HSC HO HUMM

So here we are at the end of a lacklustre year where I decided that trying to understand the marking system of the HSC is like trying to understand some alien life force that bares no resemblance to anything we regard as real on this earth.

Ok, Lacklustre maybe over stating things, as family life is always busy and makes for a hectic ride at times.  We were all healthy and achieved well, but Steve's demotion did tend to put a dampener on the year.  Particularly when he was replaced in his position of ten years by a boss who is, shall we say, a little green, and Steve is widely expected to help out in the spirit of being a team player. As can well be imagined, he spends most of his time bemoaning this or that and generally feeling decidedly uncharitable in the 'still do most of your old job, just not get paid for it' stakes.

Sarah was our guinea pig in the coveted HSC stakes, and we placed all our money on her not only getting a place but blitzing the field. However an early mishap at the trials brought about by an absent teacher and a culpable lack of professionalism from said teacher to:
1. tell her she had plateaued in her abilities, and to
2. neglect to provide any feedback to students sitting their trials so that they may perform their best.
This meant that Sarah bombed in her Trial English paper and on the back of being told the teacher felt she had plateaued while the rest of the class where improving, all but destroyed all her confidence in herself and took the mojo out of her HSC prep.  A particularly cruel thing for a professional to do, particularly to possibly the best and brightest student she will ever have the fortune to teach in her career.

I maybe biased, I am her loving mother.  But come on, her entire school career has led me to this conclusion, I am not facing the world through distorted rose coloured glasses.
Every year she finished top of her class taking out the academic achievement award through Primary school.  For years 5 and 6 she attended an Opportunity Class where she was in a class of children with similarly high academic abilities.  None-the-less she came out top and was awarded DUX at the end of year 6.
Move onto High school and her stellar career continued. Unlike most clever students, instead of finishing first in one or two subjects she would finish first in all but one or two subjects, often being the only person to elicit spontaneous school wide applause during the obligatory 'hold your applause to the end' instruction.  She showed promise to all who knew her, teachers, parents, students and community people alike, and she held this esteem in good grace and with amazing humility.
So no, I am not deluded.  This girl has something special and her star is yet to finish rising.  So why, at the crux of her school career, the point where she is about to dive into the most defining part does a teacher so categorically set about to destroy her confidence and belief in herself? This girl who was always so positive and encouraging to her classmates and whose personal motto is "Only Anything is Possible".  She's a doer, involved in everything, never afraid to have a go, enjoys a challenge and would bend over backwards to learn and understand new concepts.  This girl has most definitely not peaked, nor plateaued.

This whole episode has left me wondering, is the HSC in its present format fair?  A quick internet search reveals, apart from this 2013 article, that most commentators do indeed believe it is fair.  However I do notice that the vocal commentators do tend to be representatives from the selective or private schools in predominately metropolitan areas.  Nothing is heard from the smaller disadvantaged rural school.  Why?  Could it be that a system, that to me, appears to favour larger schools with a concentration of the 'more able students' versus smaller schools who also may have a small concentration of more able students but are also more likely to have a corresponding concentration of less able students that must then factor into any moderation.
Let me explain, because two factors I believe fed into the apparent unfairness of Sarah's final results. I should explain that she did do very well and we are pleased with and proud of her 85.3 ATAR score.  It enables her to get into the Uni subject that she desires, so a higher mark was not necessary.  As Sarah said, I am happy to let the 90's go to the people who needed those marks to get into their courses. Ever gracious.  For me I want to understand the system because I believed she would, based on her standing in relation to the rest of her class in her entire school career, achieve over 90, possibly even high 90's.  Sarah is our first, first hand experience of the NSW HSC.  Steve and I did our year 12 certificate in the ACT where we had 100% of our mark based on continuous assessment.  We knew all along how we were going and could adjust subject choice term by term as we progressed in order to tweek our final outcome based on our demonstrated strengths and weaknesses.

Firstly, with the NSW HSC it appears that it is vitally important who comes first in the assessment component of the course.  First place getter has the honour of applying the highest HSC exam score to their own assessment mark...........What?  It does my head in, but apparently this is some convoluted way of moderating the schools against each other, and a better explanation about how this works can probably be found elsewhere on the web.  But to me it seems that you are not being assessed solely on you and how you individually do, you are tied to your cohort in a quite twisted way.
Let's run a little scenario: A group of higher achieving students, lets say three or four in the class are performing well above their peers.  As the person who comes first in the course is determined by the teacher through their assessments it is feasible that a favoured student could be deliberately elevated to first position.  Then they are guaranteed the best test score to be applied to their assessment mark regardless of whether they earned it.  Second, third and fourth, even if they decided to study their hardest and try and make up for their lower assessment mark will have to take the lower test score as their assessment mark.  Student A is liked and promoted by the teacher to first in class and scores 90. Students B,C and D also doing very well but only score 88,85 and 84 respectively.  Come HSC test time, Student A already knows he is set and decides to party instead of study particularly hard. Students B,C and D are really keen to do their best and study extremely hard to try and make up ground.  At the test Student A scores 70, Student B scores 98, Student C scores 90 and student D scores 87.  The assessment marks get moderated and Student A walks away with top mark even though he only scored top for 50% of the course.

Secondly, lets look at the socio economic position of the school.  A small regional or rural school with a wide spread of abilities versus a large metropolitan school with a lesser spread of abilities.  At our school, from the example above, take a situation where you have not one outlier, but three or four. In a small cohort of say 30 pupils, the statistical model will allow for one outlier, but not four, so the three that didn't rank first will be dragged down by their cohort.  For the outliers at the bottom, apart from the very last position, this system would pull the remaining outliers back up.  So this is a good look for disadvantaged schools as it doesn't make their scores look quite so bad, but by doing this they sacrifice the top outliers.
If those same top outliers were in a much larger school, say of 200 pupils, the statistical spread would allow for them to be much closer to the top and their actual score.  With (probably) less likelihood of the bottom outliers being quite as low as the small rural school, when the moderation process occurs the ones who didn't finish first would not be dragged as low, infact there would be very little adjustment to their raw score. Imagine the difference between stretching a piece of elastic of 30cm length over a distance of 70cm, versus concentinaing a 200cm piece over a distance of 40cm.  If each cm  mark represents a student and the distance stretched or concertinaed is the range of HSC scores. Obviously small disadvantaged and rural schools will struggle with this system. Yet their hands are tied to speak out about this because to admit you are disadvantaged by attending these schools for HSC is to further chase away the more able students and further hamper your ability to ever score well as a school.
Added to this situation is the the notion that certain schools like to be seen as marking hard so that when their pupils do better than expected in the HSC exam, they can gain a benefit in being moderated up.  In playing this game and trying to play the system, students and the overall integrity of the system are compromised.  A student can end up with the triple whammy of, being deliberately marked hard in the assessment component, failing to make first place in the cohort, yet still very bright in the scheme of things, and have the remaining cohort of a relatively small number under perform and drag down her weighting.
Whilst trying to devise a convoluted system that is supposedly fair to everyone it turns out to be just another system open to manipulation and designed to make certain sectors look good.  That is raise the bottom cohort of disadvantaged schools as that is politically expedient and maintain the status quo of the better performing larger schools of mainly middle and upper class backgrounds.  What makes the system even worse is that IT IS NOT TRANSPARENT.

