Fish fillets and my first card-tapping experience,

 

Generally we like to eat fish at least twice a week mainly with either mashed potatoes or a salad, often with mashed potatoes AND a salad. Lately we have ventured into mashing the potatoes with creamy milk while adding some sauerkraut. But, as like with almost everything, and a tendency to go all française, when short on allegories, repetition beckons ennui, which is the enemy of maintaining our joie de vivre.

For the fish needs we generally have stuck with salmon cutlets available almost everywhere now, and cheaper than most cuts of meat. However, the salmon now is farmed and I heard some awful stories of the quality of feed that is given to those salmons and the density into which those fish are bred in large round fenced off fish farms with hardly any room to swim. It’s a bit like those caged chicken-eggs. How did food growing become so cruel?

We made a break from the salmon cutlets and bought flathead fillets instead. Now, don’t get me wrong, but at least the salmon cutlets are sold fresh while most fish sold at supermarkets are de-frosted fillets mainly imported from Asian fish-farms. Most fish & chips shops also sell cheap de-frosted fish instead of ocean local fresh caught fish. You would have thought that Australia, with its thousands of miles of ocean frontage, fresh fish would be keenly sought after. But, the price of fresh Australian caught fresh fish can’t compete with the frozen imported fish. The fresh flathead fillets were $56,- a kilo, and I write the price to make a point, not to brag about it. But, compared with fillet steak or lamb cutlets, it’s not all that out of the question. There were cheaper fillets of fish as well and often buying a whole fish and having it gutted and filleted works out cheaper.

On of my favourite and cheapest fresh fish is of course the sardine. Filleted and butterflied fresh sardines in a batter of flower mixed with some salt and spices, baked for a minute or two is regarded a culinary Nirvana in this household. Be careful though often fresh sardines are not all that fresh but are kept into a salt- brine to preserve them as long as possible. As with all fish, look them into their eyes and if they are unflinching, they are fresh. Have you ever looked into the eye of an honest barramundi, they are so beguiling. One almost feels guilty battering them.

Painting of my paternal grandmother.

I bought the flathead at a fish market who weighed them and gave me a ticked of the price and advised me to pay for it at the counter. To my horror I had no cash and as I never pay by credit, I was stuck with my flathead getting warm under the gills. So embarrassing. I showed the girl my empty wallet. She wasn’t silly though and said; why don’t you pay with your card? I have never paid with my credit before but she was most helpful and said; ‘just tap it.’ Which I did and it worked! Can you believe it?

I told Helvi and she was so proud of me. I overcame another technical hurdle and walked tall. I am as good a tapper as anyone now!

The flathead fillets were wonderful.

A Place of Repose

From Wiki.

“Repose is a formal or literary term used to mean the act of resting, or the state of being at rest. Repose is also a state of mind: freedom from worry. As a verb, repose means to rest or relax, or to rest on something for support: There he was, reposing on the front porch.”

In the renewed effort to reclaim a more balanced and benign view of the present world there could hardly be a better place to achieve it than shown above. The cushion that our Jack Russell ‘Milo’ is resting on is the reversed soft cotton side. The other side is deemed by him too rough. It is actually a piece of worn Afghan rug made into a large cushion cover we bought somewhere on our travels up North near Brisbane some years ago. You can see how low we have sunk to cater for his every whim. Sometimes I feel Milo is the owner and we mere yeomen, just renting, cap in hand!

The reason for the need of a place to repose is that the bleached bones of some of my past were getting to poke out of storm’s dust, causing anxiety to well up far too frequently and making me feel the fate as unnecessary fickle and punishing. We all know the black-dog’s friendship with darker moods. It is thought and I agree, that the search of man’s obsession for everlasting happiness is futile, unnecessary and might also be very boring. However, the opposite of accepting a pervasive gloom is not really all that popular either. So, what about a bit of each?  Could that be the answer?

Medicine is often prescribed as an answer to shadowy moods, but apart from an aspirin and thyroxine I have never taken any mood changing stimulants, excluding the sharing of coffee in morning and Shiraz at the evening. The capriciousness of fate is hopefully teaching me in accepting the past what can’t be changed. We might as well accept. You would have thought that a man in his late seventies could have come to that insight a bit earlier, but…better late than never. I might just be a late learner and having migrated at fifteen did something.

From now on I will take up residence for a couple of hours each day in the chair where I took the photo from, just behind Milo on his claimed cushion and ‘repose’. The beauty of those few square metres is sublime. Helvi made this Nirvana and paradise. It is just perfect, especially after about four pm when the sun is starting to take a rest and slowly goes down making a mood for respite of heavy thoughts perfect for a change into something lighter and positive. Is it in the opposites, the Wu Wei of life that there might be an answer?

What do you think and looking at Milo, does he give an answer?

 

 

The sad face of a prawn.

Everybody knows that tropical fresh water fish are easy to keep and will even reproduce in an aquarium. As a child I was deeply traumatised when our female swordfish kept pushing out little baby swordfish only to watch in horror how those defenceless babies were quickly eaten by the large and naughty black fish. ( I have forgotten its name) Tropical salt water fish are much more difficult to keep and do need much more water to swim in. I never heard of successful breeding of those fish in aquariums. However, if babies get eaten in most cases in aquariums I was glad my salt water fish never reproduced. There is enough murder and mayhem in the world as it is.

Of course large scale fish farming is now practised all over the world. The Tasmanian salmon are bred in very large floating tanks in mid ocean. But, with every step forward there are two going back. Nothing is ever easy. Sharks and dolphins soon managed to leap into those tanks and made a meal out of it. Boy, did they find Nirvana. So happy, they were so happy. The salmon company nearly went broke and almost gave up. They experimented with different coverings and all tanks are now covered by strong steel mesh. For a while the sharks and dolphins kept on leaping but nothing is more off-putting for passing sharks and roving salmon lovers than to look up and see de-hydrated cadavers of their own perished on top of the mesh wire coverings. A bitter lesson learnt just as quickly. They too have known sadness.

I watched a program whereby prawns were farmed in Asia and given dreadful food dredged from the bottom of the ocean and made into dry pellets fed to the farmed prawns. The prawns were force-fed to eat those pellets despite their loud shrieking protests at night, keeping the neighbours awake at all hours. It put us totally off prawns watching a Vietnamese prawn farmer chucking bucket-loads of the dreaded pellets to the waiting hungry prawns.

Whenever we buy anything fishy now we make sure they are Australian bred. In a blind tasting event almost all picked the Australian prawn over the Vietnamese one. This was most encouraging and pleased that at least on our own home-ground, prawns were bred with kindness and care. However, nothing is always perfect. We try and overcome and make the best of this life.
Prawns too know sadness.

The same with eggs. While most caged laid eggs are banned in many countries, Australia is lagging behind. Even so, the tide is turning and even big golden arched M’s MacDonald’s have now decided to go for barn laid eggs. However, here it comes; Barn laid eggs are also steeped in deceit and much cunning;

https://oosterman.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/free-range-chooks-its-a-con/

Chickens too, experience great sadness.

We bought a kilo of cooked Australian prawns from Aldi but they are too chewy, so…what next?

The sadness keeps coming!