Where the Wild Things Are

This is a trailer from TrailerSpy

I'm amazed that this book hasn't been made into a movie before now. Written by Maurice Sendak in 1963 the book is about the imaginary adventures of a young boy named Max, who is punished for being naughty by being sent to his room without supper. Apparently there was an animated version released in 1973, with an updated version of this released on 1988. See Wikipedia

Although the book was written for children, there is some doubt about whether or not the movie version will be suitable for little ones.

The release date for Australia is December 10, 2009.

Thank you to Ruth at Skerricks , whose blog highlighting ideas and inspirations for school libraries, I follow avidly. Ruth had this trailer on her blog and I wanted to see if I could work out how to put it onto mine as well......  

........ And I have.  I'm feeling very chuffed.

RIP kitchen garden :-(

Oh dear ..... sigh. The kitchen garden has gone to wherever it is kitchen garden plants go when life expires.  Not sure what happened, but suspect it could be that the potting soil was all wrong. Why do I suspect that? Well...... Jeb decided to use the soil that was left over, to give a boost to some bare patches around the edges of the back lawn.  

For days the tantalising (?) aroma of chook poo permeated the house and, possibly, the entire suburb. We thought that was probably ok. Chook poo's a good fertilizer right? After a while the smell disappeared (or were we in fact suffering from olfactory fatigue by that stage?), but we noticed that large patches around the edge of the lawn had taken on a distinctly dry, seared look - as in, dead. These were the very same patches that had been treated with the soil we'd used for the kitchen garden! 

We had noticed that the lettuce plants were looking a little sickly a couple of days after planting them out, but told ourselves that they had gone into "shock" and would rally once they got used to their new bed. Sadly this was not to be. They curled up their leaves, turned a beigy colour and kind of disintegrated.  I just hope their deaths were not too agonising, poor things.

Sorry, I haven't taken any pictures of the carnage we've wreaked. Too sad. Back to buying, and wasting, lettuce for a while at least.  And I won't be writing about gardens again ...... too embarrassing.

A Mini Kitchen Garden is Born

Lettuce...... I wonder how many tonnes I've thrown away in my lifetime.

I don't really like lettuce all that much. I tend to buy lettuce only when we're in the grip of a major heat-wave.  Once the weather cools a little my desire for salads cools right along with it, and the lettuce gets shoved to the back of the fridge. Here it might turn into a dreadful mushy mess or, alternatively, a green icy ball.  It depends on what mood my fridge happens to be in at any given time.

It's the same with herbs.  I'm just an ordinary cook but occasionally I'll be inspired by some luscious looking dish in a magazine or recipe book.  This will invariably be a dish which requires a teaspoon (no more, no less) of fresh (on no account should the dried variety be used) coriander or something.  So I dutifully buy some sprigs (you can't just buy one sprig), chop up the teaspoonful and put the rest away for another day.  The trouble is that by the time another day comes along (usually 3 or 4 weeks later) the coriander, or whatever, has turned itself into the dried variety, which on no account must you use for the said luscious dish.

So, finding ourselves teetering on the brink of financial ruin (possibly a slight exaggeration), thanks to the GFC, my son and I decided that there was only one course of action to be taken. No more wasting food and/or money for us.  A kitchen garden is what we need.