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DECEMBER 2008 JACKIE FRENCH NEWS

WARNING: this newsletter contains cake...

In this month's news:

• Ghosts of Christmas past
• Wombat News
• Books
• Schedule for the next year
• December in the Garden
  • How to keep cool in Summer
  • Dear Santa
  • Presents for Gardeners
• Some General Christmas Stuff
  • Home made decorations
  • Useful wrappings
• Christmas Recipes
  • Cumquat (OR Glace Pineapple, Glace Ginger, or candied cherry) Christmas cake
  • Potato Salad with Peanut Sauce
  • Macadamia, Mango, Chickpea and Coriander Salad
  • Eggplant with Golden Yoghurt
  • Bryan’s Favourite mashed Potatoes
  • Smashed Potatoes

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

For some reason - an email from my sister in law, I think, remembering times past - I've been remembering a Christmas almost a quarter of a century ago. Santa rode up that year on a horse that had eaten dust and blackberries for four years. It was white once. Now it was the colour of the paddocks.

The kids ran to meet him - drought kids, who'd never seen a flood or swum in the creek. But there were presents for all of them in the sack- St Vinnies gave us a whole sackful for only $20. None of the kids worried that the dolls lacked a bit of hair, or the rabbit's ears were frayed. That was just the way toys came.

It was a good Christmas that year, despite the drought. We lived in bits of houses, poured washing up water on the tomatoes. (My son didn't have any new clothing till he was seven, except for his nappies.) That Christmas we had all brought plates to share, including wholemeal pikelets with apricot jam. The trees bore fruit throughout that drought then went on strike, and didn't fruit again for 15 years. We also feasted on White Christmas, spinach and cheese triangles, brown rice salad, zucchini pickles. A skinny sheep turned on a spit by the dry creek. The grown ups sat on the veranda drinking orange wine and watched the moon come up while the kids slept on cushions under borrowed blankets inside ...

It'll be different this Christmas. Our houses are comfortable now, homemade houses that have grown with the decades. The seedlings we planted are trees, most laden this Christmas - it hasn't been a great season, but there's been just enough rain to swell the fruit. But the memories are still there, in every wall that we helped each other put up. The kids who danced under the willow trees will wander back, even if they don't get here by Christmas Day.

We'll have a vegan Christmas this year, partly because Fabia is bringing her vegan boyfriend from the Netherlands, but also because Christmas is a chance to cook all the things that Bryan doesn't like, eggplant with golden yoghurt, potato salad with peanut sauce and cashew and mango salad with chickpeas and coriander, though there'll be a ham (which I don't eat) in the fridge for various meat-starved males to dip into.

Hopefully there'll be fresh apricots again, and the first of the new potatoes, beans and zucchini, with tiny flowers to stuff before they're baked on an olive oils smeared, maybe an early tomato if we're lucky, white peaches and fresh currants, avocadoes for the salad and early apples in case the moist rolls in on boxing day and we feel like an apple crumble instead of cold pudding.
As you get older you don't care about what's under the tree so much, just the look on others' faces as they open their packages. Every Christmas is richer in memories than the last. I hope that this Christmas will bring all of you magic memories as well.

PS: If you're at a loss what to give the person who has everything, they won't have a box of cherries, mangos or white peaches.

PPS: I usually tell telemarketers that the aliens have landed. It gets them off the phone fast, but hopefully grinning rather than hurt. This Christmas I'm telling unsolicited callers that Santa has landed instead. Those reindeer need their carrots….

Wombat news

Wombats don't do Christmas. They don't do anything much in mid summer, unless it's a drought and they're starving. This year they have both grass and fallen fruit - the wombats and wallabies have quite taken to avocadoes. We'd leave Mothball out a Christmas carrot, but actually she prefers grass to carrots - she only goes on a carrot rampage when there isn't grass around. She likes new shoots on pea tussocks too.

This winter I noticed that she's discovered the paving around the house i.e. that a wombat can stand on the paving, stretch out her neck and eat the lawn, while her paws and tummy stay on nice warm concrete. She slowly grazes around the entire front of the house, then back to her hole, still with warm dry paws. Wombats are no fools when it comes to the good life. This Christmas I imagine she'll stay in her burrow till about midnight, then wander out to eat the lushest greenest bits under the cumquat trees, then mooch back in again. Christmas for wombats is best spent asleep.

