~subarashiiblog~

This Australian Life

2012-01-23T23:54:00.000+11:00

Hey there readers. In tonight's instalment I'll be telling you some great stories, and bringing you some pictures direct from...you guessed it - my life. First up, my amazing January so far! For Christmas my dearest got me tickets to both David Sedaris and Ira Glass in their similarly named 'An evening with....' shows 1 week apart at the Athaneum here in Melbourne. Josh introduced me to This american life about a year ago or so, and I aint done ever looked back. Much like many other regular listeners or downloaders of the American radio show/podcast, I think Ira Glass (the host) is some kind of demi god. He ticks all the boxes of what I want to hear and is pretty much just a cool dude. It was on this show that I first heard of the author/humourist David Sedaris too. He was reading aloud an essay from one of his books and i was hooked in! His exaggeration technique is like a kajillion times more amazing than what i could ever dream up!

So first up was the David Sedaris show! I had been reading his books and listening to him for a while and even starting to follow the career of his sister Amy... in a non-stalkerish way naturally. I could not believe i was going to see him in person, and I was nervous too as there was an opportunity to meet him after the show in the book signing!!! Now, I am not the smoothest of characters so I was already envisioning the ways I would embarrass myself. Plus I read that he chats to each person for a few minutes at the signing and then draws/writes something interesting in your book. One lady wrote that he signed her book something about diabetes thus the thinks he was insinuating she was fat. Now I really love DS, and I was thinking if he found fault in me I would have to ceremoniously burn all his books and pretend I'd never heard of him to avoid the stab of pain that would come every time i saw one of the books laying around. The broken fan heart. Luckily he thought i was AWESSSSSSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMEEEE!!!

Not even joking, Josh had a great idea of writing something in the book before giving it to him so I drew a pic of DS along with some other stuff and when he opened it he grinned and was like "WHO DID THIS?!!" and I fessed up (sorry, i have recently (and ironically) read a DOLLY mag.. omg, i'm OTT crazy atm) and he was like "That's fantastic, i love it etc etc.." so the 3 of us (me, the bf, and the housemate) stood there chatting to him, and he proceeded to tell us filthy filthy jokes!!!!!! It was amazing. He wrote in one of my books how much he loves my drawing, and made sure to tell me again as i left. Hoorah. Guess i can pick up another of his books to add to the collection now. He passed the test. the test of being worthy enough to keep a reader interested. Anyway that was a great night, and a few days later was Ira!!!!!!

We started the night with drinks and postulating what he'd talk about.

They were cleverly concealing their giddy child-like glee... as was I. Actually i cant really conceal anything so i made a few strange noises and squeeks that happen at these times. Skipping ahead, Ira was also great! He was different to what I imagined (posture and body language-wise) but in a way I was glad to see a bit of the real Ira and realise he is just a dude. Just a normal down to earth dude who had no idea people in Australia loved him so much as he bowed time and time again at the end of his talk. He began his show in total darkness as the voice we all know and love filled the room. When the lights came on, the crowd went wild! One of his first questions as he grinned around the room was 'How do you guys even know who I am??' - funny. I think he has learned quite a lot from his visit and his eyes are opened a little about his fanbase. I was surprised to know that their staff only consists of 8 people. Working nutso hours and trying to pull stories from everywhere they can. So amazing.

Anyway, I also just got back from a little weekend road trip to Adelaide for my cousin's birthday! We took my mannequin 'Derryn' along for the ride and he had fun at the beach. People were a little taken aback, but in the end the police calmed everyone down and we got the head back.

At first i thought we wouldnt even make it, as I had been having car issues. I had no power, and sometimes couldnt get over 80km/hour. i also later found out both brake lights were out. The mechanic my mum took the car to (as my xmas present) couldnt fix the situation and didnt fix my brakelights before returning it. So i got my un-roadworthy car back and avoided driving it. I had it booked into Nissan for a detailed inspection and was prepared to fork out a few hundo (that i didnt have) for a solution. Then luckily my sicko brother did a little online research and found out that my model of car has this in-built safety mechanism thing that when both brakelights are out, the engine goes into safety mode or something. So $3 in light-globes later, the car ran perfectly again. I could not believe my luck!

In unrelated news... here is a zucchini that grew like crazy while i was interstate. I picked it today when i got up! It is the size of my shin.

Lately I have been doing a little cooking (of course) but not photographing much of my escapades... here's just one for you:

Also, I found this at my front door one night....

I opened the door looking for my cat late one night (yes i know, cats should be in-doors etc etc) and there is was, with the fairy attached to the top like in the pic. As you can see it is half eaten by snails and has obviously blown from someone's bin. In my mind though, some young girl has taken a liking to me from the few seconds each morning she sees me cross the yard to my car and has drawn and almost flawless picture of me. It is quite remarkable how alike we are really. Those dead eyes, the black boots. Amazing.

I've been getting a little arty too, I made a bunch of snowflakes for Xmas to add some christmas flayvaaaa to wrapping paper. these ones went on the wall :)

Oh and this one... This is not a real person. This is a sacrificial scarecrow we made when Josh quit his job. We burned the uniform and badge and all in my back-yard. It was wild. And scary. And smoky. But mostly funny. Those bits on the ground are the arms. They fell with a dull thump. It's amazing what petrol and hay and leftover wrapping paper can do. Ok, i'm wrapping this up as I am getting way tired. Below is a picture of a gnome i bought from a country op-shop for $1. I thought my suburbian yard needed a little cliche to it. I love his childlike bearded face and cross leggedness.

I am yet to name him though. Any thoughts?

Vets Vets Vets

2011-12-07T20:36:00.000+11:00

Welp, I took my cat Chester to the vet again today – third time now. If you don’t know chester, he’s an 8 year old ginger family cat (who actually belongs to me). He is pretty much one of the best dudes that ever lived. These days he’s going through a bit of a ‘rough patch’. Always out, never answers my calls, picking on his litter sister, and now... fighting. He keeps getting beat up too. I wonder when he will actually get sick of being pulverised and be too scared to venture out. He has too much pride I guess.

Anyway this time it was a cat bite to the face. It got all swollen and infected and looked like a golf ball was stuck in his throat, but over to the left side. Luckily he popped it today himself and they didn’t have to ‘lance’ it. (Note: Lance is a weird name for a person. Other funny verb names: Pirouette, Strum, Gulp, Scream, Swallow.)

I opened the door this morning to find Cheds vomiting on the driveway. It looked like spit/bile so I did the whole call the boss thing, then had to wait an hour before the vet opened so I could get an appointment. The original appointment was around lunch time, but of course I couldn’t find Chester anywhere, even walking around the street shaking a box of cat food half an hour before the vet appointment. I freaked out a tiny bit thinking he’d gone off to die somewhere warm and quiet. Josh was asleep in the middle of a split shift and I woke him up to have a bit of a moment. The search went on for a few hours in preparation for the re-scheduled appointment. At one point my housemate found a pile of cat vomit a few houses away (half-digested little sponges in the shape of fish and circles) so I thought it was a sign he was around. Presuming it was his, which I did but didn’t want to believe it because I pictured him gagging all the way down the street.

Anyway the vet was a young guy called Dennis. I reckon he puts on this authoritative air, but he would only be max 27. Maybe he has to put one on because he’s so young and needs to create the respect and trust in his abilities. There didn’t seem to be much of an age gap, but we were worlds apart. I also do this- act more responsible to others than I really am. I can see myself one day rebelling against societal pressures and living out in the forest just finger painting all day. Just a matter of time. Anyway, Dennis was nice-looking but looked like he hasn’t had a super fun life, maybe he has the kind of parents who ... well, who would call their son a past-generational name like Dennis, thus extinguishing any chance of him becoming a party king or at very least a ladie’s man. (This does not apply to Dennis from Always Sunny).

Maybe Dennis is one of those guys who goes to parties with his friends who he might only see every few weeks and is slowly drifting apart from because he works so much. At the parties he is the quiet one, who doesn’t drink too much and is pretty reserved and drives home early, just as everyone is tipping over the edge into drunkenness. He slips out and people barely remember he was there. God I hope I’m imagining wrong about Dennis. He was good at the job but not so personable, I tried to get a little banter going but he wasn’t interested. Maybe I’m just a repulsive person? (‘Aha moment’ right there!)

So this Dennis, he also had a braces lisp, the one that sounds like it’s at the back of your teeth. He may have been wearing a plate even. He had so many teeth in his mouth, kinda like the guy from Glee (Kevin McHale). Is it weird that I didn’t even have to Google his name, I just knew it? Possi-proba-maybe. He also had bags under his eyes- they looked almost like bruises –all purple and pink- under his thin pale skin. I wonder how much sleep he gets, or if he’s into the pet medicine supply? I wonder if he could tell from the scar tissue/scab on the bite that I had left this go for a few days and that’s why he was being not so jovial – because he could tell I’m not the best at putting my cat’s needs first?

