There, there.

Thanks to Benny from Zaphod’s Other Head Mailing List Mark 2.

Take an onion of somewhat dubious agricultural  origin. Chop.

Cry, then fry.  You may call this “saute” if you prefer.

Whatever you call the addition of this chopped onion to warm olive oil in a hot pan, do it softly and slowly until you can see right through it.

Add gourmet vegetable liquid stock that was trucked across the country and whizzy it all up so the cooked onion thickens the stock.

Bring to the boil, skim the fluffy white stuff off the top and then reduce heat until it reaches a gentle simmer.

Add whatever ingredients you and your guests feel okay about eating,  in a countdown of  cooking time.

Don’t talk ethics while you’re actually eating it.

As a family, in 1981, Mum and Dad and all of us kids went to the United States of America, to live for a year (academic sabbatical) in the (university) town of Missoula, Montana.  We arrived there in time to farewell their summer and to welcome a season they called “Fall”.

It’s good to be back in a place with seasons.  At last.

Truffle.  Is a drug.

When Gray and I traveled across Australia we’d often arrive in small towns, like our small town, and look around. To see a place like Karri Country Good Food would always make us feel a little less alien and a little more welcome. For one thing, there was a good chance of getting some decent tofu, and maybe a chance to meet some interesting people.

Karri Country Good Food is welcoming to everyone, not just to the mainstream shoppers, and that’s something about the shop that I value. It’s not just a shop. It’s offering something different. An alternative. I hope it will always be welcoming to all, including people who live a different life and maybe like to eat a little differently too.

“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent and not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.”

Tom Robbins “Jitterbug Perfume”

My friend Bob left his hometown for a nursing home in a bigger town and these were his parting gifts to me. Tinned beef, dry biscuits and tinned rice cream. My grandmother survived the depression and said she never wanted to see anybody hungry ever again. These parting gifts from my friend Bob, as he emptied his larder on his last day in this little town, tell a little of that story, at least, they tell it to me.