Of late, the quiet is expanding.

I find myself choosing not to hop aboard as many buses and trains lately as I once did. I find myself running through a list of destinations many mornings, and mentally ticking them off, one by one.  'Nah, too hot today, too far, looks like rain, takes a train and a bus, been there, done that, nah, nah.'  

I'm not sure why.  It's true that the city planners, in their wisdom, have redesigned the bus system, making it harder for me to use. (though still free)  I suppose it's more efficient in terms of riders per bus per kilometer per hour, but I liked the old system better. Or, I suppose, I could blame it on the upgrades being done to our rail system.  The past summer has seen a lot of work on rails and sidings and so on which means I couldn't always count on the trains running if I had wanted to ride them.    

I have been finding it increasingly pleasant to linger over a cup of coffee in the morning.  Jeanne often has her phone in her hand as we sip and reads a few of the headlines.  We discuss them sometimes, but mostly shake our heads in disgust, both at the newsmakers and the media.    

Then, when Jeanne heads down to the gardens, I clean up the kitchen from breakfast, and sit down at the computer to upload my latest batch of pictures, check for incoming emails, add a bit to my ongoing blog post, write some emails of my own, play a hand of Free Cell, or otherwise amuse myself.  It's surprising how quickly the time passes.  Then, in lieu of choosing a travel destination, I check Jeanne's grocery shopping list, and head to the store.  I will probably also decide to take a walk somewhere in our local area.  I still walk about an hour every day, but that's a lot less than I'd walk if I went exploring somewhere.  

Enough rambling.  The end result of my laid back lifestyle is that I have fewer photos of the new and exciting. This post will reflect my mood lately.  It'll show you daily stuff that I recorded very recently, comfortable stuff.  

"Oh, look, a cloud with a hole in it.  That's been on my bucket list for a long time."  

As always, a sunrise

Today I walked down to the Taste of Samoa shop for some sort of dense cake and custard-like topping, (which I dropped coming home. No real damage to it except it got scrambled up a bit), and what they call pancakes.  Very much like giant donut holes.  (One of the best food bargains that I know, at 5 for $1.)  

A fall picture. That's our entrance just ahead to the left.  

The scaffolding on the far side, from us, of The Palms.  

This is a kumara. It's like a not-so-sweet, sweet potato.  Jeanne wanted to test how they'd do in our gardens and this is one of the first out of the ground. The yield will be impressive if the rest of the patch mirrors the first digging, and I think it will.  Very few people here realize how much produce she is responsible for.  There is a large crew of volunteers that help, but she has personally planted practically all of what is currently growing and harvests a large part of it as well.  

These are the Madeleines, who entertained us recently. Phenomenally good. They sing songs from the 1940's, 50's and a few newer besides.  

Here's one of their promos from YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrxZxRBCEXg

Another fall scene.

Finally, a quiet, kind of moment in time picture.  See you next week.      -djf

Good bye to Arthur's Corner

The time has come.  The long-awaited renovation of The Palms is upon us. I'll no longer be able to climb to Arthur's Corner and take pictures from that ideal vantage point.

The scaffolding and wrap will surround the building and the automatic door that led to the third floor of The Palms will no longer give me access.  It will be this way for at least the next 18 months.  After that, glass will enclose the building and I'll have to shoot through it when taking my photos. Not preferred. 

This photo is compliments of Jeanne, who took it from our balcony. I'm shooting the photos you'll see immediately below. 

They've just replanted the flowers facing the front gate, (on the left side in this picture) in our central garden. 

We're enjoying cool, crisp, delightful air this morning.  The Tasman Sea is about 10 miles west of us. I can smell it.  

Let's get ready and start zooming in. The color is rapidly developing. 

 

My bird handler released the homing ducks at the perfect moment.  

You know that I have to include at least one close up. 

The Sun is getting very bright now, don't want to damage the optics, let's pull back a bit with the next one.

As it continues to intensify, I back off even further.

To conclude this post, I've pulled back the view the sunrise almost to our starting point about a dozen pictures ago. A final view and a fitting tribute, I hope, to my outdoor studio at Arthur's Corner.    -djf

"And now for something completely different." Monty Python's Flying Circus

No, I don't intend to do a Pythonesque sketch in this post. I thought I should make that clear from the beginning. I don't want to mislead you.   

But in fact, this post is going to be very different than the last weeks was, and it's frustrating that one has to be so careful these days to give credit where credit is (I guess) due.   