Well I was actually trying to hold off until the weekend to get to the vet because 1) pay day is tomorrow and vets are expensive and 2) because my boss decreed that from now on you couldn’t take a sick day unless you had a certificate. This naturally put me off a bit because I took one last week without going to the doctor and an email was sent the very next day to all staff with the new law of the land (which I have a feeling isn’t even legally valid).

Maybe when I called my boss in the morning of the sick day and he invasively asked me what was wrong I shouldn’t have given him a strange answer like “Well...I just don’t feel up to it today”. What else would I say? Perhaps I should have gone into detail about periods or diarrhoea or something. Maybe that’s what he was after all along? His reply was “Not...up to it. (pause) Seeya!” and hung up on me. I guess he’s a busy guy. Maybe he was boiling eggs for breakfast and realised at that moment they had been on for exactly 3 minutes and he had to run off immediately to catch them before they turned rubbery. What he probably meant to say was “I understand, thanks for calling me. Hopefully I’ll see you at work tomorrow because I value you not only as an employee, but as a person too.” Yeah, I’ll keep telling myself that.

Back to the vet. It all went well although Dennis kind of walked out on me. There were 2 doors in the room, one to the waiting room and one to the secret back vet corridor, and he said thanks and then went in the secret corridor. I presumed we were done and that I should let myself out. I’m used to doctors and vets standing up and opening doors for you etc. A hang-up and a walk-out in 7 days. Wow, I really must be an arsehole of a person, guess I must have deserved it though. Ha! :)

Backyard make-over!

2011-10-25T12:56:00.000+11:00

The time has come where I finally made-over my yards ready for party-season! With the help of family and friends we were able to transform my dirt-bowl/weeds into this nice little zone....

Yay! We got good soil delivered (as mine is orange clay) and some mulch and sand. The bricks were donated by Josh's mum who had them left over from when they built their house....over 20 years ago!! She was glad to see them go!

Give the plants a few months of eating super-charged nutrients and they will be huge. As you can see, the fences are still like eye-level so those neighbours be-gone at the back will eventually block out the house. I'm thinking of putting in another fruit tree in to act as a fruit wall along one side. I have a peach tree, dwarf nectarine, lemon, bay tree, a mystery stone-fruit tree which grew from a cast-aside pip thrown into the vegie patch at my old house. Also I have rosemary, mint, parsley x 2, lavender, and in my new vegie patch zone there is zucchini, eggplant, chili, tomato, and strawberries. We'll see how that all goes! I was thinking of taking out the half-dead passionfruit on the pergola post and putting in grapes, how pretty that would be!
Also was thinking of putting lattice on the fence above the vegies so I can grow beans or peas..... MM!

I'm loving the weeping cherry in the middle of the yard, that will look BEAUTIFUL next year all covered in white flowers :D hoorahhh.

All i can say is, wait until you see what I've been up to INSIDE!

Things I've Seen

2011-09-12T21:15:00.000+10:00

Saw this on a free food shelf.....inner...cleanser...

Fold Down thing in a bathroom... Ironing board?

Jesus wanted

Domestic Tip #279 - Washing Machine Maintenance

2011-09-12T20:15:00.001+10:00

This is my first ‘domestic tip’ (although I felt that #279 was the right number to start at) and the information within is as half-formed and potentially incorrect as most of my other posts. Let me explain the purpose of this. Ok so, In this crazy old life sometimes you need a guiding hand to show you the way on certain issues. I know if i needed to, i could ask my mum, aunty, grandmother or even my dad for some advice on domestic life and I would be handsomely rewarded with some family wisdom, form a closer connection, and indeed carry on their domestic legacy to future generations. Oh how rewarding. I can see it now, us wandering around Bunnings laughing as we accidentally go down the same aisle twice, then partaking in a $2 sausage in bread with onions all before sharing some car-park rage while navigating our way out.

Since I am a child of the internet, by google-searching things like “How to clean a washing machine” or “DIY paving”, it’s almost like I am performing this family activity anyway... because Internet is my parents, siblings and friends, and I never need anything more. So, in an attempt to rekindle the olde worlde charme of sharing information, even though it’s a case of the blind leading the blind, I’m offering my knowledge to you. Again, I really don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to cleaning and washing clothes... but I try to feel my way.

Right now I am listening to my washing machine clean itself. You read that correctly. I never thought such a concept existed, but indeed a washing machine, used to wash clothes, needs washing. It’s one of those surprising things you learn once you move out, that you actually have to look after your things and administer maintenance. You, like myself, may have thought that a washing machine was so clean that it was almost a sterile environment, and if you ever needed to have an emergency birth in the house, that’d be the place to squat. You couldn’t be more wrong. There exists a build up of gunk and detergent and whatever else out of sight in the barrel which needs to be removed somehow.

Papa Google told me that a shit-load of Vinegar into a hot wash would work – no clothes. So here I sit, wondering if the problem has gone away yet, and also slightly afeared at what I will be surprised by next. Maybe “Oh yeah, didn’t you know you’re supposed to use strawberry topping on a Q-tip under the lip of the toilet every fortnight otherwise your house floods?!” or “Holy crap, what do you mean you have never vacuumed the inside of your roof!? Fire hazard!”

I hate those things, being a kid was so simple – everything was magically done and you didn’t consider the time or monetary costs of things, nor did you constantly feel guilty for doing NOTHING and try to think of more constructive things to do with your time. You could spend a whole week in PJ’s or play video games for a marathon 8 hours or so, and nobody said a thing. It was like you could do what you want, when you want and just do the things that made you happy, without being questioned or expected to behave in a certain way. Seriously, is this behaviour still allowed in Adults? Maybe I should hire a cleaner, gardener, personal shopper, scribe, and bedside nurse to assist me with showering and toilet functions so I can spend more time effin’ and jeffin’. Hmmm...

B-B-B-Birthday!!

2011-08-08T13:32:00.000+10:00

When it comes to Birthdays, I really like to drag them out. Dinners, Lunches, Catch-ups, Holidays - anything that can be connected with celebrating my Birth - I will do. This year was no exception, and it all kicked off with a little quiet weekend away to Bendigo with Josh.

We made no delay in hurrying to Bendigo town to see if the 'Po Boyz' store was still open. We got lunch fron there years ago - maybe 4 or 5 years ago- and it was the first time I had heard of Po' Boys. I got quite the education on New Orleans cuisine and history when I googled it ;) Good stuff. Luckily the store was still there so we indulged in a little late-morning chicken sub!

Nothing fancy, but oh-so-yummy! It's all in the bread I think. We didn't really get up to much during our time there, just relaxed and ate. We ate some sandwiches by the lake too, and attracted quite the array of bird-life :) We also played 20 questions trying to guess animals, plants and minerals, and Josh threw me into a spin when he chose 'Dragon'. It took me almost all 20 questions...

On my actual Birthday, Josh and I went to the nearby Shadowfax winery in Werribee South for the first time! It was so nice, we had a tasting plate followed by Carpaccio and Squid....

They also had a woodfired pizza oven on the grounds - maybe next time ;) On the night of my Birthday, I had a nice catch up with family at my dad's place. Here are a few cute things I got - selected from the big range of lovely presents..

Yes, that's right - a Sheesha! It has been very fun, let me tell you!! I also caught up with some friends at Red Bennies on Chapel Street and had cocktails, saw some amazing circus shows and dances to swing music until 3am! It was so good!!! Here is a picture of the rope lady:

So strong and talented, she was!! Well I can see that I am very very behind on my posts, but the good news is that I intend to update more regularly. Peace Y'all - happy Birthday to everyone for this year 2011!!

Heeeeere's Jadey!

2011-07-21T19:08:00.000+10:00

What a crazy world we live in! Days turn into weeks which turn into many irrate blog followers! My apologies, dear friends! I got a little carried away it would seem :) So in the last few weeks life has been fast paced to say the least! Changes at work, Skype dates, pay rises, reviews written, tax returns, books read, movies watched, birthdays celebrated etc etc! Firstly, here is a quick update of a bunch of things I cooked in the last few weeks!

Pear and Strawberry Tarte Tatin

I'm getting lazy with my photography hahaha

Roast Garlic creamy Orriechetti (with chorizo, roast tomatoes etc etc...) *Inspired by Nigel Slater*

And I also made Caramel Popcorn balls which I didn't manage to photgraph. So I think that this almost took me to 52 recipes - which you may recall was the target for my bucket list. Speaking of my bucket list, you may recall that my Birthday (June 30) was the cut-off to complete my list. Well June 30 has come and gone my friends and, as I anticipated, I didn't finish my list :P Here it was....

At first I was really disheartened that I couldn't finish it because the list was about bringing a sense of progression and accomplishment in day-to-day life. By not succeeding I felt I'd let myself and others down, but upon reflection I feel that I kicked ass in so many other areas of my life at the same time as working on the list and was happy with that. 'Change is the only constant in life' as they say, and lots of things changed in my life in this past year which meant my focus shifted and I invested more time and energy into those other areas.

