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Archive Category: Food
- Four hours on the river
- Three mofo bream
- One colander of prawns
- Three dinners in one
- Two FAT people
Fine Dining
Wednesday, 24 September 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;
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
Thursday, 2 October 2003
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
Monday, 13 October 2003
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:
The ‘Lunch’ actually went for eight and a half hours, in which time (I must quote again):
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.
Spam, PJs & Chef
Wednesday, 15 October 2003
Just because I have an acre and a half, why do junk mailers assume I’m a farmer?
On a better note, M’s mum got me new jammies!
Cup Runneth
Wednesday, 5 November 2003
A lovely day was had yesterday - though I didn’t win a cent. I got my sister to put two little bets on a couple of horses that one of her housing clients had tipped. They didn’t feature. Strangely enough, it was the first v.beautiful day that I’ve seen since hitting Melbourne.
Had a lovely lunch at the G.R’s place - which looks more pretty every time I visit (new enormo fridge and new enormo couch) - the lunch was sublime, interupted only by Beanbag the dog, who found himself somewhat constipated and ran around the table squealing and then did what can only be called an ‘ejector poo’ which thankfully everyone managed to duck.
Speaking of the ejector poo, I awoke to the sound of Rachael repeating ‘oh my god, oh my god’ - apparently the baby had managed to coat his entire body in scary liquid baby-poo; there are times when, as a house guest, you know that it is best to stay in your room.
Passionfruit Butter
Wednesday, 10 December 2003
My sister was evil enough to leave half a jar of the stuff (think ‘lemon butter’ and you’ll understand what I’m on about) in my refrigerator (that word looks violently misspelled, but I just checked, and it’s not). I am a slave to it. I put it on toast in the morning and it’s like eating cheesecake. I put it on a biscuit just a moment ago and almost drowned in my own drool. Maybe it will make up for the demise of ‘during the day tea-drinking’ (it makes me sweat).
Oh. Another thing. The DIY Blog that I contribute to has been nominated in the Best Group Blog category for the 2003 Weblog Awards…so if you feel like voting *raises eyebrows suggestively*…
A Burger of Beeve
Wednesday, 17 December 2003
Must make grovelling apologies to M’s mother, who I cried laughing at today when she used the word ‘beeve’ in conversation. Admittedly she did at first use it in reference to bees, but then corrected herself and went on about beef. I was weeping. But she was right. D’oh.
Dictionary.com - 1 entry found for beeve.
\Beeve\, n. [Formed from beeves, pl. of beef.] A beef; a beef creature.
–W. Irving.
Red Whine
Wednesday, 31 December 2003
Attended the 9:40am screening of LOTR III yesterday morning - turned up with whining six-year-old…sorry, boyfriend, and seconds to spare. We had front row seats. Now I don’t really care about where I sit in the cinema. The more brilliant the movie, the less I care about my position, because I just want to see it!! M, on the other hand, was begging to be slapped, talking about how he was going to leave and get a coffee while I saw the movie etc. etc. No wonder I was a good babysitter all those years ago. I just half-smiled in an enigmatic fashion and thought of Aragorn. I find it works wonders. So the movie was great - can’t wait for the day when somewhere like the Westgarth or the Astor (these are Melbourne references…I suppose my Sydney reference would be the Valhalla?) screen the trilogy in a single sitting, pausing only for the occasional choc-top. Bliss..
On the topic of the impending vision of NYE, I have to confess…I thoroughly despise NYE and have found it a consistent bloody let down. So tonight, we have left it too late to go and party for $60 a head on Fraser Island, we don’t want to hang with the neighbours, or crash M’s mothers National Seniors Party (I’m not joking - she’s having at least 15 of them over to her house to party around the pool)…no. I have gone out, bought a dozen New Zealand oysters, each almost larger than my head, prawns, vodka, midori, pineapple and cranberry juice, plus the best olives in the world (that for reasons unknown do not have a website dedicated to them, though I am going to try and rectify this by setting up a fan site) and I am going to wear many different dresses, whilst M works the blender, designing different mutations of Illusions as we count down the hours….
PARTEEEEEE.
And…(this addressed to my bro in London when he gets back to work and starts dropping into [miaow] ) - don’t even think of telling me that I’m a lame old loser with no life, because when you have the choice of Hervey Bay or your own private exclusive party….I think I’ve made a wise choice, so you can just shut it.
Lunchtime
Tuesday, 13 January 2004
B: I have a terrible craving for steak
M: (muses) Mmm, we don’t eat much protein…what about some sausages for lunch?
B: (gags) I think they have more dog than protein.
M: Chops?
B: (baaing) Leeee-sah, I thought you laaahved me….
M: Well, you did eat eggs last night - they have protein.
B: But I read that you need to eat stuff that either swims, runs or flies…(ponders) a recently submerged flying kanagroo would seem to be the best option.
M: (humours her with some lacklustre laughter)
B: OK then. How about some beer.
M: …and bread?
B: Done.
Olive Dip
Thursday, 22 January 2004
Last night after work (stoked up on a couple of G&T’s with Pegs DeLeur and having realised that my pay had come through - you’ll be happy about that Mr Honeybone as I can shout you lunch today) I went to the supermarket on the way back to Casa del B-star [cool dwelling terminology borrowed from missjenjen) and was stunned.
I had forgotten a few things;
1) what it is like to shop surrounded by a plethora of ‘cool’ people
2) what it is like to shop in a supermarket that has Variety
I swear, I walked into the Coles in Balaclava and there were film extras waiting in the register queues. Groovy looking girls with their rumpled inner-city boyfriends, girls with their girlfriends, boys with their boyfriends, old Jewish men and snappy looking kids. Where have I been living!!? Hervey Bay. Where soy sauce is a strange, foreign, hippy kind of condiment and there is no olive dip. Where people boggle at you when, having finally located some tofu hiding at the back of the cheese section, you actually go ahead and buy it.
Last time I was in Melbourne Ellise introduced me to the wonder that is olive dip. Since then I have searched in every supermarket in Hervey Bay and have been forced to exit empty handed. So I’m wandering along the cool refridgerated section of Coles last night, dodging and weaving among all these strangely interesting sort of people (I’m sure they’re only interesting because I haven’t been here for a while) and I am almost smacked in the eyeball by olive dip. Lite Olive Dip. Creamed Olive Dip. Olive Dip. Couldn’t believe it. Then there was the chunky basil and pinenut dip, alongside their olive and sundried tomato equivalent. I was in heaven. I didn’t buy any, but that’s not the point. It was there. If I had wanted to spend $4.00 on olive dip - I could have. Instead I took a punt and bought a $5.00 tub of mushroom, leek and pinenut risotto. I was quite prepared for it to be vile, but the possibility of finding readymade risotto that might fulfil me was too exciting to pass up. It rocked my world. Guess what I’m going to be having for dinner for the next two weeks?
Chicken Parma
Tuesday, 3 February 2004
Despite sharing a house for several years with Christine, purveyor of all things parma - I personally have never consumed/nibbled someone elses/ordered at the pub a Chicken Parmagiana - I even just had to look up how to spell it! So anyway, I just got emailed SEARCH FOR A SUPER PARMA 2002-03 - a seminal and must-have piece of literature for parma-inclined people in Victoria, Australia. The publication is an exhaustive investigation of ‘the best Chicken Parmagiana that Southern Australia can produce’ conducted and judged by authorities both ‘highly critical and carrying university educations in Parmology’.
