This is an updated version of a spongati cake recipe by Ivan Day. Day got the recipe from William Jarrin’s “The Italian Confectioner” which was first printed in 1820. The cake is sort of like an English mince tart but in my opinion, much better.
Ingredients
For the pastry
225gr (8oz) plain flour
50gr (2oz) caster sugar (I use pure icing sugar)
100gr (4oz) unsalted butter (the Danish brand, Lurpak is excellent)
3 egg yolks
For the filling
115gr (4oz) white bread crumbs
115gr (4oz) walnuts
20gr (2/3oz) currants
20gr (2/3oz) pine nuts
450gr (1lb) honey (I use macadamia honey)
Pinch of ground cinnamon
Pinch of black pepper
Pinch of nutmeg
Icing sugar to dust the finished cake
Method
Preheat the oven to 150C (300F)
Sift the flour and sugar. Chop up the butter into small cubes and mix with
the flour, sugar and egg yolks until you get a breadcrumb like, consistency
(I did this all in a food processor). Roll the mixture into a ball and chill
for about an hour or so. I always rush this step and it makes the pastry
more difficult to control (it splits and cracks) when it’s rolled out, and
on a side note, in Jarrin’s original recipe he says to let it sit in a cool
place over night.
The next step is to mix the filling ingredients together.
Take 2/3 of the pastry dough and roll it out into a 22cm (8 1/2″) circle and place
the filling in the middle leaving a 4cm (1 1/2″) clear border which you turn upwards
to make a rim. I actually do all this in a 22cm (8 1/2″) springform baking dish lined
with baking paper which makes it all easier to control. Roll out the rest of
the pastry to cover the filling and base, then press the edges together.
Put several holes in the top to let out the steam and cook for about 40 to
45 minutes.
When the cake has cooled down, lightly dust it with some icing sugar.
This cake goes well with ice-cream, frozen yoghurt (my choice), custard or coffee.
By the way, for my regular visitors, sorry for not posting for a while and
my only excuse it that I’ve been making arrangements for my up coming
trip……. plus I’m just slack!
A little while back, I replaced all the balustrades around our home. During this renovation I made a mistake and cut the plank that was to be used as the fascia of the upstairs balcony, too short. It was treated pine suitable for outdoor use and it about 4500mm (approx. 15ft) long by 300mm (12″) wide and 50mm (2″) thick. It wasn’t a cheap piece of wood and to add insult to injury, I’d already painted it with about 4 coats of paint.
It really bugged me that it would be wasted.
Every time I saw the wasted plank it annoyed me. Another thing that was bugging me was my upstairs balcony. In short, it was a useless waste of space. The view from the balcony just looked into other people’s back yards and it was completely open to the elements which meant it was too hot in the summer and too cold and wet in the winter.
Our backyard is very small and the little vegetable garden beds that we have, needed to have their crops rotated so we didn’t build up too many pests. Trouble was that we only have two garden beds and I wanted to give the beds more than a year’s rest from any specific crop. This dilemma led to me using the wasted plank to make a planter box for the upstairs balcony.
From the plank I was able to make a planter that measured approximately 800mm (about 2′6″) x 1500mm (5′). I mounted the planter on 9 castors to make it easy to move. The castors came from a series of cheap office chairs that I’d been stupid enough to buy over the years.
Engogirl had been reading about a new theory (to me at least) of mixed crowded planting. Basically the book she was reading suggested that in nature plants take up whatever ground is available and natural growth is quite dense and varied in species. Apparently this crowded mixed planting helps to control pests that love monoculture crops. We decided to plant chillies, cherry tomatoes, basil (a good companion crop for tomatoes) and chives.
The upstairs balcony gets much more sun than the rest of the garden and it wasn’t very long before our efforts were paid of with lovely organic vegetables.
The planter has been so productive that we’ve jokingly named it, “the top paddock”. You’ll notice that we cover our tomatoes in brown paper bags to protect them from pests so we don’t have to use insecticides.
