I am an enthusiastic , though not all that skilful , cook .

Strangely enough , I usually manage to produce a culinary delight in my first attempt at something new , but if I try to repeat that success , things generally go very wrong. I attribute this to an irrepressible desire to improve on the previous effort , with variations of ingredients and further variations in what should have been already sufficient as regards quantities . It seems that I can never be satisfied with repeating a concoction that proved to be good enough the first time .

The desire to vary has brought into being some strange results , so I had to rein back on experimentations at Dondingalong , lest too many gastronomic disasters occurred . Therefore I attempted to work in a simple pattern most of the time.

I always had a supply of tinned basics in my cupboard , such as tinned fish and even baked beans , onto which I could fall back at any time . One extremely valuable ingredient was a selection of canned curry sauces , ranging from the quite mild to the fierce . and there were always canned tomatoes , bean mixes and so on .

However , I much preferred to get into town as soon as possible after reaching the block , and stock up with various meats , some of the fruits that I did not grow myself , and lots of fresh vegetables . A lot of the basic meals for about a week were cooked on my first day of residence there, and various stew-y concoctions were frozen , to save me time later when I felt I would be better employed outside.

I never enjoyed leaving work , coming inside , getting cleaned up and spending time preparing meals ; time which was more productive when used in the orchard or in clearing and planting . It was much simpler to do it all early , and portion it out as needed .

Now and then I would let loose in the kitchen and do something fancy . On one occasion I cooked a remarkably good fish curry , garnished with crisp fried tiny cubes of potato. That went downvery well at a party at Bob and Jane's place .

I remember too having fun stuffing a boned shoulder of lamb with various ingredients from the orchard , including feijoa . I tried it out on a friend and his wife ( the friend I wrote about in the piece Forty Years Of The Sin of Envy ) , and it went down well , perhaps much assisted by some pleasant wines. I also made an apple dessert that evening , but I generally did not bother with other than fresh fruit when eating by myself.

One September I came across a recipe that I had cut from a newspaper a long time previously , and which had been hidden away in among some of the books in my bookcase up there . They were books that I had transferred from where we lived at Bondi Junction, books that were useful for relaxation when the local television was at its boring worst.

Because we had so much citrus , I had purchased a food processor with a juicer attachment , and juicing oranges , lemons and grapefruit was its main function . It did however possess a sort of mixing bowl attachment , set at the strangest angle -- an important point later in this tale . With that for starters , I began to collect some more necessities for the cooking of cakes , something that I would never have dared were my wife present . I already had a very large cake pan .

It did not take me long to realise that country ladies who cook tend to get their Christmas ingredients early with the result that they were already in short suppy . It took a lot of foraging to get the quantity of dried mixed fruits that I required ! However , at last I had everything to hand , including the vital ingredient , whiskey .

The mixed fruits were soaked for a long period in a quantity ( an over-large quantity , I fear ) of spirits , a plentiful mix of whiskey and some brandy for good measure . ( I always kept a supply of brandy in order to make brandied cumquats . ) The cake ingredients other than the fruit were mixed in the food processor , with only one minor disaster , partly due to that strangely offset bowl . I accidentally turned the speed up too far , and so spent some time removing portions of cake mix from the wall above the kitchen bench . That which splattered on me was simply scraped off and eaten , as if I were indulging in the childish habit of licking the bowl .

The electric oven was a good new one , and the cooking was simple . After the cake had cooled , more whiskey was poured over the top to soak in , and that process repeated as often as I thought of it for a long time after .

The result looked so good that I thought a second attempt should be made . I therefore went looking for another large pan . After going through several shops I got what must have been the last twelve inch cake pan in Kempsey , and so began the process again.

Everything went brilliantly , until the cake had been in the oven for about half the time needed . Then there was a blackout . I had visions of finishing up with the same kind of fruitcake that my paternal grandmother used to make , something that tasted well enough , but which was always sunken and soggy in the middle. One could almost drink her fruitcakes ! Luckily the power came back on in a couple of hours , and the process was satisfactorily completed.

Getting the cakes back to Sydney was a problem , in that they had to be packed ( still in their tins ) into a butterbox , and carried on the train. There was a considerable poundage in that box , but happily it was a poundage later greatly reduced by an enthusiastic family.