Jackie French July 2003 message

Contents:
So far This Morning....
New Books
Schedule So Far For the Year
Some Winter Recipes
July in the Garden
Yabbies

So far This Morning....

2 am. Earthquake rattles bedroom. Open my eyes and realise it isn't an earthquake, just Mothball wombat scratching her back on the floor joist underthe floor below my bed.
2.30. Go back to sleep.
2.35 am. Wake up as possum leaps onto the bedroom roof from the apple tree. Possum slides down roof.
3.30 am. Go back to sleep.
7 am. Wake up as Bryan tiptoes out of the bedroom, making as much noise as a dinosaur playing the bagpipes.
7.30. Mooch around. Lyrebirds have dug up the strawberry plants, bush rats have gnawed the tops of the carrots, Willoughby Wallaby has eaten every rose bud he can reach, the blood oranges are NEARLY ripe (they are deep red inside and incredibly juicy). All pretty average.
8.00 Bryan has lit the wood stove so the kitchen is warm, even though the sun won't rise over the ridge here till 9.22. Porridge for breakfast, and a cup of tea and one of the navel oranges I picked yesterday. Still feels cold even though it's been warming up in the kitchen near the wood stove ever since. Bryan has put new seed in the bird feeder. watch red browed finches pecking seed, bower birds picking cumquats and currawongs trying to carry off giant avocadoes and dropping them after afew metres.
8.35. Bryan is eating his toast. Mooch out to garden again to pick carrots, leeks, parsley, semi dried beans, celery for soup for lunch.
8.45 Cut off bush rat gnawed tops of carrots, throw veg in pot with chicken stock I made yesterday from boiled up chicken bones. Put pot on wood stove.
9.00 Answer emails.
9.30 Read through the last (I hope) draft of 'Convict Boy'
11. 20 Email 'Convict Boy' to Lisa at Harper Collins.
11.25 Pick bunch of jonquils; remember I've left soup on the stove and race in to rescue it.
11.26 Soup fine.
11.40..start writing this....
Things to do today:
. eat soup
. pick bag of avocadoes to take to Margaret in Melbourne later this week
. check solar panel batteries- we've had a week of cloudy weather and we may be using more power than we are getting from the sun. If we are we'll have to put the water wheel on- it generates power as the water turns the wheel, and will recharge the batteries.
. FINISH WRITING THIS!

New Books
                    The Whacky Families are out! The first two in the series, anyway, My Mum the Pirate and My Dog the Dinosaur. (Malcolm Knox in the Sydney Morning Herald commented: Heaven Help My Dad)
                    They're funny, they're whacky, the illustrations by Stephen Michael King are brilliantly hilarious, but hopefully there's enough meat in the stories so you'll want to read them more than once. (Which is basically the test of a good book. If you don't want to read it at least three times so it wriggles down in your memory - and take it to the loo with you so you don't have to stop reading- it doesn't deserve the title of 'good book.'
                    The other books so far this year have been Valley of Gold, The Black House, Vampire Slugs on Callisto, and Big Burps Bare Bums and other Bad Mannered Blunders (a book of good manners, bad manners, and really TERRIBLE manners).
                    It's just been reprinted, and there are also new editions of Hitler's Daughter, Soldier on the Hill, Daughter of the Regiment and Somewhere Around the Corner with gorgeous new covers. (The face of the guy on Somewhere Around the Corner almost makes me cry, it is so perfect for the story).
                    There are also going to be new covers for the Phaery Named Phredde books- have a look and see what you think!
                    And I'm REALLY looking forward to the new picture book, Too Many Pears, with Bruce Whately. It's about a cow who...well, wait till you see it!

Schedule So Far For the Year
                    So far this is where I'm booked for the rest of the year. There may be some additions, but hopefully not too many!

4 July Fun 4 Kids, Warrnambool, Victoria.

5 July, International English Teacher's conference, Melbourne

28 July-1 August, Nestle Write Around Australia, Canberra...school sessions but there will be a public sesion on the evening of Tuesday 29th for adults and kids- I don't know where yet!

