What Larks, Pip.

I entered a forgotten world today.  Cleaned out a small cupboard that has not seen the light of day for about ... erm... six or seven years.  Yes, I'm embarrassed (my mother had the house clean by ten am every morning), but not enough to stop telling a good story.

Being the handy place where odd things are put when visitors are coming, I found some unusual bedfellows.   

One half-bottle of shoe dye, a light fitting, two tapered candles with price (2 for $1), a feeder for a bird-cage, five small magnets, a piece of emu egg, a 'Lakeland' colour pencils tin with a sail needle in it, a plant label (African violet), two champagne corks, a children's book "Anthony Ant's Creepy Crawly Party" (look under the flaps), a plastic tap for the rain-barrel (wondered where that had gone) and a box with pop-up mice.

But the last things date back a long way.  They have been in the cupboard for at least 15 years, because they were left there by the previous owners of the house.  I bought the sideboard with the house, you see.

This last collection, wedged at the back, consists of an assortment of plastic jars containing powdered iron, magnesium, tin, sulphur and zinc, and potassium nitrate.  These were gathered together for the express purpose of throwing on outdoor fires at parties to make people go "Oooooh"  and "aaaah".   (The previous owners had lots of very exciting parties).  The sulphur and potassium nitrate only needs carbon (readily accessible from up the chimney) in certain proportions, to become gunpowder.  I remember that, because my incredibly trusting parents allowed me to have a laboratory in our (very large) laundry, and I used to send away for all kinds of stuff.

I know this information will make my three offspring grind their teeth, because I forgot all about the chemicals.  What larks they could have had.  Sorry fellas.

Aftermath

As the flood-waters recede, the big clean-up begins....

The Especially Great, Grey-green and Greasy.

The above photo is what my river looked like one soft winter morning last month.

The one below I took last Wednesday at the height of our terrible weather - three storms in a week!  And affecting the whole country, too.

 I have posted before about my lovely river.  Kayaking on it, and floods.

But the triple storm sequence we have had here in the last week has been really spectacular.  And, at times, scary, depending on what part of the New Zealand you live in.

Some photos from around New Zealand here.

Our river has never been as high in the 14 years we've been here!  On the photo I've dashed a line along the usual bank.  The white circle shows the top 15 cm (6 ins) of the pole that marks the top of our steps into the river.  The pole is about a metre (a yard) high.  At high tide the water usually reaches half a metre below the top of the steps.  Compare this pic with the next one, taken an hour later.  The pole has gone completely, and the water surrounds the punga trunk.

Ironically I notice that the 'post a day' napblopomo theme for this month is 'hot'.  Hmmm, here, it will have to be hot topics like weather bombs.  Or hot chocolate, hot soup or hot fires...

Laboratory Labour leads to Less Lacrymosity

While making a meatloaf today, I was at a loss to know what a scallion was, did a search on google, got side-tracked (as one does) and ended up wondering why onions make you cry... did another search and stumbled on an interesting ozzie (that's 'Australian' to us down here on the underside of the world)  news article.  

I just can't believe it's not been picked up by the New Zealand press, given

1.  its significance to all cooks around the world

and, probably more importantly to the 'newsworthiness''

2.  the furore and fuss that New Zealand makes whenever the words "Genetically Modified" come up.  

(I just found one small article in a NZ paper.)

But anyway, this guy Colin Eady is good!  To put it simply, he has 'turned off' the enzyme that sits in onion cells and that, when you cut an onion, gets combined with another cell substance to create the highly volatile chemical that floats up and turns to an acid (ouch) when it contacts the water of your eye.  He reckons what he has done it makes no difference to the flavour at all, except to make onions even nicer - ie less bitter.

Colin Eady, a plant geneticist at Crop and Food Research in New Zealand, says, "We can take the crushed [modified] onion extract and put it under your eye and you get no tearing whatsoever."

They have to check carefully that what they've done is harmless to humans, and then it will take ages (10 -15 years) to get enough seed to have these onions grown commercially, as onions only make seeds every two years.  

Trouble is, New Zealand is "G.E free", so we won't see them here, even then.  Pity.

Missing.

    

We miss middle son J.  who is now at university in Dunedin.  We miss the little plastic bugs that he used to leave around the house in unexpected places...  Hope you're keeping warm down there darling.

 X XX  Mum 

.

Accolade

"The Visit" By Jeff Hayes.

...about Jeff Hayes.  For light, colour, technical ability, charm of subject matter, and form.  His paintings delight me.  He is also generous with tips and his movies of the process and progress of his paintings are, not only helpful to me as an artist, but works of art in their own right.   

Here is the movie of the above painting and another called 'The Captive', of a lemon in a jar.  I currently have that latter image on my desktop, I like it so much.

You can see his daily blog, that discusses process, background and influences.  

Poem

To amuse emus on warm summer nights
Kiwis do wiwis from spectacular heights.

- Roger McGough

(Thanks to Kelvin for introducing me to R McG.)