the things we do for blogs

My blogger pages have automatically been formatted into Indonesian. So you are now reading buat blog. This is the lazy bloggers post, which miraculously some of you are quite interested in.

Im not sure if there are vegetable gardens around here, there are markets and not many gardens seem to grow their own;actually i havent seen many gardens full stop. I think its urbanisation doing that. There are however a lot of mango, papaya and banana trees with fruit falling over the laneways. I will do a dedicated photo walk at some stage but with five kids in tow sometimes, i forget to take the camera.

Breakfast is just how we like it, fresh tropical fruit,sometimes with yoghurt and banana pancakes. Tomorrow i am hoping for rice porridge with garlic and chicken- i love that! Last night we had a an absolute feast. Prawns fried with a coriander and tumeric spiced rice flour batter , chicken pieces dry fried in a coconut chilli crumb, snake bean and roasted coconut and soy bean salad, mild tofu in lime leaf, galangal and lemongrass curry sauce with fried shallot and potato and tuna balls.
Talking to the manager of the villa yesterday she told us that the staff here liked us as we were very happy and friendly bunch and appreciated what everyone was doing for us; we seemed to enjoy the house and were very happy people! It shocks and surprises me that people could come to a place like this and be so spoilt with the food and the beauty of the place and not be happy! She said lots of people complain all the time about the food, the staff...HELL=O! People like that don't deserve to have good experiences and generosity in life. Anyway, its a good thing that the friends we are away with one half of blogs, so therefore forgive me for leaping in saying 'hang on, dont eat yet, let me take a pic'. Lunch today I'll post later. Heaven, Im in heaven...
Pics not good at night and im on a strange camera so im unsure of the settings. Will blog about my 'dancing fingers' male masseuse experience when i can! Trippy!

relaxation and a good dose of...guilt

We have found ourselves in an unexpected heaven, paradise. We expected some heaven, but this is bliss. Three weeks of this? It may kill me.
We're camping out in a house found on Craigslist six months ago. Its a family compound of beautiful proportions, tropical gardens, resident mangy dog, a herd of cattle, roosters in bamboo huts, frogs, snails of mammoth proportions and two chefs! We were a little surprised to find upon arrival that the villa came equipped with an onsite manager, cooks, gardener, 3 cleaners and all the babysitting you can ask for (actually I have to be quite assertive to get the bean back, he gets whisked off quite frequently, i find him eating with strangers, out the front with the blokes and their motorbikes, on the cooks hip while shes grinding spice in the mortar and pestle- babies are hard currency in Bali. 'Just relax, just relax' we keep being told as we pack up after ourselves, try to do our own washing, look after my own kid. Its hard to relax when there are people wandering around cleaning up your own 'mess'. Colonial mistress I certainly fail at. The girls are finding it confronting too, wanting them to go home and be with their own families and let us do our night time dishes. So were struggling a bit. But its beautiful here, friendly and quiet. and were slowly relaxing. The chef, Nunga is a wonderful cook and lovely woman and she has agreed to show me some dishes in the kitchen and to go to the traditional market next time she goes; that's a motorbike ride Im looking forward too! So Im looking forward to learning some wonderful new dishes while we are here. The pic taken is a water spinach and mung bean cooked salad and Balinese chicken with cracked rice. Our first meal here and recalled in this post just for Veggie.

I love the tropics; the incense, the damp, the thickness of the air, the smells of spices wafting, the slightly cloying smell of waterways, the rapid fire language that you cant quite understand, the laughter, the flowers, the colour of the green. My favorite are the delicate plates of offerings made morning noon and night to please the Gods; flowers and fragrant pandanus leaves on flat woven banana-palm bowls topped with a stick of lit incense and a Ritz cracker. These gifts are placed in alcoves, on the grass, on a path, about 20 around the compound at any given time (i think the dog ate the cracker in the pic, else it was one of the kids). We are away from tourist town, located at the end of a long banana palm lined lane and amongst trees and families. Its beautiful, full of ancient culture, tradition and lots of flowering vines and mossy walls. I just have to manage the guilt.

