Regional Goings On

We've just got back from Goulburn, where we saw some amazing acts at the annual Australian Blues Festival. Pugsley Buzzard is a fabulous pianist, with a voice of gravel. Sorta kinda like a cross between Louis Armstrong, Tom Waits, Fats Waller and Nick Cave; always worth seeing. And we saw the Lemon Squeezing Daddies with new front woman, Perle Noire, who looks and sounds like she's out of Chicago but is actually a Londoner. In the one paid show we went to, Doc Neeson (of the Angels) walked on stage looking oddly like Matt Preston, and delivered a solid blues-rock set, with guitarist Mal Eastwick. New finds from this time are the young Shaun Kirk, from Melbourne and Luna, who it turns out are from Canberra, even though I haven't seen them around here yet.

In food news, we ate at the Tatts one night, which is pretty standard pub grub. They do a decent burger and a cook your own steak; the scotch fillet I had was great, very tender. The salad bar was decent, with good fresh greens but I'd steer clear of the curry coleslaw if I were you. The other night we ate at the Goulburn Workers Club, which is pretty standard club grub. A decent salt and pepper squid, a slightly odd caesar salad with whole lettuce leaves and no egg, and a big slice of garlic bread instead of croutons. Also no anchovies, but I don't even expect anchovies in a Caesar these days.

Cafe Book is our first choice option for breakfast, with a fairly standard bacon and egg breakfast. The menu is nothing remarkable, but the food is all fresh and hot and well cooked. You get service with a smile, and a huge wall of second hand books for sale. And enormous smoothies. The bakery up the road near the Big Merino is not bad, either, and do a nice sourdough and a good cornbread. In both cases, it helps to order the coffee extra strong. What is it with country towns and weak coffee?


Meanwhile, back in Canberra, the Handmade Upmarket is back next weekend. This thing just keeps growing and growing. It's a market for regional craftspeople, and the goods for sale include a decent selection of food, as well as all the jewelery, clothes, bags and so on. It outgrew the Albert Hall, then the Yarralumla Woolshed and the Kamberra Wine centre, and have now moved to the National Convention Centre. Saturday 19th February, from 11am. They're also running a shop, on the Boulevard near the former Electric Shadows, but the range there is naturally much smaller. As well as the crafty stuff, they stock some good chockies from Lindsay & Edmunds and the Curious Chocolatier.

By the way, pARTy cakes will be there, and donating 25% of their profits to ovarian cancer research. So get in there and eat cake. I've bought cupcakes from them before; they are very good.

Gloria in Excelsis Deo

A quick plug:

Traditional Kings' College Style Xmas carols and lessons at St Phil's, O'Connor, Sunday 7.30pm. Plenty of old favourite singalong carols, and some very interesting and fun choral pieces. Supper in the courtyard (weather permitting). I will be singing. Come along! All welcome, and it's free!


Note that - also in wonderfully traditional style - our local government has decided that NOW is the perfect time to resurface the driveway leading to the church parking area! I mean, who would be wanting to use a parking lot at Christmas? So, it's street parking only, and in O'Connor at that. Bicycles and feet are highly recommended as transport.

PS to those unfamiliar with church vocab: "lessons" means readings from the Bible, not actual lessons in, say, Latin grammar, or how to do long division. I must admit that there is a *little* bit of Latin, but I promise there is no quiz.


(No actual "read more" content, it's buggy. I'll fix this one day. Next year when the moon is blue.)

Concert tonight!

I nearly forgot! I haven't been cooking or shopping this week because I've been far too busy getting ready for this!

Details here: http://www.theq.net.au/pages/eventdetail.asp?id=132

A program of Spanish choral music, at the Q in Queanbeyan tonight. It will be amazing - Red Book of Montserrat medieval stuff; Victoria Missa Ave Maris Stella; Lauridsen Nocturnes; Catalan folk tunes.