So where can you get it? It comes in PDF format (which means, nuffies, you’ll need Acrobat Reader, which you can download here if you can be bothered).
Download SEARCH FOR A SUPER PARMA 2002-03.
Oh - and I would also assume this would be a great guide for where to take your relatives when they drop in unexpectedly from the UK…
[David - ‘my sister called, she’s arriving on Friday…help.’]
On further examination I’m finding it quite bizarre that the place where I had my 21st Birthday is highest on the ratings list. Did I miss something?
Divine Dinners
Thursday, 25 March 2004
After very nearly reaching the end of my tether in Melbourne I finally made it home on Wednesday afternoon. The last day in the office for a month or two is always fairly fraught, and Tuesday was true to form. I had to check out the Super-8 video clip (that doesn’t sound right) for Cheese over at Dylans and agree on a final cut. Dylan was very nice and drove me to my mum’s where I aimed to clear out my gear and get to my sisters place where I was staying the night. But I was greeted by the familiar sight of my mother, sniffling dramatically from the cold ‘I gave her’ and wringing her hands over her unresponsive printer. *sigh* After 30 minutes spent in a frenzy of reinstalling the printer drivers and packing I was seriously frazzled and headed to Williamstown.
Oh wondrous family. I’d missed dinner - but for once it was to my definite advantage. My dad (glory glory) had bought oysters and there were eight EIGHT left for me. So I ate them. Lasciviously. And it got better. My sister had made a kind of berry/plum compote crumble kind of thing that almost made me weep. It was made from blackberries, plums and pears from my dad’s country hideaway. So I ate it. And licked the bowl.
Then in the dark hours of the morning (daylight saving ends next week and Queensland is again in sync with Victoria…yay) me, my dad and the huntsman in his Cressida drove to the airport, where I had a final Chai Latte before boarding. Oh how I hate to fly. Then I enetered the now well worn trail of Brisbane Airport, Brisbane AirTrain, Roma Street Station and the Tilt Train… From Melbourne to Brisbane I worked on raising my literary credibility and read (for the first time) Catcher in the Rye which I had thought would be much longer than it was. Thank god the train showed Finding Nemo to drown out the last 90 minutes of my seemingly endless journey. It’s so nice to be home. Pesto for dinner, cats are happy, back in my own bed and M has done wonderful things to the kitchen. Bliss.
My Sunflowers
Mow - Relaxed about my Return
Saf - Limp with Relief
Salad
Thursday, 8 April 2004
Ok. So there is nothing more likely to push M into making up with me than the introduction of one or more people - even if that person is his mother. Once he gets a bufferzone in between me and himself, he melts like butter in the sun. That said, I still watched with evil delight as his salad theory fell down around his tweaky little ears. To explain this I must step back to slightly more than a week ago when I was wondering what I would cook when my mum and nan stayed for a week. I laboured long an hard over a list of things I thought we could have - and as I tend to flee from the pressures of cooking for others I asked M for input. I could see him mentally leafing through the few pages of my very limited repertoire;
“Potato salad? You make great potato salad.”
I waited, but his statement had an air of finality.
“I can’t feed my mum and my nan a meal of just potato salad,” I explained gently. “They come from a land where meals have more than one facet.”
M was stubborn.
“Potato salad is a meal.”
“No, it’s a salad. That’s why it’s not called Potato Meal.”
“Potato salad is a meal. I would eat it as a meal.”
“Fine. But I am not going to feed my mother, or my octogenarian Nana potato salad as a meal.”
“Fine,” said M, knowing he was momentarily beaten and opting for a different tack. “How come you’re cooking anyway? How come you never cook and you’re cooking now? Don’t you like my cooking?”
…anyway, last night he got to try his ’salad is a meal’ theory. He does it all the time on the both of us - he makes a killer tuna-parmesan-lettuce-tomato-basil salad with rye bread croutons fried in garlic and butter - and it is definitely, for us, a meal. However, he presented his mother with it last night. His octogenarian mother. And she picked at it. Managed about 20% of it. And then gave up. I am hoping, slowly but surely, that M is learning that what is good for him and I is not necessarily going to be embraced by people who have eaten meat and three veg for longer than he’s been alive.
De-Pouted
Monday, 3 May 2004
Upon driving into town this morning to help out at M’s sisters business (the sum total of which was drinking a cup of tea on the deck over looking the beach for a couple of hours and then leaving when it looked like being a slow day) my mobile phone got reception and five birthday messages popped through!! I am such a sucker that I felt like someone had declared today my birthday as well. I decided to run with this idea, as it was the most incredible weather and a public holiday up here in Queensland, which meant that everyone was out mowing their lawns/walking on the beach/kicking back on their verandahs. Lovely. We went for a wee drive, and then…
[brief explanatory tangent]
_________________________________________
While I was away I would occasionally call home, where M was hanging out with my Dad. I also had a message service that I could call and get voicemails that had been left for me. All the conversations that I had, and all the voicemails that I recieved, were less concerned with pining for me and more concerned about the revelatory nature of catching mudcrabs and drinking copious amounts of beer. I must explain further. There are mangroves at the bottom of our street. M has wanted, for ages, to put some crab pots down there to see if we could score ourselves some free seafood. Obviously he needed something more than my glazed expression whenever he brought up this idea. Two things happened in my absence:
1) someone gave him two, very well made, crab pots
2) my father came to stay
Apparently at one point, when there were two low tides per day, M and my Dad would tramp down through the mangroves and mud twice a day, to check the pots. They consumed so much mudcrab, that by the end of the week, they actually didn’t want to eat mudcrab anymore. Yesterday (on my birthday) I too battled through ankle deep mud to see if M had caught me a Birthday Mudcrab. We had caught a few HUGE mudcrabs, but they were female. You don’t eat female ones *sigh* so we let them go….
_________________________________________
…we went back down to the mangroves to check the crab pots. On the way we met a guy whose house looks out over where the pots are and introduced ourselves in an effort to let him know that we weren’t disposing of a dead body or anything else dodgy. He said that from now on we could go down his driveway to access the mangroves, to look out for snakes as they’d caught a taipan that morning, and lent us an oyster knife. The last point is the most important one. We found that we’d caught more female crabs and waved them a fond goodbye (they waved back, claws ahoy, as they backed away). Upon moving one of the pots to what seemed to be a more likely spot, I saw rocks encrusted with oysters. Oysters. Oysters feature in my Top Five Foods list. And there they were, free, fresh and calling my name. I opened and ate oysters with such unfettered joy that it took stabbing my thumb to distract me long enough for M to steer me back towards home. But not without grabbing two rocks that had at least a dozen oysters each clinging to them. We spent a lovely hour or two in the garden drinking gin (will it ever run out?) and hacking oysters from our rocks.
Hot Chocolate
Tuesday, 4 May 2004
No. Not that cheesy seventies band that make me want to operate on my own ears whenever I hear that hit tune (I’d mention the name, but I’ve programmed myself to forget it). This hot chocolate changed the meaning of hot chocolate for me when I had it (…wait for it) last week in Spain. (How long will I be able to keep saying that? Ooooh. About one more day. *sigh*). Check it out. My spoon stood up by itself, supported by the power of the chocolate.
Obviously from now on whenever I order a boring old Hervey Bay hot choc, or even an inner city Melbourne one, I am doomed to disappointment. I have to get a new hot drink habit. Fast.
(And just as another bracketed aside - like I don’t have enough - when I put the < center > tag above the picture I initially mistakenly typed < canter > - think of the possibilities!)
