Janine and I managed to get all our work done and we spent last week at Writers Week. As always it was a thoroughly engaging time. So many great stories and discussions. 84 sessions to choose from, so many topics and so many books, so many writers. We find ourselves entertained, inspired, engaged, and challenged.

A thoroughly rewarding week out of the workshop and into the realm of ideas.

This year there was a lot of discussion about the death of the book, it cropped up again and again in different forms and forums, but that was the steady undercurrent this year. I’m not too worried. I believe that the book will survive in all its various forms for a long time to come. I’m sure that it will see me out.

I’m not digital native, so I still like to handle the thing in itself, to feel the weight, the smell and the texture of paper and ink. but then again, I’m very old-fashioned. I stubbornly insist on writing letters on nice paper with ink and a fountain pen. Sure its old-fashioned and out-dated, but so is making pots out of clay! Plastic replaced ceramics last century for all intents and purposes, but pots still persist as an art form and a better quality product. So that is how I see the book. Invoices have all graduated to electronic form, as have cheques and banking. Email has replaced most letters and fair enough. Electronic books are OK, but not for me. Not just yet anyway.

The book as an art form will persist for a very long time. I even attended a session on ‘The Book’. I even bought the book on ‘The Book’! and it’s a beautiful thing, as I also have his earlier book on some lesser known typographic characters.

You can just imagine the Sumerians saying,  “I don’t get these Egyptians, I can’t see papyrus catching on. I just love the smell of clay, and the texture and weight of a good clay tablet!

We recently had a lot of people here for our house concert. After we cleared up the next day, we found that we had a lot of food left over. We found that we had a half loaf of Italian bread. We decided that we would have a lunch of tomato on toast.

I pan fried the bread in a little olive oil with garlic and chilli. Then a slice of ham, sliced fresh, ripe garden warm tomatoes and cucumber, a few fresh torn basil leaves, plus a little fake salt and real pepper . WOW! delicious.

With what was left over, I cubed it and toasted it in the oven, so as to make a tomato and crouton salad. The roasted croutons were mixed with oil and balsamic vinegar dressing and then finely sliced red onions from the garden, with chilli, capsicum, and lastly big chunks of tomatoes. all tossed together with the seasoning s of your choice.

The croutons become softened on the outside with the tangy oil and vinegar, while remaining crunchy on the inside. This with the fresh fruity aromas of the herbs and tomatoes. It makes a great salad. So summery!

Ratatouille is one of those recipies that has a lot of different interpretations. It’s that time of year again, when all the necessary ingredients are all ripe together at the one time in our garden. We simply use what we have that is ripe on the day.

Today that is egg plant, capsicums, chillis, zucchini and red ripe tomatoes. I brown some of our onions and garlic that we have hanging in plaits in the kitchen and out on the verandah. Add in all the chopped ingredients, along with a small jar of tomato sugo that I bottled in the autumn. A few sprigs of sweet basil are added in and the whole lot is simmered together for a few minutes, until softened and then served. It couldn’t be easier or more immediate and wholesome. Not to mention delicious!

For the past ten years or so, I have been working on a long-term project, to save every champagne, prosecco and sparkling wine, cork capsule that we opened and make Xmas decorations out of them. I decided, for better or worse, that I would make a string of capsules hung all around the front verandah of our house.

In the first few years, when it was only a few feet long. I was able to take it down after the Summer Solstice holiday was over and put it away till next year, but as it grew longer year by year. I found that it was very easy to get all tangled up with itself. It became a tiresome job to un-tangle it each year and re-hang it. As we were adding to the length by about 4 feet or 1.5 metres a year. It soon became apparent that I should leave them up permanently. So it has become a fixture ever since. No-one sees it anymore, it’s become just part of the house.

So, I was very pleased today, to finally complete the bling-string by adding this years collection of sparkling wine capsules and found that it finally reached the other end of the verandah.

Now that I’ve completed this epic art installation. I think that i will start on there BBQ area. It could use a little bit of sparkle too!

It’s that time of year again and the Village is having its Xmas party for the residents and the emphasis is on the children as always. That’s what Xmas is all about.

It’s my turn to be Santa again this year. This job is rotated around all the fathers about once a decade. This is my third turn. The first time, Santa turned up in a horse and cart. The next I was delivered in the Village Toyota Land Cruiser Ute from the fire shed. This year I’m in the big, shiny new, all wheel drive, 10 tonne tanker, fire trick. I arrive with sirens blazing and lights flashing.

It’s funny that they choose a Bah Humbug person like me to be Santa, but every other compliant father has already done it a couple of times too, so It’s my turn again. I remember the first or second time that I did it. I was wearing hand painted pink sand shoes that were visible from under the long red pants. My little son spotted them and the Jig was up, the game was over. Santa was really his Dad in disguise. Word soon spread through the kiddies in his milieu , that’s Geordie’s Dad under there. Look at the shoes!

Geordie is now in his 30’s, so no one will recognise me this time. I don’t know many of these little toddlers. My job is to turn up in the truck, say “Ho, Ho, Ho” and “Merry Xmas”, “Have you been good?” etcetera, etcetera. I hand out the presents and a bag of lollies each. Pink parcels for the girls and blue wrapped presents for the boys. It all goes off smoothly and my civic Santa duty is over for another year or two – or ten. Someone else’s turn next year.

Once all the kiddies have their presents and are gorging themselves on the lollies. I’m asked  to stay and sit for the photo shoot. I do, and this lovely grown-up girl comes and sits on my lap. I put my arm around her and she tells me to “get your Claus off me”.

We are in the middle of the coldest time of the year. This cold weather ripens the citrus. Up until we got the frosts, the citrus were all green, but now the chill has sweetened them and made them turn yellow, or orange, or tangerine!

