Snail-eating in Spain or Phar Lap’s heart viewing in Australia?

Yes, that Rick Stein’s on TV showing his food show on mass snail eating in Spain really got me hungry, so I put on a large pork roast and barbequed it for two hours with lots of pumpkin and spuds. Loads of oregano. It was almost as nice as those snails in Spain. I got a bottle of Penfold’s, St Henri Shiraz for father’s day, a 2006 number which we will keep for our diamond wedding anniversary. Does anyone remember the date we got married?

Only the unadulterated happiness of the Spanish people could get 12 000 together in a mass snail eating event. Something like 12 tons of snails were consumed with lots of garlic, laughter and copious amounts of wine in between. I could not imagine anything like that happening here in Australia. True, since last week they have discovered new bits of Phar Lap’s heart kept for decades at another museum. I believe there are now queues of people lining up to see this special jar with his pickled heart now complete. I doubt though we could muster twelve thousand people together eating Big Ben pies or those delicious Lamingtons.

For those who are ignorant about our proud heritage, Phar Lap was a horse that could outrun all other horses. He was a true champion and regarded as one of our Icons not unlike the Big Banana in Northern New South Wales or the Big Merino cement sheep in Goulburn.

Was it our previous PM John Howard, who insisted newcomers to this country had to know some of our glorious history including the weight of Phar Lap’s heart and able to recite a poem in reverence to his galloping stride? I have a gnawing doubt; Was it to do with cricket scores or something else instead?

Milo

Our own little Icon is Milo. His only demand on us is accepting his total disregard for any order or expecting obedience. He insists on total obstinacy as his right and refuses to do as asked. In fact, he delights in the opposite. We now try and trick him by asking the opposite but I am sure he will soon discover the answer and do a double disobedience in reverse. 😉

So, we are getting ready to travel to Venice and Milo once more will have to accept the care of the Dog Kennel. He gets his alpaca home knitted cushion while we are away. I think he knows we do care. He gets his chicken neck and that’s the main thing.

Cyprus needs a break

Cyprus needs a break

For Pete’s sake can’t someone bail out Cyprus? A lousy 10 billion Euro’s is now holding the world at gun-point. Banks in Cyprus have now been closed for 10 days and cash machines have dwindling supplies. Banks shares all over the world are being hit and their managers are nervous

You would have thought that there must even be local Cypriots that have that sort of money in spare cash splashing around their golf buggy. There are over a 109 billionaires that have more than 10 billion. According the Forbes richest, there are also over 250 people that have over 5 billion in their piggy banks. Just think that without our generosity they would not exist.  The world now supports 1426 billionaires. Isn’t it about time we support a few more?

It does seem strange that the Joe Blow people that have given so much wealth to many billionaires are now expected to give away their scant savings in Cyprus. Surely a 10% levy on the world’s rich would be fairer?  In fact, a levy on the world’s billionaires would probably save Spain, Greece, Italy and Cyprus together from bankruptcies.

I am not sure if I am a world’s first with this idea but I reckon if enough of you make similar suggestions we would prevent millions if not billions sinking in dismal poverty with even the chance to queue at a soup-kitchen fairly small.

The 1426 billionaires’ total wealth is estimated to be 5.4 trillion or 5.4.000.000.000.000.-dollars. Now a 10 % levy on that would not make one iota of significant difference to the well-being of those billionaires. They would still be able to support a decent meal, good wine and plenty of golf. Ten % of 5.4 trillion is a modest 540000.000.000. – Or expressed in letters “fifty-four thousand billion. This is a bit more than half a trillion. Now would it not make a lot of sense to urge The World Bank considering that option rather than impose poverty on hundreds of millions of real people. I mean we are only talking of peanuts amongst those billionaires.

I’ll consider putting up a petition to try and make a dent into a world problem that is really small compared with the wealth that is swirling around. Please sign and support my petition and send in onto your twitter and face-book contacts as well. http://www.change.org/petitions/president-of-the-world-bank-to-levy-10-on-world-s-1426-billionaires-instead-of-the-people-of-cyprus

Thank you,

Gerard Oosterman.

