whisked in an egg. I froze most of it and then ate the rest with parsley and pepper.



So there you have it! That is how you make spicy chickpea soup with lemon and egg at 3am in the morning, not that the time really matters, but at 3am, no one is around to say anything about the mess you've made. And after that, a banana with ice cream, chocolate sauce and toasted almonds for dessert!

Yum for private feasting!

Zucchini

I bet you did not know,
that when a zucchini is picked,
fresh from the plant,
it is kind of spikey!



I did not know that either!

Stephen Rothwell

I just came across, via boingboing, the collage art of Stephen Rothwell. Click on the image to see more of his deliciously dark and creepy images.

A perfect tomato

From the garden.

Veggies galore

Right bang in the middle of summer, we're looking at our last crop of tomatoes.

That makes me upset!



I've been so used to picking them off the plant, still warm from the sun, flavours so bright and bursting, manifesting their true fruit-ness, but no more!

Sigh.

*mope*

I've been meaning to write about our veggie garden for months now, since we started it. I even took some photos ages ago. Since I'm up at 4am and not even slightly sleepy, here we go!




Our very first zucchini! Whee!




Butter lettuces. Really tasty stuff - Milo loves this. We alternate with crops of Cos, some of which were rudely stolen. More on that later.




Carrots! They look normal on the top, but underneath, they're all kinds of twisty and tentacly!




Corn. The ears have come up now and we picked them a bit late - they're slightly dry, but have good flavour. The ratties like them too.




Part of my random flower bed - an assortment of petunias, marigolds, helichrysums and occassional short-lived but gorgeous dahlias.




The tomato bushes. Lots of different sorts, big ones, small ones, pear shaped ones, yellow, red, orange and 'black' ones. We lost many to the caterpillars until Bear invented (or rather appropriated the idea of) an organza bag-thing that we sewed and put over the fruit to protect them. Clever Bear! I think we should also have pruned them back a bit - they all seemed manageable while growing, then suddenly it was like a jungle. Lessons learnt for next time.




A butterfly/moth(?) on a white petunia.




Our first capsicums! So exciting! Except that they fell off not long after. Bleh.




This is part of our herbarium (fancy word for collection of pots of herbs) in our backyard. Pictured are basil, sage and thyme. The basil has gone to seed at the moment and we're growing a new crop. Other herbs we have are rosemary, oregano, mint, chocolate mint, bay, parsley, um... the dill died... what else is there... oh yes, lavender and this elderflower plant that I don't really want anymore. Also we have some chilli trees starting out and a meyer lemon tree in a big pot. Huzzah! Lots of pots!




Red helichrysum, also known as paper daisies and everlasting flowers (or something like that). I like this picture because it looks like a lotus.




Beans! Yellow ones. An easy and generous crop.




Figlets on our fig tree. Everyone assures us the bats and birds will eat them all when they ripen; that is, unless we find some sort of large metallic net to put over the tree. Meh. We also have a lychee tree, with fruits just starting to go yellow. Yummy anticipation!




Finally, this is our hardworking gardener, to whom we owe our bountiful harvest!

I do my bit too, but because I scream like a girl and run away when I see a wormie, I mainly do small-time planting and weeding. I also do the watering sometimes, which is arduous because it involves using a watering can (no hoses because of water restrictions), and can be tricky, especially when trying to manouvre around/through the Tomato Jungle to get to the leeks, etc. Nevertheless, I see it as a kind of ritual offering to the spirits of the garden - Here, I trudge around with this heavy watering can so that you may have this water, now please grow and become edible! Thanks!

Speaking of the leeks, it's difficult to talk about them because I'm still upset by the theft of our Entire crop of leeks. There was a large bed of them and I was really looking forward to using them. Steamed baby leeks with walnut oil... mmm. But some total low life came into our garden one evening, trampled my flowers, squeezed some tomatoes and then took All of the leeks. All of them! How incredibly rude is that?

So Bear and I passed several sleepless nights running through revenge fantasies to visit upon this vile soul.

We also bought a motion-sensing light thing for the garden and considered growing a hedge to block it from the street (because it's in front of the house, facing directly onto the footpath)... but we'd rather not, because of all the people who seem to enjoy looking into our garden. Everyday, we have this steady stream of people, usually elderly greek/lebanese men, women with prams and that one monk, who stop and lean over our front wall and look at the garden, and offer gardening advice and recipes to Bear when he's out there. It's really nice! And feels great and community-like. But what do you do about the idiots?

The leek theft wasn't even the first. The first time, they took several large unripe tomatoes, several lettuces, and left a large bootprint in the soil. We'd rather not wall ourselves off from the street, but then how do we show that it is Not Okay to come into our garden and take stuff?

Urgh. People.

Oh well. That's it for now. We're thinking of putting in some veggies for the winter, and redesigning the garden to have raised beds and some sensible paths and things like that. I love our veggie garden. It nourishes the soul!