Soup Update, Depression, and Golf Balls

SOUP UPDATE
Today the Use-By-Date Soup went down the drain. It was simply beyond redemption. I struggled to eat/drink it last week, to no avail. On the weekend I defrosted the remaining 2 litres and bought a bottle of cream with a view to rescuing it in some way, but today off to sea it went. Moral of that story: start with good ingredients, and it's not always possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Fortunately yesterday I picked 3 beautiful heads of cauliflower and 2 of brocolli (with loads more still on the way) so here's hoping for better things to come in the soup department.


DEPRESSION
It's a very rare day when I can't find something to laugh my socks off about, but today was one - I must have been a total joy to work with (sorry team). Even though the most childish and absurd things usually bring tears to my eyes (which I hope is a fine quality to possess, albeit probably a pain in the butt for everyone else), today absolutely nothing was even remotely funny.

Another (dubious?) quality is that I always think the impossible is possible. "Why not?" is generally the first thing that springs to mind when I concoct yet another mad scheme, and I'm prone to attempt things way beyond my skill level, thinking if I really really want something badly enough it will just happen. Which is all well and good if you can pull it off because the rewards are incredible, but this kind of attitude also leads to a great deal of disappointment when reality checks in, and the laws of the universe prevail. I mean some things are about as likely to happen as asking Johnny Depp which side of the bed he'd prefer. Doesn't seem to stop me dreaming though . . .

I had a mad scheme brewing on the weekend and I didn't pull it off. Worse still, I probably made a complete arse of myself in the attempt. Occupational hazard I suppose if you dream big? Hence today's depression, but I've learned tactics over the years to get my sense of humour/perspective back (which I must employ before tomorrow's chef school work experience - I have a feeling I'm going to need it):

1. Set a time limit. Maybe it's 6:45 p.m. and you're as miserable as shit. Allow yourself say 15 mintues of self-pitying-wallowing and go for it. Na, I mean REALLY go for it. Let all life's disappointments come crashing down, have a good bawl, feel totally sorry for yourself, be noisy, sob, the whole nine yards, use a whole roll of dunny paper to mop up the tears . Then, when time's up at 7:00 p.m.. . .
2. Stand in front of a mirror and smile. Force yourself. Stretch those facials. If necessary use your hands to manipulate your face. Honestly, it looks so ridiculous with your puffy eyes and lips stretched back in a false kind of grimace that you can't help but laugh. Somehow, a bit of perspective seems to be regained. Then . . .
3. Get on with it. Concoct another totally impossible mad scheme and try again . . .


GOLF BALLS
Generally I ignore most joke/chain letter/touchy-feely emails and never pass them on. But this is one I printed out some time ago as a "keeper" which strangely had relevance to the weekend's activities:

(paraphrased)

A professor stood in front of his class and filled a large jar with golf balls:

Professor: "Is the jar full?"
Class: "Yes"

He then poured some pebbles into the jar, shook it, and of course there was room for lots of pebbles in between the golf balls.

Professor: "Is the jar full?"
Class: "Yes"

Then the professor tipped sand into the jar and of course there was room for sand between the golf balls and pebbles.

Professor: "Is the jar full?"
Class: "Yes"

Then he tipped two cups of coffee into the jar and of course there was room.

The moral of the story (in a nutshell) was that the golf balls are the most important things in life, like friends, family, loved ones, doing what you're passionate about, and that if you fill your jar with sand/pebbles first (things like housework, fixing dripping taps, mowing lawns etc) you'll never find room for the "golf balls". Whereas if you fill your life with the important things first, you'll always manage to squeeze in the trivial. Not to mention having a coffee with friends. I'm totally guilty of the pebbles/sand thing, and often let the golf balls (and coffee) get lost in the bunker.

This weekend I was invited to a friend's 50th (I used to walk to school with her when we were 5!) and I actually considered not going because I had to study. Thank God I found some (golf) balls and went, it was the best thing I've done in ages. And totally coincedentally, she read out the the above "golf ball" thing while we were sitting in the glorious sun at Takapuna beach. It was a priceless day.

