It is an unmistakable fact that since I've moved to Kanpa, I've made more creative meals than I have in decades.
Case in point: Tonight's Fetta and Baked Pumpkin Pizza (with Homemade Pizza Dough).
As Pip can attest, I don't really cook. And certainly not with any sense of creativity. Pizza is a good example. It generally doesn't come with a recipe (instead requiring the cook to exercise some quality of invention to personalise his or her pizza), and I certainly don't bother to create or knead dough under normal circumstances.
Perhaps it's the fact that I just can't go out for dinner. So if I want to avoid eating steamed vegies with a can of salmon (my old standby dinner) or make a one-pot stew strictly according to the recipe (and from a selection of favourites that I can count on one hand), I need to get more creative. I've got a bit more time on my hands too, with not seeing 2 movies a week, going out, or popping up to the local theatre.
So, when the moment comes in between reading, listening to podcasts or music, or doing another laborious load of washing on my twin tub washing machine, I am sometimes inspired to approach the kitchen like an enthusiastic novitiate. I've even taken to turning out meat and 3 veg dinners (which had always seemed too daunting - how on earth do you coordinate 4 items with disparate cooking requirements to come out at the same time?!).
Recent delights include Vegie Pack Soup (believe it or not but I've never used those soup packs, who on earth would have thought you could just chuck them all in at once), Lentil Soup Creation, and Spinach & Ricotta Filo Parcels. And even though I told Pip not to send anything I wouldn't know immediately what to do with, perhaps I will find a way after to use that tub of preserved lemons...
But a tub of preserved lemons is hardly the thing needed for the Yarnangu bush kitchen. Last week, my friend Tahana and I were lucky enough to be invited to a bush tucker feast unlike any I've seen (and this just a mere 200m from my door).
A knock on the door and the invitation to see 3 emus and 2 bush turkeys make their final hours in the world was extended. Bernard Newberry had been out hunting and, courtesy of the excellent rain in recent months, there was an abundance of things to shoot. Emus from Laverton had migrated up to the Lands and were hanging around waiting to have their necks broken, legs cut off below the knee, plucked, singed and then slung bum pointing up in a communal sacrificial pit.
A long pit, fit for the 3 emu bodies, was prepared. 
After it burnt down to coals, these were shovelled out and the birds thrown in. Bernard told me that in the 'olden days', they used to stuff the birds with eucalyptus leaves (in order to 'fatten' the birds and extend the meat further amongst all the waiting family members). The birds were also cooked in a type of oven created by hollowing out a cave in the side of pit, which cooked the birds slower. But today, they were being cooked like a marlu (kangaroo), by being placed at the bottom of the pit with coals and dirt heaped around them. The dirt helps to stop the outside of the bird from being charred. As Bernard said, 'it's not a burnt sacrifice'.
After it burnt down to coals, these were shovelled out and the birds thrown in. Bernard told me that in the 'olden days', they used to stuff the birds with eucalyptus leaves (in order to 'fatten' the birds and extend the meat further amongst all the waiting family members). The birds were also cooked in a type of oven created by hollowing out a cave in the side of pit, which cooked the birds slower. But today, they were being cooked like a marlu (kangaroo), by being placed at the bottom of the pit with coals and dirt heaped around them. The dirt helps to stop the outside of the bird from being charred. As Bernard said, 'it's not a burnt sacrifice'.While hunting with a gun is clearly a better way to down a bird, I wondered how emus used to be hunted. Bernard told me that they hunted them by luring the emu into a smaller space, then closing off the exit. Alternatively, witchetty grubs were hung in a circle from a tree, and when the emu approached, the hunter (who was perched in the tree) would spear the bird from above. The 'food in the tree' method was also what my colleague Robin Smythe said was used to hunt bush turkey, although the hunter was nearby with a boomerang ready instead of being in the tree itself.
Bush turkeys are normally thrown onto the top of a small fire, and cooked this way. That night, however, the turkeys were on their way back to be cooked in the oven. While Bernard thinks it spoils the turkeys a little, as they have more flavour when cooked on a fire, both Maria (Bernard's partner) and I agreed that it was a less gritty way to each a turkey.
The little kids are Maria's grandchildren and the nephew of one of the other residents here.
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