It’s still Hayley Mills’ birthday and I also loved this film.
The Truth About Spring
18/04/2010Happy birthday Hayley Mills, 64 today.
I loved this film when I was a kid and wanted to be Spring and/or saila round the world. Sigh.
The dangers of jam
18/04/2010How many people have contracted any sort of illness from eating jam cooked in a home kitchen?
The question first came up several years ago when a woman approached then-MP Katherine Rich at the Upper Clutha A&P Show.
The woman had been making jam for a Save The Children charity shop in Canterbury for years, raising thousands of dollars for a very good cause in the process. But she’d been told it would no longer be acceptable unless she upgraded her kitchen to commercial standard or shifted her jam making to a commercial kitchen.
A media fuss followed and the local body involved backed down. But now another one is waving the big stick at charity cooks.
If I eat at a restaurant or buy food from a supermarket I expect high standards and have no problem with the authorities getting involved to monitor them. But if I buy jam or baking form a charity stall I know it’s come from a home kitchen and accept the tiny risk which comes with that.
Will they follow us home to make sure we store and use the jam the correct way next?
Jam is made from boiling fruit and sugar. I’d think the danger of conrating anything untoward from it would be considerably less than the risk to your helath from batting your head against bureaucracy.
Hat Tip: goNZo Freakpower.
High tea and literary conversation
18/04/2010The invitation was to A Proper High Tea at Burnside with the added attraction of a conversation in which Fiona Kidman and Owen Marshall would share their thoughts on The Spirit of Place in Writing.
Burnside is one of North Otago’s original homesteads which specialises in Victorian fare. The proper high tea included pease pudding, devilled chicken, cold sliced venison, jellied beetroot, green salad and rooled bread and butter.
Dainty cinnamon oysters, chocolate cream cakes and a selection of fruit tarts followed.
In between courses the two writers took us around New Zealand and the world with poetry and prose.
The evening was a fundraiser for the Janet Frame Eden Street Trust.
Earlier in the day Fiona had led a workshop on writing memoirs in the Janet Frame room at Waitaki Girls’ High School followed by lunch and writing time at Janet’s childhood home at 56 Eden Street.