The tomato seeds we planted were called “Tommy Toes” and they are a heritage seed which means that they are an older strain of tomatoes from the 1800s. We chose heritage tomatoes because they are ”indeterminate” which means they bear fruit over a period of four to six months instead of the fruit becoming ripe all at once (determinate) like many modern tomatoes that are bred for industrialised agriculture that needs a crop to ripen all at the same time so as to be more efficient and economical to pick.
As I mentioned before, one of the main reasons why we grow our own tomatoes is because of how low quality the tomatoes that are offered by the supermarket chains are. I’ve never had a good tomato from a supermarket yet! The supermarkets basically dictate to the growers that they want a tomato that looks good for longer and travels well, rather than tomatoes that taste good.
A pox on all their houses!
To try and ensure that we will have plenty of tomatoes, we gave a few packets of some other heritage tomato seeds to my wife’s parents to plant on the property of their holiday home out at Tallong. This has already paid off because a few days ago my father in law dropped by with a shopping bag full of tomatoes. Of course we couldn’t use them all straight away so I semi-dried them
and put them in mixture of olive oil, herbs, garlic and capers.
Once you’ve eaten your own home grown tomatoes, you’ll never go back to those hard and tasteless excuses for tomatoes that the supermarkets sell.
I hope you all had a nice Christmas and an excellent new year!
As is usual, the time between Christmas and New Year’s day is packed with feasting and socialising. That’s my excuse for being slack with posting and I’m sticking to it.
Here in Sydney Australia it’s stinking hot right now and for reasons I don’t understand, I always get highly motivated to do major projects around the house at this time of the year. The smart time to do most of these laborious jobs would be in the cooler weather, but no, that would make too much sense. I never really feel like doing such things until it gets uncomfortably hot and humid.
Further proof that I’m a complete idiot.
Last year at about this time I landscaped the front yard in the blazing sun. This year I’ll be toiling in the backyard making a pond and replacing two toilet sets in the house.
The photo below is of Engogirl on the first day of this year, helping me with the construction of some bench seating that will surround the pond we are constructing.
After sweating our butts off for a day, we decided that instead of getting stuck into our backyard work and knocking it over quickly, we would rather get into an air-conditioned car and take couple of days off to visit Engogirl’s parents at their holiday home in Tallong (2 hours south of Sydney).
There are a few orchards in Tallong and stone fruits are in season. Engogirl’s father loves jam and makes his own.
Here’s Engogirl’s father’s recipe for apricot jam
Ingredients
Equal quantity of firm (slightly unripe) apricots and sugar. For the jam that was being prepared in the photo above, 1kg of apricots and 1kg of sugar were used.
Pectin (use only half the amount that is recommended on the packet or the jam will be too firm).
Water.
Glass jars.
Method
Place freshly washed jars with lids and sugar into an oven and heat up to 100 degrees C (which is boiling point at sea level or about 212 degrees F). The sugar is preheated so that it dissolves quickly and completely when it is added to the fruit. Wash, pit and halve the apricots. Place prepared apricots into a saucepan with a cup of water, then heat for about 15 minutes, until the fruit begins to soften, over medium heat.
When the fruit is soft add the sugar and pectin stir until dissolved. Bring the mixture to the boil and cook for about another 5 minutes, whilst continually stirring. You will know when the jam is ready to fill the jars when the jam mixture sticks to the side of the saucepan in thick blobs. When the mixture is ready, take the jars and lids out of the oven (don’t forget that they will be hot, so use oven mitts) and fill with the hot jam mixture and screw on the lids straight away. It’s probably best to perform this operation in your sink in case there are any spills or accidents.
It’s summer here and that means mangos are in season! My wife and I love them and have already been through 4 whole boxes of mangos this season. We usually make mango smoothies to beat the heat, but every now and again we use mangos in salads or I make a sorbet out of them.
Unfortunately many mango growers have opted to grow the large reddish mangos (such as the Calypso or the Bowen) that look so spectacular but don’t taste as delicious as the smaller yellow mangos (such as the Kensington or the Turpentine).
Trust me on this, the smaller yellow mangos are WAY better.
I usually start this recipe the day before I want to serve it and it makes about 2 litres (about 2 quarts).
