Year in the Valley

by Jackie French

  ‘Do foxes like quinces?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Even cooked?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Even with custard?’

  ‘Not even with custard.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ decides E and takes my hand, so I have to hold up my jumper single handed, and we cross the creek again, under casuarinas, through the shadows.

  March 2

  I looked up at the hill today. I seem to be doing that more often; perhaps because the autumn light is kinder. The dead wound across the ridge is healing. There are green leaves among the brown. How much is due to rain and how much to gentler weather I don’t know. I wish we could do more than just hope for more rain before winter. The fall last month was good – but not enough to fill the water table. We badly need more.

  Pudge’s droppings are still soft and green though. She’s an excellent forager, vacuuming up the grass. I’ve never met such a dedicated eater. I’ve stopped giving her wombat biscuits, but she still gets her carrots. She’ll need the biscuits again soon though – there’s not much protein in winter grass – but at the moment she looks like she’d burst if you pricked her.

  Watched a lyrebird playing bicycle on a giant yellow zucchini this morning, rolling it down the hill, probably just to see what was under it at first; and then it liked it and kept on rolling…

  March 3

  There were mushrooms on the track this morning. Not in the grass, but on the bare patch carved by the car’s wheels. I suppose I tracked the spores in. And they sent me remembering, as mushroom picking usually does (there’s something about the scent, sweet and too pervasive; you can’t get rid of mushroom scent).

  I remembered the first time I ever heard about wild mushrooms (you didn’t find them in Brisbane suburbs in those days). It was Anna who told me about them first, then Olga, and Julie too.

  Anna was Russian, tall as the saucepan rack above the stove, with bright blonde hair (the shade in the chemist’s window) in thick plaits wound about her head. At the time I considered her verging on elderly; in retrospect she was probably fifty to my sixteen.

  Olga was Yugoslavian, a country that existed in 1969 when I knew her but doesn’t now, and didn’t in her childhood either. She had buried two husbands. The third beat her on Saturday nights. She shrugged as she buttered the toast. ‘He is a man,’ she said, as though that explained it all.

  Julie was Italian, shorter than Anna, taller than Olga and rounder than either. She had a daughter-in-law who caused her endless trouble, and four daughters who gave her endless joy.

  I met them at 6 a.m., when I arrived to wash dishes in their kitchen in a Brisbane hotel (which had become a car park last time I looked). The garbage bins bubbled in the alley, the cockroaches ran in a black tide from the back doorstep (but never into Anna’s kitchen, and who would dare?), and the debris of last night’s smorgasbord still lay in the dining room. ‘You must have breakfast,’ declared Anna.

  ‘I had some toast at home,’ I said.

  Anna said nothing and reached for the sausages. Julie snorted and pulled out eggs. Olga poured more water into the teapot that was always kept hot on the table.

  Three sausages, two bits of bacon, two eggs, half a tomato and four slices of toast with marmalade later, I was allowed to start work.

  It was Anna who showed me how to make an omelette. ‘You cuddle the eggs, don’t beat them. Eggs should be loved…like this,’ as her hands scooped air into the eggs in a way I’ve never forgotten. ‘Your husband will thank me for this,’ said Anna. ‘All girls should know how to cook eggs for their husbands.’ (When I said I mightn’t marry she only laughed.)

  Julie showed me how to cook spaghetti till it stuck when you threw it against the wall. (If you cooked it till it was soggy it fell off.) ‘Your husband will thank me for this,’ she said, and sighed. I gathered it was a lesson her daughter-inlaw hadn’t learnt.

  Olga demonstrated proper bed-making. ‘Your husband will be glad I taught you this,’ she said.

  Actually it’s Bryan who makes the beds in this family. He was brought up by an aunt who was a hospital matron in the 1930s. Her beds, and Bryan’s, never dare to come apart.

  In between serving breakfasts (none quite as large as mine) and tearing up chicken for the smorgasbord, they sat with their teapot and piles of toast and strawberry jam and talked: about husbands and daughters-in-law, about early morning in the countries they had known.