If you only go to choral music once every seven years, make it this one! You very rarely get such a solid bass and tenor sound in a choir. Not to mention the mix of youthful energy and bright voices with the older and more experienced full voices.


(Damn, gotta fix this HTML, there is no read more.)

Another Ad

I sing in choir. Bach is pretty. You come listen.

Best of Corinbank

Corinbank was totally awesome. I'm not going to dare to judge the acts or the art. But I had a wonderful time, and the highlights for me were:
* the choir. I got to sing backup to Chanel Cole and Simone Penkethman. Yay! I am so rock!
* the lineup at the Bally: Madame Mona Chromatique, Petite Sideshow presents Petite Freak, Bawdeville Allsorts Burlesque
* Mr Fibby!
* just wandering around taking in all the different artworks and people and music.

In terms of food and drink:
Best beer: The Backyard Brewery (as run by The Bloke)
Best breakfast: Huevos Rancheros by the Mayan Coffee stall
Best coffee: Non-colonialist coffee from the Mayan Coffee stall
Best cold drink: Iced Guarapo (panella sugar, lime, chilli) from the Mayan Coffee stall
Best dinner: Chicken mole from the Mayan Coffee stall

Umm... is anyone else seeing a pattern here?

An honorable mention goes to the sausage inna bun folks. They sold huge Kranski sausages from the Calwell butcher, who I am told smokes his own meats. They were indeed rather good, but the amount of fat in them is rather daunting. I don't often eat Kranski, and that one will probably suffice me for another year.

Goulburn Blues

Every February, the Australian Blues Music Festival is held in Goulburn. The Bloke and I have been going for several years now, first staying in a caravan park on the edge of town, and more recently at a motel in the centre of town. There are dozens of musical acts, from all over Australia, and they perform in the various clubs and pubs around town. There's workshops and jam sessions, and a market day in Belmore Park, and a shop window decorating competition. Most places do some sort of blue theme - this bakery's blue cup cake faces cracked me up.

The festival has downsized somewhat in the last couple of years. There used to be a big tent out the back of the Tattersalls hotel, but that stopped with a change of management. But it's still a terrific festival - and it really is an Australian Blues festival. All Australian acts, and all bluesy. No international acts, no pop, no hiphop - unlike some others I could name...

So what do you eat? Goulburn itself isn't exactly a foodie destination. The surrounding countryside is our own local region and has much good stuff, but wanting to get to various acts leaves you with very little time for lunch and dinner breaks. You're not about to drive off to a Lake George winery for lunch. The Saturday market tends to just knickknacks, jewelry and clothes, with no food. Sometimes a local vegetable and honey seller is there, and a Rotary Club does a sausage sizzle. But still, there's some quite decent stuff around.

We had dinner on Friday night at the Suwannee (how I love ya, how I love ya), Thai restaurant. It's pretty good food, and has quick service: we were in and out in under an hour. The chicken satay sticks were nicely moist with a good peanut sauce; the massaman beef curry was a bit too sweet for me, and the potato and sweet potato had been microwaved separately rather than cooked in it. But the beef chunks were large and tender and well-flavoured. The "hot" chilli basil stirfry prawns were probably frozen rather than fresh, but good nevertheless. They came with plenty of crisp veggies in the stirfry, though only a mild chilli.

I had breakfast on both Saturday and Sunday mornings at Cafe Book. This is new - last year there was some other cafe there, with dreadful slow service and very ordinary food. Cafe Book is a huge improvement: it's light and bright, with country style pale lime-wash painted tables down the centre. Dark wood and banquette tables line one wall, and bookshelves line the other. The books are second hand, for sale, and organised eclectically by author. There's no genre separation: China Mieville, Herman Melville, Val McDermid and Henry Miller all jostle in the Ms.

