Category Archives: Helvi Oosterman

Of Proust and Penguins

19 Saturday Sep 2009

Posted by in Helvi Oosterman, Ladies Lounge, The Public Bar

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By Helvi Oosterman.

I’m standing in front of our floor to ceiling book cases and I don’t know where to start my weeding; we are moving to a smaller place and I have to select which books to take and which not. I have three milk crates on the table: one for daughter, one for charity and one for the cottage. The ones I want to keep can stay until we actually move.

I take books out at random. ‘The End of Certainty’ by Paul Kelly is the first one. It was a birthday present from Allan, who passed away far too young at fifty. His beautiful hand writing makes me choke at the loss of a dear friend and I want to keep the book. ‘In the box’, says the boss who hasn’t even read it. The next one happens to be a slim volume by Marguerite Duras, a French writer who used live in Vietnam when it was still Indo-China. I start reading ‘Practicalities’; beautiful short essays about life, love, writing, Paris and wasting time. I feel I’m not wasting a minute re-reading this and not sticking to the task at hand: I have to keep this one;  it’s only a slip of a book.

On the bottom shelf, out of sight are my yearly diet books; I have bought one every January, new year, new me. Easy goodbyes to all; from Atkins to Scarsdale to South Beach. I count only seven;  many of them have already left the house to end up fattening girl friends’ book shelves. Then I pick a stack of yellowed old Penguins, Mishima, Kawabata, Hermann Hesse and Böll, which have escaped the previous throw-out. They are like very old friends now;   I put them back on the shelf.

I’m not doing too well, and I decide to take a break and walk to check the cottage collection. I find that most of them are results of previous culls, books that I had not chosen myself. Even so I managed to bring back an armful: a book on Finnish art, a long lost one of V.S. Naipaul and ‘By Way of Sainte-Beuve’ by Marcel Proust.

I have spent some hours by now and not much to show for; maybe the best thing to do is to tackle one shelf daily until the job is done. We have time;  we haven’t even put the house on the market yet. Husband walks by and looks at the empty boxes, he can see that I’m getting a headache and am close to tears: Maybe I can help tomorrow? This is not what I want;  he’ll only leave his Patrick Whites and some boring stories about Aussies migrating to Paraguay and maybe George Perec’ s  ‘Life, the User’s Manual’. ‘You can help with the cook books and the gardening ones’, I say as I have already promised to give them to family members; I have enough recipes in my head by now and my new garden will  be very small.

Oh no, I have totally forgotten about dictionaries and other language and reference books in the office and all my favorites in the bed room!

Vegemite or not….

28 Friday Aug 2009

Posted by in Helvi Oosterman, Ladies Lounge, Travels

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continental.

continental brekkie

Vegemite or not… by Helvi Oosterman

Leaving your mother country, you’ll leave behind mother’s home cooking and most times also Speciality foods of your nation. In my case it was the flat Finnish rye bread, which I hadn’t encountered anywhere else on my travels. The Estonian black bread became a reasonable substitute in Australia.

Some countries of course have food to die for ; their recipes have crossed the borders and we all enjoy our spaghetti Bolognese , our Danish pastries, Russian beef stroganoff and Swedish meatballs. That’s the easy bit, but what happens when visiting or moving into a foreign land, and you are offered those countries’ less known or some of their more peculiar tid bits.

First trip to Amsterdam and you are given your first raw herring with raw onions. How’s that for a new culinary experience. Not as good as roll mops out of the jar, but not bad either ; I could learn to love this. Greek olives or dolmades are easy to like, but what about the funny drink Ouzo, that could be problematic. Sweet and sour pork, Mongolian lamb don’t need getting used to but please, don’t ask me to tackle bird’s nest soup or hundred year old eggs, ever, never..

English roast dinner even with the peculiar Yorkshire pudding goes down well, but a pea soup with a pie floating in it, a floater, they call it…good for piglets at pigs Arms maybe..?  Haggis, now that’s something that only the starving amongst us dares to touch.

season's first herring.

Dutch herring eater.

New Zealanders wrap their fish in banana leaves and bury it in sand over hot coals to cook and this of course can taste fantastic, depending on type of fish and the cooking time. Kiwi friends of ours did this once; they buried their catch in the Balmain back yard…sadly the Snapper tasted like compost and smelled like burning rubber.

Getting used to Aussie food was not so hard; it was a matter of learning to like bland or plain food; the chops and the three veg. Sometimes the greens came out of tin, especially if you were eating in a road side milk bar, on your way to Brisbane. Sister in law, having been a waitress, had had her share of difficult customers, therefore she in her turn turned ‘difficile’ when dining out. Are the mushrooms fresh, she queried. Straight out of the tin, was the Taree cafe owner’s answer.

Husband had been in Australia many a year before I came, but he had never managed to even taste Vegemite. For me it was love at first sight , I have to have it at least twice a week.Our kids couldn’t be without it either; when living in Holland, we had to do with Marmite…no match to Vegemite. The jars were cute though, ideal for my dried herbs.