Intro…or why our PM is a lamington
Wombat news | Award news | New Books | The April garden
A Few recipes - Berry Slice - Nutty Floozies - Autumn Puddings
Last Saturday afternoon, while mixing an apple cake and listening to the radio, I suddenly realised I was seeing all the politicians mentioned in terms of biscuits, or in a few cases, cakes.
Which isn’t as silly as it sounds. If we call someone a pig, a savage beast, a peacock, or a noble lion it says a lot about their character. So why not think about politicians in terms of cakes and biscuits?
The first one was obvious. Kevin Rudd is a sure fire lamington. Sort of warm and fuzzy and just a bit dry in the middle. Both come from Queensland too. A good lamington is delicious… but sometimes both the world and your appetite need something just a bit less traditional.
Julia Gillard has to be a ginger nut. Not that either of them are the least nutty, just crisp and a bit spicy and with a good helping of ginger.
Malcolm Turnbull? I’d go for rocky road, heavy on the marshmallow. Julie Bishop is a 9 grain cracker with cheese, tomato and black pepper. John Howard is vegemite toast. Stale vegemite toast. (I think of him every time I do my GST). Bob Brown is a wholemeal apricot slice and Anna Bligh just possibly a Nice biscuit dunked in a cuppa tea… a bit soggy, but she survived.
And Peter Costello? Well, how about a passionfruit sponge finger, nice on the top but softish in the middle.
Wombat News
Bruiser Wombat arrived last month. I know ‘Bruiser’ sounds like a name for a nightclub bouncer, but Bruiser is sweet and timid and smallish. The only thing he really shares with a nightclub bouncer is a thick neck. He was called Bruiser because he was bruised when he was taken into care.
He’s been released into the bush before, and both times came back injured, by other wombats, dogs or maybe human rubbish he’d tried to scratch against.
The first night here he scratched himself incessantly. Mange we thought but it wasn’t. Just nerves. By the second night he’d stopped scratching, and moved into Mothball’s hole under the bedroom, which meant wombat yells in the night and she pushed him out.
For the next few nights he tried to graze in Mothball’s territory and hid his droppings under leaves and bushes, maybe so she wouldn’t notice he was there. But suddenly he grew confident- left droppings on rocks and steps, all just slightly to the left of Mothball’s favourite grazing places.
Now Mothball feeds to the right of the house, and Bruiser to the left, a territory shared with Rosie wallaby and her joey Emily, plus Rosie’s latest joey, so far unseen and unnamed, just a bulge in her pouch. Both wombats ignore us, and each other. And both of them leave more droppings than I’ve seen around here for years, each carefully positioned on the highest rock or step or bit of firewood in their territory, a wombat’s way of saying ‘this is mine.’
Award News
A Rose for the Anzac Boys, How High Can a Kangaroo Hop, and The Camel Who Crossed Australia have all been declared ‘ Notable books’ in the latest Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards. A Rose for the Anzac Boys has been shortlisted, too, for the Book of the Year in the Older Readers category.
New Books
The Donkey Who carried the Wounded
This came out on April 1, and was launched at the Australian War Memorial on April 8.
Most Australians know the story of Simpson and his donkey; the courageous digger and his mate who became heroes at Gallipoli for transporting the wounded to safety.
Yet while Simpson has gone down in ANZAC folklore, few people know the story of the donkey. Where did he come from? What happened to him after Gallipoli?
The Donkey Who Carried the Wounded is the story of that small, unassuming animal but also the story of the infamous battle of Gallipoli, of Jack Simpson, and of the New Zealander stretcher-bearer Richard Henderson, who literally took up the reins after Simpson was killed.
Other Recent Books
How High Can a Kangaroo Hop: all you never realised you didn’t know about our best known marsupial.
A Rose for the Anzac Boys: World War 1 seen through the eyes of three courageous young women
Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip: another hilarious Shaggy Gully picture book with the magic Bruce Whatley
The Camel who Crossed Australia: The Burke and Wills expedition seen through the eyes of Bell Sing, otherwise known as ‘he who Spits Further Than the Storm’, the young cameleer Dost Mahomet and Englishman John King.