Got Him!
Wednesday, 5 May 2004
There was a crab in my crab pot today. He just became dinner. He was very close to being bigger than my head.
(Please note that the silver bowl is a salad bowl, not an ordinary sized one.)
And here’s where I’d ripped it’s leg off….
Tea & Cake
Thursday, 6 May 2004
When one goes away for a short while, one expects to find a few things changed, broken, painted, shiny…whatever. While I was gone either M or my Dad bought the wrong tea (probably while I was I was in London musing over the phrase ‘the wrong trousers’ while perusing some Wensleydale Blue). As I am a product of my parents (specifically, my father) I find myself unable to throw them in the bin where they belong, so M and I have taken to drinking ‘two baggers’. This appears to be the only way to get a transition from tasteless brown water, to something resembling tea. Leatherwood honey also helps.
[Tangent: Back when my mate Johnno was still a proud bogan and I, on occasion, had the title ‘Honourary Bloke’, we would assess the shaggability of girls by Bags. Not handbags. Paper bags. No bags were the best, three bags were the worst. As in;
One Bag: on her head
Two Bags: one for her head and one for your head
Three Bags: one for her head, one for your head, and one for the light by the bed
To be used in conversation thus:
Johnno, shaking his head sadly; ‘Mate, I’d buy her a drink, but she’s a real two-bagger.’
(What can I say - this is the guy who told me the real meaning behind the morning after phrase ‘I tried to chew off my own arm’.) –/end of tangent] - and don’t even think about getting politically correct on me *yawn*
Anyway…we’re now getting through the scary teabags in double time (literally), which brings me to the Cake. M got me a birthday cake. There’s a first time for everything, though I have to admit to having given up on this particular wish. So I was winsomely surprised! Lovely chocolate mudcake with my name written on it - he’s whizzing along on such an excess of cake-related points that you can hardly see him when he passes. Problem is (and I may have mentioned this before), M doesn’t eat left overs. Usually this suits me fine - all the more for my oinky self. However, we have eaten the bottom fifth of the cake and he has now deemed it ‘too old’ for consumption. Personally I am finding that it’s improving with age, but that’s not the point. This is the point: - how am I going to get through all this cake!? For so long (make that six years) I have wished him to get me a birthday cake, so now I’ve got one I can’t let it go uneaten. Unless I declare the next three days a cake-only zone. Yes. But how long does mudcake last? My life gets more complicated by the hour.
Bastard
Friday, 7 May 2004
A fucking cockroach ate my cake. So now I don’t need to try and figure out how to eat what’s left. Bastard. It was the size of a small dog. And M put it in the bin with the rest of my cake which pissed me off completely, as the cockroach has now gone from just having it’s way with my cake to it’s own version of heaven. Pah. (And if there are any parents/relatives of mine reading this, just edit out that second word at the start of my rant. I needed to use it.)
Fatly Fatly
Monday, 10 May 2004
One good thing (of the mounting number of things) about leaving Hervey Bay will be escaping the scary food. I have whined about the expensive coffee (though I don’t drink it and have a new song that details this), and now it is time to whine on other topics. Nachos, for starters. Order nachos without the ‘extras’ in Hervey Bay and Maryborough and you get cornchips with salsa. You have to pay two bucks more for the guacamole, and another dollar if you want sour cream. Huh. Yesterday we went to a cafe that had about twelve different types of coffee. I ordered English Breakfast Tea. They brought me the same kind of teabag that I’m trying to get through at home. Bushells Blue Label. I should have asked for a two bagger.
M has long been known to worship at the altar of use-by dates. If the milk is even near its use-by date he won’t touch it. So going to dinner at M’s mothers place is always interesting, as she has minimal smell and taste left, but a will to cook for us that knows no bounds. When we first moved up here M would eat nothing that came from her fridge - he has now mellowed slightly and can cope with cooked dinners. However, over the weekend we were there for dinner for two nights running. The first night was crumbed chicken - largely flaccid and unidentifiable, and the second night *shudder* was crumbed pork patties with ham and cheese worked in. I don’t think I could have lived through the 1950s on this kind of diet. It rendered me insensible for about 15 hours.
Thank god for mudcrabs - one last night and M caught another one just after dawn this morning. Off I go to strip three million year old putty from the windows of my study. Much better than trying to come up with a ’structure’ for the ‘report’ of the ‘conference’ in Spain.
Improvisation
Tuesday, 18 May 2004
The lovely Ellise (who came and stayed with us for two weeks when we had no shower, no inside tap, no mudcrabs and a bucket flushing toilet) is the best person I know at making up awesome food from all the weird crap you have in your cupboard. When she came and stayed she cooked things that had never even crossed my mind. I am very bad at kitchen improvisation. But last night, in post-mudcrab desperation, the tide turned. I invented some banana muffins!! I had to invent them as none of my ingredients matched those in the recipes I frantically googled. For anyone that wants to copy my exciting, revelatory, recipe, here it is:
Miaow! Banana, Passionfruit and Museli Muffins
1/2 cup of untoasted muesli (Lowans Apricot & Almond does it for me)
2 cups of wholemeal s/r flour (that’s what it said in another recipe I read)
1/2 cup of raw brown sugar
1 tbspn of Ellises old bag of nutmeg
3 mashed ripe bananas
3/4 cup (or whatever you have left) of the natural yogurt that M wanted to throw out a week ago but didn’t actually expire until tomorrow - the value of hiding things in the back of the fridge can never be underestimated
Pulp of 3 passionfruit
A handful of sultanas (I can’t believe I had these in the cupboard - they were supposed to be porridge enhancers)
Mix up all the dry stuff. Chuck all the undry stuff on top. Mix it all together. It begins not to look scary after a short while. Use it all to fill the six holes of your muffin tin (the one I forgot to tell you to grease), and then stick it in the oven (the one I forgot to tell you to preheat at about 180 degrees celcius). It should take about half an hour or a little bit more. Yum. Well, the top halves of mine were yum, the bottom halves were black and inedible as I’d put the tray on the lowest shelf of the toaster oven - the one that is about two centimetres away from the heatsource. Put yours in the middle or top of your toaster oven. Voila.
All The Little Fishies
Tuesday, 18 May 2004
Why have all my posts been about food? I am starting to worry. But only briefly. The last few nights I have been down to the end of the street with M to get water for cooking our crab in. Cooking them in seawater is the biz - so that’s what we do. I was totally gobsmacked, standing in the shallows in my gumboots, to see, two nights running, so many fish that it was kind of cartoon like. About 20 metres out the water was alive, and every few seconds I could hear a splash, or a plop - and every few minutes you could see big fish fly out of the water and dive back in. It’s quite extraordinary. So last night we took my fishing rod and baited it with…well, the only thing we had. Stale rye bread. It wouldn’t have worked for me, and it didn’t work for the fish. But tonight, with proper bait, M caught two bream, in the blink of an eye! He could have kept pulling them in, but we already have a mofo crab waiting. Tomorrow night - I’m down there! It’s all going to happen for me!! And then my friend Christine will no longer be Queen of the Fish - the honour will be all miiiiiineeee. Miiiiiiinnnnnneeee.
Sleeping Over
Wednesday, 9 June 2004
Don’t know what it is, but I like staying over at friends houses. Expecially after they feed me burritos and pretend to think my photos are tres exciting. Baby Luka is bigger, a little more feisty and has two tiny razor sharp teeth that he tested out on my finger this morning while I helped to feed him his breakfast. My visit helped to clean a bit of Hampton from my soul - so I can vault back there tonight and like it.
