Let's Get Rich! Let's go Work in the Mines!

The new year is coming up, with new year resolutions and time for reflection and discussion. I guess there will be a good many Australians considering that a career change into the mining industry might be a fast-track to financial security. My experience tells me otherwise. I have a very limited social circle, but amongst it are no less than three people who have all spent the better part of their working lives working in remote locations in the Australian mining industry. They all have little or nothing to show for it financially. None of them are comfortably retired. Between them they have produced only one child, one is divorced, one married late in life, and one has apparently had bad relationship experiences.

So is there any fast-track to riches? I know of two pathways - inherit a stack of loot, or marry it. That's life!

Christmas shopping for perfume

I happend to be at David Jones and at Myer the other day, and I can say that at the Myers store, which is all stocked-up for Christmas, I've never seen so much shit perfume taking up so much shelf-space. I couldn't find a whole shelf or section for Guerlain in either fragrance department. What is the world coming to?

How much longer will Lili be able to resist the urge to buy Guerlain's newest fragrance?

Advice for worried partners

If your relationship has become riddled with conflict and your partner is untrustworthy, it might be a good time to invest in a glamour photo session, so that if you go missing the police will be able to release to the media some very presentable missing person shots, and you will look like a real doll to the general public.

It's only nutrition - get over it people!

Food is not entertainment. Food and cooking are themes that are not worthy of basing a TV series on. The idea that people should work themselves into a state of desperation in an effort to create a perfect dish is utterly absurd.

Cooking is not a very suitable form of play for young children. They lack the fine-motor skills needed for many cookery techniques, and much of the work of cooking is unsafe for young kids to do. Children also understand little about basic food hygiene.

Food is not love. Food is not an adequate substitute for love. To look to food for consolation for the inadequacies of a poor marriage or bad relationships or no relationships is self-defeating and cowardly. The fatter you get, the less loveable and the more unhealthy you will become. You will shorten your life, giving you even less chance of finding the things that you truly need and desire.

Food is not achievement. Just because you eat fancy stuff doesn't mean that you ever deserved what you get. Spending your time creating fancy dishes seems like a bit of a waste of time.

Food is not status. Some of the wealthiest people in the world like or even prefer to eat very ordinary hamburgers. I dine like Bill Gates when I walk into a McDonald's.

The world does not need any more cook books or recipes in womens magazines. Most people never make any more than a small fraction of the recipes in the cook books that they own. All of the recipes that anyone could need are available over the internet. Most second-hand book shops and charity shops stock a good range of cook books.

Food cannot cure cancer, no matter how often some people claim this is so.

Food cannot heal the mind, unless the mind is diseased due to some type of nutritional deficiency.

Altering your child's diet will most likely not transform your child's personality or behaviour - if it appears otherwise the placebo effect, or regression towards the mean or other scientific explanations need to be considered. Your kids do not exist to please you or to conform to your pre-concieved ideas of what they should be like or who they should be. You are there to serve and accept and raise your kids.

Today's meals are tomorrow's bodily waste.

Bon appetit!

Lili's Thought of the Day

Time stops for no woman, and time takes its toll. These days I no longer have a waist, but it is some consolation that I still have a neck, and my lips have not yet disappeared.

Lili's quote of the day

I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.
- W. C. Fields

from:

W. C. Fields quotes at BrainyQuote
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/w_c_fields.html

Lili's tip for the day for the terminally ill

If you are suffering from a fatal illness, and you know that the end is looming close, and you have lived your life according to the rules and pointless rituals and restrictions of a religion, and have made considerable personal and family sacrifices for the sake of your faith and your religious community, and have lived a lesser or harder life because of this, or have been a lesser person because of this, and you are not sure if you will be given a place in the afterlife, either because of a crisis of faith or an uncertainty of your worthiness of a place in heaven, don't ask a person who you know to be an ATHEIST if they think you will be going to a better place!

Worship the Sun God - with caution

Changes to sun exposure policy. Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. June 2012. http://www.childhealthresearch.org.au/news-events/enews-june2012-vitamin-d.aspx

In Australia the Cancer Council are apparently advising us to get some sun exposure in winter to boost Vitamin D levels, contrary to previous advice to shun the sun to avoid exposure to UV rays that can cause skin cancer. 

