Contents | Introduction | Wombat News | Book News
Schedule for 2008 | The Garden in February
* What to plant in February
* Keeping birds from your fruit
* Sharing your garden with lizards
A Few Recipes
* Eating your words: a delicious biscuit, and a new way to make learning to spell or read fun * Home made vanilla Icecream * Corn cakes with salsa

I discovered two new authors this month.
Okay, the rest of the world- well, some of it- discovered them years ago. But it’s a bit like my invention of a hunk of fresh bread covered with chopped up fresh tomato and a drizzle of fruity olive oil. The Italians may have been calling it ‘bruschetta’ ever since the tomato was hauled back from South America a few hundred years back, when someone said ‘Hey, Antonio, try a bit of this on bread.’ But I still invented it independently a quarter of a century ago, when there was nothing in the house but half sack of flour, some elderly yeast and olive oil, plus a well stocked vegie garden.
Finding two new writers is even better than finding the well boiled (in case of botulism) and plastic wrapped (in case of choking and heavy metal pollution) coin in the plum pudding, which is supposed to ensure wealth for the next 12 months, unless of course you swallow it.
Twelve months of wealth is all very nice, but two new writers last longer; at least they do when they’ve been writing books for a decade or two. Two whole booklists to order and read.
Even when you’re an adult- and for that matter part of the ‘literature industry’- it’s not always easy finding books you want to read. Books yes. Good books, no worries. Brilliant books- yep, can find those too. But the book that I want to read NOW, when I’m brain dead, or want a quiet and preferably funny universe to slip into before I go to sleep, or have been having one of THOSE afternoons devoted to working out my tax or tidying up unanswered mail, and want something that will move, soothe and enrapture me in four sentences- that’s harder.
It bothers me, sometimes, seeing how we persuade kids that reading is good for them. I don’t know any adult who reads anything because it’s good for them, except perhaps the label on their tablets, take two before meals.
We read for the joy of it, the wonder, the new universes and the old comforts. And kids, too, don’t necessarily want to read a book just because it’s a good book, or even a great book- or even the sort of book they liked yesterday. Like us, they need the perfect book to read NOW, the piece of dark chocolate at 4pm or the cup of tea at 11, or the apple crunched halfway through a journey- the one perfect thing just for that moment.
And that’s not easy- damn it, as parents we don’t just have to feed our kids protein and five serves of veg a day, but intuit what they want to read too.
But there is a cheat’s way. Take them to a bookshop; take them to a library, and let them browse- preferably for two hours while you have a cup of tea. Kids need to learn how to forage their own books, just like they need to experiment with chopped up tomato, a bit of bread and olive oil. And to do that they need time- and books- and only occasional guidance.
Like all of us really.
Ps the two authors are Allan Bennet and Chris Moore. You probably won’t like either of them...or have already read everything they’ve written. They just happened to be the right authors for me, for one month of a particular year.
Wombat News
There were wombat screams in the night a week ago. That either means that Mothball wombat is mating or she just found Feisty or one of the other wombats munching ‘her’ grass. It’s hard to tell with wombats- unless you’re another wombat and part of the action.
I just lay in bed and listened to the yells and yelps and scurrying feet.
It’s strange- I’ve only just realised that mothball is getting quite old, in wombat years. She’s about 11 or 12 now, and most wombats – around here anyway- only live to about 14.
Mothball doesn’t look old. Wombats go grey, just like humans, or their fur turns pale, so a brown wombat may look almost gold. Mothball still looks round, brown - and very determined.
She even did a bit of renovation to her hole under our bedroom this Christmas- a new pile of dirt and rocks was scarped out the front.
At the moment life her is about as good as it can get for a wombat- soft green grass, fresh water on the pond (she could go down to the creek for a drink but usually doesn’t bother), and no other wombats who are stroppy enough to challenge her.
Every other wombat I’ve known has lived hard years in bad drought times. But although Mothball has lived through the worst drought our valley has had for a hundred years, she didn’t do too badly. Even if there wasn’t much grass there was lots of fallen fruit, and avocadoes to gnaw. She looked plump all the way through the drought.
Some orphan wombats who have been looked after by humans always stay pretty small. They just haven’t had enough food while they were young. This often isn’t the carers fault- the baby wombat was just too upset by what had happened to it to really pig into its tucker.
But Mothball was always a solid little thing. She may have had a few terrible weeks, when she was orphaned and then savaged by dogs. And she did get hungry for a while when she first left our place to find a territory of her own out in the bush beyond our garden.
But being Mothball she didn’t put up with being hungry, hot and thirsty for long. She came back home, pushed through the screen door, ripped up the bath mat, destroyed the toilet paper, knocked me over, ripped my dress from hem to waist- and has stayed here ever since. No heading off again into the bush, with no lawn to munch or fallen apples to chew for Mothball…
It’s hard to think of life without Mothball. I know one day it’ll have to come. But I’m hoping it’s many years away still.

