What I Cooked Last Night

The parish bulletin of 14 October carried the following notice: "Archbishop Denis Hart has regrettably had to cancel his visit to St Paul's parish and school on Wednesday 18th October and Saturday 21st October due to a strained wrist. He told Fr Ray that he was looking forward to this visit as he enjoyed the last visit last March." That's a week's notice for a strained wrist. The parish bulletin went on: "We pray for him in his time of need and recovery." That sentence is either the kind of exaggerated clerical cordiality as satirised by comedian Dick Emery's character 'The Vicar' ... or bitingly vicious sarcasm. I'm not sure which. But I could take a guess.

We just sat at the same table exactly six years after the event below.

The tomatoes are in, assisted by that three-day heat wave we just had. Now it's raining.

The electricity generators, newly converted to the green religion, are planning to pay you to turn off your air-conditioning . The politicians love it: Mr Frydenberg said the pilot program could save enough power to support more than 100,000 homes — or as much as is generated by a small power station. How about I turn out the lights as well and you can shut another one and give me money? NSW Energy Minister Don Harwin compared the plan to the way people learned to reduce their water use during the last major drought. Bad comparison, Mr Energy Minister. Everyone has water, but not everyone has air-conditioning. Water falls from the sky, humans generate electricity. At least, they are supposed to so that people's life support equipment doesn't go off, among other things. (See Arthur Hailey's Overload , 1979.) Aside from that, I never installed aircon, so can I get the rebate for all the power I never used? Ms Zibelman ... said it would make the power system more reliable ...

Front of Himalayan Pink Salt pack: This salt is 250 million years old. Back of Himalayan Pink Salt pack: Best before April 2019.

2010: Playing computer games with your children can be just as valuable as reading to them, an expert claims. ... Jeffrey Brand*, head of media and communications at Bond University ... likens concerns over the effect of computer games to 19th century fears that reading novels was bad for children because it would stop them from playing outdoors. ... And he believes it's only a matter of time before there is a "canon" of classic computer games, just as there is a literary canon of classics by great writers such as Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens. (For 2010's 'computer games' read today's more correct 'hand-held devices'.) 2017: Tech consultants won't tell you, for example, that excessive screen use transforms your child's brain structure, which can result in issues with emotional processing, executive attention, decision making, and cognitive control. They won't tell you that it also may result in a myriad of psychological and physi...

Another cat has appeared. It visits late in the evening when I sit outside on my north-facing porch and gaze across the impatiens and roses and lavender, and the viburnum and photinia beyond them, to the clear horizon. Collarless, it is all-over grey and has a white face and white paws. It prowls up the pathway from the street, and turns left onto the porch and buffets me with its head, just like the last one did. Is history repeating ?

Throw half a cup of flour, a teaspoon of salt and the same of pepper into a plastic bag. Now add two veal shanks. Twist the bag closed and shake it to coat the shanks in the seasoned flour. Warm some oil in a heavy pan and sear the shanks. It is difficult to sear a cylindrical shape all over, so roll them around by shaking the pan gently. Remove seared shanks to a baking dish and add to the pan a finely chopped onion, a diced carrot, a diced zucchini, two scored garlic cloves and a splash of stock. Shake the pan, put a lid on it and leave it for three minutes to steam the vegetables. Then tip the whole thing into the baking dish and add a cup of red wine, a tin of diced tomatoes, a tablespoon of tomato puree, a couple of dozen pitted black olives and enough stock to cover. I also empty the rest of the seasoned flour from the plastic bag into the dish to help the fluid thicken. Two hours in the oven should do it. The meat will fall off the bone if you're not careful when removin...

