A Night at the Opera (House)

A night in Sydney for a fancy dinner (Aria) and a concert at the Opera House. Always fun. Always an amazing place to be. And iconic no matter the angle.

Sydney Ice Bear

Today is World Environment Day.

It's an important day, that doesn't get as much press and thought as it should.

This week in Sydney an Ice Bear was created to raise awareness about global warming, and the dire situation of the polar bear.

I hadn't heard of the Ice Bear programs before, but it's a fabulous concept. The ice sculptors create it and then it gradually melts away. People are allowed, and indeed encouraged to touch it- and in doing so touch the Arctic, and feel a part of the polar bears demise.

The Sydney Ice Bear is 1.8 metres high, the same height as the floating sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Ice less than 2 metres thick is too thin to survive the summer.

An informative exhibition was set up in the area, with some terrifying facts. 

Greenland is melting. Freeing one and a half Sydney Harbours per day!

Arctic soils hold twice as much carbon as our atmosphere. A warming Arctic will release this sequestered carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 and methane. Methane doesn't last as long in the atmosphere, but is 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, and may be ice free by 2030.

Which may mean that these will be the only sort of polar bears we can still see

A live webcam is broadcasting the Ice Bear from Customs House in Sydney. 

I learnt about the 1 million women campaign there too. And have joined up. They're looking for 1 million Australian women to pledge to cut a tonne of CO2. There are suggestions on how to do that, ways to pledge, and then track your progress. 

Raw Vegan Noncotti

I'm really not sure why I made this. I have absolutely no idea why it seemed so intriguing to me. It's not my thing at all. I don't really do raw food- well tomatoes, avocado, cucumber and fruit I guess. But I don't think I'll ever embrace a raw food diet. It seems somehow, well, wrong to my mind. Vegan is another concept that I will never fully embrace. What, give up cheese? Or butter? I'm quite happy to eat vegetarian foods, and the occasional vegan meal or snack. I don't go out of my way to avoid vegan foods, but similarly I don't really search them out. Which is why I have a tag label accidentally vegan on my low GI blog.

But for some reason after I read my friend Hannah's post last week, I was too intrigued to move on- despite her inclusion of carob, which I definitely don't eat. And found myself the very next day with ingredients to hand- nearly everything was already in the pantry-  I just had to buy some pecans. Too easy. It just had to be done.

I couldn't help but baulk at Hannah's chosen name for this dish. It's raw, so by definition can't be biscotti- Italian for twice cooked. So I initially dubbed them uncotti, but it's a bit too close to uncouth. So now I'm trying noncotti. Reminds me of nincompoop for some reason. Which is more pleasing.

Raw Vegan Noncotti

1 cup pecans
1/4 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 cup cocoa
pinch of Maldon salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
15mL coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 tblsp agave syrup


Place pecans, coconut, cocoa, salt and cinnamon in a food processor, and process until the mixture is finely crumbed.

Add coconut oil, vanilla paste, agave syrup and process until well combined, and the mixture holds together like a firm dough.

Shape the dough into a log on a biscuit tray lined with baking paper (resisting any temptation to take pictures at this rather scatological phase). Cut into more attractive strips.

Best served the next day to let flavours blend and the cocoa take up some moisture.



Notes
I harboured grave fears as to how my husband and son would perceive this treat that I had made (partly) for them. I greeted their suspicious looks calmly and told them it was Pecan Slice. It didn't work. My 10 year old son rejected it after one bite because the cocoa was too dark- he isn't a great fan of dark chocolate as yet, despite liking blue cheese and eating kilos of it without bothering with crackers or quince paste.

I offered up a piece to my husband the day this was made. He didn't like it, and wouldn't eat any more. With such vast quantities of cocoa it is rather like eating a big big truffle coated in too much loose cocoa. It can be rather drying on the tongue. This effect was less the next day when the cocoa had had more time to soak up moisture from the coconut oil and agave syrup. I liked them ok the first day, but they were better the next day I think.

I always like to have fancy cocoa in the cupboard for this sort of thing. Supermarket brands just don't cut it. Nice chocolate shops sell much more delicious cocoa. It's worth splurging on.

Hannah's recipe used vanilla extract. I had a tub of delicious vanilla paste in the cupboard so substituted some of that.

This was a fun experiment but I won't be adopting the raw vegan lifestyle anytime soon.

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking, a fabulous weekly meme at Beth Fish Reads.

13 Artists Children Should Know

I searched out this book for a school project for my son. I was keen to read it after finding and loving 13 Buildings Children Should Know. And I knew that I needed to read it when I could only name 2 of 3 artists featured on the cover. Try it. The top two are easy. The third stumped me. The style looked a bit familiar, but not the actual image.