Books

If you're looking for a book for Christmas, this year's crop includes something for every taste!

Picture book

Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip, with Bruce Whatley's magic illustrations. Spend Christmas day in Shaggy Gully with Mothball, Pete the Sheep, Emily emu and Josephine the dancing Kangaroo… and the biggest, meanest bunyip around!...more

Non Fiction

How High can a Kangaroo Hop? Again with magic pictures by Bruce, find out everything you didn't know about roos and wallabies, as well as the true stories of Josephine, Rosie the wallaby and the garbage guts clan... more

Somewhere between History and Fiction

The Camel Who Crossed Australia The story of the Burke and Wills expedition, told from the point of view of the camel, Bell Sing, otherwise known as; 'he who spits further than the storm' and Dost Mahomet, the young cameleer... more

Historical Fiction

A Rose for the Anzac Boys A personal recommendation from the author – it's possibly my best book.
The story of three young women who travel to France to set up a canteen in World War I, and the Anzac boys they love. This is one to give to anyone of any age, from 12 years and upwards.... more

Schedule for the next year

Much as I'd love to, I just can't do every event that I'm asked to do - or even most of them. Mostly I choose events with the biggest audience (at least 200, preferably 600 or more) because this means that I can speak to more people in the time I have available.

Please forgive me if I can't come to your town, school or event - it doesn't mean I don't want to!

The December Garden – how to keep your cool in December

• Don't fill your garden beds in a last minute panic with bloomers: they'll wilt in the heat and so will you. If you feel like a touch of Christmas colour buy a two giant baskets or pots and fill them with bloomers, for either side of the front door.  Easy to water, and you get a faceful of colour. Colour for Christmas: If you don't mind spending $$$$, buy some biggish pots and fill with hydrangeas - good in either light shade or sunlight. Feeling humid? Tall trees will shade you from the sun, but too much greenery around the house can also block breezes and add to the humidity. Sometimes a little thinning of the jungle can greatly add to summer comfort.
• Dry soil can repel moisture. If your soil is still dry just under the surface after you've watered, use a wetting agent like Wettasoil so that the next lot of water can really penetrate
• Raise the height of your lawn mower. Slightly longer lawns tolerate heat and dryness better than shaved lawns, and you'll still be chopping the heads off the weeds and leaving the grass neat and even.
• Water crystals expand and store water when wet. Add them to pots or even around young plants and seedlings. But do keep them out of reach of kids and pets, and make sure that the soil covers them completely, even when swollen - in dry times birds will eat them and, even though they may not be toxic, they probably are not good for their diet.
• When you are away on holiday see if a neighbour will water your garden for you; water indoor plants them cover with a plastic bag, and place in a cool spot - the bath is excellent.
• Mulch - but don't mulch dry soil in hot weather. Water well first.
• Cut dead blooms off agapanthus, roses, hydrangeas, daylilies etc to encourage them to keep blooming and to avoid a dead scrappy look at Christmas.

PS: Remember pets need cool water at Christmas too! Make sure their water bowls aren't in the sun and change the water often. A rock in large containers helps stop them from being knocked over. (Bryan has glued a wide sheet of plywood to the wombat's bowl to stop her knocking that over too.)

Dear Santa,

This year I'd love an automatic watering system and enough water to use in it, but I'll settle for a good rainstorm. Also 200 bales of lucerne mulch (don't let the reindeer at it, it'll give them indigestion) and a 40 year old Pohutukawa in bloom, though I accept it may be a bit heavy for the sleigh.
         Lots of love,
         Jackie

PS: I don't want to sound ungrateful but please try to keep the reindeer out of the strawberries this year and tell whoever chomped my Papa Meilland rose last time that I've sprayed wasabi spray on it this year, so they and the possums had better watch out.