The menu is quite simple - variations on bacon and eggs and toast for breakfast; sandwiches, burgers, quiche, roast meat rolls and sausage in a bun for lunch. The coffee ($3.20) is not bad, as long as you remember that you're in a country town and ask for double shots. My bacon and eggs ($9.90) was served piping hot, with a baby spinach garnish, and the white toast served on the side so it doesn't get soggy. The eggs are free range, the bacon is short rindless rashers. On Sunday I had raisin toast and fruit salad, which was similarly sound without being flashy. Thick slices of toast, nice and hot, with butter. The fruit was varied and fresh - the apple was just starting to brown a little; they should learn the lemon juice trick. Good honest grub, friendly and competent service, and books, too! I'll be back. Beats waiting an hour for your coffee at the Paragon.

We also ate at the Astor, taking our food from the service counter to the upstairs bar where the music was playing. The electronic pager discs came in handy. The Astor had a makeover several years back. They seem to be aiming for upmarket pub grub, with some fancy presentations and interesting combinations. The menu reads well, but the execution is a bit patchy. I wouldn't choose to eat there purely on its merits, but it's not a problem if there's some act on that you want to see. Unlike the Bowling Club, which is very dire.

At the Astor, I had a chicken salad ($12.90) for lunch, which came with a mound of thin sweet potato crisps on top, and a generous sprinkle of sugar crusted kahlua pecans. A very nice combo in concept, and the chicken was nicely warm and moist, but the greens were a tad on the flabby side. The bloke had some bacon and cheese potato skins ($6.90) which he found over-greasy. They came in an edible bowl made of flat bread (I think) - a bit poncy and not so nice. We didn't eat the bowl and neither did a couple of other people around the room. Their pizzas ($13.50) were much more successful, I thought. The Astor kitchen has a wood fired oven, and the pizzas come out with a nice crust. The local cheddar mixed in the cheese topping gives them a bit of difference, the toppings are plentiful, and the tomato sauce has a strong oregano note that I enjoyed.

Podfood and other Sunday Things

Belinda and I had breakfast at the famous Podfood in Pialligo at the most unreasonable hour, for a Sunday, of 10.15 am. This was the latest they'd take a breakfast booking, though, and I really wanted to check it out, so we dragged ourselves out of bed and staggered off in the rain. Weekend brunches ought not to finish so early, it's just uncivilised.

Well, I was disappointed. I've been wanting to go there for a nice fancy lunch sometime, or to do some of their Thursday night cooking classes, but now I'm not so sure. I know the weather was a bit miserable, so we couldn't sit outside and enjoy the garden. But inside was very loud, and the service was a bit off - they forgot our second coffee order. And guys, seriously, the disabled toilet has all that space on the floor for *wheelchairs*, not for extra storage space.

Not happy, Jan. The food was very pretty and not too highly priced for breakfast - with the Sunday surcharge it was just under $50 for the two of us. That covered two coffees and a French Toast apiece, plus one fresh OJ. The coffee was quite good, though why don't they have a mug size? The breakfast was well below what I'd expected. The berries were frozen, not fresh, which is fair enough - but some were still icy inside. And the French toast was only coated, not soaked through, in its egg and milk mix. Luckily they made it on fresh French bread, not stale as is more traditional. At least that meant it was soft textured where there was plain bread inside. Belinda even complained about it when we were asked how things were, and it did no good in the way of apology or discount. So, we're probably not going back there now.

The rest of the day was much better. After breakfast we wandered through the adjacent gallery, admiring especially the magpie exhibition room with the wonderful 3-D patchwork sculpture magpies. Belinda wants a lovely cat picture, surprise, surprise. We also popped into one of the nurseries, I forget which now, and I bought some cat-safe snailbait, and seedlings of jalapeno chilli and vietnamese mint. It was too cold and damp to work in the garden, so they're on my kitchen bench waiting to go in later.

