Bring out your dead 2012

This week is Bring Out Your Dead in this area and all manner of discards are put on the verge for council collection. My neighbours had a huge pile of stuff, but that is almost all gone, taken by the bower birds who drive through the district looking for goodies. I must confess to grabbing a very nice late model Canon printer from a pile of techo stuff a few doors from my place. I got it home and found that the ink carriage was jammed because someone had tried to remove a cartridge and the printer decided to return the carriage to its start position with the cartridge not properly seated and protruding causing the jam. A ten minute job and the printer is running like a Buick.
Yesterday Helen and James emptied out a fish pond and cleaned up the tangle of stringy algae and fungal growth. When the pond was empty we noticed some decidedly nasty looking bugs and they were removed from the pond. Only later did we realise that they were the nymph of the Dragonfly. Helen was a bit upset because the Dragonfly is one of her favourites. The Dragonfly breeding season is probably not yet over and we may yet see some homegrown Dragonflies. When I was young in the 1950s, Dragonflies were colloquially called Horse Stingers. Doubt if they do sting and if they did they would probably sting people rather than horses. PS: Google says that they don't sting but can bite.

Helen recently invited me over to dinner and she was trying to replicate a dish; one course served at her cousin Katherine's wedding in San Francisco. The dish was created by the chef Alan Wong.

I am not sure of the name of the dish but it was lovely.

It is chilled tomato soup with a Parmesan chip and toasted Kalua Pork sandwich. Delicious!