Presents for Gardeners
Beware!  Most avid gardeners know exactly what they want - and don't want - in the garden. Aunt Bertha's ceramic whale peanut holder can be put away in a cupboard and only brought out again when Aunt Bertha visits again next year, but a gift plant has to be planted - and it may well be the wrong colour, shape, species, give little Jennifer eczema and make her Mum sneeze. The poor thing also has to be planted, watered, mulched, all in mid-summer heat...
Gift plants should be something the receiver really wants, or something easy care and unusual, that isn't going to eventually dominate the garden. (To those kind friends who over the years have given us a pepper tree, an Illawarra flame tree, a Sydney blue gum and a pot of jasmine just itching to invade the next 300 kms of bush - we were very grateful for the thought, but... )

So what do you give a gardener? Gardening gloves - you can never have enough of them; a good rich hand cream; anything really unusual in the nursery - one year there were pineapple plants, complete with fruit, and there's sure to be some specials this year too. Go for the less common herbs, like French tarragon, or liquorice or a hop vine for a beer lover, a dwarf fruit tree in a tub…

And non-gardeners? Something unkillable. Small boys love cactus or Venus fly traps (I have yet to actually see a Venus fly trap actually catch a fly, but kids have fun hoping). Look for almost unkillable houseplants like ivy (indoors only!), begonias (great stately plants - so elegant you don't realise how unkillable they are), weeping and other indoor figs, rubber plants; most palms, umbrella trees.  Kentia, Rhapsis or Parlour palms (Neanthe bella) are other great choices. When in doubt, just ask at the nursery for something indestructible!

PS A comfy garden chair is great gift for anyone

What to plant
Basically, as little as possible – all planting can be left to January, after the Christmas rush. lettuce, beans, corn and zucchini; seeds of autumn and winter bloomers - but basically all planting can be left to January, when life isn't so hectic.

PS: If you really want to plant now, there is very little that can't be planted. Just remember that seedlings that get too hot - or dry - can go to seed prematurely, and some plants like lettuce won't germinate in very hot weather. In tropical humid areas many veg planted now will be affected by root rot or mildew; this is a great time to plant shrubs and fruit trees though - if you have the energy!

Some General Christmas Stuff

Simple Christmas Tree Decorations

If you're just starting out on your Christmas tree collection, and don't want to pay a fortune, how about the following:-

• gum nuts in clusters, painted gold, with a bit of red ribbon glued on to the end
• long gum leaves, also painted gold, with the stems tied onto a length of string (these will only last one Christmas though: by next year they'll be a crackly mess)
• paint jacaranda seed pods or pine cones or the tiny cones from cedars, casuarinas and other conifers gold or silver or red, and glue on a tiny piece of red ribbon
• cut out cardboard stars, and paint gold or silver
• make tiny bows of gold red or silver ribbon
• cut out circles of corrugated cardboard; paint red or gold and sprinkle on glue and glitter
• three-dimensional cardboard and glitter: cut out two circles of corrugated cardboard, paint and add glitter to each.  Cut each one half way down the centre, then slip one into the other and you'll see what is supposed to happen, so cut a bit more or wriggle a bit till it does!

Useful Wrappings!
One of the saddest post-Christmas affairs is to go to our local rubbish dump, about two metres deep in torn Christmas wrappings. If you don't want to see all the gaudy trimmings ending up as waste, consider wrapping your presents in:Tea towels - always useful, and you can buy cheap Christmassy ones too

• Cloth dinner napkins, for a change from the horrible paper sort; by the time you've given Aunt Ethel half a dozen presents she'll have a set!
• Hand towels
• Socks or stockings
• Pillow slips (use an indelible marker to write ‘Merry Christmas!' on them)
• Any pretty fabric - unlike paper it can easily be washed if necessary, ironed and used again and again!

Christmas Recipes

Christmas Recipes
I come from a long tradition of food servers. Especially to men. The tradition reached its pinnacle four generations back, when my great-great grandmother shoved hospitality on every passing traveller, from bushrangers to magistrates. Even in her nineties when empty stomachs no longer conveniently rode past her front door, her descendants still had to present their young men.

Who were fed. And fed. And fed.

My mother inherited the tradition, but not the love of coking.  Mum's catering stretches to putting the kettle on and finding the packet of biscuits. Hungry males at Mum's get to take her out to dinner. I learnt to cook in defence against roast chicken still stuffed with plastic wrapped giblets and sweet and sour leftovers. As a kid I used to pretend I was Australia's first quartermaster, doling out sections of my sandpit as stores to the starving colony. I've got the 'stuff them till they're stonkered' genes too.

I can't compare with Grandma. Men got besieged at Grandma's, hemmed in by plates of chicken salad, pressed to just another slice of lamb, another roast potato, a nice baked custard just for them; forced into arm chairs with convenient tables for the bowls of chips and jubes and  chocolates and peanuts.