Yesterday I played astronomer, went up on to the roof of the university and saw the Transit of Venus through a telescope with a special filter on it. It’s the first one since 1882 - which I unintentionally missed out on. By a century or so. I had no idea what to expect and examined it perplexedly. It was like looking at a huge smudgy dense yellow oil pastel background with a tiny perfect black sphere in front of it. Kind of like someone had dotted a small perfect circle on the telescope lense. When I had another look I realised what was going on, and I have to admit the obvious. The sun is Big. Venus is Small. Yike. How did Captain Cook figure it all out!?
The Office of Film & Literature Classification have revised their rating of the latest Harry Potter film to PG. Thousands of Australian children who have parents like I did will be heaving heartfelt sighs of relief. Those parents who pay close attention to film ratings and act as if they are written in the blood of all first born children…
“I don’t care how good the book is - the film is not to be seen by people under 15, and that’s YOU.”
I had to sneak to the cinema when I was fourteen to see Tom Cruise swooning over Kelly McGillis in Top Gun. It was the highlight of my year. I wasn’t allowed to see Grease when it came out at the cinema either. Or watch The Young Ones. Gripe, gripe, angst, angst.
Slow Learner
Friday, 2 July 2004
It’s the third time in about a month that I have moved from beer to red wine (and last night, back to beer). Maybe I’m not learning because I’m destroying the specific brain cells that deal with retaining important information? Whatever the case, I lay away last night cursing the full moon, the incessant roosters and the noise of a hovering UFO. Finally could not cope with not knowing whether we were all going to be beamed up at any moment and poked M.
“Wake up, wake up.”
“Huh? Wassamattah?”
“Can you hear the UFO noise?”
“Huh?What?”
“That low constant humming UFO noise. Can you hear it?”
M grunts. “It’s the fridge.”
I protest. “No, no. It’s coming from outside the house. It’s everywhere. It’s All Around Us. Can you hear it?”
M is beaten. He gets out of bed. He puts on pants (which instantly reminds me that we have house guests and they may be beamed up also - something that their respective wives and mother would have trouble forgiving). I hear him pad out toward the fridge and turn it off at the wall. The UFO noise persists. Now he’s interested. I hear him go out the back door and for a while everything is quiet, apart from the UFO.
Great. M is going to get anally probed by aliens and they’re going to send back a clone in his place. I hope that it can cook as well as he can. I hear the back door close. M comes back to bed. At least, I think it’s M - he’s colder than when he got up - but that’s to be expected. He’s not tinted green.
“What happened?” I squeak.
“I wish you hadn’t told me about it. I couldn’t hear it ’til you told me about it. And now, in the immortal words of Ms. Kylie Minogue, I just can’t get it out of my head.” [OK, so he didn’t really make that pop-culture reference - but he did unintentionally say the song title. I have poetic license.]
I sigh. “Well is there a big fat silver disc hovering over our house, or did you find something else that’s making the noise?”
M is drowsy. “I don’t think it’s a UFO - I think it’s a trawler or something.”
A rooster does it’s thing. It’s about 2am. My head hurts.
Max Brenner. I’m Waiting?
Monday, 26 July 2004
OK, so I’m a sucker for the new QVB Building. I think it’s sexy. Today I hooked up with M for lunch (a big novelty for me!) and we hit the sushi bar in the food court. Wandered the shops. Bought some presents for people. And then decided to top off the hour with a hot chocolate from Max Brenner - there are some photos of it here, if you can be bothered. I have been there once before - the hot chocolate was OK, but it didn’t blow my brain like the one I had in Spain did. So M ordered his special hot chocolate in his ‘hug mug’ and I went for the strawberry fondue (there was no way I was going to pass up this opportunity). So M got his hot chocolate, drank it, liked it, and we waited. Where was my fondue? The fondue that was going to make of break my day? The strawberrry of chocolate goodness? It was bloody nowhere. We never got it. And by then my lunch break was over, so I got my money back and slumped my way out of Max Bloody Brenner. Fondue-less. Gah. Teach your children - don’t take chocolate from a bald man.
Stealing Samosas
Friday, 30 July 2004
Last night we went out to Aussie Indian Trendy Cuisine. With a name like that, the night couldn’t fail. After an afternoon at work that threatened my sanity, leaving my camera and various necessities in the office when I left and then having my phone run out of juice, I was ready to kick in the head of anything that got between me and my dinner. We all ordered an entree and a main. The entrees came out fairly quickly and everyone seemed to tuck in, chatting about the day and asking Mung about his last two days at Baby Sleep School (it’s true!). In the pause between courses, Mung and Ellise seemed to be looking for something. I realised that neither of them had got their entree.
I looked at Mung. “Did you get your entree?”
Mung looked resignedly to the person on his right. “I think M ate it.”
“What? What did you order?”
“A samosa.”
I turned to Ellise. “What did you order?”
“A samosa.”
Finally I fastened my gaze on M. Evil M. Can’t-take-anywhere M. “What did you order?”
M had the gall to not even blink. “Samosas.”
M’s faux pas began to dawn on us all. “How many?”
M burped fatly. “Three.”
There was a chorus of disapproval. Mung was still resigned, but Ellise wanted blood - and her samosa.
“You ate THREE? You ate Mungs, and Ellises - you had a bit of mine as well, and some of Daves!”
M had the grace to try to look humble while Ellise hunted for the waiter, who looked at M with a mixture of admiration and disgust.
“I began to feel a bit full by the time I got to the third one,” explained M, “but they were so nice. I thought they were All For Me.”
Dave looked at M and shook his head. “Are you embarrassed to be out with him?” he asked me.
I eyerolled. “I can’t even begin to tell you. You haven’t even heard about the wee in the bottle story or the mu-mu shoes.”
The Car That Ate…
Friday, 6 August 2004
Our Day! Today was smeared into nothingness by my car traumas… Oh, but first, apologies to people who thought I was coming back to Melbourne, because of the little quote at the top of the page. I have to explain, shamefully, that when I fail to update the quote, you basically get what I wrote there on this day…last year. So this time last year was my first trip to Melbourne since arriving in Queensland. To trot out an overused statement; time has flown.
TANGENT: I was just in the kitchen listening to the radio and heard George Bush rip out yet another faux pas. How can someone so dumb be in charge of so much?
Oh. So I had to get my car into town at 8am this morning. Once we’d dropped it off we went to get a muffin and a juice to try and recover from the terrible nights sleep I’d given to both of us. (I tossed and turned all night having terrible recurring dreams that M and I were driving around a picturesque seaside town and I had to get to the dentist by 5pm. The clock kept jumping forward, and we kept making wrong turns. I called the dentist to apologise for my lateness but could only get his message service which told me that they had enough lobsters, thanks anyway. Horrible.) After that we hit the op-shop and scored some mo-fo seventies headphones which will be very good for recording. We also went to the supermarket and the tip shop. By the time we got home it was time for lunch and the auto electrician called with the Bad News. They needed to send my armature to Brisbane to get rewound. The regulator was cactus, and they hadn’t checked the brushes in the generator - but they might be buggered as well. All up? About $400.
