Palegoldenrod

Ingredients

• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 3 sticks celery, chopped
• 1 green capsicum, seeded and diced
• 225g / 8oz / 3 cups mushrooms, sliced
• 2 zucchinis / courgetts, sliced
• 400g / 14oz can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
• 400g / 14oz can chopped tomatoes
• 150ml / 1/4 pint / 2/3 cup passata
• 30ml / 2tbsp tomato puree
• 15ml / 1 tbsp tomato sauce
• 1 tsp each hot chilli powder, ground cumin and ground coriander
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• natural yoghurt and cayenne pepper, to serve
• sprigs of fresh coriander, to garnish
• brown rice as a side
• Serves 4

Instructions

1. Put the onions, garlic, celery, green capsicum, mushrooms and zucchinis in a large saucepan and mix together
2. Add the kidney beans, tomatoes, passata, tomato puree and tomato ketchup
3. Add the spices - season with a bit of salt and pepper.
4. Mix well
5. Cover, and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20-30 minutes (until vegetables are just tender).
6. Serve immediately with brown rice, a dob of natural yoghurt sprinkled with cayenne pepper
7. Garnish with fresh coriander sprigs

Commentary

OK, so you may be able to see how I could actually get this recipe to work. You pretty much just chop up the vegetables, dump everything in a pot and cook it. Its pretty failsafe. Don’t ignore the natural yoghurt. I used some greek style yoghurt (which I love) and it set the dish off perfectly. I wouldn’t serve it without the yoghurt, but a few of my guests chose to leave it aside and still seemed to enjoy the rest of the dish. This recipe allegedly serves 4, but with the brown rice is very filling. I served 4 (though none of us are huge eaters) and had enough left over for maybe one or two more servings.

I wandered on down to the Newcastle Coders Group’s inaugural Social Gathering at a local pub last night with a friend of mine. Needless to say the nerd factor was high, but boy - I have never had more fun with a group of strange men in my life! 

These guys have been around since about December 2005 they tell me. They are made up of people of any age who like to learn more about programming - not just those who work in the profession. They have a meeting at the local uni once a month where someone (either a group member or a guest) gives a talk about something the group wants to hear about. It could be anything from a specific technique in a particular language to a spiel on the open source community or run downs on some new products or innovations.

I went to my first meeting a few weeks ago, and it was on Dot Net Nuke and Community Server, given by someone with a lot of experience using Dot Net Nuke (and a little community server) but not much development experience. I was both disappointed and pleased at the same time - I would have liked to have seen how easy or difficult it was to develop for these packages, as well as use them; but I was greatly impressed by Community Server, which I had never seen before.

For those who don’t know, Community Server is a .Net website package that is aimed at collaboration and sharing of online communities. It supports forums (complete with moderation, user ratings, etc), blogs, file storage, photo galleries, RSS feeds and aggregation (both a private RSS aggregator for each user, and also a public aggregator for all to see - of internal or external feeds). It also appears to have some small CMS in there but from what I could see it was restricted to the home page (I hope to learn more on this soon, and I’ll keep you posted).

The presenter (whose name escapes me at the moment) indicated that the people who developed Community Server used to be Microsoft employees but have now left and started their own business. Further, the story goes that apparently parts of Microsoft are actually now using Community Server internally.

I have to admit, it appears to be written very well. It is very easy to install directly (I haven’t yet tried the web install) and works like lightning. It has an open source free version (and an SDK). Version differences are in functionlity, not in licence restrictions - the free open source version does not appear to be for non-commercial use only. Paid version have fuller features and are not restricted (the free version has file storage and gallery limitations).

I am about to use it at work to support a client’s need for a good quality .NET forum

The group had observed that in the meetings the group could listen and ask a few questions, but not really interact. They decided to get together in a social type arrangement so that they could talk to each other and get to know each other etc. So off I tramped to the pub last night!

My friend Rob came with me (nice work, Rob) and we had a great old time. There were C++ programmers, ASP, foxpro - I don’t even know what some of the other guys worked with, but they were all pretty good. And the nerd jokes just kept on rolling.

Australian children are brought up with ANZAC Day. Almost every village, school and church holds their own commemoration ceremony every year, and I have been regularly attending ANZAC Day ceremonies since my time in the Australian Army Cadets when I was 15.

