Conundrum (in Mo's words)

Craziest thing, this donkey existence, but someone's got to do it.

So if it's raining rain, you carry an umbrella.

What if it's raining umbrellas?

Another recipe for the sparrow, maybe

My connection with meat is still an uncomfortable one.

(I speak for myself. I hope the meat is well past discomfort or any sensation at all. This observation, I note, is not propelling my inner dispute about eating meat in a useful direction.)

The last time I prepared it was nearly a month ago now. I was still feeling brave after having conquered chicken, so this time I'd darted all the way over into red meat territory.

Lamb.

The more I cook, the more I realise how many of my default misgivings are related to human behaviour and past events, rather than to the food itself. But that's a story for another day.

Today, let's talk about these.

All good stories have more stories behind them, and so the chronicle of the Lamb Skewers of 2011 begins at the end of 2009, when I had my first encounter with plain Greek-style yoghurt. Prior to that, most of my yoghurt experience was restricted mainly to the thickened, sweetened, heavily flavoured substance that might contain some live culture; that's commercial yoghurt in Malaysia -- or what Indian restaurants serve as a beverage or the main ingredient for raita.

In December 2009, I hadn't reached my current state of no-refined-sugar zeal. I wanted fructose in my yoghurt, so help me! Yes, and stabilisers and thickeners and artificial colours too, thanks. This "plain yoghurt" business was so... so... unadorned. And I'd recklessly gone and bought a kilo of it.

So, stuck with a kilo minus the small bowl I had tentatively sampled, I set to finding ways to use it up.

Cakes were baked, following Orangette's classic recipe. A loaf to my pastors, cupcakes to my small group; I baked until I barely had to measure the ingredients anymore.

But still, the jar stood unfinished in my fridge. How could it be that one kilo of yoghurt contained so much?

Finally, one stormy December evening, I set my jaw and determined that this would be the last time I would take the jar off the shelf. This would be the day I would finish the unfriendliest yoghurt I had ever known. Vaguely following recipes I'd seen online, I threw in a few pinches of powdered spices, rolled large chunks of vegetables in it, and roasted them in a deep pan.

That was when I discovered that Greek yoghurt didn't hate me; it just took some... warming up.

Whether in a sweet or a savoury way.

Back to the more recent past, and the presence of raw lamb in my fridge.

And plain, Greek-style yoghurt -- which, by now, I've become accustomed to eating, having won a long battle with my tastebuds.

I didn't use an online recipe to make the yoghurt marinade this time. I couldn't; having just arrived back in the country, my spice cabinet was still bare and I had but two little packets that suggested harmony with the flavour I was picturing.

Cumin and turmeric powder. Added in gradual tentative shakes that grew more uncontrolled as my patience ran out, until the finished product was a deep ochre hue. Then a tiny squirt of honey; a few grains of sea salt. That's all.

The idea of skewering dawned slowly, and the need to pre-soak the skewers bought the lamb nearly a full day to soak in the tenderising embrace of the yoghurt. Remembering how well the zucchini of '09 had yielded to the yoghurt's advances, I'd also chopped one* up and throw it in with the lamb. The red onion slices I credit to a blogger whose page I now cannot locate. If you're going to try this one, don't neglect the red onion slices (lightly oiled just before skewering). They are sweet, and after all that time in the heat they only bite enough to remind you that pink isn't only for sissies.

That first evening, I slid everything off the skewers onto some leftover tomato-and-capsicum rice. The following day, for lunch, it was nestled in a spelt-flour wrap with fresh vegetables.

A couple of meals later, it was on the skewers with tomato-and-capsicum rice again, and then...

Well, what do you expect? I live alone and most of my meals are cooked for one. It takes a while to get through a whole batch of anything.

But I know I've discovered a winning recipe because this time, the lamb ran out before my appetite for it did.

*What do you call one zucchini? Surely not a zucchinus... right? Please say it's not so.

Sunday

Morning: Marinated tomatoes and feta

on very large bread (the plate is also very large)

Evening: Breaking out of the gritty CBD underground section of

the train line to see a rainbow stretched over Sydney harbour

Long quote from Jane Goodall

"The very most important thing we can do to try and get out of the mess we've made on this planet, both social and environmental, is to spend a little bit of time learning and thinking about the consequences of the choices we make each day. What did we eat? How was it grown? Where did it come from? Did it affect the environment adversely, or animal welfare? Is it good for human health? What do we wear? Where was it made? Does this involve child slave-labour or sweatshops? How do we get from A to B? Could we do it in a way that is less damaging to the environment? If we start to think like that, inevitably people make small changes, because very often they do things without having the faintest idea of the adverse consequences, and if people start making the small changes, then you start getting the major change that we must have if we care about the future for our children."