Gah. I did what I usually do when I’m having a car spasm. I called my dad, who asked, derisively, how they could tell the armature was broken if they hadn’t actually taken the generator off and looked in it? Anyway, the result was that we then had to drive back into town and deal with it. I told the Auto Elec that I was taking my car away and looking for second hand parts. Then I went next door to the panel placed and the very nice man told me that to fix my poor door and front panel would cost less than the electric work! So that was good and I left my car with him (as driving around without a generator is not something you can do indefinitely). So now I’m on the lookout for a regulator and a generator. My dad just messaged me and said he’s found a couple of generators and will get them tested. I think I’m going to play mechanic on this one. I have the manual. I have the means. [cue some stirring music]
Right. Now I’m off to make something out of the wonderful Bowl Food book. Chicken with Thai basil Thai corriander, chili and cashews toasted pinenuts. The day I have every indgredient for a recipe will be…well, I don’t know what it will be, because I doubt it will ever happen. Gah.
Restaurant of Choice
Tuesday, 16 November 2004
The thing that interested me in the most recent Weekend Australian magazine was not the ‘new face of Australian fashion modelling’ or ‘the woman who smiled…and then she exploded‘, or the ‘Twelve Well Dressed Men’. [Yawn.] No, it was the ‘Taste’ section that was devoted to risotto, and the exciting news that a restauarant entirely devoted to the same - a risotteria - will be opening at Southbank in Melbourne. Drool. Drool. Drool.
Tutto Bene (”it’s all good”) will be tucked into Melbourne’s riverside Southgate precinct, will serve every risotto imaginable, from black truffle and parmigiano to peach, raspberry and mascarpone.
What a Mug!
Tuesday, 21 December 2004
Via The Null Device via bOING bOING - one of those inventions that makes you want to bang your head against the wall for not coming up with it yourself. The Dunk Mug.
A coffee/tea mug with a built in biscuit shelf. Blindingly brilliant.
190 Years Old & Kicking
Wednesday, 5 January 2005
Today M’s mother took me out to lunch along with her friend Nita who lives next door to her. Together our combined ages must have been about 190 years old. As I am housebound due to absent M and an unregistered Humber, M’s mother came and got me, and took us down to her fave cafe on the esplanade. We had a great time. It turns out that although she was born in Maryborough Queensland, Nita used to live in Yarraville right near where we lived for five long years. (Tangent: Have I mentioned that the lady who lives next door to us went to M’s primary school in the salubrious suburb of St Marys in Sydney? That’s weird.)
So they dropped me home and Nita came in for the tour. M’s mother is so nice - she is so proud of what we’ve done to the house - she’s one of the few people who saw it when we bought it and it looked like a squat. Nita loved it and said she’d try to think of people who might be interested. Fingers crossed. It’s too hot here for me.
Destined to be thwarted
Thursday, 27 January 2005
When we got home yesterday, I put the kettle on to make tea.
B: You didn’t eat that whole packet of chocolate biscuits last night. Did you?
M: No, no. Of course not. I just put the ones that were left in a bag in the fridge.
B: Thank god.
[I promptly forget my chocolate biscuit craving - now I know they’re safe - and decide to eat a cinnamon doughnut that is in a tin in the cupboard.]
B: Argh! Argh!
M: [barely lifting an eyebrow; assuming I’ve seen a cane toad, walked into a spiderweb, left my phone in the rain etc. etc.] What?
B: There’s fucking ANTS in the TIN all over the DOUGHNUTS. [Pokes further into the tin.] And they’ve savaged my Ryvitas. That’s it.
[The words ‘that’s it’ are said in unison with me tossing the ant-invaded tin as far as I can from the back steps into the garden. M starts laughing hysterically.]
M: You’re Homer! You’re Homer!
B: [Muttering darkly] Yeah. That’s right. I’m living Homer’s nightmare.
[I make the tea, savagely stir in the milk, and start poking around in the fridge.]
B: M! Where in the fridge did you put the chocolate biscuits? I can’t find them.
[M’s giggling stops abruptly. I can hear him backing away from the house with sneaky, treacherous little steps.]
M: Um…
B: [Shrieking] M! Tell me. Tell me you weren’t just putting off the inevitable by saying you hadn’t eaten all the biscuits. Tell me that they’re in the fridge.
[M shakes his head mutely, and speaks very very softly.]
M: I. Ate. Them. All.
[I kick something and flounce into the study with my tea. M drives into town for some Tim Tams. Later that night he eats six of them, guzzles a bottle and a third of red wine, eats pasta, jelly, chocolate and awakes in riotously good humour. It just doesn’t seem right.]
Tired of Tea
Friday, 28 January 2005
This is truly sad. I am tired of tea. Samey old tea. I was very happy with my sexy tin of vanilla tea that I received from Ellise for Christmas, but that is now long gone.
Chai syrup is all that will revive my interest. (And a care package from West Preston.)
In other news, I have installed Microsoft ClearType (for LCD screens) that has suddenly given my eyeballs a new lease of life. I don’t advocate making Microsoft happy, but ClearType has actually given my sad little day a boost!
Port Wine Jelly is my Favourite Flavour
Friday, 4 February 2005
That’s all. And with M and his viral throat beasties, I’m making it every day.
Vita-what?
Wednesday, 9 February 2005
I send M shopping. Usually, eating wodges of bread at lunchtime makes me feel even hotter than before, so I asked him to get me some Vita-Wheats. He does an admirable shop, doesn’t forget the beer, and I start putting things in the cupboard. For some unfathomable reason, he’s decided to buy himself VitaBrits for breakfast. I put them away, and then, desperate for cheese and biscuits, call through the window…
“M, did you get any Vita-Wheats?”
“Yeah, they’re just on the table. Can’t you see them?”
I look at the table. I look at the VitaBrits I’ve just put in the cupboard. And I ponder the importance of those first two syllables: Vi-ta. I say nothing. He tried, and that’s sweet. (BTW - this is not me being patronising, in case you were wondering.)
Hurdling fences & going to the country
Saturday, 19 March 2005
Earlier today I called my sister to ask her if she could pick me up from Mung & Rach’s place in Collingwood. It sounded like her soul had been overtaken by a rabid Eeyore-borne virus. Picking me up from Collingwood was obviously almost more than she could bear. I got off the phone and commented to Rachel how like my mother my sister was becoming - anything that may throw her slightly off schedule is a huge deal.
I realised an hour or so later, after everyohe had gone to the market, that I hadn’t asked her what time she would be coming by to get me, and called back. The first thing she said was - you were just like mum on that last phone call…it was terrible.
I gagged in horror, and hid it behind a cough.
She asked me what street number the house was, and I couldn’t remember, and headed out the front with the cordless phone. Told her it was 184. Then the front door blew closed. I was stuck. Completely stuck. In bare feet on a Collingwood street.
I hung up, stashed the phone in the letterbox, and dashed around the block to the laneway. The corrugated iron fence was about seven foot high. There was even corrugated iron over the top of the dead-bolted (from the inside)gate.
Great.
There was no one around to help. There was nothing to stand on.
I gazed up and down the laneway. Someone right down the end had left their rubbish bin out. Rubbish bin.
I ran back to the front of the house and grabbed the bin, took it back to the laneway and positioned it in front of the gate. Jumped on top. Found a toehold in the gate frame. The gutter of the ajoining roof seemed very solid, but quite sharp. (This is the bit where played the role of ‘resourceful action hero’! Kind of.) I ripped off my velcro hood, wrapped it around my hand, clutched the gutter and hoisted myself up. Got a leg over the top of the fence, and the battle was won! There were a lot more footholds on the other side, so I managed to get to the ground without too many theatrics.
Then I had to grab the front door key, dash around to the laneway again, and get the bin back, before some enterprising junkie< grabbed it and tried to sell it on Smith Street. Relief.