  ‘The spider webs froze to the fences,’ said Anna. ‘We caught them on our tongues and felt them thaw. And the strawberries – they were small as my fingernail. We’d hunt strawberries all day and come home and tell my mother, no, we didn’t find any; it’s too early for strawberries. And she’d laugh, because she knew that we’d eaten them all.’

  ‘Mushrooms,’ said Julie. ‘Every morning in the season we would climb the hill and fill our aprons. My mother grumbled because they stained, but she took the mushrooms.’

  ‘I would hold a hen in my hands to feel the warmth,’ said Olga. ‘We took the eggs right from the nests and held them till they cooled.’

  The traffic howled outside, the garbage bins kept bubbling in the Brisbane heat, and the chef – who never cooked – carved mermaids out of dripping and drank rum and pineapple juice sitting among the watermelons in the coolroom.

  This morning I saw a raindropped spider web on a fence and remembered Anna. I thought it would be cottony, but it melted on my tongue. I tried to catch a chook and hold it in my hands in memory of Olga, but it looked at me indignantly and trotted off. And there was a single giant horse mushroom in the middle of our entrance track. We had it chopped into omelettes for breakfast.

  The women of that kitchen are perhaps one reason why I went bush in my early twenties. For which my husband thanks them.

  Thingummies

  Anna, Julie and Olga all had different names for these. I can’t remember any of them. I’ve called them thingummies for the past nearly thirty years.

  4 cups plain flour

  3 eggs

  salt (optional)

  Pour the flour in a mound on the bench, make a hole in the middle and break in the eggs. Add salt (I don’t). Knead till the eggs are absorbed and add a little water if necessary. Keep kneading till it starts to look transparent (I know this sounds odd but you’ll see what I mean—it takes about 10 to 20 minutes).

  Roll thin. Cut into squares, toss a few each time into boiling water. Scoop them out five minutes later as they start to float (they should just stick to the wall if you throw them hard enough).

  Anna ate her thingummies with sour cream, chopped hard-boiled eggs and caviar if she could find it. (I add chopped chives and dill, neither easily obtainable in 1969 Brisbane.) Julie ate hers with skinned tomatoes simmered to sauce, then a glug of olive oil. Olga ate hers just with butter, but the butter wasn’t as sweet as it was when she was young.

  March 4

  Bess Wisbey was at the bus stop this morning, with her grand-daughter Tammy. I got out of the car to talk to her, though my hair was wet. (I always wash it in the morning and dry it by the stove – hair dryers don’t work on our power system unless we turn on the generator or inverter – but of course there’s not time before the dash to the bus.)

  Tammy’s staying with Bess while her parents are in Sydney (it’s just a bicycle ride between the Wisbey houses). It’s not a bad autumn so far for the peaches, Bess decided. Not much rain…but enough. Just enough.

  The kids always get on the bus in the same order: young ones scrambling to be first and get the seat up front, the older ones behind them, watchful in case a forgetful parent kisses them goodbye and embarrasses them, and then the teenagers languidly loping, their stride a careful calculation of the maximum time possible before Mac gets annoyed and drives off without them.

  The bowerbirds were eating the cabbages when I got back. Bowerbirds are gourmets – they peck and then consider, then peer at the leaf again. I haven’t objected. Cabbages are winter delicacies. I mi
s-timed these, and they’ve hearted much too early. It’s got to be fully winter before I get a craving for cabbage; and then they’re at their sweetest.

  I spent the afternoon making chilli garlands, threading them with a needle and cotton then hanging them up in the kitchen. They look bright and deceptively innocuous. I reckon this lot’ll last me through the next decade, and possibly part of the way into the next millennium. I wiped my left eye accidentally before I’d washed my hands, and it’s still watering.

  There’s a box of giant zucchini outside the front door too. They look like yellow and green shillelaghs and are too pretty to give to the chooks – and they’re probably too tough-skinned till they start to rot a bit. I’ve kindly offered them around town, but strangely no one will accept them. I think every chook house in the district is probably stuffed with overgrown zucchinis now.