Haiku Friday

A gift for you all.
Touched by your honesty, trust
and good will. Thank You.

my crowded hour[s]

Ive been mad crazy busy at work lately preparing to go on 3 weeks leave. Today is my last day at work and I have just crossed off the last project on my list. Jesus that felt good. Celebrated with a Kit Kat (shhh) and a cup off tea. Goin' craaaaaazy i know! I'm hours ahead of schedule and I can feel a stress release headache coming on. Mid-winter school holidays here I come! Not too sure about internet access where we are staying, i do recall something about wifi... will post if and when I can. Totally looking forward to weeks with the kids and the bloke, sun, a good book or five and some drafted webpage ideas. Any suggestions on that front?

a moment of fancy [or something]

Im not sure what i was thinking when i decided to bypass the normal approach of just picking a tiny bunch for a tiny vase for the kitchen windowsill to be enjoyed when doing the dishes. A moment of whimsy perhaps? a fanciful idea of high tea and snooty minds? I saw these in bloom around the garden yesterday while 'taking' a walk with the boybean and immediately related these delicate faces to the stomach. It flabbergasted the husband that's for sure, that I took the gastronomique approach. Sugared violets... why not? I should really have asked myself 'why? , but there you go, Taurean by nature.


Certainly after i had finished dusting /embedding /burying them under the rather unrefined organic sugar, which had resisted the most full strength industrial kitchen whizzer (by this stage damned if i was gonna let some crunchy sugar get the better o me) they looked more than a little pedestrian, in fact rather agricultural. More like the sugared peanut at Christmas than the refined end product Mrs Beeton would have preferred. I think i failed. Big time. First time and never again. But the nearly- teen -bean verdict was very enthusiatic upon consumption of a morsel from the fridge 'OMG, they taste AWESOME!' So there ya go.

Chalk that one up to expereince to never be repeated. Sheesh. What do i even cook that needs a sugared violet? What to do with leftover violets which have no stem that you just couldnt bear to entomb? Chuck them in the Okonomiyaki of course!

a bit a me 'n' a bit a you

Blogging is a great way to connect, but it can be a little one sided at times. One writes about whats on the mind, whats important and at the end of that there lies some hope that you get some dialogue going, some feedback, some input. A conversation of sorts. As much as we all may say we do it for ourselves, it wouldnt be public if we didnt want some exchange.

Sometimes i feel like im talking to myself, other times i feel part of some delicious secret squirrel business; only we know whats going on. Sometimes Ive really wanted to know more about everyone out there but have failed to work it out. Sometimes asking questions is the only way to do it but the two way bit here online is such an organic thing and if it feels forced, its gonna flop. Thats the tricky part about blogging, that even if youre not blogging out of 'obligation';for others, sometimes you want to write but through lack of processing time it just doesnt make it to readable. Sometimes Im just so overwhelmed, awash with so many things all whizzing around that I cannot make a straight line out of a tangle of thoughts. Sometime insecurity sets in and you think oh crap, that was shit. how embarrassing, then you go oh well...and keep going, keep posting because it really is a means to ones own end, whatever that may be. I have been blogging way longer than I ever thought i would. Its magic and i keep meaning to read more, do some research into the social contructs around blogging coz i need some language for my motivations and the emotions attached to belonging to such a community. Is it really all about having a voice, being heard?

So i have a request for all you who read Taurus Rising, can you answer me a question please. It is this. If you think back to the past year or so and look at your own habits and choices, what would you say has been one of the most, or a few of the most significant things you have changed about the way you live, on any level, that you feel really pleased with, accomplished or proud. Oh, and why do you blog? I think i just need to find out a bit more about you.

Prada in the larder?

Better foodies dont do humble condiments. Now, I know this but it was this kind of principle that started a marvellous argument at Chez Pan a few weeks ago about just how much of a foodie the Bloke was. (In hindsight, i cant believe how seriously we debated the finer points of what being a foodie actually meant). So when i discovered the little tome at the library yesterday 'How to be a better foodie. A bulging little book for the truly epicurious' by Sudi Pigott I knew it contained the definitive answers we were searching for. Its an almost-thigh slapper, tongue-in-check look at the extremes foodies will go too..."the committed better foodie may spend many hours musing over the logistics of digging an Imu fire hole-wonderful for a juniper-spiked porchetta" when you can read a sentence like that and relate... (thinking of my rather nutty post-partum , in between breastfeeding a 6 week old, efforts to build the pizza-oven while on maternity leave)...

So i know lots of you readers out there are food people, can you claim to be Foodies? Here's the Prada larder checklist (with minor modifications) and my answers. If you need translations then BONK! -not a foodie.