Schedule for 2008
Because I live so far away from just about everything (except wombat holes) it mostly takes me at least a day’s traveling (usually two) to go anywhere someone wants me to speak. And there just aren’t enough days in the year- or energy in my body- to do this for a ten minute talk to open a fair or an exhibition, or even for a one hour talk unless it’s going to involve talking to a lot of people about something I feel deeply about.
But if you’d like me to talk to your class, your group or your school, I CAN answer questions with an email chat for an hour or so...or at least I can if you email me at jackiefrench72@gmail.com till the end of this February. After that the diary will probably be full. (No charge, but a recording of the school choir or a pic of the kids is always welcome.)

February 23/24: International SCBWI and ASA Conference at The Hughenden, Sydney. Bruce Whatley and I will talk about the process of creating the WOMBAT picture books, and our wonderful editor Lisa Berryman (who is as much part of the books as Bruce and I) will chair the session.
April 6 Afternoon tea and talk at the Children’s Bookshop, Beecroft, Sydney. Not yet confirmed- contact the bookshop for details.
April 22/23: a few talks in Brisbane
May 2: CBCA Conference Melbourne
July 25-29: 2008 Byron Bay Writer’s Festival
August 17-19: 2008 Book Week talks Adelaide

The garden in February
What to plant
Subtropical and tropical areas
Food plants: sweet potatoes, passionfruit vines, parsley and other herbs, hand pollinate pumpkins and melons if heat or rain is preventing fruit set, plant beetroot, capsicum, carrot, caulies, celery, cucumber, eggplant, lettuce seedlings (lettuce seeds may not germinate in the heat), pak tsoi, pumpkin, radish, silver beet, sweet corn, tomatoes, watermelon.
Flowering plants: hibiscus, bougainvilleas, tropical evergreen fruit trees, ageratum, celosia, cosmos, coleus, Iceland poppy, salvia, sunflowers.

Temperate to cold areas:
Food plants: passionfruit and banana passionfruit, rhubarb, blueberries, artichoke, beans, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, carrots (try the tiny, fat, fast maturing ones in cold climates), sweet corn (fast maturing varieties only), leek, lettuce, white onions, salad greens like corn salad, mizuna, cress, red Italian chicory, silver beet, spring onions, spinach.
Flowering plants: spring flowering bulbs like iris, daffs and jonquils (look for heat tolerant ones in warmer areas, like Earlicheer jonquils) alyssum, stocks, and LOTS of flowers to give you colour and cheer through winter- pansies, violas, primulas, Iceland poppies, wallflowers, polyanthus

Bulbs
Early planting of bluebells, daffodils, Dutch iris, grape hyacinths, lachenalia, jonquils, nerines and other spring bulbs. Make sure they’re suitable for your area- some need winter chilling, others may be frost sensitive. Ask!

Fruit
Strawberry runners.

What to harvest
Vegetables
Beans, corn, lettuce, carrots, silver beet, cabbage, potatoes, strawberries, sweet potatoes, choko in warmer areas, herbs, basil, beetroot, burdock, capsicum, carrots, celery, celtuce, chicory, corn salad, cress, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, young leeks, melons, okra, parsley, pumpkin, radish, salsify, scorzonera, sweet corn, tomatoes, turnips, salad greens like mizuna and mitsuba, and zucchini. Late maturers like capsicum and eggplant will be ripening now. Stick large ripe pumpkins on a hot roof to harden. Onions for storage, planted last winter, should be lifted now when the tops die off.

Fruit
Brambleberries, raspberries, peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, apples, passionfruit, mulberries, gooseberries, cape gooseberries, hazelnuts, almonds, grapes, figs, babaco, pepino, pawpaw or mountain pawpaw in warm areas, orange, lemon, avocado, strawberry guavas, strawberries, pears, early melons, tamarillo, and banana passionfruit.