A Horse, a Horse, my Kingdom for a Horse…(Steak)

A Horse, a Horse, a Kingdom for a Horse… (Steak)

There are so many different strokes for different folks it makes a mockery of absolute truth, common sense or even us keeping a semblance of  being sane. As some say; what is grist to the mill is porridge for the porkers.

Who can’t but be amused over the ‘shocking revelations’ that horse meat has been eaten in Britain? People were seen choking on their tripe and tripping over their chokos. What, eating horse? We are English, don’t you know? Cameron was keen in pointing out, the moral repugnance of having been dudded by the French in meat being horse meat instead of real meat, the holy ‘cow’. I am sure many were also outraged by having eaten horse, never mind morals of eating any animal.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-09/cameron-condemns-horse-meat-scandal/4509702

There is growing outrage, and of course, its le frogs who are to blame. What insult, with ’les chevaux’ being mixed into our beloved frozen hamburger mince. What will the neighbours think?

The irony must be crystal clear to many of the non-Anglo world that in a country where just about everyone is brought up on horse racing, betting and punting, that the eating of horses is seen as abhorrent, close to eating babies or to boarding out children to schools. (Hold onto your horses, we do that lovingly).

We all know that horses are not allowed to be whipped anymore and much is made to prove we don’t, with lots of TV footage of horses being stroked and even kissed (on the flaring nostril after having made a packet for the owner and the punters). Surely, that’s proof of our love for horses!

Yes, but what about the proof also that horse racing is cruel and not far removed from Espanol bull fighting or Indonesian cock-fighting. The animals are manically competing against each other and when their chance of winning is beyond hope they will end up in paddocks, hopefully looked after caring owners but many also with enlarged hearts, lungs and tissue damage. It is estimated that about 60% of horses trained for racing end up at the knackery well before their natural lives would have expired.

That’s right, next time you open a tin of Pal, look deep inside, you are looking at Beaux Hoofs or Triple Ur Dollar. Many also are so psychologically damaged, too nervous and flighty, unfit for casual riding around the paddock as well. We also know that many are damaged during racing with torn muscles, ligaments and tendons.

Look, having come from Holland I have eaten horse meat as well. Mea Culpa to all horse lovers. It was one of mum’s bitter disappointments that David Jones in Australia did not sell smoked prosciutto from horse meat.’ Oh, no we don’t sell horse meat,’ she was told. My mum blithely unaware of the cultural sensitivity, answered, ‘oh, you should try it, and it is sooo delicious… mmm…she smacked her lips.’ The shop girl disappeared, fainted behind the counter.

I don’t think the French, Dutch or Italians love horses any less than the Brits or Irish but make less of a fuss when eating them. The Dutch are more likely not to eat sheep. Those poor little lambs etc. It is strange isn’t it, with that lovely children’s song with little Bo Peep that it hasn’t filtered down in Britain to then also not eat lamb.

 

Different strokes etc… and so it goes on. The more one learns about people the more I like my lentils and stroke my Milo. Our incorrigible Jack Russell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUql207FuW4

Pancakes ( Our diabolical regression in the Art of cooking)

Of course, our eating habits have changed. Who would have thought mums now buy a plastic bottle with the advice ‘just shake it’? The ‘just shake it’ seems to be a prepared kind of pancake mix. I would imagine the intending cook fills up the empty space in the plastic bottle with milk and then ‘just shake’ it, with mixture ready for pancake making. It probably makes about five or six pancakes and at $ 1.85 works out at the outrageous price of 30cents a pancake, not including the golden syrup or jam on top. Perhaps the ‘just shake it’ has been embedded from a latent subliminal message from eager husbands pestering tired wives late at night. A clever use of product enhancement.