Ingredients
Enough mango cheeks to fill up a 1.5 litre (3 pints) blender
400gr of sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)
100gr liquid glucose (3.5 oz)
Juice of 2 limes (about the size of a golf ball)
Method
Blend the mango cheeks until liquid. You may have to push the mangos down every now and again (Now I don’t have to tell you not to do this, while the blender is switched on…. do I?). When the mangos are liquid pour in the condensed milk, lime juice and glucose (you might have to warm up the glucose in the microwave for a few seconds so that it pours easily) while the blender is running and blend until it is thoroughly combined.
Chill the mixture for a few hours and then churn in an ice cream maker and return to the freezer until ready to serve.
I usually time this recipe by doing the blending just before I go to bed and I leave the covered mixture in the fridge until morning to cool down and I churn it in the morning and then place it in the freezer until the evening. I do it this way so the texture is firm but not hard and it’s easier to scoop.
If you’re wondering why glucose is used, it’s because it keeps the sorbet soft enough to scoop and gives it a smoother, less crystalline texture.
Don’t use frozen mango cheeks or tinned mangos (they taste like crap). Another reason why you shouldn’t try and blend frozen mango cheeks to speed up the churning is because the glucose will go as hard as a rock and won’t mix in properly.
I sit writing this, a little hung over and very tired.
It has been said in the media by various financial gurus (probably the same bums that got the world into the trouble it is in, in the first place) that the best way to get out at the current worldwide financial crisis is for people to keep on spending. Fortunately for my wife and I, we aren’t wealthy enough to have money to invest and our house is paid off, which of course means that we aren’t overly exposed to the financial chaos that is currently happening around the world.
When ever I travel in the developing World, I often find myself thinking about what some of the poor people in such countries must think when they see images from the developed world. I can understand how some people must look at such images and long for the lifestyle that is shown. Of course many of us in the developed world have the same longings.
Many people when they are asked what they most wish for, will reply that they wished they were rich. I guess a lot of people want more money so they don’t have to work so they can relax and it would seem that a lot of people think that owning more possessions will make them happy. I think, that if I had a lot more money I would certainly travel more and of course I would like to build the dream home. Nothing too ostentatious or grand, just nice. Having said what I would do if I had more money I’d like to say that I don’t actually long for it and I feel that I have quite a nice life.
Actually, I have a bloody good life!
On Sunday, my wife and I had a late lunch with some oenophile friends (Brett and Cathy) who were visiting Sydney from Adelaide (for a mutual friend’s wedding) and who had brought along some extremely fine wine with them. Both Brett and Cathy live near the Barossa Valley, which is Australia’s premier Shiraz, producing area and they know some of the most famous winemakers here in Australia. I have another wine loving friend, Peter, who I thought would enjoy meeting Brett and Cathy so I invited him over for lunch as well. When Peter found out what wine that Brett and Cathy were bringing and what food I was serving, he also brought over some of his best wines from his collection.
I enjoy drinking wine, but I find it very hard spending more $15 or $20 on a bottle of wine, because I just don’t think it’s worth it as I feel that I wouldn’t notice what the difference was. I don’t think it would be a very successful strategy to start developing aristocratic taste for exquisite wines I can’t really afford.
Thanks to Brett, Cathy and Peter, my wife and I got to try some wines that were so rare and expensive that I’d never thought in my wildest dreams, that I would ever even get to taste them. It’s just one of those things that I always thought that would be out of my reach much like the first world lifestyle offered to people of Third World. Legendary stuff that you only hear about, but you never actually get to experience.
Last night I got a glimpse what it’s like to drink the kind of wine that usually only millionaires can afford. Don’t get me wrong, Brett and Cathy are not rich. They have been buying wine for the last 20 years, when it is cheap and putting it in their cellar until it is ready to be drunk. Brett told me he bought the 1994 Hill of Grace that we drank, back when it was released for only $30. Unfortunately, the American wine critic Robert Parker found out about the wine and told the world how good it was and the price went through the roof. If you wanted to buy a bottle of 1994 Hill of Grace today and you walked into a bottle shop you could expect to pay $500 for that wine.