9 August, at talk at Eltham Victoria organised by the Eltham Book Store . Contact Eltham bookstore for details.

0-13 August, school events in Melbourne.

18-20 August, school events in Sydney.

4 September 7.30 pm. Giralang Primary School, ACT, an evening session on writing for young and old. Contact Giralang primary for details.

10-13 September, Ipswich Writers' Festival, QLD, including a talk at the Ipswich Library on Saturday morning 13th. Contact the library for more details.

14 September Bolinda Primary School Spring Fair, Bolinda Vic. This should be great fun! Bryan and I are the guests for the day. Bolinda probably deserves the title of Best School in the Universe (okay, maybe it ties for first place with a few others) with fabulous kids and teachers- we've been writing to each other for years now, and they come up to our place every few years too.

26-28 September Brisbane Writers centre- workshops on writing historical fiction and a masterclass. Limited numbers so contact QLD Writers Centre for details.

2-5 October, CBC Conference Hobart

26 October Vaucluse House Sydney: In the Chookhouse with Jackie French, plus a Kid's Club session . Public warmly welcomed; contact Vaucluse house for information on how to book- limited numbers

9 November Open Garden at our place to raise funds for the new Braidwood Hospital garden- two 3 hour workshops on how to grow just about everything in your back yard, even if your backyard freezes regularly, and how to grow herbs and make your own perfume, deodorant etc. plus morning or afternoon tea. Contact the Open Garden Scheme to book- numbers are strictly limited, especialyy as most people from last year have booked again!

Some Winter Recipes

Classic Choc Fudge Slices
1 cup plain flour
half cup sugar
1 cup coconut
1 tsp v anilla
                    Mix in bowl. Add 185gm melted butter
                    Press onto greased tray.
                    Bake at 225C for 20 minutes, or till JUST starting to brown at the edges. Do not overcook!!! It will still be soft when you take it from the oven.
                    leave in tin to cool somewhat. Ice with:
1 cup icing sugar
1tb cocoa
2 tb butter
                    Dust with more coconut on top purely as decoration. Cut into slices. Store in sealed container.

Lemon Delicious Pud
3 eggs
half cup castor sugar
30 g butter
1 cup milk
2 tsp lemon rind grated
third cup lemon juice
half cup selfraising flour
another half cup castor sugar

Beat together egg yolks, half cup castor sugar, butter and lemon rind. Mix in milk and flour. Whip egg whites and add to mix.
Plae in an oven proof bowl and put in baking tray; half fill baking tray with water. This helps the pud cook evenly.
Bake at 200C for about 50 minutes or till gold on top. Serve with cream AND icecream.
ps can be made in 4-6 small pud dishes; in this case they take about half an hour to cook.

Stuffed Monkeys...a bit like squashed flies but better
No monkeys were harmed in the making of this biscuit

2 cups sr flour
2 eggs
100gm butter
2 tb caster sugar

Filling
1 cup seeded raisins or chopped dates
1 cup sultanas
1 tb mixed peel or 2 tb grated lemon or orange zest
1 tb castor sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon

extra milk and caster sugar

                    Mix flour eggs butter sugar; roll out and cut into squares or rounds.
                    Mix filling place teaspoons full on the pastry. Fold one side of the pastry over onto the other and pinch edges together. Brush with a little milk and scatter on castor sugar. Bake in a preheated oven at 200C till golden.

GENUINE Turkish Delight (not like that red jelly stuff that pretends to be the real thing)
Turkish delight originally comes from ancient Persia. The ancient Persians loved all sorts of jellies. The ancestor of what we now know as Turkish delight was one of these, 'rahat lokum', meaning 'giving rest to the throat'.
                    Turkish delight isn't the easiest sweet in the world to make. It's fairly simple if you follow the directions, and not nearly as complicated as you might think once you start making it, but it does take a lot of time. Not as much as you might think when you first read the recipe, because you can watch TV or read while the stuff bubbles.
                    Don't let any oft his turn you off. Genuine Turkish delight is so extraordinarily stunning that all the effort is worth it- and it will be quite different from any other sweet you've ever tasted.