Flowers
Agapanthus, ageratum, asters, bergamot, dahlias, gladioli, liliums, lobelias, pansies, pentstemons, petunias, thyme, roses, zinnias.

What to prune
This is a good time for summer pruning, especially vines like kiwi fruit now the fruit has set. (Summer pruning is other name is ‘hacking back the jungle’.) Bending back unwanted growth now will check plants far less than a rigorous pruning in winter, and cuts will heal quicker. If you must prune apricots or cherries because the trees are getting too big, do so now.
Prune hydrangeas back to about half their size, to encourage flowering.
Native shrubs, fuchsias, and shrubs that have just finished flowering can be lightly pruned.

How to keep birds off Your Fruit
(This year I’d be happy if they’d guzzle a lot more!)
Birds clean up at from 40 to 90 per cent of pests. Also, they are beautiful and the most obvious wildlife most suburbs have. Who wants to live in a human-only desert? But if birds eat your fruit:
* grow fruit in groves- see http://www.jackiefrench.com/groves.html
* grow decoy crops. Birds PREFER sour fruit – which is why they eat your fruit ten days before you pick it. And birds are conservative- they’ll keep eating one fruit rather than start on a new tree.
We have large mobs of rosellas, parrots and bowerbirds here- and lots of citrus in winter. But the birds ignore our oranges- they’re eating the tiny sour calamondins. Calamondins are VERY prolific, and small enough to be carried away or held in a claw.
Try:
Winter: calamondins, ‘wild’ kiwi fruit- the small round ones that don’t need male and female vines
Spring: calamondins, lillypillies
Summer: lillypillies, native figs, mulberries, loquats
Autumn: wild kiwi fruit
There are many other crops to tempt birds, of course- look at whatever native (sour) fruits grow well in your area, and then use them to tempt the birds away from the nasty sweet stuff that we humans like.
* give fresh water every day – 50 per cent of fruit eating is a search for water;
* give other food – I put out last year’s apples, kiwi fruit or stale bread to keep the birds away from other crops;
* let your fruit tree branches tangle; mix up your vegetable garden so peas are overshadowed by corn, cabbages shield the beans, and fruit tree branches overhang the lot – we have over 130 species of birds here, but almost no trouble in the vegetable garden;
* encourage resident birds – they’ll help keep away seasonal invaders like white cockatoos.

Sharing Your Garden with Lizards
Lizards make wonderful companions in the garden - they not only help to clean up pests and give you the feeling that you are part of a diverse world, but they can also become quite friendly.
Many lizards will become used to humans, especially you're willing to sit still for long periods of time with small amounts of food on your finger.
I remember a lovely two-hour period up the creek, tempting a big golden skink with a shred of Christmas turkey. By the end of that time the lizard was quite unafraid of us. The lizard residents of your garden may soon get used to you. We sometimes have golden skinks running over our feet. (Ours are the fattest skinks I've ever seen, and truly golden sometimes. Kids adore them.)
What Lizards Like
Lizards are timid - mostly. They like shelter - from cats, dogs, larger lizards, snakes and birds - but most also like to sunbake as well. If you've got a good protected spot to sunbake you'll probably attract lizards.
Lizards are cold-blooded reptiles - they rely upon heat from an external source to regulate the temperature of their body.  If the weather becomes too cold lizards become dormant and so, like many reptiles, they love to sunbake.
Skinks, geckos and legless lizards can discard their tails if they're threatened. The tail usually comes back again - not always - but will probably be a different colour and sometimes a particularly different shape. I've even seen one skink grow back two tails at once, one longer than the second one.
Most lizards like to shelter underneath rocks or in stonewalls or underneath mulch or branches. Others prefer rocky outcrops and crevices. A few like to burrow in sandy soil while others prefer trees. A few also like to spend most of their time either near or sometimes in water like water monitors, though these are rarely found in gardens. In southern Australia most lizards hibernate during the winter in rocks or branches or rock crevices or anywhere that will give them some protection from frost.
Feeding Lizards
Lizards mostly eat insects, worms, small snails - even very large snails which they suck out with great gusto - fish, tadpoles, smaller lizards while larger lizards will eat birds and even mammals. Some lizards eat plants but none are totally vegetarian.
Like birds, wild lizards should always be allowed to rely primarily on their natural food supply. But a little - a very little - hand feeding does no harm, as long as the food is fresh and you are careful not to introduce disease.
Monitor lizards for example will happily feed on eggs left out for them or even eggs that haven't been left for them and you want for yourself.
 Skinks will eat mince, eggs, little pieces of banana and sometimes pieces of grated fruit. Geckos, like skinks, love worms but can be fed very small amounts of soft fruit or even jam.
A neighbour of ours uses to leave mince out every day for a Blue Tongue Lizard to stop it stealing the eggs. The Blue Tongue happily ate the mince, and thrived, but still ate the eggs. Blue tongues have also been known to love a little mashed banana.
Lizards
How to get rid of a lizard
You may well ask why would you want to? But there are a few odd people in the world who don't like blue tongue lizards under their beds or on the front steps, and who scream if they see something slithery. Those people need counselling... but in the meantime they need to be placated before they attack the source of terror with the sharp end of a spade.
Buy a water pistol, or a plastic sprayer if you don’t want something that looks like a gun. Fill it with water. Stick it in the freezer till it's really cold, but not too frozen to squirt.
Now fire it at the lizard, goanna, blue tongue etc. Reptiles hate the cold and this will burn like fire. The lizard will retreat, probably hissing all the while. Repeat two or three times. And it may go away for good.
Hopefully though it won't come to this. The scared human may feel comforted just with the feel of a gun, albeit a plastic one, in their hands and be able to brave passing the blue tongue without firing at them instead.