So what can I say? I sure as hell wouldn’t pay that kind of money for wine, but tell you what, I’ll help you drink it!
Yesterday’s lunch exposed me to a range of experiences that I hadn’t encountered before. Firstly, I was a little bit freaked out about what food I was going to serve to complement and do justice to such wine. Luckily, my friend Peter gave me some solid advice, and told me that the truffle risotto that I had planned as an entree would be excellent, and he said that he’d bring some French pinot noir to go with it. Peter then said that I should keep the flavours of the main meal simple so that wines that Brett and Cathy were bringing could be more fully appreciated, and not overwhelmed by strong flavours; so he suggested that I just cook a high-quality piece of meat and serve it with roast vegetables.
One of my faults is that I always confuse complexity with quality and it’s a good thing that Peter was around to make sure I didn’t make something unsuitable like a curry if I had of been left to my own devices.
Another thing that I found very interesting about being around people, who know so much about wine is that they just want to share what they have with other people. Brett, Cathy and Peter have been so open-handedly generous to me with their wines. I guess there is hardly any point in having nice wine unless you can share it with friends. Brett and Cathy also made a very interesting point, when they told me that all the winemakers that they know are very down to earth and natural people. Brett basically said, “look, they’re farmers and they’re not interested in poseurs”.
And I know what Brett meant when he said that, because I was at a dinner once, when one of the other guests, told me about his collection of Grange Hermitage (Australia’s most famous, and arguably best wine). So I said to him to him, “do you drink it much?” To which he replied, of course not, it’s an investment!
Call me kinky, call me weird, but I just don’t get that.
He was the sort of guy that just wanted people to know that he owned a collection of Grange Hermitage, and for him it was obviously a status symbol. As a matter of fact, I heard him say later on in the evening, ” oh, we were out on our 60 foot yacht the other day and the girls got really cranky with me because we ran out of champagne before lunch!” he kept referring to his yacht as a 60 foot yacht. I was asked later on in the evening, if I wanted to come sailing on the 60 foot yacht?
……….um……..
What does one say to such a question from such a person? So my answer to him was, “sure”; knowing full well that I’d only go on board with him at gunpoint.
So, on Sunday, surrounded by good friends, I saw another, more natural and relaxed side of the wine scene.
So what about the wine itself, how was it?
In a word, great!
And so it should be! The 12 wines, that the six of us (the sixth person was my wife’s uncle) polished off were worth well over $1000.
One of the rather strange and interesting things was, that we drank a French wine (1976 Chateau Cissac haut medoc) that was bottled in the same year that my wife was born. It would be a safe bet to say, that not many of us have drunk wine as adults, that is as old as ourselves.
I’ll tell you what though, knowing all about wine can sometimes undermine your enjoyment of it. As soon as Brett and Cathy tasted the Hill of Grace they both concluded that we had opened it too soon, and they should have probably left it for about another five years. Needless to say, I didn’t feel that way about it, because I am so ignorant about such things. As a matter of fact, I thought it was delicious, as was every other wine that was on the table. So much better than the “cleaning products” (to quote Tom Waites) that I normally imbibe.
Brett and Cathy also pointed out how some much cheaper wines, like the Wendouree can equal or surpass the much more famous and expensive wines, such as Hill of Grace. I guess that’s where there the rub is. To get the most enjoyment and value out of wine, you have to know something about it.
I think I’m well on the way to becoming a wine wanker!
The only negative to the whole day was that I had to get up at 4am and drive Bret and Cathy to the airport. Now that was like a bad dream!
Below is a video of Cathy going for a skydive recently for her birthday
I have a friend called Brett, who lives in Adelaide, South Australia, near some of the very best wine producing areas in this country.
Several months ago, Brett contacted me because he was in a bit of a bind with a purchase of a second hand guitar that he had made over the Internet. The guitar was an Epiphone Explorer bass that didn’t come with a case and it was sold on the condition that it was to be picked up by the purchaser. Trouble was, Brett lives in Adelaide and the guitar was in Sydney so he rang me up to ask me to go and have a look at it, to inspect its condition; pick it up, and then wrap it up for shipment by air to him.
