About Saucy Gander

This started in a conversation before Christmas. We ate pudding truffles and revealed our dream jobs. Someone wanted to be a stuntman; another wanted to open an Easyway. Mine was to be a globe-trotting person who eats and cooks. Of course a friend asked, “do you have a blog?”

A day later, I bumped into Philiad. He was the first person I know to have his own blog, when blogging was still finding its identity as something more than a cyber diary. He went to South America after our arts degrees while we trotted off to law school. I made it to South America 6 years later but, by then, he had moved away.

Here is another blog on cooking and eating. This is where I write about learning in the kitchen, experiments in smell, colour, texture and taste, and the fun of cooking for large groups of friends. In a small way, this is also travelling through a kitchen and cookbooks.

Musings

Rather than the usual ‘get to know me’ stuff, here are answers to a few questions posed by WordPress Daily Prompts (updated December 2012):

If you were asked to spend a year living in a different location, where would you choose and why?

Bolivia.

A friend and I have decided when we take a 12 month break from work, we will go to La Paz, Bolivia, start a blog Two Lawyers and a Llama, which will turn into a multi-million dollar book and movie deal.

More seriously —

Of the South American countries we visited, Bolivia seemed to retain more of its indigenous culture. Although the Church co-opted indigenous celebrations into Catholic rites, religion was expressed in ways that I have not seen anywhere else – the Jesuit Missions in the Chiquitania for example, or the carving of indigenous goddess figure Pachamama on La Paz cathedral’s facade (oops?).

I was fascinated by the women walking around with tall bowler hats, voluminous colourful skirts laced with dirt, and blankets wrapped around babies. Feeling the high altitude (even after two weeks on the Altiplano), we ambled up precarious steps in the La Paz central market behind old Pacena women, past stalls piled with llama foetuses.

We barely had time to scratch the surface of indigenous Bolivian cuisine. Just wait til Two Lawyers and a Llama gets off the ground…

A writer once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” which five people would you like to spend your time with?

1. Jane Austen – for her dry wit and character

2. Gertrude Bell – for an alternate early perspective of the Middle East (other than that of D. H. Lawrence) in Syria, the desert & the sown

3. Heston Blumenthal – to ask questions about the method in his madness

4. Thomas Pynchon – because he seems to spend time with no one, and because he introduced me to the Maxwell demon, Preterites, and the modern epic novel

5. David Lebovitz – to see how he develops his recipes

Whatta share house.

Share a picture which means surprise to you!

The original Kermitmobile, only in Newtown:

And…our manager’s office just before Christmas.