The Life of a Lizard
Most lizards lay eggs usually among leaf litter or timber or under rocks or in holes in the soil. The females then leave them alone for anywhere from 6 weeks to 10 months depending on the type of lizard, the temperature or humidity. Some of the skinks however give birth to live babies. Most lizards are awake during the daylight.
There are dozens of different lizards in Australia, and many good books available to identify them.

Some common garden lizards:
Skinks
Skinks will also come inside. If you find what appears to be a dead skink on your cool kitchen floor, don't toss it in the rubbish. It may simply have suddenly become dormant in the cool of inside.
Pick it up very gently and take it outside, and put it in a warm safe place, to see if it will revive. You can also try holding it on your hand to see if your warmth will bring it to. This can be quite magical as the creature suddenly wakes up. However, once it's woken it will probably dive away - skinks rarely understand that giants are their rescuers - and you may lose it under the bed, or under a sofa, or under a bench where it will become comatose again and may be sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.
If you are going to keep skinks in your hand until they revive, always do it outside, preferably sitting cross-legged on the ground so the skink does not have far to fall to safety.
The most common garden skink is probably the Fence Skink Cryptoblephorus boutonii.As its name implies it loves fences, heat and insects, as well as loose bark on tree trunks and flat stones or paving.It eats flies and small insects.
The Striped Skink, Ctenotus lesueurii, is found over most of Australia.It likes to burrow under fallen rocks or branches or bark mulch and sandy soil it also eats insects.
The Garden Skink, Leilopisma gichenoti likes rocks and very loose mulch - the looser the better.It only lays two or three eggs but any garden usually has quite a lot of skinks.Garden skinks eat insects like flies, mosquitoes and pests like aphids as well as moths and worms.
Cunningham's Skink (Egernia cunninghami) lives in rocky areas in south east Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria.It lives in colonies in rock crevices, hollow logs or stone fences. Its colour can vary from area to area.
Cunningham's skinks eat worm, snails - and often very large ones - as well as fruit and small plants.
Geckos
Geckos are found over most of Australia, though they are more common in tropical areas. They generally come out at night and can be a nuisance pattering around the ceiling. Some Geckos prefer the ground others prefer trees, or rooves, or sheds. Geckos have a wonderful skill - they can walk totally upside down or on almost totally smooth vertical walls.
Geckos mostly eat insects, both large and small.
Bluetongue Lizards
The Bluetongue lizard (Tiliqua scincoides) occurs from southeast Queensland to eastern New South Wales and through Victoria.It loves to sunbake on rocks or even in the middle of the lawn or at the edge of garages, scuttling away if disturbed, though if cornered it hisses loudly and pokes out its distinctive blue tongue. If it's desperate it can bite but the bite won't be serious.
Bluetongues love snails, insects, mice and fruit. The young are born alive usually about ten each time.
Frill Neck Lizards
Frill Neck Lizards, Chlamydosaurus kingii, sunbake on the ground or retreat to trees if threatened. They erect their frill to intimidate anything that frightens them and they may also stand on their hind legs and hiss loudly. Frill Neck Lizards eat insects and mice or even small rats.
Jacky dragons, Amphibolurus muricatus, can be found along the eastern and southern coast. If they're frightened they rear up on the hind legs and race away, or turn towards you and try and look as threatening as they can with their mouth open showing the bright yellow inside. They also climb trees. Jacky Dragons eat worms, small lizards and insects.
