Salt and corrosion

Here is a thing that made me laugh: All the comments on every recipe blog. Yes.

Last night, I was... I'm not allowed to say 'baby-sitting', so let's just say sitting with my mother's partner, John, while she went to her sewing group. His not-dementia is getting worse and she doesn't like leaving him unattended for more than an hour or so. (The other day she had to come into town for something or other and he decided to stay home. He thought he would have a nap and, mindful of fire hazards, went round the house unplugging everything, including the fridge.) So on sewing nights, when she is away for three or more hours, they have dinner with me, then John stays while my mother goes out.

Fortunately, Tuesday night television features a big block of his favourite shows, those being anything with the words 'crash' and 'investigation' in the title. Last night we saw car crash investigations, air crash investigations and train crash investigations. So that was fun.

I appreciate that if you are vying for the role of Doomed Pilot Of The Week in Air Crash Investigations, you are not necessarily the best actor in the world. (I mean, maybe you are and things just haven't gone your way. But probably not.) Although, actually, the pilots last night were fine. The air traffic controller of the week, though, he was terrible. I think he was trying for 'understated and calm', but what he gave us was 'slightly perplexed'. So the pilot radioed ground control and said, 'May day, may day, we're being hijacked and I've been hit on the head with a hammer, we need an ambulance and armed intervention, do you copy?', and the air traffic controller sort of frowned, as if to say, 'Oh, what a pickle'.

Today is Australia's Biggest Morning Tea, which is a charity thing. Eating cake for cancer*. One of my colleagues is very keen on this sort of thing. He had us eating cake for cystic fibrosis last year. I had something happening that day and didn't volunteer to contribute any cake, so I put my hand up this time. I gave them orange cake. It seemed to go down a treat. The person cutting it did that horrible thing where she only cut slivers. I mean, well done on her fine motor skills because she got the slices so fine, but I prefer a generous slice myself.

The cake's official title, per the recipe book, is Moist Orange Cake, but the word moist has a funny effect on some people. I don't find it terribly attractive myself, but I can live with it. But there's no alternative here, is there? Damp Orange Cake? Wet Orange Cake? Not Dry Orange Cake? None of them sound appetising.

You'll be pleased to hear I'm done with essays. For now. I mean, there'll be other essays next term. Now I am creating a case study about a how an important decision was made in my workplace, and, oh, I am quite good at this. I was pleased with my attempt in the first place, and then we had to put them on-line for discussion, using cunning pseudonyms for our companies (I called mine 'the company'). Compared to the others, mine is precise and salient and gets the job done with no waffle, and I was basking in my hitherto unsuspected ability to write management case studies.

Then I realised I've been bitching about my work here for ten years, so I've had a lot of practice. It's not a hidden talent at all. I've been working at it. Hmph.




* BIG WINNER IN CANCER RAFFLE, claimed the local paper in a not-unrelated story. It meant, of course, that someone received a substantial prize in a raffle aimed at raising money for cancer research, not that a giant won a tumour.

I keep getting these consumer survey emails, which I generally ignore. The latest one asks:

When it comes to Christmas season entertaining, which is your favourite cheese brand?

What a lot of assumptions packed into that question. That I entertain, that I entertain at Christmas, that I entertain at Christmas with cheese, that I entertain at Christmas with only one cheese, that I entertain at Christmas with only one cheese that comes from a single, preferred brand. That was too much thinking for me, so I deleted it. But this year, you're all invited to my one-cheese Christmas party.

Here is a book meme stolen from catyah: The rules are: using only books you have read in the last year, answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title.

Describe yourself: The Manticore - Robertson Davies
How do you feel: Fever - Mary Beth Keane
Describe where you currently live: Cold Shoulder Road - Joan Aiken
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Tiny Islands - Dixe Wills
Your favorite form of transportation: Black Ships Before Troy - Rosemary Sutcliff
Your best friend is: The Chieftain without a Heart - Barbara Cartland
You and your friends are: The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton
What’s the weather like: The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey
You fear: The Monster in the Box - Ruth Rendell
What is the best advice you have to give: Hamlet, Revenge! - Michael Innes
Thought for the day: Show Me the Numbers - Stephen Few
My soul’s present condition: In Search of a Homeland - Penelope Lively

I read a book called Cake last year and I was tempted to copy and paste that all the way down. Describe yourself: Cake. Your best friend is: Cake. What is the best advice you have to give: Cake. It's the answer to everything: Cake.

