/karen/

Little chicken

Monday, 12 September, 2005

I went down to the garage on Saturday morning to let them know about our car and give them the key. They said they'd let me know by Monday lunchtime what was wrong with it. Then Ben and I caught the train to Cronulla. It took 1.5 hours to get there for a journey which really shouldn't have taken longer than an hour to drive. Apparently there was some sort of festival on because there were people everywhere. Tim and Ros picked us up and we went to Oak Park for a barbecue picnic lunch. It would all have been lovely except I was feeling rather sick and I thought I was catching what Ben had ... again.

Ros had made that crispy noodle salad that Haoran also makes and we ate bread and sausages and kebabs and steak and gave out presents. Even though Ben's birthday is not until October, he still got presents, including a children's picture book called Whose Poo? which Tim and Ros seemed to think was very appropriate.

The Beilharzs very kindly drove us back to Stanmore to save us another 1.5 hour trip (me falling asleep in the car on the way). When we got back, we met our neighbour from downstairs out on the porch. She said she'd just had a rather scary experience—part of the ceiling had fallen down just where she was sitting in the lounge room. She showed us and there were huge chunks of plaster and just the underside of the wooden floorboards up above where they had come from. We tried to work out what was above them (our bathroom? our kitchen?). Upstairs everything looked fine though. However Ben was stressing and fretting about whether we'd have to move out or whether the house was going to fall down.

I'd had had enough by this stage so I crawled into bed with a book and went to sleep. Ben woke me at 9:30 for dinner and then I crawled back into bed and slept for about 12 hours.

Then it was Sunday and I probably should have done some work on my essay but I was remembering George's advice about not doing things all the time so I ate some lunch and watched 3 hours of television—NCIS and Law and Order—while knitting. Cathy (who goes to my church) came around at 3 to help me cook because I was on dinner that night (mental note to self: do something about the church roster so I am not doing something every single week). She and I chopped carrots and celery and pulled five BBQ chickens to pieces before hopping in her car, going to Malcolm's to pick up his pot and his keys and then going to church to start the cooking process.

When you have to make sure you don't include any soy, nuts, onion, shellfish (including oyster sauce), non green beans (including lentils), coffee, chocolate, wheat, dairy, yeast and citrus (oranges, lemons, limes and mandarins), your options are pretty limited (thank goodness we no longer have any hard-core vegetarians left at church). However, I still managed to find a recipe that fit:

Uncle Peter's Chicken Soup

• 1 BBQ chicken
• 4-6 carrots (sliced)
• half a celery (chopped)
• ½ cup uncooked rice
• 1 packet Bouquet Garni (optional)
• 2 bay leaves (optional)
• salt and pepper
• ginger

Remova all skin and fat from chicken. Tear into small pieces.

Slice carrots and celery.

Cook a pot of hot boiling water, add chicken, ginger, carrots, celery, spices and rice. Watch that it doesn't boil over. Stir occasionally.

Cook for 1½ hours on low heat. Stir to make sure rice doesn't stick to bottom. Salt and pepper to taste.

The soup had finished cooking by the time the sermon started so I went in to listen and slipped out again to heat it before it was time to serve. Either I made too little or people really liked it because it all went—just like that! We finished up everything by 9:30 which was fantastic. But foolishly I then went to bed at 1.

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