We planted the citrus grove only 4 years ago and it has grown well. Nearly all the trees are thriving. It’s just he native finger-lime that is finding the going hard. We are quite a bit out of it’s natural growing zone, so it’s to be expected.

With loads of fruit ripening all at once, eating three pieces of fruit each day each isn’t going to make a dint on the harvest. I decide that it’s time to make marmalade. I make a few batches of pure Seville orange marmalade, but I must say that I’ve made better. It’s all a bit dull. Good enough OK, but could be better. The purists say that only Seville oranges can be made into true marmalade, but I disagree.

I’ve learnt over the years that I prefer the taste of a mixed fruit marmalade. Something that has Seville orange as a base, but also has a good quantity of  other citrus fruits like,  blood grapefruit, tangelo, lemon, lime and Italian Chinotto.

Our variety of Seville orange has loads of pips, and this is very good! Not so good if it were an navel orange for eating, it would be a pain. But as a Seville orange that we specifically grow for the purpose of making marmalade, then pips are a bonus.

Citrus pips, especially those of the  Seville orange, contain massive amounts of pectin, and they are large and there are loads of them. Pectin is what sets the marmalade into a gel, along with the large amount of sugar that is recommended.

I prefer to use very little sugar, as too much sugar is not at all good for you. One of the ways that Janine and I control our sugar levels, is to limit our carbs intake. I love marmalade, so I decided long ago to make my marmalade not too sweet and more fruity and bitter, with a lot of peel. In fact a lot of varied peels from all sorts of different citrus.

I have developed a recipe that limits the sugar down to very low levels and yet still ‘gels’ OK as a condiment. I do this by using the pectin from the pips, following this recipe;

1.2 kg of mixed whole citrus fruit

Juice the fruit to get 465g of juice

Clean the white pith off the peel to get 550g of sliced peel

add 300g of sugar and the pectin gel water off the boiled and simmered pips

Cut the citrus in half and squeeze all the juice out of the fruit. Save all the seeds. Seville fruit has loads of seeds. Ours does anyway, but I’m told that citrus fruit varies in the quantity of seeds. It all depends on which other citrus tree flower pollinates the fruit.

I put the pips in a small sauce pan with a minimum of water to just cover them and simmered to extract the pectin. This can be going on while you are slicing the peel. Push the resulting gel through a small sieve into the jam making pan. Add more water and boil again for a few minutes. Again, press all the gel through a sieve and then discard the seeds.

Save the juice and weigh it. It should bet about 455 to 465g. If there is too much, then pour some off into your mouth, or if there is too little, squeeze another piece of fruit to make up the total amount of juice, but don’t use the peel. Both options have happened to me. it all depends on the quality of the fruit. Fruit that has been picked for some time get juicier. Fresh picked fruit is a little dryer.

Cut the empty squeezed half citrus skins into 1/4s and scrape all the pith out of them then discard the pith. Save the clean peel and cut it into very fine, thin, slices. The peel should add up to about 550 to 560g of peel, add it into the bread maker machine and set to ‘jam’ setting. Add 300g of sugar and the 460 g of juice.

Turn on the machine and go about your other very important business for over an hour and come back to perfect marmalade. This week I unpacked a bisque firing and repacked another with this useful time saved.

Heat a few glass jars and lids to sterilise them and bottle the marmalade while hot. It can keep for years, but never gets a chance to.

While the citrus rush is on and there are plenty of fruit being eaten and juiced. I take the  opportunity to use the discarded skins to clean all the copper pans thoroughly and get them all shiny once more. A discarded, squeezed 1/2 citrus peel with a dash of salt sprinkled on cuts the developing verdigris oxide layer and gets copper pans looking new again.

We have our truffle safely ensconced in the fridge in a tub of rice and a couple of eggs. They will absorb the flavour of the truffle. Even though they are all tightly sealed in the plastic tub. The smell of the truffle gently wafts out every time we open the fridge door.

I decide to make a mushroom and truffle risotto for dinner. I have a couple of big brown mushrooms and I pick a few hot red peppers from the garden to go along with it. I have an ancient porcelain soba cup that I use to measure out the rice. One soba cup of dried rice is the correct amount of rice to make a risotto for the two of us. I bought this old soba cup at the Toji markets in Kyoto. My old cup is repaired with gold kintsugi and lacquer. It really deserves a bit of respect, because it is a beautiful thing. It was made in an important family workshop at the turn of the last century.

I still have a small amount of my marrow bone stock left in the freezer. Made before I went to Japan. It’s a beautiful, rich concentrated block of flavour. I do all the usual things, coating the rice in oil, browning the onions, deglaze with a cup of wine and then stir the carnaroli rice constantly in the stock until it cooks down and goes all thick and creamy. I finish it off by melting a good dollop of butter into the pan and stirring it through. It gives a lovely soft and creamy mouth feel and rich taste. Towards the end I grate a lot of truffle into the mix, little bit of very good cheese and then after plating-up, I grate a lot more truffle on top. A little bit of salt and pepper completes the dish.

Know that it is good when Janine asks if there is any more.

I have managed to get into the pottery briefly. In between building all the new sheds that we need and organising the weekend wood firing workshops. I want to have my own firing in-between the winter wood firing workshops, if I can.

The fish-truck man has some nice fresh mussels, so that is what we will have tonight. We have everything else in the vegetable garden or the pantry. I don’t attempt anything weird or out-there. Mussels in white wine and tomato sauce. Simple.

Onions, garlic and chilli in olive oil. White wine, mussels and tomato passata. A few minutes on high heat. Presto!

It’s so delicious, quick and simple. We have no trouble in finishing off a kilo of mussels between us. It’s a fantastic, warming and fortifying lunch to get us back out there  in the cold and miserable weather to get everything ready for the weekend workshop.

Before and After.