Cabbage chemistry

It was 5:05 on my bedside radio. I woke up with a decidedly uncomfortable feeling in the tummy. Low rumblings that sounded a bit like the bubbling noises you get when boiling eggs in a pot that’s a bit too big for the job. I could actually feel the air moving around the small intestine. Not pleasant! The culprit, of course, was the cabbage I had eaten while watching Coronation Street. df did warn that cabbage causes gas. It seems he was right. We had enjoyed a very tasty meal of cabbage and Indian roti (also called chappati by some). The recipe is my own Hands-on Cabbage. In my opinion, it’s the only way to eat cabbage. The boiled limp kind that my mother used to serve smelled of public lavatories and tasted of nothing very much (fortunately). My Hands-on Cabbage is great with Indian food and also makes a very nice accompaniment to sausages, lamb chops, steaks … try it.

Hands-on Cabbage Recipe:
Shred enough cabbage for two people (about four handfuls). Cut a large onion into thin slices. Chop a green chilli. Put the chopped cabbage, onion and chilli into a bowl with a handful of shredded coconut, a teaspoonful of turmeric powder and some salt. (Be careful not to use too much salt at this stage. The cabbage looks more than it is. It will shrink down on cooking.)

Use your hands to rub the salt and turmeric into the cabbage mixture. Do this until the cabbage begins to feel moist. Don’t rub your eyes or they two will feel more than a little moist. There is chilli on your fingers … remember.

Put a spoonful or two of oil into a wok. Add a teaspoonful of dhal (any except red lentils will do; urud is best), dry red chillies (optional), curry leaves, mustard seeds and cumin seeds. Fry till the dhal turn light brown and the mustard seeds pop. Add the cabbage mixture and stir for a few minutes. Lower the heat, cover and leave it to cook. Stir the mixture once in a while. Don’t add water, it completely ruins the taste. That’s it. It’s ready when the cabbage is cooked to your liking.

On second thoughts, maybe I shouldn’t blame the cabbage for the nocturnal rumblings. It could have been the glass of beer I had just before the meal. I suddenly have this rather scary image of a chemistry lesson where we used red cabbage juice as an indicator to measure the pH of various substances. One of those substances was beer. Yikes!

A fishy tale

Easter highlight? We’re grandparents! Yes, our goldfish have had babies! We had two gold goldfish and one black goldfish in our garden pond. They’ve been swimming merrily around for at least three years, just the three of them. I wonder what got in to them to go off and reproduce like that! There are, at least, 12 little fishes … all black. So we know who’s been doing what, wink, wink, nod, nod. The only problem is we can’t tell whether the black goldfish is a mummy or a daddy .. whatever it is we are definitely talking dominant gene here.

Thinking back, we did have a bit of a clean of the pond at the beginning of summer. We got rid of some of the weeds … to give a bit more space. Being warmer weather too we bought some fish food. We had kind of left them to fend for themselves for a while. Or maybe it is the stone head of the Buddha that we bought and placed on a rock close to the pond. I wonder if he's been casting some kind of spell. Whatever the impetus it’s been quite a success! df tells me that black goldfish are relatively hard to breed. Nobody told our little guy (if guy he be) that now did they?

BLTs and boats

We are going to have a little break for Easter and to celebrate this momentous occasion a group of us from work toddled off down to the pub for lunch. I had a very nice BLT thank you very much. One of us even brought along a bag of mini chocolate Easter eggs to properly mark the meal. Nice!

Much of the talk was around boats and sailing …. I’m not a water person so all this left me a little out in the cold. I’m beginning to remind myself more and more of my mother! She always refused any kind of travel that involved leaving the ground. This ruled out boats and planes. Trains were OK. She would sing along … Trains and no Boats and no Planes ….. Anyway, one interesting thing I did learn from the boat discussion was that the most common problems that the Coastguards have to deal with are i) people who run out of petrol, ii) people with flat batteries who can’t restart their engines after having gone out on the water, spent a day fishing and listening to the radio … the same radio that was draining their battery ... Boaties, don’t you just love them?

