July 2009

Osso Buco and Milanese Risotto…

by frogpondsrock on July 28, 2009

I went to visit my very good friend yesterday, Tanni lives about two hours drive away from here so it is always a bit of an effort to get together.

We got the tears out of the way first off and Tanni was as sad as I, when I told her that Amy thought that Mum hadn’t died. Even now the thought of Amy’s excited hope makes me cry.

Tanni had cooked me comfort food for lunch. Osso Buco with Milanese Risotto. When I got home late last night I found the very same recipe in Mum’s Italian cookbook.

So here is the slightly altered recipe. I use beef shins instead of veal. But really you could use any red meat that you liked, cheapo stewing steak would do nicely.

Osso Buco (ala Tanni and Kimmy)

4 veal shanks or knuckles approx 750g each (1 and 1/2 lbs) *

90g (3 oz) butter

2 carrots

3 sticks celery

2 large onions

2 cloves garlic **

flour,salt,pepper

2 tablespoons oil

2 cans of whole tomatoes

1/2 cup of red wine

500g (2 cups) of beef stock

1 tsp basil

1tsp thyme

1 bay leaf

2.5 cm (1 in.) strip of lemon rind***

1 teaspoon grated lemon rind (zest)

3 tablespoons chopped parsley****

Heat 30g (1,oz) of the butter in pan, Add peeled and chopped carrots, onions, celery and one crushed garlic clove. Cook gently until onions are golden brown. Remove from heat and transfer to a large oven-proof dish.

Coat the veal shanks (or whatever meat you are using) in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Heat remaining butter and oil in large frying pan, add shanks, brown well on all sides. Place the shanks on top of the vegetables in the oven-proof dish.

Push tomatoes, with their juice through a sieve***** Drain away all the fat from the pan the veal was cooked in. Add the wine, beef stock, tomatoes, basil, thyme,bayleaf and strip of lemon rind. Bring sauce to the boil and season with salt and pepper.

Pour the sauce over the veal shanks. Cover the casserole and bake in a moderate oven for 1 and 1/2 hours or until the veal is very tender, stirring occassionally. Just before serving sprinkle the remaining crushed garlic, parsley and lemon zest over the Osso Buco. Serves 6.

The name means hollow bones and the traditional accompaniment is Risotto Milanese.

This is the traditional recipe for Osso Buco. I generally always adapt a recipe once I have cooked it. Years ago I used to live with a Hungarian girl and so I would add 3 or 4 heaped tablespoons of Sweet Hungarian paprika to the sauce as well as oomph up the ingredients a bit.

* Veal is almost impossible to find down here in Tassie and David won’t eat it anyway after he watched that episode of South Park. So I would use beef shin which has been cut into round sections. Failing that I would use whatever red meat I had in the freezer.

** I would easily use half a dozen cloves of garlic, (maybe more)

*** Tanni uses a whole lemon peel, cut into strips

**** I would use a good big handful of flat leaf parsley

***** Sieving takes too long and just makes more washing up. I would just mash the tomatoes up a bit with a fork.

Risotto Milanese

375g (12oz) long grain rice

60g (2 oz) butter

I large onion

1/2 cup dry white wine

3 cups hot water

2 chicken stock cubes

1/4 teaspoon saffron

30g (1oz) butter, extra

2 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese

salt, pepper.

Heat the butter in pan, add peeled and chopped onion. cook until onion is tender, stirring gently.

Add rice to pan, stir until it is well coated with the butter.

Add wine and one cup of the hot water add saffron and the crumbled stock cubes. Stir well and bring to the boil. When the water has almost evaporated add another 1 cup of the hot water. Stir well again. Bring to the boil again. When this water has almost evaporated,stir in the remaining water. Reduce heat. Cook until the water has been absorbed.

Cooking time is about twenty minutes from the time the first cup of hot water is added. Cook the rice uncovered in this time.

Stir in the extra butter, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper, stir gently until the butter is melted.

These two just worked perfectly together.The richness of the sauce and the zing of the lemon combined with the creaminess of the risotto was just pure comfort food.

Thankyou Tan xox…

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The wallabies are at it again…

by frogpondsrock on July 27, 2009

in fauna and flora,frogs,gardening,Hope

For my overseas readers wallabies are small kangaroos.

Small, tasty, kangaroos.

Actually, to be precise they are small, tasty,plentiful, kangaroos that are in imminent danger of providing me with a nutritious lunch, if they don’t stop eating my garden right this second!!!