Now I am at my dad’s place on his antiquated (sorry Dad) computer, having had a three course dinner, some Coopers, some Mountain Goat, stewed blackberries, ginger cake, port, and some Glenfiddich - while beating my dad and my sister at Scrabble. Woo! Tomorrow I’m going to eat a lot of peaches. I’m in the country, after all.
Last lot to leave?
Tuesday, 12 April 2005
Rachael and Dylan left this morning, covered in mosquito and sandfly bites - further reinforcing why this stupid house is so hard to sell. They may be our last ever guests…just like we thought the ones before them, and the ones before them might be too! M and I discussed their visit and concluded that for the entire time they were here, we felt like it was Christmas! We were taken out to dine on innumerable occasions, given presents and fed cheese. It was a remarkable week. I also made the valuable realisation that, although I get bitten by bugs, the bites I get are no big deal compared to some peoples - both of them were more bite than skin 
We reviewed each restaurant we had dinner at in our guestbook, and the local Indian place that looks like a set from ‘The Office’ screamed home in first place with 17.5 points - the food was amazing. If you ever stop in Hervey Bay and want great indian food, go to:
The restaurant at Gatakers Bay came a respectable second with 15.5 points - the tapas was to die for…but the very expensive seafood banquet plate was less than mind blowing.
I am now the proud owner of an MC3 camera and Dylan also loaned me his PS-04 Palmtop Studio plus a little amp - which is perfect for recording demos with. It has heaps of drum tracks, guitar and vocal effects. It is sitting here next to me on the desk now, and I know that to touch it would mean the end of my working day…so I am being disciplined. For now.
In other news, we had organised a ‘why haven’t you sold our house yet’ meeting with our agent this morning, but he rang last night and said that a guy from Brisbane was flying up to look at the house today. Doubtless he will either a) not turn up, or b) turn up and instantly be eaten by the mosquitos that have abounded since it began raining at least once a day. So I have vacked (yes, that is a word of my own devising) the house, cleaned bugs and mank from ceiling, done the bathroom… and am just about to commence mopping. When this house sells I am going to live in my own filth for a month and then PAY SOMEONE ELSE TO FIX IT.
The end.
The Score
Sunday, 17 April 2005
On This Day…
Thursday, 5 May 2005
On this day last year I had a tummy full of mudcrab, and was the happy recipient of a fabbo mix-cd from my mate Scott-in-I-Oh-Wah (you know, the place that Bill Bryson came from and tried to leave as soon as he could). Today, in 2005, I received another birthday mix-cd with some fantastic stuff on it - quite a few live and rare things that I am going swoon over….
And on this day two years ago, I paraphrased my saga of real estate horror - I just reread it and it still burns like the fires of hell. If you’re thinking of buying a house, particularly one that is both far away and a dump that needs doing up, read it. You’ll probably decide that you’re happier renting…
Avoiding Dinner Time
Wednesday, 18 May 2005
And still, I successfully avoid the time of dinner at my lodgings, through stubborn stupidity and the knowledge that my female landlord (a culinary domestic goddess) would probably crumple to the ground if she saw me making a curry from a jar labelled ‘Green’, or, depending on my whim, ‘Red’. This is a woman who roasts pork for five hours, makes rice pudding, spanakopita, ice cream (it’s true, she makes it), chesnut pasta with three kinds of mushroom, chutney and her own pasta sauce from scratch. She has copper saucepans. I didn’t even know they actually existed. So for me to flop out my packet of curry flavoured (there are no other flavours, and if that’s not true, it should be) two minute noodles and bung ‘em on to boil in one of her tureens, is more humiliation than I’m willing to voluntarily submit to. Thus, I subsist on toasted sandwiches, extremely cheap takeaway and the occasional [gasp] Dinner Out - while slowly coming to the conclusion that slinging my landlords a bit more cash and asking them for dinner occasionally might not be such a bad idea. When they originally asked me if I wanted food as well as a bed, I was very ‘I don’t think I can commit to a regular mealtime, and I wouldn’t want to disappoint you by not showing up and/or feeling I had to call home every night, and besides, I’m sooooo popular that I’m sure I’m going to be Very Busy’. Countless nights clogging the office with the smell of the cheap takeaway make me begin to question my approach…
My First Sick Day
Friday, 27 May 2005
Well, the title should read ‘My First Legitimate Sick Day’ - it’s probably not even that legitimate, as my boss said ‘if you’re still under the weather, take a day off’. I have no idea of the process of actually getting a sick day - i.e. the administrative processes - and I don’t think he does either, so we just avoid the issue. I’ve been feeling fairly crap all week, so a day off was overdue… I did cross a hurdle - I stayed home Friday night and actually put together a dinner of pesto pasta and some salad at my lodgings! My female landlord was very nice and threw all sorts of things at me to help the salad along, and gave me some stewed quince with some home made ice cream for dessert. They also pressed half a bottle of wine on me and instructed me to do my worst. Then they went out for dinner, and I kicked back with my friend the Dog in front of the TV. A million channels, and the only thing worth watching was Footloose.
Pedal to the Metal
Sunday, 5 June 2005
Last night I attended a GNI (Girls Night In). We ate disgusting amounts of pizza and watched Bride and Predjudice, while trying to figure out who was Lizzie, who was Jane, whether they had killed off that sister who is Lydia’s sidekick who never gets to do much, or had just judged the character as so boring that they edited her out of the script. None of us could remember the name of the hideous obsequious cousin who proposes to Lizzie, and when rejected, gets off with her best friend - if I was on a faster computer, I’d google for the answer, but as it is, if this computer was an animal, it would be a snail.
At about twenty to midnight I began to get the feeling that I should leave, or I was going to miss the last train back to Collingwood. I had ridden to West Preston from Thornbury station, so I took my leave and pedalled back, fast. But not fast enough. I had missed the last train by ten minutes, and had to ride my bike back to Collingwood - so if you were driving down High Street just after midnight, you might have seen me labouring along…
Protein?
Monday, 1 August 2005
Wherefore art thou, protein? I languish. Actually, I more than languish. I feel like I have been run over by a large Mack truck, which has then reversed back over me and repeated the process. That’s right. I went to gym this morning. It’s fine when I get home. It’s fine as I walk to the station. It’s not too bad on the train. But by the time I get to Flinders Street and get on a tram - it’s truck-time. I become over-cooked spaghetti. This is due, say the people here at work, to a lack of protein. ‘Have some protein,’ they instruct me, as I flail about the office, leaden of leg and shaky of arm.
My dietary knowlegde is limited, (I can think of one proteiny thing - fish - not so good at 7am) so obviously, I googled. And now on my list are almonds, pistachios, peanut butter (…there’s a theme emerging here). Wheatgerm is up there, oatbran, and so, perplexingly, were rolled oats. Perplexingly, because I ate a huge bowl of porridge this morning, which seemed to have no influence on my limp-dishrag self. Odd.
UPDATE: Apparently the list that I was looking at is not a good one. I need a sports recovery one. Like this. So it seems I am doing the right thing, but should carry emergency reserves of nuts. Kind of like a squirl.
A New Day
Monday, 8 August 2005
Argh! The horrors of starting new jobs! I am staggering under information overload. Staggering. However, my little office is gorgeous - booklined with yachting and crime and history…and if I want fresh air I just have to open the glass door to outside. Pretty different from last week - where I had to go down ten floors just to see what the weather was doing. I am even feeling useful as I cranked out my first report - how I love having deadlines! How I am going to love producing stuff that Actually. Gets. Used.