  The only use I’ve ever found for them is grating them finely and adding a touch of freshly grated horseradish, with or without a moistening of light sour cream. But you can’t always be eating zucchini with horseradish and sour cream. They’re not bad for stuffing either, provided you only eat the contents and ignore the zucchini. But we don’t have a plate big enough to hold them – fifty-person orgies are out for the moment.

  Rain last night. Not much. Enough.

  March 5

  A grey day. Clouds hanging over Major’s Creek – not soft fog but dull thick clouds. The peach sheds were shut as I drove down to the bus; the last of the peaches went up to Sydney a few days ago. For the first time there weren’t pickers’ cars tearing round the corner as we waited at the bus stop. The valley is emptying again. The leaves aren’t yet yellowing, but definitely paler than they were.

  A new wombat has appeared by the back door, large and low slung, which if you look carefully is because her pouch is full. We’ve called her Three-and-a-half. She’s wary but friendly, as though the word has got out: these creatures (us) are harmless and their food is good.

  I gave her a bowl of oats, which she loved, and a carrot, which she liked even more. Then she wandered over and started tearing at the grass in front of the house. Pudge came by soon after, but after one suspicious glance they ignored each other. Pudge bashed up the garbage bin for a few minutes till her food was ready, then fell asleep on my foot as I scratched her back.

  Picked the last of the hop flowers. My fingers still feel sticky and there’s pollen in my hair and down my bra and again a definite lighthearted feeling. Feeling frivolous, I made a sleep pillow.

  Henry VIII’s Sleep Pillow

  Henry VIII had his own Keeper of the Royal Sleep Pillow.

  Sometimes I feel there are similarities between Bryan and King H—not just the beard (but definitely not the girth or the series of spouses) but an interest in all sorts of things and a complete dedication to what they like. King H had his own Keeper of the Royal Salad Bed too and liked his salad to be just right, fifty-odd ingredients, which is very Bryan-like.

  dried hops (but don’t abandon this recipe if you can’t get dried hops)

  dried rose petals (fragrant)

  dried lavender flowers

  dried cloves

  a dash of cinnamon

  dried rose geranium leaves

  orris root or a few drops of oakmoss oil (available from many garden centres)

  If you don’t want to stick to the royal recipe, you can add chamomile flowers, jasmine flowers or bergamot oil.

  Combine. Insert into the pillow stuffing – assuming you have a feather pillow – or make into sachets and slip them inside the pillow case.

  Dunno if I can persuade Bryan to sleep on one – his republican sympathies might intrude. But I’ve stuffed sachets into the cushions in the living room, so we should get delicious whiffs through winter.

  March 6

  Suddenly we’re getting sick of rich red tomatoes and sweet cucumbers and fat chillies. I even started looking longingly at the frozen peas in Jeremy’s shop the other day. But resisted.

  The grass is good after the last shower of rain. Pudge is even fatter (if that’s possible). Even Chocolate has stopped grazing like a lawn-mower scared to leave even a blade, and is picking only the best.

  I hope Pudge has enough flesh to keep her fat through the winter. (I hope we get enough rain to see us through the winter too.)

  Three-and-a-half approached the wombat feeding zone cautiously last night. Pudge and Chocolate were tucking into their carrots and oats, so I poured a few out for her too. She doesn’t seem at all scared – just a trifle hesitant – as though Pudge and Chocolate have already told her: this place is good.

  The vine leaves are starting to look drab – not because of autumn so much as downy mildew, which at this time of the year I don’t worry about. But I picked a great swag of them to see us through the winter. I dunked them in boiling water for two seconds, dried them, then covered them in olive oil and into the fridge where they’ll keep for months. Though if they start growing interesting flora I’ll throw them out.