I think it is unfortunate that television shows are allowed to steal perfectly good phrases, such as the one I've used for my title, that the rest of us might need to utter, in conversations, in letters, in technical journals, or in the titles of posts, without worrying that we are infringing on copyrighted material.  

I think it's most unfortunate that just because they decided to use those words on TV one day, the rest of us can no longer say it without looking over our shoulders, and living in fear that the copyright cops, or similar thugs, might be sneaking up, about to slap us with a writ, or injunction or something equally meddlesome.  And which would probably sting besides, if they slapped us with it hard enough, especially, I suppose, if it were wet. Therefore, I've decided to rename my post.  

My new title is:

And now for something completely indifferent.   

I think my title is now more descriptive of my post anyway, since I intend to discuss various versions of a pudding I have been experimenting with lately. I think that even the most tolerant of you will be indifferent to my subject. The rest of you when you read it, might want to slap me with something wet, and that stings.  

But here goes. 

It's feijoa season here.  Our village trees have been producing abundantly, and I've been dropping gold coins, practically every Monday, Thursday and Saturday, into the money box attached to the produce carts in the Atrium, and taking home a bag of them.  

I think feijoas are the perfect fruit with which to make puddings.  They are firm enough not to disintegrate when you boil them and tart enough to stand up to the bland components that I choose to add. I also drizzle in just a little Golden Syrup or honey to all my puddings, simply because I want to.  

This first pudding is one I've made before, feijoa and acorn.  I've written about this combination before as well. The acorn is much better when it's very finely ground, otherwise, even with all the boiling I do, it stays somewhat gritty. This pudding turned out very smooth. 

I'll start with the steps leading up to the final product.  

BTW, that is a NZ pumpkin in the background.  You will not find orange-skinned ones here.  

The flesh is orange.  The rind is extremely hard.  Carving this kind of pumpkin would require a hammer, chisel, and reciprocating saw. Further, the seed cavity is quite small. 

Those are average-sized feijoas.   

The texture of the outer part of the fruit reminds me of a pear.  The inner part is somewhat like a tomato, in that it is soft and seedy, although not as soft as a tomato, and it tastes nothing like a pear or tomato.  You'll notice too that they have a tendency to discolor, much like an apple does when exposed to the air.  I think that is part of the explanation for the color of my finished puddings. They tend to be darker in color than the raw fruit.  

I cut them in half and then scoop out the insides with a teaspoon.  

This is my acorn meal before the final grinding. I have kept it double-wrapped in the freezer for years now and it is still perfect. The trick is to get it extremely dry before freezing. (Acorn meal is 7% protein.)  

The finished pudding. The pieces you see in it are the feijoa parts that have not broken down. 

This pudding was a success.  

This is my second pudding. Instead of acorn meal, I used grits.  I liked this one very much because the taste and texture of the grits came through, sort of, anyway.  And I like grits. 

This next one has oatmeal added.  I buzzed up the oatmeal very fine in Jeanne's Magic Bullet and also added a few raisins to the mix, because I like raisins in oatmeal. This one might be the best one of the bunch(So far, anyway).  It, like the others, is very good cold.  Now, before you ask how could cold oatmeal be good, you need to make some of this and find out.  You could substitute rhubarb.  That's tart too and would work perfectly. Apples would work of course, it's just that they won't be as tart and I think the tartness adds something to the pudding.   

You don't need a recipe.  Get your pan of sauce ready to go and add whatever carbo you want to it and the appropriate amount of water.  Then, simmer away until you think it's done.  Just keep watching it, you might have to add more water.  

This one is made with rice.  I again used the grinder to pulverize the rice and I again added raisins to this batch.  It was still warm when I took this picture and it is getting thicker as it cools.  It took a lot of water, probably at least 3 times the amount you'd use to cook dry rice. 

For my final pudding, I pulled out all the stops.  

This one has a small amount of finely ground barley, and 2 1/2 Weet-Bix biscuits. It has raisins and pumpkin and sunflower seeds. No, it doesn't have chocolate, despite its appearance.  

 

Here it is.  

I have to say that I liked all of them. 

The acorn was my least favorite, texture-wise, but that was because I think that it was an unfamiliar food. I value it the most however, because of what it represents; a huge nutrition storehouse and a long, now mostly lost history of human consumption. 

The grits were comfort food.

The oatmeal the same, and with the raisins, it was even better. 

