The Simplest Things

Don't you hate it when cliches turn out to be true? The one I'm thinking about now is, 'The simplest things in life are best.' Maybe it's not always true, and I'll bet winning an Olympic gold medal backed by millions of taxpayers' dollars (therefore the opposite of simple) must feel pretty cool, but mostly the saying's spot on, I reckon.

Take yesterday for example, here at Onemilebridge. Sunday lunch with friends. What could be simpler - or nicer!

Lunch was pretty simple too. Lasagne cooked by me, bread baked by Farmdoc, and pavlova brought by our guests. Though lasagne's not exactly simple - it always seems to dirty every dish in my kitchen - it's not all that sophisticated either.

I base my recipe on Marcella Hazan's recipe in The Classic Italian Cookbook, a book I've been using for years.

I made the pasta using 100 grams of flour, 1 egg and some spinach leaves picked in the morning. First I washed the spinach thoroughly. (I'm always amazed by how much grit is hidden in spinach.) Then I cooked it in just the water that clung to the leaves for about fifteen minutes. When it was tender I wrung out all the water, chopped it finely, and kneaded it into the pasta dough. Then I rolled it out with my pasta machine and slipped four pieces at a time into boiling water for a couple of minutes.

I cooked up my normal bolognese recipe with our own lamb mince, and made Marcella's bechamel sauce. Then I assembled the dish, grated some parmesan on the top, put it in the oven, and washed the dozens of dishes I'd dirtied.

The proof of the pudding (or lasagne) as they say, is in the eating, and it really did melt in our mouths - that is when we weren't talking.

Finally the pièce de résistance - the pavlova. So to finish with another cliche - here's a picture that must be worth at least a thousand words:

Thanks, Janet and Annie, for a great afternoon. Sorry the weather was too cold for a picnic on the bridge. Next time, maybe.

Mole Creek, Early Autumn

In Mole Creek each of the four seasons has its own distinct personality. This week even a trip to Deloraine on a regular workaday morning was transformed by an autumnal mist:

Down the driveway,

Along the road,

and off to town.

That's nyoice, that's different, that's unewesyewl!

I wasn't going to play the My Place and Yours game this week. I only joined in last time because my gorgeous daughter Kate was theme queen. I found I was a bit distracted all week, constantly looking at what other people had posted, dying to see how other bloggers had interpreted the theme. But then Pip chose me as one of her favourite collections of the week! My very first attempt! And then I found Toni's choice of theme for this week quite irresistible.

The thing about our house that I find unusual is that we don't have a front door. It's not unusual in the country to use the back door, but we don't have any choice in the matter: there simply isn't a front door to use if we wanted to.

It's our own fault. We built this house and we just didn't include one. We forgot. So all our guests come in through the laundry. I just have to make an effort to hide the dirty underwear.

The thing that most visitors find unusual about our house is that we don't have curtains or blinds. That's because the eaves keep unwanted sun out, and with a 1-kilometre driveway we have no need to protect our privacy.

Thanks, Toni, for the interesting and unewesyewel theme. I'm sure I'll waste a lot of time this week dropping by Meet Me At Mike's to see what everyone else is confessing to.

Falling Down, Falling Down

I have no illusions about living in the country. I don't see it through a rosy romantic glow. Who was the writer who wrote 'There is no hell like a small town'? There's the lack of privacy, the gossip, the suspicion of anything or anyone new, the unthinking clinging to tradition. You can't be considered a local unless you, and possibly one of your parents, were born there.

But we enjoy our own company, have the privacy of 200 acres, and a village within walking distance, so it works for us. And when we need help our neighbours are there for us, even if they consider us crazy mainlanders. With our bridge in bad shape one neighbour said we are welcome to park our car at her place and travel back and forward on our four wheel drive bike through her property to our house. And now our other neighbours have offered to rebuild the bridge at a fraction of the cost quoted to us by the professionals. They remember when it was first built, thirty years ago.

We have wonderful neighbours in the city too, and I'm sure they'd build bridges for us if we asked, it's just that maybe those bridges would be more metaphoric than practical.