Here in the valley… | New books | New Awards
Schedule for 2010 | The December garden
A few Very Christmas recipes
Christmas is a coming, the geese are getting fat, except here it’s the lyrebirds. In winter and spring the male lyrebirds spend so much time prancing and dancing that they grow thin and tatty about the tail feathers. Now they’re properly sleek and gorgeous … and scratching out my new potatoes.
The creek has shrunk to dirty waterholes – mostly diluted duck and wallaby droppings, but the valley and garden were green for our annual Open Garden workshops. I am coming to love them more each year, as we get the routine of urn and books and cups et al perfected and can just enjoy the company and the happiness of the days.
Everyone arrives in the Open Garden bus… well, the local school bus, but ours for the weekend. This year everyone got out down past the cliff, so they could wander up the track by the creek and see the boulders washed down by floods in the years when great sheets of wet stuff still dropped from the sky.
We lashed out and bought chairs last year, so we no longer have to hire them, and a friend gave us his wonderful old trestle tables – lovely weathered slabs of wood. Morning and afternoon tea are spread out under the trees: tea and coffee and herbal tea, lemon mint and lemon verbena this year, picked from the garden, and then the food, which Sue and I and Sue’s daughters have been cooking all week: almond macaroons and apple rhubarb cakes, both gluten free, and jam drops with three kinds of jam, and date and prune fruit cake, with no fat or added sugar or eggs, and fruit slices and macadamia and cherry biscotti and chicken and cress sandwiches and lamb and apple chutney sandwiches and cheese and salad sandwiches and egg sandwiches, the eggs from our chooks and all the other ingredients, from the parsley to the lettuce, grown around here too, including the chook and the sheep.
I don’t known if everyone realised how much was home grown, but they did know they liked it. I think the average was five pieces of cake or slice and four sandwiches a head. Oh, and home-made lime and mandarin cordial, also home grown and tart, instead of sweet. A dozen bottles of that vanished on the Saturday afternoon, when it was hot but Sunday was almost cardigan weather, so it was cup after cup of tea.
And I talked, with the help of a microphone Bryan rigged up, as I don’t have much voice these days; about how I fell in love with the valley more than thirty years ago, never knowing that my family came from here; how I watched the way the bush grew around me to design a garden that harvests its own water from the air, even in a drought; how it is planned so that it feeds the wildlife as well as us and our friends; how by doing things differently we can have a world that’s generous and fun and fruitful, from the solar oven that bakes the cakes to the solar panels that power this computer to the wallabies who are munching the fallen apricots as I write this so we don’t get a build up of fruit fly.
And now no more workshops till next November: which is good, as we can look forward to them, instead of thinking of them as work. Feeding a few hundred is a joy once a year, but not more…
Speaking of feeding hordes, it looks like being a slightly gigantic Christmas here: am hunting for spare mattresses for our guest cottage for the overflow from the house. I’ve made the cakes and four puddings; planned the menus and am about to make up the beds. The wallabies, ‘roos and wombats have mown the grass for us, the agapanthus are starting to burst into the Christmas glory, even in a drought they light up the garden, and there is a great mass of old-fashioned red and yellow gladioli that have gone wild on a bank near the cottage, so I pick great armloads of those for the house too.
It will be a good Christmas. Somehow it always has been, no matter what else had happened through the year. May it be a green and glorious Christmas for you too, and a joyous and flourishing new year.
New books
‘Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior’
This is the first in the new series, ‘A School for Heroes’, and it’s funny, made even more so by Andrea Potter’s fabulous drawings of the Ghastly Greedle and Gloria the Gorgeous (Gloria’s not just gorgeous, she’s drop dead gorgeous. Or she was 80 years ago. But, hey, it’s nothing that a bit more lipstick can’t fix.) Andrea’s Dr Mussels – he’s a Headmaster, a monkey and can do fearsome things with a well-thrown banana – is on the cover.
The School for Heroes is located in a volcano, staffed by the retired heroes from Rest in Pieces – old heroes never die, they simply rest in pieces (the heat is good for their arthritis). And for Boojum Bark, student hero and werewolf, there’s a lot to discover.
Where is the library hiding today?
