Quail mail

Well, that was delicious. Sorry, no photo, you'll have to use your imagination.

Here is what the poncey linen table-clothed menu would say:

Hand reared lemon & parsley marinaded quail, oven - roasted with baby aubergine and sweet potatoes, served on a bed of wilted nero kale, baby snake beans and blanched mung sprouts, and severed with a pepper, mustard and lime mayonnaise.

ALL of which was found in my garden this afternoon. You cannot get this in any restaurant I have ever been to. No food miles AT ALL! Finally, I've arrived at that point where I can honestly say, I made this meal with my own bare hands.

Excellent. I fkn love cooking.

Here's the recipe if you ever end up with all these ingredients in your fridge at once.

Catch, kill, pluck and gut two quail. (To gut, cut down the front from anus to neck, along the breast bone and lay carcass flat.Marinate for the afternoon in lemon juice, chopped parsley, salt & pepper, olive oil.

Pick a lemon (slice thick), a bunch of parsley (chop), A handful of baby aubergine (quarter), 1 shallot (diced), a couple of baby celery sticks (diced), one sweet potato (peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes).

Put a baking dish containing  the flayed birds, legs up, a handful of fresh parsley, shallot, and a thick slice of Lemon on each. Beside them lay the sweet potato and aubergines and splash over the remaining marinade and cook till the vegies are soft. Take out the dish, turn the birds over and baste. Put back under the griller to brown.

Meanwhile, boil water and blanch the snake beans. At the last moment, blanch the kale and at the very last moment the sprouts. Drain.

Serve warm. lay the greens on the plate and place the birds in a nest of coiled snake beans. Serve the roast vegies with a dollop of mayo.

(OK, so the salt and pepper and olive oil I didn't make, but I make up for it by cooking with solar).

Best School Holiday project EVAR

Raechel's Teardrop Dulcimer

I guess you could call it doing a Flinthart.

Take one adolescent, extract from TV and electronic devices, limit intake of junk food - esp sugar - load up with a really difficult project for a week, keep upping the degree of difficulty and voila! Fun.

It's all blogged over at my music site.

Start at DAY 1 and work back to the top.

2012 Xmas Eve

It's Christmas eve and all through the night
newborns are arriving - man, what a sight
And it makes you remember, in spite of the spin
that it's bullshit to think we are all born to sin.

Love your work, your humour and your passions and wish everyone all the best of times this season. Will be back blogging next year. 

Breakfast with Boylan

 They came.

 They met the owner of the property













They BBQ'd,














In formation.

 They ate bugs thanks to Nowhere B, and country bacon and eggs thanks to me.

A pleasure to finally meet. (Esp Boylan's much better half and spectacularly beautiful son!)

The IT boy

If you're going to stand up in front of a bunch of people and recite your very own poetry, in front of Alchemy* is a very cool place to do it.

* Alchemy, by Brett Whitely, at the AGNSW's Brett Whitely Studio. Thanks for the snap, Toby.

SYDBERG BOUND

G-Man's new chap book, Protest Singer, is launching 21-3 Sept in Sydney.

Love you to come along if you can make it.

Gig #1 is +music;  $15

Gig #2 is +Poetry. Free

We're sounding amazing after 10,000 hours of practice!

Tickets and info available on line. To book, go to our website and while you're there, sign up to the mailing list. We don't really do those yooful music sites - this is between consenting adults in private.

The term chap book refers to a book of printed poetry. Comes from a time when poetry leapt from the tongue to the page. When printing became widespread and cheap enough to be within the reach of the poet and printing the words was faster and cheaper than rehearsing up a bunch of troubadours to perform it.

We're already rehearsed up (we are our own troubadours) and printing is so cheap now that your average poet can print a book for less than the price of a dinner and a show. Most poets never sell out their modest print run because it's not actually about the money.  The publication of a work of poetry is more like a record, as in music. It ties the lyric down and crystalises the poet's meaning. But like a recording of a piece of music, it can only give an impression of the complete work, which exists in a whole sonic space comprising words, voice and all the elements of music at work when one is speaking, chanting, singing, and playing.

Like some people meditate or jog, we do alchemy. We play these songs every day and burn the work into memory. The book is really an elaborate excuse to celebrate the culmination of the longterm work. After a year, we are ready to go a troubadouring - on the page, on stage - anywhere we can slow people down long enough to listen, whether transmitted on a soundwave, or imagined by the one your mind creates in your head as you read.

Love to play for you if you can  make it.  More info.

I'm Banksy

Really - I am in this photowork. 
Me and G-Man are in it. Been so damned busy I forgot this was coming out.

Lovely work. Go check it out.

In visual response - Went to the Noosa Show and recorded this. It cut up nicely into a video for a new release song. It won't be up for long - go check it out.

Hey Kimbo - nice one. Congratulations.

Some Sundays, you get angels

 She is a movie star - that is not XCU on the camera setting either, she let me get that close to her. I think she's planning on coming back as a human. I on the other hand, am planning on reincarnating as her.

Nice hairdo.

Bandicoot ban

So, Nat,
Here are the pictures of the bandicoot trap. It is a cage about a foot wide and 3 feet long.

The checkerplate is a sliding door which is held up by a hook tied to a piece of string that runs through a pulley and is attached to the wooden pivoting false floor.

Bandicoot smells delicious ham bones at the  end of the floor, runs in to suck on those bones, and once past the pivot point, his weight pulls the string which in turn releases the door and voila - he is a banned bandicoot.

Whatever you do, don't try to handle him - he has incredibly strong front paws with digging claws attached. He will rip your arms to shreds. Rather, load the entire contraption into the ute and transport him some considerable distance from your garden. Gold courses tend to be in need of holes.

Oi! BRISBANE BURGERS!

Hey Brisvaguarians,

Coming down to perform next week.

It's the early show, and you can bring kids, being a bowlo. Let me know if you want to come and I'll organise a table.

Sorry I've not been online lately - well, for fkn ages actually -  but I've been flat out like a lizard drinking.

Am just out from under getting this year's Reality Bites festy together, in which our unofficial patron,  JBHMSLF will be appearing in July, as well as;
●publishing G-Man's next book of poetry
●rehearsing like crazy for its launch in Sydney at the Brett Whitely studio in September,
●keeping the garden going for want of actual money
●caring for G-man's and my own increasingly demented aged mothers 
●working on my writing
●duck wrangling (and Christmas culling if I dare to count all their eggs before they hatch @ $20/kg, which may go some way to alleviating actual money status).
●  duties chef du maison ordinaire or, in middle English: Housebonde
●working for actual money
● cocktail hour
● sleep

As you can see, there are very few windows of opportunity before sleep rolls round, not even for my favourite disaster porn fetish.

So, by about October, it's looking good for re-engagement with the outer universe, which begins at Caboolture.

It would be great to see you guys if you can get along.

love and wet fishes

xxx