The guitar was in the excellent condition that it was advertised and so I picked it up. Being a bass guitar meant that it had an extra long neck and to be honest, it was huge. Another thing that caused me concern was that the headstock bent back further back than the very back of the body of the guitar so that when it was laid down, the headstock was supporting the weight of the guitar. I just didn’t think that wrapping it in bubble wrap and cardboard was going to get it to Adelaide in one piece, so I rang Brett and told him about my fears for his new guitar. Unfortunately, because the guitar was so big, the carry cases for them quite rare, and therefore they cost quite a bit more than normal cases, so I offered to make him a wooden carry case for it.
Brett’s father owns an upholstery business, and as such, Brett has access to the materials to cover the case with, and the hardware to hold it together.
In the meantime, my friend Mark was going back to his home town of Adelaide (Mark and Brett grew up together) for a short trip, so he offered to take the guitar in its case to Brett.
Brett was very happy with the job that I did for him and he rang me up to thank me and to see if there was anything he could do for me.
I know that Brett has a large wine collection of very high quality Australian wines, so I said to him, half jokingly, just bring around a bottle of ”Hill of Grace” (one of very the best wines made in Australia, at any price, which I know he has quite a bit of) next time he is in Sydney, knowing full well that probably wouldn’t happen for quite a while and that would let him off the hook feeling obliged.
Brett surprised me by replying that he would be coming to Sydney at the end of October for Mark’s upcoming wedding and that he would be bringing a few bottles of wine with him.
As a rule, I don’t really have that much time for the whole wine wanker scene. I consider myself a bit of a wine philistine in that I don’t believe that one should spend a lot of money on things that one probably wouldn’t appreciate anyway, just for a pose. Having said that, I have three friends who have extensive knowledge about wine and large collections who have patiently dragged me, kicking and screaming like the low class trailer trash that I am, into a better understanding of oenophilia.
Over the last couple of years, my friend Peter (who collects wines), has been generous enough to share his knowledge and wine with me. So it was with great pleasure I was able to invite him to a barbecue at my place on this coming Sunday with Brett and his wife to enjoy the wine that was coming.
Last night, Brett sent me an e-mail with a photograph of the wines that he is bringing, so I looked them up on the Internet to find out a bit more about them, to try and gauge what I should cook to go with such wines.
I got the shock of my life when I found out more about the wines that Brett is going to be bringing along.
The wine is worth at least twice as much as the guitar and one of the bottles, the 1992 Wendoree Shiraz Malbec is quite rare, and is considered by many to be a spectacular wine.
The 1994 Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz is of such quality and fame that puts it in a price range that I thought I would never ever get to taste.
The 1993 Turkey Flat Shiraz is made from some of the oldest shiraz vines in the world. Apparently, the original Shiraz vines in France were wiped out by phyloxia (a nematode) , and that modern French shiraz vines have been grafted to the root stock of a native American variety of grape from the Mississippi region. Which is ironic because the nematodes were first brought to Europe from America. It seems that the French had to import their current shiraz vines from here in Australia, South Africa and South America.
As I write this, it makes me think about the famous Australian bush walker, Paddy Pallin, who once said, something along the lines of, “if you know the names of a few trees, when you look at the bush, it’s not just bush any more”. I’m starting to feel that way about wine, in that the more I know about it, the more interested I become in it and therefore, the more I enjoy and think about it when I drink it.
So to make sure that I do justice to Brett’s generosity in sharing his fabulous wines (that I don’t deserve), I will be going out and buying the absolute best piece of meat to barbecue for us this Sunday. Probably the best meat to barbecue (I have a kettle style Webber barbecue that burns charcoal) that you can buy here in Sydney would be a whole Scotch fillet of organically grown, aged Angus beef.