Exactly what is Boo Fu, taught by Mrs Kerfuffle, the librarian, who’s deadly with a well-thrown dictionary?
Why does Princess Princess Sunshine Caresse von Pewke get so upset when Boo sniffs her bum?
How do you face giant Rabbits, Trrroooolls, Ogres and other Bogeys armed only with a zombie sausage?
What does the mysterious Yesterday want with the school garbage?
And where do flying pigs get their little jumpers?
‘Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior’ is a big book. There are lots of hilarious short books around. But the trouble with a short book is that just when you are really getting into it, it stops. If kids can find a two and a half hour movie fascinating, why not a big book? Often it’s the big books – the entrancing ones that kids don’t want to stop reading – that really turn a reluctant reader into a book guzzler. A short book can be a giggle for a while – and it’s tempting when you don’t like reading and you’re told you have to read a book. But the books kids read, and then reread, are usually the long ones.
‘Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior’ is crammed full of universes, where Rabbits are deadly predators (almost as bad as budgies) and fairies bite and zombie spaghetti may be the most fearsome weapon of them all.
‘The Night They Stormed Eureka - a fresh look at the history we thought we knew.
Are the history books wrong? Could the rebels have succeeded? Could we too have seceded from Britain, like the USA?
This is the story of Sam, a modern teenager, thrust into the world of the Ballarat goldfields, with the Puddlehams, who run the best cook shop on the diggings and dream of a hotel with velvet seats, ten thousand miners who dream of gold and rebellion, and Professor Shamus O’Blivion, who tries not to dream at all. But there is a happy ending for Sam, who discovers that when you stand together, you really can change the world – and your own life, too.
Schedule for the Next Few Months
I’m sorry I can’t accept every invitation – there are always many more than I could fit into a year. But as I have family in Brisbane and Perth I always love an excuse to travel there... or anywhere that might involve a stop-over in Perth, too. NSW bookings are done by Lateral Learning; Queensland bookings by Helen Bain at Speaker’s Inc, and for other bookings contact me at jackief@dragnet.com.au. I can only do one trip away from home a month though, and that includes trips to Canberra, so I mostly only speak to groups of more than 200, and where it will take six hours travel or less each way (except WA).
January 4: Civic Library, Canberra: A free talk about books and wombats and other good things. I don’t think you need to book – just turn up and I’ll see you there!
January 28: Create a picture-book workshops, one for kids and one for adults at Marymead, Canberra. These are aimed particularly at the foster parents and kids in Marymead’s program, but do contact Marymead – or watch this space in January’s newsletter – as there may be places for others, too.
17, 18, 19 March: Somerset Festival, Gold Coast, QLD. Sue Degennaro and I will be launching our new book, ‘The Tomorrow Book’, about how tomorrow can be good. Sue’s extraordinary artwork will also be on display. The illustrations for the book were created entirely from ‘rubbish’ in her kitchen, from old tea bags to labels. It is beautiful, stunning, funny and joyous… no words to say really how inspiring she has made Tomorrow.
April onwards: Sue Degennaro’s artwork for ‘The Tomorrow Book’ will be at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre, and Sue will be giving talks during the year too. Contact the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre for more details.
27, 28, 29, 30 April: Talks in Brisbane, as well as an address at The 3 R's - Reaching Reluctant Readers Conference. Contact Helen Bain: helen@speakers-ink.com.au.
18-19 June: Talk with Bruce Whatley, the genius who created those incredible images of the wombat in ‘Diary of a Wombat’ and ‘Baby Wombat’s Week’, at the NSW Children’s Book Council Conference, Sydney. That’s also about the time we’ll be launching our next joint book, ‘Queen Victoria’s Underpants’, the almost entirely true story of how Queen Victoria revolutionised women’s lives.
July 14-17: Whitsunday Literary Festival, including a public gardening talk, Mackay, Q’ld.
August 4-7: Talks and workshops at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre, contact the Centre for details or bookings.
Late August: Probably a couple of days of talks in Sydney. Contact Lateral Learning for bookings.
September: Trip to Yorke Peninsula, SA. No dates or details finalised yet. Contact Carole Carroll at c.carroll@internode.on.net for more details. I may also spend a day or two talking in Adelaide.