Animals in the news

February 2004: The waters are rising in the Manawatu farmland in lower North Island, the cows need to move to higher ground, the farmer goes to the rescue .. but she and the herd are swept away. Happily, she is rescued by one of her cows. Cow 569 becomes a national heroine!

In September the now famous cow became the mother of a ‘strapping hereford-cross bull calf’. The calf was named Tuggys Buoy and was auctioned for charity.

The rescued farmer, Kim Riley, wrote Cow Power, an illustrated story for children (ISBN 1869416546 ). So the animal that she first described as, an old cow, an ugly old tart hasn’t done too badly! How many humans get the chance to become national heroines, auction off their kids and have books written about them?

April 2004: A 10-year-old merino sheep, subsequently named Shrek, was captured on Bendigo Station on the South Island after he evaded the musterers for six years. When captured he was too old to be sold for mutton and the heavy fleece that he was sporting was too long for the machines. Normally, he would have been killed for meat about age six. Not so in New Zealand! He instantly became a television celebrity.

Shrek was shorn on National TV in a program that was beamed to Japan, Australia, Britain and the US. His fleece .. 375 mm. long and weighing 20.5 Kg .… was auctioned online to raise money for the Cure Kids charity. He even went to parliament to meet the Prime Minister.

The old sheep had no monetary value but as the famous Shrek he has already raised $250,000 for charity.

May 2004: The ‘bugger’ dog dies. Hercules, for that was his name, was the star of the popular Saatchi & Saatchi "bugger" advertisement for Toyota that judges at the Advertising Olympics in Cannes in 1999 called one of the year’s best automotive ads, "Bugger".

Sadly the end of the dog seemed to herald the end of good news-making animal stories. Oh well! It was nice while it lasted.

Yeah right?

I’ve been busy … some work at the office caught up with me and at home df and I have been doing a bit of autumn cleaning. The cleaning frenzy is probably fuelled by the knowledge that the really sunny warm weather won’t last … and maybe too by the thought that my baby (the younger of two at 22) is visiting us in May. The garden needs to be readied for its winter slumber. We’ve just eaten the last of the peaches … the strawberries are still doing well, as are the passion fruit, the beans .. and the weeds!

The good weather is predicted to continue for a little while longer. The other day the weather girl who makes her appearance just after the evening news was winding her way through the usual district, towns, etc when she came up with this amazing phrase 'Auckland just keeps on keeping on’! What’s that about?

Isn’t it weird what people say? Linda, a colleague, was discussing the imminent arrival of another colleague’s baby and commented, ‘by this stage you start feeling like a floundering whale’! How picturesque!

And df has the annoying habit of proclaiming, ‘If it’s meant to happen it will’. Plagiarising from the famous ad for Tui Beer all I can say is, Yeah right? Some of the Tui ads have been controversial enough to have been taken to the Advertising Standards Complaints Board. "US Intelligence... Yeah right", was one such. Common sense prevailed and the Board ruled that ‘the beer company billboard did not reach the threshold of causing serious or widespread offence, as it was humorous and satirical and would be recognised as such by the viewer.’ If you are feeling humorous and/or satirical why not enter the 'Yeah Right' Competition?

Fiji Bitter

After sitting up till close to midnight last night, eyes glued to the TV screen, we lost our World Cup rugby sevens title to Fiji! Our sevens didn’t even put up a good show! Fiji 29 New Zealand 19! Naively, df and I believed that the Fiji Bitter beer that we drank while watching the match would ensure that the Fiji sevens were left with a bitter taste in their mouths … just shows you can’t trust the spirits when you need them most!

Almost perfect

The Imperial Russian Ballet Company were in town to perform Swan Lake. Last night df and I swanned along to watch, listen and enjoy .. and enjoy we did. You can always trust the Russians to put up a good show, especially when it is ballet! The costumes were beautiful, the staging romantic, the dancers very good ... even brilliant sometimes. The only thing that marred the whole was the lack of live music .. the recording of Tchaikovsky’s great music somehow made it just not quite perfect ... but I'm not complaining.

