(Not) tasting the difference

This moussaka tasted a lot better than it looks here. When I saw lamb mince at the supermarket this week, I suddenly remembered making this dish quite often years ago. So I thought I'd give it another go. It's time-consuming: first cooking the meat sauce, next sprinkling the sliced eggplant with salt and draining it for an hour (though some newer recipes say not to bother with this) followed by quickly grilling (i.e. broiling) the slices, then thickening a white sauce and adding grated cheese and egg – and finally assembling the lot and baking for an hour.

Lately Allen and I have been eating very simple meals. Several times a week, I don't even cook but just grab something like a frozen chicken pie, baked beans or even porridge with trimmings on colder evenings. Allen seems unconcerned as long as there's something on his plate around tea-time. Though he used to enjoy good food as much as I do, now he just doesn't seem to care what he eats. And certain textures give him trouble (e.g. some cuts of meat, stringy vegetables like spinach). So easily managed foods hold more appeal than tasty dishes that are a challenge to handle or chew. Where he once appreciated and welcomed new flavours and spicy foods, now I have to give him much blander meals and add any interesting flavours to my portion only (anything hot, anything spicy etc.) The result is that I'm losing interest in cooking.

Allen couldn't remember ever eating moussaka, but he ate this whole portion. I had to cut up the slightly crusty top, as he's forgotten that knives are best used for cutting, not for pulling things apart with. I couldn't blame him too much for that, though, because my super-efficient oven does crisp up things a bit more than should happen at this temperature. However, the flavour, I thought, was exquisite: hints of nutmeg coming through the custardy topping and the eggplant and lamb such a wonderful combination. Allen's verdict, though, was less enthusiastic: "Different", was all he said when prompted for a reaction. And 'different' now is a polite way of saying 'can we not have it too often?' It's such a sad thing, this loss of good taste in food. Baked beans on toast would please him just as much, I'm sure. Maybe even more, as beans can easily be scooped up with a spoon. 

The gerontologist told me at Allen's annual check-up this year that the same part of the brain that governs speech also controls a good part of the chewing and swallowing functions. So whenever Allen has any health problems (a cold, his recent pneumonia etc.), we must immediately thicken all liquids as he's likely to ingest fluid into the lungs while trying to drink or eat. The swallowing and breathing functions are getting mixed up, it seems. I wonder if somehow this partly accounts for Allen's diminished interest in new and 'different' flavours. After all, if he's mainly concerned with 'Can I eat it OK?', he can't be too bothered about 'How does it taste?' Like so much else about this dreadful condition, the loss of good taste in food is a cruel blow.

Welcome back, me!

After such a long drought, I hardly know where to begin. Blame Facebook, some addictive computer games, Donna Leon's Commisario Brunetti novels and my wonderful vegie garden for taking up so much of my free time, leading to this absence of postings for the past two months. 

Charlotte Maudie and her Mum

My gorgeous grand-daughter has to accept a small share of the blame, too. Whenever I've been around her in these first six months of her life, I've had no interest in any other pastime. Just look at this photo and you'll see why!

But now I'm determined to mend my ways and get back here more often.

Speaking of my vegetables, this looks like becoming a bumper year. During the winter I was able to have the lower vegie bed extended, the middle beds raised a little and properly drained and a new upper bed constructed where there was formerly just a sloping bank of clay. I tipped a total of 80 bags of mushroom compost onto all these beds, as well as some soil and sand. And after weeks of letting all that settle, I began planting. Not surprisingly, everything is flourishing. We're already harvesting a number of greens, plus stringbeans and radishes. I've even planted sweet corn this year, which I've only grown in Tasmania before, never Queensland.

Allen is also doing well – ploughing on with his word puzzles and working out every day on his exercise bike. Blue Care is sending in a physiotherapist once a week to help Allen improve his balance and strength, which deteriorated somewhat during the winter. We visit the library just about every week, too. He's moved on to large-print books now. It's not that he needs this for his vision. It is just easier for him to face up to a smaller amount of text on each page. Certainly, 'processing' anything (whether that's ideas, spoken utterances or tasks) is becoming more problematic for him. But he doesn't give up. Even if he can't finish half the books he starts, we are gradually getting better at selecting topics that will hold his interest and be right for his ability level. He's reading more biography and history now, and also enjoying some of the wonderful illustrated books that are available about historical periods – e.g. A Photographic History of World War II.

Shorter, more frequent postings: that's my resolve! So I'll close now and finish making the fish chowder based on the leavings of a large cod my son-in-law left in my freezer a few weeks ago. I cut fillets off the fish for last night's tea (photo); the rest of the fish made the broth base for tonight's dinner.

Pumpkin and pastry

There is so much happening here that I have hardly been near the computer in days. Well, that's not quite true, but it is a convincing opener, right?

JW is making her annual winter visit. It's always lovely to have her company, not only because she gardens, vacuums and today, even did my ironing! No. The fact is she and her faithful pooch Lik-Lik are lovely company. We have loads of good talk, good food and the odd (i.e. daily) drop of red or white.

