Last night was the last dinner in my 12 month reign as food master for the Ararat Wine & Food Society. It was a great experience to put together a series of meals for the society around different themes and with a great bunch of local chefs.
Last night we were at The Vines in Ararat where chef Sandy O’Malley excelled again with a very French influenced menu designed around a poultry/bird theme. We started with appetisers of foie gras, caramelised apple and walnut crostini and also smoked duck breast with pink grapefruit on witlof. The foie gras on caramelised apple, served on a sliced of toasted baguette was outstanding.
Entrée was the most flavoursome yet exquisitely sparkling quail consomme, with quail and pheasant pasties.
Giving my annual report as Food Master to the society
By the time we got to main the assembled crowd was fully in the swing of the evening and looking for another stand out. I served chicken casserole! But what a casserole, coq au vin, made the long way around with the sauce reduced separately (and for days) before the chicken and vegetables were cooked. The chicken was entirely infused with the favour of the wine soaked stock. For the first time in memory, when I stood up to tell everyone about the dish, the room exploded in spontaneous applause for the dish before I had said a word. A better dish, better executed could not have been found for a cold and rainy night in Ararat. The humble chicken outdid itself.
That only left dessert and it didn’t disappoint either. Sauternes baked custard with olive oil and Sauternes cake with Sauternes syrup and baked pears. This was served with a Chateau Roumieu – Lacoste Sauternes, utterly delicious.
I am now looking forward to what delights our new Food Master Peter Thomson and new Wine Master Chandra Ball will bring to the society in the next 12 months. Yum.
As a board member of the East Grampians Health Service today I was privileged to attend two award ceremonies for Lowe Street and Willaura aged care facilities. After an incredibly rigorous accreditation process both facilities passed all 44 standards. A great achievement on the back of very hard work by many staff.
Jo Simmonds receiving the accreditation award from David Hawker
The Hon. David Hawker, Member for Wannon officiated at both ceremonies and presented certificates of achievement. At both centres board members paid tribute to the long and personal interest David has taken in the Ararat and Willaura health services and communities.
NSW is following Victoria’s lead and mandating minimum skills training for firefighters. It seems NSW has learned nothing from Victoria’s experience and will have no recognition of prior learning, forcing highly experienced firefighters to do the course and sit the test.
A NSW firefighter has written to the Land newspaper about these new regs and has managed to encapsulate in a couple of sentences exactly what is wrong with all these regulations.
“Something has subtly shifted. Instead of “our” brigade, it has begun to feel like “their” brigade. Bureaucracy is toxic to the volunteer spirit that has shaped bushfire brigades around Australia.”
The same can be said of food handling requirements for CWA and Red Cross ladies, much of the Working with Children regulation and the never-ending growth in police checks. No wonder more and more volunteers won’t take on leadership roles, get burnt out or just quietly retreat.
Like many others I never thought the original national broadband network (NBN) proposal would work. When Telstra said they wouldn’t bid because it couldn’t be done within the bidding parameters I took notice. And I thought in this case that the criticism of Sol Trujillo and Donald Mcgauchie as unreasonable and aggressive was misplaced. The argument seemed to be that because Telstra didn’t agree with either Liberal or Labor governments then Telstra must be in the wrong. Couldn’t it possibly be that government, of whatever hue was the one in the wrong?
As both a farm dweller and a former telecommunications analyst I just couldn’t see how $9.4bn could deliver fast broadband to 98% of the population. My scepticism proved correct when Minister Conroy announced the original plan had been scrapped and instead Labor would spend $43bn in an attempt to deliver super fast broadband to 90% of the population. Some analysts think it will only get to 85%. A huge increase in cost for less coverage and as Malcolm Colless pointed out in today’s Australian that “instead of uniting the community by ending the tyranny of distance, it will divide the population into haves and have-nots.”
I wasn’t that irritated by the previous plan, yes it was $9.4bn and yes Telstra has already indicated further upgrades to the Next G wireless network are in the pipeline making much of the rural part of the plan redundant anyway. (In fact Telstra has already demonstrated the network can achieve 21Mbps up from the current 8Mbps). So it seemed to me that the market was working to deliver me fast broadband the government was duplicating this effort apparently just to spite Telstra.
But $43billion is really serious money. And now the speed has been increased to 100Mbps for the lucky urbanites who will be able to get it (and who can afford it), I am very annoyed. Yes I understand I live in a sparsely populated area where the costs of delivering fibre are prohibitive and I am also willing to accept the argument that once we get to 100Mbps then applications become possible that aren’t even imagined now and could drive economic growth. But surely the government’s role, if it must build telecommunications, is to correct for market failure. Instead this government will role out very fast broadband past Australia’s wealthiest suburbs and the biggest beneficiaries will be the already infrastructure privileged inner city wealthy. In its rush to make the big announcement, Labor has completely ignored both geographic equity and income inequality.
Last night was my first Ararat Wine & Food dinner as foodmaster. The occasion of the much anticipated pig’s trotters filled with pork, shallot and mushroom and served on lentils with a red cabbage and apple salad. Delicious.
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It is always difficult to decide what to blog on when starting up again, should it be something momentous or something of the moment? A story caught my eye in The Age online today by Jason Dowling on the growing cosiness between the Nationals and Labor.
Perhaps inadvertently (these passages are out of order from the original article) Jason has laid out for all to see the innate corruption of the National Party. It is completely clear that their primary goal is getting more pay for Nat MPs. It has nothing to do with better representation for the long suffering National Party voters.
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Compare and Contrast …
Over at Slashfood today I learned that to become a licensed food handler in Oregon you can take an online course. By contrast, where I live you have to attend a food handling course to become something called a food safety supervisor. Why can’t we learn online like Oregon? Are there any stats out there anywhere to show Oregon, USA has a worse record of public food poisoning than Victoria, Australia? Also, all organisations, including charity street stalls, have to have something called a Food Safety Program.
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Cooking & Food, Rural Communities | Louise Sunday, July 12, 2009 | 
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