Salsa bastard, you are too far away

Earlier this year, we did a road trip to Griffith. That's about seven hours solid driving without breaks from the chair that I am sitting in right now, or two days if you have a noise making monkey in the back seat that wants to be fed and changed and played with at regular intervals.

Before I went to Griffith, the thought of going had always been filed away with "dumps I would prefer to avoid if possible", places like sewerage plants, nuclear waste facilities and Delta Goodrem concerts. An actual visit changed my mind.

The things that changed my mind were food, grog, the Yarts and a really good chutney.

As far as the Yarts go, there was an art gallery on the edge of town that we dropped in to - more for a leg stretch than anything else. The result of that visit was the purchase of the candle holder shown here. The reason I bought it is that the smiling fish on the bottom reminds me of my brother. He didn't smile that much when I sent him a photo of a pottery fish and said that it was a good likeness - particularly as the one above him is his wife, and I don't think he appreciates being at the bottom of the fish pecking order.

The wineries were good as well, particularly De Bortoli. I wanted to visit them to buy some more dessert wine, which I did. As they were packing my bottles into a box, they asked if I wanted any of their el-cheapo white plonk - basically a white for chicks to drink on the weekend which won't break the bank. I consider it cask wine in a bottle. I relented and allowed them to put a few bottles of some $6 chick piss in my case of lovely, aged dessert wines.

When we got home, a mate came over and a bottle of this cask-like el-cheapo chick swill was opened and I reluctantly allowed a glass to be poured for me. Before the girls could refill, my mate and I had polished off two bottles of the stuff. It turned out to be rather excellent (as far as cheap, drinkable white goes). It took only a few weeks for the rest of the case to go.

So I checked out the De Bortoli website in the hope of restocking with 6 cases or so, and found that not only could I not find this chick plonk on their wine listings, but you can't order over the web! Spewing! They must be the only winery in the country that doesn't do sales over the web. Useless wogs. One day, I might work out how to use the phone again and ring them up and place an order "off line". Until then, we are drinking 2002 Hunter Valley Chardonnay that came to light during the recent move. At 4 years old, it has mellowed to the colour of really old cats piss, but it tastes somewhat better. As it should, at about 5 times the price of the Griffith cask-in-a-bottle. Bloody wogs should learn to embrace the web. Yes, I know that most of it is in English rather than eye-tie, but that is no excuse for not developing an online shopping presence.

After sampling a few wineries, we got lost in the backblocks of the Murrumbidgee irrigation district. I need to put a compass or a GPS into the car. It's flat as fuck out there (hence the irrigation) but the roads are not laid out on a perfect grid. Instead, there is a kind of a grid, but not a proper grid. We turned left and right and left and left and got thoroughly confused as to which way we were pointing. That however put us right outside some kind of fruit and nut farm, which we popped in to visit.

The shop turned out to be the pantry off the kitchen, with bottles of stuff stacked up in a mayhem-ish fashion. It reminded me a lot of Rivendell - 10 different chutneys, jams made from all sorts of stuff, pickles etc. It was great. I bought a jar or two of some kind of chutney or salsa that contained a good dose of chilli. It was almost like a chilli jam. I think he called it a 5 fruit salsa, or something like that. Put it this way - whatever the hell it was, it was excellent with bacon and eggs. So excellent that it lasted about 3 weeks and then it was empty.

And the bastard stuff can only be bought out of a pantry on the outskirts of Griffith - 7 hours each way - and I doubt I could find it again as I'd probably get lost on the looney grid road system.

Bastards! Why are they conspiring to keep me and my tasty chutney separated? It's a pain that in this age of instant gratification, I can't just pop down to the local deli to get a jar. I actually need to wait. Wait until we do our next road trip down that way. I feel like an early settler waiting for mail, or a jar of marmite, to be shipped out from England on a sailing ship. It takes 3 months for your order to get there by ship (if the ship doesn't sink) and then 3 months to come back. No wonder people got so excited by the arrival of airmail.

It doesn't help me though, as I have no idea what the nutter's business was called, and I doubt he will consent to shipping one or two jars through the mail - not worth the candle. The kitchen isn't big enough to store an entire case either. Fuck. I'm stuck.