Spring has well and truly sprung. It’s almost like someone just flipped a switch. One day it’s cold, overcast and windy and suddenly the next day is clear and hot. The weather has been so glorious that my wife and I spent last weekend pottering around in the garden planting new plants (mainly Australian natives as they’re much more hardy and require far less water) and re-oiling our outdoor furniture.
Although our back yard is very small, we have over the years made it into a very nice place sit and relax. My idea of heaven is to sit outside in the morning with my wife and read the weekend paper together then do a bit of gardening during the day to be followed by a barbeque at night. As a matter of fact that’s just what we did. On Saturday night we had the neighbours over to help us eat some barbequed and smoked loin of pork and knock over several bottles of wine whilst chilling out to Gabin
It was announced in the papers here in Australia last week that Starbucks is going to close about 75% of its stores in this country. The fact that of the 84 Starbucks locations in Australia, 61 will be closed, is a resounding slap in the face to an arrogant multinational giant.
Over the last several years I have been back and forth to North America, and I have constantly been amazed by the amount of people who think that Starbucks makes a good coffee. It used to bug the shit out of me when locals over there used to drag me into Starbucks for a coffee like they were doing some poor clueless bumpkin a favour. I’d always go kicking and screaming, saying that “don’t you want to support a smaller business that actually makes good coffee?” My protests were usually met with blank stares of non-comprehension and embarrassed mumbles of, “but they make good coffee”.
“NO THEY DON’T!” I would impotently counter.
Saying that I hated Starbucks produced on my host’s faces, expressions reminiscent of a puppy being smacked over the nose with a rolled up newspaper. I’d try to explain how bad the coffee was, and they just didn’t get it. I’d just get that hurt puppy dog eyes thing. Then I would try to explain that it is better to support small local businesses than some large chain. They still didn’t get it. More sad little eyes. I also tried to explain that the insincere and obsequeious “crawling for tips” demeanour of Starbucks staff wasn’t actually good service.
It’s demeaning to customers and staff alike. It pains me to see people grovel.
I even tried pointing out to them that the cakes that they offered were very poor, but to no avail. It was like trying to explain what an orgasm was to plankton.
My wife has a poster above her desk at work that shows a pig sitting in mud, with the caption, “never try and teach a pig how to sing. It’s a waste of time and it irritates the pig”
Not only is the coffee at Starbucks very mediocre, but all the stupid names that they name their coffee irritates the hell out of me.
“Just give me a fuckin cappuccino you grinning crawler!”
Here in Australia we have a large Italian population that has thankfully dragged the Anglo Irish majority into an appreciation of what a good coffee should taste like.
It always seemed to me, an incredibly arrogant act of hubris that Starbucks tried to sell their bland crap here in Australia. One would have thought that a business which has all the resources of such a large company would have done a little bit of market research. We have a very well established and sophisticated coffee culture here.
The only reason why Starbucks does so well in North America, is that outside of the very large cities, it is incredibly hard to get a good cup of coffee. A couple of years ago I spent a week in Santa Fe, and to my consternation I wasn’t able to find a decent cappuccino the whole time I was there. One would think that in Santa Fe, which is the second-largest art market in North America, there would be some demand for a decent coffee and that demand would be catered for.
In a week in Santa Fe, I did not have one single decent cappuccino.
One time, when I asked for a cappuccino, I was brought milkshake glass full of whipped cream and extremely weak coffee. I was getting so sick and tired of getting such stupid concoctions that I asked to see the manager and I thought I’d straighten him out. Perhaps I could give him a lesson in how make a real cappuccino, after all, I have a espresso machine at home.
How hard could it be?
When I told the manager that a milkshake glass full of cream wasn’t a cappuccino and that I was willing to show him how to make a proper one, he indignantly retorted, “but I was taught how to make cappuccinos by Starbucks”, as though it was something to be proud of!
Oh, well at least I can be happy with the fact that there is only 23 Starbucks stores left in Australia. With any luck they’ll go belly up as well.
It’s too bad that McDonald’s have smarter marketing people, and they have researched the local market so that they produce some products that at least gives a nod to the local demands. I’d like to see McDonald’s and all those other horrible fast food chains go the same way as Starbucks.