So I have been reading lots of cool books, watching some cool stuff and finding some new potential obsessions! I have been writing lots and still doing reviews on Milk Bar Mag, and I have been learning and growing as a person too... I suppose that's no small feat. I have been taking on more stuff at work, and learning lots of new things too. I feel good about life these days, and it's all you can really hope for - a positive outlook and happiness :)

This is why I have decided to start a new list - one that I will not number and tick. One that I will not post here like the last one, one that involves doing nice things for other people rather than for myself. Seeing as my birthday/financial year both fall on the same day, it is like the change of years for me - and my new year list is already in action! I'll share some of the things i do on my list, but from now on I'll just be posting about random crap I see/do/think like in the old days!

I will post soon about my funtastic Birthday, and some other adventures I have been getting up to lately! Stay Tuned <3

Car Affair

2011-06-16T17:03:00.000+10:00

G'day g'day mates! Sorry, I'm a little brainwashed at the moment - I worked at a country car show on Sunday handing out showbags and have got this Aussie bogan twang going on. It was a fun day, I was representing "Just Cars" magazine, so got to drive their company v8 ute 2 hours out of Melbourne to Alexandra:

It was fun! I don't get WHY this car is amazing, but a lot of people there seemed to think it was! The day was called the "Alexandra Truck, Ute and Hot Rod" show, or something very much along those lines. My job was to hand out free magazines to willing passers-by. Easssy! I saw a few other promo girls floating around... in heels and with make-up plastered on their slutty bitch faces. I was more the honest down-to-Earth promo girl you may not see around much. They say sex sells, and on Sunday I was pretty far off the mark. Let me tell you why. At 1am on Sunday morning I thought I'd better hit the hay, and set my alarm for 5.30am so I could do my vintage hair and makeup. Unfortunately I set me alarm (yes ME alarm - i'm a bogan now remember) for mid-week and the alarm didn't go off. At 6.22am I woke with a fright looking for me phone and a time. When I realised what the time WAS, and that I was meant to be in Fitzroy in 8 minutes time... I cussed the house down and sprang around the room gathering belongings and looking for directions.

I left in a hurry, without doing me hair or make-up, not to mention not eating, showering, peeing or even brushing me teeth (or, chompers). Just literally up and out. I was a few minutes late (heh) and barely found the warehouse in the thick fog that blanketed Melbourne that day. Callum (the dude I was to be promo-ing with) said we had HEAPS of time and I could use the toilet before we left. Woo! We both hadn't eaten so we spent a portion of the 2 hour drive discussing breakfast plans, after we actually introduced ourselves of course!

So it was 2 degrees up there, and I was in the toilets applying makeup and doing my hair as the people started arriving. I treated myself to a hot coffee and foccaccia while Callum started packing showbags. After I'd handed out all 1,000 or however many, I took the liberty of wandering around and taking photos of some cool... or not so... things i saw!

Prepare yourself for this next one... this is a chick's car...

Instant Pig... Just add Rum. Wow.

I don't know if you can see that, but her hat has a tag saying "Fuck off we're full". Um... ok.... :S

This one was more about the dudes sinking piss at midday

What a day! I had lots of fun! There was some PRIME people watching to be had, and I accidentally made fun of mullets and rat-tails when Callum told me he used to have one... when he was 10. Oops! Good thing he was a good sport about it. Hahaha. Next time, if they want me, I'll be dressing up a little for sure! Imagine how many mags we could have pumped out if I had woken up on time!

Vintage Kitchen and Dish 45!

2011-06-03T11:13:00.001+10:00

That is my new butter dish - awesome, is it not? I bought it in Sassafras, up in the hills, on a rainy old Mothers Day only 1 month ago. The town of Sassafras has many hidden gems, one of which I stumbled across on my Mothers Day visit. It's called "Soak Bathecary" and is the nicest body shop I've ever seen! I'll take pictures next time I'm there, I promise! I bought a lovely perfume, which sadly 1 week later emptied into my handbag. I can still smell it on EVERYTHING. Anyway this new butter dish prompted me to model my 3 vintage aprons. I'm aware that putting a grey filter on pictures of old things is lame, but I couldn't help it.

My floral apron in Green, Yellow, Orange and White. (or in your case, grey, grey, grey and white)

Hand embroidered purple and white checked Swan apron!

Blue, Red and White spotty apron!

Funnily enough, I never wear an apron while cooking. My clothes are my apron and I always get messy! Speaking of which... I made lamb koftas the other night! Dish 45 of 52. Gotta pick up the pace!

They were verrrry good! I ate one, before freezing the rest for a future dinner :) Crunchy on the outside, soft and spicy on the inside! I even used Mint from my garden, how good! So yes, it has come to my attention that I only have a few weeks until my brithday, and the time limit for my bucket list. I have a few little tricks up my sleeve and there are even things I have failed to write about or am deliberating ticking off. I think I've done pretty well. One thing's for sure, next time I will not be so damn vague with my list items :D

Spoiled Rotten!

2011-05-31T17:01:00.000+10:00

Word recognition fail! I typed 'spoilt'... then changed to 'spoiled', now I don't even believe it's a word anymore. The point is that lately I have been spoiled in the food region! In the last few weeks, I have been invited for dinner 3 times :) Let's kick off with Josh's amazing parmesan and herb-crusted rack of lamb <3

Served atop a bed of buttery mash, some roasted cherry tomatoes, garlic, and asparagus! My god it was brilliant! He followed that stellar effort up a few days later by making Paella!!

It was also amazing! He didn't use seafood, but that's ok cos my favourite bit is the chorizo anyway :D Also I was taking leftovers to work the following day for lunch and i didnt want stinky prawns in the microwave!

If that wasn't good enough, my dad invited me over for some home-cooked Lasagna a la Zack! I love trying people's lasagna because you never get 2 lasagnas the same! They are always so individual and ALWAYS delicious. You can't really fuck up a lasagna, can you? Anyway, here are some pics of the yummy dinner they put on for me:

Greeted with beer, nice touch :)

Bubbly lasagna top with basil leaf detail, another nice touch!

Zack dishing up his creation

My first ever Golden Syrup Dumplings!

YUM!

The dumplings are kind of like donuts, cooked in a combination of Golden Syrup and sugar. We all felt a bit ill after eating them, that's fo sho! Needless to say, I was so full and satisfied after each dinner. There's always something special about being cooked for, i love it :)

Dish 44) SARMAAAAAA

2011-05-27T16:55:00.002+10:00

Last weekend I made a long overdue dish with some current and ex- workmates. The dish is called Sarma (roll the R), and my Serbian pal Dragana had told me all about it back in the day when we worked together!

It has proven to be quite the contentious little dish as my Croatian friend angrily objects that it is actually a Croatian recipe. And some Sri Lankan girls at work said "um.... isn't that Indian??" haha. Whatever it is, I can tell you that it rocks my warm Winter Socks off!

Here are some pics of the prep...

Here we have minced pork, minced beef, onion, capsicum, aborio rice, and a little mixture of carrot, parsley, garlic and paprika! On top of that, you also need some whole pickled cabbage leaves, water, vegeta stock, more paprika, bay leaves, an egg, smoked pork ribs and Spec (smoked bacon).

Start by cooking the onions for 20 mins, then add the capsicum for 5 mins, then the minced meat, then the spices, carrot mix and rice. Cook for about 20 mins until all browned and combined.

Next, take a cabbage leaf, fill it with mixture, and fold up into a little parcel!

Layer them in a pot with the Spec and ribs...

Fill with water, and add bay leaves, paprika and a bit of oil...

Cook for about 1.5 hours on the stove with a lid on, and serve up as below:

Yeah, it looks a little like a selection of body parts, but it is sooooo yum! If you are sceptical, I would compare it to something like Chop Suey/Chow Mein.. like an Aussie mama makes haha. Comfort food to the MAX!!!!!!!!!!

We had a nice day catching up in her lovely newly built house, and I was quite taken with her elaborate iPhone cover! It is so unevenly bumpy with bling that she can't rest put it down on its back!

2011-05-20T16:49:00.000+10:00

Wow, I have totally spaced on something cool and big. My 6 year anniversary with Josh!

We celebrated this about, oh... 2 months ago! Not writing about this is grounds alone for Josh to give me the flick. Well I'll make up for it now!

So I arranged accommodation at "The Blackman" hotel - one of the Art Series Group. They are very VERY cool! Don't get me wrong, the property was very lovely, but next time I think I'd try 'The Olsen' - it has a pool and is closer to more restaurants etc. My friend tried to warn me, but I wouldn't listen! So here is our balcony Suite for 2 nights:

So on our first night, Josh arrived super late so we got some room service dinner and lounged around in our big fluffy robes drinking red wine. I may or may not have spilled a few drops on my robe :S Of course I did... c'mon. Food is an all over experience!!

The next day in the city, we took the opportunity to do some shopping and lunch. Seeing as we both have champagne taste on a beer pay check, we went to the "Clear It" outlet on Brunswick Street Fitzroy to get some Jack London (for him) and Dangerfield (for me) items. The place was so intense. Because there weren't really any mirrors, we used my camera to model the things we liked. Here is Josh modelling but pretending to look casual. He is going to kill me for putting these up :D

Lovely <3 And here is me...

