Le tour

Early last July I blogged about watching the Tour de France. This little essay was posted early in the tour, well before Cadel's triumph. The blog June initiative had inspired me to keep on blogging, if more sporadically than during the month of June.

So it seems fitting that the last day of blog June 2012 should coincide with the start of this year's tour. We've just watched the special documentary One Sunday in Paris; delighted in Gabriel Gaté's Taste le tour in Liège (Belgian waffles and potato salad with mussels); and are now settling in by the fire for the first stage.

The time trial is underway. Only two and a half hours to wait until last year's yellow jersey winner makes his appearance. It seems that Cadel will not be wearing yellow in the traditional way, due to a change of sponsors. Never mind. We hope to see him wearing yellow again in three weeks time, on the streets of Paris.

Earlier today we went for a stroll in Balwyn's beautiful Maranoa Gardens. In the middle of winter there are not too many flowers on display, but this beautiful golden wattle brightened up a cold afternoon. An appropriate colour for celebrating Cadel's triumphant return to Le tour.

Wattle, Maranoa Gardens

Finally, thank you to all the June bloggers for your dedication to the challenge and for your inspirational writings. It's been such a pleasure getting to know you better, and I hope we can keep in touch.

 

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Village people

Today we visited my aunty in the retirement village in Forest Hill in order to return a book to another aunty from Adelaide who was paying a visit after visiting yet another of my aunties in Warrnambool. I found the book in question in a bookcase during a cleanout a few years ago. It was inscribed by my grandmother with her name, address and the date (1949). Inside the book was a little mothers' day gift card inscribed by her daughter, my Adelaide aunty.

The book is Marjorie Lawrence's autobiography. My Adelaide aunty had no recollection of giving this gift to her mother all those years ago, but still remembers many fascinating details of her childhood and youth. She is looking forward to reading the long lost book.

On driving into the village we narrowly avoided skittling a lady who decided to wander across the road in front of us without first checking if a car was approaching. Perhaps this lady was still recovering from yesterday's monthly happy hour, in which the village people get to enjoy unlimited beer, wine and nibbles for $4.00 a head. My aunty who lives in the village thinks this is an absolute disgrace, as the price was recently bumped up from $2.00.

Mr 30 and Mr 27 are very keen on catching up with their great aunty and grandmother respectively at the next village people happy hour.

Op shop bounty

On the way to the village we detoured via the Wattle Park op shop to drop off a few bags of offerings, emerging with only a lavender leather handbag, a tiny red velour jumpsuit and a purple satin dress. Quite restrained really.

 

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Discovery night #2

Tonight's discovery dinner was at Shintaro in the Middle Camberwell shopping strip. Although this restaurant has been around for many years and I have walked past it countless times on the way to the shops, I've never been there before.

It is situated in the former State Bank building (does anybody remember the State Bank, formerly known as the State Savings Bank of Victoria?). This makes it a very solid and secure location with a lofty ceiling which allows for some creative decoration.

 

A couple of us detoured to Safeway for some sparkling wine and Asahi, then retraced our steps to the restaurant where food selection was well under way. We left the choice of dishes to Mr 30, who excelled himself with a selection of wakame sarada (seaweed salad); tempura; tofu karai (tofu and vegetables with a spicy sauce); fukuoka buta (braised pork and vegetables with a light sauce) and the special jungle king prawns with a home-made sweet chilli sauce.

The wonderful thing about this unassuming neighbourhood restaurant (apart from the food) is the beautiful service and atmosphere.

We had a very special night and rounded it off in front of the fire and the footy show at home with our dear friends and family.

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Banana cake

Tonight at printing we were treated to another recipe from the Edmonds Cookery Book - banana cake.

The master printer's version looked perfect and tasted delicious. As there were only three of us in attendance at the Ancora Press tonight (one of our number being stuck outside Richmond station on a Pakenham train which was in turn stuck behind a V/line train), we decided to call stumps before 7.30, to give us more time to enjoy the cake and a cup of tea.

Consequently I set only a few lines tonight - the completion of last week's discursion on Manius Aquillius and the start of a new extract about avoiding the foul air of London by taking a train to Windsor.

A discussion of the Edmonds banana cake recipe is available on the Edmonds challenge blog. Here is a picture of Brian's delicious cake and its lovely old fashioned tin.

 

St Silas Sundays

Today's outing was to St Silas Anglican Church in Albert Park for 'St Silas Sundays', a concert by the woodwind students of the Australian National Academy of Music. We were driven to South Melbourne by Mr 30, who decided we should be dropped off at the Rising Sun Hotel (the scene of yesterday's 'Riser to Riser' event) for a quick beer and chips before the concert.

