City Food & Wine Month

Right on the heels of the Perth International Arts Festival is the City Food & Wine Month. An entire month of celebrating all things yummy and sippy. The events vary widely: a progressive supper (each course at a different place), cooking demonstrations, freebie wine tastings, way too expensive cooking competitions where you get to eat a bit of the entries, festivals on the foreshore, cooking master classes, tours of notable food suppliers (grazed my way through Kakulas on this one), a wide variety of ethnicities and price tags.

We ended the month at the Butcher's Picnic. Free samples (naturally), a state championship judging of independent butcher sausage recipes, entertainment, the ubiquitous bouncy castle, a picnic set-up competition and some meaty demonstrations. Now, this was hardly the world's fair and the crowds not as huge as you might hope, but I enjoyed it anyway. Is that real pig intestine getting ground meat squirted into it? A pizza oven on wheels is cooking some lamb meat for sandwiches. Classic tunes with hokey sheep & sausage lyrics being sung by a local siren. The classic egg & spoon dash is done with cocktail ("little boys") wieners. The state championship sausage judging almost passes unnoticed. It is in a roped off corner of the large tent. No drum roll, please. Just three judges munching away at a white draped table. Much like the toothpick-armed public around the sampling stands.

We missed out on a really interesting wine tasting ($6 for 48 wines) but only because the group sponsoring that particular event had failed to procure the necessary alcohol permits. Oooops. No matter, we'll just await Perth's next festival coming soon.

CWA

I so enjoyed the speakers, camaraderie and feeling of connection with the community when I was a member of the Worthington Women's Club that I "quick-smart" joined the CWA upon my arrival in Perth. The Country Women's Association, although not strictly just country, offers socialization, support and advocacy for women and family issues.
If you have ever seen the movies "Babe" or "Calendar Girls", you've gotten a snapshot of these organizations-"Calendar Girls" representing Britain's Women's Institute. It can be entirely too easy to dismiss the CWA as a bunch of 'chinwaggers' holding bake sales, selling cookbooks and knitting baby booties for maternity hospitals. Indeed, the CWA does raise money for their multitudes of good works by selling 'slices', cookies and crafts. And the hospitals count on the donated baby bundles to send newborns home in. The CWA makes its collective voice known on a variety of issues including: complete labelling of imported food products, ATM keypads more accessible to the visually impaired and other social issues heading to state and federal legislators. It builds & maintains holiday cottages and sponsors scholarships for country nurses. The CWA in Australia joins similar organizations in 61 other countries as an NGO acting in an advisory capacity to the United Nations.

I think the single most convincing aspect of its viability, visibility and power is demonstrated in an annual event by a major grocery store chain. Woolworths donates the profits from a single day's sales to help farmers affected by drought, floods and fire. Rather than trying to disburse the funds themselves, Woolworths hands the money over to the organization with an established infrastructure, the state office of each CWA, for appropriate disposition. Everyone-Woolworths, CWA and petitioning farmers-wins.

On country drives, I like to look at the "CWA Centres"-tiny little clubhouses with storybook landscaping around it. In Harvey, I finally got to go inside one. Built in 1931 for £12 and renovated 70 years later for $15,000, it is an alternate community center for the town. It is also an example of the changing face of the CWA. The Harvey branch has six members remaining. Four of these members are active, two of those four are in their nineties. They do a fantastic job with their available resources and I figure they could boost membership numbers by offering cooking lessons to young women raised on fast food. But a more likely reality is the closing of the branch when no one is left standing. Even the national statistics indicate dwindling troops to do the work: approx. 25,500 in 1500 branches around the States and Territory = an average of 17 per branch. Ours has 21 members and the president had my hand in an iron grip when I first cast a shadow upon the door.

And still, the ladies of the CWA soldier on.

