a good larf

Chatting at home with Simon last night about a colleague who is going through the family court at the moment reminded me of the drama that is seperating one life unit into two. It also rekindled a memory of the depths ex partners can go to to seek revenge on a spouse, to try and equal the pain of the heart. This story is funny and despite the agony at the time i did manage a very good larf.

The crux of the amusement stems from the fact that my ex husbands name is Simon and my then boyfriend (now my husband) is also named Simon and that additionally, my surname is X and my boyfriend (now husband) also has the surname X. My ex husband has a different surname.

The circumstance that i found myself in is that i recieved a letter from the government stating that a certain department had been trying to contact me, unsuccessfully, by phone and had also twice sent someone around to my house to 'interview' me. I had remained uncontactable, hence the letter and would i please call this department for an interview about my current living arrangements.

???
So i call.

The woman who is in charge of my 'case' informs me that they have had an 'anonymous' tip off that i am in fact co-habiting with someone yet recieving extra government allowance allocated for people parenting solo. Could I please confirm that my ex husband had moved back into the house. What the!? That sounds horriffic! NO!

I tell her that but she also informs me that the tip off has included details about a vehicle being seen frequently at the house etc and being there for a few days. I say 'well my ex husband drop the kids off every week but he doesnt even come inside the house and that this tip off is a bit of a mystery to me coz there is no way on earth we are back in a relationship together'.

She asks me a few more questions... my mind is racing around trying to figure out who on earth would make a 'tip off' like this; that my ex and i are back together...its ludicrous! Nuts. A really awful notion! The only person who i think would make a tip off about me being in a relationship (and hence 'concerned' about co-habitation with another man) would be my ex husband but he is the one being tipped off! Im confused. Then the lightbulb goes off. I ask her a few questions about the names she has in front of her...

Is the reported name of involved person Simon? "yes"
Is the surname reported X? "yes"
I tell her that Simon X is not my ex husband, despite the name, that he is my boyfriend and the name of the person doing the tip off would be my ex husband Simon? "Umm I cant reveal that."

I tell her that what has happenned is that someone in the department has seen the names involved and become confused and has assumed that the boyfriend is the exhusband and the ex husband is the boyfriend. It gets really special here as the natural effect of such confusion is that the ex husband has now also implicated himself inadvertently as a co-conspirator in this 'defrauding'. He has, by his own doing, sent the goverment dudes around to his place to answer the same questions i am getting and go through the burecratic nightmare that was required to prove his innocence! Priceless. Boy , did that woman and i have a belly laugh on the phone that day. I really, really would have loved to have been a fly on the wall the day the ex realised what a totally botched job he had made of his attempt to make life difficult for me.

There was no defrauding on my part. Sleepovers dont count. I could have told him that. Ahhh, revenge gone wrong. Sweet enough for me.

Haiku Friday

post me a comment.
two micro-loans up for grabs
just two get the gift.

i will draw the winners randomly on 1/6/09

Duxelle and Extract

i didnt want to put you off by telling you in the post title that its another mushroom post. This is what happens when you're into seasonal and local and you blog and you have a short mushroom season and a spot which is prolific. Sorry. Now you know, read on or exit at your leisure...

I should make this post four on my 'what to do with a glut of seasonal produce' posts!

You cant eat as much fresh mushroom as you can pick ( tell me- im not a huge mushroom fan but put me in a forest with thousands and I'll come home with kilos). So we have eaten them in sauce on pasta, fried on toast, stuffed and baked them, we have frozen some fresh and frozen some whole and dried heaps. What else?...we've still got kilos left (and we're planning on another picking this weekend??)


Enter Antonio Carluccios recipes for Mushroom Extract and Wild Mushroom Duxelle (dook-SEHL). A duxelle is a mixture made from minced or roughly chopped wild mushroom sauteed in butter with shallot, garlic, fresh bread crumb, and herbs. I think the duxelle looks particularly beautiful when made with these red pine mushrooms (saffron milk caps) as the colour contrast with the herb looks incredible. I hope they defrost just like this!


It is excellent to freeze and is used as an addition to soups, stuffings, sauces and to fill tarts and to top pasta. Did i say it freezes well? I cooked up about 4 pan loads of duxelle for the freezer, packed into small containers and we did eat a bit along the way...


The extract was simple. Cover chopped mushrooms with water. Bring to boil. Reduce to a simmer and add bay leaves, pepper corns, dried porcini, a splash of soy/sherry and cook for 40 min. Strain and squeeze solids, return liquid to pan and and reduce further until liquid is 1/2 to 3/4 in volume. Viola. Bottle. This will keep in the fridge for a while ( how long? im not sure) and can be frozen. I will use this for soups, sauces, stuffed mushroom, anything where i would add stock, actually Im chucking it around the kitchen a fair bit, anywhere i can. It can also be used as a condiment .



That might be my bloomin' lot.
* unless someone can tell me what else to do with a mushroom to preserve it other than pickling them!

kale karma

I'm not normally a violent person.
Until now.

I dont spray with organic pesticide.
Maybe I'll start. Maybe a kale isolation unit could resolve the problem. I used to just 'remove' offending pests.

I can overlook the holes in the outer leaves of the cabbages, who needs the outer leaves? And why dont they eat the chard? We have plenty of that.
But oh the kale, NOT THE KALE!
My coveted Tuscan kale...
That pushed all my Tarantino buttons.

i have a [reocurring] dream..

well its a bit of a nightmare really. I have it all the time and have done for the last five years. Its a kind of nightmare to start with but the ending is great! I always wake up happy and at peace. I had it again for the second time in the week last night. Its always the same theme but I havent had a recurring dream sequence like this since i was a kid.