*takes a deep breath*

Normally the wallabies and I get along quite nicely. They keep the grass down. They only eat the lower branches of my fruit trees and they aren’t as destructive as those rotten, bloody possums.

I loathe possums.Possums will seriously damage a young fruit tree in order to nibble on one or two blossoms. Possums will break half a dozen branches climbing to the top of a young tree and then once they are up there they will break another couple of branches, just for fun as they go about their possummy business.

I went outside today and found that parts of my flower garden had been seriously nibbled. I had planted out some chrysanthemums, pansies and marigolds. The wallabies, thanked me for my thoughtfulness and chomped away merrily. They also had a snack on a pot of geraniums that I had been thinking about planting out into Mum’s garden.

My flower garden is in a constant state of flux. Sometimes it is quite nice but mostly my garden is in a state of rambling neglect. The plants need to be able to tolerate severe frosts, occasional snow, baking heat and prolonged drought. When you factor in wallabies, possums and the occasional passing deer, combined with my she’ll be right attitude you have a garden that looks like this.

Green and straggly.

Which brings me to the point of this rather rambly post. Mum’s garden.

I have been thinking a lot about the plants that I want to use.They need to be colourful and fragrant, drought tolerant, frost hardy and not on the local wildlifes most nommed list.

This is going to be the site for Mum’s garden. There is a natural hollow there that is filled with the remains of a bonfire at the moment. I am going to put two kiddies clam shells in the hollow and voila we have two frogponds.

The site for Mum's garden.

Mum liked proteas as well as those giant banksias that were the baddies in snugglepot and cuddlepie. I know those plants fit the climactic bill and are pretty inedible as well.

I have lots of bulbs already. White Nerines in a pot, that I gave Mum one year for her birthday. Red Jacobean lilies that Mum and I got from Nan’s garden. Nan has promised me some orange Tiger lilies as well as some white Christmas lilies.

Mum and I had also gathered other plants from Nan’s garden. An orange climber thing that has bell flowers and seems to be quite hardy, whether it gets eaten or not is another matter.

I have a bell shaped trellis thingy that I was originally going to set up out the front here over an Amy sized wading pool. I had planned to grow kiwi fruit over it and the idea was that Amy could eat kiwi fruit whilst she was paddling in the pool. The kiwi fruit turned out to be the sookiest, thirstiest plants ever and the wallabies adored them. Oh well, the best laid plans…

So I will put the trellis thingy over the frog pond and grow the orange climber up it, along with a lovely white, super smelly, honeysuckle. The small honey-eaters will love it. There is a bird bath down at Mum’s that I am sure was a gift from one of her brothers. I will add that into the mix as well.

I am going to buy some mushroom compost and sheep poo this week and then I can make a start. That is the plan so far. Stay tuned..

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Walking not falling

by frogpondsrock on July 25, 2009

in Amy,fauna and flora,Hope,scenery

I took Sharon’s advice and I went for a long walk today. David came with me and I think the walk did us both a lot of good. I took a gazillion photos (yay) and here are some that I like.

sometimes there are unicorns

fairy dust.

river rocks

not as prickly as it looks

the creek.

peeling.

blackwood leaves.

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“MyNanny is not died.”

by frogpondsrock on July 25, 2009

in Amy,Love and Loss,Sadness

I was driving home from the studio yesterday, listening to a programme on the radio that Mum liked. (Hamish and Andy you are total idiots btw) I was thinking about Mum and I was mentally congratulating myself on the fact that I was able to think about Mum without crying.

I hadn’t been home for long when Veronica rang and told me about Amy’s joyful hope that her Nanny was not died. I have lifted the following text in italics, straight from Veronica’s post, Heartbroken

As we pulled into the driveway and parked, Amy looked at me happily.

‘YAY! YAY! MyNanny is not died! We go visit!’

I looked at her, with tears in my eyes.

‘I’m sorry sweetheart. MyNanny did die. We’re all still very sad.’

‘Oh.’ She said and went quiet.

When Veronica told me about her conversation with Amy I started to cry. I cried when I thought about Amy’s hopeful little face shining with excitement at being able to see her ‘Mynanny’ again. I am crying now as I write this and the need to hug my grand daughter is very strong.

