why are you photographing my eggs?

Does anyone else agree that the best kind of energy is when you're walking amongst a gathering of people, a social affair, and there's not one, not five, but more like fifteen different languages and ethnicities, bumping of one and other? Than Marrickville Markets are for you. When it comes to crowds you can usually count me out, but today I was bumping around with the best of them.

My dear friends, living in a nature wonderland near the Marrickville River, whom I rarely see, invited us to explore their little world on a heavenly Sunday morning. We'd spent the night with them, falling asleep at the dinner table than sleep walking to the Buzz Bar Cafe, so were now bushy enough to eat our way through the markets.

Is anyone a collector of crap? Or how about 500 magnets with 'I Love Australia'? The little squirty pump part of squirty bottles? Well M'ville Markets is also for you. Recycled Garbage is a creative mecca plopped off to the side of the community centre. It changes all the time, inviting all walks of life to come sift through massive, wooden squares of STUUUUUFF. Parents bring their children on rainy Sydney days, to go off with their imaginatioins and collect scraps of felt and naked bald barbie dolls. Way up the back there is planks of timber, sheet metal and endless tins of used house paint.

  All of this could be out the door and never seen again by next week.

All I can say, is that there should be a place like this in every community.

 Than there is the food. Like most markets where you can find tie-dye, there is usually pretty delicious food.

 

Today my friend leads us to a vendor under a shady tree, next to a lady selling fudge who assures us hers is the best. I believe her. She is living proof.

Our lady, who resembles a bee with mad hair, is giving us a bit of vego heaven. At first I wanted it all, than I got it all, than I ate it all, than I wanted more. Little balls and squares of imagination that fits in the palm of your hand and fits in the hole of your mouth.

First of all there is the Lebanese bread. Spread with what you choose. Homous and yogurty goodness for us. The bread is all rounded and hilly, like you have to go searching for your next organic morsal.

I should explain a little more clearly what this is all about. There's a whole bunch of plates filled with small bites of vegetarian and vegan bites. Rice and legumes, potato and carrot fillings with spices and fresh herbs. Oh joy.

I thought the coolest part was when her glass jar filled with shreaded red cabbage had a whole cabbage leaf used as the lid. Dandy I would say.

I think chickens and eggs are quiet nifty. I also like to eat both and one day in the near future I would like to have chickens pecking away in my back yard at worms being happy chickens. If they feel like it, they can offer me some beautiful eggs every morning. My story begins and ends like this: I was walking into the market when I see some photos of happy chickens and a big pile of eggs next to them. I thought I would take a photo of that photo and those eggs. The lady who owns that photo and those eggs thought that was a bad idea. She chased me down three stalls away, excused me and demanded she need to know why I was taking photos of her fowls. I told her we didn't have chickens where I come from. That is why you see this photo before you.

After a short encounter with my scrumptious market day, I will leave you with this. Anywhere you can perch on a thick patch of grass in the sun, in an inner city suburb, never knowing except for the planes that you are even in fact in a city, with a hand painted yoga sign, a recycled garbage centre, bogans, hippies, farmers, yuppies, families from every hidden corner of the world, food, gardens, pooing dogs and of course a procession of Somoans heading to their church, all in plain view, is somewhere to be on a Sunday morning.

Now in there for close up. It was just simply good.

Street food that doesn't need to roll you over and shake you up the wrong way.

tomato and basil sitting in a tree

It's fairly wonderful when you arrive in Australia a week or so after the last of the tomatoes have been picked. For a good six months now i've been facinating about bruschetta. Making it. Eating it. I couldn't bear to make something as delightfully simple as bruschetta and use tomatoes that have been shipped halfway across the world, or even produced in a hot house as near as California. I WANT TOMATOES. TOMATOES. NOT SHAPES THAT LOOK LIKE TOMATOES.

Something else that's very smashing is that my mum has enough basil in her garden to harvest for a pesto festival held somewhere wonderful for a good week. I can see it there now. Just life giving life to all that I breath in.

Another beautiful component of bruschetta is that you can use whatever bread you like. Of course a nice french loaf or turkish bread is the most fun. Little rounded rectangles of soft crunch. This time I used store bought turkish loaf. I was told that if I wanted the real deal that I needed to get to the bakery earlier on in the day. O well. This was mighty fine. A little drizzle of extra virgin drizzled over the top after being toasted under the grill. Mmmmmm mama. So much garlic.

