Category: Posts

You can’t see me …

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Tawny Frogmouths  subscribe to the Ostrich Theory …..

When approached, they freeze, stick their heads in the air and shut their eyes.  Mostly this form of disguise works because their plumage matches the bark of the tree and their shape is almost indistinguishable from that of a branch.  But the pair that has taken up part-time residence in my banana tree hasn’t caught on to the fact that brown stands out quite well against a background of green!

These two de-camped when their roosting spot, a huge old turpentine tree on my neighbour’s property, was cut down.  I won’t get into the “which was there first the tree or the house?”, or even the “should you have built your house under a massive tree with branches as thick as a small human?” arguments …

Anyway, their loss is my gain.  So I mow, clatter around with my wheelbarrow and even use my leaf blower a mere three metres below them, and apart from a few reproachful looks, there they sit with eyes resolutely shut.

A spicy Saturday …

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IMG_1502 (960x1280)My second visit to the Sticky Rice Cooking School  in the Adelaide Hills several years ago was just as delicious and enjoyable as the first. The Sticky Rice school is situated in an old converted shop and residence in Stirling. The premises have been beautifully decorated in a modern Asian style with a smart dining room, a huge well equipped catering kitchen and a small shop selling spices, cookbooks and accoutrements.  Thankfully, I managed to resist the temptation to buy yet another cook book !!

This time instead of a Thai Banquet, we cooked a Moroccan Feast …

Using ingredients sourced locally and mostly at Adelaide’s famed Central Markets, Barossa Valley chef Mark McNamara guided us through the preparation of nine Moroccan dishes – preserved lemons, harissa, warm green olives with pickled lemons, fresh sardine tagine with harissa, chicken & almond pastilla, Moroccan country style bread, tagine of lamb with saffron & thyme, couscous with green peas & butternut and a coiled almond and rosewater pastry.  Every dish was a delight, simple to prepare and will probably be added to my repertoire.

The unexpected highlight of the day was the tangy warm green olive dish … which as Mark said, would convert an olive hater to an olive lover.

We cooked for a while, ate and drank for a while, cooked a bit more and ate and drank a bit more, then stumbled out into the late afternoon sun, satiated and thinking that a quick nap might be next on the agenda …

Lamb, Saffron & Thyme Tagine
Chicken & Almond Pie
Sticky Rice dining room
Couscous with Peas & Butternut
Almond & Rosewater Pastry
Fresh Sardine Tagine
Green Olives with Pickled Lemons

Brrrrr it’s cold …

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This morning my outside thermometer read 3 degrees !!

This is the coldest morning I have recorded since moving to my new house four years ago, and the first time that I have ever seen frost in my “bottom paddock”.  For people who live in colder climates, 3C is nothing much to complain about, but this is supposedly sub-tropical Bellingen, and when you consider that one day last week we recorded 29C – one of our hottest ever August days – it’s all a bit of a shock.

Last week lorikeets were hurtling around the garden feeding on early blooms, the mango had started flowering nearly two months prematurely, and I was busy pruning and tidying up in anticipation of Spring.  But this morning my family of kookaburras, who usually visit the veranda for a breakfast snack, were hunched up high in a eucalypt  trying to catch the early morning sun. As for me, I’m eating my muesli in a patch of sunlight warming myself like a lizard.

Early morning visitor …

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Wallaby Visitor

There’s a patch of lawn at the back of the garden that catches the early morning winter sun, and around this time of the year I sometimes see a wallaby with her joey warming herself and nibbling the grass.  I remember earlier this week wondering if she would visit again this year, and this morning there she was …

She’s very timid so I had to take the photo through my bathroom window.  I suspect from the size of her tummy that she has a joey in her pouch, but this time it didn’t show its face.