Ingredients
4 cups caster sugar
4 cups dark grape juice
juice of 1 lemon
1 cup cornflour
2 tbsps rosewater
three quarters of a cup of icing sugar (not icing mixture)
a quarter cup cornflour, extra.
                    Take two saucepans.
                    In the first one place the caster sugar, one and a half cups dark grape juice and the lemon juice.
                    Boil till a little sets into a soft ball in a saucer of water.
                    Take off the heat.
                    In the next pan place one cup of cornflour and half a cup of grape juice. Stir to a paste then add two more cups of grape juice. Simmer on a low heat till thick, stirring all the time, then pour the hot syrup into the thick cornflour mixture, stirring all the time.
                    Simmer on a very, very low heat for about an hour. Stir every now and then. You don't need to stir it all that often till near the end of the operation.
                    It'll get thickerä and thickerä and very, very, very thick... but don't give in. It'll be almost solid by the time it's ready.
                    When it's really, really, REALLY thick and you are quite sure it can't get any thicker and anyway your arm is about to break, take it off the heat and add the rose water.
                    Pour onto a greased tray. Leave uncovered for about three hours. Lightly oil a knife and cut into squares, or just gloop it up like this...
                    Now mix three quarters of a cup of icing sugar and a quarter of a cup of cornflour and roll each piece in this. Store in an airtight container.

July in the Garden
Plant: Trees, trees, trees - if you don't have fruit trees now is the time to put one (or twenty three) in. Also roses, in pots or bare rooted, asparagus crowns (but seedlings in spring will grow faster), rhubarb crowns, artichoke suckers, thornless blackberries and raspberries and loganberries
Prune: Leafless trees, shrubs and roses.
Don't prune: Banksia and other roses that only bloom in spring - wait till they've flowered. Don't prune roses or other shrubs in very frosty areas either - wait till next month
Spray: Fruit trees and roses with bordeaux - this will kill the fungal spores that will give them black spot and other leaf and fruit disease next season.
Repot: Hanging baskets and pot plants. Potting mix starts to repel water after a year or two, or turns into concrete - which is why pot plants stop growing and flowering so much as they get older. Repot each winter and they'll keep on looking lush.
Water: Everything! Cold weather dries out plants - and water penetrates best into slightly damp soil. If you wait till the ground is dry most will run off or not penetrate to root depth.
Think herbs: Plant drought tolerant lavender, rosemary, sage, thyme, santolina or curry plant in sunny spots; Corsican mint, creeping thymes and prostrate savoury in sun between paving stones; woodruff and comfrey in light shade.

What to plant:
Flowers:
Cold ≠ warm: Seedlings of pansies, primulas, polyanthus, alyssum, calendulas, dianthus, hollyhock, foxgloves and poppies.
Subtropical - tropical: As above plus any annual seedlings in the nursery.
Vegetables
Cold - temperate: Onions, artichoke suckers, asparagus or rhubarb crowns
Subtropical - tropical: Just about anything.

How to Catch Yabbies
So beware of the bite of the yabby,
They are tasty but often quite crabby,
They'll grab at your bum,
Your toes and your tum -
Especially if you're a bit flabby.
                    One of the great treats when I was a kid was to go yabby hunting, then boil tthem on a fire and eat them. These days it's harder for most kids to get to a dam to catch yabbies, and there are more kids and fewer dams- and fewer yabbies I suppose too. But if by any chance you DO visit a place with a farm dam, yabbying is great fun.
                    Yabbies are freshwater crayfish - or in other words, delicious crab-like things in shells, usually as long as your hand without your fingers, but often much bigger or much smaller. They live on decaying vegetable matter and other small animals and insects in dams, creeks - in fact, wherever you have mud or freshwater. If the water dries up the yabbies go overland to the next lot of water.

