Dear List Readers, It's good to be home again. I've been finding the chance to cook a bit once more, and I'm starting to get back on an even keel. Been doing cajun seasoned shrimp/avocado/carrot slivver/shredded rape/dulse shusi rolls. God I love shusi! I cook up gummy rice, turn it out and work it up with seasoned rice vinegar as I prepare all the other components. Then I roll and slice. I like my little Japanese chef's knife for this, though the blade is New Zealand in manufacture. I can't take these things on planes, however.
After a month of Ceasar Salads in Australia where, pardon me, they don't know how to make Cesar Dressing, I just had to whip some up. My recipe? A heaping handful of peeled garlic, half a raw onion, half a cup of my dill pickle brine (touch�!), juice of a raw lemon, a few herbs like basil and marjoram and immature (green) black pepper, a cup of cold pressed olive oil and a can of anchovies, whipped the blender until it is creamy. That tossed in the salad with my homemade grated hard cheese! Yummy! And it only takes ten minutes or so. But when its too much trouble doing croutons, none of those. My spare(?) money doesn't go into antique cars or my passion for golf or anything like that. I rarely go to any movies. I spend it on cooking. In my kitchen there are all kinds of knives, skillets, saucepans, chopping blocks, whisks, strainers, big soup kettles, griddles, mashers, spoons, ladles, flat pans, roasters, crock pots--you name it, and some machines like blenders and juicers too though I don't go in much for machinery in the kitchen any more than I go in for machinery in the wood lot. I burn wood for heat as it gets cold here and the wood heater is keeping the house warm now. Splitting wood with an axe is a zen art, but it's far easier with an axe once you've got it down than with big mauls and hydraulic log splitters. I feel the same way about making pizza dough. I mix it up in a pan and get the dough right and do I knead it out on the counter with flour everywhere? Not exactly. It's a lot less mess in a ziploc bag, though the plasticizing agent in the plastic worries me a bit. I imagine there's far more phthalates in saran wrap though. Phthalates are the estrogen mimetic chemicals in plastics that make the men unable to get it up. They soften plastics, so the softest plastics contain the most phthalates. This means, ladies, if your hubby is running around on you and you want to fix him so he can't, wrap up all his sandwiches in double layers of saran and microwave them good before sticking them in his lunch bag. He'll never know what hit him. Then after a year or so I suppose you want to give him all the propaganda about the dangers of Viagra. Just remember it cuts both ways and you'd better have a good vibrator. (I can say this, being single and wifey is not packing my lunch.) Anyway, the Australian Tour was a success from my point of view. We taught farmers a lot about using the Steiner remedies with radionics. I started out in Toowoomba telling lots of stories, which you can imagine is a passion of mine, and it wasn't until Western Australia that Cheryl got me reigned in with such a tight focus on the subject that I heard several comments of, "That was the best lecture on biodynamics I've ever heard!" Peter Reuhmkorff was terrific in leading the classes on dowsing and use of his Prue Instruments and cards. I learned a lot from him. And Hamish gave one of the best lectures I've heard introducing farmers to some of the higher rungs of Anthroposophical awareness. There really is so much to it that Hamish only gave an introduction, but it was excellent. Our treatments really clicked at all four workshops. There had been some recent rains at Toowoomba, though not out on the Darling Downs, and you could see the ether was still rather murky. The treatments at all four workshops brought some very light initial precipitation and cleared the ether. Then in every case rain moved in following the workshop as it normally would cycle if the ethers were healthy. So in that respect, and it was a big one, the workshops were very successful and the Australian drought is now broken. Many will say that the drought was fixing to end anyway. Glen points out the astrological portents were good for rain beginning around the month of February for Australia. And I think that is true. Our workshops were in a very good window. But as Glen points out, that just made it easier to boost it on over into true relief from drought rather than another lick and a promise. The weir at Lake Hume at Albury was reported down to 4% during the time our workshop was held, and that's critical for fish survival there, and was the result of around 2 years of drought on the Murray watershed. They sure didn't need another round of weak relief. You should have been there and seen the thickness of the murk when the workshop began, and how the ether cleared up! I'd say it was dramatic. Peter and I started the evening prior to the workshop, becaused it is always easier to start off cownhill and get a little momentum befxore going uphill. We got a light shower the first evening of the workshop and then one heck of a wind blew everything clean, clearing out the atmosphere, making the space for some real weather to roll in. Great stuff! See ya later, blokes, Hugh Visit our website at: www.unionag.org