Grandma believed men like baked custard. She cooked it for my father, who hated it, till finally my parents were divorced and he never ate another one again. She cooked them for my ex-husband, who couldn't stand them either, but foolishly complimented her on the first one - dooming himself to another fifty or so before we parted. Sadly she died before I finally married a man who adores baked custard, and would eat one every second night.

Actually Grandma was a twenties feminist. She believed the male role was to father children and then retreat, sending funds and goodwill while leaving the women and children to get on with their own lives. You have no time when you're looking after a man, Grandma complained. There's so much to do for them. Like make baked custards.

I remember a boyfriend's face, delivering me to Grandma's door to find not a discreet porch light for a bit of necking but Grandma, coffee pot and jug of Ovaltine, hot date scones, fresh lamb and chutney sandwiches, and Sao biscuits squashy under cheese and tomato. Just to keep him going till he got home.

Grandma had her own rules of nutrition. For instance, you must eat meat at the start and end of every day, every activity should be finished with a cup of tea; that tea cannot be drunk without a biscuit. Even in my thirties Grandma still told me I was a growing girl and bought velveeta cheese to tempt me eat my crackers.

It was Grandma who informed me that chocolates eaten watching home movies don't have calories. No box of chocolate given to you has any calories either.

Later, I worked out rules myself. Anything that's eaten by someone thinner than you won't put on weight. Just match the mouthfuls of the skinny bod across the table. When they stop eating find another chicken shank and watch them too.
Calories are contagious. As long as you don't heap your food together it'll stay low calorie. Extra chips nibbled from the communal bowl don't count. Two small servings have far fewer calories than one large one. Six bites from someone else's chocolates or ten forkfuls of pudding from the plate next door (just to taste) have almost no calories at all..

Most importantly, food eaten for a worthwhile purpose has no calories at all. Fund raising dinners, Easter eggs from kids or lovers, birthday cakes, the Christmas cake your hostess slaved all night over and will be heartbroken if you don't eat, the white Christmas and marzipan potatoes the kids made this morning - how can you possibly refuse them? They might never cook again.
It's your duty to eat Christmas dinner. Just repeat the song of Roald Dahl's wolf once a day till Christmas:

I know full well my tummy's bulging
But oh, how I adore indulging.

As for those extra ten kilos - they're not from over eating. They're an ancient hibernation hangover from our northern hemisphere ancestors. You needed to put down enough fat to see you through the lean times. Till next Christmas.

Recipes

Cumquat (or candied cherry, ginger or pineapple) Christmas Cake

Note: A reader wrote in to ask for my 'Cumquat Christmas cake' - she'd lost the recipe. It sounds delicious, but I can't remember ever giving a recipe, though I have used candied cumquats in cakes.
Anyhow, there are still a few bottles of candied cumquats in the larder - wonderful to decorate cakes or on ice cream sundaes, but as we rarely eat ice cream and I even more rarely decorate the cakes with anything more than scatter of macadamias, they don't get used much. They are also a delight in a Christmas gin and tonic, but I make those even less often than the ice cream sundaes.
So ... here is the cake I made last week. The candied cumquats look and taste superb, but you can substitute candied ginger or candied cherries. The latter won't add much flavour, but at least they'll look good. Chunks of glace pineapple are good instead too, but not dried pineapple- too fibrous.

Glace Cumquats
Place cumquats (or calamondins) in a saucepan.
Cover with water. Simmer till skins are soft.
Add one cup of sugar for every two cups of liquid - if necessary add more water. Simmer till very thick and syrupy.
Store cumquats in sealed containers in a cool place- not necessarily the fridge - till needed. They should keep for a year or so, but throw out if they bubble, change colour, smell alcoholic or look strange in any way.

Cake Ingredients
250 g butter
5 eggs
1/2 a cup ground almonds
2 cups of plain flour

The fruit part:
1 cup orange juice, pineapple juice or whisky, or a mix of any of the three
juice of 1 lemon or three limes
3 cups sultanas
1 cup currants
4 cups chopped crystallised cherries, or chopped glacé pineapple, or glace cherries, or glace ginger, or candied cumquats, or a mix of any of these
1/2 a cup pineapple or apricot jam
3 tbsps grated fresh orange rind or lemon rind or both mixed
1 cup finely chopped fresh or canned pineapple or grated apple or grated carrot
1 cup brown sugar

Cover with plastic wrap. Place in the fridge. Leave overnight.
OR bring slowly to the boil; simmer 3 minutes. Cool.

