A is for Adventure

It is a very prevalent comment from people that change is often hard. You get told this as if this gives permission to complain or even try to resist the change. During the 90’s change management was actually a thing that you could sell to organisations ( think “who moved my cheese”) and was everywhere you turned. It predated the obsession in the 00’s with CRM and to resist it was to be branded “ not a team player “.

As you know my life has changed completely from what it used to be. During the last 3 years everything changed again as I moved from what was to what is now. This meant that I had to re find myself and then work out how I was going to see out my remaining days on our beautiful blue planet. I certainly was not going to do it alone and I am pleased that I have found a beautiful, confident, self-starter and like minded partner to set out and discover the last great adventure.

I use the word adventure as I decided that it was pointless to continue to try to do what I had previously set down as my plan. I discovered that as much as I tried - the map I had in my head could not be molded to the terrain - and as the Swiss army aphorism says “if the map and the terrain disagree, trust the terrain”.

So, we took all the bits of how we thought we could spend our days, mashed them together and came up with a new plan. The next part was to work out where.

Looking for somewhere to live and derive an income without being to far from travel options ( trains, planes and automobiles ) , had to be warm but not too hot, good rainfall, grow stuff well, have space for animals, somewhere for all the toys  (read garage) , space for the Minions, space for guests, a place for brewing the list went on and on but you get the picture on top of all was to be affordable of course – this had become a daunting task.

After a couple of miss starts (re – termite infestation, a flood plain and a hilly Christmas tree farm with 9'foot fences ) were overcome  - one contender became apparent - Coffs Harbour.

So circle back to the opening statement – we were now staring down the barrel of consolidating 3 houses, 5 boats, a garage full of absolutely vital, cannot live without stuff ( you never know when a used rusty 3” nail will come in handy !) and move it all 17 hours by road - north ! 

                                                                         http://www.askaprepper.com/11-things-pioneers-carried-oregon-trail/

This is no ordinary run of the mill change – this is a complete life alteration!

But that is exactly what we’ve done.

Nothing left behind.

Armed with my 48 years of knowledge (or is it lack thereof ?) and a well-worn copy Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage bible we will set out to do all the stuff I kept on saying I would do  “ one of these days “

Come with us on this journey – its gunna be a hoot !

Getting the kids to eat new things....

There is a plethora of studies around the introduction of food and food types in the first two years of a child's life on earth. Most of them to point to the direction that is - that the kid will pretty much put anything in their mouth *  - so why not get them to try all sorts of food and get used to it ?

And with out putting too fine a point on it we have extended family members who have very, very narrow food tolerance ranges. So we are painfully aware of the outcome of not being at least a little adventurous.

We have always had a mantra in the house " It's not a restaurant fella, that's what 's for dinner". Which really serves two functions. The first is -  we don't have time for everybody to have a separate meal prepared and secondly -  try different things it's good for you.

And when I look back at my food experience's as a child it would certainly indicate a predilection for eating well.

I'm blessed to be married to a very good cook and I've been told that I'm not too shabby myself. So it's fair to say a dish like this is common place.

Prosciutto wrapped white fish with lemon mayonnaise and asparagus

And all catering for parties is done by The Beloved with us constantly in her way ably assisting  including such jobs as
- Hand deep frying one by one Won ton wrappers, only to have the box they were in dropped and they all shatted
- Picking off the tiniest pieces of fennel and adding the to the the exact tip of a salmon mousse hors d'œuvres without denting the tip.

But it doesn't always go the way you want. The beloved once tried an eggplant dish on us, we all took the first mouthful and well, the look of horror said it all. But persistence beats resistance and we got more adventourous.

Any way our youngest grabbed this spirit of adventure and starting helping out with cooking. It's now at the stage where he and I cook over the weekend.

But not just anything.

Nope we get down the cookbooks and pick really stupidly difficult awesome stuff. Take this effort

Jamie's Hunter Lasagne

Here is the recipe and as you can see its a cracker.

The recipe is very thorough and we had to really get some substitution going on, as I just didn't find a hen pheasant nor did I find a pigeon that I was happy to touch let alone eat.

Also I pretty much used ever pot and pan we had over a 5 hour period. It was truly exhausting. Try Roasting four types of meat and then try separating them into what resembles a big bowl of hair even before making the sauce.

Any way all I'm saying is encouragement seems to breed learning. I'm just concerned about the level !

So as I watch him leaf through "Heston at Home" I just hope that it's a dish that doesn't require anything to be ordered from a science store or that requires a permit from customs.

*( I've seen a cousin eat a cockroch so it must be true)

Don't try this at home - lessons from some one who knows

Apparently there are eight  principles of learning as set down by Educational Psychologists and Pedagogues, these are (in no set order) :

readiness, exercise, effect, primacy, recency, intensity, freedom and requirement.

