aka R’acquel

One of those long-time recipes that mum always used to cook. It’s one of those meals that always gives us a great zing & physical ‘high’ - also fantastic to eat during times of sickness with colds & flu too. What i love about this meal, is how it has a way of saying,

“Enjoy the balance as the lemon sings, I am at peace.”

INGREDIENTS
* 4-6 chicken drumsticks (legs) - fatty skin taken off
[NB - Chicken legs must be used for this recipe. No other piece of the chicken seems to make the soup taste this good.]
* 3 L water? (enough to cover the legs in a large pot)
* a good handful of rosinni pasta or noodles
[NB - rosinni is a style of pasta that looks like small pieces of rice]
* squeezed juice of 1 lemon
* salt/pepper to taste

METHOD
1. Toss legs into a large pot, fill with water, throw in a big pinch of salt.
2. Boil for 30-60minutes, until water reduces down to a level to serve the family. The longer you boil, the better - the meat should fall off the bone very easily.
3. Remove legs from the pot, pull off the meat and set aside in a bowl.
4. Taste test here for salt, add pepper, add rosinni or noodles. If there’s not enough ’soup’ and you’ve boiled it down too much, you can add more water here.
5. Cook until the rossini or noodles are done.
6. Add lemon juice, allow it to stir in & serve!

The juice on it’s own makes a fantastic stock and can be set aside in the freezer for later use

Afiyet Olsun!

Man, did we get dumped with a shitload of rain again or what?! Was it alot of rain or are the stormwater drains in this region simply not coping? We’re living on the tops of mountains here!

Not much of a picture outside of my place, but this dumping was worse than the one two weeks ago. Cars had to drive onto the wrong side of the lane to get past.

I was practising how to drive when the storms hit, one just after 2pm and another after 3pm. Very hazzardous conditions on the road as you could barely see through the rain at all. Some sections of the mainstreets in Katoomba & Leura had rivers running even on the footpaths. Pity i couldn’t stop the car to take photos to relay the real drama =P.

Today was another familiar pattern of sunshine/dry morning, with storms begining to brew as it verges towards “end of school” time.

Shitload of rain here at the moment. Hope it’s enough to replenish the water levels in regions where they need it the most.

I’ve been experiencing an old famliar pattern of summer storms this week which makes me wonder if the Australian drought conditions are headed towards a turn-around soon. The days have been sunny and then evolving into thunderstorms towards the afternoon/evenings. It definitely feels like something very familiar is “returning”.

The flash flooding we experienced here & here mid february with 295mm of rain across two days was clearly a record since my year of living here.

My first suspsicions of possible weather changes coming up was sparked by the flowering of a succulent that my mother received as a cutting from an old neighbour a long time ago. It hadn’t flowered in 18 years. It made me wonder what could be the cause that triggered the plant into flowering as it didn’t seem like the quality of soil was the cause.

The pursuit to find out possible triggers made me stumble across the god of flowers & the Mayan Calendar ending in 2012. That’s what left me wondering if perhaps this plant was responding to a natural cycle of something beyond the seasons, something longer - so that’s what made me wonder if something like El Nino / La Nina could’ve been responsible.

I’ve been wondering if the drought would begin to slowly turn eversince, and i think it could be beginning it’s journey now. Perhaps not directly addressing the drought at first, but I’m suspecting there could be more rain on the way slowly emerging this year, with the possibility of too much rain to follow.

Who knows. Perhaps we will with time.

I have this old memory of how much it used to rain in the late 70s - early 80s as a child. I remember how wet it was. I also remember how people used to have such colourful looking umbrellas too. These days, they tend to be a rather generic boring black! Why is that? Was it because it did rain so much once upon a time that we manufactured colourful umbrellas to cheer ourselves up a bit? Maybe it was an offshoot from the flower power of the 60s? Or maybe the popularity of Kermit The Frog’s Rainbow Connection song at the time? Did we see more rainbows back then? Do they have more colourful rainbows in places like England where it normally rains a lot right now?

