Letters from Wetville

The best part of today, even for a non-television watcher, is that Paul Henry has resigned. More domestically, the cardy I began six months ago , is still on needles. I am about 2/3 of the way through the first sleeve. The completed back and both fronts are nestled in my knitting bag. It was all very well fancying a lighter woollen garment which was less bulky at work, but at this rate it will take longer than a pregnancy. Yesterday I had a go at a Snak Log substitute, something I'd been meaning to try for months . Having misplaced my Edmonds book for the 31st time, I decided to start with this online recipe . I whizzed everything up quite finely with my whizzy stick machine and this meant the dried fruits (papaya, cranberry and apricot) were not specifically detectable to the boy who claims not to like them in baking or indeed on their own. I put some sunflower and linseeds in as well. Then I ground up some dark chocolate (Whittakers Ghana is on special in my local supermar...

I've finished the biography (the Artemis Cooper one) of Elizabeth David. I loved my adventure into her world with all the enthusiasm of a voyeur who can choose when to begin and when to slip away. Often I flag part way through biographies, but I wanted to know everything Elizabeth David did. The term 'Mrs David' was one which she recognised as very useful. She saw marriage as somewhat essential for a woman of her era (and class, but really I suspect 'era' still covers it). I was struck by the number of people in her circle who divorced, sometimes multiply. It seems this scourge to morality and family life only became so once 'everyone' was doing it, perhaps from the 1970s. Or could it be that divorce and damnation was ever present and current conservatives choose to see it as a 'this generation' malaise rather than face what none of us wants to: our parents and grandparents and generations before all had sex, not always with one person only, a...

I had a few days off from thinking about the politics of food but it does seem to catch up with me with lightning speed and here I am again. When I heard about the Labour Party's proposed policy to remove the GST on fresh fruit and vegetables earlier this week, my first thought was about compliance costs. On my next blog surf I noted similar concerns from Homepaddock . Only Homepaddock goes further (I like her writing but I tend to be opposed to her politics) and quotes Bill English's attack on the proposed policy. Here is the original link with English's comments. I link to that because in it are some figures which don't make logical sense to me. Quote no.1: The $250 million annual cost of the move, divided among all New Zealanders, is worth, on average, just over $1 a week - less for low income earners and more for high income earners. This seems plausible from the outset, but the following does not fall into line with it: Quote no.2: The Tax Working Group las...

Amongst the food writing I consume, there is nary a word for sausages. I've been pontificating about why this is. After all, sausages use up the otherwise unwanted leftover bits of a carcass. It has meat fat in it and a long pedigree which dates back to when people made the sausages with the actual intestines of the animal as the casing. For the eco-meat brigade who contend that it is okay to meat so long as we use every part of it and eat it reverently and kill it humanely and make sure to say karakia first, surely the humble sausage has something to offer? But in my reading, sausage does not feature. For the pro-meat fat brigade, represented on my bookshelves by Ms Sally Fallon herself, you would think that good old greasy sausages would have something to offer. Not according to her Nourishing Traditions . I have been thinking that the reticence of such a book regarding such a useful food is a kind of snobbery. Sausages are fast. Sausages are useful food for busy families...

I haven't been posting this week because I am too busy reading and thinking. Not quite true, I also managed to be at work almost all of the time Fionn was at school (never the plan), to fit in celebrating being married for an entire decade, finding a new babysitter who we all love which hopefully means we will go out, just the two of us adults, again before our 11th wedding anniversary, planting some celery, kale, broccoli and violas, sleeping not enough, thinking about earthquakes and of course making zillions of meals. I've thought about the outrageousness of the idea that woman cannot work and parent and partner. I stumbled upon some truly doozey internet stuff about the evils of feminism while I was looking for information about eating parts of a pig. Such that I stopped researching pig eating. I got so busy I couldn't make it to the Blackball working class history project meeting and I can't see I will be at the next one either. I'm not sure if I should res...