As a side note here something I didn't know - Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction. 


But I digress.

I sit quietly as the tears stream down my cheeks and I reflect on my inability to learn. How did it happen again ?I fit all of the eight principles so what went wrong ? How did I get here yet again ? I replay the steps in my mind  and realise that these are amateur mistakes that just shouldn't be made.

The first time was back when I was trying to impress my wife to be whilst we were at our favourite restaurant for a nice noodle soup and conversation not only did I manage to get chili in my eyes but I followed it up with a good dose of lemon juice. My eyes puffed up, went red and I looked like Twilight saga fan who has just been told Taylor Lautner is now married.
So the entire time was spent trying to clean out my eye and suffice to say not much conversation other than "Are you sure you're OK ?" went on.

At least this time it was just onion. And I had taken precautions - I had washed the onions under running water which supposedly stops the vapours that cause you to cry be released. But once again like before I had taken my finger - all coated and primed and jabbed it in my eye to relive a perceived itch.

Image courtesy of slashfood.com

As I wait and gently wash my eye with cool water I cast my mind back to all the other "Don't do this" moments in my life.

- Get on a rowing machine after a hot dog and a beer at "O" week at University, turns out your vomit reflex is really close to the diaphragm, so after exertion the body just empties itself. I didn't make the rowing team either......

- Pull apart secateurs while holding them in front of your face. Seems they have a few safety precautions built and as I rotated them and kept up my attempts to pull them apart one half neatly sprung off and pierced my lip and embedded itself into my gum. So off to hospital we went. My wife still claims to this day I'll do anything to get out of gardening.

- Pull mussels off the pier with bare hands. It seems that even if you grab them gently they are designed to defend them selves by being razor sharp all the way around. The tiny yet prolific cuts they leave behind really only become apparent the next day. When you can't clench a fist any more or hold your cutlery......

Image courtesy of blog.smalladventures.net

- Attempt to saw rubber water pipes with a hacksaw when they apparently have steel wire re-enforcing inside them. This will cause the hacksaw to catch and then bounce out and come down on your finger you were using to guide the blade and sever a good chunk of you finger nail and slice into the finger. The sheer shock of this one (surprise and then searing pain) was enough to convince me to use an angle grinder on everything for about a month afterwards.

- If you take hot trays out of the oven with a wet cloth it turns out the heat from the tray turns the water in to steam vapour which will leave some marks behind. It just goes to show that rushing in a kitchen isn't a good strategy.
For all of you who know that I cook regularly - contain your howls of dismay, this one is not  recent experience. I use it to illustrate a point.

My eye feels a little better and my nose seems to have stopped resembling Victoria Falls, so I guess I'm good to go. Until I have another learning experience of course.

I wonder which of the eight principles I'm at right now ?

Chicken does not come from a plastic packet

I was talking to a manager at work the other day and she was chuckling at the fact that whilst growing up in the country they used to decide what they wanted for dinner and then went and hunted/gathered it. Where as several of her nieces had thought that chicken etc - just came from the supermarket.

Grandpa on the Go has some land in the country and he has chickens. I know first hand they don't come ready to go on a plastic tray.

I'm going back about 20 years now, and he tells me he has two roosters, which is apparently one too many and he says to me "you gotta kill one and we'll eat it."

I figure he means go in there and shoot one of the roosters. No, not at all , he hands me the metal handle off the car jack and says just stun it and bring it out here and we'll cut its head off.

In the mean time, I'm having this internal discussion with myself

"Great, so I have to get it ?!! "


"How many Roosters have I killed to date ?" 


"Including this one ?"


"None, you idiot".

So in I go and single out one of the roosters. He sees me trying to push him into the corner and he knows something is up in chicken land. 
He picks up one foot slowly and flexes it and then puts it down, then picks up the other foot slowly and flexes it and puts it down, he did this carefully so I could see the dirty big spur on the back each of his legs.


He warily circled around me keeping his head slightly tilted and one baleful eye on me at all times. We dance like this for several minutes until I finally get it kind of cornered and I'm waving this metal bar like a flyswatter at it, then all of a sudden he jumps up feet first wings flapping and I'm flinching and swatting.

I open my eyes and he is lying on the ground stunned, unconscious and Grandpa does the rest.


As I plucked the feathers off the bird I was feeling pretty bad until I realized that wasn't guilt I was feeling, as his final hurrah the rooster had passed fleas on to me.


So spare a thought for your kids and do them a favor - show them where vegetables come from by planting  some in a pot and watch them grow.


And do it before some crazy relative tries to show them where steak comes from.........

Image courtesy of ebookee.org

Tricky Pizza skills

Lets go old school from 2009 and look at some pizza skills