Beef Goulash by Garry Hun

This year, autumn made a belated appearance in Sydney town. The seasonal distinction is always hard living in a coastal Meditteranean climate, but this time we seem to have had a prolonged spring, with the hot weather only setting in after the calender change at the beginning of March. Last night we had spitting rain and a distinctively cool kick in the pants come through on the wind. Today the bones in my feet are chilly (oh, woe is my aged body!) - perhaps the best indicator that summer is over (or that I'm going to end up a crazy old lady with a hundred rescue dogs gnawing on my corpse, either or).

Being Good Friday (good for the world's Christians as it's an imminent sign that Jebus is coming back, good for the rest of us as we get a public holiday) TheBloke was home from work and we spent the day tackling the masses of boxes that we've carted around through four houses, three years and two storage units. We had a house inspection earlier in the week which was a deciding factor in whether we'd be able to renew our lease for another year (ha, can't escape real estate talk in Sydney even when you're reading a tummy-blog!) - and regardless of the outcome, cutting the crap was something that we desperately needed to do. The idea of living in cardboard shanty town for another year was pretty repugnant, as was the thought of having to cart aforementioned crap through another move.

We worked up quite an appetite unpacking, repacking, garbaging and recycling the contents of TheBloke's music studio, and decided to reward ourselves with a movie (Dr Seuss' Horton Hears a Who - 7/10 if you're interested, the CGI is great in parts and almost claymationish in others) and udon noodles at a Japanese restaurant upstairs in Broadway shopping centre. We were sadly disappointed to find that Jebus' demise had resulted in the closure of the food court, and with an hour and a bit to kill and rapidly increasing hunger, we lamented the lack of other decent options for food in the area. Even the Landsdowne's $5 steak couldn't be had on account of Jebus' drinking all the wine in the city at his Last Supper.

And that's when we remembered Unas. Unas, for those of you who don't know, is a continental restaurant which started as a cafe in the 'Cross, and has, since 2000, grown to two other locations in Double Bay and Broadway. We'd eaten at the Cross restaurant before and come away rotund, jolly and full of praise for their massive Austro-Hungarian (plus a liberal sprinkling of Deutsch and Swiss) meals. Driving past the Broadway restaurant I've always been interested in their lunch specials, but have never actually ventured in there. Given the biting weather and lack of other viable options (sorry crepe cafe also serving Japanese ramen, Chinese dumplings and bubble tea) the only thing standing in our way was the possibility that they might not be able to serve us in time for our movie.

We needn't have worried. The service was fantastic, our meals (schnitzels, a fast decision is a good decision!) arrived within ten minutes of ordering, and TheBloke drank half a litre of beer. Life could only be better if we'd had big enough bellies to fit in everything else on the menu. I've not tried the Unas goulash, but I made an executive decision to carry the Euro cuisine along with the weather to tonight, and make a hearty homebound attempt at the famous traditional beef stew.

I'm not making any promises about Hungarian authenticity: this recipe is based on doing a bit of reading (thanks, Wikipedia), a need for warming spice (hence the distinctively Bitchlike addition of chillies) and memories of how my Oma used to make this when I was a kid. I'm pretty certain she used tomatoes (a no-no amongst purists, apparently) and it was definitely more of a stew than a soup. TheBloke and I are hitting Hungary in late October this year so I'll definitely give the national dish a once (twice, thrice, tenth) over to see if there is such a thing as a textbook version. Until then, this rib-sticker will keep you warm.

Beef Goulash by Garry Hun

Ingredients
500g casserole beef, cubed
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/4 red capsicum, roughly diced
1/4 green capsicum, rougly diced
1/2 tin tomatoes, crushed
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
2 bay leaves
2-3 dried chillies, split lengthways
2 cups beef stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
1. Heat olive oil in a large saucepan, add onion and cook until it begins to soften. Add paprika and caraway seeds, stir, add garlic and capsicum, stir.
2. Add beef and cook until well browned.
3. Add bay leaves, chillies, beef stock and tomatoes, stir well and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until beef is very tender.
4. Season with salt and pepper and serve with buttered noodles, dumplings, mashed potato or potato rosti and steamed veggies.

Emo Eco

So in my old age, instead of becoming more cynical and bitter (which, come to think of it, was probably an impossibility) I've come to the horrible realisation that I'm turning into a lentil-loving hippie type.