After that, I started off making a curry for tonight and later in the week. It's a beef rogan josh, made with blade steak, and a bush tomato spice blend that I picked up in Cairns. I've added some native pepper to keep up the theme, but I'm not sure it's that noticeable. I also got a dhal panchporan mostly done, just ready for its topping to be made tonight. This time I roasted the garlic and onion along with the tomatoes - a good idea, that was, I'll do it again.

Later in the afternoon, the bloke and I spent a couple of hours over at Olims, in the rather sad sports bar area, listening to blues guitarist Owen Campbell. I first heard of Owen when he was busking outside Dickson Woollies a couple of years ago, and have been idly following him since. This time he was on a double bill with his Dad, Satch. Satch plays more folk than blues, in the Dylan and Pogues line, which he sings in a lovely Scottish accent. I enjoyed Satch's set, and I love Owen's slide guitar, but I didn't enjoy the bit of country banjo-pluckin' stuff that they did together. Well executed, but not at all my cup of tea.

Then I had a quiet evening at home while the bloke went off to catch up with another blues band and a friend at the OCI. I took the chance to make myself a simple pasta dinner of bloke-hated food: tuna, sweetcorn and asparagus. And also bloke-approved items like chilli and baby peas and too much cheese. Yummy. I had more of that for lunch today.

Oh, one final note. Sadly for alphabet fans, I have completely failed to make it to anywhere starting with G in the last week. Will try harder.

Internet Salmagundi VIII

As we all know, Bazza O. will be the first black US president. And on a personally scary note, he's the first one who's younger than The Bloke. Not me, though. Obama was born in the same year as me, but he's still older than me. Cartoon collection here. And the key question we're all asking, I'm sure: who will be the new White House chef?

Yet more wacky hijinks from loony American Christians: a burning cross is the perfect Xmas lawn decoration! Really!

Here's a very encouraging development in the search for a cure to AIDS.

It's been a good fortnight for music. Two Robyn Archer concerts; and a Jonno Zilber CD launch. And I stumbled on this music site: 100 greatest blues songs.

Cectic is back, yay! Only one a week, but it's better than nothing.

Funniest diet ever. Up yours, Atkins!


And now for something serious. Do you want your internet connection slowed down by 30-85%? Do you want your access blocked to random sites that vaguely resemble some that some wowser dislikes? Like maybe breast or testicular cancer information, or support groups for GLBTQ teens, or anything from Scunthorpe? Or are you an adult who *gasp* wants to read adult content online? The Rudd government needs a wake-up call on this totally ridiculous net censorship rubbish.

It's technically totally stupid; it's treating adult citizens like naughty children who can't make their own decisions; it's putting us up for justifiable international ridicule; it's a massive and stupid waste of public money for no reason other than to pander to the wowsers. Start at the No Clean Feed site for more information about what you can do. And do it! Yeah, join the facebook group, but don't leave it at that level of slacktivism.

Robyn Archer is a God

Amazing, I'm just blown away tonight. Robyn Archer did a *2* *hour* set at the Street Theatre, ranging over a century and a bit of French song. Jacques Brel and Aristide Bruant and Edith Piaf and so much more. She's such a dynamo - singing and speaking for two hours straight, and still full of comic bounce at the end.

Monday night she's doing German song, in which I expect a lot of Brecht. We'll be there.

Ham, ham, and more ham. And Blues.

I didn't have time to blog on Friday - in the morning I had brunch at idelic in Kingston, and shopped at the Essential Ingredient. And then it was off to Thredbo for the Blues Festival. That turned out to be a mixed bag - some really good music, some not so great; some crappy venues, some good ones. The daytime venues were outdoors, and very short on shade and seating. Most of the evening venues were too small for the audiences they were attracting. I did get to see Jan Preston, Ray Beadle, Andy Cowan, Mojo Webb and Dallas Frasca, and go for a couple of nice morning walks, so it wasn't a total loss. But on the whole, I prefer Goulburn. It's better organised, and bigger, and you can pretty well always get a seat.

