Cooking up a storm

For a variety of reasons I experienced a Christmas present and a birthday present this week. Even though it was neither my birthday nor, for that matter, Christmas.
By coincidence both presents were similar.
The Christmas present a postponement of a cooking course that the only non-S Clark gave me. An Indian Cooking experience which had transmogrified into "Tasty Asian".
It was great to spend a full and fun evening with daughter number one
The birthday present a Moroccan Cooking course with the great pleasure of my fine son-in-law. Much hilarity and staring at poor unfortunate on the side of the road who was sculling a can...which we assumed was alcoholic beverage, but was actually Fanta!
He was indignant about our attention, and quite rightly so. But it was an hilarious event. Great bonding

Just thought you may be interested to know how cooking courses work, and what benefit they are.
The photo alongside is a great trad recipe from Morocco. Bestella. A pigeon pie...which we had demonstrated  as a chicken pie..and which the pic alongside is actually in fully Vegan form! (see here for why that might be so!)
Now the hilarious part of this is that Chef du Maison of Adelaide's Marrakech Restaurant, Mohamad Bartaouch demonstrated four beautiful recipes with wit and charm.
And I have made said Bestella twice since we had the class a couple of days ago.
Mohamad finished his pie with the traditional sweet sugar recipe, criss crossed with cinnamon . I said to the lovely D...you can see his expertise. A perfect criss cross applied by hand.
My version is above. D noted that my criss-cross pattern was in the best tradition of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. Rude b#$%er. But perceptive!
But!!! I think that a good sign of a successful cooking class is that you cook the courses. And I have

I am writing this as I have just returned from Sticky Rice's Tasty Asian cooking course. Stuffed Prawns, Moreton Bay Bugs, Massaman Curry, Lemon Chicken.
All seem eminently possible. Though I don't think vegan!!
Both were complemented with fine SA wines. We are so fortunate.
I will blog more about wine a little later.
Someone said at tonight's course and dinner (the best part of a cooking course...you celebrate your learning by eating the product in the companionship of others)
"So many people at work love eating food! And cooking food, a great way to get together."

A great way indeed

Look on my works

My prediction is that the foolish words of Treasurer Foley suggesting that future generations will build him a statue will come back to haunt him again and again.
I guess that not a few folk with a more literary bent immediately thought of the poet Shelley who in the desert came across the decayed and broken statue of Ozymandias who had boasted “look on my works ye mighty and despair”. The poet then observes:

“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away”

If we do not heed the lessons of history about hubris, arrogance and misplaced pride then (as is clearly apparent) we are doomed to repeat our mistakes.

I comment, you nitpick, he challenges, she capitulates, we implode...they vanish into obscurity

Is it significant that in a week when the South Australian Liberal Party appears to be imploding (again!), Alexander Downer, who demonstrably is an expert in Liberal shenanigans, chooses nevertheless to divert our attention to a soft target, the Church?
There is a certain sense of irony in this given that the Government to which he belonged, on more than one occasion, told the Church to keep its nose out of politics.

The term of my natural life

I have lived most of my life in South Australia and I am glad to have done so. There is always a modicum of melancholy at this time of years because it was on March 18th 1967 that we arrived on the SS Orsova (pictured) at Outer Harbour. We did not get to see much of Adelaide, our family who had come to meet us were in much haste to get back to Whyalla where they had work commitments etc.

Those of you who have made the journey from Adelaide to Whyalla will know that you travel from the relative lushness of the city to the edge of the desert. It was for us a great adventure, though the culture shock was probably greater than you imagine. Looking back it felt more like moving into the American mid-west than Britain down-under. It was remote, culturally sparse, and educationally harsh.

All but one of my siblings has gravitated to Adelaide, and I often think how fortunate we are to live in such a temperate and stable place. Here, in the middle of a State election campaign, you get the impression that even if the worst happens and your opponents win, life will still go on much the same.

Although in SA we bemoan all sorts of things, and we are mocked ceaselessly by those who live on the Eastern seaboard for being small, quiet and perhaps a little inward looking; I suspect that most of us quite like that. And in fact I sometimes think we like to keep the secret and certainly do not want Adelaide to become like Sydney or Melbourne, so we almost conspire to not promote ourselves too much.

It would be good to be included on some of the national tours a bit more often. It's a pity that plays, musicians, art and so on seem to manage to go to Perth but find that Adelaide is hard to do.