Melt the butter; take off the heat and mix in the five eggs one by one then add the ground almonds, and plain flour and the fruit mixture. Mix gently but well - don't keep beating though once it's all amalgamated.
Place in a deep cake tin.; I line the edges with three layers of baking paper, otherwise the crust dries out too much, and place a dish of water in the bottom of the oven. Bake at about 150 C for four hours. If the cake seems to be browning too fast turn the heat down or cover with a sheet of alfoil half way through cooking.
Cool in tin before turning out. Wrap in alfoil and keep till Christmas. Drizzle on more whisky each week if you like a whisky scented cake.

Note: If you make many small cakes instead, they make excellent Christmas presents. In this case cooking time will be less. You'll have to sniff! poke! and see. As soon as the cake has been filling the house with good spicy fragrance for about half an hour, dip a skewer or even a knife in and see if it comes out clean, or if the top springs back when you press it lightly with your finger.

Potatoes with Peanut Sauce

Ingredients:
1 kg sliced cooked potatoes, or small boiled new potatoes

Dressing:
1/2 cup crunch peanut butter, or munch up freshly roasted peanuts in the blender
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 chopped chillies (can be omitted)
5 tbsps tomato purée
4 tbsps olive, peanut or macadamia oil
1/2 a cup lemon juice
brown sugar to taste

Mix the dressing well, pour over the potatoes. If it is too thick a little more tomato purée or water can be added - you should be able to scoop it easily with a spoon.
You can eat this cold, or heat it all in the oven or microwaves, or heat the sauce up in a saucepan and pour it over hot or cold potatoes.

Macadamia, mango, Chickpea and Coriander salad

Ingredients:
1/2 cup chopped coriander (yes, parsley will do if you hate coriander)
1 avocado, peeled and chopped
1 cup mango, peeled and chopped
2 tbsps Spanish or red onion, peeled and chopped
4 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp lemon or lime juice
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsps chopped red chilli or red capsicum
1 cup chickpeas, canned and drained
1/2 cup chopped raw or roasted macadamias

Combine all the ingredients to make a delicious salad.

Eggplant with Golden Yoghurt

Ingredients:
2 large or 10 small eggplants
1 large carton creamy natural yoghurt(Not low or no fat - it will separate)
6 tbsps olive oil
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp cumin
Optional: 1 chopped onion and 6 chopped cloves garlic

Slice the eggplant. Sprinkle with salt and leave slices for a couple of hours, then wash off the salt. The salting will dry the eggplant and it won't take up much oil when it's fried. But you can also omit the salting or use a non stick fry pan.
Fry the dry slices in 4 tbsps of olive oil. Remove.
Add the remaining 2 tbsps of olive oil and gently sauté onion and garlic on a low heat till soft; add the spices and saute for about 2 minutes. Don't let them burn. Turn off the heat and cool.
When eggplant and spices are quite cold, mix the yoghurt into the spices. (IF you do this when the spices are still hot you may get curds and whey).
Pile eggplant slices on a platter. Top with the golden yoghurt, so it spills down like snow on a mountain. Do not serve to Bryan.

Bryan's Favourite Mashed Potatoes
Note: To be served at nearly every meal, Christmas or not. If I ate a spoonful my cholesterol reading would be off the chart, but his stays low regardless.
4 potatoes
12 tbsps butter
10 tbsps cream
2 tbsps chopped fresh chives
water
black pepper
Optional: 2 tbsps grated strong cheese

Peel and slice potatoes. Boil till JUST soft. Drain off water. Add butter, cheese if you are using it, and chives. Mash well. Add cream. Reheat slightly on a low heat, mashing all the while, till it thickens again. Take off the heat and add a grind of black pepper. Serve hot.
PS: This can be made beforehand and reheated in the oven - you get a lovely brown crust on top of it.

Smashed Potatoes
Cook 4 potatoes, peeled or unpeeled. Cool. Crush with your palms- the spuds should still be chunky - throw into a bowl, and add the other ingredients in the recipe above. Cook in a slow oven till brown and crusty and the liquid is all absorbed.

For more information from Jackie, please go to her website: www.jackiefrench.com

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