The Aussie BBQ...or Russian Roulette for food.

Anyone can cook meat, all you need is a frypan, temperature controlled stove and a dash of oil.

It takes a real man to cook on raging flames, with the temperature fluctuating between burn and incinerate, when even getting close enough to flip the meat might cost you an eyebrow..thats what makes  it 'Mans work'.

* Perfect, the meat should go on NOW

With a beer in one hand (to put yourself out when you catch fire) and tongs in the other you dash headlong into the flames, turning that which seems scorched enough and moving to the side that which is still on fire, then dash back checking for burning eyebrows and forearms as you do. A long slurp on the beer about now will cool your burning throat..

Now stand back for a few minutes as you recover from the incineration, slurp a few more times on the beer still in your hand and laugh with friends, telling jokes about women, cars, work or the weather. All to soon it's time to tackle the flames again as you prepare by drinking more beer for the upcoming fight, thankful for the fireproof apron and burn cream already rubbed into the groin.

Before long though the cooking is over as most of the meat is set and shrunk like a rubber shoe sole, a sure sign that it's cooked enough. Regardless of the amount of carbon on the surface the cook declares the meat 'cooked' and 'perfect'.

 *Of course you've locked the dog away in the back room from where he looks at you all day like this through the window...

At this stage the guests turn to the woman of the house who has washed and cleaned the BBQ and area beforehand, made numerous salads and sides, supplied drinks, classes, and cutlery, welcomed the guests and continually nudged the man of the house to remind him to turn the meat.

The guests help themselves as is the Australian way, taking a plate, piling up the sides and salads and sorting through the meat for the least burned bits (of whatever that is/was)

After stuffing themselves with beer, salads and meat guests invariably thank the man of the house for HIS great BBQ, the woman of the house would be there...but she's in the kitchen washing dishes and putting away.

* You can see this meat is nearly done by that nice shade of black gradually creeping over the steaks

NB: the woman of the house seems frustrated and tired which greatly confuses the man of the house...after all, HE did all the cooking!

 *You can even BBQ in the great outdoors by mounting the BBQ on the boot of your car like this tripper, you could BBQ as you wait for the kids to come out of school or even while filling up with fuel. (Watch out for the police though)

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Aussie Traditions...The BBQ

After 4 long months of cold and winter, we are finally coming up to summer and Barbecue season. Therefore, it is important to refresh your memory on the etiquette of this sublime outdoor cooking as it's the only type of cooking a real man will do, probably because there is an element of danger involved.

When a man volunteers to do the Barbecue, usually on a Saturday, the following chain of events is put into motion:
Barbecue Routine
The woman buys the food.
The woman makes the salad, prepares the vegetables, and makes dessert.
The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with the necessary cooking utensils and sauces, and takes it to the man who is lounging beside the grill - beer in hand.
Here comes the important part:
THE MAN PLACES THE MEAT ON THE GRILL.
The woman goes inside to organize the plates and cutlery.
The woman comes out to tell the man that the meat is burning. He thanks her and asks if she will bring another beer while he deals with the situation.
THE MAN TAKES THE MEAT OFF THE GRILL AND HANDS IT TO THE WOMAN.
The woman prepares the plates, salad, bread, utensils, napkins, sauces and brings them to the table.
After eating, the woman clears the table and does the dishes.
And most important of all: barbeque jokes
Everyone PRAISES the MAN and THANKS HIM for his cooking efforts.

They tell good old Aussie barbie jokes like:
Question: What do you call a boomerang that won’t come back?
Answer: A stick.

The man asks the woman how she enjoyed 'her night off.' And, upon seeing her annoyed reaction, concludes that there's just no pleasing some women....



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It could have happened to anyone…Right?!

We’ve had a lot of rain recently...heaps!
Not rain like the rest of the world knows rain… but around 40mm (1 1/2in) in a week. That’s a lot for southern Australia, and because the land is pretty much flat, we actually got some flooding.
Flooding here is not like flooding in the rest of the world either… Flooding here is a wide expanse of water over roads etc, sometimes a foot deep. A whole foot! (you can stop laughing now)