Surely any assessment system must have at its core transparency.  Students never ever find out what their exam marks were. In English they will never know if they excelled or bombed in creative writing, was it the essay writing that gave them the bulk of their score or the short answer.  In art was the major work a defining factor or was it the essay in their final mark.  How can a person get to the end of their thirteen years of schooling, and be assessed in the biggest and most comprehensive exam of their life, and not find out in what areas they excelled and what areas they did less well? In short, they finish school not truly knowing where their strengths lie.  Now that's crazy, because it is their comparison with the rest of the students across the state, not just those in their school class cohort that will give them a true indication of how well they really did.

So why do I care?  The HSC is over and it's greater relevance on later life is practically zip once you make it into Uni.  Even now there are many paths into Uni so the ATAR mark, which is correlated from the HSC score is meaning less and less.  Well as I wrote earlier, Sarah is our guinea pig in  a system that prior to this we have had very little experience of.  Next up, starting year 11 next year is Evan, and he wants to score as highly as possible - well that's the point isn't it?  So how do we learn from Sarah's experience?  I certainly don't want to face a situation where he gets his confidence shattered, like Sarah had hers, but more importantly I want to understand how he can achieve true to his abilities and not be unduly penalised by attending that same small regional or rural school that Sarah did.

So yeah a relatively lacklustre year all things considered, but we're still here kicking and fighting, and of course, all things can only be up from here for 2015....can't they. But then again we still have that Federal mob in power and with their insistence on dismantling the family tax benefit system, household finances are going to stretch even tighter. A child at Uni, a pay cut and a winding back of benefits, I guess the belt is going to get tighter so that we become lifters instead of leaners, or maybe we'll just become even leaner.

For now let's say farewell  to 2014 with a bang and a smile.  Another year over, Christmas round the corner and a fabulous family hanging out and spending time together, when all is said and done, at the end of the day, it doesn't actually get much better than that.

The next blog

I Started to write about my traumatic time in Darwin and promised to get straight on to the other major upheaval that was happening in my life at the same time.  It has taken me a couple of months to get my head space together to get around to writing about what else was going on.

As I wrote in my last blog I miscarried my baby, and although it was relatively early in the pregnancy, I was devastated.  I had never miscarried before and after three very healthy pregnancies I had no reason to believe that the fourth would not follow the same suit.  I already had my head around baby number 4 and had emotionally welcomed it into my life and family.  So yes it was extremely painful to lose (him or her).

Meanwhile, someone else very close to me was also dying.  My Father who had been diagnosed around six months earlier with inoperative pancreatic cancer was rapidly going down hill.  He was given two years of good quality life expectancy, but it was becoming evidently clearer that that was not going to be the case.

30 May 2007
Diary Entry....
...Library again - sent email to everyone.
Dad not well, need to contact Lezah or Murray. Will wait until my emotions have settled.

Had a lovely night out at Stokes Wharf. Lots of tables over looking the working Harbour. Heaps of food shops to choose from and live music for atmosphere.
All happy/sad mixed together.

On top of this a major family feud was in the making as well.  A feud that would demand that family members take sides.  It was the emotion of the time, dealing with a dying father, who needed a lot of care, a mother who was increasingly surcoming to the ravages of dementia and the opinions of five siblings who all thought they knew what was the best course of treatment.  It was definitely the ingredients for a lot of drama.
I was caught in the middle of the situation, trapped in Darwin, so geographically challenged as to being able to do anything.  Dad and the rest of the family were in Canberra.  I was miscarrying my baby and emotionally wrought. Then came the phone calls from both sides of the family.  Telling me about the dire state of dad's health and how I just had to fly home straight away.  Some said I should stay, some said I should go, I felt tugged and pulled in all directions when all I wanted to do was curl up into a small ball and cry and cry and cry.  But life marches on and it doesn't let you do that.


My mother was an angel at this time and I will never forget the support that she offered me over the phone.  She was facing the prospect of losing her true love and life long partner, but still had enough beauty and courage within her to offer her daughter some love, sympathy and support.  I am so touched by how she could do that totally selfless act and will forever be indebted to her.  What an incredible woman!  She understood perfectly my difficulty in travelling at this time and offered me unconditional acceptance of whatever decision I came to.  (I have tears rolling down my cheeks as I write this).

In the end I waited till I had the Doctor's all clear to travel and I left my own family in Darwin and travelled to Canberra on what they call the redeye flight.  It leaves Darwin at midnight.  Unfortunately I just missed seeing dad as he died just before I could get a flight.  I did however get to Canberra in time to take part in the funeral preparations and experience first hand the sibling feud that was flaring up between my brother Gary and sister Lezah.

I am not even going to try and dissect that issue as it is deep seated and terribly complex.  I may one day attempt it, but this blog is not the time or the place.  But it did cause an awful lot of tension and nastiness to erupt between us all.  I didn't have a support network to help me cope with the double situation of my father's death and the sibling nastiness.  I was already in a very fragile state from my miscarriage.  It was all a recipe for a later emotional break down on my part.  But that was not to occur for another six months, this was just the planting of the seeds.  Add a few more issues and a tummy bug and I was a basket case, but that a subject for another blog also.

I'll get onto the Canberra bit in later blog too.  For now however we continued our sight seeing around Darwin while I got regular updates from the family about how dad was progressing.  None of the news sounded good.

On the first of June we went to Fanny Bay goal.  I found it freaky looking at all of the cells. Afterwards we went to a swanky cafe in Cullen Bay.  They had a toilet which had situated its urinal to look out through a window at the rest of the cafe.  It was a one way window, so they could look out but the cafe patrons couldn't look in.  What a funny experience to have to perform in front of all the patrons.  It was a nice place but probably a bit swanky for us.  We left before paying and didn't realise until it was too late.  OOps.  Steve tried to ring to organise to pay by credit card over the phone, but they wanted us to travel all the way back in to pay in person. We declined.

More about Darwin next time.....

Budget mess

I never liked budgeting, I always saw it in the same realm as dieting.  Too controlled and controlling.  It's the sort of thing that may have to happen in an emergency, but if you could avoid it, all well and good.
Joe Hockey's budget of 2014, the one that will go down in history as an attack on the modern family.  The one that will unwind all the family friendly conditions that their own party brought into being the last time that they were in Government.  I wonder what John Howard thinks of his successors.
Back before Labor's bungled attempts at being a coherent Government we had the Howard and Costello years.  They managed to eventually do their dash with the Australian public and got voted out for being mean and tricky.  Their mean and trickiness pales into insignificance next to the Abbott and Hockey brand of Liberal.  At least the last crop of Liberals believed in the value of having a primary caregiver at home while the kids were growing up.  They supported the stay at home care giver with a series generous family tax payments.  The unfortunate thing about this was that it wasn't long before it started to be labelled as middle class welfare, and the Capitalists set their sights on tearing the whole thing down.  These are Capitalists mind you who enjoy their very own range of tax breaks, but their form of Government support is not labelled derogatorily as 'welfare'.
When I was growing up my mother received a very small sum of money called Child Endowment. It was paid on a per child basis, and I don't believe that it was means tested.  So the more children that you had the greater the sum of money you received.  Granted, it was a pittance, but it was not regarded as welfare, it was regarded as a civilised society supporting those who are doing an extremely important job, that of bringing up the next generation.  The next generation who will fill the jobs that need filling, provide the services for future society and be the the future tax payers who will fund the budget in years to come.  A redistribution of wealth, if you will.  Give a little now, gain a lot back later.  Support families, the back bone of our society, create a better society and hopefully a crop of fully functioning educated individuals who can then take their place in society and contribute back when they have grown up.

