Archive for July, 2009

The Black Swan Family

July 25, 2009 at 4:40 pm · Filed under Out & About

We see a lot of black swans in the lake here, but we seldom see a black swan family of 3 passing by. What amazed me was the family bond in the animal world, which is so similar to what we have in human society.

Mom, dad and their child…… They stick to each other, they do things together, and parents protect their kids.

Remember, baby swans have different name. A baby swan is called a “cygnet” or a “signet”. While a male swan is known as a “cob” , the female is known as a “pen”.

Did you notice that the baby swan has almost white feathers all over the body, instead of black as we thought they would have?

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Sketch on bed

July 23, 2009 at 9:25 pm · Filed under Craft & Art ·Tagged ,

I don’t know how far I will go on this sketching business, but lately I practised a lot on bed before I fall sleep.

I didn’t use any professional ink pen like Micron Pigma or a real sketching pencil or anything like that on this one, but now I started to think about it.

It would have made some difference if I had used it, would it? I couldn’t believe that I used a crappy blue ball pen for this one. The pen nearly runs out of the oil now. I had to shake it hard to prepare for each stroke. I must have been crazy.

The problem with bed sketching to me is that I have very limited materials. Except the bed side table lamp and the corner of the bedroom, I found that what I have seen in this room was quite boring and not inspring at all.

So I decided to draw my left hand, which was holding the pad where I draw with my right hand drawing my left hand holding the drawing pad. It is a desperate but funny idea, isn’t it?

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Pig’s Ear Cold Dish & Australian Master Chef

July 20, 2009 at 12:46 pm · Filed under Food & Cusine

Australian’s very first Master Chef has been finalised last night. I suppose that to a lot of people, who are enthusiast about cooking and would not miss even single one episode of the show, last night’s show was very emotional.I only watch this program occasionally and to me, I actually like the “Iron Chef” better, even there was full of American accent in the show and the Japanese title “Zu Ke Zan” was almost called out ridiculously like in every 20 seconds.

Another reason is that I found the dishes presented in the Master Chef were rather disappointing. Probably because of my background as a Chinese and from the grass root, I don’t really enjoy the presentation of most of the dishes. For example the last night’s choc dish appeared in the 3rd round, so called “the most elegant and exquisite dish”, I didn’t find it very appealing at all. If I had seen it in a restaurant table, I probably wouldn’t be very motivated to eat it. To me, it’s aesthetically awful and looked very ungenerous. Or another explanation is I have never really eaten any beautiful food, or I simply don’t have a taste for the art of food, or I am too mean to appreciate the beauty in a high restaurant-standard dish.

Comparing to that choc desert dish in the show, I actually enjoyed what I made for the last night dinner better. We bought two pieces of pig ear the other day. Yes, pig’s ears…that’s sort of gross stuff I eat and enjoy, which probably would disgust most of judges from the Master Chef:-(

I boiled them and cut them into very thin strips, and made a Sichuan styled hot and spicy cold salad. Well, you know, grated ginger and garlic, salt, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, grated red pepper,really hot chilli oil, sesame oil and sprinkle with spring onion or shallot. But this time to make the flavour more interesting, I actually heated the red peppers in the veg oil first and then when it gets hot, stir fried some white part of shallots and fresh red chilies until the aroma came out, then poured the oil mixture into the dish, finally sprinkled with green part of shallots. It all came out shinny, red and yummy.

I’ve got my own fan as a family cook tonight. This is the very first time we actually ate pig ears in Australia. Wouldn’t you love the crunchy texture of white soft bone between two layers of gelatinous meat?

Sorry I didn’t have a photo for this as I accidentally deleted it this morning :-(

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喜欢上砂锅

July 15, 2009 at 9:42 pm · Filed under Food & Cusine

We came back home last night, feeling so exhausted. There are so many loads of washing that need to be done, and unpacking, cleaning the hired boots, tidying up stuff and organising all the photos and video clips.

I started to fall apart yesterday on the way back, although the mountain colour and landscape on the way home looked extremely attractive and we just couldn’t believe how green and fresh it was. My eye lids were all flopping and I couldn’t even get up this morning to go to work. Going to work the next day after such a trip was a silly idea anyway. I think I do need at least one day to glue all my pieces together for the rest of the week. Otherwise, I will just collapse.

Right now, I think the only thing would really pick me up is some nice food. You probably won’t believe this. After the last several days of crazy eating — the hot pot feast, the Korean BBQ banquet, the roasted lamb leg, the full English breakfast and French style pancake morning, the garlic prawn, scrambled eggs and Chinese way of stir fry rice with grilled beef and lettuce… I still couldn’t forget about the seafood tofu hot pot that my husband had promised to make for me last week. So we went to get the pot (“砂锅” Sha Guo) and ingredients from the supermarket, and I really was looking forward to it.

Dinner time. The dish was finally ready. I was waiting next to the table ready to release the leash of my appetite. I haunted in the pot, enjoying the taste of all sort of seafood, fish, calamari, salmon, “淡菜”, prawns and tofu with the nice salty flavour of oyster sauce and lightly thickened hearty warm soup.

The black “Sha Guo” that we just bought was so good that we have pretty much decided to utilise it in the future as much as we can. We determined to develop as many “sha guo” recipes as possible, so we can have “Sha Guo” dish everyday. Well, what’s for tomorrow night? Cabbage, vermicelli and pork meatball soup?

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The Snowy Trip

July 12, 2009 at 11:27 pm · Filed under Out & About

To see and play with snow was the part of the plan. Coming a long way to Fairview, which is situated at the foot of snowy mountain range, it would be just silly if we missed the snow capped mountain.

