Judith Lacy’s Jottings: This Neighbours Month you could marinate some meat for them over the street

You be the judge - my beef salad and Barista's. Even my pears are not chopped the same. Photos / Judith Lacy

OPINION:

We’ve all seen the recipes. Chill for at least four hours, ideally overnight. Marinate for eight hours.

These recipes call not just for the usual organisational skills of having the right ingredients and setting aside time to make the said recipe, but allowing the time for resting, setting, freezing, or marinating.

I’ve never been a big marinator, not just for the time required but because it usually involves chopping meat.

Confession time - I wear gloves when I have to chop meat and then scrub and scrub the chopping board. I like my meat to come ready to cook.

But in the interests of fulfilling my promise to write another column on the A Taste of Palmy recipe book and wanting to attempt Barista’s beef salad, I donned my gloves and found my big knife.

The dish is marinated beef with greens tossed through with blue cheese, walnuts and pear, and finished with a honey dressing.

Overnight marinating is recommended but I ended up leaving mine 24 hours - definitely not recommended.

But that was only the start of the over-marinating. I took scant notice of the advice to be careful with the hot oil and ended up with splashes not just on the elements, but the stove knobs and the kitchen wall. These marinated as did this column that was to run on February 2. The leftover marinade and the dressing I forgot to put in the fridge became scientific experiments.

My body started marinating in the most painful way and it was hello, extended sick leave. Definitely no visits to Barista.

My normal face colour is tomato. When I exercise, it turns beetroot. But when I’m sick, an apple cucumber invades my pigmentation.

This time there were new lows to add to the canon of Judith being sick. When I needed to check the name of a medication, I raised my wallet to my eyes instead of my glasses. When I limped towards the doctor’s surgery slower than a tortoise needing a hip replacement, an elderly man with a bend in his back leapt up to open the door for me.

When the combination of the pain and no diagnosis become too much for me I burst into tears and hugged a woman I barely know.

My friend A is a master of looking after sick people. Without her, I would have been in the soup without a spoon, a marinade without the vinegar.

Other friends were great too - ringing, visiting and sending cat and dog photos. One delivered a book written by her wife, who signed it with a personal message. Colleagues messaged to say they missed me. I missed myself.

This March, Neighbours Aotearoa is encouraging us to do something to get to know our neighbours a bit better.

I’m the first to raise the flag on my mailbox to admit I’m not good at this. I can make excuses - I don’t have children, I’m not home much, there is a lot of churn on my end of the street.

From my lounge window I can see five houses. Just one resident has been in the street longer than me. The house I see from my kitchen window has had eight families in the eight years I have lived there.

But, just because something is hard doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try. I would love to hear how you have got to know your neighbours.

Perhaps I will win Lotto and shout my neighbours to beef salad at Barista. It won’t be as tough as mine was.