When I arrived at work yesterday, I discovered that I had sent myself an email at 1:17am Saturday. Subject line: Paper aeroplanes. No message. I really must have been unwell, because I have (a) no recollection of doing this or (b) no idea what I meant.

We went out for a farewell lunch for a colleague today. We had a farewell lunch for her last year when she left to go overseas, but then she came back, and now she is going again. I sort of resent having to think of two things to write in a card. It's hard enough thinking of one. Anyway. Good luck to her.

Lunch, though. I ordered a twice-baked goat's cheese soufflé. I noticed on the menu that other things mentioned if they came with salad or vegetables or whatever, but the soufflé didn't. So I asked, just to make sure, then ordered a salad too. Which was just as well, because the soufflé, though tasty, was tiny, smaller than my pumice stone, which is no help to you as a measurement. As big as a toad? A bit larger than a large mouse? Perhaps not the best comparisons there. At least the salad was plentiful, taking up a large, rectangular plate. Plentiful, but not... it was a plate of iceberg lettuce, always my least favourite of the salad leaves. Not the tender leaves, either, but the thick exterior ones. It had six paper-thin slices of radish and six chunks of cucumber, and one lettuce leaf had some chopped chives in it. That's not much of a salad, is it?

Back home, the Christmas with Innovations catalogue arrived today. It featured the sentence Slate - the perfect temperature for cheese!, which is neither a sentence nor a sentiment I have ever considered.

I have returned to the land of the living. Not that I was dead before. Just doing audit work. But that's over. I just have to report to the board tomorrow, and we know how well that usually goes. Fingers crossed.

This was on the cover of the newspaper's Sunday supplement:


I've just realised that my photo cut off the end. What it says is: BILL GRANGER COOKS WITH COCONUT, FLAWLESS BEAUTY, MICHELLE BRIDGES + MORE. What an esoteric ingredient list. Take that, Heston.

The seed catalogue from the heirloom seed site I use arrived a couple of weeks ago. So I worked out my winter seed needs and sat down to do my order on Saturday, 9 March. The parsnip seeds listed in the catalogue weren't on the website, which was odd, because normally they list everything and mention if it's out of stock or not in season or whatever. So I sent them an email via their contact page. I didn't expect an answer over the weekend, obviously, and not on the following Monday, which was a public holiday, and not really on the next day, when they probably had a backlog of emails from people like me to work through. I didn't get a response all week, though, so this Saturday just past I did my order without the missing parsnip seeds. And so of course yesterday, nine days after my email, I got a response. Just 'the seeds are there now, so try again'. But I can't be bothered now. I'll make do without parsnips, or get seeds from somewhere else. Nine days is too long, isn't it? Or am I being unreasonable?

Tomorrow: The Saint and the Sinner!

I saw an ad last night for a vacuum cleaner. Some sort of super vacuum cleaner that gives no loss of suction power. What's more, it comes with its own generator, so you, and I swear, this is what the voiceover said, 'get portable no loss of suction power'. So that's handy. And awkwardly expressed.

Today the mobile Detox Your Home service visited the City by the Sea. It comes once a year, just like Santa! Other years, you could just rock up to the livestock sale yards any old time on the appointed day, and the Detox people would take your chemicals and paint tins and whatnot. Not this year. No. I had to register online to get a number; once I had that, I could choose a window of time. The morning was all booked up, so I got a window between twelve and one this afternoon. I had to go between those times, or I would be turned away. I had to take my number with me, or I would be turned away. How organised is this?, I thought. It's going to be like a military operation. Anyway, so I went today, and mine was the only car there. So that was an anti-climax.

I had a nearly empty tin of paint and an old bucket filled with assorted batteries, light globes and spray cans. The bucket has a huge crack in it, rendering it useless for liquid-carrying, so I said to the Detox man, 'You can have that, too,' and he said, 'Nah, sorry love, we can't take rubbish.' So I've still got the bucket. (I notice on their website that they have a list of things they won't take: motor oil, industrial/farm chemicals, asbestos and ammunition. And buckets, apparently, although they don't mention that.)

After that, my mother rang to say that she and her neighbour, Jan, were going to the local embroidery guild's annual show, and would I like to come? So we did that, which was nice, and then Jan had to go to the ATM, so my mother and I loitered discreetly while she did her banking. 'It's no good,' she said, coming back to us. 'It won't work.' The man who had been queuing behind her finished his transaction and walked off with his money. 'It worked for him, though,' she said. 'Come on, you two try.' So we went over to the ATM and Jan stuck her card in. A picture of a numerical keypad appeared on the screen, with instructions to enter the PIN and press ENTER. Jan started poking the numbers on the keypad. 'No, no,' I said. 'That's just a picture. Try the keypad at the side,' and I pointed to the physical keypad at the side of the machine. That worked. Hooray!