The version of the story that they danced was the one that ends happily ... evil is defeated and Siegfried and Odette are transported to a permanent state of sublime heavenly bliss according to the program. Nice!

The evil sorcerer, Von Rothbart was a rather strange combination of a biker cum gang leader with a costume that reminded me of leather jackets and chains and headgear that looked like a baseball cap worn the wrong way round. It could have been funny but because of the power of the performance ... somehow it wasn't.

New Zealand 74 England 30

This was the score last night when the Silver Ferns took on England. The game? Netball, of course. Here in New Zealand it’s way up there in the public limelight …. amazing really for a women's game. The match was shown on prime time TV …. that’s how much interest it attracts! The only game that overshadows netball in New Zealand is rugby. I must admit it would be difficult to outshine the All Blacks.

Call me weird if you must but I love it. The women are just so elegant to watch. Points are scored in rapid succession, very little time is wasted with throw ins, scrums and there's no rolling around in the mud and grunting. Netball ... you can't beat it!

Too much of a good thing?

It was lunch time when I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t packed my lunch. I would have to venture forth and buy a sandwich. Sitting at my desk, I was feeling cold. A quick glance out of the window convinced me that since it looked bright enough I could probably safely go out without a jacket. So doing, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the outside world was a glorious sunny 24 degrees. Whatever happened to just opening the windows and letting nature in?

Yeah sure, but what happens when it’s freezing outside? How lovely to be cosily encased in our heated rooms oblivious to the artificiality of the environment.

Maybe we have lost the balance a little. We overuse technology and try a little too hard to achieve the perfect controlled environment. In summer, we all have to wear extra clothes in the office and remove them when we go out. In winter, we remove layers of clothing when we get to work. Just think of the futility of it and of all that energy that's being wasted!

Sigh!

A PS:
mark's comment just reminded me of the funniest part of the whole air-conditioning saga. When we first moved into this building a couple of years ago ... it was freezing. Believe it or not I was wearing a woolly hat and gloves while sitting here at my desk! Innumerable phone calls and complaints to the air conditioning people failed to produce any increased temperatures and so, eventually, the engineer came out to investigate.

Turns out the thermostats are all centrally controlled by computers and they were adjusting the thermostats for offices on the floor above us! Imagine! All the poor guys up there were probably stripping off while we all continued to freeze! Isn't technology wonderful?

Size matters ..

What is it with New Zealanders and Critical Mass ….. it’s everywhere .. or if you believe the numerous reports the lack of it is everywhere.

Until I came to New Zealand, when I thought of critical mass (if I thought of it at all), it was in the context of nuclear weapons and the chain reactions that set them off. Not so if you’re a Kiwi! We have a thing about being as Pascal imagined of our earth a tiny revolving ball in the immensity of space, one among innumerable others great and small …..

Take the Biotech industry that I just happen to know a little about .... comments like, you’ve really got to have a much bigger critical mass than people originally anticipated. … and developing greater regional critical mass will give Australian and New Zealand biotech companies better access to global market opportunities ... abound.

By all accounts then size matters. Don't get me wrong ... we also do BIG. We have Fonterra one of the leading multinational dairy company, owned by 13,000 New Zealand dairy farmers that claims to be the world's largest exporter of dairy products.

I think what we should be promoting is it's not the size that counts, it's what you do with it.

Heelan Coos and veni burgers!

What a Sunday! df and I went to a farmer’s fair and had a great time … there were highland cows (heelan coos), goats with udders as large as a cows (.. almost), veni burgers (crafted from venison meat), fresh fruit ice creams, wood chopping, equestrian and the traditional flower, vegetable, cake competitions …..
The highlight? A New Zealand record for a giant pumpkin …333.3Kg. Quite grotesque really and not my favourite vegetable!

My all time favourite word

Prepone (verb): to bring forward to an earlier time. It’s the opposite of postpone.

“Prepone” is widely used in India and appears in such prestigious English language newspapers as the Times of India. For example, on the 8 March the newspaper reports that two women power lifters were banned from competition for two years when they complained that, that the women's events scheduled for February 18 and 19 were strangely preponed. The newspaper goes on to say that, the sudden preponement was because ….There are many, many examples of this usage.