Right, enough is enough. It's 7:45 p.m. and I have an appointment with a mirror at 8:00 p.m . . .

Use-By-Date Soup

METHOD:
Empty everything from the chest freezer onto the spare bed (yes, the freezer's in a bedroom). Identify the worst case of freezer burn. Luckily it happens to be a ham bone salvaged from the last family Christmas dinner, Lamb's Fry soup may not have been so appetising. Also grab a bag of frozen 1" diced red and green capsicums that are now mainly ice.

In a large buckled pot with a too-thin base, cover the ham bone with water, ideally collected via a rusty roof, filtered through decomposing vegetation and stored in a tank uncleaned for 3 years and containing (known items only) sunglasses, tape measure and four lead-topped roofing nails.

From the garden pick some forked hairy carrots, a few sticks of slug-chewed celery, parsley (going to seed) and thyme (looking good apart from cobwebs/spiders).

Fight your way through 30 years' accumulated garage junk to the root crop store and select onions (sprouting) and garlic (ditto).

Back to the bedroom and the bulk dry goods store (wardrobe). This is an excellent opportunity to use surplus galley items from a 2005 sailing trip. Assess the damage (sea air + tropical temperatures = rusty tins) and choose accordingly, namely chick peas and Italian tomatoes.

Finally to the kitchen for bay leaves (do they go off?), chillies (hanging beside the stove in possibly too humid conditions - is that mould?), peppercorns, salt, oil.

Bring the ham bone, water, roughly chopped hairy carrots, holey celery, sprouting onion, bay leaves, seedy parsley, peppercorns and cobwebby thyme to the boil. Suddenly realise you'll need to cook it for a least 2 hours to get a decent stock, so go and clean out the garage, wash the car and drain the flooded letterbox. Come back inside and clean the stove top, using baking soda and water to remove boiled-over baked-on ham stock.

After 2 hours strain into a too small bowl. Get a bigger bowl and repeat. Try to jam bowl #1 into the "dish drawer". Use newspaper to wrap broken wine glass and a screwdriver to re-attach sagging drawer slider.

From the sieve, pick out and reserve anything that looks remotely like it once had a curly tail and wallowed in mud. Hand feed gristle and fat to the neighbours' cat. Wash the floor with hot soapy water (messy pussy!). Realise you'll have to let the liquid settle overnight so the fat can rise to the surface, so abandon cooking for the evening and have a bottle of wine. When the stock is cool enough, transfer to the spare fridge (guess where?).

The next day, skim off the fat and have it on a sandwich. (Na, just kidding, I made that bit up.) Heat olive oil in the buckled thin-based pot. Remove from the heat when a blue haze develops and use a broomstick to de-activate the smoke alarm. Open all the windows. Gently fry hairy carrots, holey celery, sprouted onion/garlic and mouldy chilli, all chopped brunoise. (Sorry, but you'll have to pay $5500 and go to Chef School to find out what that means).

Spend 30 minutes reducing slushy pre-frozen capsicums from a 1" dice to brunoise size (ha! there's a clue) and add to the pot. The water content will help loosen the burnt onion/garlic. Add the ham stock which should come out of the bowl like a large jellyfish. Wear an apron. Have a big enough pot. Put the dirty jellyfish bowl on the bench with the growing mound that won't fit in the dish drawer.

Open the chick peas and rinse in a sieve (the same one you used yesterday that's still in the dish drawer, unwashed) then add to the pot. If the tinned tomatoes are whole, push them through the sieve for 15 minutes then give up and tip them in whole. Put the reserved pig back in. Bring back to the boil. Realise it will take a good hour for everything to cook, so get on the roof and clean out the guttering (again), mow the lawns (i.e. pull out the worst of the longest weeds) and fill the Commodore with oil and water. Think ahead and seach the garage for ice-cream containers (for soup storage). Empty bolts out of one and snap hardened glue off the lid of another. Sterilise.