Another tree gone. I took out the stump on Tuesday. Good riddance. I have a book in my reference library titled Who Planted That Damned Thing! by Graham Calcutt, a gardening landscaper and writer of some note. As you can tell by the title, it is a light-hearted read but it packs a deadly punch. Its subject is the unsuitable shrubs and trees that people put in their gardens - mainly due to gardening fashion - and which landscape gardeners are eventually requested to remove. Calcutt advises his reader, 'Do your homework well, because to have to remove a tree that in five years is already too big, is a futile exercise.' But the book was published in 1985, so it talks about plants that were fashionable in the 1960s and 1970s, and only matured into monsterdom a decade or two later, like pampas grass or gum trees. Sometimes you still see pampas grass the size of a forest on those large blocks in the foothills of the Dandenongs, or giant gum trees in small Fitzroy courtyards. One...

Twenty years ago - or maybe it was thirty - no-one had ever heard of gnocchi until some Italian immigrants started importing shrink-wrapped packs of them and selling them in delis in the inner suburbs. I bought some of the earliest ones and quite liked them with napoli or bolognese sauce, but these days I make my own, because home-made ones make the manufactured ones taste like Deb instant mashed potato, which essentially is what they are. Now gnocchi are everywhere, especially in overpriced hipster cafes where I even came across one dish some years ago that was entitled 'gnoccho' because it was literally one on the plate. That was probably the last time I visited a hipster cafe. The sole gnoccho had an injection of arugula walnut pesto on it, and it costed $21, but without the dollar sign, to make it sound cheaper. But gnocchi are not the only Italian dumplings. There are also 'malfatti', which means 'badly made', because these dumplings tend to take ran...

Farmed salmon is either the best thing you can eat, or environmentally unsound depending on who you ask. Something about encroaching on unfarmed fishes' territory, or their residue spoils the water for the natives, or the farmed fish can escape . In the past a riposte such as the W. C. Fields quote about fish could blow these nonsensical theories out of the water but today any rational reply is met with a sanctimonious gaze through eyes that are slightly unsteady. Salmon with beurre blanc. The sauce Reduce 3/4 white wine to 1/4 white vinegar in a pan with a sprig of tarragon, a bay leaf, ten black peppercorns and a chopped spring shallot. Cool and strain. Place two tablespoons of this reduction into a pan with a tablespoon of cream. Reduce this by half and then gradually whisk pieces of cold, diced butter until thickened slightly. Add the juice of half a lemon, salt and pepper. The fish Cook salmon fillets gently in a pan with a little butter and lemon juice. The vegetab...

This is hard to watch, but incredible. Hard because they run the wrong way in Sydney (explanations are vague but New South Wales also tried to sabotage the southern colony by building their railways on a different gauge and playing a different ball game) but incredible because of the outcome. Either a barrier attendant was holding her late, or the starter let them go before she was settled, or she reared and nearly dropped Hugh Bowman; either way Winx came out four or five lengths behind the field. Her eventual overtaking of seven horses occurs in the last six hundred on the outside, despite being almost outfoxed at the post by stablemate Foxplay. But not quite! In a mirror event, Arrogate failed went down to his stablemate. Jockey Hugh Bowman repeated how I described Winx on Saturday, but it's hardly a unique claim: "She's a freak!"

Winx v. Arrogate : Winx hasn’t been beaten for more than two years and, after this weekend, she could even be rated the best galloper in the world if US champ Arrogate has his colours lowered again at Del Mar in California on Sunday morning. She's a freak: A recent university study identified Winx’s stride and, to be more precise, the frequency of her stride as a clue to her extraordinary ability. Winx’s stride length was measured at about 6.8m, which is longer than the average. The mighty mare takes about 170 strides per minute — compared to an average racehorse’s 140 per minute — which underlines her ability to sustain top speed for longer than her rivals. A longer stride at a faster frequency? That's freakish. Could we train humans to do that? Probably not - four legs v. two means there is some kind of a gearing phenomenon at play.

Three Glenn Campbell favourites, all of whom are Jimmy Webb compositions: 1. 'Galveston' 2. 'Wichita Lineman' and the lesser known: 3. 'Where's the Playground, Susie' and maybe this as well: But she'll just hear that phone keep on ringing Off the wall, that's all Read Jimmy Webb's tribute to Glenn Campbell.