It must be back-breaking work to put flour in a bowl, and then add some milk, a couple of eggs and whisk the lot together and get the old fashioned pan-cake mixture for a quarter of the cost. Walking slowly past the supermarket’s shelves there were other similar products. A cheese in a tube, some powder that turns into instant mashed potato, but the most irksome of them all, and H is so sick of me commenting on them, are…simmering sauces. My eyes forever keeping guard on our dietary habits, I even spotted a kind of meat-spread in a tube. It was called, I think, devilish spread which came in mild and spicy.

Yet, again, I switched on the telly and it’s almost obligatory now to find and watch a cooking show. No matter what time, there is someone with eyes turned heavenly upwards, saying ‘oh, how yum’ or ‘wow’. Fresh ingredients are tossed together; fish, meat, snails, frogs are being infused, thrown about and cooked almost to the point of a kind of Le Mans’ car race.

It’s all very confusing. There are options in watching French, Italian; Spanish cooks either cooking away in their own country or in top restaurants in Britain. They seem so enthusiastic, you wonder if they have mattresses tucked behind those huge gleaming stainless steel stoves and just take quick naps in between the stacking of delicious looking char-grilled hearts of goats and noodles with infused ginger and deep fried shreds and strips of celeriac with chanterelle-shiitake mushrooms on giant plates.

Then there are culinary delights shown in Vietnam, Indonesia, Burma, even Thailand. Fresh fish swimming, frogs are croaking and eels or snakes still slithering about. Within minutes it is all cooked and on the table with huge smiling families feasting away.

If pancake making is the only thing my grandkids will remember me by; so be it. It would be nice to have an epitaph on my pebble crete slab; “here lies the greatest pancake- maker” (but keep off the grass).

Cooking needs to be an act of love. You can never cook something in total indifference. When the kids are over, pancake making has almost religious overtones. Their own parents’ pancakes seem to lack ‘crispy edges’, I was told by Max who is the youngest of the three grandsons, adding, ‘they are alright though’, not wanting to dob in his parents.

It is not as if I swoon over every pancake but I do hand mix the dough adding water and pinch of salt. I use real butter and cook on two cast iron solid pans on high heat. When I gently lower the mixture into the pan, the edges frizzle and sizzle out into the much desired golden crispy and crunchy edging. While hot, I rush them over to the kids seated at the round table, fork and knife in hand and at the ready. I squeeze some lime juice and sprinkle a light dusting of sugar.

I leave the rest to them.

Zwarte Piet

Zwarte Piet.

I suppose everybody at some stage in their lives would have experienced a Zwarte Piet. I certainly did. The Zwarte Piet in Holland is what the bogey-man or the Halloween figure is elsewhere. It is a mythical all powerful figure that has an aura of badness as well as some benevolence about ‘it’. I say it, because it has lately been turned in having the possibility of being a female as well. See, how far reaching the female has got? Nothing is now impossible for the fair sex to achieve.

All of those have some kind of pagan history dating back hundreds of years and might even relate to the festivals of the dead or harvests. In earlier times they must have had good parties celebrating the dearly departed as well as having a good harvest. As the pages and centuries marched on relentlessly we must have become a lot more gloomy and pessimistic. There would not be too many celebrating a nice good death by stomping around a bon fire and giving good send-offs. More likely ‘ uncle Harry was a skinflint, good riddance’, as he slowly in his well bolted down casket ( just in case of a bad smell) slides into the warm and welcoming crematorium’s oven.

The idea of the Zwarte Piet in Holland is to make small children behave just a few weeks before the 5^th of December when his boss SinterKlaas arrives from Spain on his horse and gallops over rooftops from house to house to drop jute bags of presents down the chimney for those that have passed the test of good behavior. I always passed the test, hence was always supplied with lots of grey hand knitted socks and sometimes a ball that would bounce.

The whole idea of those kind of figures has probably been invented as a pedagogical tool for large families to have some kind of hold over small children. A kind of psychological cane: if you don’t do as you are told, ‘no socks or ball.’

