Wednesday, April 20, 2016

A day in the life of an elderly, retired gentleman

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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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