The Season for Giving

Christmas is coming and it is the season for making things to give friends and family.  A friend of ours gave us some mulberries and as it was getting to the end of the useful fruit on the tree, I turned the harvest into jam.  I was a bit concerned that the fruit might either be too tart because it was not ripe enough or too sugary being over ripe so I decided to add some other fruit and flavours to make it more interesting.  I wasn't sure if it would work but I had some apricots and added some vanilla bean and - well, it worked.  Go figure.  It will be nice to be able to give a jar of jam back to the friend who provided the mulberries.

The same friend gave us some wattle seeds.  Mind you I had to do the tedious work of extracting the seeds which took ages.  It's not hard, you leave the pods in the sun until they dry out and open then scoop the seeds out, or if you have left them on something easily shakeable, they will shake free but of course I didn't do that so had to manually split the pods and flick the seeds out with my fingernail.  Like I said, not hard but time consuming and I'm not sure how rewarding it might end up being.  I've never used wattleseeds before but I am aware that you can use them in the same way you'd use poppy seeds so a little experimentation is in order.  Eating them whole is tough, unlike poppy or sesame seeds they are hard little beggars but I read that you need to toast and grind them in a coffee grinder.  Well, fortunately we have a coffee grinder so no problem.  I have a few recipes that I will be trying as soon as I get the chance.

I've been making Christmas mince pies, experimenting with an almond meringue topping on my gluten free spiced pastry and making the filling less sugary sweet by adding fresh pear to the standard fruit mince.  I won't claim it to be acceptable to diabetics with the meringue topping but it might be better than a regular mince pie.  I would certainly hope so.

So, the real joy of the Christmas season is the preparation building up to the day, the making something to give.  Shopping and Christmas carols have long since worn off but the feeling that I can use my skills to make presents feels good.

Rain, rain, steamy rain

Just before Spirit of the Land earlier this month a farmer told us that they were looking at a good harvest and just needed a spell of rain in October to finish it off.  Well, that much needed rain arrived and I hope for the farming community's sake that it did the trick.  The harvest has started but not in earnest quite as we haven't observed the wholesale emptying of the crops on properties along the Wagga or Boree Creek Roads yet but it is happening.  Mind you we had quite a bit of rain courtesy of a storm cell last weekend.  It was warm (though not as warm as Alice Springs thank goodness) and steamy when the storm hit pelting the shop with driving rain for about half an hour of power threatening lightning.  We have become accustomed to holding our breath during electrical storms as they threaten power cuts which are not good when you run fridges and ice cream freezers and certainly there were a few flutters in the supply but nothing too serious.  The thunder and lightning continued across the weekend especially through the night when a bright flash and very loud crack directly overhead jolted me awake.  But we survived without leaks in the shop.  The crops looked a bit hammered on Monday bent over by the onslaught of wind and rain.  Let's hope that they survived well enough but I guess they will need some drying out which as there is more rain predicted through the week, they might not get the chance to do.  There are pools of swampy water lining the roads again as they did most of this winter.  I noticed on my evening walk last night, that those pools are now smelly, instant breeding grounds for mosquitoes.  With such a flat landscape in this area with little natural drainage, swampy water is a problem, especially in the townships where there are not many stormwater drains.  It just seems to be left to nature to sort out.

I'm starting on my traditional 'build-up-to-Christmas' Dickens reading.  For some reason around this time of year I start hankering to read a Charles Dickens classic.  It's something to do with the idea of experiencing a traditional Victorian winter Christmas.  I don't go in for decorating in the Northern Hemisphere tradition of fir trees, snow scenes and Santa Claus in the summer heat we get here in Australia and New Zealand for Christmas and the idea of eating all the stodgy winter trimmings is too much but I do like to imagine what a Northern Hemisphere Christmas must be like by reading a Charles Dickens novel to get into the Christmas mood.  It doesn't even have to be A Christmas Carol that I read, I get the same satisfaction from any of the classic Dickens tales.  They are all brilliantly written satirical cautionary tales and always worthy of multiple readings.  This time however, I am taking a slightly different tack and embarking on 'Havisham' by Ronald Frame, the back story of the infamous Miss Havisham of 'Great Expectations' re-imagining the events leading to the tragic wedding day abandonment that set the scene for Pip's education in that marvelous book.  I hope it lives up to the original.