I don't know why it is so blurry. Either Josh doesn't know how to use a camera or he felt super self conscious in the girls section taking pics of his little lady so lifted it for a split second to take the picture before quickly lowering it.

Anyway he bought a few jackets and i bought... nothing! Unreal!! So we worked up an appetite and went a few doors up to the Little Creatures Dining Hall. It was awesome! You could leave your ID and borrow a board game. Naturally because Josh is obsessed with 'Words with friends' on iPhone... we got scrabble. We played at our own pace while eating, sampling the fine tap beers, and also while Josh juggled a few more scrabble games on his phone.

My yummy lunch! Beef and kipfler potato salad, with a poached egg. YUM!

Josh got a club sandwich on a chopping board :)

That night we mustered up the appetite and energy to go out for dinner to "The Kitchen Cat" (used to be Jamie Oliver's Fifteen) which is run by Tobie Puttock - who was working hard in the kitchen :) It is a really nice basement layout and has such delicious food, but I thought it was a little pricey - particularly the alcohol. There was a great selection but we just couldn't manage it :( frown frown. I had the best EFFING dessert there - a beautiful plump grilled peach with vanilla marscapone. DROOL!! Check out their site - you will be convinced to try it.

For the rest of our time we lounged around on the most comfortable bed I have ever slept on in my life. I pulled the sheets up to see what it was...

I'm now looking out for ex-art series hotel mattresses. Providing they don't come with ghosts and STI's :) ahhaha...

Celeb Crush: Rory Culkin

2011-05-10T15:09:00.000+10:00

Is it just me... or is there something about Rory Culkin?

I saw Scream 4 a few weeks ago and developed a bit of a crush on the character Charlie, played by Rory Culkin. I know what it is too, the hair. The long hair, the nerdy vibe, and the sexual inexperience- despite his chiselled face and attractive features. I love that shit. I wanted to show Charlie how it's done. A few people have told me I could be a good teacher, so I am going to imagine this is what they had in mind when they said that. Teaching skinny shy boys how to party (strictly in my imagination of course).

This all makes me recall the days when Josh and I were courting. Ahhh, those were the days indeed! There was me; the born and bred tom-boy trying to correct myself slowly by quitting skating, wearing more pearls and trying to learn how to rock a short hairdo without being mistaken (again) for a lesbian. And there was Josh- the skinny, shy, slightly nerdy guy with a chiselled jaw, Iron Maiden T-shirt, unrealised attractive features and hair longer than mine. A match made in heaven- well, at least that's what Wes Craven seemed to think when casting Charlie and Kirby!

Anyway, those were fun times. We would be walking down the street and someone would say "Excuse me, Miss?" and I'd turn around to respond, but they would be looking at Josh. Hmm... that was meant to be a joke but I have a feeling it could have actually happened.

This has always been a thing with me. You see, when I was a kid I went to Catholic Primary School, and in grade 3 we had to make First Holy Confession. I didn't have anything to confess so I made up a lie (as you do in confession...) that I had sinned by fighting with my brothers. The priest couldn't see me, and asked how many brothers I had. I told him two. He resonded "Wow, THREE boys? Your mum must have her hands full!" and my tiny but apparently gruff voice responded ".....I'm a girl...." to which he apologised. One other time I was getting my hair dyed and my housemate said I looked like my dad when I don't wear make-up. Oh god. It seems I've had to try extra hard to be noticed as a girl in this life. Perhaps that's why I overcompensate by wear pencil skirts and bust-enhancing tops? Who knows...

Anyway, I can be a little rough and Josh can be a little soft but we work pretty nicely together. For example, tonight I will be going to his place to drink beers and watch a doco about Grizzly bears (which I am promised has some gruesome fight and kill scenes) but maybe tomorrow we will be drinking tea together and i will be asking him which colour shoe looks best with my new skirt and knowing that I will get the correct answer.

I don't know what this has to do with Rory Culkin anymore, but I think the lesson is clear: I can't stick to a topic, but the result is still pretty entertaining. And Rory Culkin is awesome and why are there so many Culkins?

Dish 43) Fenek Moqli

2011-04-27T13:30:00.000+10:00

Heyyy!! So... Easter. When you think of Easter, do you think of Rabbits? Well I do :) And what better way to celebrate Easter than eating a rabbit? No better way, I say! My Maltese co-worker hooked me up with a recipe for a fried rabbit dish called Fenek Moqli.

Basically you buy a jointed rabbit, put it in a bowl with 2-3 bay leaves, some dried thyme, 3 cloves of sliced garlic, and cover it all with some dry white wine. Leave overnight to marinate. Then, heat oil and garlic in a pan and fry the peices, turning occasionally and using the white wine to baste, and stop the sticking.

Traditionally she said you are meant to serve it with hot chips... so Josh and I did a little spin on the tradition. Here is the finished product:

So it was sliced, parboiled desiree potatoes marinated in herbs and oil then grilled on the griddle pan. We also grilled some zucchini and arranged a nice little nest to place the rabbit on. Then we quickly made a gravy from the pan juices- it was delicious! I know it sounds cliché, but it tasted like chicken. It looked a bit like chicken too, and was just a little tougher - maybe that is characteristic of the meat, or maybe i cooked it too long? I thought it would be a red meat for some reason... Anyway Interesting!

So now I have 9 dishes left to go until I have finished my list of new recipes. I have picked out ones i want to make, so stay tuned :)

Writing Revolution!

2011-04-19T12:35:00.000+10:00

Hey all my lovely readers! I have some exciting news! You may already know this, but I have begun working with a cool website named "The Milk Bar Mag". I know a cool guy who writes for them and asked how he got involved, and he showed me the way! I e-mailed the cool Editor Dan a link to this very blog, and he seems to think I am also cool enough to get involved in the site! Cool, huh?

I think I will be mainly writing restaurant reviews for the Western Suburbs and around the Queen Victoria Market- both my stomping grounds! I will be testing out all the local cafes which are undiscovered little treasures! My first review was published yesterday entitled "Lunch In The Urban Jungle" and my next one will be up next week :) I am also currently researching my 3rd review :) woo!

So, not only have I been doing this, I am also pushing myself to review other things like movies and CD's on Ctrl-X and they sent me two movies and a CD to review last week. My deadline was Sunday so I spent a lot of my spare time listening, watching, researching and writing. I haven't done something like that since high school! Back then I wasn't very good at reviewing and god bad marks for it so I thought it might be empowering to conquer that fear now. I submitted reviews of Jebediah's new album Kosciuszko, the Edward Norton/Robert De Niro movie "Stone" and the martial arts film "Ip Man: The Legend is Born". So yes, they must have trusted my name or something to send me 3 things without ever working with me before. The ultimate test! I feel confident, apparently they liked the Jebediah review so we'll see.

I have my creative writing class tonight too, so you can see what's on the brain all the time hey? I also am going to be writing some poems soon, visiting a vegetarian restaurant soon, and next week will be doing my volunteer work! Woo! Also, I will be doing some cooking on this amazing long weekend I have coming up. Stay tuned :D

Train Poem

2011-04-18T16:53:00.001+10:00

I wrote this poem on a near-empty train in the late morning of last Tuesday. Thought I'd share it...

This noise on the train is intrusive,
to my sore and wind-whipped ears.
It certainly isn't conducive
to my poetry in arrears.

My head is throbbing away
and I sit here to wonder whether
hat hair is really so passé
and if I should have just donned one in this weather

As the rain runs down the glass
like liquid lightning bolts,
I look at the scenes I pass
and rock gently with the trains jolts.

This all has made me gloomy-
the wind, the rain, the chill.
As consolation, I'm at least roomy
and those around me don't seem ill.

If this counts towards my list, I have another 6 to go until I have written 12. I hope you enjoy what I try to pass as poetry :)

MACAROOONNNNSSS

2011-04-15T16:38:00.000+10:00

Can y'all guess what I made last weekend?? You smarty-pants, correct! Macaroons :D My friend Claudia arranged the whole thing and brought over some piping bags and food dye, and we got started!! I cannot even be bothered recounting every step of the process and every mistake we made or telling you how many HOURS it took, so please look at the pretty pretty pictures and see macaroons made easy:

They came out looking like little burgers.... They were meant to be bright pink haha! Something went wrong in the oven! The filling was a raspberry buttercream filling with some Maggie Beer 'Raspberry and Pomegranate' Jam mixed through!! It was freaking amazing. I had half a macaroon then Claudia took the rest along to a friend's party, but by the time I arrived (fashionably late) they were all gone! I guess it's a good sign that the macaroons were well received!! Kudos to me and Claudia for being good at stuff :) For some reason we agreed to re-convene and try it again in a few weeks. Oh dear :D

Oh, did I mention this is dish 42 of 52 for the list?? WOOHOO!! I'm just a bit worried about sleeping under the stars as Winter is setting in. Oh god.

