Food – m i a o w

Fine Dining

On Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Why oh why did I not take a picture of last nights dinner? I am drooling into my keyboard as I type…
The obvious reason is that it was way too yummy to even pause and get the camera. M’s mother lent us an indoor bbq thingo and we had seared prawns and mackerel with steamed vegetables in satay sauce. To die for. Our house guests excelled themselves yesterday (their first day) when they asked if there was anything they could do (poor naive creatures). M immediately and shamelessly suggested that if they wanted to pull down the ruin of the old shed out the back that they should feel free. Now we have no shed. It was kind of like one of those DIY show moments when I walked out the back and looked at where the shed was and instead saw a neat pile of wood and corrugated iron. They also discovered a nest of cane toads– ugh. They have been proliferating for the past two days – until then I’d only seen one in the last four months. In the past two nights I have seen about ten – they are very cocky and don’t move when you shine the torch on them. I have a horror of them and walk out to feed the cats by stamping my feet very hard on every step to make them hop away – and I can hear them scuffling off to hide. Yuck.

For those people who aren’t familiar with cane toads;

Cane Toads were introduced to Australia to eat French’s Cane Beetle and the Greyback Cane Beetle. The ‘whitegrub’ larvae of these beetles eat the roots of sugar cane and kill or stunt the plants. The Australian Bureau of Sugar Experimental Stations imported about 100 toads from Hawaii to the Meringa Experimental Station near Cairns. The toads bred quickly and more than 3000 were released in the sugar cane plantations of north Queensland in July 1935.

They are also highly toxic and we have already heard of people who have lost their pets who have licked one. The Queenslanders we know encourage you to stamp on them on sight, but I can’t. I need to employ a toad stamper as I’m scared some little ones might get into the cat home – the cats would love to play with anything that hopped.

It is v.windy today, which is casting a pall on my plan to have my first proper swim of the season – the others went for a dip last night, but I didn’t go. Bother.

Let’s Do Coffee

By beth

On Thursday, October 2, 2003

In Food

Coffee. I would say, without too much prejudice, that Melbourne is the coffee capital of Australia. I don’t even drink the stuff, but I do find myself buying M cappuccinos often enough to have an opinion. Up here, a cappuccino can be priced anywhere up to $3.90 – for some reason I only recall paying about $2.50 in Melbourne. Odd. We have discovered somewhere that sells $2 ones, but it’s a pub, with a limited ambience. Yesterday we took Dave and Ellise to the place of my date (which now feels startlingly long ago) – and in extreme contrast to the very pretty surroundings, the food and drinks were b-a-d. Bad to the point where the chocolate sauce on Dave’s chocolate and pecan pie turned out to actually be Worchestershire. *gag* The coffees were not good and my scone…well I’m not sure how you can go wrong with a scone, but I needed mega jam and cream to force it down. It wasn’t really a scone, it was kind of a practice-scone that you throw away and learn from. (And would that be scone as rhyming with ‘on’ or scone as rhyming with ‘cone’? Just to stir up the natives ;o)

Price differences between places are weird. Today’s weather is weird. It looks Melbournesque, though it’s still T-shirt weather, but it’s windy as a bastard, and they actually just put a storm warning out on the 6pm news for the South East Queensland area – here! Have brought the cats inside to visit for the first time – this weather will be a definite test of the strength of the cathome!

Had to say goodbye to the lovely Ellise this morning – she departed a few days earlier than previously planned so she can spend some time with her Year 12 students who are having pre-exam freakouts. It’s going to be strange here without the freckle – she cooked up a storm – it was so nice for me to have a girly-friend to hang with. M is obviously top-of-the-pile but there is just certain things about Secret Women’s Business that even he can’t replicate with a power tool.

Ladies Who Lunch

By beth

On Monday, October 13, 2003

In Food

Woe is me. I have just had the most delightful email from my friend C which tells of a recent outing had by The Ladies Who Lunch – a loose conglomeration of women for whom a long and largely alcoholic lunch is an annual occurence. And guess what. I’m in Queensland so I missed out. I am assaulted by wild depression, enhanced by constantly having to update and rework this BLOODY poster I’m doing for my boss, and alleviated by the arrival of my Masters In Writing certificate that just arrived by registered post. (Up here, registered post means that the little white car that delivers the mail will lean on it’s horn until you prevail on handyman/boyfriend to run out to the gate as you are still pyjama-clad.)

I digress. The Ladies Who Lunch bloody excelled themselves in my absence *sob* Their lunch went so well and for so long that it then morphed into dinner! I quote:

“Then somehow the sun was setting and it was time to go home – but NO came the cry (especially from the ladies with small children waiting for them), so more pints were ordered, mobile phones were busily engaged in explaining to the various men folk that we had turned into ladies who dinner. Menus where extracted from reluctant waiters who felt it wast time for the ladies to leave, but, as it was clear they were staying the waiters agreed that more food was a good idea.”

The ‘Lunch’ actually went for eight and a half hours, in which time (I must quote again):

“The tally stood at 1 glass of bubbly, 1 stubby, 1 pot, 1 bottle of sav blanc and 22 pints.”

Goddamnit! What am I doing up here?! Oh. Trying to make money on a house. That’s right. Now which would I rather have if I got hit by a bus tomorrow – a hangover from the longest, most gossipy lunch this year, or a house in Queensland that I have to wait until June 2004 to sell? Grrr.