Leonardo da Vinci
Jan Vermeer
Claude Monet
Henri Rousseau
Mary Cassatt
Vincent van Gogh
Henri Matisse
Paul Klee
Franz Marc
Pablo Picasso
Marc Chagall
Frida Kahlo
Andy Warhol

Of these, I was pleased to have heard of all but three of them. Rousseau, Klee and Marc have escaped my notice til now.  Eight of the 13 I could probably recall some of their major works and/or recognise their style! da Vinci, Vermeer (thank goodness there was that book about The Girl with the Pearl Earring a few years ago, otherwise this might have been different), Monet (one of my favourite artists, I made a pilgrimage to his garden at Giverney in 1998), van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Kahlo and Warhol.

Two women out of 13. Not bad perhaps. Kahlo has a recognisable style. Although it is a style I don't particularly like. I don't find redoing the same painting of your own monobrow all that inspiring or artistic I guess.

Some things I didn't know before I read this book.

There is a colour called Vermeer Blue.

I quite like Franz Marc's work, although am a bit disturbed by it. Franz Marc became famous for pictures of blue horses, yellow cows and red cats. He liked animals more than people, though that they were cleverer than we are as they don't try to be better than nature or destroy it.

The Saltimbanques were street artists, clowns, harlequins and actors who went from town to town with their show. Picasso did a painting of them. I imagine this was the inspiration for Cirque du Soleil's Saltimbanco.

Picasso invented Cubism.

Marc Chagall sounds French, but was born in Belarus.

Frida Kahlo contracted polio in childhood. She took up painting at 18 when recuperating from a motor vehicle accident that broke her back.

Andy Warhol bought a hairpiece at 25.

The cover artists are of course, Vermeer, van Gogh, and Rousseau.

Wondrous Words Wednesday 2/6/11

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a fabulous weekly meme hosted by Bermuda Onion, where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our weekly reading.  

I'm currently reading Robert Louis Stevenson's classic work Kidnapped. It's rather fascinating as a story, and intriguing too for its vocabulary. Published in 1886, but set in Scotland in 1751, it is choc full of anachronisms.

David, you shouldnae speak to me about your father.

So much so, that my Penguin edition has a 3 page glossary at the back. But still there are even more words that are new to me. Most of the words I'll feature here aren't in the glossary. I suspect that Kidnapped will supply enough words for many Wednesdays.

1. Risp. Verb

If the worst came to the worst, and your high relations (as I cannot suppose them to be somewhat of your blood) should put you to the door, ye can but walk the two days back again and risp at the manse door.

Make a grating sound (particularly on an uneven bar on which a ring slides, used instead of a door knocker)

http://www.electricscotland.com/history/leith/22.htm

(The manse was the  house of the parish minister)

2. Rowans. Noun

To be sure, I laughed over this; but it was rather tremulous laughter; and I was glad to get my bundle on my staff's end and set out over the ford and up the hill upon the farther side; till, just as I came on the green drove-road running wide through the heather, I took my last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard where my father and my mother lay.

I initially thought he was referring to grave stones or monuments, although it is unusual for poor people to have large grave markers of course. Turns out rowans are trees- and apparently meant to scare away the witches.

http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/tfl.rowan.html

3. Firth. Noun.

There was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying anchored in the firth; both of which, for as far away as they were, I could distinguish clearly; and both bought my country heart into my mouth.

Not an unfamiliar word.

But a different meaning here. Reasonably obvious from context. I suspected harbour, and was close enough.


Firth is the word in the Lowland Scots language and in English used to denote various coastal waters in Scotland and England. In mainland Scotland it is used to describe a large sea bay, or even a strait. (from wiki)

Holiday Reading

Sadly, I don't have any imminent holidays on the horizon. But a recent article in the travel section of The Sydney Morning Herald got me to thinking about selecting holiday reading. An important activity for every reader.

Last year I took a magnificent trip to Singapore, Dublin, Paris and Luxembourg. Naturally, I fretted about my holiday reading for weeks. Particularly difficult because I was taking actual books, not files on an e-reader- but I'm certainly starting to see the allure.

I was even planning themed reading, which I don't often do. I selected James Joyce's The Dubliners for Dublin, and Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris to take as my major reads. I planned to fill my eyes with visions of the city during the day, and fill my mind with visions of its literature at night. Which is a fabulous plan. It just didn't work.

I was reading Michael Ende's The Never Ending Story when I set out from Australia. I expected to finish it on the plane to Singapore. I didn't. Then I thought I'd finish it during my week in Singapore. I didn't. I didn't even manage to finish it during my week in Dublin. And it was only as the final days of our fortnight in Paris were drawing to a close that I managed to finish it. Why? It wasn't a bad book by any stretch. In fact I quite enjoyed it. But busy schedules and jet lag meant that I didn't actually have that much time for reading.

Progress measured in single pages- I kept falling asleep and dropping the book open

I did read the first story of The Dubliners. And whilst it didn't make all that much sense to me, it was actually readable, which was more than I was expecting from my first brush with Joyce.

Notre Dame de Paris remains unopened, waiting from my next trip to the City of Light.

A Full Moon and a Bad Photographer

When you're trying to take a photo of the moon, but you don't know what setting you should use, and the real photographer is asleep, you get quite a range of results.

sometimes it looks really cool

sometimes not