Salt and corrosion

Television people seem to think that people who live in the country have two heads. Last night on MasterChef they took the contestants to a farm to cook for a hoe-down. What, MasterChef? I've lived in the country my whole life and have never been to a hoe-down. I've never even heard of one happening outside of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which is (a) very old and (b) American. Anyway, the contestant celebrated the forthcoming hoe-down by doing the heel-toe polka, which, again, MasterChef, is not something country people do. Not after they leave primary school, at any rate.

Then they started talking about what country people like to eat. In those words. 'What do country people like to eat?' asked one judge, as if we were exotic animals. Food that's hearty and warm and filled with flavour, apparently. I won't deny that country people like food like that, but I don't think we're alone there. (One contestant made gnocchi and the judge said, 'Why gnocchi? I would have thought, country people, gnocchi, why not do a baked potato?' To be fair, she stuffed the gnocchi up and would have been better doing a baked potato, but that's more to do with her cooking rather than country people's tastes.)

They had to do all their cooking outside on charcoal, because country people don't have ovens. Or houses. Also, because they were in sheep country, the only protein (MasterChef judges never say 'meat') they could cook with was lamb. They all cooked with lamb, except for one sensible soul who decided to do a couple of desserts involving apples and rocky road. (The judge's father, who owned this farm, pretended to punch him for this, because country people are apparently too manly for dessert and are also massive tools.) Honestly, if I went to a hoe-down and the only things to eat were lamb and rocky road, I'd be disappointed. Do you know what country people like, MasterChef? Variety.

Basically, last night's MasterChef: trying my patience.

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I have been quietly coveting a copy of the Super Dictionary for ages. If you've not heard of the Super Dictionary, my word, you've missed out on a treat. Basically it's a dictionary from the 70s, featuring superheroes in odd little scenarios, defining words by using them in sentences. (My icon today shows part of the definition of 'duck'.)

I have just discovered something I want even more than that: the Mighty Marvel Superheroes' Cookbook. No superhero was willing to put a name to the recipe for Stuffed Frankfurters (stuffed with cheese and peanut butter, held together with bacon), but Spider-Man apparently likes Bananas in Blankets (sugar-coated bananas in bacon blankets, that is). Those aren't the worst recipes listed, surprisingly.

After you've eaten like a superhero, you'll need to exercise like one, hence the Mighty Marvel Strength and Fitness Book, which is linked to within the cookbook article linked to above. It is just as mad as you'd expect, featuring, among other things, the Silver Surfer saying, 'I shall triumph over human lethargy!' That may well become my new personal motto.

I was a bit fed up yesterday, but not today. It's impossible to feel glum today, f-list, because I now own not one, but two - two! - containers of mushroom spores. As I've mentioned before, my mother always warned me about eating mushrooms that grow under trees, but she never said anything about ones that grow in boxes under the laundry bench. So in a few weeks I will be dining on portobello and oyster mushrooms. I've grown the portobellos in boxes before, but never oysters. They are in a tube that the mushroom company insists on calling a grow bag. I won't be calling it that because it sounds silly. I was also going to get some shiitake mushroom spores, but then I read that I had to provide my own log and drill holes in it with a special bit and plug them up with wax, and that all just sounded like too much hard work. So portobellos and oysters it is.

Then I found out that I could also purchase a small hive of stingless native bees and imagined myself as a famous stingless native bee keeper, supplying the world with stingless native bee honey from my one hive. But I will give that a bit more thought. I imagine they're a bit fussier than mushrooms.

Also, my mother came round for dinner before heading off to work the night shift at the hospital. We caught up on the big issues, like will the Phantom ever realise his wife is still alive and is being held prisoner under a fake name?* We are an intellectual family. My mother loves the Phantom. When I was little, she once used her powers of couture to send me to a Brownie fancy dress party as the Phantom, complete with striped shorts. None of the other kids knew who I was meant to be, but the Brownie leaders were impressed. I won fifty cents for Best Costume.

Then Masterchef Australia started again. O Masterchef Australia, how I've missed you. It is my second favourite program (after Collectors, the show about people who collect things). Masterchef started off with fifty cheftestants and had them do a barbecue. 'I'd do sausage in a blanket,' I said. 'And you wouldn't win,' said Mum. Which is true. But I would love to see someone dish up burnt sausage in a slice of white bread, just to see what the judges would say.

Anyway, then they had to make pavlova, which is where I definitely would have lost. I make pav using my grandmother's recipe. The Masterchef pavs had to be high and filled with puffy meringue. That's crazy talk in the Daisy family. We like a flat, cracked pav, with oozy meringue. One of the judges complimented a cheftestant for decorating her pav with mango and blueberry, 'a classic Aussie combination', as though no other nation has thought of putting them together. Another judge congratulated another cheftestant on her 'handsome meringue'. Not one of them decorated the pav with grated Peppermint Crisp, the Daisy family way. We are just too avant-garde. Although not quite as avant-garde as the cheftestant who served up caramelised banana with snapper and prawns for his barbecue dish.

Finally, I read that drinking twelve cups of coffee a day makes a person 67% less likely to develop diabetes than someone who doesn't. And 100% more likely to be permanently wired.


* Probably, say I. It will be as touching a reunion between a bald woman and a man in purple tights as you will ever see.

Am I the only person on my f-list reading mediumlarge? Because I shouldn't be. It's one of the few comic strips to consistently make me laugh (as opposed to Mary Worth, who always makes me laugh but for all the wrong reasons). I was particularly fond of the first panel in yesterday's strip.

I have been quite the busy bee today. I put together my new exercise bike for one thing, all by myself, and it hasn't fallen apart. Then I set the on-board computer and rode up a hill. The bike has a long neck, which does rather make me feel that I'm riding a giraffe.

Finally, this started as a comment I made on someone else's journal and I liked it so much I'm going to turn it into an entry. You know the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever, in which John Travolta struts along carrying a tin of paint to the funky stylings of the Bee Gees singing 'Stayin' Alive'? I love that scene; it's one of my very most favouritest scenes in any film ever. It gives John Travolta a get-out-of-jail-free card for any number of Look Who's Talking sequels as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, if that were me being followed by a camera as I went about my business down the street, the musical accompaniment would be Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear. I am sure of this. What would your opening credits pedestrian song be?