So in that morning, we drove through the country grassland, went into the bushes, passed by a river and crossed over another mountain…. I can’t remember how long exactly we had been driving, but I can remember those slightly wet and winding mountain roads, pine tree forest with little yellow and reddish walk tracks right into the very deep of the bush and many many tall eucalyptus trees along both sides of the roads. Eventually we got to a point that we started to see the white stuff and appear spotting here and there. Wow, that’s definitely snow!!!

Another 15 minutes later, we found ourselves completely in the middle of this beautiful white wonderland. Everywhere is snow, snow, and endless snow. For many years of wondering what it would look like to have snow in Australia, I had all the reasons to hold my breath. It’s just so unbelievable that only half an hour apart, it can look so different.

We stopped in front of a large snowfield, changed our normal shoes to hired Apres boots. I put on my down feature coat which I haven’t really worn for like 7 years. Everybody got equipped with hat, scarf and gloves. I don’t know about other people, but I definitely looked very rounded in my gears. Then we stepped into the Gold Seeker Track, which is suppose to be a two-hours return walk track completely covered by the almost knee high snow.

I was a bit nervous at the beginning as I was really worried about getting lost here, but soon I realised that apart from those wooden poles, which stands up about every 50-100 meters with tiny little orange arrows on the top, there were plenty of foot prints on the snowfield left by the previous explorers.

So, let the game begin.

We walked and looked, of course took photos. My husband made a full figure splash on the snowfield with his whole body, which made it look like a crime scene. We wondered what’s inside of those shallow black trees and where all the animal are hiding. We got down to feel the running water in the little creek and we made assumption about what those green fluffy fern that sticking on the outside of the broken trunks was. We threw snowballs to each other. The snow very occasionally got into our boots and gave a chilled icing feeling. The wind came, making a hollow sound and blew our ears, exposed hands and the weather was amazingly cold but the body was warming up and full of happiness.

Whatever had happened in the past two days has been a great adventure to me. I stopped thinking and started to use my eyes, nose and ears. What I have seen, smelled, heard and sensed, made me feel so alive and I was just there, feeling it with a blank mind.

We didn’t really have a plan and we really don’t need one. That’s why when we happened to drive up to Cabramurra, the highest town on the Australian continent with (elevation 1488 m), our surprise turned into some unexpected joy.

Standing at the lookout, I felt so thrilled with excitement and delight. The houses here have very special design with a very highly pitched roof that I have never seen in my life. David ran into the other side of the snow field to catch more video clips, as if he was running into another side of the mountain.

Our friends captured a photo of me and my husband, which is maybe technically not the best, but in terms of poetic imagery, it’s such a moment that I probably would never trade for anything.

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The “Fairview”

July 11, 2009 at 11:31 pm · Filed under Out & About

It is the second time I visited here, but to be honest with you, I still can’t quite get where exactly Fairview is located on the earth. All I know is, this place is half an hour drive from Tumbarumba township on one end and on the other end, it about another 40 minutes from Tarcutta. We had tried both ways so far. This Saturday we came in through a big pine forest over the mountain and luckily saw some emus crossing by. My perception is, it doesn’t really matter which way you go, you will always have to pass by a phase of the road which is unsealed and definitely would make you eventually realise, “oh, this is the COUNTRY”.

But there is one thing that I certainly know well, and that is, “FAIRVIEW HAS IT ALL” – beautiful mountain view, never-end green landscape scattered with black cattle with white face, two horses Jumbo and Mary, son and mother, old dog Blix, cats Tom and Urki, a little creek plus a self-built dam, a huge shed, so many old trees and a garden that I would never be able to explore all parts of it, beautiful house with French doors everywhere opening to a fantastic view from every angle, a large collection of the pieces and bits of art, paintings, sculptures and other items collected from all over the world. I even got to play Chopin on a grand piano in a house with open fireplace.

In the morning, I got up early, went out and breath in the very first puff of the fresh air offered by the country mountain, listening to sound of creek water hitting the rocks and going between all the branches of bushes. My husband played with Jumbo and tried to feed him with a piece of apple (it didn’t turn out terribly successful) and he seemed really enjoy filling the wood into the fire place. I picked some lemons at the side of the house the other day. We four people prepared the dinner and made every night’s meal a big feast. We sat around table and fire hours and hours eating, chatting, playing with Tom, watching DVD. I slept at the night listening to the rain and imagining what the weather would look like the next day. We went to hunting that afternoon, well not so much hunting, I should say shooting. Everybody got their shot with two different riffles. That paper box with a white piece of paper as the target got hit with many little bullet holes at the last, and everybody was happy. And we went for a drive through the little bush again in a 1977’s Ford. Gods know where we were, but I don’t think there was anybody really worrying about running out of the petrol. We drove and drove and eventually drove back to “Fairview”.

I just constantly got amazed with the changing colours and lightings of Fairview and its surrounding view. I believe that none of modern technology (camera or video camera) would even make it close to what I have really seen over these 4 days. Human’s eyes are the best. They can’t play back, but they collect everything we see and leave them into our mind. And that memory, probably is going to last as long as we would like to last or till one day we can not.

That’s why at the end of the trip, I feel compelled to write a separate post about this beautiful property, not just a few lines of words mentioning about it, as it just won’t be enough.

Fairview is the very core of this whole trip, and it is a reflection of June and Marv’s many years effort after their retirement. I see it and I can see through people’s souls. It is an exciting collection and wonderful celebration of people’s youth, their dream about the lifestyle they pursue, the family history back to several generations down the track, their life experience about the world, and their passion about the life itself.

I think one day I would really love to go back.

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