As for the rest, I am glad to have discovered the secret.

Parliamentary Reform

I agree with Business SA (The Advertiser 11 January) that we need serious parliamentary reform in South Australia. But I don't quite understand how the abolition of compulsory voting would add to this, unless we want to encourage people not to take an interest in how we are governed or what our elected representatives get up to, which seems the very opposite of what is being proposed by the business lobby.

It is trite to say, as Peter Vaughan apparently does, that 'democracy' requires the abolition of compulsory voting. Democracy requires responsibility, and the key responsibility for the elector is to vote.

In the end we are not required to vote for any one particular person or party in Australia, we may choose to exercise our democratic responsibility and vote informal. But it is to our credit as a nation and as a state that all adults are permitted to vote and are required to act responsibly by so doing.

Judgement of poor Mike's poor judgement!

It will be a free-for-all in State politics this week as SA Premier Mike Rann finds his private life exposed. We will be reminded of why the 'private life' of a politician in this country has traditionally been regarded as off limits. Will the Labor Party take the opportunity to mudsling in the other direction?

I noticed a brief clip of Liberal Chris Pyne saying yesterday that private lives of politicians have by and large been left alone. In these latter more desperate days this tradition seems to be evaporating before our eyes.

One can see little good come of this. Despite the fact that Rann has been highly successful (well at least he has managed to stay in office for a long time) we, the public, will see his legacy reduced to some grubby little stories about an alleged affair.

Is this appropriate? does it matter?

To my mind it does matter whether a person lies or not. It does matter if they treat other people (however consensually) poorly!

This was the problem with the Lewinski affair. Clinton lied. He treated Lewinski poorly,and his wife even worse.

There seem to be some elements in this present business that may have the same sort of thing.

All in all, were I Mike Rann I would be inclined to think that enough is enough, and it's time to go. But I won't hold my breath!

Many years ago

I have blogged before about the journey our family made in 1967 from up there to down here.
Today is the anniversary of our arriving in Australia. I was 14 and couldn't even imagine being 42, let alone 42 years passing since our arrival.
Life goes on, much has changed. There are of course many cliches that could be hurled around.
My previous blog asserts how profoundly Australian I feel, and how I can see myself living nowhere else. I don't even want to emigrate to Melbourne!
But, lest we forget, emigration is not without significant cost. The loss of a large extended family nearby (hundreds of them within 30 kms) I didn't realise until years later how much a loss this was.
My sister L has moved from the swamp (way on the northern side) to Goodwood (about 10mins away...on a good day) and I have seen her more in the last week than I have in the last three months, and it's nice. Our family here is not quite as large as it was in England, but it has now got very big too. As we get older we realise that this is all a bit more precious than we might have realised.
Incidentally eldest child is in the process of getting a British passport, and will be making the journey the other way in a few months. She will return, we hope. But many don't.

Tournament Champ

The youngest SC was victorious again in her section of Tournament of Minds and is now part of the South Australian State Team going to Canberra for the National Finals next month. So she got over her tummy wobbles, and followed up on last year's success (see here and here)

Who'd be a politician?

The ever smiling Iain Evans, leader of the State Opposition is under seige yet again. His popularity rating has never been particularly high. The most that can be said about him is that he is less hard-faced than some of his opponents. One in particular, who shall remain nameless but who is not of the same gender as the Hon Iain.
It's suggested in the press and on the radion today that the next Liberal leaders may not actually be in the Parliament yet. That may be true.
But an interesting discussion ensued about the ingenuous Martin Hamilton-Smith who precipitated the last leadership spill. And lost!
But it needs to be said that Marty has kept his profile high and has ridden his motorbike unceasingly around the State's worst roads. He is often interviewed, and sometimes makes sense!
This is more than the other key players often do. Monsieur Evans and Madame Hard Face often just seem to whine and whine and whine about the Government, and fail to capture the popular imagination.
Although Hamilton-Smith looked like a total goose when denied any factional support in the recent stoush, has he positioned himself so that when next he moves he will not be so easily disregarded. A strange similarity to Senor Rudd's path to glory, which appears to have been successful in the long.
It is interesting to note in the picture alongside, (Marty in the front row with the brown jacket) that the above mentioned other female aspirant is sitting quite in the shade. Far be it from me to say she has missed the boat, but I am putting my money on Opposition Leader Hamilton-Smith in the next six months , not Evans or Chapperson!