500 BBQ Bites by Paul Kirk.

Posted by Abbie Jury in Cookbooks and tagged with

500 BitesIs there such a thing as a barbecuist? A combination of enthusiast and barbecue? We briefly toyed with the possibility of becoming regular users. When our old barbecue died, we set off to look at modern barbies “about the same size as a Mini but came home with one the size of an onboard trolley case”, the husband quipped. It is not often used. Our house design, lifestyle and eating habits just run on a different course, rarely accommodating the barbecue. But I know others who barbecue most days, certainly through the warmer months. If you are an enthusiast, this may be the book for you. Despite being American, there is a wealth of ideas and flavours going well beyond the boring staples of steak, sausages or meat patties.

Chapters cover the usual suspects – fish, shellfish, lamb, poultry, beef and pork with the mandatory chapter on vegetarian options. Honestly, vegetarians are not likely to be keen enough to buy a book of barbecue recipes but if you are catering for a group, some non meat options are helpful. The format is the main recipe (most with a photo) such as Hot and Sticky Summertime Chicken followed by four differently flavoured options. There are apparently 500 recipes and variants in all. Ingredients are store cupboard standards with nothing too out there or difficult to source though some fish will need to subbed because we have different options here.

Modern barbecues are multi purpose cooking appliances with a versatility that goes well beyond a mere hot plate, often with a price tag to match. This little hardback book may be just the ticket to extending the repertoire of food options to justify the expenditure. Family and friends will notice and enjoy the variety.

500 BBQ Bites by Paul Kirk (New Holland; ISBN: 9781741107203) reviewed by Abbie Jury.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

“Easy Organic Gardening and Moon Planting” by Lyn Bagnall

Posted by Abbie Jury in Garden book reviews
Easy Organic Garden

Easy Organic Garden

This is organic gardening as carried out by a dedicated moon planter but easy it is not. The author subscribes to the why-use-one-sentence-when-you-can-use-ten school of writing. It is very long and wordy, filled with so much detail that even the experienced and knowledgeable gardener can end up seriously baffled. You need to be a believer to want this book. As it is in its second edition, there are either a fair number of believers out there or there is a thirst for knowledge on the topic of organic gardening. I suspect the latter but I am not convinced this book will give the answers.

I am very keen to see books which will separate the organic gardening concepts from faith and mystique. Psuedo science does not do it. Nor do sweeping statements. When I read statements like: “I must confess to not fully understanding the science behind this particular portion of moon-planting principles, but I do know it works in practice,” I start to worry. The author is referring to the changed polarities of yin and yang in Virgo and Libra. I get irritated by the careless use of the word chemical as a synonym for all that is bad and destructive in gardening. A chemical is simply a substance or a compound. In itself it is neither good nor bad. I raised my eyebrows at the claim that synthetic fertilisers lock up essential nutrients in New Zealand soils. Really?

I am all for sustainable gardening practice and I think it is all to the good that we are questioning some pretty dodgy habits. If you are willing to drill down into this book, it promotes good environmental practice, aimed at the author’s homeland of Australia. It covers both ornamental and productive gardening and even has a helpful section on bushfire season. There is just an awful lot of smoke and mirrors to get through first and the husband still doubts that it is possible to get a tomato crop through in our climate without a little non-organic intervention.

(Scribe; ISBN: 9781921372605)

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Dark Jelly by Alice Tawhai

Posted by Abbie Jury in Adult fiction and tagged with

Dark Jelly

Alice Tawhai writes about those marginalised on the fringes of New Zealand society. Snapshots of subcultures, as the back cover says. These are short stories, her third published collection. Each story is a well rounded, complete entity but they are a little too challenging to want to read more than one at a sitting. There is nothing cosy or comfortable about Tawhai’s writing. Each story has a central character and although usually written in the third person, we see their corner of the world through their eyes and their perceptions are often a little askew.

This is not writing for shock value. It is too well crafted for that. There is an underlying explanation and logic to the situations the characters are in, appropriate to each story. While there is a pervasive sense of darkness and a pretty heavy dose of ugliness, it is all dealt with in a matter of fact way. Prison, gangs, street life, domestic violence, racism, drugs and alcohol – there is no great tragedy, no searing expose, no magnified drama. In many ways, it makes the stories even more uncomfortable because they are individual interpretations of incidents and sequences which are disturbingly plausible. This may not be the New Zealand we want to see but Tawhai brings a powerful interpretation through strong writing which is impossible to ignore.

Dark Jelly by Alice Tawhai (Huia Publishers; ISBN: 978 1 86969 476 0) reviewed by Abbie Jury.

The Broken Book by Fiona Farrell

Posted by Abbie Jury in Adult non fiction and tagged with

The unanticipated delight of December was reading this book. I just didn’t want it to end. Farrell’s facility with language, her mastery of writing techniques, her personal view of the world and her ability to weave together a whole range of disparate thoughts and strands into a satisfying reading experience are superb. It is also a really interesting phenomenon which I suspect we will see a great deal more of – a creative response to the personal stress of the Christchurch earthquakes. That is why it is a broken book. What started as a travel book about walks here and abroad by acclaimed NZ fiction writer, Fiona Farrell, deviated from the planned routes when her life was thrown entirely off balance by the quakes. She lives on Banks Peninsula. The result includes accounts of four walks (two in France, one in Dunedin and one in Christchurch), interspersed with 21 haunting poems about the earthquakes, all linked by a personal narrative which is poignant, understated yet remarkably coherent.

The Broken Book

It is not without wider interest and humour. The dissertation on consumption (the Menton walk) was fascinating while the details on Robert Louis Stevenson (the Cevennes walk) were repellent. Her explanation of school hierarchy made me laugh out loud: “At high school, life became more serious. I was in 3P1. P for Professional. The girls in 3P2 would become nurses and primary-school teachers. In 3C for Commercial they would work in offices and do typing…. But the girls in 3P1 were destined for higher things. They did Latin and would go to university…. They would read Cranford and Jane Austen. They would become familiar with the habits of the rural gentry of nineteenth-century England.”

I found this book from one of our leading contemporary writers an absorbing and rewarding experience to read.

The Broken Book by Fiona Farrell (Auckland University Press; ISBN: 978 1 86940 576 2) reviewed by Abbie Jury.

Les Tres Riches Heures de Mrs Mole by Ronald Searle

Posted by Abbie Jury in Family and tagged with

Tres Riches Heures de Mrs MoleRonald Searle is probably best known for his cartoons and his St Trinian’s books, along with the Molesworth series. His style is very distinctive – often oversized bodies of animals or people topped with disproportionately small, angular heads and unmistakeable facial expressions conveyed with wonderful simplicity and humour. This little book is a special testimony to love – 47 drawings of Mrs Mole looking happy. You have to read the brief written notes to understand what it is about. These were private sketches done for his wife, one for each bout of chemotherapy as she began a fight against virulent breast cancer in 1969. They were Searle’s way of showing love and support in a situation where he was helpless in the face of her suffering. Each sketch celebrates Mrs Mole and an aspect of the life they planned together in a Provencal village.

The joy of the book is that, against all odds, Monica Searle survived and went on to live that very life with her husband for a further 40 years, not dying until July this year. Publishing the sketches in a small book format was clearly a mutual decision and the result is a touching affirmation of love, survival and simplicity. It is a wonderful book to give to any woman diagnosed with breast cancer but it may make a gift of love to any woman who is struggling with adversity in her life. There is such poignant charm in this little book of hope.

Les Tres Riches Heures de Mrs Mole by Ronald Searle (Harper Collins; ISBN: 978 0 00 744910 1) reviewed by Abbie Jury.