Goodbye Aliens, Hello Food.

(Subtitled:  It's still Monday in America.)

Yes, Magazine Monday came and went and I was caught up with the last week of teaching and marking and baby juggling and other boring things like that.  So today is transatlantic Magazine Monday - we're fine by LA time.

We had a bit of a foodie weekend, which will not be surprising for those people who know us.  In fact, most people who know us will be asking "Aren't all your weekends foodie?".  Well, yes, I do tend to orientate this way.  But this weekend was particularly so.  We went to the Canberra Farmers Market at EPIC, which was celebrating its 5th anniversary.   Among the celebrations were cooking demonstrations by local chefs using produce bought at the markets.  We watched the head chef from Grazings make a salad using Poacher's Pantry smoked duck, and tasted his macadamia, chive and fetta pesto (yummy indeed),

And then we went home to get a jump on this week's magazine.  Introducing - a week of eating courtesy of Gourmet Traveller!

I was lucky enough to be given a subscription to Gourmet Traveller last Christmas.  I read it every month, usually drooling, but ever since the arrival of destructo-boy - uh, I mean my son - I haven't been cooking that many complex recipes.  

This will change!

The first recipe we decided to try was a simple David Thompson one.  We own, and love, Thompson's classic cookbook Thai Food.  Every recipe in it we have tried is amazing.  It is, however, not an easy cookbook.  To do the food justice, you need to set aside a full afternoon (or sometimes a day) and be prepared to be precise, fastidious and meticulous.

The recipe we tried on the weekend was from his new book, Thai Street Food.  The recipes are described as 'easy' and 'fresh'.  And, for David Thompson, it was relatively simple.  A simple assembly of ingredients:

I said relatively.  There were only two things we had to buy specially (well, three if you count the duck eggs but you could use chicken eggs) and the rest we had in the pantry. 

It cooked up to quite a decent Pat Thai (David Thompson says Pat instead of Pad, and I'm not going to argue!):

No meat, just tofu and dried shrimp instead of fresh which gave it a nice, chewy, gusty edge.  A little chilli and garlic oil at the end punched it up to where we like it.  And the leftovers were great for lunch the next day.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go hunt down suppliers for agar agar powder so I can make Parmesan marshmallows for our next recipe.

It's not paranoia if it's true.

Magazine Monday has rolled around again, and after the consumer bent of the last two weeks, I wanted to take another path.

I enjoyed reading about tractors, so I thought it was time to expand my vehicle horizons.  Now I could have chosen boats, planes (real and/or model), motorcycles, bicycles, cars, steam trains, electric trains or unicycles.  (Ok, I'm not sure there actually is a unicycling magazine.  But it wouldn't surprise me if there was.) 

I decided to think a little outside the square.   And so, introducing....

UFOlogist!

The subtitle is Beyond Imagination Lies Truth.

I can tell it's going to be an educational week for me, because the first page alone has taught me many new words and methods of scientific studies.  There's the relatively boring fields of geomancy, gematria and simulacra.   Then there's archaeoastronomy, a science described as "A field with academic work of high quality at one end but uncontrolled speculation bordering on lunacy at the other".  I'm sure UFOlogist falls into the high quality end.

My favourite however is euphonics.   Spell checker doesn't like it and google doesn't think it exists.  (And, in case you were wondering, Classic Tractor kicks euphonic's butt in a googlefight.)  So I figure by the end of this week, I'm going to be smarter than spellcheck and google combined.  Right?

In these Tough Economic Times...

My mother-in-law reads this blog.  I know this, because after reading yesterday's post, she accused me of being a soft touch, and spoiling Toby (which is, as everyone knows, a grandparent's right and duty, not a mother's!).

Hmmm.  She may have a point.

However, it is Monday and therefore time for a new magazine.   This one I chose for a number of reasons.  Firstly, I have a heap of marking to do this week and I wanted something that required less concentration.  I liked the tractors, but I still don't know what a grub screw is, and this week I don't have the time to try and find out.   Secondly, in the spirit of the economic stimulus, the global economic crisis and calls for consumers to do their bit, I thought this magazine appropriate.  And in light of the TractorGate toy episode, I will do my best not to buy anything for Toby as a result of this week's magazine - a positive shrine to consumerism:  Shop 4 Kids!  

Wait, this may not have been a good idea.

A few years ago, a new magazine came out called Shop Til You Drop.  I was, and still am, astounded that there could be a whole magazine that was just shopping.  Isn't that the point of advertising?

