Coal versus Hydro

In today's local paper there is a news story about a decommissioned hydro-electricity power plant at the south west town of Collie. The power station was decommissioned after it was flooded in 2000. The government gifted it to the National trust as a heritage site.

They never thought that would come back and bite them.

The Trust chief executive, Tom Perrigo is a go-getter and has asked the Heritage Minister for $4.8 million to get it running again to feed power into the grid. Collie is a big producer of coal; that nasty stuff we should stop using, but will continue to use at the Collie power station at a rate of 1 million tonnes a year. Griffin Coal, the Collie miner, is also building another two coal-fired power stations at Collie. Is this what is meant by carbon trading???

Over the weekend a man was taken by a white pointer shark. Only some scraps of his wetsuit have been found. His family don't want authorites to do away with the shark as the man was in the shark's environment. Fair enough, but what of other swimmers and divers. I am sure that sharks are no different to other fish, birds, insects and animals. They will return to a known source of food. I wont be going diving at Port Kennedy.

I have at last replicated the 1950/60s recipe for chilli Beef eaten by many hundreds of customers at Pals hamburger bar at Canning Bridge. Pals was an instituion and people travelled from all over the metro area to eat at their Canning Bridge site. Unfortunately when the Kwinana Freeway was extended, Pals had to close down. My friend Dennis pleaded with the owners to get their recipe, but unfortunately they decided to take it to the grave.

Here is my version:

Canning Bridge Chilli
Ingredients:
1kg casserole beef
1 large onion
1 teaspoon crushed garlic
3 tablespoons of oil or (authentically use beef dripping)
fresh chillies or chilli powder (you decide your own fire)
1 each teaspoon of cumin and oregano
tomato sauce
500ml beef stock

1kg of casserole steak diced; floured with salt/pepper seasoning.
Fry steak in oil until rich brown
add onions and garlic and saute
add 1 teaspoon of cumin and 1 teaspoon of oregano
cover with beef stock
add chillies or chilli powder to suit heat
simmer until meat is falling apart.
add a small amount of tomato sauce to taste