  I’m not sure why I like vine leaves. They’re tough, relatively tasteless, and become slimy as soon as you cook them. But like them I do; in fact, I adore them. It’s probably the fact that there are so many of them, so easy to grab through most of the year, that makes me cook them so little – the disdain for something so familiar. I do use them often though: as platters for cheese or asparagus or even steamed veg with vine leaves spread on top. I think I’d rather serve food on greenery than on Royal Doulton china (though I wouldn’t mind some Royal Doulton if someone sent me a set).

  Stuffed Vine Leaves

  youngish, fresh grape leaves

  rice stuffing

  juice of 1 lemon for every 10 leaves

  twice as much olive oil as lemon juice

  1/2 cup water or chicken or turkey stock

  Use any stuffing you like. I love rice cooked in chicken stock with garlic, pine nuts, currants and lots of chopped parsley – just bunged in a pot and simmered till the rice has absorbed the stock.

  Though if I’m making it for company I seethe an onion and lots of garlic in olive oil, then throw in the rice and currants and so on, stir it till it’s covered with oil and has absorbed most of it, then I add the stock – but the quick way is almost as good.

  Once you have prepared the stuffing, take a youngish grape leaf, pick off caterpillars, brush off beetles, and dip the leaf in boiling water for 2 to 10 seconds – till the leaves are limp, but not deceased.

  Wrap the stuffing neatly in the vine leaves – yours will probably look much better than mine. Place the stuffed vine leaves in a casserole dish, sprinkle on the lemon juice and olive oil and the water or chicken stock. Bake for 30 minutes in a moderate oven (180°C).

  Serve hot or cold. Vine leaves are one food that is perhaps best tepid.

  March 7

  The birds are coming back – red-browed finches pecking at the grass seeds and poking their beaks into the rosehips, silvereyes examining the kiwi fruit, the lyrebirds investigating the moist places in the garden. We haven’t seen any of them for months, since before it got so dry – there simply wasn’t seed for them to eat.

  We spent breakfast watching a lyrebird play with two giant zucchinis I’d picked this morning and left by the edge of the garden. It rolled them over with surprisingly dexterous feet – so massive when you see them actually grasp something – and perched on them and rolled them and rocked them in a fabulous balancing act, and pecked at the stalk, which I suppose was still damp with sap. Then a grey shrike-thrush startled it and it ran back into the dark under the kiwi-fruit vines, and then into the young asparagus to scratch and preen and play.

  The chooks breakfasted this morning on Cheezels and things called Dinosnacks, which seem to be Cheezels in another shape, and candy-covered popcorn – all the goodies E gathered in his show bags up in Braidwood on Saturday and then discovered that he didn’t like, and mooched out to pick a couple of cucumbers instead. Not that he doesn’t like junk food – but his tast
e runs more to hamburgers than to cheese and salt and sugar-coated elderly corn.

  According to Mistress Margaret Dodds (Cook and Housewife’s Manual, 1829): ‘to keep hens laying in winter the French give them nettle seed and hemp seed.’

  I haven’t tried it.

  March 8

  The bowerbirds were pecking the Golden Queens so I ate one peach and then another. All ones the birds had pecked, as they were obviously the ripest. (Birds choose the best, and fruit ripens after it’s been pecked too.)

  There is no other peach like Golden Queen – firm but not crisp, so you think it’s dry till you bite into it, then realise the juice is encased in the flesh, it doesn’t drip onto your fingers but just oozes through your mouth. The taste is like essence of peach, three times as powerful as any other.

  Of course it doesn’t look like much, especially ours, because I don’t prune the tree or thin the fruit so they’re all small and fuzzy and slightly pointed at the bottom.

  I thought there was only a light crop till I looked at the tree today. Peaches swell so much in the last week of ripening. Not that they’re all ripe – we’ll be picking them for weeks I think, the big ones first and then the tiddlers.

  Harvest Tart

  I haven’t given exact proportions for the fruit and the pastry – how do I know how big your pie dish is or how fat your apples and peaches?

  shortcrust pastry to line a pie dish (decent pastry – don’t spoil the taste with preservatives)

  1 or 2 apples, thinly sliced