Wow! A quick Google search has just led me to this report in the Bangalore based Deccan Herald. “Preponed” and other “Indian coinages” have made it to the seventh edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary.

My day is made!

The things people say #1

In a Team discussion this morning: Don't treat us like mushrooms - leaving us in the dark and feeding us chicken sh1t. We want to be like sunflowers - in the light.
Brilliant ... thanks JP.

Another dhal recipe

Yes, yesterday was Coronation Street night again and df was looking decidedly non-culinary. He was doing a bit of manly tinkering with the extraction fan in the bathroom which, I have to admit had been sounding rather like the Concorde about to take off. It looked like it was up to me to step in to the kitchen yet again. Dhal with spinach leaves, that’s what it was going to be.

Here’s my recipe:
I used toor dhal (also called split pigeon peas or yellow lentils). A cup or two of the lentils were thrown into a pot with water, half a teaspoonful or so of turmeric powder and a little oil. When the dhal was half way done I added the spinach leaves – lots of them. Don’t worry, the more the merrier, they very soon boil down.
Ah ha thought I, time to put the rice on else I’ll have to wait around for it to cook and miss the beginning of Coronation Street – a big no, no.
Done! Next I got out a small pan, added a little oil and when the oil was hot enough, I added dry red chillies (fresh green ones will do but dry red is better), some cumin seeds, some mustard seeds and when they began to splutter I put in a handful of curry leaves and a pinch or two of asafetida. Make sure the asafetida doesn’t burn. You should get a pleasant cooked smell but DON’T burn it … it tastes bitter and not very nice when overheated.
That's it! All that remains is to pour the fried stuff from the small pan into the pot that contains the dhal and spinach, boil the mixture for a minute or two and switch off. Salt … don’t forget the salt!

My piece de resistance was the crunchy fried potato that is a great accompaniment to the rice and dhal.
It’s so easy! Cut the potatoes as finely as possible. Mine were more or less 5cm long x 1cm wide x 0.2cm thick. The pieces are washed in cold water and dried in a tea towel, rubbed with salt, chilli powder and turmeric powder and deep fried till crisp. Very nice even if I say so myself. Even df, who can be very critical of my cooking, was impressed.

I wish his struggle with the fan had been as successful. It now sounds more like a helicopter!

My hairdresser’s bald!

I made a trip to the hairdressers last Saturday for my bimonthly service. I decided on the usual colour/hair cut combo. My hairdresser, Frank, has the most gorgeous brown muscular arms, a flat tummy and the greatest bum … and he is bald. OK, not really bald, more shaved. He’s all round cute. He was telling me that it’s the best job ever. When he goes out to the pub with his mates and gets chatting with the girls all he needs to do is to tell them what he does and he is running his fingers through their hair, looking very wise before you can say Bob’s your Uncle …. or whatever it is you say nowadays. How jealous does that make his mates?

I did mention to him that it was slightly unusual for a hairdresser to have no hair. It’s a bit like a dentist with no teeth, say I, trying to be funny.
Maybe dentists don’t have teeth, says Frank. They probably all have implants. Now there’s a thought!

English as she is spoke!

Recently df, who learnt English as a second/third language pointed out a few weird things about English that I had never thought about.

Weird thing #1: A person who dances is a dancer, a person who speaks is a speaker, a person who sings is a singer but a person who cooks is a cook NOT a cooker! Imagine saying, we had to close the restaurant because the cooker was ill. And what if the rice cooker was the person who only knew how to cook rice or the pressure cooker only cooked when he/she was pressurised to do so!

Weird thing #2: If the cleaning lady is the lady who does the cleaning and the washing machine is the machine that does the washing; then the swimming costume is it the costume that does the swimming and the waiting room is the room that does the waiting.

Chaos - the natural state

Yesterday, in the warm Sunday afternoon sunshine, we washed and waxed the cars. This morning it was raining.
Yet another example of Murphy’s Law at work!