1. Nam Pla - 20 year habit
2. Mirin - sure
3. Soy sauce or shoyu -yup
4. White miso paste - umm,checking.. yes
5. Bonito flakes - I've run out
6. Verjus - for sure
7. Saba - huh?
8. Rose or orange water from 'foreign' shop -check rose water
9. Ume-shu - no have
10. Pomegranate molasses - *blush* yup
11. 100% pure maple syrup - yup
10. Honey-chosen for type - loca
11. Cardomon, coriander, star anise, all whole - who doesnt?
12. Chermoula - have all ingredients to make it fresh when required
13. Baharat - nother huh?
14. Ras Al Hanout - huh huh huh???
15. Jordanian Zatar - definitely not
16. Peperoncino - nope
17. Dukkah - yup
18. Shichimi togarashi - nope but i will coz its fabulous!
19. Preserved lemons/limes -yup, too many jars!
20. Sumac -yup
21. Chilli jellies - check this; yup
22. Red harissa - yup
23. Saffron -a few strands floating around
24. Mace - just nutmegs
25. Maille Dijon - personally purchased from Les Halles-whoop!
26. Vanilla - fair trade , thick and pure from Vanuatu and a pod
27. Fruit cheeses - yup, mine and bloggy trades!
28. Biscuits; lah dee dah ones -nope, get eaten by the kids too often , bake/buy on a need only basis

Extra questions to sort the Prada larders from the mere Tom Fords

a. boutique tuscan extra virgin olive oil - pass
b. Artisanal jams - home made count?? of course they do!
c. duck confit -*blush* again- from genial artisian duck grower in Brittany
d. goose fat - have home rendered duck fat in the fridge- count?
e. twist rolled darjeeling - nah
f. L'Artisan chocolate flakes -nah
g. Food trophies from Michelin establishments etc definitely nah- not into foodie trophies!
Hmm..not sure about scoring this thing; theres no cut off! Looks about right; i think Im into food but merely the garden Tom Ford varietal foodie.

When it come to spices, im not a loca vore. How can you be a foodie without a variety of herbs and spices? How can you enjoy food without variety? Where i can i will pay more, sometimes alot more (the Vanuatu vanilla which i guard like Mother Bear..."thats tooo much" she screeches at Bean2 across the kitchen), to purchase a local or more local ingredient but I think that spices are international trade currency, its ok to be non loca- they're light, used sparingly and keep but fair trade is important as is sustainable production. Its the big guns of everyday bulk consumption where i put my loca investments.
And remember , a formative foodie learns to assemble and turn a pasta machine at the same time, if not before, they learn to ride a bike. Touche.

How did you score?

business planning with a fizz

I had my first 'meeting' with 'the board' last night (that would be me n him); dining table, bottle of wine, brains and pens and paper. Si has built and sold quite a few businesses in his time so i figured that he might know a little bit about helping me out at this stage of my venture. I'm a bit of a 'i can do it myself' girl so this process was actually a little confronting for me (go figure) but it was a good process to go through, to take myself and my goals seriously, speak them out aloud and work through my business plan together. We worked our way through my marketing plan and strategy, business goals, finance and storage plans and itemised my 'to do' list. I learnt though this evening that I had done heaps of research, knew my product well and had a very good knowledge of the big issues involved. Im prepared as i can be at this stage of the process. I was very surprised and pleased when Si said he'd do whatever it took to help me along and that he would also be prepared to pound the pavement to get this product out there. Im such an academic at heart and always have been, the idea of 'selling stuff' has actually never really been an option in my life but Im passionate about ridding the world of single use plastic- just rip em off willy nilly-fruit and veg bags. We crashed into bed at 1.30am. It feels extraordinary to be pursuing this and Im so glad Im married to one of lifes eternal optimists. I can recommend Alibaba.com as an amazing insight into the world of 'stuff'. Suffering the effects of a fun night a little this morning...

Haiku Friday

hauled from the cellar;
summer pomme. Frozen berries
found. Crumble and cream.

any advice appreciated

Ok. so now I have an ABN (Australian Business Number), i have a trade name, i have a business plan (sort of) and I have a wholesaler for my very very favourite soft and filmy produce bags who can supply me at a reasonable price. The bags are made from certified organic cotton and are certified fair trade, made by a collective of women in a village in India. So now its all freaking me out. Between getting my thesis done, blogging, family, research, the garden and all, Im about to start importing and become a sole trader and all that's associated. Life is nuts sometimes. Watch this space.

*and now a registered web domain-whoohoo