I also remember that my father received a tax rebate for his dependents through the tax system.  A rebate is not a deduction, it's better than a deduction because it actually pays you back the tax that you have paid. For example, if you were taxed $10000 and you were entitled to a $3000 you would get the full $3000 effectively only paying $7000 in tax.  A deduction merely reduces your taxable income, so if you qualified for a $3000 deduction, for example, you would only benefit by the percentage tax rate you are on.  So if you are on a 30% tax rate your deduction is worth 30% of $3000, or $900.  Not so good, eh?
Now this tax rebate was not seen as welfare either.  It was a legitimate tax break recognising the importance and the expense of raising a family. An individual tax payer on $100000 is ALOT better off financially than another tax payer on $100000 with six mouths to feed.
There were a few problems with this system, it wasn't means tested, so the rich were entiltled to the same as the needy.  The bulk of the money went predominantly to the male, where as it was generally the female who was incurring the day to day living expenses of raising children.  In some family situations this money was not always passed on and well it all just felt a little bit too embarrassingly sexist.
Enter the bright sparks of Government to over haul the system.  The first advantage to the government of the new shiny social security system was that they could rip the money out of the tax system and use all of that lovely rebate money to buy votes.  When you are getting a tidy sum delivered regularly into your bank account care of the government, there is lots of potential here for pre-election promises and vote buying of the middle class.  It also enabled means testing so that the money could be directed to the ones most at need.  The problem with this is that it turned it into welfare and gave the ones who missed out a stick to bash the recipients with.  Suddenly instead of being justly recognised and in a very small way supported during the most expensive years of life, which is bringing up a family, we became middle class welfare trash.  It was only going to be a matter of time before the heavies would insist on rolling it back arguing that we can't afford middle class welfare without recognising the historical reason why a small amount of monetary support for families is essential and indeed highly desirable in a civilised society.

I argue that calling it welfare is demeaning, degrading and insulting.  It is primarily an attack on women (as they are predominately the primary care giver) and also an attack on families and the kind of decent society that we want to live in. Once women had very little choice, they had to stay at home once they got married.  We had a revolution and changed the way women were perceived in society and opened up choices and opportunities for them.  The whole point was to break down barriers and allow women to choose work or motherhood, or a combination, or whatever.  Just when we looked like we were getting somewhere, more female representation in higher positions, including a female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard's misogynists have seized power.  Now women are a new instrument of the state, they are productive units that must get back to work under the yoke of the industrial machine. Pop out them babies, whack 'em into institutionalised care, and get back into the workforce.  We need you there to bolster the numbers of workers braying for those lower paid jobs so that we can lower the minimum wage and reduce workers conditions for everyone.  It wont do to have employers competing for the best people for the job, they may have to offer better wages and conditions.  No we need the working poor so that we have plenty of fodder to choose from to run the capitalist industrial machine. God, I am starting to sound like a Communist.
Ideological ranting aside, it is the children that I feel sorry for.  Some families have both parents working and it's great for them.  I have friends who truly believe that they are a better mother when they work.  Staying at home was not for them.  That's fine, that's their choice and I applaud it.  Equally, there are mothers who know they do a better job as a parent being at home and attending to the day to day tasks, such as  ensuring that the kids actually get to school each morning on time, dressed and slightly sane.  A stay at home parent who can be there when the kids get home from school and need some time with a parent to discuss their day.  A parent who can get things done while everyone is out of the house, the cleaning the shopping the cooking, the family finances, and the multitude of other tasks that the household requires to run efficiently.  There are the volunteer roles and the school concerts that lose out when everyone is at work and can't get time off. Weekends are suddenly not rest and recreation times, but catch up with household chores.  Quality time is lost.  Some sacrifice this for extra money that comes into the family as a result of having two wage earners.  If the wage earners earn enough they may compensate by having a big overseas family holiday.  Others, like me and many many more prefer life to be a bit more gentle on the kids.  I want to be there when they need me, not have to sacrifice quality family time on the weekends just to catch up on what I didn't get done during the working week.
I believe in my families case that the kids grow up much less stressed and far more well adjusted when there is less focus on how much household income we have and more focus on spending time together.  I love the relationship that I have been able to build and foster with my children.  I believe it makes for a better and happier society.  We risk losing this by forcing mums back in to the workforce as soon as their youngest turns 6. Children no matter what age they are still need their parents. They need to be the ones that come first, not an employer who has the ability to withdraw your livelihood.

.
This Government needs to recognise the profound importance of the primary caregiver and not trash the family assistance scheme.  It is not welfare, it is the just recognition of the value of well cared for, strong functioning families for the good of society.  You achieve this through giving women choice, not taking it away. By offering a small amount of compensation that acknowledges the expense of feeding a family it allows families to make up their own minds and make their own choices about how best to structure work and family life. It also offers them dignity. Each family will have its own unique solution that will work for them.  Wake up Libs, you need a society first, an economy second, not the other way around.

Happy Mothers' Day

There is no greater thing in the world than to love and be loved.  This is the joy of being a mother.
Mothers' Day is the perfect opportunity to take stock of just how great it is to be a part of a family and to remember just why relationships are so much more important than material goods. Why giving up the chance to be rich and famous and hugely successful for being the mother of 4 excellent children is just so worth it.

On Friday at school the P+C ran the annual Mothers' Day stall.  As P+C President I had a big role in bringing it to fruition. We bought a bunch of gifts, laid them out on tables and allowed the children to buy them for $5 each.  Watching how much fun the kids had deciding on what to buy mum, and the thought and deliberation that went into their decisions was gratifying.  The children really did seem to reflect quite seriously on what gift would most suit their mother/ grandmother.  Allowing the children this opportunity was an important part of them growing up and becoming responsible, caring and empathetic citizens.  It also taught them about value and how to make discerning choices with their money.

I 'manned' the jewellery section of the stall and when my own child, Harry came up to purchase his two gifts, one for me and one for Ninny, I saw him pick a gift for Ninny.  He chose a necklace with a crown pendant, because Ninny is like a Queen.  How sweet.  (Although, I suspect it had something to do with her age and that she is almost as old as the actual Queen, but we wont dwell too much on that.)  I didn't notice Harry choose anything for me so guessed that he had picked another item from elsewhere on the stall.

He didn't.

He very stealthily ( I love that word) chose me a piece of jewellery too.  He presented it to me this morning.  A gorgeous Tinkerbell fairy pendant.

Sarah left me a package that I found on the kitchen bench this morning.  She wrote me a beautiful note which I shall reproduce here:
The front of the envelope said......
To Mum (please feel free to open this envelope as soon as you see it) [although you might like to stare in wonderment at the purple wrapped thing on the bench awhile]
Inside the envelope it said.....
Dear Mum,
Although I may not be up yet I would still love to wish you a fantastic mothers day (!) because you are amazing. I would love to thank you on behalf of myself, who has grown up to a grateful adult under your generous care, and for little Ellie who I can see adores you as much as I do and you will never lose our endless love.
Enjoy those breakfast croissants,
Love Sarah xxx ooo

It brings a tear to the eye.  How beautiful is that?