This started me thinking about another law that we all spend a lot of time and energy battling against. It’s the law that states that disorder increases in the universe. The only way to overcome disorder is to input energy. I know I know - its a really bad interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics but that’s how I understand it and it works for me. Importantly it elucidates why I need to spend half my life battling chaos. It’s everywhere … in the garden, we remove weeds only to have them reappear hours later, we sweep the leaves from the path, they reappear before you can say Jack Robinson … in the home, we vacuum, wash clothes, wash dishes .... take showers, shave, cut nails … etc, etc, etc. ….. and all of these energy requiring activities have to be repeated again, and again and again. There is no net gain. All the input of energy that this entails does nothing more than ensure that we are able to live our lives in something resembling a state of order … we can’t escape.
It’s a natural law so no point fighting it!

There’s another natural phenomenon that no law, as yet, describes. It is the indisputable fact that men have great difficulty in finding the things that they ‘had just a moment before’. It could be keys, specs, clean socks, a handkerchief, the cup of tea that they were in the middle of drinking, a spanner … the list is limitless. Clearly objects will not disappear or become invisible. What is missing, then, is a scientific explanation of the observed facts.
It was while searching, yet again, for the key to the garage door, that df came up with this hypothesis,
Once upon a time, long ago, before supermarkets came into existence, primitive societies survived as hunter-gatherers. Women did the gathering; men did the hunting. As a result, women evolved to find edible roots and fruits, things that don’t move, while men evolved to spot the slight movement of animals as they roamed around the forests of yore.
The law according to df states that unless it moves men don’t see it.
Any takers?

Boys and their toys

I took a walk over the bridge and down to the village at lunch time today. Suddenly, coming towards me was this walking umbrella, for that’s what it looked like. The little fellow was holding the stem way up at the top, not down at the wooden bit that was the handle. The result was that I couldn’t see much of the top half of his body and from the way he was walking – like a little kid who hasn’t yet quite mastered the technique of walking without falling over – he couldn’t see much of where he was heading. Why? And it was only a very mild drizzle not enough even for granny to get out the folded-up rain hat that she kept inside its pouch in her coat pocket.

The village is well known for its cafes and nice places to eat. What do I see next? A bloke, sitting in one of the gracefully designed, wrought iron chairs placed outside for the use of the patrons, drinking from a blue carton of full cream milk through a straw. A straw!

And then there he was! A REAL man sitting on the pavement outside the garage, a few sundry tools scattered around, staring in admiration at – a very shiny miniature 50cc motor cycle. It looked a bit like this. The seat couldn’t have been more than a foot above the ground. But was he proud? He casually mentioned that the machine could take weights up to 200kg and had four gears. Wow, four gears! The 50cc moped I used to ride had no gears. Somehow the thought of this full grown man sitting on the miniature machine just made my day!

Sorry boys!

The gym thing

The sun was shining causing the water in the pool to sparkle. The smooth sleek bodies of the young members of the swimming club were cutting their elegant way though the water as they swam up and down perfecting their strokes. And here was I, in the gym, amongst grunting, sweating flesh looking enviously down through the glass on the scene below. Why do I do this when I could be out taking a walk in the park that borders our garden on two sides?

I just had to find some answers and the best I could come up with is this … at least it took my mind off the pain of treading the treadmill! I do the gym thing because:
1. It isn’t always sunny outside and it’s all too easy to put off a bit of exercise on the excuse of inclement weather of some sort.
2. Once I’m in the gym, I stay there for an hour. The park is too close to home. Every round of the ground I have to pass the back door where other attractions beckon.
Don’t get me wrong! I’m not a gym junkie. I don’t have withdrawal symptoms if I miss my day at the gym. I’m not trying to build a perfect body - fat (*oops*) chance of that. I just want to keep reasonably fit.