In Western Australia yabbies are known as gilgies or koonacs - and they are a different species of yabby from the eastern Cherax destructor - C quinquecarinatus and C preissii respectively. Western Australia also has C tenuimanus, or the marron, which is much larger than a yabby and delicious (so are yabbies). Yabbies are usually a sort of dull olive, but you can get orange, yellow, brown, blue, red and even white yabbies.
                    As yabbies grow they shed their skin or shell. The old shell splits and the shell underneath is soft and white for a while, gradually hardening. Yabbies usually hide while their skin hardens. Young yabbies lose their shells often as they grow; older ones lose them less often. Yabbies can also regrow lost eyes or legs.
                    Yabbies use their claws to gather food or to defend themselves. Yabbies grow from eggs - literally. Instead of cracking an egg open like a baby chicken, yabby's heads stay in the egg while the yabby egg stays attached to the mother - up to eight hundred eggs at a time. Even after the head leaves the egg baby yabbies hang on to their mother's tails. The tails can get extremely crowded and sometimes baby yabbies crush each other. (As they get older yabbies may eat each other too.)
                    But even though yabbies like to eat other yabbies and worms and insects (they wave their antennae around out of the water to attract them) , most of their food is rotting leaves.
                    If a yabby's waterhole dries up it can burrow down into the mud and wait for it to rain again - or it can march overland, up to about two kilometres, as long as they are going through fairly moist grass or on a wet night so their gills stay moist. Sometimes people see hordes of migrating yabbies and can pick up sacks full at one time.

Where to Catch yabbies
                    Farm dams are the best place to yabby - you are less likely to be eating another animal's food supply in farm dams or feeding on a rare species of yabbie in danger of extinction.
                    Make sure any dam you go yabbying in hasn't been polluted from run off from farm chemicals or has old bits of machinery or rusting drums of something or other rotting to one side. Also make sure you don't 'over yabby' any area - just take a few every now and then, so there are always plenty to breed up. If you only catch two yabbies, throw them back. Throw back little 'uns too. And also any females with eggs or young under her tail.
                    ALWAYS ASK THE OWNER OF THE LAND IF YOU CAN GO YABBYING ON THEIR PLACE, AND ASK IF IT IS SAFE TO EAT THE YABBIES THERE TOO! KEEP AN EYE ON LITTLE KIDS WHO MIGHT DROWN IN THE DAM- OR DON'T TAKE THEM YABBYING! MAKE SURE YOUR PARENT/ GUARDIAN KNOSWS WHERE YOU ARE AND IS CONFIDENT IT'S SAFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When to Catch Yabbies
                    Yabbies bite best in summer - particularly hot dry summers when there is little other food about - but you may catch them at other times. You can catch yabbies at any time of the day or night, though some people say that they are most active in the early morning or just before dusk.

How to Catch a Yabby
                    The traditional way to catch a yabby is to stick your toe in the water. The yabby then catches you. You pull out the yabby and pull it off your toe - then look for a bandaid.
                    A more popular method is tying a bit of old smelly meat (not fatty meat - it floats) onto a bit of string or, even better, old nylon stocking. The smellier the meat the better, as the yabbies notice it sooner. A bit of bleeding liver is excellent. Some people use a bit of soap. Aborigines used wonga vine - or other tough vines - with a bit of meat to catch yabbies (they also muddied up the water so the yabbies tried to escape and then grabbed them). They also used lawyer vine - which has very sharp spines - to hook them as they emerged from the mud to catch insects.
                    Throw the meat into the water and hold the other end of the stocking. When you feel something tug on the other end draw it SLOWLY out - don't jerk or the yabby will let go. As you draw it out of the water stick a net under it or an old boot - anything to catch the yabby as it lets go and plunges back into the water.
                    This method usually catches young yabbies. Older yabbies are smarter and let go sooner.
                    If you attach your yabby line to a stick and keep it propped up, you can have many lines on the go at once - just keep a sharp eye on them and pull out any that start twitching.