It reminds me of a conversation I was having with Steve earlier in the week.  I was discussing with him how we vary the way we parent each child depending upon their personalities, and also how little they realise why because they can't see the full picture of who they really are. I was postulating with him that do any of us really know who we are.  We know who we think we are or who we'd like to think we are, but others see us differently, and those who know us the best are the ones who, no doubt know us better than we know ourselves.
Evan is a good example of this.  He told me the other day that he can't wait until he has kids of his own.  He would be very tough on them and not let them get away with anything (Evan thinks we are too lenient on Harry). At first I was worried about his poor future children (my grandchildren) then I remembered what I was like at sixteen and the world views I had then are totally different to what I have now. I wasn't even going to have children at all when I was sixteen, I thought kids were annoying little messy things. Now look at me, I am head over heels in love with my four kids and adore them beyond compare. (Yes they can on occasion be messy and annoying, but they are an absolute blessing and I can't even begin to imagine how empty my life would be without them).
So here is Evan at sixteen, confident and assertive and very articulate.  He is aware of his righteousness and his ability to express it. How did he get like this? Was it in any way our parenting?  With a different style of parenting could he have grown up to be introverted and depressed?  Quite possibly.
I heard a story the other day about a teenage boy who had written a suicide note.  He sounded like a very sensitive child born into a family where he wasn't accepted for who he was.  His parents had an expectation that he would more fit the model of a boy's boy, motor bike riding, rough and tumble type.  Instead he just wants gentle love, not the tough love he is being given.  How sad for him.
It's so true that many many boys need more gentle love.  I am not the first mother to notice that her sons are far more delicate and emotional than her daughters.  I remember reprimanding Sarah over a certain misdemeanour (say drawing on the wall) and she would just look at me like it was nothing.  I would lay it on a bit thicker really telling her about what she did was completely inappropriate and how she'd now have to clean it, or lose her textas, etc etc, and she would blank faced take it like it was water off a duck's back.   I wasn't sure that I was getting through to her at all.  Then along came Evan.  I wouldn't get two words into a ticking off and he'd collapse into a ball and be totally devastated.  Steve and I learnt very quickly that we had to way back off the discipline with him, he was far more sensitive than Sarah.
That's just one example of how we adjusted our parenting to suit the personality of the child.  All through their lives there are many more examples.  Certainly dealing with teenagers requires a tailored situation, no one size fits all there.  But I do believe that Evan is confident today because we didn't crush his spirit, or make him 'man up' when he was growing up.  He is also loving and affectionate and very comfortable with who he is.  But he wont necessarily see or appreciate that his upbringing had anything to do with who he is today.  In fact if anything he (like we all did) will focus on his parent's shortcomings. Ah it can be a thankless job sometimes, lol.
No not quite thankless, just very very hard, but also rewarding 1000 fold. There's nothing I would rather be doing. So thank you, my gorgeous children, for the necklace from Harry, the tea and mug from Sarah, the foot massager from Evan and the Love that you all share with me.  I love you all so very very much.

The Coffs Coast Hinterland

I love getting out of Coffs and travelling up over Red Hill to the Orara Valley.  It is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I envy the people who live up there.  It is only a very short hop skip and a jump to Coffs Harbour city with its beaches, shops, restaurants and attractions, yet when you are on the other side of Red Hill you feel like you are truly out in the country.  It has a beautiful quiet rural feel and more often than not, thanks to it's high coastal rain fall, it is lush and green.  I never tire of going out there and feel a real sense of peace and contentment when ever I venture that way.  Maybe one day we will live up there.

Because it is so close to Coffs, I have a few friends up there, so have a good excuse to go and visit.  The boys play soccer against Orara Valley teams, so we find ourselves attending soccer matches a few times a year.  I have started going to the play group up there too at the recreation oval.  Mainly because my friend goes and it's a good way to catch up with her, but I do find myself enjoying the setting (almost) as much as her company.

When Evan, my sixteen year old learner driver son, suggested a driving lesson up to Coramba to visit his mate Mitch I jumped at the chance.  I have often travelled the Orara Valley Way, usually with end destination in mind and so have not always had the opportunity to stop off at some attractions along the way.  When I travel to Grafton for example I like to do at least one direction of the trip (either there or back) along the Orara Valley Way.  I often have to head out to Glenreagh for various scouting activities and I also have  friends who I occasionally visit in Nana Glen and on Dairyville road.  There is also the pick your own blueberries farm on Bucca Road which I frequent at least once a year.  So while my sojourns up the Orara Valley way are reasonably frequent, the opportunity to stop and enjoy its offerings are rare.

With Evan wanting to spend a few hours with his mate, I figured I would have time to kill, so I invited Steve to join me on a date out exploring the Orara Valley.  As it turned out we also had our 15 month old and our 12 year old with us, but it was still all good.

We started the trip with Evan bustling us out of the door, a short time after 10.30am, complaining that we were running late and that we should already be on our way. We bundled into the four wheel drive and then realised that fuel was low, and as we were in such a hurry and could not possibly stop to refuel, we had better all squeeze into the little Mazda instead.  Ellie, Harry and I squashed into the backseat, while Steve took on the supervisory responsibilities of panicking about Evan's driving prowess.

We left Coffs and followed Coramba road up over Red Hill to the Orara Valley.  I'm not sure at which point Coramba Road turns into Orara Valley Way, but we followed the road all the way to Coramba and stopped at Mitch's house.  The first step in this grand plan started to unravel.  Mitch was not home.  On contacting him Evan discovered that Mitch was actually back in Coffs at his girl friend's house.  Reluctant to just turn around and head back home I suggested we continue on up to Nana Glen for morning tea and give Mitch a chance to organise himself and get home.

I had a secret reason for going to morning tea in Nana Glen.  There is a gorgeous cafe there called Kafe Kookaburra and I had a memory of going there some years ago with my sister.  We ordered lemon meringue pie and the slice of heaven that was delivered out to us was nothing short of spectacular.  Now I am not normally a fan of photographing the food you get in restaurants.  But this creation was something to behold and I do remember it being photo worthy.  The meringue sitting on top  of this enormous wedge was inches thick.  It was a memory that had lived in my mind for years and although incredibly decadent, one I intended to revisit this weekend.

The secret couldn't last for long.  I had to admit to the rest of my fellow travellers why we were going to Kafe Kookaburra.  I personally didn't care what the others ordered, but I was definitely having the lemon meringue pie.  We arrived at the Cafe and found that there were already quite a few people there. We got ourselves a table in the sun and perused the menu.........No lemon meringue pie.  Bugger.

Determined to make the best of it I decided a cappuccino and a slice of (another sort of) cake would be good too. The setting is so lovely that it is hard not to have a good time out there.  In the course of our stay at the Cafe many people arrived to enjoy it's pleasures too.  It is a very popular place.
As I was deciding upon another option to eat with my coffee the blackboard menu got changed to include (yes, it's unbelievably true) lemon meringue pie!  They must have picked up my vibes.  So now, after all, I was going to be able to show off this legendary pie to the rest of the family.  Naturally, I ordered the pie. Steve ordered orange and almond cake, Harry ordered a trio of dips with Turkish bread, and Evan ordered wedges.  Ellie would just eat bits off our plates, including the cream from Steve's cake. I sat back happily to await the arrival of my order.

And how utterly disappointing my pie turned out to be.  In my minds eye was an enormous wedge of luscious lemon curd topped with a mountain of meringue.  I felt slightly decadent also ordering the cream and icecream to go with it. But what came out, at first glance it looked like they had stuffed up my order.  Because what was sitting on the plate was two small blobs of meringue topped tartlet that looked like profiteroles.  They were smaller than mini cupcakes and second glance confirmed that they were actually lemon meringue ......... tartlets, rather than pie.  What a massive letdown!  It was still delicious and the setting truly is marvellous.  Given the popularity of the place they are definitely doing something right.  Maybe they had to cease the generous portion sizes as the place was just getting too popular.  I know I wont be rushing back there for the lemon meringue pie.