All last week, my wife (a senior analyst specialising in computational fluid dynamics) had to work late to get ready a tender that was due in Canberra on Friday at 2 p.m. Due to various hiccups involving upper management not being available to sign off on various documents and contracts due to vacations and various other commitments, the last courier down to Canberra was missed.
After a discussion between my wife and her boss at about 8:30 on Thursday night, it was decided that the tender was to be delivered by hand. Both my wife and I didn’t mind being asked to take the tender down to Canberra because we are always happy for an all expenses paid, drive in the country. The other pluses were that we could stay at my wife’s parents holiday home in Tallong on the way back and I would get to take some more photographs with my new camera.
Since it is the middle of winter here in Australia we had fairly stormy weather nearly all the way down. I kept wanting to stop and take pictures of the dramatic skies but we didn’t because we wanted to make sure the documents were delivered in time. We reached our destination, with one and a quarter hours to spare.
Just outside of Canberra is a fantastic little restaurant known as the Poacher’s Pantry, which specialises in smoked meats. To reward ourselves for our dash to Canberra we had a very delicious lunch that consisted of a smoked duck ragout as an entree and a red curry of smoked chicken for a main all cooked and presented in the style of “mod Oz” (modern Australian, which is a blend of European and Asian cooking).
After lunch, the weather, alternated between pouring rain and brief moments of light drizzle.
Since our car is continuous four-wheel-drive, I don’t really mind that much driving in the rain, but I was being constantly distracted by how dramatic the skies looked and since we’d already dropped off the tender I was able to use a bit of time to take a few photographs.
Every now and again the heavy cloud would open up to reveal little patches of an almost electric blue sky.
About 30 Minutes Drive northeast from Canberra, the highway to Sydney passes by Lake George. Due to the weather conditions here in Australia, Lake George is quite often dry and usually just looks like a grass covered plain.
After about another hour and a half, just as the light was beginning to fade, we arrived at the small village of Tallong. My in-laws holiday home is 10 km down a narrow and winding dirt road, which really isn’t that big a deal in the day time, but at night, there is a very real hazard of hitting a wombat. Wombats are sometimes described as being the “bulldozers of the bush”. Although they are not very big (about the size of a very fat corgi), they are solid muscle and gristle that will badly damage a car if you hit one. Driving down the dirt road is always stressful at night due to the chance hitting one of those brownish-grey, gristly speed bumps, as it darts and out in front of your car. In the past we’ve had to dodge about 6 in one night and there are always dead ones on the side of the road.
Another little known hazard here in Australia is that eucalypt trees are made up of extremely hard (much, much harder than oak) but very brittle wood and the branches are known to break off during high winds. Every year, there are a few people who are killed by falling tree limbs. It is common knowledge here, that you never camp under a tree.
By the time I got to my in-laws holiday home I was absolutely shattered. The pouring rain had made visibility especially bad and my nerves had been racked by the noise of falling branches, hitting our car. Only last year some unfortunate guy had been crushed while driving his car by a falling tree.
I cooked a dinner of rolled chicken (chicken breast and prosciutto with basil wrapped around weisswurst) and wine sauce on a bed of wilted English spinach. My mother-in-law made a delicious crumble for desert which we had with some of my homemade calvodos sorbet.
The rain poured and the wind shook the house all night but by the time morning came around, the weather had eased off and the skies were once again clear and blue.
The view from the guest bedroom window is spectacular.
I got up early and drove the 20 km round trip to Tallong to get the weekend paper, so we could have a nice relaxing Saturday morning.
On Sunday, my wife and I helped her parents remove noxious weed (fireweed, poisonous to livestock and fast spreading) and retrieve logs for firewood from the bottom of their property. As we would move the logs with the aid of a tractor, little Eastern Yellow Robins (Eopsaltria Australis) would appear to take advantage of the uncovered insects.
As we walked back up the hill towards the house we came across this poor old battered Swamp Wallaby (Wallabia Bicolor).
It had chunks of fur missing from the base of its tail and from its shoulder plus its ear was torn up. My guess is that it had been mauled by feral dogs.
