About Me

What, you want to know more about me? Don't
get me started or you will be wading through my website for
hours. But then, you have plenty of time don't you! The
theme of my site should immediately tell you a lot. Instead of
Barbie dolls and teddy bears, I love horses and zebras, and
cats are also very important in my life.
Where do I begin? Firstly, all I can say is
thank goodness my mother never dressed me in hideous,
frilly, pale pink, girly clothes. It wasn't very practical
anyway living on one acre of land which was absolutely HUGE to
me as a child. I could not understand how my cousins could bear
living with such small backyards in the suburbs. I would
have died being so cramped up and having to spend so much time
inside.
My cultural heritage is European and in the
early days, our one acre of land was well utilised. It was full
of animals - a cat, a dog, chickens, ducks, domestic rabbits at
one stage, a goat, a lamb; large vegetable garden and plenty of
fruit trees, namely apples, plums, quinces, figs and a
lemon tree. What my parents could not grow or make themselves,
they bought, and that was not much in the food
department.
I grew up on fresh fruit and vegetables,
freshly slaughtered meat which was purchased directly from a
farmer (beef, pork or lamb). My maternal grandmother did
not waste ANYTHING from the carcass which she, together with my
grandfather, would spend the whole day carving up and packing
into manageable portions into their freezer, often with the
help of my parents. In fact, my grandmother even made
her own noodles - you can imagine the delicious full
flavour of my grandmother's (and my mother's) chicken
noodle soup made from home grown chooks, home grown
vegetables and home made noodles. A restaurant would do
anything to have such a meal on their menu.
Don't forget that my parents and my
grandparents survived the second World War in Europe and
nothing was ever discarded until every usable part was finished
with. Another example is how my mother provided us with
feather pillows amd feather doonas for all our beds and my
grandmother made exquisite crocheted lace borders for
the pillow slips for our duck feather pillows. Having such
resourceful parents (and grandparents) was definitely an
advantage in many ways.
Instead of writing screeds here, I will
recall memories from my childhood, teenage years and adult life
in separate pages. Bear with me as I add to those pages over
time.
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