The evenings of the 5^th of Dec were for me the most exciting events of my life and not much has exceeded those nail biting evenings ever since. Let me explain!

Zwarte Piet was the helper of Sinterklaas; a bishop from Spain, who, legend has it, would sometimes eat naughty children as well as give presents to good children. Do you get where I am going now? Of course, I wasn’t a fool even though I had some sympathy for those so very hungry, they would eat anything even naughty children! The war was still warm with ruins still smoldering.

Boy, did I do what my mother asked me for. Wash up the spoons while standing on a box, tidy my room and not forget to wipe my bum. The evening of the 5^th was most spine tingling. Of course, December is already gloomy and Europe at its darkest. Storms were usually howling and we prayed Sinterklaas would be able to manoevre his horse over windswept rooftops. Soon, the dreaded knock on our door announced Zwarte Piet had arrived. A black gloved hand would slowly appear around the front door. He would bang louder and louder and we kids would hide under mum’s skirt. A somewhat daunting experience, but we were scared witless! Even though my behavior had been faultless the preceding weeks, you just never knew! Would I end up being eaten?

Zwarte Piet would then throw handfuls of ‘pepernoten’ (a kind of hard dog-kibble like clove and cinnamon laced type of biscuits around the room. This was the moment I had been good for all those long weeks. On hand and knees, I crawled, totally possessed, around the room fighting off my competing brothers tooth and nail for the most handfuls.

When all this subsided and we were weary from being good and battled out we would finally take a peek around the door. Lo and behold a large jute type of coal bag with the presents was left behind. Oddly enough, my dad would then suddenly appear. It was a couple of years later when this dream was shattered when told that Zwarte Piet was really my dad.

So it always goes, dreams are beholden by the child till stolen by adults.

Greek Drama with Euro-Neuro

Greek Drama with Euro-Neuro.

The unity of Europe with a common currency was a dream that was destined to become a nightmare. It was conceived in good faith but the genes were so diverse and far apart that the result could not have been but a mule, neither a horse nor a donkey, a sterile disambiguation at best.

The United States of America has at least a common language and common culture. Going from north to south there is a common architecture, language and common goals. Through work and credit card they hope to ‘make it’. A simple philosophy of materialism that more or less, (lately a bit less,) that has stood the test of time. And with Hollywood and Gridiron thrown it they have somehow achieved a kind of unity that by and large seemed to have worked for its population.

Just look at Europe and its diversity. The question should be asked; why this need for commonality? If anything, its diversity should have been encouraged and maintained instead of it artificial made homogenous with the push of the Euro.

The Greeks should have been allowed to remain the architects of democracy. Let them sit around cafes, it worked very well in the past. There is a need for the Greeks to do their own thing.

What would a common European culture be like? Should it be like the British, a hotchpotch of chasing something forever obsolete with their love of complicated tradition and dislike of the new? Should it be the simplicity of the Scandinavians or the thriftiness of the Dutch?  Or should it embrace the German method with its icy emphasis on order and meticulous organizational qualities? Perhaps the French way, with its food and love of fashion and truffles. Spain with paella. Oh, Portugal with its deliciously char-grilled sardines. Unforgettable.

The different work ethics, the different languages and above all the different cultures cannot make for a united Europe with all ambitions and its entire people being the same. Europe should celebrate its diversity and share the good but not at the cost of differences.

Years ago, train travel on the Continental express Genoa- Stockholm was an unforgettable experience, not least with all the pass-port controls and different currencies. Why did we ever think this needed weeding out? What is the benefit of this Euro efficiency when it all ends up being boring and monotonous? What are we alive for? Remember the custom officers (Douanes)? They all wore different caps and showed such different idiosyncrasies. Some would look you in the eye and try and determine levels of honesty, or, if capable of smuggling rare cheeses or African diamonds. Other would just nod and walk on. In Genoa you bought a small bottle of wine and half a chicken passed through the train window for 500 lire. In Germany, a Brodchen mit Kase or Bock-wurst.

