When our daughter Cara left home some years back to go to the Big Smoke I gave her a collection of my simple, albeit, exotic recipes so that she would not be strapped for the whiff of home cooked aroma on a lean lonely night.  After our house was burned to the ground in the Jan 2003 bushfires we rented a house in Hilder Street Weston for a year. During that year I sent this recipe to add to her collection. I must admit I had nothing to do with the recipe itself, merely recounting the circumstances.  

Jamie was asked to cook up a recipe as part of a school lesson, and Denise unearthed this pumpkin soup. The basis of the recipe came from the Weston Preschool recipe book called "Yummy Things", the author being Catherine Butt, and Denise added extra ingredients, as you do when you want The Boy to do well, and you are cheffing alongside, as it were, and toss things in on culinary impulse.

The McGloin family at Grandad Jack's 80^th birthday.  Jamie (The Boy) stands next to Santa. We can see from the photo how proud he is of his family. So much so that he retouched the photo (slightly) to approximate his imagination. Grandad and Nanna Bartlett, and himself of course, remain untouched.

JAMIE's Explosive Pumpkin soup

Cara, sometimes such a catastrophic turn of events makes you wonder whether you did indeed, in the words of Grandfather Jack, run over a Chinaman. Makes you wonder about predestination, fate, chance, karma, the stars, Catholicism and whether you should have turned Buddhist or whether you were, in the words of the Albert King blues song (later covered by Cream)

"Born under a bad sign

I bin down since I begin to crawl

If it wasn't for bad luck

Wouldn't have no luck at all"

Notwithstanding (to use the favourite expression of Uncle Gerard O'Neall) the double negative, bad luck through no obvious fault of one's driving abilities - and I'm constantly on the lookout for a roving Chinese, Scotsman, gypsy or tipsy Catholic - is indeed bad luck. Luck appears to have a supernatural element, no obvious natural cause, merely chance ones eg. walking under a ladder, or across a black cat's path, or under a pair of black cockatoos - and  so punters grip protective talismen like the handle of a poker machine watching the wheels spin into the night.

"Ah foun a lucky penny

Rabbit's foot on a string

Uh huh uh huh uh huh oh yeah

Ah wan a good luck a charm

A hangin on mah arm

To have

To hol

tonight

Uh huh huh,

uh huh huh

Uh huh huh

Oh

Yeah"

Elvis 1962, interpreting Doc Pomus and Mort Schumann's philosophic musings

Karma of course sits easier, being bad luck brought about through your bad actions in this lifetime, or in the previous lifetimes, or by the previous bad actions of your forebears. It sort of makes sense initially; you do something bad and get walloped for it, a law since childhood. But then it gets into the waffly stuff. Now yer forebears, and God bless 'em all I say, a bloody great bunch of top chaps, maybe unknown to you, but top chaps notwithstanding, may have slotted in amongst them a slightly less than desirable dodgy character whose previous actions a few generations back cause you grief at this present moment. This, you might admit, is a touch perplexing even if one accepts the premise of karma. Me, I reckon it's bullshite all up, but on the off chance that it may cause a descendant of mine to stub his toenail, I'll concede that it's in there with a chance....  

Fate of course may deal, in the words of the great Ray Charles (and Mr Calhoun who wrote it), a losing hand. You know of those who never seem to have a stroke of luck, apart from bad luck, and choice is a limited option to many, but there are those who as your mum has observed always seem to make the wrong decision: women who always hitch up with the wrong bloke, get the wrong job, buy the crook car, rent the wrong place and forget to pay the right rent, get a crooked landlord, crook neighbours, write the wrong song and sing someone else's lines etc.

Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born

Some are born to sweet delight

Some are born to endless night.

Now yer Blake who wrote that was a hell of a poet and a bugger of a romanticist. Most of us get some things right and a lot of things wrong, such is the nature of human infallibility.    

Although Denise is not normally into the woolly waffly stuff, she had her fortune read by a tarot reader late last year [2002]. She reckons the seer was looking through the wrong end of a telescope at someone else. For example the seer failed to spot the surgery and the blasted emotional fallout, the result of breast cancer. She failed to see some old god throwing lightening bolts at drought ridden Namadgi, causing three almighty bushfires and stirring winds to raise the fires to over two hundred metres in height,  blasting them through ancient wind tunnels to converge and consume five hundred and fifty homes, one of which was ours. You'd reckon a seer's apprentice would spot that coming over the tops of cards six weeks prior. She failed to see Grandad Jack's death a month after the bushfire. His star must have loomed brightest on any seer's horizon. She failed to see Brendan losing his job the following month, and the associated emotional impact. She failed to see Denise's job going due to "restructuring" and my work area being dismantled due to "restructured client service", and the associated emotional toll. Yup, as a seer she needed braille.  

But maybe she saw and didn't want to say. Well you wouldn't would you? How would you put it?  "Well it looks like a big bonfire down your way, and guess what, the best family gathering ever.....I know someone who is going on a long relaxing trip, and hey, I see new career paths for three of you, and I see lots of yellowy orange substance which tastes good". I hadn't mentioned that. Jamie's Pumpkin soup. Coming up.  

Someone said life is a roller coaster, and perhaps you'd rather be on it than on the merry go round. I would normally. But my two bob ran out five rides back. Keep flying past the booth. "Oi, hey mister, I haven't paid..."  The attendant's deaf. The ancient Greeks had the belief that the gods played games with humans and perhaps they were right. In any event we're not unnoticed.  

They must have had a laugh when Jamie cooked his soup. A homework project and we had to assess his culinary expertise. Not one for homework is The Boy, and projects can wait. 'Til the parents yell at ten o'clock the night before it's due. Denise chose the recipe, he likes pumpkin soup, his Aunt Bernice makes it, and like most kids if he eats something at someone else's place he loves it, despite having refused to eat it at home.  

And so he set about doing his best with the preparation of the ingredients. I suggested an easier way of pealing the potatoes and carrot. "I'm left handed, can't do it that way."  Peel and bits flying everywhere. Anyway between his mum and I and Jamie's protestations it came together at last in the pot, a pressure cooker, but alas not the one we'd grown to know and love which had been blasted in the Big Bonfire.  

I was on the phone some fifteen minutes later when there was a huge bang, clatter and a yell.

I looked over and Denise looked stunned, The Boy held the side of his face but was obviously ok and the décor had changed to yellow. There were yellow bits everywhere, hanging from lights, cupboards, fridge, splattered on walls, ceiling, carpet, it looked as if a marauding Jackson Pollock had laid waste in his yellow period.    

Well, out of every downside there is an upside. Mostly, and certainly in this case where the Boy was made whole, the new ochre décor was removed, the pumpkin soup was recreated by Denise and turned into a dish fit for a prince, and we all ate happily ever after.    

2 cloves garlic, finely cut

2 large spuds

1 large onion

3 TBS good curry powder (we used Screaming Seeds Kashmiri Crush)

2 carrots

1 large tomato

1 TSP ground cumin

2 TBS extra virgin olive oil  

1 large butternut pumpkin, peeled and chopped

Good chicken stock to cover pumpkin  

1 TBS yoghurt

1 TBS parsley, chopped finely

1.                   Sauté all ingredients in first bracket in a large pot

2.                   Add  pumpkin and cover with stock

3.                   Bring to boil and simmer for 1 hour, stirring every 10 mins or so

4.                   Puree, add yoghurt and parsley, adjust seasoning to taste and serve   

I remember Michael Caine's interview on Parkinson when he stated his philosophy in times of adversity - "Use the difficulty", that is, get something positive out of it. A very useful tip, which did us proud in our efforts to extricate ourselves from the recent "bother".