I saw Carol Selvarajah make this on SBS at least 15 years ago and wrote down the recipe. It’s MUCH nicer than guacamole, IMNSHO and a great way of getting a lot of healthy foodstuffs into your family. MissN knows that I will make it on request, ripe avocadoes being available. I usually have all the other ingredients. We are growing our own chillies and I look forward to using them.. maybe my next dip.
“Asian type” avocado dip
Whizz together in a food processor (a stick blender works well too)
1 avocado
1/2 granny smith apple, core removed
bunch coriander (cut off roots, use stems)
small brown or white onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled
some ginger – about a half inch square piece or the equivalent (peel it with the back of a teaspoon)
some green chillies (one long green one, seeds removed is a good base to work from)
1/2 cup coconut milk powder
a dollop of tamarind paste (HP sauce is a good substitute)
For those of you who interpret Genesis 1-11 in a concrete manner (ie you believe that it is a factual account and that the details should be intepreted without considering metaphor, myth, symbolism or that the literary genre of Genesis 1-11 might not be historic narrative in the post-Enlightenment modern sense of ‘history”)… a question:
Genesis 9:2 says
The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered.
That is not literally true.
So how do you reconcile that with a belief that the rest of Genesis 1-11 is a historic factual narrative wherein the details are to be interpreted in a concrete manner?
If this verse employs hyperbole, why is the rest of Genesis 1-11 pure narrative discourse to be interpreted concretely?
I bought myself one of those ‘deals’ vouchers for a snorkelling lesson/guided snorkel early in the year. I LOVE snorkelling but just don’t make the effort to go unless we are on vacation, so thought this was a good way to get a snorkel in. (I can highly recommend Pro Dive Manly! ) After lots of procrastination (and some health issues), I finally booked myself in at the beginning of April before the weather got too cold. Sydney water stays warm till July at least but it’s nicer getting out into balmy air than chilly winds. And I did choose the last warm day for several months!
It was amazing! I loved it. It was just me and the guide in the “group” and we snorkelled for an hour in the marine reserve at Shelley Beach (right in Sydney – at Manly. How blessed are we Sydney-siders!). Shelly Beach is apparently unique amongst east coast beaches in actually facing west. Which makes it sheltered, calm and less windy and you can watch the sun set across the water.
The abundance of fish and sea life blew me away. I didn’t see any leafy sea dragons (have to go further out to see them.. maybe another trip?) But apparently one of the bronze whaler sharks that have become common in the bay since the marine reserve was established came within a metre of my face but I missed it. I was looking the other way! Which is probably good as I was a tad nervous about the resident sharks even though there haven’t been any incidents and there were SO many people in the water that I would not have been a logical target, even if one of them decided to turn mean.
I learned quite a few snorkelling tips and techniques as well as having one of those deeply pleasurable experiences that is almost spiritual in its intensity. Who would have thought Sydney is home to such incredible sea life!
The sun was setting over Manly as I lingered on the beach, not wanting to do the hour’s drive back home in rush hour traffic.
Here is Shelly beach in the late afternoon (my lesson was at 4pm).
See the waves beyond the rocks? That’s where you have the best chance of seeing the leafy sea dragons. We snorkelled to the left of this photo, following the coast towards Manly staying close to the shore.
And the view looking north towards the Northern beaches:
Click on photos to get a larger view. You can enjoy hundreds of other gorgeous sky photos here at Skywatch Friday.
You know the Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Well, Kiva has a great promotion at the moment – join up and qualify for a free $25 loan. You get to choose whom to loan to, and they foot the bill. Don’t miss this opportunity to bless and empower the life of someone less fortunate than yourself. Our family has made a couple of Kiva loans and it’s empowering to partner with someone in a small way ($25 is less than the cost of 2 movie tickets) but know that you are helping them escape poverty.
Everyone will live in peace and prosperity, enjoying their own grapevines and fig trees, for there will be nothing to fear. (Micah 4:4)
What a goal to work towards!
Sign up here. They only have 40001378756 0 free loans so be quick!
Update: All the free loans are gone. Consider investing $25 in the future of a family in need. Once the loan is repaid, you can invest it again and again and bless other families. Continuous giving!
Update again: Looks like they just added another 4000 free loans!