On Wednesday I go shopping to [gasp] pick out my chair. I’ve been asked what tea I like best and what stationery I require. There are cats lounging about, and I’m free to play whatever music I like. There has to be something wrong… Surely?
So now I am home near the heater, M is cooking up his brand new wonder-soup (Sweet Potato & Sweet Corn with Blue Cheese Swirl) and there’s a bottle of white in the fridge. Great plans are afoot for thiscoming weekend when we’re thinking of going to the Australian Specialist Cheese Show! What a perfect event for M to attend! Now, if I could just stop checking to see whether Albert/Kennedy has arrived…keep going with that spicy food Rae!
Dbye Code Dis Impoovig
Thursday, 11 August 2005
My cold is on the mend. I no longer feel like I was repeatedly run over by a semi-trailer. This is a good thing, as my new job is proving pretty hard going. How I hates the curve of the learning. Now that I feel more human, I am going to have to return to gym [groan]. Last night was spent at Essendon Keilor College’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar, choreographed by my very own housemate. It was an awesome show - the first that I’ve seen there where they have used a live band, which made all the difference. Tonight, the 10Speed practice was called off due to bad weather and Christine’s lack of drums [eyeroll] when, oh when will she get her hi-hat and snare? Instead, I spoiled M and made him a recipe I’ve been wanting to try for ages. It wasn’t that great, but I followed it up with rhubarb and yoghurt - which was.
Festy, Festy…and finally… Festive.
Saturday, 24 December 2005
This morning I didn’t exactly ‘awaken’ because I was never properly asleep. I just lapsed into a marginally more alert state of consciousness when the alarm went off at 5.30am. That’s right. Bloody, bloody, early. I woke M gently and felt that he was astonishingly smiley and relaxed, considering the hour. I then discovered he momentarily thought it was Christmas day. As soon as he realised it wasn’t, and we were merely trudging into Vic Market with the rest of Melbourne for festive food supplies, the morning took on the shape of the pear.
M turned into Evil M quicker than an eyeblink, swearing at Christmas, oysters, mooring lines, weather, alarm clocks and the petrol bowser. It’s times like these that I envy my friends in a three-way relationship - at least they always have someone else to roll their eyes with. I just bit my tongue, narrowed my eyes and hoped, like the storm, it would dissipate without a loss of life. His. Obviously.
M strode through Vic Market, visibly seething at his situation and bought the first oysters he saw. Which we then found for four dollars cheaper elsewhere. (They better be good.) He then ranted as we hadn’t been to an ATM machine and were running out of money. I am so disciplined that I have waited until right now to point out that the early morning seafood mission had been entirely of his design. Gah.
Only when I foiled a two kilometre long line of people at the ATM machine (by ducking to one that was hidden from view around the corner) did he begin to shake off his evilness. We collected prawns, mussels in their shells, some cheeses from Curds & Whey and he placated himself with some dolmades and bits of octopus.
We then drove out to Boat, and M paddled out precariously on the surfski as the wind whipped up around him. I dutifully watched to make sure he made it in one piece, as I felt guilty about spending at least forty minutes of the morning intricately plotting his demise. Just after he passed the halfway mark I saw something huge leap from the water- it looked like a huge bluefin tuna trying to take a bite out of a passing seagull. I stopped watching after that.
We had a lovely breakfast at the Pickle Barrel in Williamstown. If you like your chai lattes - this is somewhere you should go. We meandered home via the supermarket for cat supplies. By the time we’d got home, there was no trace of Evil M, but burgeoning traces of Cranky B were beginning to emerge. I was SO TIRED that I could have leaned against a wall and fallen asleep. Instead, we cut our losses, left our purchases in the esky and went back to bed for four hours.
We are now kicking back in south east gippsland, at the cosy house of Father of [miaow]. Presents are piled on top of the heater. The Sister of [miaow] is running in aimless circles, just having realised she left dad’s present in Hampton, and M is passed out in front of the wood fire with a glass of whiskey. It all turned out OK.
Happy Christmas Everyone!
Baking
Monday, 26 June 2006
I made these biscuits/cookies the other day. (I am also now very glad I was wearing clothes while taking this photo as I can now see myself reflected in the kettle - isn’t there a name for that kind of porn? i.e. where naked men are reflected in toasters for sale on EBay…?) After I’d bought all the ingredients (I didn’t use the one cup of peanuts) I began them on a wing and a prayer because our oven doesn’t have a readable temperature setting and I also realised that the only measuring cup I had was a 1/4 cup measure. They turned out fine. In the name of the budget I am going to try and bake something at least once a week. [looks hopeful]
Peanut Butter/Chocolate Chip Cookies - a Fannie Farmer Cookbook recipe
1/2 cup peanut butter
8 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup flour
1 cup peanuts
1 cup chocolate chipsCream together the peanut butter and butter, beat in the two sugars and then stir in the remaining ingredients in order. Arrange by teaspoonfuls on baking sheets. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Stick half of them in the freezer to hide them from your boyfriend
Thanks for all the roo…
Thursday, 29 June 2006
Yesterday my father traitorously closed the door on the kittens as they slumbered in their cat carrier bed in the laundry. I don’t think they’ll see the cat carrier as such a nice place to sleep anymore. They tried to escape, and we tied some rope around the carrier to make sure they didn’t succeed. We drove them into the excellent vet around the corner from my work (the kittens did not make a peep for the whole hour and a half - too scared) and sadly dropped them off to be desexed, vaccinated and wormed.
My punt was correct. The furry one is a boy and the twins are girls. They reportedly behaved beautifully and didn’t even hiss once! I picked them up at 4pm and drove them to South Caulfield where they are going to live with Cat Saviour Anne (CS-Anne) for two weeks (as dad, as their legal guardian, is working in town and can’t look after them).
CS-Anne is a wonder. She had set up her spare room entirely for the kittens and was rapt to have them there. In a couple of days I imagine they will just be passed out in front of her gas heater, skidding on her polished boards, and batting at the hanging handles of her blinds. CS-Anne is going to decide whether she wants to keep one, two or all of them, so we will have a better idea of their futures in a few weeks time.
After all that I was completely drained and I headed to my mum’s (who is still away overseas)where M made a special trip down because our lovely friends, Mr & Mrs H and smaller Master H came and made us a marvellous meal of slow-cooked kangaroo with scalloped potatos (they had a more impressive name for the potatos that I can’t remember) and vegetables, followed by a lemon delicious pudding. Oh my GOD - it was decadent. We drank our way through our entire supply of wine, but, judging by the way we all stumbled into the kitchen this morning, it was good that we didn’t have any more hanging about.
It was like we just spent a night camping with our friends - none of us being in our proper homes. Master H has now been taken off for an educational journey to the museum and they have been invited to be the first visitors to the Trailer (which means we will really have to find something to sit on - a few somethings!).
The muffin hunt
Thursday, 13 July 2006
After a late night last night I awoke this morning at 8.37am - a whole 23 minutes to get to work. And for some reason I had a puffy eye, just to help things along. By 8.56am I was in the shops near my work, having fanged along the beach road - all I needed was something to put in my tummy. I decided a muffin would do it. Went to Brumbys or Bakers Delight, whichever one it is, and they had NOTHING in their window. They had obviously decided, overnight, that baking was not their thing. There were a few employees inside looking perplexed. Goodbye to that idea.