Other than having the garlicy, basily, oil base left to add more tomato to the next day, there is the joy of eating this with my dad. My dad is a meat and three veg kinda fellow, and seeing him involved in mmmmmm's and drizzles of oil running down his face was pure delight.

It's just too splendid when you are able to create simple food with an explosive taste for people that need to close thier eyes for one last moment of bliss, than, it's gone, only until the next bite.

let the bread speak

It's time for a little bit of sentimentality. If the clouds decided to part ways than I would salute the Cascades to the east and the Olympics to the west goodbye. Instead , while waiting at the traffic lights, I was able to have some final eyebrow push-ups as the resident lunatics faught their battles up and down my clustered neighbourhood. All be it, we arrived at sea-tac hours before we took off, allowing us to sample some of our airports creative food ideas. Not really,just being silly, but we found a little wine bar that had great wine and a delicious menu with the food coming in at a close third on the tasty track. O well, we had the plane ride to look forward to, an excitable 14 hours of snacking on plane goods, flowing Australian wines to sample and endless movies to watch right? Only in my mind was that happening anywhere from San Fransisco to Sydney. If I wasn't begging Glenn to convince me that we were going to be okay and not crash into the Pacific Ocean, than I had mad motion sickness, the kind that you could imagine being chopped up than tossed into your food processor, pulsed, pulsed, pulsed, than poured. Not in anyway is that an exaggeration.

I think it was breaking point when my wine litterally flew out of the glass it was swimming in. I never knew turbulance was so mean.

I wonder if the bumpy ride had anything to do with the hunched over elderly gentleman carrrying a crucifix, man four foot nothing, crucifix four foot nothing. It was a only moderately disturbing, while walking to my seat, when I saw him hitting himself in the neck with his little old friend trying to calm him. I reckon he knew we were going down but raised his cross to the mightty force in protest. Thanks ole mate. I only wish I could have snapped a few photo's.

I must say it was a pretty sweet feeling landing in Sydney. The last few years of just wondering when the time would come. Plonk. Down on that runway. Deciding years in advance what I might want to eat first. What I might cook a bit later.

 I'm still a little shocked at how I never rememberd all the little amazing details of home. My gosh, just walking down the street in Marrickville or Clovally was a treat. Black cockatoos, lorikeets, whip birds, than travelling up the coast, what we thought was a dingo playfully jumping around in national park area.

A few people we told assured us that it was only a wild dog but we like to think we saw a dingo far from what many believe are only on Fraser Island.

The mission once we stepped out of the Kingford-Smith was to get our hungry, tired asses to the

 Wicked Van depot in Waterloo. Thats right next door to Redfern, with no place to go except the bottle shop at 9am for a longneck of VB. One of those you've gotta experience it yourself moments to realise just how exhausted we were after not only the flight, which would have been barable, but the 2 hour bus ride from the airport to Bondi Junction than on another bus all the way back to the same area we came from just took it out of us. There were beautiful, flowing tears and almost some wet pants from lack of food and sleep. We made it though and when we finally got on the road the only thing I had to worry about was staying on the left side of the road. Made it, with only a few times cruising down the right side, at night, when I was a little misguided from dusk lighting.

I never would have thought the first thing I was going to eat would be a hamburger, but it was a mighty fine one at that. The simple way. The way mum use to make. A handful of ground beef with onion and garlic, moulded into a flat disc and thrown on the grill. I could never forget the grilled onions. Sublime. The bun. Geez, so light the wind nearly blew it away. I don't even have any glorious photos, just toooo hungry. Than some sleeping went on, some dazed sleeping, parked at the beach, with the sound of families running around and funny dogs and dog walkers.

The best things in life are free. Well almost. It's free to get excited about all the great food i've been absent from, but far from free when I need to purchase great cheese, butter and Lebanese bread from a very small local milk bar. (More on the greatness and wonder of Lebanese bread soon).

Our first night served us well, with views of the Clovally Bowling Club. Although it was Friday night and the oldies were up for some fine bowls club grub and beer, yahooing out across the cemetary close by, we were out cold by 6pm, not noticing the hard board under the inch thick matress til' the next time we were blessed with sleeping in our van.

