Letters from Wetville

The drive shaft of my food processor is down the back of the dishwasher. Down the back, unjtil an unwelcome repair to the dishwasher or oven shall reunite us. I didn't give up straight away. I tried to wiggle the dishwasher, realised it had no leverage room and might crack if I pushed it. I shone the torch down and saw other long forgotten relics down there, but no drive shaft (which I observed fall down the back earlier this year with my very own eyes). I got tongs out and also looked down the back of the stove, but it's gameover. My six year old food processor, which only gets used for pesto and hummous and has no grating blade, is now at the very top of the highest cupboard, a long way from the functional hum of the rest of the kitchen. I've been missing my hummous though. The bought stuff isn't worth buying now I'm used to my own. So today I cooked up chickpeas (and had to accept that my pressure cooker has some dangerous fault so downgraded to cooking it...

I planted my garlic this morning, fitting it in around the various rose bushes I have moved to or begun along the back of the house and in the old tobacco bed. My strawberries, transplanted just over a week ago, now have bird netting over them. The strawberries are in a wooden raised bed which Favourite Handyman made for me last December. He used the partially rotted wood boards which he had had to replace from our largest shed. This made it fairly easy for me to nail in some black piping (hanging around from when FH built the poultry palace and the piping turned out not strong enough) and hoop it over the square bed. Then I had a raised form to stretch the bird netting over. I put lots of nails in around the edges to hold the netting. This way I can lift and replace it easily come summer. My third gardening project today was the yam experiment. The punga raised bed was overrun with yams and they all needed to go. I pulled all the tops off, many of which were rotted or rotting and put ...

Tonight, for the first time, I made gnocchi from scratch. I used a recipe from today's Christchurch Press , by Maxine Clark. Although gnocchi has always seemed exotic and probably difficult to make to me, I used (following the recipe to the letter) home grown potatoes, egg and sage. I used New Zealand grown flour, cheese and butter. It turned out pretty well. Cook 600g floury potatoes in boiling water for 20-30 minutes, until very tender. Drain well. Mash the potatoes, add 1 teaspoon salt and 200g flour. Make a well in the centre and crack in an egg. Mix together, knead lightly to yield a soft, slightly sticky dough. Roll into long sausages, 1.5cm in diameter. Cut into 2cm pieces. Lay on lightly floured tea towel. Bring big pot of salted water to the boil. Cook the gnocchi in batches. Drop into the boiling water for 2-3 minutes or until they float to the surface. Remove with a slotted spoon and keep hot while you cook the rest. Mix 200g melted butter with 2 tablespoon...

Last night I got some more details on the ways in which people are protesting against the night class cuts. At my local high school there is a petition asking for the reinstatement of night classes (though they often extend beyond just nights). If you drop into the reception of your local high school, I expect you will find a petition there to sign. I've also got a postcard to send in in protest and I've found out about the Stop Night Class Cuts website . I've joined the facebook group protesting the cuts and I'll be writing to my MP also. I've seen figures of 200 000 people doing night classes each year and also 400 000 people. Despite the huge discrepancy, it is still clear that they are used and valued in each adn aevery community within New Zealand. In my last post I wrote about working class lives a little before jumping on to the community education slaughter. They are linked. I remember my Mum going to night classes from when I was quite small. Just as I ha...

Paul Maunder, a writer and a working class man who has contributed hugely to the development of the Blackball working class history project, recently sent me a draft of an article about working class heritage. I found it very helpful and will post details just as soon as I hear that it has been published (paper or web). Two things stuck with me in particular. Maunder discusses the development of heritage parks as a commodified version of history. We've all been to a few, taken the kids and spent a fortune on expensive lunches and admiring scrupulously clean and well maintained artefacts of wealthy colonial life. Our local one, Shantytown, is mostly free to locals, but eye-wateringly expensive to anyone else. If you climb up the back of the 'village', you can see a rough pub and a prostitute's hut. There is also an old hut (an original actually used a long time ago I think) hidden up another track where visitors scarcely ever go. But few visitors see these - much ...

July's NZ Gardener came through my letterbox today. There was a profile of Akaunui Gardens , near Ashburton. If you click through the link, you will see a lovely stately house. I don't covet a stately house, but I do covet a rambling rose climbing all over a shed as per the photograph on page 50 of the NZ Gardener. I quote from the photo caption: "The Noisette rose 'Claire Jacquier' covers the shed by the herb parterre." I'll have to google both Noisette and parterre, but I'm captivated by noth the romantic view and the romantic names. Favourite Handyman liked the photo too... So I can trail a rose up over the new lean to and the shed behind it. I think it would be too shady to trail a rose up from the south side of the shed though. I can trail roses over various fences and I have the beginnings ( tiny , small beginnings currently) of a structure along the back of the house for my roses (to be surrounded by garlic and in summer, lettuces and h...

She's alright, is Nigella (Lawson). I bought her book when we were new to London, How to Eat , and pored over it, reading all the delicious, helpful wordy bits in between the recipes. She doesn't do budget - I doubt you will find her rolling out a tips to be frugal book for $25 as seems to be the rage at the moment. They make the book small so it looks like a bargain, but it is still $25 and everything in those books is on the net. From How To Eat I learnt how to make risotto, chicken stock and hummous, cooked with chestnuts for the first time (her lentil and chestnut soup, good enough to win over any carnivore visiting for dinner) and drank in some wonderfully sensible thoughts on feeding babies and young children. Today, after deciding we weren't dying and that by afternoon, what with the DVD player dying instead, we could do some baking, Fionn and I looked through some recipe books in search of a chocolate cake recipe. Nigella's was a winner, not least because ...