Vegetarian Diaries Thoughts and the occasional recipe from Down Under,
Today summer, in this part of the world, finally kicked in a good month late. It's tardiness was the topic of frequent media comment. The holiday air time was filled with stories of despondent holiday makers packing up sodden tents. More unusual were the nightly pieces on global warming , which would not normally get a sound bite. The late summer, the chill southerly winds from a dissolving Antarctic, which in the early summer had sent icebergs the size of apartment blocks to drift ominously up the country's coast to the 42nd parallel, came to be related in one's mind to rising sea levels, relocated island dwellers and the extreme weather events reported on nightly . But today as everyone headed back to air-conditioned offices, the air was finally heavy with heat and the scent of new mown lawns. Children in the final weeks of their summer holidays were sent for midday naps and the blue green sea which surrounds this city seemed the best place to be.
I was free still and walked the pink scoria pavements under elderly plane trees to the fruit and vegetable mart to stock up for the next few days. Bumble bees bumbled over suburban hedges in search of mates and tasty flowers and the neighborhood was a peaceful jumble of blazing summer light and the cool green shade of villas. At the market I was stopped short in an aisle by the perfect antique perfume of the white flesh peaches. I bought nectarine, sharply sweet under their fine tough skin, new season's apples whose period of crispness seems to have the transistorizes of butterflies life, a bunch of optimistic red radishes some choy sum and a cos lettuce.
Once back home I made myself a radish sandwich and flipped through the morning's paper and noted that a Brazilian artist who had some of his excess body fat removed and he used it to to fry meatballs which he served to gallery guests. At home an animal rights group which had broken into a chicken farm and documented horrific conditions which would be checked out by the SPCA.
Radish Sandwich
Take a wholemeal or ciabatta bun and spread with a good tahini-rich Turkish style hummus and slice 3 large red radish, not too finely and layer onto one half of the bun, season with salt and ground pepper.
I ate mine with a black espresso. Out side the crickets called, the neighborhood cat thin in his summer coat visited to stretch out in the through breeze between the front and back doors. post script In the first political poll of the year, the Green Party had increased by 4% in the polls to 10%. It was thought the growing awareness of global warming was the reason for this.