So much of this country to explore in every living moment. I'm facinated and have ultimately fallen in love with it. I don't know if it has been love all over again, but my eyes and heart are open now and that's what matters. I think it takes being away from a place that you know is somewhere there in your heart, just not being able to locate it at times, than coming back for to see it to really appreciate the endless joy of it. Travel; that's all I can say. Do it now. Don't forget.

P.S. Please comment. Please please please.

Indian moments between life updated

I've been messing about with settings and what not on here, having technical and clerical difficulties. Nothing too blown out of the water, though enough for me to pass some unnessesarily bad vibes onto Glenn, who has been sitting here next to me at times, an innocent bystander, in our adopted basement apartment. Although it's not at all handy to miraculously loose the spell check option on your blog settings, it's also not very handy to create a war with your husband. A war that could start over something that is meant to be fun and challenging for the soul is not my pick-a-path way today. Saying that, I, at times, have been known to allow my body heat to reach boiling point and spill haphazadly over the edges and into the great abyss. So right after my last post we decided to head  over to the water where I could drink tea and think about my childish ways. Which of course past when I realized that it was probably the madness in the high winds that was sending me a little sideways.

While living in and out of order at times, having the majority of pots and pans, recipe books and general inspiration all packed away and living in Columbia City, one must choose to cook one pot dishes. For a number of obvious reasons. One pot; dutch oven. Left overs; tastes better as the days go by. Mix it up; add extra ingredients later on. Last but not least, energy. You can disguise your effortless ways of preparing your usually perfectly sliced garlic and your geometically cubed onions with chucky vegi's and aromatic stocks and herbs.Who has the energy left to be so precise when you're working and packing and trying to be a sane wife? It does kill me to admit that I don't. O well. Comfort just takes me along for the ride and i'm more than happy to follow.

Only a week ago we were living across from an Indian grocery, one I would walk past if I didn't drive to work. Everyday there would be boxes of vegi's and signs that would display sales on baby goats. When you walked inside, down the back to the meat display cabinet, with the shiny clean windows, would be stuck photos of those very baby goats you are looking at skinned and portioned. I still chuckle everytime I go in there. These baby goats in the photo's look like some serious petting zoo babies. Especially the way they're looking up at the camera baaaring with there little pink tongues poking out.

I know for a moment there I might sound slightly sadistic, not very vegetarian of me. Though I did try once. I told and old chef friend ten years ago that I was stepping over to the other side, giving up the taste of flesh. He stopped speaking to me for three days. He was passionate about food, spreading my way what was the beginning of a food sensation in my life. He was the first person to teach me to treat food with respect. I guess that's why my local Indian market insists on displaying glossy photo's of edible adorables. Respect is all.

My one pot dish was to become an Indian feast. A peas and potato feast. I cooked it up the day before we ate than decided that we needed papadums. I've only seen these delicious, paper thin, crunchy morsals once over here and it was an embarassing display to say the least. So I was looking forward to frying up my own plastic looking discs at home. After I went on a voyage with the shop keeper in search of papadums, throughout the pasta aisle and than of course the rice aisle, with every other kind of pasta becoming what he was convinced was a papadum, we made it back to the counter where he took pleasure in giving me samples of Indian snacks that his fellow countryman alike come to eat. My favorite one's were the golden brown somosa that I never got to try and my least favorite were the tomato looking sweet and deep fried treats that I got to try too many times.

This recipe is nothing more than a bit of fun throughout the week when you just can't storm it up in the kitchen. I like to add any kind of Indian spices. Lots of chili and cardomon, cumin and cloves. Oh yes. They are the dream team. Cook that up with onions and garlic and they will have you coughing with joyous watery eyes. I like to pour in some homemade chicken stock and get the pot all excited. Once it you've got it simmering away and theres a good amount of liquid i'll throw in the sturdy veg. Potatoes it is. In they go with more stock if needed. Salt and pepper of course. Stir occasionally. If i'm adding peas and not going to eat until the next day than i'll just wait until about half an hour before serving.