Kitchen Musings

2011-04-08T14:41:00.000+10:00

It has been a while since I posted about cooking, so it is fair to assume that you fairly assumed I wasn't cooking. Thankfully, this is not the case! I have been having fun sweating it out in the kitchen, and have selected a few dishes from over the last month or so to write about. Life has been hurtling along, bringing with it many new avenues, opportunities and distractions for me. Many things have changed.. like my housemate Hayden moving out, my involvement in the writing course and having homework again (!), pushing myself to read more and write more in a notebook throughout the day, a new boss, a new kitten and unluckily, new car issues. I have lots on my mind and life feels full of possibilities and challenges to tackle!

Let's put all that aside for a second and step into the kitchen. My kitchen is a place where the little things on my mind twirl up into the exhaust fan along with the steam from a big pot of soup. Depending on my aggression levels that day, they may also get pulverised into oblivion as I knead (read: punch) some dough. I find cooking can be very therapeutic if you are open to the possibility. I'm sure this doesn't apply to everyone of course, but indulge me for a moment while I muse about one of my favourite past, present and future times: food.

Dish 38) Chicken and Apricot Tagine:

When I was a kid, my mum used to make "Apricot Chicken with Rice" from time to time. I really enjoyed the simple blend of canned apricot nectar, a few fresh ingredients, and a packet of seasoning. I thought we were stepping up from the classic Meat and three veg into the new wave of culinary fashion. As I became more snobbish I decided that Apricot Chicken was so passé, and I couldn't possibly like it anymore. Overnight it went from something I would squeal "woohoo!" about when Mum told me what she was cooking, to something I would roll my eyes at. Lately, I have realised that those childhood gems have become, whether I like it or not, comfort food. I was feeling nostalgic enough to want some Apricot Chicken but not enough to actually execute my plan. I thought about the meat/fruit combination and realised it is reminiscent of Moroccan tagines with apricots and preserved lemons involved. I decided to put a spin on the Apricot Chicken I grew up with, and made this Tagine. It was Chicken, Apricot and for some reason I put olives in there too.

The recipe was delicious but I accidentally overcooked the chicken so it went a little dry :( It was tasty, but certainly didn't meet the comfort food/nostalgia requirement. I may just have to pick myself up a can of Apricot Nectar next time I'm at the supermarket!

Dish 39) Dutch Apple Pie
This recipe comes from the Dutch cook book my pal Jim let me borrow. He put a little post-it flag on the page meaning I should try to make it. It was quite tasty, but I wasn't happy with it at the end. The recipe didn't call for you to bake the shortcrust pastry base first before adding the wet fillings.. so as a result, the base was undercooked and a bit soggy. Also, the apples went in raw and at the end I wished I had stewed them for a little bit to soften them. My dad thought too much cinnamon... but I thought not enough :) It was a controversial little pie, that is for sure. I liked the idea of simmering the raisins in orange juice on the stove, the flavour was delicious!!

Dish 40) Breakfast Pizza

I saw a recipe for this on Smitten Kitchen yonks ago, and I have never forgotten it. Pizza for BREAKFAST?! Unheard of!! Josh and I made this after I got home from Adelaide a few weeks back. We were too hungry so we bought pizza bases instead of making fresh dough. Also, we changed the recipe to include tomato paste - mm-mmm!

I really loved it, but perhaps half a pizza each is enough next time. And most of the eggs were over-cooked so the yolk was like a yellow rubber disc. Not nice! I had one good one - and it happened to be the first one I ate. Then everything went down hill. If you make this, it's definitely better to have the egg a little runny than overcooked BLAHHHHHH!

Dish 41) Peppery Lamb Curry

I got this new cookbook called "INDIA" by Pushpesh Pant, which I am a bit obsessed with. It comes in a little "rice sack" bag for your carrying pleasure! The pages are a thin paper - like yellow pages - and the book is divided into coloured sections for appetizers, mains, vegetarian, breads, grains/pulses. The photography is cool and rustic and colourful and from the 3 recipes I have followed - the food is awesome! I still have 997 recipes to go until I've clocked the book! This was my favourite of the three:

The guy at the spice store convinced me to buy this 5kg sack of rice. He said it would last 10 years. Chester is a fan!

Oh yummmmm! Lots of different chili powders and fresh and dried chillies went into this!! The only thing I'd change is to cut back on the Ghee, I got so many pimples a few days after eating this and the other curries I made in the following days. My body is not used to so much ghee or butter and broke out like a muvva bitch.

Sleep Deprivation Experiment

2011-04-04T15:06:00.000+10:00

For some reason, I wanted to beat my measly record of 33 hours without sleep. This is the reason I put the item on my bucket list "Do not sleep Friday or Saturday night" - I was aiming for 48 hours of waking. I can only assume I was on crack when I decided this and as you can see, I have been avoiding this list item ever since. Well, I finally decided to go for it on Friday. Let me set the scene of my last attempt.

About 6 years ago some buddies and I were talking over MSN and decided not to sleep that night and reconvene the following day at the Nip/Tuck-athon. So we went out seperate ways and did our thing. My only memory of the night was sitting in my bedroom with my back against the bed watching TV all night. If I felt tired I would get up and go for a walk and have some watery coffee. Somehow I made it through the night and caught up with Josh in the morning and we walked from his house to Simon's house to commence the Nip/Tuck-athon. I struggled not to faint or vomit on the walk, and was surprised to find the walk revived me. When I arrived at Simon's, I found out that both Simon and Corey had fallen asleep and were feeling quite defeated. Simon had tried to listen to Iron Maiden to stay awake but instead Bruce serenaded him to sleep. They were trying to get me to fall asleep so my record number of hours wasn't too high, so they had prepared a mattress on the floor with pillows and blankets for me to sit on and watch Nip/Tuck. I stayed awake all day watching episode after episode, and even hallucinated seeing a cat in the room. I can't remember what time I fell asleep but the record was 33 hours. Not really much when you think about it.
I saw a documentary on SBS about sleep deprivation a while ago and the host decided to test himself out, so he hung out with this man who held a sleep deprivation record. The host lost his mind slowly, his appearance became unkempt and he was sitting under a tree at night trying to stay awake and started talking jibberish. It was a very interesting doco. So I suppose I wanted to attempt it again but record what I think and feel seeing as I couldn't remember the last time.

So Friday morning I got up at 7:00am and went to work. It wasn't until half-way through the day that I decided I might as well just try it. The original plan was to just go 1 night and then the following weekend go for 2 nights. I didn't think I could go the double straight away. I should also preface this sleep deprivation account by explaining another intention for the weekend. I have been doing a creative writing course and I thought that the extra hours of waking would allow me to write some quality stuff and also get through the pile of books I had to read. This was the main thing I wanted to achieve over the weekend, and as long as I beat my record I was happy. I thought I could kill 2 birds with one stone and also use the time to get to know my new kitten Peanut:

What a cute little gal! So here is a kind of time-line of how my weekend went...

Friday

7:00am- Woke up
8:30am- 5:00pm- Work
5:00pm- After work drinks. Wondered if the pint of beer would put me to sleep on the train ride home.
6:39pm- Got the train heading home
7:30pm- Dinner at mum's place - had some red wines - again wondered if i was sabotaging myself.
8:30pm- Left mum's with my brothers. Stopped into my place to visit the new cat - the house was empty so there was no stimuli.
9:00pm- Went to dad's place to hang out with my brother/dad.
9:32pm- Starting to feel tired already.
9:34pm- My first yawn. Got out my Baby Box(es) from the roof to go through and look at all my old school work and stories etc.

Grade 6 Jumper, still fits. Somehting is so wrong with that...

"I can make people into snakes" from Grade Prep...

No idea what the hell this is about. It is an anti-racism thing I think. I hope.

SATURDAY

1:20am- Got back home from Dad's, played with Peanut and did the dishes. If I sit down it will be all over.

1:30am- The house is too quiet, put the tv on. Flicking through the channels I see "Desperately Seeking Susan" with Madonna in her 'Like a Virgin' style garb, "Barber Shop 2" and Entourage. I really don't like Entourage. I got told by a male friend that it's like the male equivalent of Sex and the City, so I can't talk too much trash on it. All I will say though is that I can't stand Kevin Dillon. He looks like a mix between his brother and Kevin Bacon. I'm not exactly a fan or either, and the combo is just disturbing. I saw a movie on one channel called "One Nite in Mongkok" which made me laugh. Not only because of the dirty sounding name, but also because I found out Mongkok is the name for Hong Kong's Red Light district. This is made even funnier because there is a restaurant in Adelaide called Mongkok where my cousin Bec had her birthday dinner! I turn over to rage and watch some videos. Eventually I put on Skins to watch, and Maki comes home around 2.30 or 3:00am and we get to talking.

3:00am- Eat some boiled vegetables for my second dinner.
4:00am- Maki goes to bed and I make myself a coffee and put on "High Tension" to write a film review for practice.

4:30am- I feel the muscles in my face acting of their own accord and they feel as though they want to be slack and rest. Some time later I write that my knuckles and joints hurt because I am not giving my body a chance to rest.

4:45am- I write that Red-heads like Mike Bailey (Sid from Skins) and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) are the kind of Red-heads that I'm attracted to. The colouration of their skin, and lips is the key.