October 27: International Children’s Day. I’ll be speaking at the awards in Canberra in my capacity as ACT Children’s Ambassador, and probably giving a talk somewhere else in Canberra that day too, if previous years are anything to go by.
Early November, probably the first weekend: Open Garden workshops at our place. Contact the Open Garden organizers for bookings, act@opengarden.org.au. If you want to make a weekend of it, there are lots of places to stay, from cheap pubs to luxury B&B’s close by. Look at the Braidwood web site. We also have a cottage that we rent for weekends sometimes – with very limited tank water, a healthy population of snakes and lots of wildlife who’ll ignore you and go on munching.
Nov 20: Eurobodalla Slow Food Festival at Moruya, NSW. I’ll be giving a series of talks during the day, on everything from fruit trees to wombats, and launching the festival once again as its patron.
New Awards
The Canberra Critics Circle Award for Writing was awarded to me this month – many thanks indeed to all the critics! It was presented by Robyn Archer. My father asked me to tell her that he has been secretly in love with her for thirty years. So I passed it on, and she laughed. Dad has also been secretly in love with the cello player in the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, but I didn’t mention that. And also the waitress who makes him his morning coffee and biscotti…
The December Garden
Six ways to have the Greenest Christmas Ever
- Choose a living Christmas tree – a hardy native, like New South Wales Christmas bush (which comes with its own bright red decorations) that can be planted in the garden afterwards, or even the best looking fruit tree you can find in the nursery. Dwarf lilli-pillies make stunning Christmas trees. Even cumquats or dwarf peach trees can look great.
- Go for truly recyclable Christmas platters... like baskets lined with grape leaves, or use hollowed out watermelons or pineapples or even squeezed oranges and grapefruit for individual portions of icy sorbet or fruit jellies.
- Use the sun to cook your Christmas dinner. I’m serious –I’m using a sun-powered oven to cook ours this year. All you need is a sunny day (which isn’t too hard at Christmas). Who needs a gas barbecue? A solar oven will cook anything from turkey to bread to Christmas cake.
- Make your wrapping ‘paper’ green too – use teatowels, cloth napkins or hankies, pillowcases… anything that can be loved and used, not thrown away.
- Make your own ‘green’ presents from the garden: a giant hanging basket of flowers, or home-made jams or pressed flower soaps or candles. See this month’s web pages for details.
- Cool your house naturally. A green garden around your house can cool the place down by 10ºC. Cover paving with sun-shades or shade cloth, too. That paving soaks up heat and reflects it (marvellous for winter but not so welcome on a hot summer’s day). If you live in a humid area grow tall trees like palms that shade your house but let the breezes flow into your window, or prune off lower branches.
- Do a rain dance. Lots of rain dances, as soon as it gets cool enough to dance each night. We may not make it rain but, well, singing made the blitz better, so I reckon dancing makes droughts more bareable too.
What Not to Do in December!
. Don't panic about parched grass. Grass recovers. Our grass turns brown here each summer (we don't have enough water to keep it green) but green shoots appear just a few hours after rain.
. Don’t worry if your shrubs wilt (I wilt in summer too). But if they stay wilted even in the cool of the night or start to turn brown, give them a long cool soaking – then keep that moisture in the root zone with mulch.
. Don’t go on a shrub-planting binge just because you have time on holidays. Those newly-planted shrubs will need watering long after you’re back at work.
. Don’t feed your garden. Not just because you have enough to do with holiday cooking, but because fertiliser can burn plants roots in hot dry times.
. Don’t forget to pick all fruit and tomatoes before the birds, fruit bats and fruit fly get them first and…
… and to put your feet up (just for a little while) each evening out in the garden, to smell the warm earth and the flowers – and relax.
What to plant in December
If you really do have time, energy, mulch and water...
Food garden
Plants: Strawberry, sweet potato, choko and herbs.
Seeds: Artichoke, asparagus, basil, beans, beetroot, burdock, cabbage, capsicum, carrot, celery, celtuce, chicory, corn salad, cress, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, kale, kohl rabi, leeks, lettuces (may not germinate if the temperature is over 26ºC), melons, okra, parsley, pumpkin, radish, salsify, scorzonera, sweet corn, tomatoes, turnips, salad greens like mizuna and mitsuba, and zucchini.