Monitor Lizards or Lace monitors, or goannas (Varanus varius), can grow to over 2 m long - like most reptiles they continue growing all their life though progressively more slowly.  You'll see them either on the ground or climbing up trees. Their appearance varies enormously from area to area sometimes with yellow and black strips and sometimes just a mottled look (there are various other monitor species which can be confused with the Lace monitor or goanna).
Goannas are often found around chook yards - they love eggs but they also eat birds, wild bird eggs, small mammals, small reptiles - and absolutely love rotting meat - the smellier the better. Around here goannas also climb peach trees and eat peaches or apples, though they much prefer the fermenting apples in the dump. A drunken goanna is smelly, ridiculous and often bad tempered.
Goannas usually lay their eggs in termite mounds, letting the heat from the termites hatch the eggs. The young goannas look like tiny dragons, about 28 cms long, with very pronounced stripes which they often lose as they get older.
Goannas definitely get used to humans, and will ignore you once they realise you're no threat. They are very good judges of character - one goanna I knew marched into a friend's kitchen, grabbed the leg of lamb off the table and marched out again, quite rightly ignoring all their screams and threats. It knew they were only bluffing.
Goannas in Chook House
We had problems for years with goannas eating our chook eggs - we like to leave the chook door open so the chooks can free range throughout the day. We finally realised that chooks can fly but goannas can't. Our chook gate remains shut all day, except when we want to go inside.
 Instead Bryan has put a window in one wall of the chook house with a perch about a metre either side. The birds jump up onto the perch, and fly through the window onto the perch on the other side. The goanna has made many attempts to work out how to get through the window, but so far it has been foiled, and sits on the roof of the chook house lashing its tail and hissing wildly and peering at us with little piggy eyes. The chooks have become quite used to it and ignore it.
Other ways of keeping goannas out of chook houses have included putting down stone eggs, presumably to give them indigestion or filling hollow eggs with mustard, chilli and white pepper. Don’t try it- it either won’t work, or will be a horrible thing to do to the goanna.
We found though that our goannas (who may of course be more intelligent than most), ignored the stone or plastic eggs, as well as the mustard filled eggs, and only went for the good ones. And in other places goannas and snakes have died horrible painful deaths from eating white stones they thought were eggs.
Goannas love rotten eggs - we do leave the occasional rotten egg from forgotten nests out for the goanna as a treat. Do not however expect gratitude from a goanna.

Hazards to Lizards in Your Garden
Dog and cats - dogs and cats will both eat and torment lizards, though some dogs will ignore and some cats prefer birds to lizards (cats appear to be either bird or lizard hunters rarely both, except in the wild).

Pesticides - Lizards are very vulnerable to poisoned insects or rats or mice which have eaten poison. Though the manufacturers may tell you there is no flow-on effect, I have seen too many cases of dead reptiles to believe this. If you want lizards in your garden, avoid pesticides as much as possible. Use traps, repellents or non-toxic, organic remedies. (Some organic remedies are toxic)

Digging - most lizards lay eggs or have favourite sheltering places and too much digging or disturbance may damage the eggs or young lizards. Instead of digging mulch, mulch, mulch - and then just part the mulch to put your seeds or seedlings into the softer soil below. The mulch will provide lizard habitat and insulation, as well as encouraging earth worms and other insects for them to eat. It will also do your plants no harm at all.