Yabby Traps
                    The easiest yabby trap is an old soft drink can with a bit of string attached. Leave the can in the waterhole overnight, with a bit of bait inside - and hope a yabby is sheltering there next morning
                    Usually it isn't - but you never know.
                    You can also make a yabby net. This is just a circle of wire, with netting tied onto the bottom and three strings attached to pull it up with. You put some bait in the net (tie it onto the middle of the netting), and throw it into the waterhole. When it reaches the bottom the top collapses onto the bottom. The yabbies are lured in to eat the bait - then you pull the net up . Leave your trap in the water for at least an hour. This is the best way to catch many yabbies simultaneously and often quite good-sized ones.

Yabby Pots
                    Roll up some chicken wire into a cylinder. Make a flap at one end, so that you can open it again to take the yabbies out. At the other end make a funnel shape - big on the outside but smaller on the inside, so the yabbies can get in easily but find it hard to get out. Push some bait into the trap, attach a rope (so you can pull it out again) and throw the whole thing into the water. Leave it there for an hour or a week or anything in between - then haul out your yabbies. The longer you leave them the more likely it is that you will uncover unpleasant scenes of carnage and cannibalism when you do inspect your traps.

Yabby Tins
                    An old fashioned way of catching yabbies was to punch some holes in the bottom of an old kerosene tin, then lay it in the water on its side with some bait in it. Next morning tip the tin upwards as fast as you can. The water will drain out the bottom - and with luck the trapped yabbies will be staring up at you

How to Grab a Yabby
                    Hold your yabbies behind the claws, so they can't bite you.

How to Cook a Yabby
                    The best way to cook and eat a yabby is to tip it into clean water for ten minutes As soon as you haul it out (this cleans it, and lets it get rid of any muddy water inside) then throw it into a boiling billy of water (this sounds cruel- but the yabby dies immediately). Leave the yabbies simmering for five minutes, or a bit longer if they're very big, then eat it with lemon juice and butter - or just by themselves. Fresh yabby meat is subtle and very moist, but it dries out quickly. Most people only eat the meat from the giant claws and tail, but you can also eat all the insides of a yabby - and if you don't feel squeamish, they're delicious.
                    One aboriginal way to cook yabbies was to dig a small hole, half fill it with hot ashes, throw in the yabbies, then throw in more hot ashes or coals. After five or ten minutes the yabbies would be dug out, and eaten - insides as well as heads, with only the gills and long intestine thrown away.
                    If you don't want to eat your yabbies straight away, keep them alive in a bucket of water - not too full or the yabbies will crawl out or even in a thoroughly wet sack for a short period of time. Never cook a yabby that has been dead for more than half an hour - yabbies 'go off' very quickly and you can get food poisoning.
                    As well as throwing yabbies into boiling water, you can also kill them by knocking them on the head (but this can be cruel if the first blow doesn't kill them). You can also leave your yabbies in the fridge for a few hours so they become sluggish and won't feel as much pain - but putting yabbies into the fridge can be cruel too. I feel the instant death in boiling water is best - and make sure you don't have too many yabbies in the water at once so the water keeps boiling strongly and the yabbies are killed at once. Yabbies can also be skewered between the eyes. I haven't tried it.
                    A friend up at Major's Creek, Angela Marshall, has the following story: Once we left an enormous number of yabbies (about forty from memory) overnight in a child's wading pool outside on the lawn. The night was much colder than we expected and in the morning all the yabbies appeared to be dead - motionless and no response to stimuli like being picked up. Thinking they were ex-yabbies we went and had breakfast before throwing them away and by the time we came out again the first of them were just starting to revive and feebly wave their antennae. None had died and within an hour of the sun warming up their water they were all marching around and bullying each other as yabbies are wont to do. I did feel that we could easily have transferred the cryogenic yabbies to a pot of boiling water and they wouldn't have known a thing.

How to Hypnotise a Yabby
                    Grab your yabby behind the claws so it can't grab hold of you. Tuck its claws and tail under its body and prop it on the table still holding it down firmly. Now stroke your yabby between the eyes for about five minutes, back and forth with your finger nail or tip of your finger.
                    Hypnotised yabbies stay perfectly still until they are woken up again.