We got home from yesterday in enough time to bake a half ham for dinner - and lunch and dinner again, and some more meals, and then freeze some more of it with the bones for winter soup. Ham doesn't actually freeze well, but if it's going to be used in soup it's OK. I got the recipe from the bloke's Mum, Moira. It's a good one.

Anyway, a serious chunk of ham is a very useful thing to have on hand for summer. As well as just eating it with salads, I like to use it in an extremely simple fresh pasta sauce. And there's always pizza and frittata and risotto for more variety - I'm thinking of a risotto with ham and baby peas later in the week.

Recipes for baked ham and ham pasta follow.


Recipe 1. Moira's Baked Ham
1 ham
1 1/2 cups Guinness
2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon ginger
1 cup dark muscovado sugar
Remove skin from ham, score fat into diamonds. Put ham in a baking dish, and pour over the Guinness. Bake at 160C for 3 hours, basting regularly. Mix sugar and spices to a paste with a little of the pan dripping, and rub over the fat. Turn up oven to 200, and bake for a further 30 minutes.

Notes: Actually, I used half a ham, and kept the basting and paste ingredients the same, but reduce the initial slow bake to 1.5 hours. The pan juices reduce to an amazing dark spicy gel; it's worth de-fatting and saving this to use as a condiment in sandwiches. Dark muscovado sugar is a rarity here, but is available from the Essential Ingredient. It's a very dark brown sugar with a strong molasses taste; I imagine that regular brown sugar and a tablespoon of molasses would be a fair substitute.

Recipe 2. Simple Summer Pasta
chopped ham
ripe tomatoes
fresh basil
parmesan
penne or spirali
Peel tomatoes, chop roughly. Mix with ham and shredded basil. Toss through hot cooked pasta. Serve sprinkled with parmesan, with a green salad.

Notes: this is more of a concept than a recipe, so no quantities. I used 4 tomatoes, half a pack of penne, and 150g ham today.

No time!

Successive days in the next couple of weeks look like this:
Tomorrow work drinkies & rehearsal; rehearsal; music lesson & rehearsal; work Xmas party & concert, SATURDAY!; concert; conference & dinner; conference & dinner; conference & dinner; conference, music lesson & rehearsal; conference & show; drinkies with friend & show; SUNDAY! MONDAY! Concert; WEDNESDAY! Rehearsal; dinner in Sydney; Saturday in Sydney; Concert; then finally on leave for Xmas Eve.

There's certainly not a lot of cooking time in there, although there is plenty of singing and eating.

The main concert is a Messiah, presented by CAMRA. Not a beer thing, this CAMRA a small organisation in which my singing teacher Pat is a major player; they put on a couple of major musical performances a year. It is going to be good; the choir is really nicely balanced with plenty of tenors. It's at St Phillips in O'Connor this Friday and Sunday, at 7.30pm. (Follow the link for details.) I also have a studio concert on Tuesday 18th, in which Pat's students sincg Purcell and Xmas music for each other and a few friends. And on Sunday 23rd Dec, my regular choir Cantorion (oops website out of date) will be singing at the National Museum of Australia - it's a free program of Xmas music, at 1pm.

And then in addition, work is busy. I'm on the organising committee for the conference, so that makes for a very hectic couple of weeks before and during. We're setting up local cheapie dinners for each night that it's on. I might squeeze in a few reviews here and there...

Tonight I was going to make that prawn noodle salad from Delicious, but it was raining and cold, so I ended up making the prawns into a stirfry instead. There's enough leftovers for a couple of meals, and we've got a good stock of salad and sandwich makings. But when I'll be shopping and cooking again, I don't really know. I do intend to make a cake, though it's way too late for my usual boiled fruit cake. That needs three months of maturing with regular brandy baths. But I have found an intriguing recipe with mashed pumpkin and dried apricots, so I'll be trying that out close to Xmas. We're spending Xmas at home. Peace and quiet - I hope!