It does feel like rain has been on the increase for me this last year, although that’s been slightly complicated for me because i moved from Sydney to Leura and that’s a big constrast in conditions of climate via the dramatic change in altitude. Will certainly gain a better picture with my second year here to make a comparison nevertheless.

Looking forward to more rainbows …and flowers too. Fingers crossed.

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Day 3 of neck pain, in quite a fucking bad state at the moment. Day 3 of not getting better but worse, it’s not a good sign. My past is begining to haunt me today.

Had trouble driving in the car on the way home after dropping my son off at school. Couldn’t tolerate the jarring motions, my hand was against my neck alot. I bought a foam cervical collar brace yesterday.

The jarring was painful. Brought back memories of being pregnant when Multiple Sclerosis entered into my life at wk 17 way back in February 2001. We were driving in a hired ute to buy furniture from Birkenhead Point for our new appartment in Newtown. The bumping off the car with jolting pain like that - it wasn’t fun to re-experience the same thing today. My mind had vivid flashbacks of being in the ute. At least our Ford Fairlane has much better suspension! *lol*

It’s exactly 6 years since MS hit me bloody hard. It started with a urinary tract infection battle, followed by a 3 week flu, then neck pain like this.

My life’s recently re-experienced this battle. UTI. The local GP almost prescribed Bactirin, which i’m allergic to. I ended up with amoxyllin - the same as i had been given during pregnancy. It didn’t work, UTI returned again - treated with Keflex for the second round. I don’t feel it worked properly, but i think it’s just about out of my system now after a few weeks. I’m just over a recent flu. Not as bad when i was pregnant. Now i’m dealing with this neck pain that hasn’t shown improvement in 3 days, seems to be getting worse.

I’ve been pretty much in complete remission this last year. Hardly any relapses/flare-ups. Body completely recovered. The fact that my body was able to recover physical sensation completely is bloody amazing.

It’s getting harder to move my head. It will hopefully just get better, maybe i’m dealing with a really bad neck-strain but atm - it’s not going well.

Anywayz. I’m not scared.

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www.newtownmums.com.au

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This was one of the first flowers i fell deeply in love with when i first moved to Leura. It’s a summer flowering bulb here - the first flash of fire to strike my heart. I love flowers that have the colours of fire.

Would anyone know what these are called? I can see how this plant could easily turn into a weed, as i’ve noticed with many bulbs in general. I’d want a flower like this properly contained in a pot in my home.

There seems to be a bit of controversay over the “agapantha” here, becoming a problematic weed in the Blue Mountains region. The head gardener of the Everglades Gardens mentioned how he could spot these flowers sprouting many miles out in bushwalks - but nurseries still keep on selling them. I can sometimes see the “anger” in the streets - as though people bend & break the flower heads Marie-Antoinette-style in protest? I’ve been searching for rental properties here and I’d have to agree - the agapantha can sure turn into one hell of an overtaking nightmare that can suffocate many plants here.

There’s another breathtaking flower I’ve also seem bloom here in summer called “red hot poker”. I’ve caught flashes of them whilst driving around here but i haven’t had the chance to stop and take photos. I’m feeling sad because i don’t think i can capture one this year. I only know of one spot where i see the last remaining, but it’s too hard/dangerous for me to stop the car (but oh, how I am tempted!). I’ve fallen so deeply in love with the red hot poker flower that i want to be able to grow one next summer, so that’s one goal for the year.

Ah cool! I came across this great website:

Weeds of Blue Mountains Bushland
http://www.weedsbluemountains.org.au/index.asp

There you go, the fire flower pictured above is known as Crocosmia or Montbretia. Noxious weed too. Red Hot Poker can be a weed too. Nice to know such things upfront.

I don’t know what this flower is called either. Spotted in my SIL’s garden. This kind of colour always gets me high.

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Valentine Vagenda with a 007 twist for the ladies (and erm…perhaps even the men) perusing VV over at Mrs.Lifecruiser’s place! New design of special undies for the modern man, with a special stick-out rose to cover up any suspicious looking snakes that might decide to pop out for a feed.

How can anyone possibly say NO?! ccc

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