Something to think about

as you put your cup of coffee and something to nibble on down next to the computer.

Factor by which the average desktop computer keyboard reportedly contains bacteria compared to a standard toilet seat: 400 times.

Source: Good Weekend Number Crunch SMH Dec 8 2007.

WOW. 400 times that's quite a bit. Considering we all sit and eat and drink at the computer, and well I don't imagine we do it at the other, well I certainly don't. Not that I'm advocating antibacterial cleaning products (which IMHO are pure evil), but it certainly is something to think about as you tap away.

I decide to join the younger generation on Facebook, just to find what the fuss is all about. The very same day, indeed within hours, the Facebook Fiasco is the lead story on the SMH site. Ah well, I've had a fun couple of days fiddling around with it thus far. We'll see how it goes, I don't think I'm going to devote my life to it just yet. There's some fun stuff there- bookshelves and Scrubs quotes. It does seem to be rather competitive, you are judged by the number of friends you have.

Nucular Cheese

So, Phillip Adams wrote a great column yesterday, part of which reads:

It will take decades to build nuclear plants. And did you know that the much-vaunted value of uranium is somewhat exaggerated? It’s just 1 per cent of our mining exports. As Ian Lowe points out in the latest Quarterly Essay – demolishing Howard’s nuclear arguments – Australia makes more from the export of cheese.

That's quite amazing. Australia earns more from cheese exports than uranium exports! I've never seen Johnny on the news defending the cheese industry. I wonder why?

And in a truly scary moment today I learnt that I too suffer from a lifestyle threatening condition.




Thankfully, help is already readily at hand, due to Havidol.

Rhubarb Ginger Beer Sorbet

Now this is an amazing sorbet recipe. Sorbets and icecreams are so rewarding to make at home. They are so much more tasty than things available in plastic tubs in supermarkets, and of course you can make a dazzling array of flavours. You look like a culinary genius creating such stunning flavours but they are so easy to do!

This recipe spoke to me as soon as I saw it in the Good Weekend back in September. It was a great flavour and I know I want to make it again. I hope you make it and enjoy it, let me know. The recipe is by Andrew McConnell a chef now working in Melbourne who said that he created the recipe to serve with yoghurt cake a few years ago, but it's delicious enough to serve as a dessert in it's own right. Which is how we enjoyed it.

I of course have an ice-cream machine, along with most other kitchen gadget ever invented so I used that. The texture was sensational, very smooth. The colour was a gorgeous and vibrant pink. I made it over two days, simply because I ran out of time. It's very easy to do that with such a recipe. I did all but add the ginger beer one day, chilled the mixture overnight and added the ginger beer the next day and then churned it. It was probably the best result I've had from my ice-cream machine, so a days delay certainly didn't hurt things.

Rhubarb and Ginger Beer Sorbet
Serves 8

2.5 cm piece ginger, peeled and finely grated
225g sugar
300mL water
juice and zest of 1/2 lemon
1/2 vanilla bean, split in half lengthways
300g rhubarb, cut into 1 cm dice
2 tsp honey
180mL ginger beer

In a pan, simmer the grated ginger, sugar, water, lemon juice and zest and the vanilla bean for 5 minutes. Add the rhubarb to the pan and simmer until soft and pulpy.

Remove the vanilla bean and puree the rhubrab with the honey and all the poaching liquid. Strain the puree through a fine sieve and cool. Add the ginger beer and churn in an ice-cream machine.

If you don't have an ice-cream machine, pour the mixture into a plastic container and pop it into the freezer. After a couple of hours, crush the ice crystals that have formed, return to the freezer an crush every half-hour until set. The end result will be more granita than sorbet, but equally delicious.

Amateur Transplants

I just can't get enough of these boys. Priceless.

Polar Bears

Reading about the plight of polar bears makes me sad. Very sad indeed. Today, in the spirit of trying to read and then recycle some of the mounds of newspapers that I hoard until I have read them, I read a two page article from Good Weekend, printed back on March 31 2007. I'd picked up this article numerous times and always put it back down unread. Today I read it. And what a depressing read it is. Adult polar bears are losing weight. They used to weigh 295 kg on average in 1980, but were a mere 230 kg in 2004. There has been a 40% loss in the thickness of the Arctic ice in the past 25 years. The bears rely on the ice. They only feed whilst on ice, if it's too far between areas of ice they can drown trying to get to the next one.

And what is our government doing about this? Not much. Still not signing Kyoto. It's got a website. But what is it actually doing?

While they're still around, we can all enjoy things like this.

The Road

Wow, what an amazing book. I've read it twice in the past month or so. I wasn't planning to read it twice, but I had so many questions, and this haunting tale still played on my mind after I'd finished it, after bookgrouplist had dissected it for two weeks, that when looking about for a small book to take on holidays to Melbourne with me, I decided on a reread of The Road.

This is the second McCarthy that I have read. I read All The Pretty Horses a few years ago now, again with bookgrouplist. I don't remember many details from it now, but do remember sparse, clear prose. This book is even sparser, and clearer. As many have commented the style is almost poetic. The author is somewhat intrusive in this aspect though I think. To make the setting different from modern times, he has dispensed with apostrophes at random, and uses a lot of sentence fragments. The sentence fragments I don't mind in the least, but random placement of apostrophes is jarring to the modern reader. He also has either a Vast Vocabulary, or works with an online thesaurus open and continually running. Amazing words leap off the page- discalced, crozzled, cheroot.

We immediately enter a post-apocalyptic world somewhere in southern America, (See Rock City. A simple sentence early on, incomprehensible to the average Aussie reader actually gives it away) where an unnamed father and son are walking down the road, walking towards the coast, which looms as their only hope in a rather hopeless world. He has created a very convincing world. Several years earlier "The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions." The cause of the end of civilization as we currently enjoy it is never explored in the book. And it has become irrelevant. Nothing matters except ongoing survival, and that is fraught enough. The plant and animal life has all but died out. They hear a dog once, but otherwise the native world is dead, killed by the pall of dust that cakes the world and hides the sun.

What is the point of their journey on The Road? Many have argued about whether this book, and it's ending are optimistic or not. I don't really see how it can be. All potential human food sources are dead. The few remaining people are eeking out their existence, living off the shrinking remnants of the previous society. Ultimately, what hope can there be? The father is still hopeful for the survival of his son, even in these cirucmstances.

The ending is somewhat alarming. It just seems to stop. The last paragraph does not come from those before it. But I don't think it's an important enough problem to ruin the book. As with any road trip, it's the journey not the destination that is important, and this journey is quite the page turner. An important book, ignore it at your peril.