Flower garden: Achillea, ageratum, alstromeria, alyssum, amaranthus, aster, balsam, Bellis perennis, brachyscome, calendula, candytuft, Canterbury bells, carnation, celosia, clarkia, cleome, coleus, coreopsis, columbine, cosmos, delphinium, dichondra, echinacea, echinops, erigeron, euphorbia, foxglove, gaillardia, gazania, globe amaranth, gloxinia, godetia, gypsophila, helichrysum, heliotrope, hellebore, honesty, lavender, marigold, nasturtium, petunia, phlox, Flanders poppy, portulaca, rudbeckia, salpiglossis, salvia, scabious, snapdragon, sweet William, viola and zinnia.
A Few Christmas recipes
You know it's summer when:
. the first brown snake wriggles across the path (this year it was striped yellow and red);
. the lyrebirds’ tails grow back;
. the Illawarra flame tree blooms;
. the first mosquito (trap it with a torch and bowl of water);
. the fly traps need emptying;
. you realise why you shouldn't have planted six zucchinis;
. wearing three, two or one garment (or none) instead of four layers and
. you wonder yet again if you really do like Christmas cake.
PS Do not buy a pudding or a cake. As a long-time cake and pudding lover I have tried just about all available… and absolutely none are as good as your own.
To boil a pudding: Cheat. Wrap it in two baking bags and just throw it in. Unwrap and heat in the microwave.
To make a cake: Any recipe will be good. The real secret is long slooooooow cooking, and dowsing with rum as soon as you take it from the oven. (The alcohol evaporates leaving the flavour.) Make sure you line the pan with three layers of paper and that the paper sticks up at least half the size of the pan again so the top doesn't burn. Trust me: it’s the long slow caramelising that makes a good cake or pud, not the secret recipe.
Jackie's Christmas Biscuits (invented last Friday)
These are delicious – an Aussie biscuit crunch with the colour and tradition of old-fashioned Christmas goodies
125 gm butter
1 1/2 (1.5) cups brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup SR flour
1/4 cup rolled oats
half cup dark or white choc chips
half cup of your favourite nuts (sliced almonds are good, or macadamias)
3 cups finely chopped glace fruit, or just glace cherries if you prefer, or glace ginger
Optional: 3 tbsps candied peel
Optional: 2 tsps ground ginger or mixed spice
Cream butter and sugar. Mix in egg, then flour, then everything else.
Preheat oven to 200ºC. Place on non-stick trays or grease them first.
Place teaspoons of mix on the trays – they'll spread. Bake for about 10 minutes. They should be pale brown and still softish – they'll crisp as they cool.
Store in a sealed container.
Serves: about 30 biscuits
Ease of making: moderate... easy enough for kids to make as long as you watch to make sure they don't burn their fingers on the trays.
Excellent Fruit Punch (non-alcoholic)
Ingredients
A generous handful of eau-de-cologne mint, chopped or roughly torn (though with this recipe you can also use peppermint or even common mint at a pinch, though it's not as good as eau-de-cologne mint).
1 bottle ginger ale (can be lo-cal)
1 litre pineapple juice (can be unsweetened)
1 orange, very thinly sliced, with peel still on
3 lemons or limes, very thinly sliced, with peel still on
At least 6 cups of ice
2 passionfruit, still warm from the vine (optional)
Place the fruit and mint in the bottom of a large bowl. Add the pineapple juice, and leave for at least an hour for the flavours to mingle. Just before serving add the ginger ale and ice.
Makes about 15 cups punch.
Baked Fish with Fruit Salsa
1 whole salmon or tuna or other firm fish
alfoil – or grape leaves, free of beetles and dipped in boiling water for 10 seconds
lemon or lime juice
Salsa
half a cup chopped coriander (yes, parsley will do at a pinch)
1 avocado, peeled and chopped
half a cup paw paw or mango, peeled and chopped
2 tbsps Spanish or red onion, peeled and chopped
4 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp lemon or lime juice
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsps chopped red chilli or red capsicum
Day before:
Sprinkle fish with lemon or lime juice, wrap in alfoil or cover well with grape leaves (or both if the grape leaves refuse to stick around the fish) and bake for 30 minutes at 20ºC. Check it’s cooked all the way through but don't overcook – it’s a good idea to check half way through as the cooking time depends on the size of the fish - the bigger it is, the longer it will need. Remove from oven. Cool and place in fridge.