Nowadays we have to go out of our way to get any exercise at all. We sit in our cars to go to work, we sit at our desks at work, we sit in our cars on the way back from work and we sit in our chairs watching TV when we get home (I know we don’t have to but it’s addictive and it’s there). It’s not like the good-old-days when at the very least we all walked to work (or at least to the bus stop) and back, there were no magic cleaners that lifted grease without the application of a fair amount of elbow grease, the laundry rooms were steamy, sweaty places where the clothes were scrubbed clean … etc, etc, etc …. We didn't need gyms we just went about our daily toils.

Sigh!

Dhal recipe

I was in a rush to get the food organised so that I would be ready to watch Coronation Street without interruption. Past experience has taught me that a culinary hurry is a recipe for disaster. Last night was the exception. It was actually df’s night to cook but he made some beans and kind of left the kitchen. It was up to me. Dhal it was going to be. I decided to use the ordinary red lentil. Of all the dhals red lentils cook fastest.

Method used:
Boil dhal in sufficient water with a little turmeric and a dash of oil. The oil speeds up the cooking process. I have no scientific evidence for this but it was my ex-mother-in-law who told me this and that’s good enough for me.
While the dhal is boiling, in a separate pan, add a little oil and when it’s hot throw in some red or green chillies, some cumin and mustard seeds and a few curry leaves.
After these have spluttered for a bit, add a finely chopped onion and after a bit some chopped garlic and after a bit more some chopped coriander leaves (these are essential to produce the *wicked* taste).
To this mixture add a bit of vinegar (not too much or you’ll spoil the whole thing), a pinch or two of sugar and keep frying till the smell of vinegar is dampened. It’s done.
Add the fried stuff to the dhal, boil for five minutes or so and don't forget the salt.
Enjoy with the rice that you have remembered to cook in the meantime. Oh, and the beans were a treat too.

Diet

Now be honest. What was the first thing you thought about? Was it along the lines of “healthy diet”, “balanced diet” or did you think “Oh my God, I’m so fat. I just have to diet”? If what we read in the newspapers is anything to go by it was the latter “Oh my God” response.

How is it that so many people can make so much money out of diets and dieting? There are books, pills, snacks and drinks all offering the road to eternal slimness. Writers and celebrities are minting money from the gravy (*sorry*) train that is the diet industry. Why doesn’t anyone get it? The only way to lose weight is to eat less? If you can throw in a bit of exercise all the better.

In the good old days, and I remember them well, Mother used to cajole us into eating up everything on our plate because we had to “think of all the starving children in India”. We didn't get fat on this advise because we were served just the right amount of food in the first place. Maybe this is too simple a solution for the people of today!

At lunch time in the office kitchen, we were discussing the food issue when Linda volunteered this story. A neighbour’s child, when prompted to eat up and think of all the starving children, deliberately picked up her plate, went outside and along the road where she proceeded to empty the remaining food from her plate in to the letter box. She was “posting the food to the little children far away”. Mmmm, I wonder!

Worth a nobel Prize?

Can you believe it? A British psychologist has calculated the year's "most depressing day," and get ready—it's Monday! Dr. Cliff Arnall, who specializes in seasonal disorders at the University of Cardiff, Wales, created a formula that takes into account numerous variables to calculate peoples' emotional nadir.

The model is:
([W + (D-d)] x TQ) / (M x NA),

where W is weather, D is debt, d is monthly income, T is the number of days since Christmas, Q is the number of days since New Year's resolutions were abandoned, M is motivational levels, and NA is the need to take action. I have reproduced this gem from here. If you are so inclined, you will find more details here.

However, I believe that by adjusting the model to take into account the fact that here in the Southern hemisphere the weather (W) should be a “good variable”, it may even turn out that the original calculation is wrong and that the "most depressing day" is NOT a Monday. Methinks that this equation, in its present form, only holds true when applied to the unfortunates who happen to be in Wales just after Christmas. Now that’s REALLY depressing!

Whit’s th’ maiter, Billy?

Billy Connolly's World Tour of New Zealand is showing on TV. I’m a big fan but somehow this series doesn’t have the oomph that the earlier series in which he toured England, Ireland and Wales had. The places he visits are interesting but the clips from his shows are not very funny. He seems to have lost a bit of his spark. Anyone agree? Is it him or is it me?