Weekend notes (incl. greener 4 1/2)

Many years ago, when the world was young, I found John Thorne's book, Simple Cooking. (He now has an e-zine here, I find). The book has a fabulous chapter on those impossible recipes (often perpetuated by community cookbooks) with unnervingly mad ingredients but which yet, somehow, work - the chocolate cake recipe from that chapter is still a favourite, I was able to translate it into ingredients available here.

But even John might, with me, be wondering why, in the You Say, We Pay section of a Sunday paper, a lady from Kirrawee is after an old Sydney County Council recipe for a stew that contained minced steak, gingerbread biscuits and, she thinks, raisins. Can anyone help? they ask. Yikes! That was a recipe someone tried and KEPT? (Although, to be fair, bizarre moments like this are what keeps me glancing over You Say, We Pay.)

The Olé quilt top is sewn. Should I admit this? I'm just debating whether to add a border, and if so, what. The very assorted assortment of fabrics went together rather nicely. No pix yet - it's dark outside.

The Go Fug Yourself girls are live blogging the Oscar fashions. Yay! Can you guess which bit of this recent post had me laughing aloud? Their humour is sharp and black and fabulously skewering...

Now, as I said, I don't know her, so maybe she's a complete nightmare and likes to wash her dishes with bourbon and eats nails and uses kittens to scrub the bathroom floor. I don't know her life.

greener (4 1/2)

This house has 18 bulbs connected to dimmer switches. The minister for incandescent light bulb reduction claimed on Tuesday that compact fluorescent bulbs are 'available' for use with dimmers. I found out today what 'available' means, when like a good person I went to find them. They weren't at the huge hardware barn that has everything, almost.

At the specialist lighting shop I learned why - there is apparently only one brand on the market so far, and the bulbs cost THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS EACH. The specialist lighting shop didn't have them either. Not much call for them, apparently - at least not once people find out how much they cost (they'd had other enquirers, none of whom had invested, and I use that term with some thought). I hope that will change. $630 is a lot of dough for 18 light bulbs (the minister is, I note in passing, a multi-millionaire).

As the specialist lighting shop lady pointed out, the way of the future is to divide one's life between overhead lights with CF bulbs (the circle ones last longest) for clear working light, and lamps (with warm white CF bulbs of lower wattage) to replace the dimming effect when you want lower light conditions. Fair call. But right now, this house has dimmers (which means that for many years it has been saving electricity and carbon, even if not as much as CFs would).

The non-dimmer bulbs here are being replaced with CF bulbs - need to take more notes before shopping again, to replace like with CF like ( wattage and with the correct fitting, screw/bayonet). Definitely prefer warm white to cold white, though. And they need to work out ones to replace fancy rounds and candle-like ones for 'visible' situations like chandeliers and other light fittings where the bulb needs to be small and understated.