It starts with me in a situation; a party, a dinner, a household moment where i am back in a relationship with my ex husband. The kids are usually involved in the dream but always in the 'backgroud'. The main component of the dream at this stage is the sinking feeling im experiencing at the realisation that i am not happy and feel that the rest of my life is a death sentence and i have to share it with this man. Its the re-expereincing of the real life feeling i had the day he moved back into the house after we decided to get back together after a seperation of six months. Dread. Despair. Heavy. Hopeless. Stuck. Dark. Misery. Anger. Death. So i revel in these emotions in the dream a little before the good bit arrives when i realise that Im no longer sharing my life with this Si but the new version, Mark II; the one that actually fits! The new Si usually walks into the dream room as i have this realisation. This moment marks the pinnacle of the dream.

My heart soars, my despair and dread lift and a feeling of pure joy and love rise up in me when i become aware in the dream that I have done the hard work, that those emotions belong to the past and that I am no longer bonded to a life of misery and 'smallness'. That expansiveness and hope are now a part of my living vocabulary. Then I wake up. Smile. The nightmare has gone...

I really love having this dream.

crabapple verjus

VERJUS: (vair-zhoo)

1. the tart, fresh, non-fermented juice of unripe wine grapes, crab apples or other unripe fruit. From the French, vert (green) + jus (juice); sometimes called verjuice.

Thats what my Larousse told me. Fantastic, coz crabapples have been weighing on my mind and stressing me out! Since my visit to Olive and Popeyes and coming home with trays of glorious figs and a huge bucket of crabs, Ive been wondering what to do with them. There's not a huge amount to do with such a tart fruit. I've done the crab jelly and we've still got monster loads of paste from the quince harvest... but we are running out of our home made chardonnay verjus. Thats always the deciding factor for me: will I use the end product??? Its all very well and good to make heaps of stuff, but...


So when i discovered that from medieval times, crabapples have been used for making verjus, well i was mighty happy to have found a worthy use for the 10 odd kgs of crabs that have been sitting in the pantry just a little too long and hoping not to end up as compost fodder.

Verjus is a useful kitchen liquid, its much less acidic than vinegar or lemon juice and has a sweetness that adds a mellowness to savoury dishes and desserts. I use it in vinigarettes, to deglaze a saute pan; usually from duck and its a staple in risotto. Ive never used it as a drink mixer but apparently if you just add campari and soda... It keeps forever and unlike vinegar and lemon juice can be used alongside wine in cooking.


The process of making verjus is similar to winemaking -- pick grapes(crabs), crush, press, rack, and bottle. But instead of being stretched out over the course of 12-18 months, since verjus does not need color extraction, fermentation, or barrel aging, the production is straightforward. And, unlike vinegar, which has grape juice or wine acidulated by an introduced culture, verjuice is simply crushed, unripe fruit juice. The grapes used to make verjus are the grapes which have been removed when they are just beginning to ripen in order to strengthen grape vines and allow them to produce full flavored fruit.

But i had crabs, so here's a recipe for Crabapple Verjus.

10 kgs of crabs, washed and with majority of stems removed. Stems can be kept on but you have to be careful not to press too much as they will change the taste of the final product. Additionally if you use a food processor to make a mash then they will have to be removed.

Quickly blanch crabs in boiling water to make pressing easier (stems are more easily removed after blanching)


Press crabs in a wine press if you have one. If you dont have a press then you need to use a food processor and reduce the crabs in batches until a fine pulp is reached. Strain the mash or pressed juice into a bowl with a lip using a muslin/cheesecloth and or a fine sieve and paper/muslin.


Pour juice into sterilised bottles, adding 10% of grappa/vodka of the storage bottles volume, to the mix. I really didnt want to use potassium sorbate to stabilize the juice and prevent fermentation so i opted for the addition of 10% alcohol instead (Maggie says I can!)


If you can ensure the sterility of the containers and the juicing process and know the acidity and sugar levels of your juice then no preservatives (alcohol or potassium sorbate) will be required. However, the presence of sugars and yeasts in the juice will most likely result in a fermentation of your product. This is ok and you can bottle after this process (generally 2-3 days) but a secondary fermentation may also occour. This is ok too, as you will then have methode champenoise verjus (some verjus in the medieval literature report fermented stuff) but its generally an unferemnted (non-alcoholic) liquor.
This volume of crabs made about 1.5 litres of jus.

Stretch It- the container challenge

In lead up to World Environment Day i thought a challenge was in order. Inspired by the deliciously funny post by Katrina at Kale for Sale I thought that it's the kind of post i really love reading; amusing commentary on someones life challenge to step outside the comfort zone and do something a little unusual in the name of saving just a little bit of plastic stuff from its disposable lifecycle. Katrina writes about her self consciousness and inner musings as she walks the footpath with her big red plastic bowl to transport home her takeaway chicken.

The idea behind Stretch It is that by sharing ideas and experiences about how to generate some small changes, push the social boundaries, redefine the norms of acceptability which surround dispoable... we reduce our fear by encouraging interesting and amusing alternatives to food and goods transport, from supplier to home. This way we can share the humiliation and exhiliaration around and have a good laugh along the way. I find that knowing someone else is doing something, that i share the pain makes a challenging behaviour more palatable and I learn from the ingenious ideas that others have that i never thought of.

Not put off by the fact that its generally big gun bloggers who start challengers either, I thought why the hell not? we all have to start somewhere and i thought it was a great way to showcase everyones small actions and attempts and foibles at reducing superflous plastic consumption.

Write a post on what you do thats a stretch to your comfort zone, ouside the norm or about something thats been bothering you and some alternatives you've been pondering which you might challenge yourself to do...take a tub to the cheese shop and buy off the wheel, use the wheelbarrow instead of the car, take your ceramic cup to the upmarket coffee shop, whatever and link back here!

Lets Stretch It