(Jane Goodall, in Wisdom: Life by Andrew Zuckerman)

Image from Jane Goodall Institute (Singapore)

Here is beauty

The synchrony.

The musicality.

The innovative use of costumes as props.

The clean, supportive partner work.

Sigh.

Healing

So many have been deeply wounded by nature in recent days.

May beauty return to dwell in these places, and within the ones who are learning to live once more.

Words are not enough

This is lovely (profound, evocative, moving, passionate, stirring, playful...) :

I couldn't invent words in any language I know that would properly describe it.

So I'll just have to ask you to watch it. Then you'll know what I mean.

Image from Wong Fu Productions

Commentary and notes (and the film itself) here.

Beside me at church this morning

“You moved here from Malaysia? That was very brave of you. I always think people who change countries are very brave. Although my own father was one of those people. He came over from Scotland...

“When I wanted to get married, he told me, 'Not without you going to Scotland first.' In those days you had to sail. It took six weeks each way. In the time that I was away, my husband built a house on the orchard and ordered flowers for the wedding and all that sort of thing. Later on, he asked me, 'Do you think that was Dad's way of testing the relationship to see if it would last?'

“My husband died suddenly 22 years ago. I was sixty-two then- yes, I'm eighty-four now. Are you sure you still want to come and have tea with such an old lady? No, he wasn't ill. The evening before, we took a walk by the river near where we live. We rested on a bench and he looked at me and said, 'You're perfect.' Which wasn't true, but it was very nice, and the next morning he- the other thing he said right then was, 'You're better looking today than when I first met you,' and both those things weren't true, but they were lovely because he was saying how he felt. The next morning, at about three o'clock, because he had to get up very early for work – he worked in the Flemington markets supplying fresh fruit and veg – well, the next morning he was gone. And I always think that was a special gift of God's grace, to hear him say those things just before.”

We talked a little more, she repeated her invitation for tea at her home sometime, she impulsively gave me a hug. For one timeless moment the gap between eighty-four and thirty, Scotland and Malaysia, the 1960s newlywed grower couple and the white-haired woman sitting alone beside me, faded into the briefest of trivialities.

And then we walked out of the sanctuary into life as normal – if ever it is – to the foyer where a friend asked for a ride home, where people were drinking coffee out of non-biodegradable foam cups, carrying conversations in defiance to the humming, high-pitched energy field that always seems to emanate from kids' church downstairs.

By your side

Tenth Avenue North "By Your Side" from Provident Label Group on Vimeo.

I love everything about this song. The truthful lyrics; the unhurried metering; the rise-and-fall simplicity of the melody. I could listen to it over and over again.

It's the video and its added sound bites that I'm not so keen on, because it seems to send the subtle message that God is "by your side" only if you've lost your home to a hurricane, fire or similar catastrophe.

Which, I will never dispute, he is. And I am not disputing that the crisis relief organisation that produced this video does fine work.

It's only that the video doesn't do justice to the wide sweep of grace the song refers to. Because it doesn't take your being caught in a state-wide flood to get the Almighty's attention. The point is, wherever you are, he's there. Even in the situations that don't make for so much dramatic camera footage.

Like being stuck for eight years in what seems to be a career dead zone, and feeling too old -- and too scared of making your wife and kid suffer even more -- to make any change drastic enough to get you out.

Or finding yourself back in the very same section, and physical location, of the rat race you'd put all of your resources into escaping.

Or facing the end of a relationship that took up the second half of your 20s, blinking in disbelief and trying to navigate this new, lonely landscape.

Or waking up in a life that's got all the right boxes ticked, having all that you ever asked for and yet feeling that it's not what you wanted.

He's by your side there, too.

Wherever "there" is for you.

If you needed to book roses for tomorrow and you haven't, it's too late, so read this instead

I've never really "got" Valentine's Day. Where I grew up, it was a foreign celebration that opportunistic capitalists quickly picked up as a very easy way to get rich, at least one day a year. It wasn't a part of my family's tradition, or of the faith I eventually came to have. So I have little of my own to say about it.

But hopefully this will provoke some activity in your head this sleepy Sunday.

A picture from my archives that would be wholly unrelated to this post,

if not for the one heart-shaped cake tin I own. That heart-shaped cake,

with some accompaniments, eventually became my cousins' first anniversary gift from me, on the occasion of their first visit to Sydney as husband and wife. That, and the pedestrian everyday sparks of

my life and my friends', is the type of occasion I'd rather commemorate. Who wants to wait for that once a year?