Breakfast Icons

Vegemite
You've heard about it in movies, it's celebrated in poetry and pastes childhood memories to everyone's heart. It's a stinky brown sludge made from brewers yeast...er, I mean...it's a fabulous source of vitamin B that was included in WWII soldier rations and has graced breakfast tables for generations. Do you slather it or stripe it on your toast? I figure it was Kev's declaration of Australian citizenship. He never ate it growing up, but has regularly coated bread with the stuff since his return from the U.S.
A bit of vegehistory: In April 1984,Vegemite made grocery market history when a 115g jar became the first product in Australia to be electronically scanned at a checkout in a New South Wales' supermarket.


Weet Bix

At first glance, there is not much to recommend this most beloved of breakfast cereal. Start with the unappealing name of the manufacturer, Sanitarium, which sounds like a tuberculosis recovery hospital. The second is its appearance, layered like shale rock, the color of true regularity and shaped into uninspiring rectangles. Jazz up the box with cricket player photos and include tradeable player cards and you still have a cereal with all the sex appeal of Grape Nuts.

Fortunately, the taste fares better than the visuals. And nutritionally, it ranks much higher than Captain Crunch. This cereal has die-hard fans--and not just myboyfriendBrettLee, a famous cricket bowler and spokesperson for the brand. [full disclosure: the first box we bought prominently featured a picture of myboyfriendBrettLee.] I have talked with people who travel with a box-just in case. Cruise lines, when it is known that an appreciable amount of Aussies are on board, will stock Weet Bix on the breakfast buffet.

Some facts:

• Today, Weet-Bix is sold in 22 countries around the world. They are called Bixies in the UK and Mauritius, Ruskets in the US.[never heard of it]• Aussie cricketer Brett Lee [myboyfriendBrettLee] fuels up every morning with seven Weet-Bix.• If the number of Weet-Bix eaten by Australians each year were laid end-to-end, they would stretch 2.8 times around the equator.• In 1999, a Mount Gambier man set an unofficial record when he ate 40 Weet-Bix in one sitting. He said at the time that he will continue to eat Weet-Bix, but probably not that many ever again in one sitting.[Crikey, If I eat more than two, I am making a fast dash for the bathroom]• It is not true that a driver’s license can be found in a Weet-Bix packet.[That would be CrackerJack boxes, mate]• Sir Edmund Hillary ate Weet-Bix for breakfast during his historic climb to the top of Mt Everest in 1953. [I did mention that there are die-hard fans. but this is a bit much.]

Harvey Harvest Italian Festival

Lots of event choices during Harmony Week ("We are the world. We are the children...")included: general international, indigenous, Bangladesh, Polish, head-banging music & art, etc. We chose to go Italian, for reasons beyond the commonplace, at the Harvey Harvest Italian Festival.

I like Harvey. Lots of orange orchards, dairy farms, beef cattle, fresh produce stands, great cheese place, 'my' Italian winemaker who sells his free range eggs for $3/doz and pours grappa for Kev, other winemakers nearby, cheap factory grocery store and a wonderful bit of kitsch in a 14 meter tall orange observation stand called "The Big Orange".

The harvest festival (not the same as "The Show" or county fair) had all the requisite fair type offerings and activities: inflatable bouncey castles & slides for kids, antique cars for dads, handmade jewelry stands for moms, local alpaca and soap products, numerous food stands for everybody and a wine tasting area for me. Couldn't convince Kev that the Grape Stomp competition was a good idea-the Open Invitation division was won in great style by a couple of backpackers.

I was on a mini-mission at this festival. I wanted to take the free tour of Harvey. I'd been to the area before but getting a real introduction tickled my fancy. We were obliged to fasten our seatbelts on the tour bus. Didn't know that Italians had been held in internment camps there during WWII. They stuck around afterwards. It was those folks I wanted to connect with. Who better to lead you to a superior supply of roma tomatoes for canning than old Italians?

At the edge of the park where the festival was held was a CWA (Country Women Association) house and I paid them a visit. But about the CWA, I shall write later. All in all, a nice Sunday afternoon with the added delight for Kev in scoring a six-pack of a favored Jarah Jack's beer.

Gray Nomads

Kev and I took one of our customary exploration drives this past weekend. Headed for one of the many National Parks around here. Bumped into quite a few Gray Nomads there at Warren . Gray nomads—the Winnebago set by a different name—are everywhere. And a bit different.

