Wednesday 6th October

I think I’m over yesterdays rant, well, over but still keeping it in mind anyway.

Added to my list of food I refuse to eat, it’s a short list anyway, only one item originally, it is now 2 things.

If anyone can give me a recipe for cooking eggplant/aubergine that can make it even almost palatable please send it along. I keep persisting in trying to find a recipe for it that can make it taste any different to partially rotted green waste in a compost heap, but so far it still smells and tastes like the most vile smelling rotting vegetation I have known.

And yes, I’ve tried slicing, covering in salt, dipping in batter and frying, making a vegetarian curry, that Greek dish that reminded me of what I used to feed the muscovy ducks, every possible permutation of steaming, frying, baking, roasting grilling that I can think of. It still tastes like crap.

Oh, the other thing I refuse to eat is tripe, so I don’t have a fussy type of nature. But Eggplant/Aubergine now joins the list. Finally, I have given up trying to find a way of making it edible.

Tiff is still away from work, she has a really bad dose of pnuemonia, the worst I’ve seen her, she is definitely not a well lady.

I mentioned Adrian bought me a dozen bottles for my home made ginger beer last week. I added in another bottle of my pineapple/pawpaw/chilli sauce as well to the 3 bottles of ginger beer I swapped for the shirt, I still have a few bottles of sauce in the cupboard.

He phoned about 5 pm yesterday. He could barely talk, his tongue had gone numb, his eyes and nose were watering, he was sweating from every pore in his body, and he’d made the mistake of rubbing his eyes with his fingers after dipping a sausage into the sauce then licking his fingers to get the last drop.

I’d warned him it had had a few months to cure, and was probably a lot hotter than when it was first made, but this is Adrian, he’d put about a tablespoon full onto a single sausage.

He came out to Ranadi today, he had recovered, but is treating the sauce with a lot more respect now. I find it spicy, but not excessively so, but I eat raw chillies at the market to find the hottest ones anyway, and I love vinegar cured chillies on a salad sandwich. Without a lot of that green stuff as well. Add more chilli is always a good motto.

I’ve been tracking my son Hayden in the Porirua Council elections, he seems to be holding his place well, and should get voted in when the voting is closed and the results are finalised next week, allowing for postal voting. He went to his first Housie night this week, commandeered the microphone for a couple of minutes and picked up 45 more votes, well they said they’d mark their ballot papers and post them in anyway. He didn’t say if he won anything at Housie though.

Employment still seems to be tight in Auckland, Stef is still unemployed, been a while now, and things aren’t looking any better short term. The whole economy is turned down, and I don’t think there will be a huge turnaround even with summer coming eventually.

I’ve been in touch with Computenz NZ, the training and assessment organisation in New Zealand. They feel I can slot back into their organisation if I go back, I’m still registered with them as an Assessor, I’ll have to do a bit of retraining due to a lot of the early Unit Standards having altered, but nothing that I haven’t been keeping up with thanks to being still on the mailing list for Horticulture Training Standards Moderation Boards.

It’ll be a good job at worst, and a good way to stay in the training and teaching field. It’s either that or chase down some contacts in BOC Gases and see about working for BOC as a welding demo person. Or find some small craft bakery and work there. Depends on how I feel I guess, One of the good things about having had a few choices at times, and making the most of them. Or find something completely different to learn. The last choice sounds good to me, but probably not all that practical, and as I’ve never let practical be a consideration, it may be the one I choose eventually.

Everything at work has slowed down this week, timber is delayed, the roof for the prop house is a bit behind schedule, as to be expected, with Tiff away there isn’t anyone available with all the contacts, so the sooner we get the nursery set up the better and we can increase the office staff and spread the workload a bit, and give Tiff more time to be a CEO instead of everything from office girl to Manager.

We’ll make it eventually.