Next to the cafe next door to the former bakery. Our friend from our fave beach cafe used to run it and says it’s crap. I have always agreed - $6 for a small banana smoothie - grrr. But I was desperate. I went in, waited for the guy behind the counter to finish his conversation, and asked what kind of muffins they had.
“These ones.”
“What flavour are they?”
“Raspberry, coconut…”
I got ripples of grateful excitement.
“…and white chocolate.”
“White chocolate?”
He may as well have said ‘raspberry, coconut and slugs’. I hate white chocolate. I asked if they had anything else. They said no. I said ‘thanks anyway’, and as I closed the door behind me I heard him sniff derisively. Gah.
The next cafe had muffins with raspberry almond and milk chocolate chunks. Rejected. I don’t necessarily feel that chocolate belongs in muffins, but I’m willing to be lenient - except at breakfast time. I don’t WANT chocolate for breakfast.
Now a full four minutes late I went to the little grimy bakery further up the road and got a perfectly respectable croissant, that has just made my keyboard a wee bit buttery.
Upon my arrival at work they exclaimed at ‘how tired’ I look, but also said that CS-Anne had said yesterday that she wanted to keep the kitten twins, and that if her neighbour didn’t take the pretty furry one (which she has christened ‘Frederick’ - hmmm) she might keep him as well! I will be following that up in the next day or so!
Yulla - Raspberry Chocolate Mousse
Thursday, 20 July 2006
In a couple of emails my mum has asked ‘has the organic supermarket opened yet?’ and I haven’t been able to answer. But tonight, I couldn’t face the Sandringham supermarket and headed down to Black Rock…and stumbled over the organic supermarket! It’s called Macro - and it’s great, although a little bit pricey. It has everything from organic gin, to tampons, to cheese to cosmetics. I was trying not to spend too much money, so I got a little tub of Yulla Raspberry Chocolate Mousse - it’s totally to die for.
Why I Hate Fruit
Wednesday, 26 July 2006
Because it hardly ever fills it’s potential, I hate fruit. Correction - I am a fruit snob. I only like the finest fruit. I do not eat fruit for the sake of eating fruit, I eat it because it tastes nice, as I do oysters, Coopers and port wine flavoured jelly. I am told I should eat more of it. I have a go every month or so, but am more often disappointed than not.
Today I had a fresh burst of hope. Released early from the office hothouse due to an electrical meltdown, I actually got to my mum’s place in daylight and took the opportunity to wander down, in the last of the afternoon light, to the organic supermarket that I discovered last week. I bought M (who would buy everything organic if I let him - it’s too expensive) some packets of pasta and rolled oats. On a whim, I bought two Fuji apples. Organic. Fuji. Apples. To eat on my walk back to the house. The last time I’d bought some apples was a month ago, from the fruit shop next door to the Sandringham supermarket - they were actually excellent, and this knowledge fuelled my purchase.
I wandered back towards my lodgings and took a big bite of the first apple. There is not going to be a second apple. The bite was a powdery mouthful of mank. But, although I fight against it, I was brought up to finish whatever food I begin eating, regardless of it’s mank factor. I managed about four other bites, which I priced at about .35cents each - these ‘organic’ apples were megabuck. So I have given up on the fruit angle of the organic supermarket and will rely on the occasional tangelo from Coles and the odd apple from the non-organic fruit shop. My angst is also due to the fact that if I hadn’t bought the two apples, I could have bought a stubby of Mountain Goat beer. Woe, I say. Woe.
Successful Soup
Thursday, 10 August 2006
My third successful soup (after the potato and leek, and the pumpkin and sweet potato) was one I made the other night. Pea soup. No ham. I don’t do ham. It was very easy, and I reckon you could freeze it after you blended it smooth and then add in the whole peas once it had defrosted. Anyway, in case you want to try it out…
INGREDIENTS1 tbsp olive oil
1 large brown onion, chopped finely
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 medium white potatoes, cubed
1.5 litres chicken or vegetable stock
500g frozen peas
1/3 cup cream
SaltHeat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic; cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until soft. Add potato and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.
Add stock and bring to the boil. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Add half the peas and cook, stirring, for 7 to 8 minutes.
Blend soup mixture in $4 food processor from Hervey Bay Op-Shop until smooth. Return to pan. Add remaining peas and cream and cook for 4 minutes or until peas are tender. Season with salt to taste.
Hot and Slow?
Wednesday, 16 August 2006
Went to my latest cafe for lunch today. The normal. Toasted cheese and tomato sandwich and a drink. The guy there is very chirpy and chatty. After I’d finished, I went up to pay.
“How’s your day been going?” he asked.
“Oh, yunno - kind of slow.”
“Slow?”
He gave me my change and wasn’t quick about it, “Hot and slow?”
YOIKE!
I think I muttered something about “um, no, just slow…bye!” as I scuttled out the door. Did he really say ‘hot and slow’? How could I have aurally invented something like that? His wife was cooking in the kitchen. I really think I might have heard wrong (and I’m definitely a long way from looking hot atm) - so maybe he said “Got to go?” or “Blot the flow?” or “Lots to know?”
Jeeez. I puzzled over it on the walk back to work for all of, oh, 57 seconds.
(OpShop score today? One Pyrex-esque casserole dish, and two books: Man & Boy and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - some history of film…
UPDATE: Have discussed this with Lee (my workmate) and she admitted to thinking the guy in question is a ‘pantsman’. PANTSMAN ALERT.
Robbed
Saturday, 7 October 2006
A month or so back I took a photo of the mangroves reflected in Cannons Creek.
The guy who owns the property where our boatbuilding shed is had commented that the creek was looking particularly photogenic. M got the photo printed and framed and gave it to him last week. In return, his wife baked us some wholemeal blueberry muffins, which M was rhapsodising about when he brought them home. I decided to have one after dinner with a cup of tea. I left it, stupidly, on the arm of the chair while I went to put on the kettle. I turned around to see that Saf had chomped a whacking great bite out of the top of it and was scarfing his way through about four blueberries under the chair. I was so furious-o that I put the entire remaining muffin into his bowl so he could eat it all and hopefully feel sick, and possibly guilty.
Nope. He just ate it down to the paper and then passed out in a large furry muffin inspired stupor. Gah.
I get serious about submersion
Thursday, 19 October 2006
The tide is currently high in the mornings. So we hit the beach before 9am and swam. I have eczema to banish. I decided to steel myself and start immersing myself less like a cat and more like a seal, because who knows how long it will be before I can start swimming in Melbourne? After swimming we went grocery shopping to try and avoid the white bread, processed meat, sugary cereal, crap beer and soft drink that was going to inevitably arrive with the others that were turning up to stay at the house. We got kangaroo! And pesto ingredients. And beer. Coopers.
We headed out to the airport to meet M’s neice and her squeeze. They turned out to have been on the plane with M’s brother-in-law’s sisters and mother. The place was filling up! Luckily they were heading out to J’s house, while M’s neice and squeeze came with us. We had good chats. They were revolted at the idea of kangaroo and went out for fish and chips, while M got gourmet in the kitchen. Embarassingly, we were all in bed before nine!
Tuesday nights when I’m away…
Tuesday, 21 November 2006
I always tease M that when I return to the trailer on Wednesday night there is always an empty tin of tuna, an empty tin of tomatoes and either empty bottles of wine secreted in each gumboot, or six empty bottles of premium beer stashed in the bottom of the recycle box (as if I’m not going to see them there). Tonight on the phone…
“M,