JW's been instructing A in using watercolours so he can add some colour to his drawings. Tomorrow we are all off to lunch, then Thursday is A's final day in the 6-week rehab program, and Friday his first art class. On the weekend, Reality Bites begins. So I guess there is quite a bit going on – even without counting my trip to the tip today with a trailer-load of prunings and then a stop at the landscape supply place on the way home to fill the trailer with hoop pine mulch. Later this week we will spread that on a section of garden that JW and I cleaned out earlier this week.

Last week while cleaning out the vegie garden we harvested the last of last year's pumpkins – three of mixed size that I found under the winter weeds. Here are two of them, in an arrangement that JW photographed as a fit subject for A's next watercolour project.

This afternoon I turned the art project into a pumpkin pie to take along tomorrow, when we have lunch with Dee, a very special Tasmanian friend who is wintering in nearby Noosa this month.

And since I was making pastry, I thought I might as well double the quantity and make a quiche for tea (see below). It was a spinach and ricotta quiche, with a few trimmings of mushrooms. But the frozen spinach more or less disintegrated during preparation, so the final result was a delicate light green in colour. Quite pretty, and tasty too. But with colouring better suited to a Christmas meal, I thought.

If this has been a very quotidian post, part of the reason is that I'm writing to stay in touch with daughter ZH, who is somewhere in Israel, attending a conference. This is her first overseas trip without hubby for company, so all the mundane news is partly for her benefit.

Summer bounty

Here's what we're picking in the garden at the moment:

The basil just keeps coming – the box above has kept us supplied throughout the summer. We've made pesto several times, and we use the leaves liberally, with tomato and feta, on toast and pizzas.The pumpkin goes into pies and soups. Brazilian cherries, cooked with apple, make a great jam. I take the pips out before cooking, but tie these up in a piece of cheesecloth to keep with the fruit during cooking. This batch of cherry jam was cooked a bit longer than planned, because friends arrived just as I was about to test the mix. The slightly longer cooking time caused the mix to go a bit darker than I like – as you can see in the difference between the colour of the fruit and the colour of the finished jam. The flavour is OK, but the texture is a bit stiffer than we like. This fruit also makes a great jelly to serve with cold meat, but jelly-making is a bit time-consuming for my taste!

Our four mango trees are all heavy with fruit. We have to pick them while still green, with just a flush of yellow-pink beginning to show (as in the basket photo), or else the possums and flying foxes will strip the fruit down to the nut before we get to it. This bunch was about to be delivered to a neighbour, but nearly everyone around here has a good supply of mangoes this year. I usually mark each piece of fruit with the date picked, and then we choose the earliest picked among the ripe ones for our breakfast (or in Allen's case, for morning tea – to ensure he has extra energy for his daily word puzzle).

My favourite fruit treat this summer is Mango Jam. Here's the recipe: cook 3 cups of peeled and sliced mango, one sliced lemon and 1/2 cup of water until tender. Cool slightly and put through the blender until smooth. Add 1 cup unsweetened pineapple juice and 1 teaspoon ground ginger to the mango-lemon mix, measure how many cupfuls this makes, and then and cook all until near-boiling. Meanwhile, warm sugar in a bowl in the oven (1/2 cup of sugar per 1 cup of fruit mixture for this one), then add the warmed sugar to the fruit and bring to the boil. (Fruit mix will start to darken from the time sugar is added; pre-warming the sugar reduces the amount of time that sugar and fruit need to cook together, and this helps to retain good fruit colour.) Cook only until the desired consistency is reached. To test, have some saucers cooling in the freezer. When the fruit mixture seems thick enough (it should go a bit wrinkly on the top when you stir it), drop a spoonful onto one of the chilled saucers and roll it around. If the jam wrinkles nicely, it's definitely ready. I don't even wait that long, as I like my jam runny. As long as the thin layer of jam on my testing saucer isn't too liquidy, I stop cooking and start to bottle.

In this warm climate, I've had trouble keeping my jams free of mould. This year I've switched from the vinegar-dipped plastic-sheet covers I used to use, and I'm trying paraffin instead. It's called 'preserving wax' and comes in a solid block (see package in jam photo above). You melt the block in the top of a double-boiler, and pour a thin film over the hot jam in each jar. The next day, you top up with an additional dollop of melted paraffin, making a 12mm wax seal on the top of each jar, with no airspace between jam and seal. I add metal covers and clips later, to minimise accidental damage to the wax, which would be too easy to dislodge, either by me or by mice! We'll see if this method works better than plastic sheeting. If it doesn't, then I'm going to need a second fridge for my preserves and jams, or else a freezer to store the uncooked fruit. Of course, I could reboil the glasses of potted jam in a traditional preserving pan, thus sealing on the metal lids. But over-cooking invariably results in a dark-coloured jam with too stiff a texture. So I hope the wax will do the trick this year. Bon appetit!