Later this year:
The Night They Stormed Eureka
School for Heroes, Book 1: Lessons for a Werewolf warrior
Baby Wombat’s Week
Schedule for ‘09
I’m afraid I won’t be able to manage much more than the list below. (It doesn’t include all the other things that have to be crammed into my life.) I usually receive at least one invitation to give talks, workshops, visit an inspiring project, meet kids with a problem, or a request to tour the garden each day, often several. Much as I’d love to, I just can’t do them all – or even most of them. Mostly I choose events with the biggest audience (at least 200, preferably 600 or more) because this means that I can speak to more people in the time I have available. I find that about eight hours of travelling is all I can manage a day, too- and it takes three hours to get to an airport from here. There isn’t time to travel to Sydney, Melbourne or any other cities that I have to fly to, and then make it back home the same day. A one hour talk can mean two day’s travelling.
Please forgive me if I can’t come to your town, school or event – it doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I wish I were Superwoman and could do them all, and respond to every request for help or mentoring too, and give long answers to every kid who emails for material for projects. But I only have two hands and 24 crammed hours in a day.
May 5 – 7 Talks in Brisbane.
May 15 Induction as patron of the wonderful Monkey Baa Theatre for young People with the equally wonderful Susanne Gervais and Morris Gleitzman
May 17 Writing Capatin Cook- panel at the national Museum of Australia, Canberra, 2 PM. Visons Theatre
June 20: Eurobodalla Slow Food Festival, Moruya
August: possible talks in Sydney. Contact Lateral Learning for bookings.
September 9, 10,11, 12 Brisbane Writer’s Festival
September 19 & 20: EYES Conference and possibly other talks in Fremantle and Perth
Sept 5& 6; October 3,4,5, and 9,10, 11: three talks each day at the Floriade Festival Canberra. Contact Floriade for details or see the Floriade programme later in the year.
October 28: Children’s Day, Canberra
November 7 and 8 Open Garden workshops at our place. Contact the Open Garden organizers for bookings, not us.
The March garden
Don’t Bump Your Nose on Lunch
If I honestly nominate a hobby, which I admit I never have done in any survey, it would be ‘growing food’. Though come to think of it, it’s not a hobby, as I make part of our living writing about the things in our garden.
When I look out my study window I see food
When guests arrive at the moment we have to warn them to 'watch out for the kiwi fruit’ - the vines, which are easy to avoid if you duck your head going through the front door, but the fruit, which are hard to see at night when dinner guests arrive, and the furry bits get stuck in your hair. I’d hate a guest to think they’ve suddenly developed prickly dandruff.
Our garden doesn’t look like most passionate garden plots though- no neat rows of vegies, or well rounded trees. It's a jungle. But it's a jungle with endless flowers and fruit an veg… a different way of growing crops, that needs much less work, far les water- basically just the stuff that irregularly falls from the sky- and incidentally is much more welcoming to birds, wombats ,wallabies and other wildlife.
One of the problems with Australian gardens is that they are still pretty much European ones... they've evolved in places where lots of that strange grey stuff falls from the sky.
If you want a garden that feeds you and delights you but doesn't need any watering:
1. Forget about summer planting. The plants shrivel and so do you. Plant in autumn instead- many plants traditionally planted in spring actually do better bunged in now, so they can get themselves settled before the worst of summer
2. Go for perennials that develop big roots so they can live on their hump, like camels- including perennial veg
3.Add a few annuals that grow FAST and give you a heck of a lot in return. These are usually veg from places that have stinking hot summers and freeze you toes off winters too, like most of the Asian greens
4. Find out which fruit trees survive in your area. Around here you’ll find pears, apples, plums, persimmons, quinces and loquat trees where once a farm house stood, long gone to bushfire time and termites. But the ‘great survivors’ are still fruiting.
All of these look stunning, and even the ornamental ones will help your veg grow better.
The Top Ten Great Survivors
1. Italian red stemmed chicory
2. Jerusalem artichokes
3. chives and garlic chives
4. agapanthus
5. any of the salvias
6. big flagrant rambling roses up the fruit trees to disguise them from birds and possums
7. perennial leeks
8. warrigal spinach
9. a plum tree
10 any nut tree...try a self fertile almond
11 pomegranate
12. Lady Williams apple
Others: figs, pears, crab apple, BIG grevilleas, medlars, olives, grapes, wild kiwi fruit, asparagus, artichoke, chilacayote
A Few recipes
Berry Fruit Slice
This is a classic slice, extraordinarily good- but a lot depends on how well it's made. If you overcook it, you'll have lead slice, dry and crumbly. Follow the directions exactly and you'll have something superb.