We finished our pleasant (not spectacular) morning tea and still hadn't heard whether Mitch was back home yet.  Do we head back to Coffs and abandon our trip or carry on?  I voted to carry on.  There were two wineries here in Nana Glen that I had always wanted to visit.  The one I was most interested in was Kiaora, an organic winery that produces preservative free red wine only available (allegedly) at the winery.  We chose to go to Kiaora first, so travelled through Nana Glen towards Glenreagh and found the turn off to the winery.  We followed the signs along the bumpy dirt roads to the winery and reception area.  The reception area looked like a house with no real indication of where to go or how to approach it.  We opted to head straight up to the front door and ring the bell.
The door opened a crack and a head peered out at us.
We asked if the winery was open.  The lady enquired whether we wanted to taste or buy.  We answered that ideally we'd like to taste and then maybe buy depending on how it tastes.
She scurried off, after shutting the door in our faces, muttering something about checking to see if her partner had any left.
The lady returned, opening the door long enough to say sorry she couldn't help us, shut it again and left us standing on the verandah wondering what that was all about.  Upon looking at the state of the vines in the vineyard, it was in desperate need of a mow, I was left wondering if it was indeed still a working vineyard at all.  Steve was left wondering if it was just some sort a tax dodge.  Either way, we were left to make our way back to the highway with hopes that winery number two was a more promising proposition.

The second winery was back towards Kafe Kookaburra, but on the opposite side of the road.  It is called Two Tails winery named after the two tailed lizards found on the property.  Nana apparently is the aboriginal word for the lizard that sometimes features two tails and can be found in the area.  Along the way to the second winery Steve regaled us with a description of our experience at Kiaora that reminds me of why he really should be doing a whole lot more blogging.  He has a quirky way of looking at the world, a fabulous sense of humour and the articulation to make reading his blogs a pleasure.  He liken our failed visit to the door of the winery to Dorothy's experience when she presented at the gates of the Emerald city in the Wizard of Oz.  The woman (the gate keeper) had to go off and check with the great and powerful Oz.

 At which she returned to tell us that the Great and powerful Oz was not able to help us after all.  The only difference was, we were less insistent than Dorothy.  I wonder if I was Dorothy?  Would that make Steve the lion, the scarecrow or the tin man? Who were Evan and Harry?  Something to ponder another time, I think.

Two tails winery was the real deal.  It had a dedicated tasting area and the owner was truly delighted to see us and knew her wine very well.  We tasted about three white and three reds, some fortified wines and flavoured wines.  As it turned out Steve and I had quite different tastes.  I was under the impression that we essentially liked the same kinds of wines.  But at the end of the tasting we both picked totally different bottles as our favourites.  I chose a rose called Blush and the Ginger wine, which was like a strong alcoholic cordial.  I could imagine it tasting delicious served with soda water.  I am looking forward to trying it that way.  Steve chose a red and a white.

As we exited the winery Evan was on the phone to Mitch.  He was headed home and we arranged to meet him in ten minutes.  We jumped back into the car and headed back to Coramba.  We dropped Evan off at Mitch's, informing him that instead of four hours he now only had two hours to hang out with his mate.  Harry, Ellie, Steve and I headed to the Coramba Pub for lunch.  I had heard the menu was impressive for a pub and the beer garden views spectacular.  The reviews were right on both accounts.

Neither Steve or Harry were all that hungry.  I, however was feeling pretty peckish.  Must have been the huge pie I had worked myself up to eating, that now left a big hole.  While Harry played with Ellie on the

kids playground, Steve ordered our lunch.  Harry had a burger and chips, Steve had a Thai red curry and I had nachos.  Steve and I shared a mixed Thai entree plate.  The Thai entree was excellent as was Steve's red curry.  The chef is Thai, so he knows his stuff.  Well his Thai stuff.  Harry thought his burger was excellent, and although I enjoyed my nachos, why oh why add sweet chilli sauce to nachos?  It's just wrong.
It is not the first time that I have experienced this, there seems to be some subversive movement to put sweet chilli sauce on nachos.  Nachos is MEXICAN, sweet chilli sauce is THAI, the two cuisines should NOT be mixed.  The sweetness just does not work with nachos.  The tomato sauce on nachos is meant to be hot and spicy not sweet.  It has things like tomatoes, onions, chillis, capsicum, oregano, cumin and coriander.  Not copious amounts of sugar.  What is wrong with people?  Nachos is a tried and true dish, adding sweet chilli sauce does not improve it in any way, it wrecks it.
Apart from the sweet chilli sauce the meat, cheese, sour cream, guacamole and cornchips were quite nice.  The setting was beautiful and the musician, who was just getting started for the afternoon session, added to the relaxed Sunday afternoon atmosphere.  But twelve year olds don't appreciate these things.  So after exhausting all his attempts at prising money out of us so that he could use the sega racing game and the chocolate machine, we decided to head down to the river for a walk.

The Orara River at Coramba  is beautiful and rather than try to describe it, hopefully these photos I took with my phone might help show how lovely it is. After exploring the river we headed to the park for a play in the play ground while we waited for Evan to finish at his friend's place.

 We picked him up and then he drove us back to Coffs via Hill Top Organics, where we loaded the car with organic compost for the garden.

All in all it was a fun trip and great to be able to take the time to enjoy some of the wonders of the Coffs Coast Hinterland.

Getting the thoughts out frees up head space

I have really enjoyed blogging since I started less than six months ago.  I now run three blogs, and my original plan was to blog once a day, that goal has now stretched out to a more modest at least once a week.  I have three different blogs in which to air my thoughts.  That means that this one, my original blog that started everything in the beginning is becoming a little neglected.  My rambling thoughts are building up and I find they are starting to clutter my brain.

You see this has been one of the great things about blogging, it allows me to download my thoughts and essentially get them out of my head.  We all have times when endless thoughts clatter around in our brains and take up space.  They can keep us awake at night and dominate daytime thoughts.  The shower becomes the place of reflection and construction of many a letter of complaint or diatribe about life's injustices.  However if I can manage to transfer the thoughts and opinions from shower (or bed) into my blog I can free my mind and go onto think about and appreciate other things.

This downloading of ideas and thoughts reminds me of the scene from Harry Potter when Dumbledore uses a pensieve to extract his memories and store them for later.  I imagine myself doing the exact same thing when I start blogging.  Putting all these thoughts and memories down so that I can come back later and peruse them at my leisure.

Now all I need is to find the time and the mental space to organise my thoughts and get them written down.  Right now I have had constant interruptions from my 15 month old and I have a niggling sense of guilt that what I really should be doing is the housework or my Tax homework.  Oh how much easier would it be if I could formulate my thoughts in the shower and then physically extract them to the blog via a magic wand like Dumbledore is doing in the picture above.

In defence of Teenagers

Sometimes I feel so proud of my children I could just burst.  Obviously I am just madly in love with my one year old, Ellie.  I have already blogged about how special it is to fall head over heals in love again. But does the euphoria fade as they get older and pass through more challenging stages, and of course approach (shock, horror) the dreaded teenage years?

The answer to that is a resounding no. Everyday I love my children even more and that love is bolstered by something even more special- I am so proud of the individuals they are growing into.  And far from the teenage years being seething bed of horror and dysfunction, I think (so far) they have been their best years.