Unwrap fish carefully. Nibble any bits left clinging to the alfoil. Place fish on platter.
Mix all other ingredients. Pour over fish.
Christmas Relish
I love the word relish. It gets the taste buds going almost as much as the word 'chocolate'.
A relish is what you add to make boring things taste good i.e. cold spuds, cold meat and most aren't bad on cheese on toast, especially if you liven it up with half-way decent bread and good cheese and call it foccacia instead.
Most relishes will last for months if not years in the back of the cupboard waiting to be hauled out in case the meteor falls and life on earth – or at least the supermarket part of it – is extinguished.
This relish needs to be kept in the fridge and eaten within a few weeks, as it contains less vinegar, less sugar and more fruit than the ordinary variety. This also means that this one tastes better.
Ingredients
3 cups fresh mango, paw paw, or pineapple, chopped
half a cup raw sugar
half a cup good white wine vinegar
2 large red onions, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsps olive oil
1 red chilli, chopped, optional
2 whole cloves
Sauté onion and garlic in the oil till the onion is soft and totally transparent. (If it isn't, the acid in the relish will make it go hard and rubbery.)
Add the rest of the ingredients; simmer till thick (about 10 –15 minutes).
Place in a sealed container in the fridge. Keep for three days to mature before using. Good with turkey, ham or fish.
Spectacular Vegetarian Christmas Timbale
(serves 6)
1 very large or 2 or 3 small eggplants, sliced
3 large red capsicums, quartered and seeded
6 fresh largish bocconcini cheeses
6 small zucchini, thinly sliced
1 fat orange sweet potato, very thinly sliced
1 large bunch silver beet
1 large red onion, peeled and chopped
10 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp pine nuts
4 cloves garlic, chopped finely
6 semi-dried tomatoes
1 tbsp finely chopped parsley or coriander leaves
juice of 1 lime or lemon
salt
Sprinkle the eggplant slices with salt; leave for two hours, then wash in cold water. This reduces bitterness and makes them more supple. Brush each slice with olive oil. Grill, chargrill or fry on each side till cooked – about 5 minutes.
Brush zucchini slices with olive oil; fry, grill or chargrill them.
Brush sweet potato slices with olive oil; fry, grill or chargrill them. (Make sure they are cooked – you might have to try a small sample as you go!)
Grill the capsicum till the skin is black and blistered. Place in a plastic bag till cool, then rub the skin off. Brush the capsicum with olive oil.
Leave everything to cool.
Sauté the onion and garlic in 4 tbsps of the olive oil till the onion is soft; add the silverbeet, chopped or torn into small pieces (the stems can also be added but must be very finely chopped). When the silverbeet is soft, take it all off the heat and add the pine nuts.
Slice the bocconcini thinly.
To assemble:
Place four slices of bocconcini side by side on a plate, so they form a largish sort of circle. Now add a layer of eggplant, capsicum, sweet potato, zucchini, then cheese, eggplant, capsicum, zucchini till it's all used up. Place the dried tomato on top. Surround the circle with the chopped silverbeet and pine nuts.
Combine the remaining olive oil and lemon or lime juice. Add a touch of salt or pepper if you like. Pour it over the mound, then sprinkle on the parsley.
Serve.
Lemon and Garlic Butter Corn Cobs
Melt half a cup of butter with four crushed cloves of garlic. Take off the heat. Add a good grating of black pepper and the juice of a lemon. Soak eight cobs of corn, papery wrapping and all, in water for twenty minutes. Then unwrap them carefully - don't tear the wrapping. Pour a little of the slightly cooled and thickened melted butter mix onto each cob. Rub in well with your fingers or a pastry brush.
Grill until cooked through – at least twenty minutes or half an hour, turning several times.
You can also try this with alfoil instead of the natural corn packaging; but it's not nearly as good.
NB Don't buy corn wrapped in plastic. It tastes like plastic.