We got back last week from a week at Maqai Beach Eco Resort on Qamea island (east of Taveuni) in Fiji. It was wonderful despite the cold showers (no hot water) and the open boat crossing between the islands in driving rain to get there (no lifejackets!!) No shoes worn for a week (‘cept reef shoes or fins in the water and I donned my hiking boots for the “jungle walk”), the food was what the amazing ladies in the kitchen cooked (and it was superb – organic vegies from the garden and fish caught that day), snorkelling, crab catching (to feed the baby turtle), lazing, reading, table tennis, bird watching, kava drinking, fun, new friends, hammocking and just being transfixed by the unbelievable beauty of the views… it was heaven. We were restored.
Click on photos to get a larger view. You can enjoy hundreds of other gorgeous sky photos here.
Today I am grateful for living in a country where medical services are freely available (in the cities anyway) and accessible by all, without being dependent on the ability to pay for those services. We have had a lot of medical expenses over the last 4-5 years and over the last year especially. I am thankful that Medicare covers the bulk of those costs (for non-Aussie readers most Australians pay a 1.5% income tax levy which funds the national health system) and our private health cover picks up a substantial portion of the rest.
I stopped counting when I got to 50 medical appointments (just for me) for 2011. My car “knows” the way to our medical practice and can get there on autopilot. So today I give thanks for a doctor who bulk bills my daughter’s visits.
Yes, I know the system has its faults. Yes, I know waiting lists in the public system are increasing and if you live in regional or remote areas, things can be very grim. But it’s good to live in a country where a heart attack will not bankrupt you. My mother spent 6 weeks in ICU in South Africa after heart surgery (in a private hospital) and the bill was more than the value of my parents’ home. My dad never recovered from the debt.
So thank you, Dr L, for bulk billing MissN and thank you, Australia, for Medicare.
Today I give thanks that I do not have a paid job. Yes, I miss the sense of achievement. Yes, I miss the company. Yes, I miss feeling important and successful and the praise for a job well done and the satisfaction of being good at what I did.
But being available to care for my family, and especially my beautiful daughter, is so much more important to me.
Yes, you can do both… in an ideal world with support networks and super flexible workplace arrangements or your own business. But it didn’t work for me.
So I am thankful that I do have the privilege of being home with my girl when she is not well. Many mothers, probably most mothers worldwide, do not have that choice.
You are my God, and I will give thanks to you wrote the psalmist in Psalm 118.
I’m going to try to post daily on something for which I am grateful. Some friends are blogging the 365 Gratitude Project and others posting daily gratiude updates to facebook. I will try to resist my tendency to overthink things and write long, illustrated blog posts. Nor am I going to commit to a photo per post. I’m not going to be adamant about posting every day (life sometimes prevents that and I am NOT in ownership of a smart phone to post from – nor do I want one).
Was pondering where I should start (thematically and practically) and weighing up if I should tweet, use tumblr, facebook or my good old neglected blog. And I realised had my first thing to be grateful for – the myriad ways I can connect with people over the interwebz.
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is a long distance call…
I am thankful for how I can open my laptop and chat with my family who live in South Africa and England and Wales and Queensland and the USA and Canada and elsewhere. I am thankful that I have made and can communicate with friends in Kuwait and Bonaire and Brazil and Mauritius and other exotic and not-so-exotic places (as well as friends who live just down the road).
When we emigrated from South Africa to Australia in 1987, the idea of a videophone was a dream of mine and one I prayed we would be able to use with my family before the end of the century. Sadly my parents never had more than dial-up internet and so couldn’t video chat with us. But I am thankful that facebook especially has allowed families to re-connect. I love seeing photos of my nieces and nephews, chatting with my aunt and cousins whom I haven’t seen irl for far too many years and sharing the lives of those we left behind when we moved to Australia.
We spent 2 weeks in Tasmania in December and loved it. On our last morning in Hobart we drove up Mount Wellington, were amazed that we were almost IN the cloud and that there were bits of snow at the top. We enjoyed the view (that’s where the Sydney to Hobart yacht race ends, folks) and tried to keep our hands from freezing before driving up the coast to some beach. It was COLD up top.. probably about 3C at 9am. This is mid summer!
View from Mount Wellington
and here am I…
Wendy and Hobart from atop Mount Wellington
Click on photos to get a larger view. You can enjoy hundreds of other gorgeous sky photos here.
