CARA'S MANUAL OF CULINARY SURVIVAL

            - AN EXPOSE OF LE CHEFFING SKILLS DE LE BAZZA

So Cara you are now eighteen and soon no doubt will be seeking independence in one of the sparkling metropoli where hopes and dreams are made possible or plundered, where fantasies become realities, where realities become fantasies, where the sweet jasmine spring turns to the acrid winter exhaust, where Cinderella becomes a princess one magic night and the pumpkin turns into a Jag, where the morning light strikes starkly on a beaten up old brown bomb in the parking lot, the dishes need washing, the room needs airing and the brain needs reprogramming, but, where the promise and possibilities of a new day are endless.

Sometimes, in the hurly burly of life in the great metrop, you may hanker for the familiar ambience, atmosphere and cooking aroma of your home in Canberra. I can't really do much about the first two, except to provide you with a tape of Jamie loudly calling one of his football games - all four quarters - but the last is before you now. When you wonder to yourself " what was that dish which Dad cooked every Saturday night for two years?" the answer is here, no less than the Thai Beef Salad. Of course your version, even if you follow the recipe will be different, as mine was each time I made it.  And was it perfected, is the perfected version in this collection? The answer is that it may be, because the quantity of ingredients does not necessarily produce the same result, assuming of course that the quality is identical. Something similar probably, something better perhaps. You may put your heart and soul, your love and prayers, best wishes, your culinary dream into it, the intangible ingredient, the factor X - to use the modern technospeak. These recipies are merely the canvas for your own gastronomique palette, the dressmaker's dummy for your ballgown, a tune for a symphony, a sketch for your Picasso, a key to the door ...... a sump plug for a V8 motor.... 

You will notice that, er, a lot of these recipies are handed down from various members of the family on my parents side, some long departed. The families McGloin and Kirk, and the respective antecedents, Tobin and Thorleys, did not commit a great deal to paper that I've seen, bugger all to be truthfull. So in the great tradition of storytelling, these recipies have filtered through the ages by word of mouth, and most of our relatives rarely spoke to each other anyway. Come to think of it I don't know a great deal about them. When Denise and I visited Scotland and we met the relatives in Glasgow I remember one of the great Aunts looking at me and saying "och noooo - he's nae one of oooourrrs, looks mare like one o' the Lennons ". The Lennons from what I could gather were an offshoot of the Tobins, my fathers mother's side, anyway I don't believe they wanted me on board, as it were. My father did say though that we had a family history behind us, which was just as well.

On your grandmother's side, the Kirks, my Uncle Norman had traced the history back to a Kirk at Waterloo who fought on Nelson's battleship,or at least, on one of them. Now that's a piece of history to be savoured.

Dad however informed me that his side came from academic and sporting stock which probably accounts for our academic and sporting brilliance. Now the Great McGloin was in fact a champion sculler at the university in Enniskillen, Ireland. My Uncle Tom reckons that he did a bit of rowing as well (his joke). Anyway he fell in love with the Dean's daughter who was a Nixon, and she was duly with child, but, it appears they were slightly out of wedlock. And so they had to elope to the land of the Scot for the sake of a certain amount of propiety, after all he was a Catlick and she a Proddie which in those days was non negiotiable. The Dean after some consideration agreed to countenance the union with a bit of financial resources provided that the couple dropped the McGloin and used Nixon as the monniker. My dad in fact was brought up as Nixon, known as "Nicky Nixon". He later metamorphisised as John McGloin in the land of the Sassenach (England) where his dad had to move after being blacklisted for union activities in Scotland. Grandad McGloin knew the great Scottish union organiser Keir Hardy. He also knew the great Scottish "fitbaw" (football) player, Stanley Matthews. So there you have the academic and sporting connection.

Dad did say that our family had invented the tartan kilt and he often recounted the story which went something like this:

It had been three days and three nights since the Tan MACTan McBeth William Wallace McGloin had set out for food and his dutiful wife the voluptuous Vi had sat in the family seat, a reasonably comfortable middle class cavern halfway up the craggy doon, awaiting the return of the great hunter. "Och, he's nae slouch the Tan MACTan when it comes tae providing for the meals" she'd always proudly declared to the Wives Of The Hunters MACTan committee. And usually they'd nodded assent and the obligatory "och weeel there's nae denyin' it".

But this day, a Thursday in the year 4607 BC [Before Connelly], that wee woman, a blacksheep MACTan frae the other side of the sheepskin had added "aye, the Tan's a man for a' that but mah Wullie's back hame within the day, so he is", which had created a momentary diversion from the agenda with the Vi plugging a rabbit hole with the wee woman's posterior.

The insinuation nagged the voluptuous Vi, so it did. The Tan would bag his haggisorous on the first day and unfailingly spend two days plodding o'er mountains through bogs an' braes trying to find his way home. It was a common complaint among the MACTan McGloins. Basically they were pillochs when it came to direction.

The haggisorus was eventually on the spit and the Tan was enthusiastically drinking the health of numerous ancestors.

"Aye, the great Dewar o' Croghmaghmlich here's tae you laddie, hey Vi, where's ma meal? Connelly, ma stomach thinks ma throat's cut....Wha's tha' for Connolly's sake?."

"Tan, ma bold Tan, ye were always complaining o' the draughts aroond yer lowlands so I've knitted you this", she said presenting what looked like a colourful skirt.

"Great Connelly ah could be kilt wearin' tha' woman"

"Och, ma sweet bairn it's mare than a warmer, it's a topographical overview. The large red doon stripes are the main tracks. The smaller yellow horizonty stripes are the goat tracks. Now. If you divide the sections you travel by four point three and multiply the result by 3.095 recurring it will show you the way home'"

The Tan MACTan McGloin quite understandably was somewhat overawed at this point of the discussion by his wife's mathematical ingenuousness. In the prevailing wind of change he forsook the traditional stance. 

"Ach weeel, A'hm hame the noo, what d'ye call it?", offering her a scotch....

"Ta, Tan"

""Oh aye..Aaanyway there ah wuz Vi an this huge fire breathin' ..., tartan ye say?"