Fedeterranea on Wikipedia

I've just had a lot of fun writing my very first wikipedia entry (the "Housing" section). I think I got the encyclopaedic tone just about right. I wonder how long it will stay there?

Who are you?

I've got one of those counters for visits to this blog... 61 visits in a week! Who are you lurking silent ones? Reveal yourselves - don't be shy - I'd love to meet you.

Signs of Marrickville

I went for a long walk last week, from my place up Illawarra Rd to the Addison Rd Markets, & took lots of photos of signs. I like ordering things, putting them in sets & making patterns. My friend Zoe would say that it's because of my Virgoan sensibilities. Here are some of my favourites - there are more on my flickr account.


The neon sign of the Vietnamese cafe opposite the Hellenic Bakery.


An old houseplate.


The hepC graffiti on the railway bridge.

Reasons to be Cheerful

On the way home from work I stopped at the Coopers Arms on King St and had a brandy & soda. In Marrickville I bought avocadoes and red capsicums from my friend the greengrocer, and other bits & pieces from shops along Illawarra Rd. I made a big dish of nachos, some guacomale, a salad. We were all stuffed silly. It's a humid evening and the overhead fan is on. The kids are doing their things, playing on msn, talking on the phone - "so is everyone bringing their own case? Alcoholic not!" - "There are these two losers from my year" - "No wait, losers from your year?" - "No no, seriously..." and getting ready to go to a battle of the bands. And the best thing - once the kiddies are off Richard and I are going to watch the first episode of the fourth series of Six Feet Under. I can't wait to find out how Lisa died, and even if, indeed, she is dead at all. And I have new sandals, and in the morning I'm off to see me dears in Melbourne.

Day of the Triffids

I've just read a lovely review in the London Review of Books of Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Butcher in Tuscany, written by Bill Buford. The reviewer is Steven Shapin and he offers a great little history of our relationship with food as well as a critique of how we eat and cook now. I'm going to buy the book - I love the quotes from it, the interchanges between Buford and his pasta mistress best:

"...just when he thought he'd cracked the secret of working the dough with the matterello, she announced her disapproval with a blow on his shoulder: 'You look like an old woman... You will never learn if you roll it out like an old woman.' "

Buford, former fiction editor of the New Yorker, went to Tuscany to "learn meat".

"...by the time he returned to Manhattan, he was able to schlep a whole still-bleeding pig (only recently bereft of life) from the farmers' market back to his apartment, taking it up in the lift - together with an unamused Wall Street banker - and butchering it in the traditional Tuscan way: a tub of pork confit, chains of salsicce, a rosticiana, an arista (the aristocrat of roast, herbed rolled pork), vast quantities of ragu, brawn: 450 servings of food from one animal, skilfully dismembered."

This getting in touch with the sources of food is utterly admirable, but not for the faint-hearted, or those like me who don't eat pork for ethical reasons. The pig may have been lovingly carved up, but its life was still most likely absolutely misery, especially if it was female. I'll do my bit for the slow food movement by continuing to tend my vegie patch.


Remember when I put it in, not even two months ago? (see before shots)


We have lettuce galore - butter and frilly, which is more bitter. They're a great combination in a salad.


I never knew brussels sprouts grew like this, along the stem like parasites... I picked these and ate them on Sunday, lightly boiled then tossed in butter and a little white wine vinegar.


The broccoli head, still only about 4cm in diameter, is protected by this huge fan of bluish leaves. I wonder if the leaves are edible? It seems such a waste if they're not.

And... I looked for a pic of a triffid but only found out that John Wyndham's full name was John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris.