We know the importance of taking time out to reflect, re-energise and connect with other like-hearted people, so put this date in your diary.
On 29th August, the Shoalhaven Women’s Conference will be held in Bomaderry. Inspirational speakers, exceptional value and fabulous food. Take the opportunity to have a day in the beautiful Shoalhaven and come along to share ideas and learn with businesswomen from diverse sectors. I promise you’ll have a fabulous day.
Here we are almost at the end of another month, and my best intentions to blog have gone out the window. Last night I attended an event convened by AmCham Women In Management, hearing three inspirational women speak about Entrepreneurship. A key tip (amongst many) was delegate, delegate, delegate!
So, demonstrating my rapid learning and ability to instantly implement lessons, I have asked a talented friend to “guest write” something for you. He has often told me about his “reverse pumpkin theory”, so it’s a pleasure to share it with you:
Reverse Pumpkin Theory - David Smith, (Author, Musician, IT guru and creative genius)
We all have friends who live in the country. People who have eschewed the lure of the bright lights and the traffic jams and the freshly ground Brazilian coffee lovingly steamed by Manuel, the only barista who really understands us. Or was that Columbian? Whoever… Anyway, we all have friends who live in the country. It’s a rule.
And, sure enough, the same as we denizens of the metropolii occasionally decide that what we really, really need right now is some country air, and head west over the mountains to the great beyond, so our country friends decide that what they really, really need right now is a dose of carbon monoxide poisoning, a high stress ride through the streets of an unfamiliar city with one hand on the street directory and the other, white-knuckled on the wheel, and a personal introduction to Manuel, the only barista who really understands them.
So they arrive, dusty, tired, stressed. It’s usually a Saturday, mid-afternoon. You usher them in, show them the shower, pop a nice bottle of something in the freezer, and half an hour or so later, they emerge, human… almost normal. Small talk is exchanged, the good old days dissected and then one of them gets a gleam in their eye and says “We’ve brought you something from home. Gerald (Norman, Barry etc) will get it from the car.”
And so it begins… A battered cardboard box arrives. Inside is a scattering of potatoes with clumps of red dirt still attached, perhaps also an obscure vegetable that you’re not quite sure of, like a turnip or a parsnip, and always, always, a pumpkin.
It’s not a small one either – this is a real mother of a pumpkin, staring up at you out of the box in a round and vaguely malevolent way. It’s a nice pumpkin, and no doubt it tastes exquisite. Well, great. Well, nice. Well, OK. Well actually I don’t really like pumpkin all that much, truth be told. The saving grace of a pumpkin is however, that you are under absolutely no obligation to do anything with it right away. Your friends will be gone soon, and it can sit there in the corner, staring at you in a round and vaguely malevolent way while you ponder the meaning of its life. Eventually it rots and you throw it away – around about the time when you ring your friends up and tell them it was absolutely delicious as soup.
Next time, a year or so on, there’s another visit, and another pumpkin, because we all have friends who live in the country, and they always bring pumpkins when they come to town.
This, dear reader, is Pumpkin Theory. You know it. I know it. So, when it’s my turn to go and reacquaint myself with the quaint country charm of wherever it is they’re living – the termite ridden fence posts, Ethel the goat who, despite all evidence to the contrary, is still alive, and the dry, dry ground, well I like to indulge in what we’ll call Reverse Pumpkin Theory.
It’s the nobless oblige of city / country relations – the rich man / poor man saga writ large in the dusty window of the Holden station wagon parked for several years now, in big shed. Reverse Pumpkin Theory involves bearing gifts to our poor country cousins – not a pumpkin of course, because that would just be Pumpkin Theory in reverse, which is a different thing entirely, but instead the very crème de la crème of epicurean delights.
David Jones is a good place to start, assuming there’s a Food Hall, natch. Perhaps some gently spiced goat’s cheese (the like of which Ethel could never hope to produce), a new variant on the scale of dried / sun-dried / semi-dried tomatoes in triple virgin olive oil perhaps (you can never have too many virgins associated with your food), the finest Belgian dark chocolate with 85% cocoa butter from Columbia, or is it Brazil? Perhaps a special salad dressing from a famous local restaurant – a steal at only $25 for 375 ml. Is that French truffle oil or a local Tasmanian version? That sort of thing.
It’s not hard to fill up a basket with such wonders – and it’s fun. You get to buy things that perhaps you’d otherwise be too afraid to tangle with on your own, and watch to see if they’re actually edible.
You arrive, your basket piled high – and they’re very glad to see you. It’s Saturday, mid-afternoon. You’re stressed from the constant bumping of fifty or so kilometres of corrugated goat track. They show you the shower, although asking if perhaps you could not spend more than a minute in it due to the drought, and they slip a fine bottle of something into the freezer.
You emerge half an hour later, human. Almost normal. The basket is presented. You explain Reverse Pumpkin Theory – as a thank you for all those lovely pumpkins they’ve bought down over the years, you’ve bought some real food for them to eat. It never occurs to either your friends or yourself that you’ve brought it merely so that you can ensure that you yourself will eat well whilst staying with them.
The cellophane wrapping is removed and the contents lovingly spread on the kitchen table whilst you sip a brisk young New Zealand sauvignon blanc not of your providing that’s not only many cuts above the Ben Ean Moselle you were expecting, but gets you wondering how, living in such a crusty old backwater, they managed to get hold of it.
One of your friends picks up a jar of hand picked Peruvian high altitude special large capers in rice vinegar and says, “You know, these are absolutely my favourite capers. They’re just a touch saltier than the standard ones you get at Woollies – and it’s more a sea salt than a rock salt flavour, while putting them in rice vinegar gives them a subtle sweetness that I’ve not tasted in inferior brands. I get them all the time from the new deli in town.”
“Oh… and I love these too,” she says, moving onto the next impossible-to-procure-in-the-country item that you’ve spent the best part of last Saturday tracking down in an obscure Portugese deli in Newtown that a friend told you about only if you promised not to let the secret out to the hoi polloi… “and these are just darling….”
Damn the global marketplace…
When we create environments that focus on Who we are, that allow us to express our values and nourish us, then our natural talents and energy are released. The impossible becomes possible, and results exceed expectations.
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