Once again this year I made my way to the ANZAC Day Dawn Service in my town, but for some reason this time was different. I first noticed that the traffic was particularly heavy this morning - perhaps it was even record attendance for our dawn service. When I got out of my car and joined the masses walking towards the service, I had this feeling of community which I feel rarely these days. So many people, peacefully moving in that hushed way that people do in the early morning, gathering with the intent to remember the horrors of war.

The dawn service I attend is held overlooking our local beach, and the service always starts with a spokesperson talking about how it was on a morning like this on a beach like this that all hell broke loose.

They played a short audio clip with the sound of gunfire, shell explosions, shouted commands and screams, which again, they do every year. This time, as I stood in that soft predawn darkness, I looked up at the flag above us, listened to the awful sounds of pain and war, and for the first time started to understand. After learning about the battle at Gallipoli, the Somme and others for my entire life (over 25 years), only today did I start to understand it. To feel it. And an unexpected and uncontrollable wave of emotion rose up within me, unbidden.

This beach, so peaceful now, could easily have been the place of battle. Could easily have been the place where I and many of the people I know would be killed or wounded. Could be the place where I would feel that I needed to kill and wound other human beings in order to protect my country and people.

I remembered that all of those Australian and New Zealand forces in WW1 were volunteers. This generation of Australians before me were driven to kill and be killed because they believed they needed to protect their country. Many of them were slaughtered because of poor reconnaissance or poor command decisions. The fact that they volunteered to be involved in violent war and meet this terrible end did not make me mourn them less, or take any more pride in their actions.

ANZACs are often called heroes, and maybe they are - I am not terribly patriotic, and abhor violence, so the concept of a national hero being someone who died in battle is a little alien to me. That is not to say that those dead are to be disrespected. All I know is that many, many young men died terrible deaths in battle, and even those that survived were left horribly scarred. I stood during that ceremony and felt for them - not some pride to be put on display, not some patriotic symbol of Australian values - but a compassion for every one of those men as individuals. For the fear they suffered, the mental, spiritual and physical pain they endured. I wanted to somehow reach back into the past and comfort them on the battlefield - prevent their pain. To gently take the weapons from their hands and lead them from the place that would become their open grave.

The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of unrest are being fought by people my age. People are dying right now in deliberate violent acts. Preventable acts. My heart went out to those people also. Finally, I felt for all people in the world who were scared, alone, or in pain.

It started raining heavily during that ceremony, and I stood there silently in the cold Autumn morning while the sun slowly rose from behind the ocean and the rain ran down my neck and through my clothes and hid my tears from those around me. The wet cold didn’t matter. Those masses of dead and wounded deserved more attention than twenty minutes of rain.

Every year more and more younger people are choosing to attend these services - perhaps with many of our own involved in these wars, the younger generations feel somewhat closer to those who fought and died in years before. But this is what ANZAC day needs. ANZAC services usually use \Rudyard Kipling’s “Recessional” in song, and a particular phrase from it in prayer - “Lest we forget”. We choose to gather together and re-tell the stories, lest we forget all those that fell before us. Lest we forget the horrors of war. Lest we forget the feeling of fear. As detached from the blood and gore and fear as we are, it is vital that we force ourselves as a people - as a global people, not just Australians - to remember.

We cannot continue the killing. As long as we remember, we have hope that one day we will be able to stop it.

My friend Chris and I have a knack of what we like to call “playing things by ear”. Other people call it “leaving everything until the last minute”, and whatever you call it, it normally means whacky hijinks and disaster.

So when we decided to go to one of the most popular camping areas in New South Wales only a few days before the busiest camping weekend of the year, we were sort of expecting a bit of an adventure. We planned to hike. Chris would like to eventually walk Kokoda, and I have always enjoyed walking outdoors, but of course never do it enough. It was a fresh and healthy thing to do on an Easter Long Weekend, and we were excited at the prospect of exploring some trails that we had ever seen. We selected two half day hikes in the Blue Mountains — the Red Hands Cave Trail and the Grand Canyon Trail. We planned to arrive early Saturday morning, walk one hike, camp the night in a local camping area, and then walk the other trail the next day. There were plenty of shorter walks of various grades close by these longer trails to fill in the rest of those two days.

The Red Hands Cave Trail near Glenbrook is a return trip trail up to a cave containing 1600 year old aboriginal hand paintings. The Grand Canyon Walk near Blackheath is a popular walk down a deep canyon — about the best canyon walk you can go on in the area without proper canyoning equipment.