The mid-winter solstice is coming up soon in the southern hemisphere. In the middle of winter in many parts of Australia the levels of UV are low enough that it is safe enough to be outdoors on a sunny day without a hat or sun protection. Believe it or not, even in a sun-drenched country like Australia there are lots of people, of all ages, who don’t get enough sun on their skin during the colder months of the year to maintain good levels of vitamin D (and they also don’t get enough of the vitamin from dietary sources or supplements). Scientists have only recently become aware of the full importance of vitamin D, and this is still being researched. A lack of this vitamin has been linked to a wide range of serious ailments, including bone diseases, multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases, peripheral arterial disease and possibly cancer.

So check the current UV levels in the place where you live, and if they aren’t dangerously high, and the weather permits, why not get out in the sun and the fresh air and enjoy a bit of exercise too. Maybe you might like to fix your eye on a landmark on a distant beach, and set aside an afternoon to reach it by foot, maybe taking some time along the way to climb to the top of a large sand dune, and jump down the side of it, rolling and tumbling down as the clean white sand caresses and trickles down your bare skin. This could be more fun if you bring along an attractive companion, or a sheet of cardboard to use as a sled. Either you love sand or you cannot stand the feel of it. I love it. Leaping down the side of a sand dune for fun is considered to be a bad thing by environmentalist kill-joys because it causes erosion, so I advise that you restrict fun on sand dunes to more remote beaches where no one will see.


Of course, it might be wise to curtail your sun-drenched coastal adventure if you find yourself near an army rifle range, or a shipwreck that has a curse on it, or a bloated dead stinking beached whale that is attracting man-eating sharks to the vicinity, or an old WWII bombing range full of unexploded ordnance, or a nudist beach where things happen that you don’t approve of or don’t want to look at or are against your religion, or a dog beach full of dog turds and uncontrolled genetically psychotic pit bull dogs. Stroll at your own risk.


Music tracks to enjoy while mid-winter sunbaking



I am the black gold of the sun – Rotary Connection (recorded 1971)
(from the LP Hey Love)
music clip at YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DR_NMtBEj4&feature=related

I am the black gold of the sun – Nuyorican Soul (covered 1997)
(from Chillout Classics Disc 2 – Ministry of Sound)
music clip at YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIzqQOs_IrI&feature=related

The sea – Morcheeba
(from Chillout Classics Disc 2 – Ministry of Sound)
music clip at YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnCS25z18pI&feature=related

Waiting for the sun – The Doors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0kypyGSKs

Sonne - Rammstein
(from the CD Mutter)
Music clip of lyrics translated into English at YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3uxhesiKgE
Regular music clip from YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXqEMuXGK08&feature=related

Hymn to the sun – singer counter-tenor Paul Esswood, composer Philip Glass
(from the opera Akhnaten, about the megalomaniac pharaoh Akhenaten who worshiped a sun god and had the legendary beauty Queen Nefertiti as his Great Royal Wife (only wife number 1 actually – not such a great position as it sounds)
music clip at YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW_ZUC5uqqc

image of Queen Nefertiti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nofretete_Neues_Museum.jpg

image of Pharaoh Akhenaten depicted as a Sphinx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Akhenaten_as_a_Sphinx_(Kestner_Museum).jpg

Lili does not dance to anyone’s tune, but she will be watching carefully and taking notes from the sidelines

There’s been many a time recently when I’ve been tempted to look certain people in the eye and say something that isn't very nice, such as “You know what the difference is between you and KC and the Sunshine Band? I don’t dance to your tune, dear!” or maybe "I'm sorry, I think you've mistaken me for someone who enjoys playing idiotic games" or "Do you know what the difference is between me and a harp?"

But there really is no need for confrontation, and the idea of looking anyone in the eye is rather yuck. Actions always speak louder than words anyway. And I’ve found that the most manipulative people in this world are invariably suffering from some type of mental illness or personality disorder or deep psychological insecurity, and in time, they can be relied upon to get themselves into more trouble than I could ever arrange for them. I've also found that these people are invariably female. Make of that what you will. It’s just a pity that they so often drag a collection of stooges, fools, innocent bystanders, children and people who are only trying to do their job into their world of melodrama, chaos and self-absorbtion. It’s the children that I worry about.

If you suspect that you might be the target of the unreasonable demands and lies of a person who has a serious psychological problem that is characterized by an obsession with manipulating others, Lili's advice is to run, run like the wind, and don't ever look back, and if you don't take my advice, don't look to me for sympathy.

Lili Marlene’s Chocolate Orange Self Saucing Pudding

Winter is just around the corner, and oranges will be in season. This recipe is rather ordinary in flavour without the extra dimension of orange, because it is only made with cocoa, not chocolate, but nevertheless a plain chocolate version is never rejected by the kids, or the grown-ups.