Why does society paint adolescence as a horror story?  Are we normalising abnormal behaviour because some children (for a variety of reasons) go off the rails a bit during this time?  Steve and I went to the seminars about managing your teen.  We were told about how they will naturally want to take risks and sometimes do stupid things due to the lack of development in their brains.  They used this theory to explain why teenagers drink, take drugs and drive cars really fast, among other anti social and dangerous activities.  This then was painted as the norm.  As the sort of thing you should 'expect' and perhaps except from teenagers.

I say this analysis is wrong.  Those behaviours are abnormal and result of something else going on in the teenager's life.  They then manifest more easily because of the stage of brain development that they are at.  But what about the majority?  And it is the majority who sail through adolescence with minimal ripples.  What does the risk taking part of the brain have them doing?

Well I tell you, and the things are amazing and it is why teenage years truly are the best years of your life.  With additional confidence, a tendency toward risk and perhaps a lack of the bigger picture pressures that bog down adults, teenagers are creative, innovative, and game to take on challenges that later in life they maybe less inclined to tackle.  They learn amazing stuff, like jumping off cliffs (abseiling) or rock climbing.  They think nothing of going on challenging overnight hikes.  They stick their hands up to speak in public, or play instruments for large audiences or play sport.  They speak their mind and are not afraid to have a go and get involved.  They have a can do attitude.  And they are funny, because they say and do the sort of crazy things that society slowly beats out of us as we age.

This is a far cry from the morose lazy teenager stereotype that we are fed. Of course there are moments of that, sometimes too many. It is true they have lots of sedentary time, spend way too much time skulking in a messy room playing on their computer.  But during this time they are also learning and studying for school or secretly practising their creative writing skills.  They are socialising on social media and building relationships for life.

I look at teenagers today and I see that they are more confident, better educated and more socially aware than we ever were. They have access to greater opportunities to succeed and excel. With a nurturing environment at both home and school teenagers have the capacity to do great things and utilise this unique time in their brain development to lay down an amazing foundation for adulthood. So let's stop looking at the negatives and embrace the positives, and I guarantee you will find so much to be proud of in your teenagers.

Teenagers have a way of filling the house with their presence. While you are lamenting the lack of personal space, remember that, so far in this journey, these are their best years. It wont be too long before they are gone and then the house will feel so empty. So embrace the opportunity now to really enjoy your teenagers by getting to know them. You will definitely find yourself feeling great pride in the fantastic people that they are developing into.

Stevia

I am growing Stevia in my garden.  It's doing it's own thing and growing okay.  It's a straggly plant, but is still alive after a full growing season.  It did flower a few months ago and I expected that it would die.  But it has finished flowering and has continued on and added some new growth.

That has got me thinking that this may actually be a useful plant.  If it's going to keep on growing without needing too much input from me, it has some very real potential to be a convenient sweetener in the kitchen.

Stevia tastes many times sweeter than table sugar.  Just chewing on one small piece of a leaf is a bit too sweet for me.  It tastes sweet, but in an artificial way like artificial sweeteners do rather than sugar does. Even so, I was hoping that I could start to incorporate it into some of my baking.  Particularly now that I am tossing sugar out of the family diet.

The two main methods of using fresh stevia leaves (ah la an internet search) are:
Dry and crush the leaves and use as a powder
Boil leaves in water and create a syrup that you store in the fridge.

Each of these methods seem like a step too far for a lazy cook like me. One other method suggested was to throw a few leaves in your cup of tea and steep them with hot water.  Now this sounded more like me, straight to the point and no mucking around.

So I thought maybe if I could come up with some recipes where the stevia leaves are steeped first in a hot liquid and then the strained liquid is added to the other ingredients.  Then I would just need to experiment to workout approximately how many fresh leaves it takes to produce the desired amount of sweetness. At the moment I have no idea.

This afternoon I made some chocolate.  I wanted it to be barely sweet.  Just sweet enough to take the worst of the bitterness off the cocoa.

This is what I did:

I melted cocao butter and coconut oil in a saucepan and put in a small number (10) of stevia leaves.  I left them to steep in the liquid for around 5 minutes.  The liquid was not too hot.
In another bowl I put my cocoa powder, then I strained the liquid mixture into the dry.  I squeezed and pressed the stevia leaves to get as much 'juice' out as I could.
This worked and did sweeten the mixture, though I would probably need to use more.  I am trying to cure myself of a sweet tooth, so I was deliberately keeping it as low in sweetness as possible.

Now to experiment and try the same method in some other things.  For something like  a cake, I imagine that I would need quite a few stevia leaves.  The other thing I would try and remember to do is to bruise the leaves before adding to the hot liquid to steep.  I have also read that boiling the leaves in too high of a temperature will render them more bitter.  So perhaps pouring boiling water, or milk, or whatever over them and leaving them to steep for a while could be the go.  I also imagine that 5 minutes was probably on the short side for length of time to steep them.  Next time I would try it for much longer, for example, at the beginning of baking the first thing I would do is prepare my stevia, crush it and steep it, then get on with the other components in the recipe.

I'm pretty happy that I can grow my own sweetener.  Now to find a convenient way to use it and incorporate it into my cooking. :)

Time to get the chop

I was sitting in the Park in Bellingen under a massive Bunya Tree with Ellie when the call came through on Steve's mobile phone.

I knew that I had accidently left my phone at home even though I assured Steve that I had it with me as we left the house earlier that day.  As it turned out I had picked up Sarah's phone instead, which looks identical to mine. When Steve's phone rang I figured that there was a reasonable chance that it was for me.  I answered.

"Hello, Steve's phone"
The person on the other end greeted me by name and then informed me that she was "Jenny, from day surgery and that Steve was ready to receive visitors.  He's dozy but doing okay."

My first thought was that I didn't want to see him when he was all out of it and groggy from the anesthetic.  I liked my husband vital and full of life, that was the way that I wanted to see him.  I felt myself starting to drag my heels.  I had to coax Ellie back into her pram and then hike back up the steep hill to the hospital.

As I commenced my walk I felt a wave of depression descend upon me.  Steve had been 'fixed up'.  This wasn't some corrective piece of surgery, this was a mutilation, a severing of a key part of him.  And not only did it effect him, it was of direct consequence to me. This operation signalled the end of our child bearing days, and even writing about it now, some hours later, that fact still makes me sad.

We are old enough and have four beautiful children to be able to legitimately call it a day.  But it still makes me sad to finally say unequivocally that this is it.  No more chances of feeling that wonder of a new little life forming in my belly.  It is one of the most amazing and incredible things that can happen to your body, and now that will never happen again.  I feel I need to mourn.  As I walked back to the hospital that is what I did, I felt tears welling up in my eyes, and they weren't from climbing that bloody steep hill either. (Why did they put the hospital at the top of such a big hill?)

I/We knew that the day was coming.  After the birth of Ellie, we felt we had to make a decision, that really we can't keep doing this and having babies.  Particularly after the hoo ha with me clotting up this time.  To have another pregnancy would really be a risk.  Logically, the decision is easy.  No more babies, lets get 'the chop' and be done with it.  Move on, know that there wont be anymore surprises in life.  We can plan our future, blah, blah, blah. But, emotionally it is a whole other story.

I left the decision and the logistics to Steve.  I really didn't want to have anything to do with it.  I knew that the outcome was going to make me sad, so I preferred to sit with denial instead.  Then just as it started to look like they had forgotten Steve and his name was never going to come up on the waiting list, we got a call three days ago.  Three days ago.

