dividends

A few years ago, while driving up from Brisbane to Toowoomba for Christmas, Lee and I stopped in at the Big Orange to buy fruit. This is a fairly common occurrence, but on this occasion we were charged with buying mum a fig tree which they had on special. At least, I think it was a fig tree; I have a dim memory of buying what was requested and also something that wasn't, but I can't recall what those might have been. Anyway, we bought a fig tree, and gave it to mum for Christmas.

The fig tree had a bit of a rough time of it at times in the garden. In one storm in particular it was knocked over, and it was touch and go as to whether or not it would recover. However, these days it is in rude health, and this weekend past, Mum brought down a crop of 10 fresh figs for me. As an investment, that tree has well and truly paid itself off now in fruit, not to mention what it adds to the garden as a tree.

I neglected to take a photo of the whole box, but after two meals, these four were left. Of course, today, they aren't - I was under strict instructions to make sure I got through them quickly, and I was not about to disobey.

Shocking form to post pictures of food, but at least they're not instagrammed, I suppose.

I also enjoyed reading up a little about figs online. I suspect that the variety I've just been eating is the brown turkey fig. The other interesting thing I found was that many species of fig have a symbiotic relationship with a certain type of wasp, whereby the wasps can only reproduce by injecting their eggs into the fig, and the fig tree can only reproduce by the wasp carrying pollen between male and female trees (although I believe the figs here don't play this game).

By way of rejoinder

I would have to say that, on the whole, the quality of my culinary preparations has probably gone slightly down since returning from France. This is attributable to any number of factors: the unavailability of ingredients to which I had become accustomed, the increased distance to the shops, and perhaps the general laziness associated with getting older :)

However, one of the great blessings I've had is introducing myself to kangaroo meat. I've had a number of kangaroo steaks, fillets and roasts since getting back, and I have found them thoroughly palatable, both from a pure taste point of view, and from the point of view of eating a lower-fat, lower-carbon-footprint, lower-water-footprint form of meat.

" * * * "

What's that, skip? You say you'd taste lovely with some roast potato, sweet potato and garlic? Ok!

mattresses and pie

I decided to buy a mattress. After 2 and a half years, my poor old sofa bed has quite reasonably become uncomfortable in the middle, meaning I have to choose one side or the other upon which to sleep. A simple enough decision if made while awake, but not so much when dormant. Fortunately, Jacques and Sophie volunteered to drive me to a shop to take delivery of said new mattress, so last Thursday it was off to the shops, with the additional participant being the now-5-month-old Juliette.

The chap in the store quite happily assured us that the mattresses were all on site, rather than over at the depot, which was nice to know. Of course, this was true right up until the point where I said, "I want that one!", at which point he grimaced and admitted that said model was not, in fact, available until next week. At which point I cried, got him to order it in, and went home to make pie.

Goat's cheese pie. Ring any bells? Inspired by Chris & Anjum, I perhaps foolishly offered to J&S to make them the guinea pigs in my first attempt at this famous dish. Its actually pretty simple: chopped onion, halved cherry tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, basil (I didn't have time to buy any fresh stuff, so I just used dried), lots of chèvre (for the non-francophones, that's pretty much goat's cheese), and pesto.

I have to boast that all this went down in the context of a somewhat larger and more impressive culinary exhibition. We started with melon with italian ham and port. The goat's cheese pie, runny despite my having avoided real tomatoes, followed, accompanied by a rocket and beaufort (smelly french cheese) salad. We finished off with a raspberry charlotte cake (bought, it must be admitted) with ice cream. I offered coffee, but forgot to dose the calvados, much to my shame upon realising as much. The only hitch was that Juliette got pretty tired and, as is the wont of her kind, made noises I would not have credited to an instrument of her size had I not heard them with my own bones. Nonetheless, as my most ambitious invite-around thus far, I would call the whole shebang a success.