Rednesday

This year marks a decade since I first became attracted to the colour red. 

In 1999 I returned home to Melbourne from travelling through Asia to settle down for a while; find a job and a home. Regular life seemed so colourless compared to the cities and villages I had travelled in.

I don't remember if I sought out these clogs or if I saw them in a store window and just knew I had to have them. All I remember is that I was home from travelling through countries where red is the colour of prosperity, and I bought these shoes.

In those days I wore them wherever I went, though these days they sit by the front door – easy to slip on when I go outside to empty the compost bucket, check on the chooks or pull the flying fox rope back up for Z.

Pollan Count

A few days ago our friend Jason sent us a link to a great interview with author Michael Pollan. If you have a spare 20 minutes and you're interested in the ethics of food, I recommend you watch the clip.

One of his main points is about how sneaky the food industry is. In his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan writes that if a food has more than five ingredients, you should avoid it. As a result there are many companies coming forward and saying their products are simpler. Such as Haagen-Dazs who has released Haagen-Dazs 5, a five-ingredient Haagen-Dazs product. 

"You know, it’s still ice cream," Pollan says. "Ice cream is wonderful, but we shouldn’t treat it as health food because it now has only five ingredients."

Pollan is also an advocate for the local food movement, and says companies such as Frito-Lay are advertising that their potato chips are local.

"Now, you have to remember, any product is local somewhere. Right? This food doesn’t come from Mars. But to think that Frito-Lay as a local potato chip is really a stretch," he laughs.

He also writes extensively on the evils of high-fructose corn syrup and says companies such as Snapple and Coca-Cola are now making a virtue of the fact that some of their products contain real sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup.

What that is, is an implicit health claim for sugar. And that is an incredible achievement on the part of industry, to convince us that getting off of high-fructose corn syrup has made their products healthier. It has done no such thing. Biologically, there’s no difference between high-fructose corn syrup and sugar.

And so, Pollan has had to update his rules:

...if you want to avoid all this, simply don’t buy any food you’ve ever seen advertised. Ninety-four percent of ad budgets for food go to processed food. I mean, the broccoli growers don’t have money for ad budgets. So the real food is not being advertised. And that’s really all you need to know.

J-Dog

My sister Emily's boyfriend, J-Dog is 30 today.

Not only is he great for Emily, but he is great for our whole family and great for you too if you happen to meet him one day.

He is remarkably thoughtful and funny and oh so lovely. Last year he did an impromptu act for one of our nieces at her birthday party, he sent us a thank you card after he stayed with us, and he makes breakfast in bed for Emily most weekends.

Happy birthday, Jono!!

We think you're just tops.

xx

PS. Plant Me Then Eat Me

Dear PJ's Parents,

Thank you so much for the dinner voucher you sent me for Stepmother's Day. I used it last night and shard a delicious meal with PJ. We felt so privileged to be eating so extravagantly and appreciated every mouthful.

As we were leaving the restaurant we chatted to a woman we know who works there. Knowing that I had a voucher she asked if it was my birthday. She looked stunned when I told her why I had received it and from whom.

She too is a stepmother, but unlike me, she was not recognised or acknowledged on Mother's Day. Not by her stepkids, because they don't want their mum to think they align themselves with her, not by her partner who takes for granted everything she does for his kids, and not by herself, because she didn't know she was entitled to.

Thank you for acknowledging my role. As the new partner, I have insecurities about Z's feelings towards me; that he, as well as everyone else will forever compare me to his birth mum, PJ's ex-wife, your ex-daughter-in-law.

All anyone wants is to be seen and accepted as themselves. The thoughtfulness of your gift made me realise that I am.

Much love to you both from me at the kitchen table,

Meg

Contrail

From Doobybrain:

Contrail is a concept bicycle device that attaches above the wheel of a bike and covers the bicycle wheel with a layer of chalk. The chalk then creates a trail or mark on the surface of the road, turning the bike into a sort of large drawing utensil. 

The concept, developed by Pepin Gelardi of Studio Gelardi focuses around the idea of safety in numbers. By using this device, bicyclists will have a clearer path on which to ride safely and out of the way of vehicular traffic. At the same time, as more bicyclists using the Contrail go over a line created by a cyclist before them, the line gets brighter allowing drivers to clearly see a marked bike path where there might be none. It’s sort of similar to what happens when a dirt path appears in a grassy field after lots of people have taken the same shortcut over a period of time.

Harmony Day

Yesterday mid-morning I went up to the local neighbourhood house for Harmony Day. Although the official day was on March 21, for logistical reasons, we celebrated it here yesterday.

One of the highlights of the festivities was chatting to the ten Togolese new immigrants over cups of tea and scones and finding out all kinds of things. For example, in Togo, babies are named according to which day of the week they are born. Incidentally, when I was in Thailand I learnt that babies are named after the position in their family, eg one or two etc.

As new Australians entering the workforce, it was thought that the Togolese should know a little about Aussie rules football, so they would be able to participate in conversations around the water cooler. This was another highlight of the day: Listening to O talk about the clubs and what kind of person generally barracks for each one, and why they have the mascots and colours that they do.

After our guests had selected which teams they were going to barrack for henceforth, we all participated in a handballing competition. Me, the little Aussie tomboy who went to my first and only ballet class as a kid in my football gear, came last.

Axis Mundi

I had a meeting in Melbourne on Monday morning and then spent the afternoon with my mum for a belated Mother's Day celebration. We started off by walking up to Craft Victoria, where my friend Tash is having an exhibition of her work.

I took an entire memory card of photos, but not a single one does the show justice. The work feels other-worldly but my photos all came out flat. The porcelain, the scrolled paper, the poetic codes, the charted maps and the shadows created by the towers. How do I capture both the scale and detail? The boldness of the ethereal?

In her artist statement, Tash says:

Ultimately, Babel evokes a spiral passage both outward and inward. To unravel the scrolls initiates a return to the spine – the axis mundi, the source of a universal native tongue – love.

And here, the axis mundi of another world, a Mother's Day gift from PJ, Z and I, left in the bush for Mother Nature.

Vegetable Victory

They did it!! 

Last night at the Vogue Entertaining + Travel Produce Awards, my sister Kate and brother-in-law Bren won the top award for their organic vegetables, and a gold medal for their freerange organic eggs.

From their blog:

We are a Certified Organic mixed family farm in Daylesford, Victoria. We focus on sustainability and biodiversity. We have orchards, market gardens and chickens. We work with the seasons and in any given year will produce up to 40 varieties of apples, hazelnuts, berries, free range eggs and up to 30 different vegetables, often with several varieties of each. 

We enjoy growing heirloom varieties with lots of different flavours and colours... We sell produce to local cafés and restaurants and at farmer's markets in Daylesford, Castlemaine and Melbourne, at Collingwood Children's Farm and the Abbotsford Convent. 

Come and see us for some great tasting fresh organic food.

Oh we will! Mazel tov, mazel tov, mazel tov!!

Daylesford Organics

Not only are these vegetables famous, but I am related to them.

My sister Kate and my brother-in-law Bren, who together run Daylesford Organics, are flying up to Sydney today for the 2009 Vogue Entertaining + Travel Produce Awards, for which their vegies and eggs have been nominated.

Good luck, you guys!!

You can see more delicious photos on their blog.