Chris didn’t have a sleeping back, and mine was old and nasty from the days when I was an army cadet, so we both bought some new sleeping bags of better quality and less weight (any excuse to spend some money, I guess). I was tempted to buy a new tent, but reeled myself in and decided to just dig out my old four man tent that was still in reasonable condition. I also took the opportunity to buy a little gas burner and billy, which I had been planning to get for a while.

The first sign of fun was when I called up to enquire about a few of the camping areas. The response to my polite enquiry was barely controlled laughter from the National Parks officer. “Bah!” we thought, “surely we can find one small place to camp, and if not we can stay at a local hotel.” It all sounded so simple when we said it, so of course that was how it was going to happen.

I had hoped to go shopping for supplies on the Friday before we went camping, so on Friday I suggested we go out and get some canned food and a big water cannister (some camping sites didn’t have fresh water). Chris looked at me blankly for a short while and then reminded me that it was Good Friday, and everything was closed. So there went that idea.

I had hoped to have our feet on the start of the first trail at around 9am on Saturday. We got up at 8am and Chris went to find out how to get to the Blue Mountains. Yes, you have read correctly. He got directions a half hour before we left. We also somehow ended up not taking a map — just some very brief hand written directions from whereis.com.

The trip started off poorly. After stopping at the grocery store on the way out we realised we had left the directions at home. So back we went to get them. Then we went fairly well for a while actually, until we reached the dog that is Blacktown.

Blacktown is a magical land where people don’t believe in road signs, and where whereis.com means “turn left” when it tells you to go straight through. We went around Blacktown two or three times. At one point we ended up at some place called Doonside and made a U-Turn back towards Blacktown (when Chris started singing “We’re going to Bonny Doon”). I, finding the whole “getting lost” thing hilarious, declared that with our luck the Great Western Highway that we were trying to find would probably be just around the bend in Doonside.

We went back down some nameless road and turned left at a sign to the M4, which we knew was an alternative route to Katoomba. Much to our chagrin the turn we took brought us straight through the roads we had just been criss-crossing for the last half hour, but this time in heavier traffic. It did, however, get us onto the Great Western Highway where the first exit we saw was to Doonside. D’oh.

So we drove along, taking turns ranting about how Blacktown and Bonny Doon, and finally we arrived at Glenbrook. I wanted to pull over at the Information Centre to buy a few better maps of the area and find out more about our accommodation that night. After waiting for some bright sparks to clear their cars from the driveway, we finally got to the Info Centre. A building is full when on approaching it you see mismatched limbs sticking out the windows and chimney. We bravely dove into that mayhem and tracked down a map or two of the area before asking about accommodation for the night.

At first I thought the Info Centre guy hadn’t heard me over the din, and began to repeat the question. He cut in, and bluntly told me that I had buckleys, athough he did suggest that if we were very lucky we may find some accommodation an hour’s drive beyond where we were planning to camp. He must have been very devout, because for the rest of the conversation about accommodation he just kept repeating “its Easter Weekend”.

At that point we started thinking that maybe this camping thing may be a bit more difficult to organise than we first thought, but we didn’t give in. We started off towards the Red Hands Cave Trail nearby, and said we would talk it over on the walk.

I told Chris we should park outside the National Park gates and walk in — the start of the trail wasn’t too far in the gates, and it costs $7 just to get the car through the gates. So we parked outside and off we tramped. It wasn’t until we started walking down a steep switchback road that I started thinking maybe we should have brought the car in.

But at the bottom of this mountain we found a small creek and the start of our trail, and we were off. It was a really nice walk. It follows a small, largely dried up creek, and the fairly narrow valley has these huge rocks through it which the trail clambers over from time to time. I realised (again) how unfit I am. We stopped for a break about two thirds into the trip up to the cave, and we sat quietly for a while. It felt good to have such silence — no traffic, no people, no chatter. So much of my life is full of noise, and I really enjoyed sitting there — even for that short time — not needing to speak, and not needing to listen.

The cave was sort of interesting — it was all protected behind a metal cage so that people couldn’t damage what is now considered to be precious heritage. Its a shame we can’t trust people. It would have been cool to be able to get closer to some of those paintings. Some of the hands outlined on the wall were tiny - young children probably, long since grown up, grown old and died — probably without ever having seen a white person.

On the way back we talked about giving up the idea of wasting hours finding a possibly non-existant camping area for the night. When Chris started getting some pains in his feet we figured he wouldn’t be up for another hike the next day anyway, and it was decided. We hauled ourselves back up the switchback (well I hauled and Chris walked along as if he were walking over an anthill), got in the car and drove home.

We were back in time for dinner.