On the strength of that, my mother said, we all deserved a hot drink and a cakey thing. I had a hot chocolate and a macaron. Where available, I will always go for a citrus-flavoured macaron, but there wasn't any obviously citrus-coloured ones there, so I ordered one that was a lovely dark yellow with a brown filling. When the waiter brought it over, he said apologetically, 'Do you know what flavour this is?' I told him I thought it was caramel. He shook his head. 'Vegemite.' Well... okay. 'You can swap it if you like.'

No, I said, I will give it a go. And you know what? It wasn't bad. The salt of the Vegemite offset the sweetness of the macaron, and if I hadn't been told what it was, I don't think I would have guessed. Now I'm home, the internet tells me that Vegemite macarons are a real thing, so you can make your own.

In an attempt to use some of those excess cucumbers, I have been looking up cucumber recipes. Today: cucumber yoghurt cooler, which is a drink. A drink featuring cucumber, yoghurt, garlic, salt, pepper and fish sauce. An interesting experiment, but not one I'll be repeating. Maybe the cucumber lemon spritzer will be better.

There was a jawbone on the beach this morning; long and black, with pointy white teeth in it. So that was exciting.

I meant to say yesterday when I was talking about Christmas that the supermarket was making something of a fuss about its Christmas pudding range. Only to be expected, I suppose. Anyway, one of them was a pudding with a hidden orange inside it. Very festive. Like so:



Anyway, searching for that photo to show you revealed that this hidden orange phenomenon is old hat in Britain, where it was unveiled in 2010 as the brainchild of Heston Blumenthal. So, almost disappointing in its blandness, then.

I have been contemplating whether I like this idea. On balance, no: I think it looks interesting, but I find candied orange a bit chewy, so I wouldn't be thrilled to find a great chunk of it where I wasn't expecting it.

While I was out buying green groceries today, the supermarket had a special display of a new stock of mandarins. I love mandarins, so of course I snapped some up. Can you guess why they're called sumo mandarins?



I know this is a little early, but it came up in conversation today: if you were going to purchase one of these Advent calendars as a gift, f-list, which would you pick? The forest or the dragon?

I like dragons, but I am leaning towards the forest, I think.

While I am asking questions: what can I do with perfume that doesn't agree with me? Someone gave me a bottle of Sunflowers by Elizabeth Arden for my birthday, quite a large bottle of it, and it turns out that daisies can't wear Sunflowers. I knew that as soon as I saw it, because the perfume is dark yellow, not the watery, greenish stuff I usually like. And I was right: it gives me a headache. The giver is going to ask, though, so I am hoping to come up with an alternative use. The problem is, any alternative use I can think of will still involve me smelling it, won't it?

I bought a purple cauliflower the other day. It causes quite a disconnect when I'm eating it, because it's so... purple, but tastes just like cauliflower. Tonight, I baked a couple of florets with olive oil, lemon juice and chilli, and it came out pink. Hot pink cauliflower! I imagine it was some sort of reaction to the lemon juice? It tasted all right.

Today I bought a train ticket on-line for the first time. It's like living in the future! Only they don't let you print the ticket. I have to take the order number to the station, where a ticket will be issued to me, which seems to defeat the purpose of buying it on-line.

This week's random word:

12. Marjoram

Well, now. Marjoram is part of the family Origanum, and so is related to oregano. It turns out what I call marjoram is also known as sweet marjoram, and what I call oregano is also known as wild marjoram. So there we go. The name comes from the Middle English word marjorane, which comes from the Mediaeval Latin marjorana, which is a variant of majoraca, an alteration of the original Latin amāracus, which comes from the Greek word amā́rakos, which means... marjoram. So that's quite a nice little circle.

This is what my herb book has to say about marjoram:

Sweet marjoram was introduced into Europe in the Middle Ages and was in demand by ladies 'to put in nosegays, sweet bags and sweet washing waters'. Its leaves were also rubbed over heavy oak furniture and floors to give a fragrant polish. In thundery weather, dairymaids would place marjoram by pails of fresh milk in the curious belief that this plant would preserve its sweetness. This task might well have been followed by marjoram tea—advised by the herbalist, Gerard, for those who 'are given to overmuch sighing'.

Also, you can make a strong infusion to use as a hair conditioner.

Next week: cowpuncher. Apparently that's a word. Lucky 13, hey.

I've just worked out what to do for next week's word. I'm looking forward to it.