Come inside and repeat baking soda stove cleaning exercise. Taste. If it tastes like vegetables boiled in water you're on the right track, so did mine. Add salt. Add more salt. If it now tastes like salty boiled vegetable water, head to the small freezer (guess where? WRONG, it's in the kitchen) and add a couple of frozen tomato paste cubes. (Admittedly home-made and a bit experimental). Still lacking? Give it a whizz with a stick blender. Thick salty vegetable water is somehow far more palatable than thin salty vegetable water.

Still tastes like s*it? OK, hit the main fridge (surprisingly also in the kitchen). Add a generous scoop of basil pesto. Don't worry if the pesto looks like a science experiment, underneath that furry stuff it's all good. Also drag out the parmesan which should be rock hard, cracked and almost incapable of being grated. Re-blend. Taste. Too salty? Add sugar. Shrug and realise there's nothing else that can be done.

When cool, fill ice-cream containers, one for work lunches (soup-of-the-week) and one to freeze.

Enjoy.

New Tutor . . . New Bottle Shop . . . Old Problem

NEW TUTOR
Our regular Chef School tutor, who is surely one of God's Chosen sent from heaven, is away sick for 3 days, so we had a locum tonight. It really threw us. The change in procedure wasn't helped by the locum having a rather strong accent, from Cuba or thereabouts, and a few instructions/ingredients got lost in translation. Like cumin, which turned out to be Chef's favourite spice, and unfortunately sounds a lot like "coming" in a Cuban accent: "I lufff coming, always lots of coming", which of course got no reaction whatsoever from a class already misbehaving like school kids with a relief teacher.

We were gathered around Chef's stove watching a demonstration and I must have looked a little confused or quizzical, because the following conversation was directed at me:

Chef: "Soooo hugh hargue weeth meee?" (That was supposed to be a Cuban accent)
Me (red-faced): "No Chef, certainly not"
Chef: "Whhhy not?"
Me (stuttering now): "Well, I jjjust never would Chef"

Silence. Mexican (or should I say Cuban) standoff.

Classmate: "I think she's asking if you agree with her, not if you argue with her"

Oops. God bless the English language for making two virtually opposite words sound quite similar.


NEW BOTTLE SHOP
Mondays - Wednesdays are normally AAFD's (Attempted Alcohol Free Days), however due to a very busy work day and a more than usually stressful Chef class (quite apart from my Cuban accent faux pas, it's my turn to be Head Chef this week i.e. you have to fetch all the tutor's ingredients, wash their dishes, assign cleaning tasks and mop the floor, in addition to your normal personal cooking/cleaning tasks) I felt the need for a bit of "attitude adjustment" on the OK Bay Bach deck before tackling any of the usual night time household tasks.

It was getting late and I knew my local bottle shop would be closed so I just pulled into anything that was still open (no desperation there eh?).

Bottle Shop Attendant: "Hello love, you look knackered"
Me: "Yes, hard day"
Bottle Shop Attendant: "What do you do for a job then?"

I might point out here that I was still dressed in full chef's uniform: checked trousers, double breasted white jacket, hat, neckerchief, and an apron with curry stains down the front.

Me: "I'm a jockey" (I thought she'd think that was funny, me being rather short)

Bottle Shop Attendant: "Oooh, that must be exciting dear"

FFS.


OLD PROBLEM
You know what I really hate? One of the worst things about living by yourself (or possibly the only worst thing) is stepping out of the shower and realising that your towel is still outside, draped over the deck furniture to dry in the sun, and that it's a good 5 metres to the linen cupboard, past windows with curtains yet to be been drawn, to get a replacement.

I tell you, for a 49 year old I can still move pretty damn quick when I have to.