This silly little recipe isn't anything to gee wiz about. It's merely an offering of inspiration. I'm about to go board a plane to Australia and for the past month or more i've been preparing for the trip. My first trip back there since moving to Seattle. So a nice silly little one pot dish is what one needs every so often. Enjoy the likes of whatever you create in your kitchen.

I'll be seeing you in a few days from that other hemisphere.

Life Updated (Part 1)

Oh dear blog and the small handful of faithful readers I have at the moment, I miss you so and have felt a small part of me at loss since my life has taken a turn for the distracted and busy in the last seven weeks. Knowing very well that life was in fact going to get quiet busy, I still jumped into my world of blog, setting my impatience free of restriction. This is a little update of what i've been doing with my time and to raise my arms up in glory for food, cooking and adventure. As much as my mum chooses hope over belief when I whisper the word 'promise', I am going to promise to never leave you again, for such a long time, readers of now and hopefully many more to come.

Since i've been absent I have set quiet a few lovely projects for myself. On the last day of Febuary I hosted a dinner. A family supper. I hosted this in honor of cooking up a storm and to get a Sunday night roast at my work rearing for the lucsious months of spring (and pumping bbq's in the summer..mmmm..meat on a stick). As I am yet to obtain some delicious photos from the table at Sunday Night Supper, it will be a wee few weeks until I get it together for a tasty spot on here. So stay tuned as you are.

Early into March, it was my birthday. A day I could have as much fun and enjoyment if there was nobody else in the room. In this case though, there was my husband and a couple of dear friends of ours. Whom decided that it would be a bit of a treat to fly in a very small sea plane (and an even smaller one on the way back), up to Victoria, BC. Of course the adrenalin of it being my birthday way overided the fear I usually get when in small planes, so to celebrate, we promptly ditched our bags at the hotel and headed straight for food and cold beer. In good old Mike and Ann fashon, they took us somewhere with a little touch of home.  I don't know, maybe it was drinking beer on the water with the sun shining, or maybe just a little old fashioned commonweath brotherly love. Or do I need to say sisterly? There is nobody here to ask, so i'm going with my feelings. Needless to say, this crickety old brewery on the harbour of Victoria was the perfect place to begin our birthday festivities, that would roll well into the night, with certain people a little worse for wear.

The place that did stand out from the rest, with the smell of Indian food still very fresh in my mind, was the Empress Hotel. From a distance it was grand and royal, than when you enter, it has that old, not very homey feel to it. As we twisted and turned up and around stairs we made it to the apparently ever so famous Bengal Room. We missed High Tea, so of course beers in cold handled glasses was what we were sipping for the next couple of hours. Glenn, my husband, and I usually get to Indian Buffet at least once a fortnight, shamefully. So sitting in a magficent room that looks like it was in the set of some parts of Ghandi, drinkning crisp cold beer and nibbling on those nice and nasty indian bar snacks you used to see eight years ago at party's was magical.

What a great way to spend the last birthday of my 20's. Turning 30, or whatever age for that matter, has never really got me all twisted in a frenzy. Take it full circle I say. Who know's, maybe I won't agree later in life, but now I do.

Geez, what else. Moving a lot, that's for sure. In the past 7 weeks or so Glenn and I have been gradually moving our life possesions, something I said I would hope to never do gradually again. But there we were, a couple of car loads at time, a couple of times a week, driving to Columbia City where Glenn's sister awaited our belongings to store in her garage. In between all this shifting, I still managed to collect more things, such as a food mill here and there. In honor of food mill, we invited our special friend Kalee over for potato gnocchi. Since I hadn't made gnocchi in about 5 years, I was a little size happy with these tasty morsals of dumpling. After I worked out how to make the food mill work (sometimes one just needs to ask for help), we made a mighty fine mess with some mighty fine starch. Like I said, it had been a while since making gnocchi and of course not following a recipe I just went on ahead and peeled those potatos, realizing after I did it that i'd already buggered it up. Off to the store to get more spuds. Boil. Seperate skin. Now we're having a messy fun with the food mill.  

Although gnocchi takes a little work, practice and loving care to get awesome, I think it's well worth the effort. That night after i scooped them out of salty, boiling water, I tossed them through a classic buttery and creamy sauce with garlic, mushrooms and peas. We had so much left over, that a few days later I browned them up all crispy like on the outside and still super light and fluffy on the inside. Just the way I like them.