Dark and Fruity Christmas Pudding
A Christmas pud is a lovely thing – dark and fragrant so you can smell it all over the house, and you only need a small bit because it's so rich.
I can never understand those who sling off at a pud as being unsuitable for Australian summers. You don't HAVE to have it hot and flaming, do you? Actually we have ours cold and flaming, and I do all the boiling at night after the house has cooled down – and when the kitchen will cool down again by morning.
Christmas pud is also easily prepared several days before Christmas Day, so if you're having it cold there's no last-minute hassle. Added to which a good pud is a great big gorgeous thing, in other words, there'll be plenty of left-overs to see you to New Year. Like a turkey, Christmas pud is destined for one day’s feast and many day’s nibbling at the crumbs.
Added to which, Christmas pud – a good fruity dark one – is one of the best accompaniments to icecream that I know. (As you may have guessed, I do like my pud.)
Most families have pud recipes passed down from Grandma, though usually they’re changed a bit with each generation. This is my Grandma's, changed by Mum and changed by me.
Mix:
250 gms butter or marg, melted
2 cups bread crumbs
quarter cup plain flour
3 eggs, beaten
2 cups sultanas
1 cup currants
half cup glacé cherries
half cup mixed peel
half cup glacé pineapple or ginger
1 large apple or carrot (carrot makes an even darker pudding) peeled and grated
half a cup apricot or pineapple or cherry jam
quarter cup brown sugar
2 tsps mixed spice
half a cup rum, brandy, Grand Marnier whisky, sherry or orange juice; add more if it seems dry.
Don't forget that every member of the family should have a stir for luck!
Place in a greased oven-proof bowl or divide mixture into smaller bowls. In any case the pudding mixture should only half fill the bowl. Cover basin with alfoil, tied on securely with string or wool. Place pud in a saucepan large enough for water to come half way up the bowl.
Boil a kettle full of water, pour into the saucepan, light the stove and boil for four hours, adding more hot water as necessary.
To cook pud in a cloth: This does make a moister, thicker textured pud.
Dip clean cloth in boiling water for two minutes; you can use the traditional calico or even a new teatowel - not an old one, as odours may linger!
Hoik cloth out of the boiling water, let cool for a couple of minutes then wring it reasonably dry and spread it out and brush over about a cup of plain flour.
Place mixture in centre of cloth, tie up with string and lower into RAPIDLY boiling water. With a steamed pud in a basin it doesn't matter dramatically if the water goes off the boil; it does with a boiled pud.
Put the lid on to keep the water boiling well and minimise evaporation (DON'T do this with the steamed pud). Top up as needed with boiling water from a kettle.
Boil for four hours
Note: You can make lots of small puddings with this mix. They make good presents. For small puds place some of the mixture in small Tupperware basins, put the lid on securely and boil.
To keep: In cold climates puds were kept in the cool larder for months or even years. Here they tend to grow interesting moulds after a week or two, so cover with plastic wrap and keep in the fridge.
To serve: Both steamed and boiled puds need a second boiling. This darkens the pud and gives it its rich caramelised flavour. You can either boil them for two hours on the day and serve hot, or do it a day or two before and serve cold.
To serve: Wriggle a knife down the edge of the basin, or unwrap pud gently. Don't bother if a bit is slightly damp - puds are so rich that this will hardly be noticed!
Fill a large dessertspoon with some high alcohol substance – I use rum or whisky. Hold it over the heat of the stove till it sends up an almost invisible cloud of alcohol. It's now warm enough to light, so hold a match to it (do beware of singing eyebrows and hands). At this point: I should advise wearing leather gloves, goggles, protective clothing and a flame-proof mat, but of course no one will, so let me just repeat, this can be exceedingly dangerous and if the house catches alight (especially if you've been imbibing) or you receive second degree burns don't bother complaining. BECAUSE I WARNED YOU.
When it catches alight (and hopefully nothing else), pour over pud and carry in in triumph.
We eat pud with icecream and cream; custard is traditional but after a heavy meal this is just one more burden. And remember – you don't need much pud!
Cold pud is even better than hot pud. Keep covered in the fridge and it'll last for weeks.
|