Sundays . . . and Time Saving Tips

Sundays have never been my favourite day. Mondays are naturally worse, but the anti-anticipation (Unanticipation? Disanticipation?) of the looming working week somehow detracts from God's rest day. Friday on the the other hand, is bliss. There's no better night to celebrate in my opinion, unless you grossly over celebrate and consequently waste the only decent day off by lying in the recovery position.

Naturally this only applies if you're in a Monday - Friday job, and for that matter one that doesn't particularly make you fizz at the bung. I'm sure chefs for example have their own "Sunday's", but then they probably love what they're doing, or why the hell else would they do it?

Because at least half my "rest day" is spent preparing for the coming work/study week, here's some handy time-saving hints, which are particularly useful if, like me, you spent your most recent Sunday driving 400km to say "Happy Mother's Day" in person.

Don't Have A Sauvalanche (too much Sauvignon Blanc) Just Because It's Friday Night
Not only does the resulting lethargy cause under-achievement of Saturday's jobs, but you'll still be looking a tad rough when the 7:00 a.m. Sunday alarm signals it's time to set off for The Mother Visit.

If You're On Tank Water And Haven't Got A Dishwasher, Install A Dish Drawer
This is actually just a pot drawer, but it's used to stash a week's worth of dirty dishes until you get around to washing them.

Don't Take Dishes Out Of The Dish Drawer Late On A Saturday Night With A View To Washing Them
You know it won't happen, and Sunday morning will find the bench heaving with ants. Should this happen, douse the lot with flyspray and forget about it until you get home late Sunday afternoon.

Don't Speed
Yes, it may save you 10 minutes on the overall journey, but it takes an officer longer than that to issue a ticket. Guilty as hell of course, but I do think it's a bit mean to lurk at the bottom of Waiwera hill mid way between a temporary 80km and 100km zone just to clock someone doing 101kmh. I wonder if he noticed I was wearing the same sweatshirt as in my licence photo taken 6 years ago? Maybe that's what the ticket was for, crimes against fashion? In fact he could have nailed me for traffic and fashion offences for wearing jandals, but maybe he couldn't see them under the baggy track pants. Styling it, I was not.

Prepare A Week's Worth of Breakfasts and Lunches on Sunday Afternoon
Yes, colleagues will think you're a pig when you load 5 boiled eggs, 10 slices of toast and 2 litres of soup into the fridge at work on Monday, but just smile knowingly and pat your tummy.

Try To Have Average-Tall Parents
This will avoid those midnight on Thursday new jeans-taking-up sessions just so you've got something to wear on Casual Friday. (Don't they make jeans for Hobbits?). I swore last Friday I would never again wear those old ones that make me look like Granny Clampett meets Farmer Brown.

Get An Old Fashioned Carpet Sweeper - It's Quicker Than The Vacuum
They work just fine on large-ish debris such as dead (and live) moths, wetas and corn chips. Not so successful with pins, big pieces of denim and inground dirt, but hey, I'm not expecting the Governor General.

Don't Spend Too Long Writing a Blog
Say no more. Done.

Rain

It's something we used to get at OK Bay, but not much to speak of since Christmas.

I clambered on top of the water tank on the weekend and lifted the lid to see if there was enough water to chance doing a load of smalls. I swear to God if I'd fallen in I'd have died of thirst before being found.

To add insult to injury, the council sent me a wastewater bill for $137. Are they serious? NOTHING goes down the drains, even the toilet only gets flushed on "special" occasions.

In times of water crisis (which is any day ending in a "y" so far this year) revellers at OK Bay Bach are invited to use the 5-pebble-method. A small container and 5 pebbles are placed on top of the cistern. Every time someone has a wee they put a pebble into the container. The person who puts the last pebble in the container has the privilege of pushing "flush" (usually accompanied by much whoop-whooping and applause). One must of course be sensible and hygienic - exceptions are made for particular "jobs". Tactics also play a role - if you pay keen attention, limit your fluid intake, eat loads of salty snacks and have a strong bladder, you can be the "flusher" far more than you deserve to, much to the disgust of fellow revellers. Honestly, it's hours of free entertainment, do try it at your next dinner party.

