I’m sitting under
the palms, post-pool-dip, with a glass of excellent local ‘hand-crafted and
brewed’ ginger beer (well, it’s only 3pm) in my hand, after another day of
writing very little, but indulging again in my two main recent activities:
shopping and cooking!
I can’t believe
that I’ve only been Kurt von der Cove for six days. So much has happened in
those six days. The daily trip to Scott’s ‘Kitchen and Table’ to fit up my wee
kitchen as befits a home rather than a holiday flat. You know: $100 pans, saucy
red crockery, the more recondite kitchen tools …
Up street and
down. Encounters with Barry the accountant, Kylie the barber ($13 pensioner’s
cut), Sean the very superior butcher, and with old friends Seve, Sunny and Rams
from the town’s best restaurants ..
Of course, all
this gallivanting has meant I’ve greatly increased my exercise rate, because
all roads from the Cove either go (much more steeply than this picture
indicates) steeply up or steeply down. I feel I am developing incipient calves.
Today was the most
exercised of all. Wednesday, Yamba has its Farmers’ Market, in the car park by
the seaside …
So off I stomped,
up the hill to Fusion
Dowwwwwwn the
steepest bit to the coast
And there was the
market. A nice wee market, with something for everyone. Some fresh produce,
some home manufactured goods, the obligatory-these-days (live) muzak … I was
looking for veggies, especially that Australian hen’s tooth known as English
spinach, and some herb plants for my wee terrasse garden.
I got farm-fresh
taties and mushrooms and the last wee bit of adolescent spinach from one stall.
Alas, the big stuff had gone at 7am …
I got avocado
‘seconds’ for $1 apiece, couldn’t resist a kilo of ‘ironbark honey’ for $10 and
then visited a cheery chap with a huge display of seedlings – most of them were
veg and salad plants, but I got oregano, garlic chives, a variant of basil et
al to plant next my resident parsley plant ..
And then, as I was
preparing to lump my purchases back up the hill, I spied that sign. Home-made
ginger beer.
Yesssss! Plus ditto lemonade and something called kombucha. Twenty
bottles please. And Matt the brewer said he would deliver them after closing
time.
So up, and along
the cliff-top to the Cove, with my plunder
And it wasn’t even
lunchtime. Lunch. Well … Sean’s wondrous corned-beef had been a little much for
one, so I’d cut up the remainder, and some potatoes … yes, I was going to
attempt that great Algonquin Hotel dish, the corned beef hash. Sometime. Why
not now.
Well, it was
nowhere near Algonquinhash standard. I suppose I shouldn’t have used olive oil
instead of the recommended butter, and shouldn’t have tried to cook it all at
once. But my onions were perfect, and my tricky egg-on-top worked a treat, and
it was crisp and hot and tasty … but too oily. Next time, I suppose, I have to
use butter
Well, it’s Fusion
again tonight with my Aussie family … I’ll write some Victorian Vocalists tomorrow
…
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