A brisk walk through the gracious tree-lined streets of South Melbourne and Albert Park saw us arriving at St Silas just before the kickoff.

The program consisted of three pieces: Mozart's Serenade in E flat major, K375; Nielsen's Wind quintet Op. 43; and Richard Strauss's Suite in B flat major, Op. 4.

All three pieces were lovely and beautifully played. The Mozart was nice and familiar and reassuring, and the Nielsen allowed the individual character of the instruments to shine through. I found the Strauss with its larger (13 piece) ensemble including the sonorous contrabassoon to be the more complex and interesting piece.

Thanks to Philip Lambert, the Librarian of the Australian National Academy of Music, for his helpful program notes.

A visit to St Silas is interesting in its own right. The church was sliced in half in the 1960s to create a hall below and the church above. With the assimilation of the Middle Park parish of St Anselm in 2001 to form the 'Anglican Parish of the Parks', many of the artefacts of St Anselm's church were incorporated into St Silas. Thus the building has a mix of styles and decorations, but is obviously a much loved hub of the community.

The church has a small memorial garden and some nice plantings in its compact grounds. This beautiful Geraldton wax near the Bridport Street entrance seems to hint that spring is not too far away.

 

Saturday

Although I'm not even working at present, I still love Saturday sleep-ins. After a particularly committed effort this morning, it was eventually time to get up and make the day happen.

Revived by a glass of orange juice and a shower we walked to the local shops for food supplies. For a nice change there was nothing to get from the supermarket, so we only needed to visit the deli and the fruit and veggie shop. We lingered at the Conti deli for a pot of tea and a cup of coffee - the first time I've ever joined the throng of local families having breakfast, lunch or coffee rather than just ducking in to grab some bread, cheese, dip or other delicacies.

Lunch (by this stage it was far too late for breakfast) finally happened at around 1.30 and consisted of beer, tomato and cheese pie, and sweetcorn. Then it was time to watch the beautiful Siobhan Owen sing the Welsh national anthem before the start of the Australia-Wales rugby match.

For some reason the new PTV original app (a very welcome and long overdue reinstatement of the old Metlink app, with new timetable information) failed to find the local tram stop, so it was out with the trusty TramTracker, then off to Richmond to collect the car.

The car was required to travel to Ormond to collect a standard lamp which had been on order for about a month. It was raining in Ormond but cleared up by the time we got back to Camberwell.

Assembling the lamp took some time and required vacuuming the floor afterwards, to remove all the bits of foam packing that had escaped. Then we made some dinner (spiced basmati rice with green beans and a lovely pear, parmesan and rocket salad) and settled down in front of the fire.

We watched a few episodes of Black Books before I finally remembered it was time to do the blog for today. And now it is bed time.

This is a picture of a beautiful old tree in Riversdale Park which we pass on the way to the shops.

 

Koor-jet fahr-see

The other day I discovered a wonderful food blog by Veronica, a web developer living in the south of France: La recette du jour. One of the sections in the blog that I really like is the reviews of Veronica's favourite cookery books, including such treasures as Jane Grigson's Good things and Geraldene Holt's French country kitchen. I stumbled across this blog while checking out the different versions of Jane Grigson's famous curried parsnip soup recipe.

This got me thinking that maybe there could be an alternative approach - a blog about really awful cookery books.

I happen to have one of these in my collection, although I'm thankful to say I didn't buy it - it was passed on by a friend, complete with her original food stains. It is called The complete vegetarian cookbook, a 1976 version of a book originally published in 1973 with the title Cooking without meat. The editors didn't even bother to update the title in the introduction to the new 'edition', which is an indication of how cheaply it was produced.

In the style of its time it does not have lavish illustrations or an appealing cover, and is printed in three columns with occasional line drawing decorations in red. It includes two groups of colour plates, but there is no reference in any of the actual recipes to the existence of an illustration. The 'index' is simply a list of recipe titles, grouped by categories such as 'Pizza and flan dishes' and 'Vegetable dishes'.

But the most annoying thing about this book is its condescending attitude to the reader. For example 'Courgettes Farcies aux Amandes/Courgettes [zucchini] stuffed with almonds' has the following introduction:

An elegant vegetable dish, Courgettes Farcis aux Amandes (koor-jet fahr-see oh-zah-mohn) will really impress your guests.

If your guests aren't impressed by your cooking or food presentation skills, at least they will be blown away by your authentic French pronunciation.