Having said that, it's no fun playing the game by yourself. The water truck is coming tomorrow.

Chef School

Don't ask me, I've got no idea why I'm doing it. I just had a particularly bad day at work, made a casual phone call, and two days later I'm standing in a stonking-hot kitchen with 15 people less than half my age, kitted out in full chef's regalia, three day's late for the course start, feeling like an utter muppet and wondering WTF had hit me.

Actually the fault in this latest hair-brained scheme lies with Mat Follas. Kiwi bloke who won last year's Masterchef UK. I was glued to the telly. I loved his food and his ideas, fresh locally sourced ingredients where possible, not over-worked nor particularly "cheffy", but obviously damn tasty. Plus he seemed like a hell of a decent bloke, and of course being a Kiwi helped enormously. I followed him on Twitter while he went on to start what is now a hugely successful restaurant http://www.thewildgarlic.co.uk/ in Dorset, quite an achievement given that the winner of Masterchef UK receives nothing but a trophy! I even tweeted him (and that took balls, one doesn't want to come across as a stalker) (even though one clearly is) to say it was his fault I'd started Chef School, and bless him, he responded!

I was catapulted out of culinary complacency. Despite being mad about food and cooking enthusiastically for roughly 37 years, I'd kind of sunk into the same ol', same ol' grub. You know, always cooking lamb shanks when people come for dinner and not being very adventurous at all.

So after two weeks of slightly regretting yet another random decision, week 11 finds me thoroughly loving school! And as happens when you just dive in the deep end, outrageous possibilities keep popping into my head. Like Antarctica. Always wanted to work a season there but never had the qualifications. Now all I have to do is get a couple of years cooking experience, a few months as a commercial cleaner, an Advanced Trauma First Aid qualification, lose 15kgs, get fit, develop "the personal attributes to be able to relate well with others", and I might be in with a chance as a Domestic/Kitchen Hand. Doddle.

Or what about cook on a superyacht in exotic locations? I have sailing qualifications and (more importantly) in 4 ocean passages and several nasty coastal "encounters" I've never been seasick. I can in fact down a double-serve of lasagne surrounded by 3 barfing crew members, clean up after them and still go back for thirds.

Or what about . . . . hmmmm.

A blog eh?

How very 21st century of me. Whatever will be next? Broadband? A phone that takes photos? A car with electric windows? A sewing machine that does zig-zag? Going more than 2 days without wine?

I suppose by going to Chef School at age 49 I ought to have something to write about, and I have been Twittering it (or should that be Tweeting?) http://twitter.com/OKBayBach but hey, sometimes a good story needs more than 140 characters to tell. Of course finding time for any stories at all is the issue. Being a full time paper-shuffler, part time potato peeler and sometime grower/gatherer doesn't leave much slack in schedule.

This blog idea is due to illness. Yes, she of the cast-iron-constitution who never gets sick (being the only person to scum it for 2 months in India on $7 a day, not get Delhi Belly and in fact put on weight) has had a filthy cold for 2 weeks. Come Friday and I realised if I didn't pull my head in and take it easy this weekend I might get really sick and I can't afford that.

Consequently out came THE LIST and off it I crossed everything that wasn't absolutely essential. No housework, no gardening, no preserving, no experimental recipes, no concocting homemade cleaning compounds, no boozing on the OK Bay Bach deck until all hours, no shopping for winter clothes, no bread making, house repairs or ukelele practice. Only washing, ironing, Chef School homework, a week's worth of dishes, food preparation for the next 4 days and phone calls to Mother and Father. As a result I found myself with an afternoon to spare, so why not start a blog?

Of course it took me way longer than the recommended "5 minutes" to figure it out and set it up (try an hour) so now I'm running into overtime without having actually said anything interesting. More to come, I hope.