What’s the point of going to Greece or any European country and not use a different currency? I went to Melbourne last week-end and ended up landing in a different kind of Sydney. Not one Iota of difference. I could just as well been in Perth. The same Harvey Norman frontages, the same large car parks with Big Macs golden arches. The sameness of a stifling all encompassing ennui of dreary monotonous architecture. Is that what the Euro-Visional behavioral architects envisaged? Surely not!

From Rambo Amadeus;

Euro skeptics, analphabetic, try not be hermetic. Euro-Neuro, not be skeptic, hermetic, neurotic, pathetic and analphabetic.

Forget all cosmetic, you need new poetic etc.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHnqF5PLP2w

Idealism in Chaos ( A Greek Tragedy)

χάος

Another big fall in world markets, billions will be wiped off and Greece is tottering on the brink of total economic collapse. Good morning!

Some European countries which were supposed to be examples of how society ought to distribute wealth more equitable are now being lined up to fall like a row of dominoes set up on the dining table of good and well intentioned but un- equitable sharing of the rich Euro baked pork dish with crackling good social security till the grave.

What went wrong? Was it the apple sauce?

The answer might well come from the dining table itself. The excessive ladling out of all those goodies without balancing it to an equal generous increase in taxation revenue was always dodgy. The expenditure didn’t match the income. A classic case of economic delusion that one can live beyond means was always a premier lesson at the kindergarten of economics. If you keep scooping the sand out the sandbox will finally be empty.

The lure of getting more with less income seemed to have overtaken the world of capitalism. Election after election the sound economic principles of setting expenditure to income was eroded away. The voters swallowed it like marsh-mellows on a stick held above the fire of greed and avarice. Right wing governments took over with the promise of more for less and we were all seduced by this ugly Judas kiss. And look at us now? Will there be blood on the streets once again?

With Portugal and Spain queuing up after Greece with youth unemployment at a staggering fifty percent it seems to be hovering on a similar precipice into economic collapse.

In Australia we keep rubbing hands together with glee in how we seemed to have escaped the GFC turmoil with our scooping up of mineral resources. In the process we seem to forget that this is due to luck much more than sound economics. Take out China, and we too would be lining up at soup-kitchens.

Are we too taken in by the lure of more for less? Notice the upheaval in the suggestion of raising taxation on our resource mining companies. Notice how the Three hot headed Musketeers of our resource companies have taken on Australia and its citizens daring to utter getting paid a fair share of the economic resource pie. Notice too, how the principal of taxing those that defile our environment is fought against tooth and nail. Millions are being spent in advertisement opposing this very sound and principled way of making the environment spoilers pay for it. We too are cruising for a bruising being taken in by the fairy floss of more for less.

At least in Europe there seems to be a return to the left with new governments willing to find a solution in bringing the rich back to the kitchen table of give and take.  In France, the rich will have to pay much more tax and many are questioning how anyone should have more than they can possibly need. Capitalism has gone berserk and the masses are paying for the sins of the rich. The poor, for too long have been denied a share for which they have worked just as hard as the rich, which, in the majority of cases inherited the wealth enabling them, with the regimes of lower and lower taxation, to keep on exploiting handy taxation loopholes and fattening themselves on the pork crackling of lenient taxation laws.

It is not for nothing that the collapsing economic capitalist world is looking anew at Scandinavia. They were always looked at askance and with suspicion. How could a taxation regime of over fifty percent continue to thrive giving its citizens a world of social welfare that would sooner or later end in total collapse and disaster? Well, the Scandinavians did not and now seem to own the only beacon of light and insight in perhaps having a solution for those countries on the brink of economic disaster.

We should perhaps look anew at those prophets of lower taxation being the only way forward. Just look how, with the new budget, we have delayed Foreign Aid? We have the top three wealthiest in our society owning over 30 billion. Or is it 40 billion now?

How just is our society and how moral when we can’t support foreign aid anymore and at the same time support not raising taxation for the obscene wealthy?