5:37am- I have an intense internal monologue going on. I am having a conversation in my head and there is a running commentary of everything I see. For example: "Ok, here is the plan. I will go over here and clean this thing, and after that I'll go into my room and.....". I also feel a bit nauseous for the first time.

5:49am- Feel the first waves of physical tiredness: shivers or goosebumps washing over me.

5:59am- I heard a car engine start - people are going to work now. My eyes don't want to focus on anything, and blinking is becoming dangerous. My hands are going numb and I need more oranges. (?)

6:08am- Decide to wax and do some beauty treatments like a facial and manicure to stay awake. Sitting is not working out for me.

6:43am- Eating an orange. Decide I cannot possibly go to bed now, I have way too much to do. I have gotten my 3rd wind, and Peanut has gotten her 27th. This cat never stops!! Walking from the kitchen to the bathroom I think I see a man standing near the hallway. It was a jolt that woke me up even more.

6:58am- I heard my first morning warble, I'm racing the sun.

7:02am- Thought I heard a knock at the bathroom door. Starting to feel paranoid. Luckily the sun is coming up and the shadows are retreating. I have made it 24 hours.

7:08am- Kind of missed the sunrise. I'm sitting in the middle of the backyard on a chair staring at the sky. The air is so fresh and I can hear a shrill cricket to my right, and a bird chippering away in the tree above the cricket.

7:17am- Decide to have a shower to welcome the new day. Have to decide whether or not to change my clothes. Will it be good to make a clear distinction between one day and the next? I change my t-shirt and underwear but nothing else.

8:14am- I realise I have so much reading and writing to do today and can really get heaps done. If my kitten still has energy after a night of no sleep then surely I will be fine also. I clean the rangehood.

9:01am- Peanut put herself to bed. Turncoat!!

Decide to watch some TV - I watch Hannah Montana where she has writers block - how fitting!

10:15am- Decide to do a load of washing and put on Six Feet Under in my room. I'm kneeling my the mirror doing my hair and make-up and watching it in the reflection. Each episode goes for 1 hour so I think this could be my ticket to victory!

12:00pm noon- Josh arrives. He starts work at 1:00pm and finishes at 6:30pm. I tried to convince him to not sleep Saturday night with me... but he wasn't interested seeing as he had work at 7:00am the next day.

1:00pm - Josh is gone, Maki has gotten up and we go to get KFC for lunch. I know I will regret eating this.

I am trying to write my film review up into a coherent body of text, but my brain isn't working and i feel myself relaxing and fading into sleep as I sit at the laptop.

4:43pm- This is the worst I have felt. Sore, tired, no motivation to do anything at all, and cannot even write or read.

5:00pm- Walk to the shops to buy a pumpkin
5:30pm- Start cooking dinner. Cooking is a good task that takes up time.

6:30pm- Josh gets home and has a shower as I finish making the curries. He says I look sick. I'm not even offended because I know he is right.

8:30pm- Josh reminds me that it is daylight savings and I wind my clock back one hour. It's only 7:30pm now. What a blow.
We eat the curries sitting in my bed watching Peep Show. I am barely capable of laughter even though I know it is funny. I am not tired and don't want to sleep, I'm just a shell of a person. My brain is not even allowing me to plan things I could do to kill time. I have never been so literally in the moment. The cats are fighting and hissing at each other and I lose my temper and start going a bit hysterical. Josh suggests I have a shower and calm down. In the shower I realise that I haven't really written anything, my bookmark is still in the same place it was on Friday morning, and I am incapable of feeling any joy. I count the hours of waking: 39. I then make the decision to go to bed. I thought at least I could get some stuff done on Sunday.

In hindsight, it's hard to say if I succeeded or failed. I succeeded in beating my record but I failed at producing anything good except for a notebook full of rambling incoherent handwriting, a clean rangehood, a clean dishwasher, and a few less weeds in the garden. If anything I was less productive than usual on a weekend. The staying awake doesn't really bother me but the frustration of not accomplishing much really in my free time does. I am going to say that my curiosity is satisfied for now, I have increased my waking limit, the list item is more or less accomplished, and now I have some serious writing and reading to do before tomorrow's writing class *eep*

Adelaide, my old friend!

2011-03-29T17:25:00.001+11:00

Adelaide is a little bit like our cousin to the west who we visit sometimes. They are cool to visit for short periods of time, and you have some amazing times, but sometimes you notice they don't have things at their place that you really enjoy and take for granted back home. It's not until you're hung over and hungry on a Sunday morning in Adelaide that you realise how much you love going out for breakfast in the city. Hell, back home you did it all the... well... maybe twice a year if the mood strikes. After you've passed your fourth "Closed" sign on a cafe door... you start to feel that "I wan't my muuu-uum!" tantrum rising up inside you, like it did on Day 1 of school. Year 7 was daunting, what can I say? If you know how to have fun, or know a local who does... then Adelaide is actually a great little getaway. You still have most of the city comforts (unless skyscrapers are your 'thing') but with the added bonus of less people, less traffic, less noise and lots of unspoilt natural views.

Luckily for me, I know how to have fun, and so does my cousin Bec who lives in Adelaide. For those of you who haven't followed this blog for long, I should point out that this latest Adelaide Adventure is just one of my countless trips to the S of A. I haven't really gone THAT many times but I have already lost count which must say something. On second thought, I think all it really says is that I'm not very good at counting to 10...

I realised that it had been about a year since my last visit, which Bec and I both agreed was far too long. I also realised with horror that I had been away for so long that I didn't know 2 of her new housemates and had to make new friends and good impressions!! (Just like Peter Pan *sob*) I have a feeling that Bec might talk me up to her friends privately, so I felt a definate need to perform for these 2 new housemates and prove that our family aren't all a bunch of liars.

This time around I chose to fly as I didn't fancy an eight hour solo car trip. Either I would have picked up a serious caffeine addiction, fallen asleep at the wheel, wrapped my car around the giant Koala's left nut, or worse... run out of This American Life podcasts to listen to on the way back home, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Anyway, I had some reading to do, and I'm not very good at reading and driving. Just kidding, mum and dad! So, reliable old Dad dropped me at Avalon Airport and I was quite amazed to see some of the improvements inside since my last visit. There was even a 10-minute massage lady there who I never worked up the courage to approach. I thought about asking her to work on my right shoulder where some absent-minded guy had just elbowed me while putting his arm around his girlfriend, not realising that I had been sitting behind him for at least half an hour reading. Well, I should say trying to read... as their conversation and neccessary eavesdropping was so distracting! It took me some time to work out that I wasn't sitting behind John Saffran. I've never heard the word Anti-Semitist used in day to day life before. I guess I must hang out in the wrong circles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not playing B-ball with Edward Norton in prison or anything, I'm waaaaay far from that scene. I'm usually jealous of anyone with a bit of cultural background - these cats were Jewish-Australian and were talking about the meal, nay BANQUET, they would be eating for dinner in Adelaide. I was trying to work the names of the dishes but I'm not well versed on Jewish cuisine. Sadly, in more ways than one, all I know about Jewish cuisine is learnt from The Nanny or The Big Bang Theory.

Anyway, upon arrival at Bec's place, we started off our weekend (Thursday afternoon) with a drink and some cheese. It seemed like a divine idea at the time!!

It wasn't long until her first foreign-to-me housemate got home from work with an arm-full of tie-dye accessories. Here's what I know about Matt. He's in a band called "Isle of Vision", is really chilled in a hippie surfie way, has big fuzzy brown hair, is funny and loves to tie-dye. Dislikes: being called "Dad" by cheeky girls from Melbourne. I may be missing several key personality points, but what can I say, I'm just a lovable scamp and my pretty pictures can detract from the lack of information. While we tie-dyed we listened to some mood-setting CD's selected by Matt. My favourite was a band called "LOVE".. if they weren't off their chops when they wrote that albumn, then I'm a deep sea cucumber. Here's a tip I'd like to share: The first rule of tie-dye is usually PUT ON GLOVES, so heed the advice. But rules are meant to be broken right? Well we all had blue fingers later that night. Bec and I were heading out to the Garden of Un-Earthly Delights as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival to see some shows. Unfortunately we had already consumed 2 bottles of champagne before leaving her house and, as if by divine intervention, as soon as we stepped off the bus in the city we were handed a "ladies night" coupon for a free vodka. It was a sign. We must get messy. Here is me just after the vodka, showing my blue fingers... and full bosom. I must have been a little tipsy if I'm looking through the viewfinder of a digital camera....

We arrived at the Garden (Rundle Park on East Terrace) and as it was a Thursday night we had room to move and be silly and take pictures.

Do you see what I see?......

Scream Mask, oh yeah! So let's just say we had lots of fun from what we can remember, and the following afternoon after I had finished feeding her front lawn and had re-gained the use of my legs, we went to inspect our tie-dye handy-work! Pretty neat-o huh?