I've tried using the juice from the orange in this recipe, with less boiling water, as the liquid poured over the top. For some reason this seems to mess up the magic in the way that a sauce materializes at the bottom of the mix, and a solid sponge forms at the top. It tasted OK though.

Lili Marlene’s Chocolate Orange Self Saucing Pudding

Ingredients
1 cup self-raising flour
3 tablespoons of quality cocoa powder
½ cup castor sugar (I have found raw castor sugar on sale in Coles Supermarkets)
Finely grated rind of 1 large orange (use a fork to remove all the rind from a manual grater)
½ cup milk
2 beaten eggs
60g melted butter

¾ cup or 120g brown sugar
(another) 3 tablespoons of quality cocoa powder
2 cups boiling water

Equipment
A large fairly flat Pyrex baking dish (you just can’t have enough Pryrex in the kitchen!)

Method
Pre-heat oven to 160c fan-forced or 180c conventional
Mix first 4 ingredients together (cocoa, flour, sugar, rind)
Pour on the milk and egg, mix till mixture is smooth
Mix in the butter
Pour mix into the baking dish
Sprinkle the brown sugar over the mix, then sprinkle the second lot of cocoa over this
Pour the boiling water over this mix
Bake for around 35 minutes. The top solid layer should be cooked and there should be a liquid layer bubbling up around the sides when it is cooked.
You can serve it with ice cream or whipped cream.

Copyright Lili Marlene 2010.

Lili Marlene’s Easy Chocolate Steamed Pudding

What really matters about family cooking isn’t complicated recipes with dozens of obscure and expensive ingredients. What really matters is how often you actually make nice things for the family, things that they want to eat, putting the hot goodies onto the table for everyone to enjoy. If you have kids, today’s meals are the stuff of childhood memories that will last a lifetime. I think it is preferable that those memories do not consist primarily of foods with names that start with “Mc” or "Nanna's".


Lili Marlene’s Easy Chocolate Steamed Pudding

Ingredients
60g butter
½ cup brown sugar
60-70g quality dark chocolate, broken up into pieces
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 cup boiling water
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup self-raising flour
½ cup ground almonds (omit if you want a moister, more spongy texture)

Special Equipment
A pudding steamer tin with a lid.
A large saucepan with a lid, large enough for the steamer to bob about inside it.

Method
Place the butter, brown sugar, chocolate pieces, vanilla and bicarb into a large heat-resistant mixing bowl.
Pour over the boiling water and stir to mix. Leave it to cool down.
Mix in the beaten eggs, then mix in the flour and the ground almonds.
Grease the steamer tin. Pour the mixture into it and secure the lid. Place the tin into the saucepan with enough boiling water in it to float the tin in it.
Steam pudding for 1 ¾ hours, checking every ½ hour or so to make sure that it is not boiling dry.
Carefully turn the hot pudding out, upside-down onto a plate.
Serve hot with pouring custard.

Copyright Lili Marlene 2010.

Lili Marlene's Footwear Tips - Number 3

Crocs are for kiddies, not adults. If you must wear them, only as slippers, please.

Lili Marlene's Footwear Tips - Number 2

If you wear your cherry-red Doc Marten's boots with yellow shoelaces, you run the risk of looking rather too-much like Ronald McDonald.

Lili Marlene's Footwear Tips - Number 1

If you loose a pin off a Croc shoe, don't despair, don't throw the shoe away. Go back to the shop where you bought the shoes and they might have some spare pins, which can be snapped into place without tools.

Rice Bubble and Date Delight

My working-class grandmother used to make this slice, and I thought it was the best thing ever when I was a littlie. It’s hard to believe that it has been a quarter of a century since Nan departed this world. This easy recipe requires no baking.


Rice Bubble and Date Delight

110g butter
220g chopped dates
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups Rice Bubbles (can use a little bit more if you like a lighter slice)
extra desiccated coconut
A tray suitable for slices (approx. 28.5cm x 18cm x 2cm) (one of the most useful items in the kitchen)

Put the butter, dates and sugar in a saucepan.
Heat it gently while stirring and squashing the dates with the spoon, till the mix is pretty thick and the dates have lost much of their form, a few minutes.
Add the Rice Bubbles and mix gently.
Grease the tray and sprinkle it with coconut.
Turn out the mix onto the tray and smooth it flat.
Sprinkle with more coconut.
Leave to set in fridge.
Turn out onto a board and cut into rectangles.