Sally Fallon is wary of pig meat and has no recipes using it. Paul Pitchford of course doesn't like it but he doesn't like meat anyway. Jewish and Muslim traditional food rules prohibit it. Now, amongst my latest stash of food books from the library (such fun, so much better than netball or watching tv), I find that Peter D'Adamo of blood type diet fame doesn't seem to like pig meat either. I love bacon, I love ham and ham soup. I love roast pork and salami. The awesome gelatine-intense stock you can get from pig trotters seems to team with good health messages to me. So I'm curious as to the origins and reasons for the pig taboo. I'd love to hear of all theories, hypotheses and examples. [Off to read the rest of the food books...]

We tried some new vegetables today. Earth gems, boiled like spuds only not for quite as long, then some butter over the top and served with roast chicken and broccoli. Let's not dwell on the chicken, possibly the most ethically loaded food around. Everybody ate them! The children called them earth germs and asked to have them again. Sharon Astyk, who is forever writing thoughtful intelligent posts, wrote here about cooking skills and the need to adapt to preparing foods currently unusual to us. While I have some reservations about the extent of the crisis which she predicts (I don't think we are all of a sudden going to lose all role specialisation, not even in 100 years, and the role of food access in social stratification and role specialisation is central), I decided that she makes a valid point. Hence my next project(s): to learn to make and like meals with jerusalem artichokes, globe artichokes and kohlrabi. All of these things are growing in my garden now, so clearl...

I can tell by the way I've been binge cleaning. It is always always a portent. Brighid and I scrubbed the corners of the kitchen floor, with a steelo pad and some baking soda no less. Then we swept and swept and swept the entire kitchen floor and then I washed and then I got cloths out and dried it by hand (it is a small kitchen) so I could get back in there and carry on transforming. I cleaned the shelf of supposedly just tea bags and eggs and the old fashioned scales which hold the eggs (but actually the groaning holder of many recipe books, too old lemons and bananas, school notices, empty bread bags and Inland Revenue mail). I cleaned the top and surrounds of the old chippie fire which hosts the jug, the Kenwood mixer and the sugar jar. I cleaned the top of the stove and the wall around it and even the door of the oven. I cleaned the top of the dishwasher and the surrounds of the slow cooker and the wall around that as well. Then I made sushi. Welcome, spring. When I first lear...

Today's library haul: Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth Fran McCullough, Good Fat with 100 Recipes Malcolm Kendrick, The Great Cholesterol Con A S Byatt, The Children's Book I had a bit of a read of the first three at the library and have settled into Fran McCullough's book now. Fascinating. After reading this article on slow reading last night, reading some non-fiction books in their entirety instead of net-surfing for nutritional information (which I suspect myself of being addicted to) seems timely. Tonight's dinner. Rice thingie with green salad. Green salad: lettuces and rocket from the garden, with acv and olive oil drizzled over it. I didn't realise it had a sign over it which said 'adults only', but there you go. Rice thingy: I cooked the brown basmati rice with a piece of kombu then let it cool a bit. I grilled aubergine and scooped out the flesh (originally intended for making baba ghanoush but corralled into dinner at the eleventh minute), grated carr...

I'm doing another week of keeping a food diary here. Now that we (I) have made the commitment to no dairy except butter and low wheat, I need to build a new store of fast meals. Fast meals in my world doesn't necessarily mean cooked just before dinner - that is often a nightmare - but prepared quickly. Tonight: pumpkin and cabana pasta . Roast six pieces of pumpkin. Leave to cool. Then chop into chunks. Slice cabana (lovely cold already cooked chorizo from the Blackball Salami Co). Cook a small amount of pasta, add some chopped broccoli to the boiling water a few minutes before the pasta is cooked. Put all this in a bowl. Sprinkle some dukkah over top. Drizzle some olive oil over top of that and stir gently to combine. Eat. Dukkah has turned out a very useful purchase - for a $10 extravagance a few months ago, I have topped lots of meals with this yummy flavour and am only half way through the jar. Of course I could make it myself, and maybe I will sometime, but as of t...