Three days, is not long to finally and emotionally face that this is really going to happen.  Three days is way not enough time to get a decent amount of mileage out of teasing and stirring Steve about, manscaping performed by burly Mr Sisters, and what if the surgeon slips? And myriad of other jokes that I and others could make at his expense.

That's what Sarah and I did last night, making jokes about Bellingen and what type of drug fuelled hospital stay he was likely to encounter.  Our hilarity brought Evan out to the living room, wondering what we were talking about.  When we told him that dad was having a vasectomy tomorrow he was quite taken aback on two fronts.  I think he was keen for another baby brother or sister, and he made the comment, that did that then imply they were all mistakes?  I get where he is coming from, because I had the same thought myself.  By surgically rectifying this having babies thing, it sort of sends a message that our children are a medical problem that needs fixing.  Of which they definitely are not.

So now it's done.  Unless one escapes before the pipes are clear, no more babies in this family, until the kids decide to start the next generation.

Happy First Birthday Ellie

 Today, just one year ago our darling Ellie was born.  As with each of the kids, their first birthday has always marked a very special and emotional time for me.  It has always been natural for me to remember the amazing thing that was unfolding exactly one year ago. The fact that my body was in labour, our baby had decided that the time was right, and into the world popped another beautiful, much loved baby.

When babies are only one year old they aren't really old enough to understand what's happening.  Why do these crazy people hand me parcels and then open them for me? But the things inside the parcels are pretty cool.  Why are these crazy people singing at me and actually letting me have cake? And why does that mummy person keep getting all misty-eyed and gooey over me? - well more than normal.

For me the first birthday is a celebration for everyone else, me in particular.  As bub is hardly aware of what a birthday is, that first birthday is a very poignant moment.  This newborn life that in the space of just one calendar year has changed and developed so much into an active lively toddler.  One that can walk, communicate, have opinions, feed herself, laugh, cry, play and pretend.

What an amazing year it has been, and what an amazing addition to our family she has become. So very much loved and adored. Now we look forward to her next year of life, where I guarantee that by her second birthday she will have a pretty good idea of what's going on when the celebrations roll around again.

Happy First Birthday, my beautiful baby girl.  I love you so much.

Mum xxxxx

Food for Thought

When I was a child growing up in the 1970's I envisaged a future of food where we all would be eating a single pill that would provide our complete nutrition and thus do away with the need to eat food.

How different the actual future is.  With more variety of food than ever before and cooking shows amongst the most popular shows on TV, eating is still well and truly alive.  Kitchens are getting bigger and fancier, there are more places to go out and eat, and the access to foods from various cultures and the proliferation of super foods has shown that in no way are we ready to give up eating for a nutrition packed pill.

Imagine life, though, if this future had come to pass.

Firstly, all that time spent shopping for, preparing, eating and cleaning up after food would vanish.  That would amount to enormous hours of the day that we could reclaim to do other things.
Secondly, imagine the extra storage space in our houses. Plates, bowls, pots, pans, casserole dishes, cutlery, the "good" crockery, could all go, freeing up mountains of cupboard space.  Also the pantry would be a thing of the past, and who would need a massive fridge anymore?  The oven, the cook top, the microwave, the dishwasher, could all go.  There would be just so much stuff we could get rid of and then have so much less clutter to deal with and so much more cupboard space.  Now that's something I definitely need.
Thirdly, it would eliminate that whole issue of trying to eat a balanced diet and the weighing up of the pros and cons between various ways of eating.  But here is the crux of the matter.  How could any responsible scientific organisation possible come up with the perfect diet encapsulated into a nutrient rich pill when they can't even agree on what constitutes the optimal diet for humans?

For the past 30- 40 years we have been fed the mantra of low fat, high carbohydrate as being the way to live a healthy life.  I believe it, I've grown up my whole life being taught this.  It hasn't stopped me from having an 'apple shape' rather than a pear shape, which is now deemed unhealthy and a precursor to syndrome X and it's attendant diseases of modern living such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Nice.  But to a certain extent I feel a bit powerless as my father and his mother before him had the same 'apple shape'. Was it diet related or was it genetics? At least they didn't have to suffer the indignity of being told that they have a waist to hip ratio that is going to kill them.

It is tempting to basically ignore any government health warnings from this day forward.  It seems that no one really knows what they are doing in the field of nutrition. Hundreds of billions of dollars are thrown at all manner of studies trying to prove which is the optimal diet for us. All that seems to happen is that the studies are either inconclusive, are interpreted according to whoever is reading them's bias, or are instantly disproved by another study.

The bottom line is, there are just too many variables in the modern diet because it is such a cornucopia of variety.  To scientifically isolate one variable is well nigh impossible. People have slightly different genetic make up and respond differently to different diets too, which further complicates things.

I have come to the conclusion, after much reading about how the caveman diet is our optimum diet, that although that maybe true on an individual basis, on a population basis a high carbohydrate diet is better.

Think back, 10,000 years ago, we switched from predominately eating meat to growing and eating grains.  We may also have introduced a bunch of chronic degenerative diseases that became more apparent as we became clever enough to eliminate the other major killers of misadventure and infectious disease.  But these chronic diseases of modern living, still allow us to live long enough to reproduce, so they are not bad enough to impact on our survival as a species.  And this is the point.  Our population got to the point where it had to evolve to move further up the evolutionary scale.  As a population, we are incredibly healthy and successful. Perhaps as individuals not so much.

But, agriculture allowed us to guarantee a food supply that had never been guaranteed before.  It lessened our day to day reliance upon capturing or picking fresh foods because now we could store vast quantities for long periods of time.  It also meant that less people were needed to be involved in the actual procurement of food and that freed others to go and progress civilisation.  In the last 10,000 years not only has our population sky rocketed but our civilisation has moved ahead in enormous leaps and bounds that just wasn't possible while we were existing day to day on a tenuous food supply.

So in order for the human race as a whole to make the next development leap and form societies, government, religion, culture, science, technology, the list goes on and on, we had to free ourselves from the grip of the hunter gatherer lifestyle.  This is evidenced by the hunter gather cultures still in existence in the last few centuries, who were primarily living very primitive lives until they were introduced to Western civilisation.  Their rates of chronic disease were low, to the point of non existence, but their populations were relatively small and isolated which impacted their ability to develop technologically.

Reverting to a hunter gatherer diet is a luxury that affluent Westerners can embrace.  It may make their individual health outcomes more positive.  But for the entire world population to revert to such a diet is unsustainable.  We just don't have the capability to feed the whole world on a predominately meat diet.  That ultimately means that the third world and poorer populations will be fed with the cheaper high carbohydrate model and be prone to chronic disease, while the affluent will live long happy lives.  There is an inequality here.  Our success as a species has meant that we are destined to be less healthy individually.  It's a small sacrifice we all make to ensure the species remains strong.  Like herds who have their strength in numbers and can afford to sacrifice the weak few, so that the herd as a whole survives.

If this be the case, then governments trying to control what we eat and haranguing us about our health to do it is futile.  Basically we are damned if we do and damned if we don't.  Arguably Western nations have the wealth to manage expensive health budgets that deal with chronic disease.  It may be the pay off we have to make to avert the greater evil, that of starvation and malnutrition.