However, Shop Til You Drop was a success, so much so that it has spawned different versions of itself.  There is the one off magazine Shop Girl, aimed at the 'tween' market.  I'm not making this up.  I didn't chose that one because a) it's only a one off - I think magazines need to be periodical to be proper magazines (magazine snob!  Watch me break that rule when there's a one off I actually want to feature) and b) I didn't think I could cope.  I oscillate between being horrified at the concept, and, in the context of having seen my now 13 year old sister start an interest in fashion and shopping over the past 3 years or so, grudgingly impressed at the niche marketing.  As the media flurry shows, I'm not the only one who finds this magazine disturbing.

However, as well as Shop Girl, there's also Shop 4 Kids.  I have a kid.  I shop.  Seems like a perfect combination, right?  It should be an easy week of leafing through a magazine.

Not so much.  My ease of reading so far as been impacted by the eye rolling (oh yes, I think a $159 dress is a great idea for a toddler.  What, there's a matching one for Mum for only $399?  What a fantastic idea!), my genuine inability to tell the difference between the actual content and the advertising at times, and the urge to throw the magazine across the room at certain points (usually involving ridiculously grown up and inappropriate attire for little girls.  No, baby bikinis are not cute.  Nor are little girls lounging by the pool in bathing suits with mocktails and pretending to read Danielle Steele novels).

I also have an issue with the title.  It's the 4.  I mean, Toby is going to be of the sms generation.  I get that.  He'll use acronyms and abbreviations that I don't understand.  Text speech will probably be old school by the time he's baffling me, but I'm sure there will be some alternative to lol or rofl that will be cool.   Even though I get this, I don't have to encourage it.  Can't he learn the real words before we start shortening them?  It's the same reason I refuse to buy any Playskool branded toys.  I don't think toys with a deliberate misspelling in their name is a great start for your child's reading and spelling skills.  I want my kid to write properly, and I want his environment set up to assist this.  If Toby forges a late note, I want it to believable.  "Sry Toby wuz l8 4 skool" just won't cut it!

Hmm.  Far from encouraging my materialistic side, it seems Shop 4 Kids is exposing my curmudgeonly, crunchy, earth mother side.  I have a sudden urge to go out and stir the compost bins while reading to Toby, humming The Internationale and perhaps baking organic cookies.  

It should be a fun week.

Magazine Monday - It's Classic Tractor!

The first magazine to kick us off – Classic Tractor.

I don’t know much about tractors.  I live in Australia, which has quite a few farms.  I live in Canberra, which is basically a country town, so near quite a few farms.  I regularly see tractors in the nearby farms.  More than this, we go out to the Murrambateman field day every year, which is like the Royal Show  (State Fair, for the international visitors) crossed with a tractor meet.  Unsuprisingly, there are tractors there.  Big, shiny tractors.  We walk around them, marvel at the size (and the shininess) and then walk off to join the queue for the cold drinks/hot food/portaloo, (the queue for the drinks or food depends on the temperature.  There’s always a queue for the portaloos) having learnt nothing more about tractors.

So, equipped with my magazine, which I chose primarily because of the pretty red tractors in the pretty flower field, I figured I should do some preliminary research.  Google it!

Tractors has about 25,800 000 hits, while Classic Tractor has only 727 000.  Clearly, we’re dealing with a sub-genre here.  In a google fight it loses miserably to classic cars, classic movies  and classic music.  I’m starting to feel bad for poor old Classic Tractor.   To give it a better chance, I decide to pit the agricultural wonder of industrial revolution against its forebears.    Yes!  Against the classic plow, the classic plow horse and even the classic oxen the classic tractor finally comes into its own.  (Though the classic oxen did put up a good fight.)

Reading through Classic Tractor, it's clear I have a bit of learning to do.  I've worked out that MF stands for Massey Ferguson, but why this brand is so dominant I don't know.  The magazine is part mechanics (grub screws are mentioned quite a bit), part aesthetics (a kitchen spray bottle and washing up liquid can make all the difference in applying decals to your tractor) and part collectors paradise.  I need more coffee to get my head around what a grub screw actually does, but I have learnt something from the magazine already.

Tractors - even Classic Tractors - are expensive.

This is a used, refurbished tractor.  It was made in 1968, purchased for around 1300 pounds, and driven for thousands of hours.  When it stopped working in 2003, it was stripped down, repaired and refurbished.  Then in May of this year, it sold again for 11, 800 pounds.  That's over $21 700 in Australian money ($18 800 USD) - more than our car!  For a tractor that's over 40 years old, has been used full time on a farm, and has already stopped working once.  Guess Tony won't be getting a vintage tractor for Christmas after all.