Oh, I can hear your shrieks from here. "Noooo! Not TheBitch! You, our last bastion of all that is wrong in this wide, brown, unpleasant land of ours!"

Alright, so maybe the lentil-loving bit is a slight exaggeration - although TheBloke and I do partake of vegetarian food several times a week, I'm not in any danger of reverting to veganism. I hold the firm belief that said wide, brown unpleasant land is put to much better use as grazing pasture than attempted agriculture. But aside from that, in the last couple of months I've become increasingly, what's the word? Oh, that's right - eco-conscious. (Don't worry, I screwed up my face a little just typing it).

Along with converting our electricity across to 100% renewable (don't ask me how it works though), trying to remember to turn off the lights (not that hard given that my Dad used to scream coal-fuelled murder if we left them on as kids), and visiting an organic market (by and large a massive fail, the stuff that was for sale there was the same as is stocked in our local Woolies), I've been reading up on carbon footprints, green cleaning and other latte-lefty buzzwords de jour.

The somewhat manical attention paid to grocery shopping by my parents in the eighties has actually held me in good stead for the carbon bootprint part of the equation. "Buy Orstrayan Made" was originally an ocker-mantra designed to keep jobs onshore and away from those funny lookin' types north of us but following the principles these days (for both production and manufacture) is a fairly easy way of keeping eco-transport costs down. Of course, you could go a step further and only buy products grown within 100 miles of your home, but that would be kinda hardcore (cool idea though!). Truthbeknown, I'm loathe to purchase shelf products that have been grown in Australian climatic conditions when there's a better alternative elsewhere in the world. Hence, my beloved tins of Homebrand tomatoes (try them, they're awesome!) will still be coming to me on a ship from Italy (like almost all of the tinned tomatoes on your supermarket shelf) and I'll keep buying rice imported from SE Asia. We do plan to reinstate our veggie garden soon so that will cut down some of our fresh food transport to about twenty metres (and I'm quite proud to say that I've managed to resist the gorgeous hues of California-grown navel oranges in the fruit and veggie department... I'm an arsehole, but not so much of an arsehole that I require fruit to be whisked halfway around the world in cold storage for my tummy).

I'm in the process of converting our household products over to less residual cleaners. We were sucked into buying some Method sprays at the supermarket (ooo! a shiny thing!) but overall I've deemed them a craption (crap+option=craption) because (a) they don't work; and (b) they're imported from the UK or US, kinda negating the whole idea of being more green friendly. I picked up a bottle of Earth's Choice floor and surface cleaner after using their dish-washing liquid down at Tuross Heads a couple of weekends ago and lo and behold that shizz is the bomb! It actually works better than the Pine-O-Cleen I was liberally swishing around the place previously, and it's cheaper. Made in Australia and not tested on animals, it's win win (times four) even if you don't give a toss about amphibious life.

Which brings me to the third chardonnay socialist stickler, Fair Trade. It's something I've known about for a long time and agreed with wholeheartedly in principle, but I'm ashamed to say that yesterday was the first time I actually did something about it. On my second ever visit to Aldi I discovered a treasure chest of cheapish organic groceries, and in amongst the tea and coffee section I came across Fair Trade branded green tea and arabica. Being a David Jones food-hall bean whore, I must admit that I ummed and ahhed over the purchase before figuring that if it was godawful I could use the grounds as mulch around my golden cane palms. This morning I braved the espresso machine (not usually my job, TheBloke is designated caffienator in our house) and made myself a brew... and to my surprise, it's actually drinkable. (I've typed this entire entry in thirty seconds, BTW. Buzz buzz!)

With Easter two days away, the other major produce concern of Fair Trade, chocolate , is everywhere. Channel Nine, in conjunction with Tim Costello from World Vision, ran a piece titled "The Darker Side of Chocolate" as part of their Sunday program last weekend which investigated the practices of child trafficking and slavery in the cocoa industry. TheBloke and I don't eat much chocolate at the worse of times, but I'm going to have a closer look at the options available for the odd occasion when I bake cocoa-riffic treats as well as a less tainted replacement for our beloved 85% Lindt. 600 000 kids working on farms in the Cote d'Ivoire isn't something my newfound inner-tree-hugger is down with supporting.

So check out the Fair Trade website and give the chocolate eggs a run if you come across them this season of Jebusless. It's easier to take up uncertified products than it is to stop wearing deodorant and grow armpit dreads, and you'll be supporting better outcomes for the yoof of the world without any extra effort.