mouse corpse last supper: chili and pink lemonade

Costa Rica to all of you, and to all a good flight! So hopefully everyone had nice weekends!! I sure did - despite the FUCKING FREEZING COLD WINTER WEATHER! On Saturday morning my mum, brother and I headed up to Trentham (again) for the farmers market! I recalled the last time that Josh and I went there that the outside temperature displayed in my car was 5 degrees C (41F for those very few still playing in the Imperial System). This time it was 4 degrees! EEP! I cannot recall ever been so cold during the day man. We were walking around that market pretty damn fast, make no lie! chuckle chuckle. My mum made such a faux pas... i was sampling some olive oils using the small cubes of bread provided. I told mum to try the lemon olive oil so she dipped her finger right in the bowl of oil and licked it. The oil lady's face was like "WOT...." and she was trying to be cool about it but I was all "MUM! You can't do that, you have to use the bread!" and she got all embarrassed and as soon as we walked away the oil lady was inspecting the bowl rather closely heh. Anyway I got 5kg of trentham red potatoes (mm) and some organic apples (4 for $2.50... in hindsight they weren't THAT great) and some granola to have for brekky-poos at work. Mum went back to the olive place and bought some tapenade to make amends for contaminating the oil. Oh mother. I was going to try and get a photo of me blowing out... smoke..? frost....? steam...? in the freezing cold air, but the Christmas Carolers were putting me off. I have no idea why there were carolers there but it was not making the cold easier to bear. hey i did a rhyme!

Anyway after that we went back to Blackwood which is just before Trentham and got a snack and some antiques. Well not really. My mum got some chairs and i got a picnic basket for $25. Prob shouldn't have got it but i have been wanting a new picnic basket for so long now so i thought i'd treat myself. Hooray! At the Blackwood General Store, you can find groceries and a deli, a cafe with alfresco dining, and an antique shop all in one. It's actually kind of cool. Would have been better in warm weather but there was a log fire in the enclosed outdoor dining area so it was OK. Their dog Tyson sat and watched us the whole time...

and then just after i took this photo he ran toward me and barked and i got frightened! Apparently he just wanted outside, but i think HE thought i stole his soul. Probably. Oh here's my little picnic basket! Expect to see more of THIS in warmer months!! I wish it had another basket bit on the other side of the drink holder, then it would look like Elsa Billgren's.. *sigh*



Oh well! Anyway, Blackwood is an interesting little old mining town. It reminds me of a gingerbread village mixed with incestuous hillbillies. Kind of like the little town of Hotshot from the True Blood books :O but prettier. You drive into the main street which has a few stores - General Store, Pub, Wine Bar/Restaurant, and maybe a few others.. and on your right there are residential streets that snake their way uphill or downhill - it is a hilly place! So some houses sit atop a crest looking down at you through the undercast, whereas others can just be spotted by their rooves peeping out beside the road. There are even log houses. LOG HOUSES! I want to go back there and walk around and peep around and take pictures! Maybe this time I wont get assaulted by a dirtbike gang zooming all around me in the middle of the road!!

Ok enough of that, look as this pretty present Josh got me:

It was yummy! Pink Lemonade mm-mmm! We all shared it and drank from wine glasses :) Nice work Josh! Yeah so i had a chilled night at home on Saturday with Hayden and Mel watching movies with the heater on, the wine flowing, and minestrone soup a-brewin! It was fun, and distracted us from money- or lack thereof haha. I watched "Some like it hot" for the first time and thought it was really really cool! Reminded me of Sorority Boys! it must be the original concept... which was quite daring for the time!

So then on Sunday I got a surprise visit from my darling friend Sarah who moved to Darwin after her wedding in Feb! What a shock! Luckily I couldn't sleep properly on Sunday morning and cleaned the house up a bit, so she saw it for the first time relatively tidy! I even cleaned the shower - my most hated chore. And i use the word chore on purpose here. Yuck showers yuck. It was great to see Sarah anyway! The poor thing has forgotten what winter is after moving to Darwin and she was suffering! Sunday was about 12C and raining or something shocking like that. She is here for the next 2 weeks so hopefully i can organise some cool activities with her during that time :)

Sunday night I decided to finally make Chili con carne. I used a Women's Weekly recipe, but i don't think it went right. It tastes too watery, i want it rich and tangy! I will have to compare it with some other recipes and make an ultimate chili con carne recipe to end all others and try my luck again. It had a 3 hour cooking time... i just don't get it. Anyway forgotten. Here are the ambitious pictures i took BEFORE eating it. This first one is the stewing of the beef steak stage. It reminded me of LOTR when frodo sees the evil souls under the water....

Then after an hour of stewing the beef, you have to shred it like shredder on the ninja turtles:

And cook some onions, garlic, spices etc then add everything else to the pot and cook for another 1.5 hours...

voila. crap.

not fair.

Anyway, at work I am cleaning up the area under the stairs where we keep old files. There is little to no order under there and I have been feeling very driven and organised lately so I have been sorting and categorising things. When I was in there last Friday I happened to see this:

Correct. A decomposed mouse. Fucking GROSS (Yet interesting). If that wasn't gross enough, check it out from another angle...

So yeah I have to go back in there now to sort out some more stuff but i'm not game to go near that little corpse again. So I'm kiiinda excited cos I'm catching up with an old friend from work tonight. I havent seen her in like 1.5-2 years as she went to America to persue her dream of becoming an actress! We have finally got our shite together and will be catching up after i finish work today! How cool! Also, I will be seeing my friend from school on Saturday at Mt. Buller!! She has been travelling around doing seasonal jobs for the past year and i havent seen her in as long so that will be cool too. Although I have to go to HER as she is working in the snow and can't really leave the mountain! Haha. Well if i wanted to see her any earlier than now I would have had to go to Canada or to Queensland to the pumpkin farm she was working on!! I wonder where she will go next!? I guess I'll ask her on Saturday!!