Here is housemate Matt and his band in the Local Paper... They got one of the guys names wrong and it became a house joke :)

It was on this Friday that we heard news of the Tsunami and earthquakes in Japan, and we followed the news story while I tried not to worry too much about Shiho. She is fine, in case you are wondering, but she dropped out of contact for a few weeks! Stress!! Speaking of stress, we came home on Saturday afternoon to find two birds in the kitchen, slamming into walls and furniture in their panic to get out. They throught if they hit the walls hard enough they might penetrate it and end up outside I think. It wasn't until Bec rescued them and set them free (while i stood flat against the furthest wall) that she told me about the last time it happened and pointed out the blood on the roof to prove it. Yucck!

So, Bec's housemate Megan was jealous of our awesome Tie-dye and wanted a turn, so we arranged for another session. Check out the one I made - I'm wearing it... and notice I am wearing gloves too!!

Sadly, it wasn't my t-shirt, I just used one of the housemate's spares to work my magic on. My own results the second time around were not as impressive! I didn't even take pictures... that's really saying something for me :) This is Bec's... I love how much white there is! It reminds me of 90's acid wash or something...

Saturday night I got to visit "Good Life" Organic Pizza store. There is one in Glenelg and one in the City - that's the one we went to! I got an amazing mushroom pizza with aioli, and Bec got a roast veggie pizza - complete with roast beetroot. The Hessian Sack swag and tail curtains in the bay window were simply adorable!

We went back to the garden to catch up with some more Adelaide crew - including Tom, an avid home cook and youtube chef who has his own wood fire pizza oven at his house!!! Next time we are going to arrange a pizza cook-up! Saturday night we saw "Cantina" - a Spanish acrobatic show in the Speigel Tent (sp?) which blew my mind! The tent was gorgeous, and the acrobats had so much multi-faceted talent, and I even saw a guy naked. Value for money: I think yes! Sunday, my last day, was beautiful weather. My aunty Christine and her husband Dennis came to pick us up and take us to the Barrossa Valley! I love going places with them, I feel like a little kid again!! They pack us chilled water and snacks in the back of the 4WD and we sit in the back giggling like we would have around age 10 :)

In particular, we visited MAGGIE BEER'S FARM!! I don't know if you know, but I love Maggie Beer! She is a South Australian cook, who has released some cook books, has a supermarket line of preserves and products made from Barrossa produce, and is on the show "The Cook and the Chef". I love her, I wish she was an aunty or grandma of mine :) *sigh* look how happy i was to be at her cute little pheasant farm/shop/cafe....

I spent a fair bit of money there, but it was worth it. I wanted to buy more! My lovely aunty bought me a product I have covetted for months now: Verjuice. She also bought me a book written by Maggie on how to cook with Verjuice! Luckkkyy!! I also picked up some Pomegranate and rasberry jam, some tomato, basil, olive and rocket sugo, and some Barrossa tomato sauce!

As always on my trips to Adelaide, I come back with way more than I went with. I had such a good time and can't wait to get back there! Next Fringe Festival, here i come!!

Restaurant Review: Shou Sumiyaki

2011-03-25T16:30:00.003+11:00

Hi Everyone! It appears we meet again! :) I gotta say, I am about to talk about something that happened literally weeks ago :O I am so far behind in finishing my post drafts, it's not even a joke! Well it actually is a joke, a disgrace if you will. Life has me in a wrestling move, maybe something called a... choke-hold? That analogy has lead me to realise I'm not well-versed in wrestling terminology, so let's do a restaurant review instead!

Shou Sumiyaki

160 Little Bourke Street

Melbourne VIC 3000

Shou Sumiyaki, nestled just inside the big colourful gateway of Chinatown, is this cool little Japanese Restaurant I visited a few weeks ago. Or do I mean... Koren BBQ Restaurant? No no, I mean Japanese. I think. It certainly had a Korean BBQ vibe to it, as the food comes delivered to your table on dainty little plates which you can cook yourself on the table-top grill. Luckily I'm not as arrogant as the Japanese food purist on the next table, and can just shut up and enjoy the good food.

We ordered a special combo so that we might try a bit of everything, and were given a good amount of food in my opinion- which some may say is a little too much. The starters included fresh cucumber salad in a sesame/white miso dressing, a crab dish, miso soup and lovely steamed rice. My memory is a tad hazy on the details as it was so long ago and I didn't make many notes. Bad Jade, BAD Jade!

The friendly staff removed their shoes to walk into our sacred dining zone and fired up our grills. Thus commenced the meat procession, in which they carried little plates of meat out to the table and explained what each plate was in case we didn't know. Scotch... Oyster blade... Ribs... Wagyu... the words were flying around as we discussed our favourites and their prefered cooking times.

I discovered something about myself during this dinner - I. Love. Ribs. I'm not just talking about the visible rib cage of my svelte boyfriend, I'm really talking about the edible type. Ever had chicken ribs? You should. My friend's dad is a butcher and he does some amazing marinated chicken ribs. It's cut up into little individual rib bones with a bit of tender and delicious meat attached! I'm also partial to pork ribs, and am working on my goal of one day having the Flinstones style giant ribs attached to the side of my car. A girl can dream. There is something about the meat in that area of an animal's body that I really enjoy... the taste, texture and fat:meat ratio - it's has it all.

I'm sure my eyes glazed over mid-meal as I was transported back to my Osaka home-stay in 2003. We stayed in a little traditional hut in the mountains and in between riding uni-cycles and playing with a three-legged stray dog we cooked our own meals from scratch. One night we made a dish named "Niku yaki" meaning 'grilled meat'. Basically we had a bucket full of hot coals with a mesh grill lid and we grilled vegetables and meat on it while sitting cross legged in a circle around the cooking pit. I have to say, Shou Sumiyaki was a little more up-scale than that and we even used Wagyu beef as a matter of course.

I spent my dinner blathering on about this or that, and warning my friends passively about one of my pet hates: People who can't pronounce Wagyu Beef and incorrectly say 'Way-goo'. It makes me die inside.

We each got $10 beers and the whole thing worked out to $50 each. For some fresh, good quality food and a big old Japanese beer... I was very impressed! Next time I feel like grilling my food I will think of this place before any other :)

The Holy Laksa Grail

2011-03-17T13:11:00.000+11:00

Seriously guys, is Laksa amazing or is Laksa a*Maze*inG 'Oprah Style' with a capital "G" at the end??? I simply LOVE this dish!! I can't recall my first brush with the bowl of golden gastronomic gold, but I can tell you that I have never looked back since.

For those out there who aren't quite sure what I am jizzing about, Laksa is a spicy noodle soup from Singaporean/Malaysian influence. It has been adopted by almost every Asian take-away joint I know, so it's not too hard to find. In the world of Laksa, there are two main categories: Curry Laksa (coconutty curry-base noodle soup) and Asam Laksa (sour fish-based noodle soup). So far in my years of Laksa loving, I am yet to try the second category and I've always stuck to the Curry Laksa.

Here's what I know about Curry Laksa - which isn't much. There is a delicious orangey/golden coconut curry sauce, in which you can find noodles and toppings. There are usually 2 types of noodles used - thin rice Vermicelli noodles, and a thicker type of noodle- everywhere I've had Laksa here serves a Yellow Hokkien-type noodle.

Toppings usually include puffed tofu, some type of seafood and/or chicken, and maybe some type of vegetable. Usually here you can choose Seafood, Vegetarian or Chicken Curry Laksa.
When working at the Reception Desk of a backpacker hotel a few years back, I used to work evening shifts from 3pm - 11.30pm. In the winter, you can imagine that the tourism industry isn't maxing out, so I was usually doing uni homework or reading, then of course dealing with the occasional guest. The down-time gave me a chance to work up my appetite and crave a hot dinner - usually Laksa. I would wait until around 8 or 9 then go around the corner to get take-away Laksa. I thought it was soooo good. It was ok, but in hindsight I didn't know what I was missing.

This new place has opened up near work called "Coconut House" on Elizabeth Street, which advertise that they serve traditional Malaysian Street food. It is packed with Malaysian and Singaporean people every single day, and is so busy that they had to open "Little Coconut House" a few doors down to accommodate. I finally went a few weeks back to try their hand at Laksa, but i was busy at work so needed take-away styyyle:

I got the Traditional Curry Laksa and scuttled back to my desk like a crab under a rock who has just found something so amazing that he wants to hide it away from the world in case any nearby seagulls swoop in to steal it, rendering him without purpose in this world therefore he has no option but to throw himself into the murky depths of the ocean whereupon he realises he can actually swim and the whole gesture was un-neccesarily dramatic and pointless... Err... yeah so LAKSAAAA...

This Laksa had Vermicelli, hokkien noodles, some soft and melty grilled Eggplant (an amazing touch) , bean shoots, two big juicy prawns brushed with what looks like sambal chilli paste, 4 squares of puffed tofu, 2 seafood noodle things, chicken breast-meat, and chopped coriander. The sauce was also delicious but not too spicy!

I was feeling like a cold was coming on, but after devouring the whole thing my nasal passage was clear and i was energized and feeling amazing! The healing properties of Laksa!! So because I always go on about Laksa in my own head and to a few others, I feel like I should try to locate my favourite Laksa. Everyone has their different tastes of course, and I've never had a traditional Laksa in Malaysia or Singapore so I am really just some hack whose word aint worth shit BUT I know what I'm looking for. Join me on the adventure for the holy laksa grail.