Going back a few weeks, a friend had borrowed my trailer to pick up some horse poo for his garden and to pay me back he kindly returned the trailer full of said horse poo. I barrowed most of it around to the back garden but left a couple of wheelbarrows full to tuck neatly under the shrubs in my neatly graveled front yard. (we don’t have grass here, it’s too dry) Then the rains came….
Hands up all those who knew that horse poo floats?………..
OK smarties...well I didn’t!
With my front yard under almost an inch of water the horse poo spread out to cover most of the yard. After a few hours the water receded gently leaving it spread perfectly across the yard.
So it was that I found myself with garden rake in hand in the light drizzle raking the poo back where it belonged...under the shrubs. You can imagine how wet my runners got from this adventure. . and the smell? Don’t even ask!
I rinsed them clean and knowing that I needed them the next day I put them in the oven and turned it on just a tiny little bit.
A few hours later when I checked, they were still cold and wet, so I turned the oven up, just a tiny little bit… unbelievably; they were still cold when I checked them later. I turned up the oven just a tiny little bit.
One thing led to another, things happened (no ones fault) ..and I went to bed having completely forgotten the shoes in the oven.
Early next morning when I went into the kitchen I instantly noticed a warm musty smell, my eyes were drawn to the oven…the light was on. I opened the oven to find my runners dripping between the shelves, a mixture of melted plastic and scorched leather…
I didn’t tell my girls about this cause I think they’re planning to put me in an old farts home at the first opportunity, instead I put on another pair and went shopping…no one need ever know.. Shhh!

Speaking of my girls.
My oldest daughter (D1) had borrowed yet another mobile phone and stopped in at one of the others girls houses to get her slow cooker back. (crock pot)
D1 and D3 have had perhaps 25 phones between them in a couple of years.
She shopped on the way home and had to do the usual juggling act to get it all into the house in one trip. (as you do)
Once in the house she quickly plugged the slow cooker in to warm up while she peeled and cut vegetables, poured in stock and diced meat for the evening meal.
She had to rush a bit because slow cookers are …well, kind of slow!
With the evening meal in and cooking she tidied up the kitchen and decided to make a call. It was about here that she realized she hadn’t seen her mobile for some time.
She searched the scrap bin, the empty shopping bags, her bottomless handbag (whats with women and their bags anyway?)
Eventually she found her way outside to check the most obvious place of all, the car.
Nope, not there either!
Tracing her steps in her head she remembered having the phone in the shop…in the car.. in her hand as she struggled to load everything for the trip to the kitchen…
..a dark thought crossed her mind and so she went to check.
Scooping around in the now half cooked evening meal she found a slightly charred, slightly twisted phone in the bottom, right where she’d put it as she scrambled about in her bag for the front door keys.

We still give her shit about her ‘Nokia soup’
I’ve got an excuse because I’m old..but D1 at just 27…..



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Are men hopeless or not?

Yeah, good party trick mate!




Recently I stuffed up a simple recipe, I expected to get some good-hearted stirring but instead got the old ‘men should stay out of the kitchen’ routine.
No one expects men to be able to cook, and when we do, it is a choir of ‘Hmm, that’s not bad…for a man.’
Ladies, let me remind you how sexist that is!
If a woman’s house is untidy they are reminded to get off their ass and catch up, but when a mans house is untidy it is all, ‘Well, he is a man, what do you expect’, or ‘let me do that for you. (you hopeless dimwit)’.

Once we lived in caves and ate dead things…raw! All one had to do was throw the yucky bits out the front of the cave or back into the corners, thereby giving archaeologists something to work with in the future. No floor to sweep, no windows to wash, nothing to paint, clean, trim or mow...and man was as happy as a pig in shi… alright, maybe that’s not a good analogy.
However, somewhere along the line someone decided that we desperately needed to move to a more affluent neighbourhood. I am guessing it was someone’s wife…
Now I have to tell you that men and women have different standards, what is clean to a man may not reach the lofty standards set by most women. When you ask your man if something is clean or not, he is looking to see if you can see the thing through the layer of dust…if you can, it is clean! Simple. (remember the cave)
Cooking is the same, is the meat bleeding and moving about? No, then it is ready, dig in.
For some reason women recoil at this relaxed state that men seem genetically predisposed to??

Then there is the ‘Hopeless Gambit’ an all-encompassing theory put into practice when you are asked to do something you do not want to do. It works like this, stuff it up badly enough, often enough and you will not be asked to do it again. (it works surprisingly well) I have witnessed this done by all manner of men, from lowly husband’s right up to our Prime Minister.

What I am saying here is that some men are lowering the standards well below the achievable. Whether deliberately or coincidentally they make us all seem inept and childlike…and I am confused! I do not know whether to scold them or thank them.