It's a classic almost fudgy fruit slice filled with whatever fruit you have on hand. I've been using dried blueberries and cranberries lately, but others can be substituted. It is incredibly good- great for lunch boxes, or you can even serve it slightly warmed, with yoghurt or icecream.
Ease of making: medium
Time taken: 10 minutes to mix, 20 minutes to cook
Serves: about 25 smallish slices
125 butter
1 cup brown sugar
3 tsp vanilla paste or essence (the paste has a better flavour)
1 egg
1 1/4 cups (150 gm) Self Raising Flour
3 cups dried fruit and nuts: I've recently been using 1 cup dried cranberries, 1 cup dried blueberries, half cup chopped walnuts, half a cup of sultanas.But it's also very good with half chopped dates and half sultanas, or mixed dried fruit, or candied cherries and sultanas and almonds. It's also good with fresh stewed apple, chopped fresh peaches, any nuts in your garden, hunks of plums...if it's sweet and fruit or nutty, it'll be good.
Method
Turn the oven on to 200 degrees NOW.
Melt butter in a saucepan over a very low heat with the dried fruit, stirring well. Add the brown sugar and mix till the sugar is dissolved. Take off the heat, stir in the egg quickly, then mix in the flour.
Scoop into a baking tray lined with baking paper, or rubbed with butter then dusted with flour so the mixture doesn't stick.
Place in over.
Leave for 20 minutes and take out.
Nutty Floozies
or One Two Three Biscuits
I think these may have originally been 'Nutty Oozies', as they do spread a bit, then become gold and crisp. But they've been floozies in my kitchen for decades. They were the first biscuit I ever made, and are so good that one friend's boyfriend got up and left when he discovered there weren't any in the biscuit jar when they visited. Okay, he was a pig, and she soon got rid of him, but they are a good biscuit.
Ease of making: very very easy
Feeds: makes about 40 biscuits
Time taken: 2 minutes to mix, 15 minutes in the oven.
Ingredients
125 gm butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 tb golden syrup
2 tsp ground ginger
1/1/2 cups plain flour
half cup chopped nuts: peanuts, walnuts, almonds, macadamia...
half cup SR flour: or two cups plain flour: will be a bit tougher
1 egg
Step 1. Put everything except the egg in a saucepan on a low heat. Mix when butter is melted.
Step 2. take off the heat and beat in the egg.
Step 3.Put flattened teaspoons full on a greased tray (or covered with baking paper) and bake at about 150C for 15 minutes, or till light gold, (not dark brown).
Take out, they'll crisp as they cool.
Store in a sealed container for up to a month.
Press your finger into the centre,. If it seems liquid put it back for 5 minutes, but it is important NOT TO OVER COOK.
Autumn Puddings
Suddenly it's autumn- autumn leaves, doonas and hot puddings.
This one only takes five minutes to whip up, and it cooks while you're eating the first course. They're also great made in advance and warmed up over the next week.
Ease of making: simple
Serves: 4 (double or triple to recipe so you can have a week's supply)
Time taken: 5 minutes to make, to cook
Equipment
4 coffee mugs
1 baking dish
Ingredients
100 gm butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste or essence
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups SR flour
1 cup mashed banana, OR cooked peaches, OR cooked dried apricots OR cooked pumpkin OR grated carrot OR peeled seeded grapes OR finely chopped ripe figs
Plus: 4-8 tb jam, or stewed fruit, or honey
Place jam, stewed fruit or honey in mugs.
Turn oven on to 200C.
Place pan in oven and half fill with water.
Mix all of the rest of the ingredients together with an electric beater. If you are mixing by hand, cream butter and sugar first well, then add eggs, then the other stuff. Don't worry if it's a bit lumpy, as long as there are no big lumps of flour.
pour into mugs.
Place mugs in tray oven.
Bake for 30 minutes.
Serve hot with cream or icecream or both. You can either scoop out the puddings- use a knife to loosen them- and eat from bottom to top, or pour the cream and icecream into the mug and eat from top to bottom.
Otherwise cover and keep in the fridge for up to a week. Reheat in the oven or microwave- about five minutes in a moderate oven. They're not bad cold, either- not fridge cold, but left to come to room temperature before eating .
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