Our household is going to go dairy free. Whether this is a thoughtful and wise decision or that of an increasingly mad woman already wearing purple, I cannot objectively say. There are symptoms for all four of us which make the project worth trying. Another part of me says "Just buy some bloody tim tams and stop thinking all the time." The latter part is not currently in the ascendancy, though I can feel her getting ready for a slot. In news beyond my immediate selfish concerns, Child Poverty Action Group now have a Facebook page and are aiming for 500 'likes' as part of a ymedia project. I don't recognise the term 'ymedia' but I do recognise the value of more New Zealanders becoming aware and supportive of CPAG's work. I love the signautre on their email newsletters: Ka Whangaia ka tupu, ka puawai That which is nurtured, blossoms and grows. Another promotion: this time for a group working to give agency to women over their bodies, one which does...

I first learnt of Sally Fallon's book Nourishing Traditions online. In a forum I was part of at the time and also on some blogs, this book kept coming up. Instinctively, from the snippets I was hearing, I thought it might be worth me having a look. But I'm not big on buying books these days. Mostly I lust unrequitedly after them or chase them at the library. But every year I allow myself a new non-fiction book. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Meat was a worthwhile purchase and much consulted book. Andrew Whitley's book Bread Matters is so utterly useful that one day I will buy it again because I will have worn our copy out. Eventually, I was so intrigued with the Fallon references I was encountering, that I bought the book. It was worth the money, but I have reservations as well as praise. Miriam (thank you for your recent comment which prompted this post), I would highly and hugely recommend Bread Matters over Nourishing Traditions . Then, when you are ready to make ...

Such a flash term. Italian I believe. I branched out into cooking shin beef with this recipe today. The attraction of cooking with sawn across rounds of shin beef (upper part of a cattle beast's leg) was that the bone marrow which becomes available as it cooks is so nutritious. Turns out it is tasty too. I adapted from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's instructions in his book Meat . Brown six rounds of shin beef in olive oil. Put into casserole dish. Then in same oil, sautee 2 chopped carrots, 3 chopped cloves of garlic, a chopped celery stick, 2 chopped onions and some chopped mushrooms. Then add a tin of chopped tomatoes and a big slug of red wine (I love the total decadence of cooking with wine. A shame that the budget doesn't allow for doing it nearly as often as I would prefer) and bubble for a few minutes. Tip all that into the casserole dish with some fresh herbs (bay leaves,thyme and oregano) and put in the oven for two hours on 140 celsius. Six rounds would ...

so much fun. Well bits of it are. My kind of nursing involves loads of garlic and potions and lotions and sleep and vitamin c. loads and loads of vitamin c. Finding sneaky ways to get it in the small kids. But now Favourite Handyman is crook, as is usual for this time of year. He gets crooker than the kids (they don't smoke tobacco) but also he is more open to trying funny tasting things to help. Tonight I stumbled upon the idea of an onion poultice to burn out a lung infection. He has been saved from that for the moment because I wasn't satisfied I knew enough about it after my googling and also because I would have to sleep with onions as well if I put it on him. And they might fall out of the poultice wrap and land on me. Who needs slimey cold onions all through the bedding? So for the moment, it is winter flu remedy (somewhere in my archives is the recipe - acv, cayenne, garlic, honey), more vitamin c, carrot, ginger, celery, apple juices made with the flash new juice...

Fish and chips for dinner. Takeaways. The bliss of it. Last night I cooked pumpkin bake and one child hid under the table so as not to even have to look at it and the other made noises similar to those probably made by men and women dying of torture in the Reformation. At the prospect of eating perfectly nice food. So I'll be taking a break from food reporting for the foreseeable future of my breathing existence. Mostly at the moment I am spending my waking, dreaming and the bits in between when I want to be asleep but am not, thinking about childcare. Our precious K has moved out of her parents' home, taking her boyfriend and baby daughter with her. It isn't to the original flat they had planned and we have decided that Brighid cannot go to K's new home. I've been close to tears a few times this week but also grateful for the wonderful care we have had for Brighid over the last 2.5 years. K's mum will still look after Brighid two mornings a week and I've be...