As I ready myself and the family for an experimental dietary change to explore the hunter gather diet epitomised by the Paleolithic diet I find myself reducing cupboard stock of carbohydrates and legumes.  I am starting to feel slightly unsettled by this, and we haven't even begun the diet yet. As the large fridge in the shed which houses the 'staples' of rice, pasta, bread mix, flour, dried beans and legumes becomes emptier and emptier I start to feel a small pearl of worry forming. It is ironic that the very carbohydrates that supposedly store themselves as excess fat on our bodies are the same carbohydrates that we store in stockpiles outside the body in order to protect ourselves in lean times.  With an empty 'store' of carbohydrate staples I feel vulnerable.  What if there is a truck strike, or we have an event that wipes out the electricity for a few weeks?  Focussing our diet on just meat and fruit and vegetables is a predominately fresh food diet.  It is extremely reliant on me being able to access the supermarket, butcher and greengrocer.  We grow a few of our own vegies, fruit and herbs and have our own eggs, but in reality, these will not go anywhere near providing adequate calories or nutrition for our family of 6 if the need should arise.  By having a fridge and pantry laden with carbohydrate foods, a short breakdown in the food chain supply, although inconvenient, would not be catastrophic.
As the one who is primarily responsible for the provision of food in the house and the mad one who is proposing we trial this diet, I feel a small sense of responsibility here.  Obviously the likelihood of some disaster occurring and interrupting the food supply is slight, but it is not entirely out of the question either.  Should I cover my bases and stockpile some emergency food in case of need?  After all the advent of agriculture cemented our survival as a species because it insured as against this very thing. But as the Paleolithic dieters advocate, all carbohydrate (particularly refined) needs to be gotten rid of in order to avoid temptation.  Refined carbohydrate is the evil one in all of this, the most likely culprit of chronic disease and obesity, but it is also the food that is least perishable and so the most useful in times of food shortage.

It is a dilemma. Oh wouldn't life be so much simpler if we just had a pill to take and all these decisions would not need to be made.

A Day in the life of a toddler

I have made a couple of signs to pin on the toilet door.  Because yes we are at THAT stage of every toddler's development when the lure of the toilet bowl is just too great.
Yesterday I poked my head round the door to the toilet and noticed a toilet brush, a full roll of toilet paper and the toilet paper holder were all shoved expertly down the toilet hole. Now it takes an expert toddler to manage this feat.  Most of us mere mortals would only be able to fit one thing at a time down the hole in the bottom of the bowl.  But with the rugged determination that only a toddler can muster, Ellie managed three sizable items.

In addition to this she had also unrolled most of the roll of toilet paper, strewn the empty rolls both inside and outside the toilet area and deposited the toilet brush holder down the hallway where she had also emptied its contents of old toilet water onto the floor.

This all occurred while the whole family (excluding Steve, who has to go to work in order to keep us in the lifestyle we have come to expect) were lounging around inside, zonked out by the heat, in quite close proximity to where this was all happening.  Ellie obviously decided that the best way to beat the heat was for a spot of water play, and what better place than the handy toilet bowl.

So the signs have gone up, reminding everyone to close the doors and keep the rampaging toddler out.  Whether they will have any effect will remain to be seen.

Sign inside the door:

Remember the rampaging toddler

Please remember to close the door when you are finished :)

and on the outside of the door:

You know what I want to do if I get in here

So remember to keep the door closed....just sayin

Attack of the killer cockroach

When you have house guests you like to at least try and put up a façade of cleanliness.  Just before they arrive you put extra effort into making the house look presentable.  Some of those cleaning jobs that you have put off because you are either too lazy or bored to tackle, suddenly need to be done as a matter of urgency.  You maybe a lazy disorganised slob, but you don't want your house guests thinking that. So either successfully or unsuccessfully you give the whole place a spit and a polish and hide away the worst of the clutter behind bulging cupboard doors.  As long as they don't look too closely or open the wrong doors you should be able to fool them for a little while at least.

Not so when the cockroach that  you had disturbed and frightened under the fridge earlier in the day while you were cleaning the floor makes his grand appearance especially for you house guest.

Steve has his brother Al up visiting us for a few days.  We picked him up from the airport and deposited him in our dining room for a catch up chat and a cup of tea.  Now Al is from Queensland, so no cockroach is going to faze this guy. But his most recent jaunt has seen him stop in and visit us after having spent a week in Canberra.

Now I can only guess, as cockroaches don't normally charge out from under my fridge and assault my house guests.  In fact I can't actually remember it ever having happened before.  Sure late at night the odd cocky would make a quick dart across the floor from one protective piece of furniture to another, but in broad day light and running straight at someone? No never.

Well this cockroach was a fool.  If it thought it could wreak its revenge on me from being forced to cower under the fridge in terror earlier in the day by attacking one of my house guests, it had another thing coming.  I can just imagine it eyeing Al off from amongst the dust and grime under the dark fridge.  It would have put on its hyper sensor alerts and determined that here was a fella from Canberra.  An area that rarely sees cockroaches.  It would have plotted its dastardly plan to dash out and scare the crap outta the house guest, hopefully making him leap onto a chair in sheer terror.  Then the cockroach could have strutted around like Arnold Swartzneigger before resuming its sentry under another piece of furniture.

Now this evil plan would have worked if it had chosen a true Canberran like, perhaps, my sister.  He would have got himself a good deal of squealing and arm flapping to accompany the assent of terror up upon the chair. But Al, is a Queenslander, he eats cockroaches for breakfast.  And big ones too.  Not these pathetic little mamby pamby ones we have in NSW, but big muscley Queensland ones. So when the smart arse cockroach made his brave dash for Al he met his demise in a spectacularly rapid fashion. 

If cockroach stomping was an Olympic sport, Al would be a world champion.  This cockroach never stood a chance. The moment Al noticed the tell tale movement in the corner of his eye, he moved with lightning speed and stomped down with his bare foot fair on the cockroach's back. Splat. Cockroach got flattened and guts went spurt.  It was so second nature to Al I don't think that he even realised he'd done it at first.

As I tittered with slight embarrassment, muttering something along the lines of 'Oh I don't know how he got there, we don't normally have cockroaches' I bent down to wipe him from the floor with a tissue.  In true cockroach form, this is why they will one day rule the world, he got up (with no guts) and tried to run away.  You have to give him credit for his tenacity, but this creature was never going to survive, not when we had the world champion cockroach stomper in the house.

That was one cockroach who should have chosen his quarry more carefully.

Yummy Moist Chocolate Cake

I have made this amazing wheat free chocolate cake before, it is so moist and delicious.  This time I have varied it slightly to try and make it a bit more healthy.

Emma's version of Red Kidney Bean Chocolate Cake

 

 

 

 

Ingredients

1 Can of red kidney beans (420g) I use my own from the freezer that I have previously soaked and cooked.
1 egg
1 tablespoon of water or coffee
1 tablespoon of vanilla
Put all the above ingredients into a food processor and process until smooth.  In a mix master bowl place the following ingredients  and beat them together:
200g dextrose
5 eggs
1/2 cup of light olive oil
Once they are light and fluffy add in the red kidney bean mixture. Beat or mix to combine. Then fold in the following ingredients and mix well:
80g of cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of bicarb soda

Pour the mixture into a lined spring form cake tin and bake for approximately 50 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. When cooked it will pull away from the sides a bit. Remove from oven.  It will contract slightly as it cools.
Serve with yoghurt.  Delicious.

Notes

Now most people sift their cocoa, and that is a very good idea.  I am a lazy cook so I rarely sift mine.  I do get a few lumps of cocoa in my finished cake, but I prefer to think of them as unsweetened chocolate chips.

This cake turns out very moist and the kidney beans are not noticeable in the finished cake.  It is very chocolatey and tastes far more wicked than it is.