Eating Your Words
Kids see the world in many ways- by looking, hearing, smelling, and the feel of air on their skin. And there are many different ways kids can learn to read and write too- not just sitting at a table or desk with a pen (which can be pretty boring for any active kid), but making giant letters as they run across the sand, or blasting out words with a water pistol on a brick wall or pavement, or making squiggly words with wet spaghetti.... I could go on for pages. (And have elsewhere)
This is one way to learn your words- by eating them. I promise that by the time a kid makes the letters, forms them into a word, ices them, admires them, then eats them, they'll have that word for the rest of their life, whether it be a difficult one like receive or ornithorhyncus.
P.s these are also delicious, even if you don't feel you need to eat your words

1-cup plain flour
90 gm ground almonds
90 grams butter or margarine
1 egg yolk
1-teaspoon vanilla OR 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon OR (for adults) teaspoon of mixed cinnamon, ginger and ground coriander, or even a few fennel seeds for an aniseed taste.
Note: this doesn’t contain any sugar. You can add 2 tb castor sugar, or make them sweeter with icing or topped with other sweet things- see below. But they are also good unsweetened.

Mix with your (clean) fingers or in a mixer. Leave dough covered in the fridge for at least 2 hours to cool down again or it'll be very sticky.
Spread out baking paper. Place the dough on the paper. Place more baking paper on top. Use a rolling pin or even a sturdy glass or clean tin can to roll it out thinly- about 3 cm thick.
Now use scissors to cut out letters...or make 'templates' of letters on cardboard and put those on to of the baking paper so kids can cut out the shapes.
You can roll of remaining dough to use for more letters.
Place letters - still in their baking paper- on a baking tray. Peel off the top bit of paper.
Bake at 150C for 10-15 minutes till very very pale brown, not dark or mid brown.
Take from oven. Cool before handling- they will be hot. Peel off the base of paper.

You can eat them plain- they're good dunked into milk.
You can ice them...one trick is to use different coloured icing for each word. All the letters for 'receive' for example might be green.
You can sprinkle them while still hot with 1 tb castor sugar mixed with 1 tsp ground cinnamon
Or- naughty but delicious- take boiled lollies, praline, peanut or macadamia brittle; place in a paper bag, bash with a wooden rolling pin or hammer, then sprinkle the bits onto the biscuits before you cook them.

Home Made Vanilla Ice cream
3 cups cream
2 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean
1 tb castor sugar
Place cream, egg yolks and castor sugar in a saucepan. Split the vanilla bean long ways, and scrape out the pulp into the pan. Now turn the heat on to the lowest possible setting, and stir for about ten minutes. Don't stop stirring. When the mix thickens enough to coat the spoon take it off the heat. Let the mix cool then put it in an ice cream machine and follow the usual directions. If you don't have an ice ream machine put the creamy mix into a plastic container in the freezer. Remove the container every ten or twenty minutes and beat the cream with a whisk or eggbeater till it's light and frozen. I know this is fiddly, but it's worth it.
True vanilla ice cream is perfect with apple or apricot pie, or simply by itself. And you'll never think of 'ice cream' - or vanilla as being ho hum again.

CornCakes with Salsa
(The corn is ripe, the corn is ripe, wacko the corn is ripe.)
Salsa Ingredients
1 large red onion, chopped
3 large sweet fragrant tomatoes, peeled (slit the skin lightly in a few places, place in a bowl, then our over a jug of boiling water. Wait 1 minute and the peel will come of easily) and chopped (if you can't find a fragrant tomato, substitute ripe mango, or even a very ripe navel orange in winter- but eat at once or the chopped orange flesh will turn bitter)
A few drops only of balsamic vinegar - don't overdo it. It should just be a hint.
Corn Cake Ingredients
4 eggs
2 cups self-raising flour
2 cans corn kernels if you must; otherwise use a knife to scrape the kernels of twelve ears of freshly boiled corn
1 tb finely chopped capsicum (Sort of optional)
1 tb finely chopped parsley (Ditto)
1 tb chopped chives (Ditto too... but do try to add them)
Milk
Mix everything except the milk; then add milk slowly till it's still thick but will drip rather than glop from a spoon
Heat a frying pan; add a dab of butter or a tb of olive oil- I use olive oil; slide in spoonfuls of mixture; fry till brown on one side then flip over and brown on the other.
Serve hot with the salsa on the side.
You can make these all in advance and keep them warm under a tea towel or in a very low oven...or just fry them up as people eat, nibbling the slightly charred ones as you cook.