I am also spending way too much time analyzing my grief, I tend to over think things sometimes. The tears aren’t as intense as the first week after the funeral and I am certainly not as vulnerable as I was then. Things that were said or done, that hurt me in those first weeks certainly don’t have the same power now. There is a fine line between sorrow and anger. I am also not afraid that I will start to cry when Mum’s friends ask me how I am, which is a relief because that was annoying, as well as slightly embarrassing.

I thought that I was travelling along nicely,that I had put the worst of the tears behind me. Obviously not. There isn’t a time-frame for grieving, nor is there any set way to grieve. I want to be able to write about my work but the words just aren’t there. My camera is getting dusty and my clay is going hard.

*************************************************

It is now much later in the morning and I am not feeling quite so sad.

Veronica and I are going down to Mum’s later on today to pack up some more of Mum’s things. It is an incredibly sad task, packing someones life into cardboard boxes. It is also a job that I find I am quite unable to do by myself. I just keep on wandering aimlessly around Mum’s house picking up her things and putting them down again.

Small things make me sad. The library book that Mum was reading that I keep on forgetting to return. A book of sudoko puzzles that I gave Mum when she was having chemo. Mum’s gardening shoes just inside the front door.

On a lighter note it is a sunny winters day up here today, the sky is a clear cloudless blue and there is some warmth in the sunshine.

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Half written posts,tears and fatty lumps.

by frogpondsrock on July 19, 2009

in ceramics,Ehlers Danlos Syndrome,Family,Hope

I have stopped sobbing now.Previously I only had to think of my Mother and I would start to sob. The tears would flow for five minutes or so and then I would be right.Ten minutes later I would start again.

I have a zillion half written posts in my drafts folder. Posts that start off like this.

All I want to do at the moment is crawl into my bed, pull the covers over my head and pretend the real world doesn’t exist. Yesterday by three o’clock in the afternoon I was knackered and the idea of just going to bed was so tempting, that I very nearly did just that. Sometimes I think that Eliza Bennett’s mother in Pride and Prejudice had the right idea when she just declared it,” All too much!” and took to her bed.

I want to ring my Grandmother to see how she is going but every time I even think about my Nan I start to cry.

Then there were posts like this one.

I am sitting here in the dark trying desperately not to think about the lump in my daughter’s breast. Ha! Epic fail.There are two distinct voices in my head, one is telling me that everything is going to be okay. Von is breastfeeding. She found the lump early. We have a history of fatty lumps. Don’t panic.

The other is the voice of pure terror and it is whispering the words, my daughter might have breast cancer, over and over at me. I truly don’t know if I have the strength to deal with a cancerous lump right at this moment in time.

I was supposed to return to Tafe that week but I went to the ultrasound with Veronica and Nathan instead. I cannot even begin to describe the relief that I felt when Vonnie was given the all clear. It was just a fatty lump. YAY.

We then went to visit my Grandmother, herself a breast cancer survivor. I hadn’t seen my Nan since the funeral and I couldn’t stop my tears. Nan held me close and I sobbed like a child bereft.

We three women who had been there at the end, sat and talked and cried. We shared our pain and our memories. Nan talked about Mum’s first day at school and we consoled each other with our recollections. With each memory shared and each tear shed we affirmed our love, not just for Mum but for each other. Our visit started with tears and ended with laughter.

It has been 25 days since my Mother died and the sharp edge of my grief is changing into a softer ache.

My Mother loved to cook and I have her cookbooks here with me. I am using Mum’s saucepans and her oven mitts hang in my kitchen. Small things of Mum’s that give me a great deal of comfort and pleasure.

I was using Mum’s pots the other night and I had emptied a pan of spaghetti sauce that I had made into a bowl. Harry the dog was looking at the pot longingly, hoping to lick the bowl.I distinctly heard my Mother telling me, “Don’t even think about it Kimmy!” I smiled to myself as I did as I was told and put the pan on the sink to be washed.

Isaac had a seizure on Thursday and we are waiting to see if he has epilepsy, or if it is related to Ehlers Danlos Syndrome as well. When Veronica rang me and said she was in the hospital with Isaac, my first thought was, right I will just let Mum know. Then I remembered and I sighed with sadness but I didn’t start to cry.

Life is slowly returning to a familiar rythym. David is back at school. I have returned to my studies. The house is full of clay and Jeffrey is growling about the mess I make. Things are as normal as they can be and I am starting to think about picking up my camera again. I have pots in my head screaming to be made and Barbara’s bum is morphing into a ladybird instead of a stag beetle. I am still not dreaming but I know my dreams will return and when they do I will follow them.

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