The picture is of my dad’s birthday cake on Boxing Day. My memories of his birthday through my childhood always involve some exquisite duck dish with an appropriately gourmet starter such as cold cherry soup or lobster salad – something cool and refreshing to sparkle and entice the taste buds in Melbourne’s sweltering summers.
Catering for dad’s birthday lunch and all the Christmas celebratory feasts of the last few days has had me tied to the kitchen and spending lots of time inventing yummy dishes with our friend Annette.
We have spent most of Christmas at Filippa’s house in the ecovillage in the Currumbin Valley where she and her family live. This has been my home for the last three months, after running from a life that had massively fallen apart. My three sons arrived from WA a few days before Christmas, heralding the beginning of the festivities. It has been a long hard year for the four of us with the end of my relationship with their dad and the complete emotional and nervous breakdown I went through in the months that followed. Christmas, food, family, fun … all have been a beautiful way to shake the year off.
We have hired the community centre in the ecovillage which has been created from the old dairy facilities that existed on the original farm and contains a fully equipped commercial kitchen for our preparations. Lunch is a sit-down affair for 22 guests, including the birthday boy who is turning 77.
We begin with champagne cocktails created with pickled hibiscus flowers giving suitably exotic visuals as the flower floats pinkly in the bottom of the glass. The entrée is King Prawns and prosciutto with a lime and mango glaze on a bed of Asian greens. In keeping with tradition, this year’s duck dish is duck breast with a cherry, port and sage sauce on a bed of braised bok choy served with French roasted potatoes.
To finish the meal off, we have the required fabulously decorated chocolate cake and an old favourite celebratory desert of mine I developed years ago – the Naughty Auntie’s Meringue Cake – a delicious combination of a coffee pecan meringue filled with brandied ganache, cream and summer berries. Foodies being the fashion victims they are, this type of cake is now called a “Dacquoise” — who thinks this stuff up one wonders?!
Annette and her husband Guy and I have had little time to enjoy the meal but the highlight for me is the King Prawns and Prosciutto. Great seafood is readily available here on the Gold Coast and the dish is a wonderful balance on the palate of salty, sweet and sour with fresh crunchy vegetables.
Annette, Guy and I have worked late into the evening cleaning up. Filippa and her family have gone home to bed and my boys have disappeared into the ecovillage somewhere to enjoy the warm balmy air. Over the last few days I have realised that I do not wish to return to the south-west town in WA where I lived. I can’t think of any way to rebuild my life in returning, and everything over here in the Currumbin Valley seems ripe with possibility and opportunities to re-invent myself. For now, it means moving away from my children and the consequences of this will be enormous for us all. In making this choice for myself, they will end up with parents on opposite sides of the country, a situation my sisters and I grew up in and one that I never imagined imposing on my own children.
After the cleaning is finally finished I walk down to the Currumbin Creek which is moments from the front door of Filippa’s house. My boys are building intricate shallow dams that look like Aboriginal fish traps. I strip off and jump in the swimming hole. The moon is almost half full, the evening air is warm and slippery. The heat leaves my body as the creek’s flow entices away the lingering scents of the kitchen. My boys’ calls and their instructions to each other as they negotiate the dam building fill me with a contented joy.
I have just been through the hardest year of my life and made the most difficult decision of my life and there is yet more of an emotional rollercoaster ride ahead of me. I have no way of knowing how this will all play out but in my heart I know my decision is right.
July 6, 2009 at 7:54 am |
Hello Deb! Who would have known that as well as all of your other many talents that you are also a fabulous writer. I love your writing style! Thanks for sharing all this with us.