Tonight I made my sea bass on roasted vegetables only there wasn’t any sea bass in Woolies, so I opted for barramundi. It was delicious, obviously, but I was in a bit of a quandary when I bought the fish. Almost all the fish was ‘skin-off’. Mirinda reckons they’re breeding skinless fish but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t work.
So, my question is, why do Australians prefer fish without skin? I can only assume it’s because more ‘skin-off’ fish is purchased than ‘skin-on’. And I further assume, the supermarket knows this because people with loyalty cards don’t like fish skin. When you don’t have access to a real fishmonger because supermarkets have killed them off, it’s a pain in the arse when people with loyalty cards determine whether you have skin on your fish or not.
Perhaps it’s like the Swedish supermarket thing with cutting all traces of fat off meat. Which was equally annoying and why we used the butcher instead.
Not that the skin free thing occupied my entire day. We all slowly woke up in our mountain house and, after coffee and tea, took Archie for a stroll around the neighbourhood.
And what a lovely neighbourhood it is. Bush all around with some faint tracks through it, gorgeous houses, some far too big for humans to live in, others very cute and desirable.
Having wandered around, we drove to Leura for a brilliant brunch at Sorenson’s Glasshouse and Gardens. An egg and bacon roll to die for. And delicious carrot cake of an appropriate size – unlike the doorstop hummingbird cake Fi and I are still recovering from.
There followed a bit of a drive around the streets, admiring the Leura houses and gardens which are coming alive with bulbs. As I said to Mirinda, it’s odd seeing daffs in September.
At one point, driving slowly by one house with Fi waving her hand vaguely at things, a man painting on the roof of one house thought she was being friendly and waved back. This caused some hilarity in the car and my attempts to change the words of a well known musical.
Obviously, a walk up Leura Mall was required which always includes a stop in the wood shop where Mirinda decided I needed a new walking stick and Fi treated Mirinda to a beautiful blue wren.
Actually, the blue wren was purchased with great stealth. Mirinda had admired it with Fi, then helped me choose a stick. When we returned to the check out, she wanted to show me the wren but it had gone. She was amazed that it had been bought so quickly after she’d admired it. We should have guessed that Ninja Fi had struck again.
We then stopped for a drink in Leura Garage. Fi noticed she had a message on her phone. It was some emergency services people wondering why Bob’s emergency beacon had gone off.
A few days ago, I’d thrown the beacon in the skip. Mirinda had found the paperwork and a sticker on the beacon both confirmed it was out of date. We figured it was fine to chuck it. Apparently that was not the case. At some point, possibly when the skip was put back on the truck, it went off.
This caused a bit of an uproar because they were worried that Bob’s plane had crashed and they needed to find him. Though, I would have thought they could locate the beacon rather than ask us where it was.
Anyway, back at the house, Mirinda rang the emergency services people and explained what we had done. The guy on the phone seemed quite relaxed about it and asked for the name and number of the skip guy so he could find out where it went. Hopefully he was successful otherwise, it may keep beeping forever, at the bottom of some landfill site.
After all the excitement, we settled down to, basically, doing nothing for a few hours. Well, I basically did nothing. Fi talked on the phone and Mirinda had work meetings.
A splendid rest day after the last few weeks. I’m pretty sure we all deserved it.