The rice reminded me of Chinese Congee. I have tried several of them. They are available in little singe serving cans in markets here, and most even provide the diner with a tiny, snap together spoon. My pudding is much thicker than the congees I've tried. They come in lots of different flavors, red bean being the most common, or even plain rice. 

The barley and Weet-Bix was my hands-down favorite. It's just so full of good stuff. I found that the Weet-Bix completely disintegrated and with the cooking, came to give the pudding a really interesting smoothness.  

Finally, I thought I'd show you a feijoa 'shooter.' It's Jeanne's favorite way of eating them.  You get an explosion of juice and flavor this way.  Very pleasant and somewhat addictive, especially if you have someone else peeling them for you. The one on the left is from our village and about an average size. The one on the right I bought from the market. It's the biggest one I've ever seen.         -djf

   

Be prepared!

My sister, Mary, just had an experience. She lives in a retirement community in Michigan.  Early yesterday morning, she was awakened by a pounding.  The source was not apparent. There was no one at her front door.  

Because she has limited mobility, she called a male friend down the hall who checked on Mary's closest neighbor.  It turned out that this woman had fallen. However, she managed to unlock her apartment door, and began pounding to call attention to her plight. Mary called for help and shortly thereafter, the police arrived and helped the lady to her feet, and then to bed. The ambulance was cancelled and all was well for her, or at least better, than it had been. Thank goodness she had the presence of mind to unlock her door and pound. And thank goodness she lives next to Mary.   

This story made me think. I decided that a post about being ready for an emergency might be a good idea.  

I want whoever reads this to remember this woman, think about your own situation, and maybe put some of Mary's suggestions to use.

I've always needed to feel prepared. Maybe it's my cub/boy scout background. I've certainly never thought of myself as a prepper. However, just before we came to live in New Zealand, I had 550 meals of beans, rice, barley, and pasta stored in oxygen-free containers. I also had canned fish, meats, sugar, salt, toilet paper and lots of other long-life necessities stored away.  

When we arrived here, I learned about the Shake Out drill that is held every year across the country. In such a seismically active locale, it just makes sense.  We had great drills each October. My daughter and grandsons joined in of course, ducked under cover, and held on to the table legs for the duration of our mock quakes. Another part of Shake Out readiness was maintaining an emergency supply of food. You might imagine that I took on that project with vigor. (My grandsons helped me with it. You should always have some boy-chosen snack items in any emergency stash, and of course, we had to do some extensive research before deciding on the best ones.)

Here at Waitakere Gardens, Jeanne and I have made some preparations that I'd like to share with you. Our preparations are suitable for us. Your own needs are undoubtedly very different, and I urge you to do whatever seems right for your situation.  

We are fortunate in that we have three emergency call buttons/pulls within our apartment in case of a fall, illness, or other situation. I have also made a change because of a suggestion Mary made.  She stores her phone down low and even takes it into the bathroom when she bathes/showers.  Excellent idea!  One of the most dangerous places for old folks is a tub or shower. Doesn't matter if you have a shower chair or rails, stuff happens.   

I used to store my phone on a high shelf. I now keep it on my desk, which I can reach from the floor.  All the numbers I might need on in my contacts on the phone and I make sure I charge it daily.  

We call what you see in the photo a trolley. They are used everywhere here, but mostly by older people, for carrying shopping.  We have this one dedicated to our emergency evacuation.   

In it we each have a change of underwear, socks, warm clothes, water, long-life food bars, and important papers. If, in an emergency, we have to leave our apartment, instantly, it is stored in a place we can grab as we leave the apartment. We would add just one more item to it. That is the tin we use to store our medications. That would add just seconds to grab. 

If however, we have a few minutes before evacuating, we have a second-layer plan. 

This is my trolley that I use daily for shopping. It is also very accessible. Our plan is to dump our computers, hearing aid charger, and phones into it first.  I've done a test and that would take well less than a minute to do. 

Then, if there was a little more time, we'd take some additional bottled water and food and probably some additional clothes or a few keepsakes.    

We feel that we are adequately prepared for most emergencies. 

I do hope that this post has made you think. How would you get help if you fell and broke an arm or leg? If you had to flee your house or apartment, what would you wish you could grab before you go? Shouldn't you make some sort of plan? 

I urge you to choose a carry-on bag, backpack or carry-all of some sort and use it to formulate  your own emergency evacuation plan. Be prepared.    -djf