First, you don’t see too many Winnebagos or other very large RVs around here. More like, trailer campers or pop-top campers they call caravans. The obligatory canvas front porch awning appears regardless of what anyone anywhere drives. I am sure they all have portable gas burner stoves,but we are still jostling with sausage & potato armed seniors for the free grills in the park. And not so senior at that. A lot of these folks simply aren’t old. Gary & Diane are probably in their early 50s. Couldn’t wait for their kids to finally get out of the house so they could drive around the country for four months. Four months?!! Takes quite a bit of seniority in North America to get four weeks of vacation. I found myself caught between pure envy ("Gee whiz, you lucky dogs!") and the Puritan/Protestant Work Ethic ("Get back to work, slack butt!")

Native son Kev is amused by my vexed reaction. This is the kind of life he is familiar with and aspires to. Come to think of it, Kev’s parents didn’t even wait until their kids were out of high school before taking off on long holidays without them. I always thought it was because they are from Liverpool England …or because they had six sons!
As I don’t plan on going gray, I may as well start nomading now. See you…whenever.

Trash & Treasures

One year before I moved to Perth, I came in for a visit to check things out. Get the lay of the land, as it were. There were two things that markedly stood out. One was climate shock. Perth was no less than 80 degrees warmer than Columbus, Ohio at that moment. The other was the amount of trash lying around. Big trash. Couches, chairs, tables and other furniture, toys, do-it-yourself project leftovers, home decorations, etc., just dumped on the curb and spilling into the street. Ewwww, this redefined "trashy neighborhood."

It was, in fact, time for the semi-annual "Bulk Kerb Collection" done by the city. Two weeks before this massive waste haul-off, people start putting their unwanted stuff on the curb. Expect broken and useless junk, but not all of it. Some people put items out that they just don't want anymore and can't/won't advertise it for sale or donate it to charity. They'll even 'display' it for easy viewing by curb crawlers. Yep, the 'hood becomes a giant freebie garage sale for those looking to furnish homes, patios, gardens and garages. Act fast because the 'good stuff' doesn't go unclaimed for long. We keep an eye out for planting pot alternatives like small refrigerator drawers, children's toy wheelbarrow or dump trucks which add extra visual appeal to our herb garden. So I have readjusted my viewpoint on this otherwise unsightly disposition. Noncollection times excepted, but if trash appears in front of an apartment building-how will the police know whom to ticket for littering? Ugh to the litterbugs.

Special collections also occur for garden greenwaste, hazardous wastes and a regular weekly collection for recyclables. Oz takes preserving Mother Earth seriously.

Gnomesville

We like to investigate new areas whenever we get the chance. This past Labour Day weekend we headed for Ferguson Valley to investigate the coal mining town of Collie [very clean and the sidewalks were littered with coins. I'm richer by 75 cents!] a number of wineries [count on that for any trip] and Gnomesville.

From mysterious beginnings more than a decade ago (no-one knows for sure who started it), a couple of meek lawn ornaments plonked near a roundabout in Dardanup has grown into a sprawling citadel, a virtual world of more than 1000 roadside gnomes. Garden variety gnomes, sports-playing gnomes, fishing gnomes, partying gnomes from all corners of the globe – they’re all left here with accompanying names and messages, usually richly pun-related. (Like The Rolling Gnomes, the Gnoman Empire, Sweet Gnome Alabama and travelling seniors like The Gray Gnomads.) The gnome community is self-protected by the rumour that incredible bad luck will befall anyone foolish enough to steal from or damage Gnomesville and it must be heeded as there is relatively little damage done here. Also rumored is that wishes are granted to those who add to the collection when they visit. Try to find space! Many are hiding in foliage, up in trees or after a bit of a walk in this once tiny map-consulting park space.

Kitschy? You betcha'. And it attracts all types passing through, near or around the area. It is not unusual to see a motorcyle posse or cruise ship tour bus join families, backpackers, retirees with caravan in tow, local civic groups, politicians and the occasional winery hopper walking about for a guffaw at the puns, photo opportunity or placement of their own gnome.

After all, there's no place like Gnome.