Today was fabulous. Quite a few people came out to Blackball and spent time reading the history boards, looking at the exhibits and watching a film. It is no longer a pie in the sky dream project but a resource for everybody to learn about and celebrate the stories and struggles of working people. I did take my camera and I have run out of battery juice and I have lost my battery charger so no photos of today. What I do now have though, are some fabulous, fabulous photos of the May Day opening (two weeks ago). Thank you Jo Edgar, you are a wonderful photographer. The march from the Community Centre to the Memorial building. I love the backdrop of rain cloud and blue sunshine and a little mist, all together. That's what it often looks like in Blackball. The woman holding her baby is the very skilled worker of the cross stitch banner. I apologise for not remembering her name, but she is one of the Christchurch Anarchists. Jose Garcia, the Cuban Ambassador, speaking at the openi...

Today was bliss. I gardened, we all stayed home together all day, bar a couple of small trips to the shops for a new tarpaulin and for milk, coffee and more fruit supplies. I freed one of my roses in the rose nursery from the creeping buttercup (or is it spreading buttercup? either way, it lives up to its name). The three surviving roses in the rose nursery (one section of the garden against the back brick wall) are all from cuttings I took from our clever rose growing neighbours last winter. This winter I will shift them into a more permanant spot, but to do so, I have to get rid of the weeds to get access. I planted out the six kohlrabi seedlings beside the rose nursery. I cleared away weeds, punga ferns and the outer leaves going yucky from the silverbeet in the punga raised bed. I have some more to do there before there is room for more vegetables. I think some rocket seeds are worth a go. I cannot imagine having too much rocket. Tonight I saw this post on drying comfrey and...

We did it. The end of the week is here. At lunchtime I collected Favourite Handyman from work and we did some family things which needed doing during regular working hours. Fionn had the rare treat of being collected by his Daddy and slowly we all wound down into homeness. Dinner: polish sausages from Blackball, baked in the oven. Nice. I tried a new vegetable combo and sauteed sliced carrots and ginger in lots of butter until they were soft enough to pulverise with my whizzy stick. After a bit of cooking, I decided to add some silverbeet and anchovies. So omega 3 from the anchovies and the butter providing the fat and vitamin a for the fat soluble vitamins in the carrots and silverbeet. It whizzed up to a very nice soft mash. I had cooked pasta because I thought the girl would eat it (wrong) and the texture effect of the mash spread through the pasta was rather baby food like. again. But the anchovies definitely lifted the taste out of babyfood land and I am going to make t...

Dinner: milo (for the boy with a numb mouth), chicken, avocado and hummous sandwiches, tayberries, cheese, mandarins. It was great to be home and have something to eat. I never really knew what a root canal was until today. Fionn was in agony last night and as soon as I got to work today (couldn't ring earlier as we had no power after last night's storm), I began to negotiate the school dental service system. Eventually we got him an appointment with a dentist in town for the afternoon and she advised a root canal over an extraction. The things you learn in pubs. As I went into multitasking mother overdrive, I ran into our local pub to tell the publican who is also Fionn's rugby league team manager that he wouldn't be at practise and why, it turned out I knew the only two patrons as well and they had some strong, indeed vehement, advice on root canals (DON'T!!!!!!!!) and I realised I had 45 minutes to research this. By the end of 45 minutes I had organised afte...

Pumpkin soup. Very mediocre in my opinion. Not having great joy this season on sourcing rich yummy pumpkins. One vegetable where you cannot tell anything from the outside apart from if it is mouldy. We all ate some. Some of us under more duress than others. Not bad Fallon/Price food except for the shop bought toast we ate with it. Good marks on the cheap front. This morning Brighid and I drove out to Blackball, populating Old Macdonald's farm with ducks, mice, pigs, horses, elephants, tigers and lions as we went. It is quite exciting to have our Blackball working class history project meetings in our resource room, onsite at the 08 memorial. This is no longer a pipe dream. The shrine to the toil and struggle of working people is here and cannot easily be taken away. We talked about future exhibitions for the exhibition space (small, but there nevertheless)> Paul is keen on something about rich and poor, inequalities. I'm keen to focus on the dreams and aspirations...