Dorrigo

I thought I'd better post a few of my photos, even though I've been really dissatisfied with my strike rate lately. Here's the best of a bad lot from a reasonably recent trip to Dorrigo.



Dorrigo is the home of a World Heritage National Park, an old train yard, a somewhat interesting hand-made motorbike called the Ned Kelly bike - more interesting because it's housed in a very terribly cafe - and really not much else. From my older days of living near that area I remember that Dorrigo red soil potatoes are apparently the best you can get. Those must all get shipped out because we didn't see a spud anywhere!



Back to the bit about the World Heritage National Park - it's part of the Central Eastern Rainforest reserves of Australia. Here's the tourist mini-guide: "Dorrigo National Park protects areas containing plant and animal communities typical of the eastern rim of the New England Tablelands. High rainfall and moist conditions nurture subtropical, warm and cool temperate rainforests. Subtropical rainforest grows in the richer soils and supports huge, buttressed yellow carabeens, black booyongs ahnd bungalow palms. Strangler figs germinate high in the canopy and vines loop from the branches. Elkhorns, staghorns, crows nest ferns, cunjevoi, ferns and mosses create a vivid green forest, splashed with deep red flowers of flame trees in early summer."

I really would love to spend days and days walking around these rainforests. The vegetation is amazing. The greens are so vivid. Theres thousands of little microworlds to learn about, explore and marvel at. And then there's fungi. Keep a firm grip on my hand... because when I stop, fascinated by something, it's easy to leave me far behind!

Surprise Chef

I’ve been eating a lot of salad lately. It’s easy to knock one together, and I can keep the ingredients for a long time without them going off. I also don’t have to worry about finding a microwave at work to heat up my lunch in – which if you have a kick-arse reheatable luinch that you’ve been looking forward to since getting out of been at three in the morning, it’s guaranteed the ones out on site in Scumbag Workplace will have given up the ghost.

The fun thing with my approach to salads is that anything I feel like seeing in the bowl gets thrown in. A handful of fresh beans? Chopped cashew nuts? Any thing goes and mostly it works out.

I’ve been using labna chopped into it to replace dressing. Labna is a cheese of sorts, a very soft yoghurt ball thing that tastes awesome and tends to spread throughout the salad and coat everything in it. But the other reason I’ve been using labna is… I haven’t stocked up on the dressings yet. My relatively new pantry is bare when it comes to corruptible greats such as mayonnaise and assorted vinegars.

Last night’s salad effort included the last of the leftover roast chicken. I decided that the labna would no longer cut it when it came to bodgey dressing ideas. It was time to get creative. I had a lot of crunchy elements in my salad, which was lucky. The only elements in my pantry corruptible into some sort of dressing were of the asian factor.

What a brilliant experiment. It was simple and so effective.

I grabbed half a lemon and juiced it. Into that I put a splodge of sweet chilli sauce. I tasted it and mixed them by adding more until they balanced out – not to sweet and not too sour. Then I beefed it all out by adding olive oil and whisking it briefly. Fuck yeah. Yummy, and perfect for chicken and crunchy style salad.

Often I have invention disasters in the kitchen. I fail to see all the factors in what’s happening and end up with a bin-able offense. But when I pull it off, well I have to say I get pretty proud. This particular adventure is definitely a “save that one for later” recipe.

Spider and the Spiderettes

There was a spider in my kitchen sink today. Now, I don't know what everyone else does in this situation, but what I do is approach the spider's inability to scale the sides of the stainless steel as a perfect opportunity to study the little beastie.

This one has a lumpy, ugly, hairy back. Why the hell do you have lumps? I say aloud to the hopelessly trapped arachnid. On that I leaned a little closer and squinted at it. The lumps all over my captive's back were not lumps at all. They were baby spiders. Spiderettes. Hitching a lift! Lazy little fuckers.

I reached toward the trapped traveller with the ride-scabbing spiderettes and immediately two or three bailed out. Ah-ha! They know when they've been busted skiving a free ride and they try to do a runner to get away from the hand of Vic.

The interesting thing is that the ones that bailed were easily able to scale the sides of the sink. If all of them left the shelter of the back of their host, and went out on their own they would find freedom is just at the top of the stainless steel. Yet these spiderettes insist on hanging on the idea of somebody else giving them a ride out of there, effectively weighing the ride down and with their laziness, destroying any chance of their own salvation.

There's so many parallels to human life that can be drawn from this.