I've developed a rating system for the laksas out of puffed tofus. This Laksa gets 3.5 tofu puffies out of 5.

So I guess I should break it down.. I loved the topping selection but the tofu was chewy - I've had much better tofu in laksa before and for me this is a big deal. The chicken was tender and tasty! I have had Laksas before where the chicken is kind of grey and it's off-putting.

The sauce was awesome, could have been a little spicier I think - it is probably traditionally very spicy.
Well, after writing this out, I am tempted to bump it up to 4 Puffies, but as it is my first one. I'll use it as a benchmark for now and then after a few reviews i will standardise the results. They used to do this at school if everyone went Reeeeallly bad on a test haha! I have also eaten at "Laksa King" in Flemington which is super amazing and popular, so I will officially review that soon!

So wish me luck on my quest for the holy laksa grail, and if you know of any good places around Melbourne please let me know :)

a little peace and quiet

2011-03-07T14:55:00.000+11:00

Have you ever had one of those days when you just need to be away, in the middle of nowhere, just... away? Well I experienced this rare desire on Sunday. Normally I am quite happy to be at home to sort through my thoughts there, but yesterday I decided I needed to be near running water for some reason. I hope this doesn't mean I'm losing the plot, like the water is calling me to it and then I slowly march in and never re-surface. That is... until I resurface one town over next to a little child making what would be their very last sand-castle before they developed a phobia. Anyway, so I felt like I couldn't concentrate on reading or writing at home and I needed to be in a more open natural area.

I think this desire may have had something to do with the fact that I spent all of Saturday in bed due to some overzealous partying on Friday night. It was a shame I was the only one on that level and the only one hung-over because there was nobody to sympathise with. All I got were other people's recollections of what I said or did and who I yelled "SLUT" at... much to my brother's amazement. I can't say I'm terribly proud of my cheekier actions but I obviously had an amazing time. Josh said I was being a dork and he was happy that I was happy. What a guy <3

So Saturday was interesting. Once my body had expelled most of the demons I realised I couldn't really move - or at least it wasn't a good idea to. Josh got up and went for a walk and made a delicious breakfast for himself and then went to work at 1pm. I was still dying. I tried to have a shower but standing up for that long simply made things worse and the heat of the water made me feel like I was going to pass out. It was then that I realised that binge drinking is no longer something that I can do very well. Back in bed, I was glad to see that I had a tube of Pringles, some Oranges, water and a remote within arms reach. And so commenced the "Six Feet Under" healing marathon. With each episode and orange segment, I felt life slowly filling my body like the formaldehyde in the show. So I got out of bed at 5.30pm and tried to act like I CHOSE to spend my day in bed. I wasn't foolin' nobody.

So after that little effort, I was certainly looking to get out and about on Sunday. I went for a drive to a semi-local spot I had actually never visited. I thought it would be nice and quiet there at one of the lookouts off the carpark, but within 5 minutes of sitting down I was already witness to some "hoon" behaviour. One car was trying to impress.... me?..... and did a SICK burnout on the gravel or the car park for about, oh 15 seconds, and then took off onto the windy road screeching for the next 15. How attractive. Obviously a man with money who can splash out for new tyres every other week! How I remained sitting there fully clothed during that display is beyond me. Maybe they were hoping that the power of their burn out would blow my clothes right off? Wankers. Anyway, once the smell of burning rubber was gone I could focus on my little picninc table. There was a sign that I chose the right table for me:

I swear that wasn't my handy work. Unless I tend to sleepwalk to far away secluded places to graffiti wooden tables. That sounds like something I'd do right? Anyway, once I picked my table, I admired the view.. it was green and quiet and lovely.

I sat down with my books and did some quality reading.

This is from a book Josh got me called "The Art of Salad Making" from 1968. It's pretty cute. I love the opening line to the book:

It made me laugh out loud the first time I read it. I continued to read more of her anecdotes and thoughts. For some reason this line struck me: "The hostess who gets carried away is a dreadful menace."

I planned to stay for a long while but the comings and goings of the cars in this secluded spot were distracting me immensely! After the first car burned off, there was a second car full of guys tearing it up and yelling out, then an Indian family got out and sat at the next lookout for 5 minutes before leaving, then another car pulled up a bit too close for comfort. I could hear the pop and crunch of the gravel on tyres slowing down like a roulette wheel behind me. I tried not to look around, because that would let THEM know I was freaking out. It probably didn't help that at this point I was reading a book about murders and attacks and disappearances. They killed the engine and sat in the car for a minute or 2, while I pretended to read and put my glasses back on (all the better to see you with). When I heard the car door open and close I tensed up and a classic Peep Show quote ran through my head: "They're going to kill me and burn me in the bath". (HINDSIGHT LOL) I heard the crunching of feet approaching me and wondered what the hell I was doing keeping my back turned. I spun around to see this middle aged lady with a massive camera come to take pictures of the view. She ignored me, so i went back to my reading, this time with a higher BPM. After a while I was alone again, so naturally I took the opportunity to get a self portrait looking pensive ;)

Oh yeah, that's the stuff. Look at that vulnerability- I was asking for it. Ok enough of that. So ends my first (un-succesful) journey to find a quiet thinking space. Something tells me I may be in the wrong suburb for it :P

lovely love

2011-03-02T17:00:00.001+11:00

Ladies and gents, that envelope contains the first love letter I ever wrote to my Josh- back on February 14th (that's right) 2005. wow :) I think I explained this before - how we weren't quite dating and he didn't know my feelings were reciprocal until I gave him this letter. It was one of my most anxious moments sitting beside him as he read through it.

Now, as you know, I am quite a creative person and always have to be doing something. Before the blog (and you) got all my creative attention... there was Josh. I suppose you could say he was my muse. I wrote stories, comics, poems, letters, drawings and little love notes by the bucket-load. Actually, more like... by the BOX load- as he stored them in some gift boxes and shoe boxes. I realised not long ago that he didn't seem to have those sacred documents anymore. He explained they were still in the wardrobe of his old bedroom at his Mum's house. You could imagine my shock. I had to retrieve them before they became house-hold reading material. I had this horrible mental image of his mum and sister perusing the collection over breakfast going "Ooh, here's a good one!". I didn't want them to know exactly which parts of Josh I liked best, expressed via the art of poetry. I didn't REALLY write a penis poem or anything like that, but there are some fairly incriminating documents. Here are some pics of the more creative and less sickening displays of my affection..

I made this booklet for Josh when he got Chicken Pox in 2005. We had only been dating for a few months and I wasn't allowed to visit him as his house was a disease-ridden quarantine zone. I'm pretty sure his brother and sister both had the pox too. Josh was 18 at this point so it hit him pretty hard. He was zonked out on Phenergan for about 2 weeks and I didn't hear from him. Of course I was freaked out and thought he was dying. Always melodramatic. When I got finally in touch with him he could remember reading the messages but then fell asleep for 3 days or something and forgot about them. What a relief. My boyfriend was now a junkie :) Here's a picture i stuck in there of us 'just as friends' at a dress up party in early 2005.

I love his embarrassed smile- it slowly rises from one corner like a fish-hook pulling at his lip :) I used to call it "The Hook" naturally. Below is a pirate book I made for some anniversary. Maybe like 74th day anniversary or something ridiculous like that.

When Josh tried to grow his first full beard I noticed the red hairs in it that I'd never noticed before- so came the name "Captain Red Beard". OMG check this out...

That's me nearly 6 years ago in full Pirate garb :) Anyway part of the reason I went through all the letters and drawings was because our 6 year anniversary is coming up this month and I was feeling nostalgic. As you can imagine, we toned down the amount of letters and gifts to one another and now do Birthdays, Yearly Anniversaries and Christmas only. It was getting insanely time consuming and it almost became this intense game of One-Upmanship that saw us colouring in pictures at 3am by lamp-light. I remember one Birthday Josh made me close my eyes while he put the finishing touches on a card he was making me. DRAW FOR ME JOSH, DRAWWWWW *whip-crack*

It is nice to look back on all that stuff, and it's also interesting to read what I had to say back then. I feel like I have been through a lot in the last 6 years have been doing lots of soul searching lately as I feel like I have changed beyond belief. Reading the letters, it is just clear to me now that I am still the same Jade... I just have a more busy and complicated life so I kinda live for myself and don't make a million presents all the time. I get too caught up in the trivial dramas of day-to-day life and forget birthdays until a week prior - not enough time to make comics. I would like to do more nice things for others this year - hopefully i can share this with y'all :)

Abandonment Issues

2011-02-28T14:28:00.002+11:00

Hell YEAH! Another Bucket List item is now complete :) That being "Visit an Abandonment and take photos". Ever since I stumbled across Michael John Grist's blog about Urban Exploration in Japan I have been fascinated by the thought of wandering around in the dark with my heart in my throat. Sounds funny I know. I used to stare longingly out the train window as I went past some dark and scary abandoned factories near South Kensington Station - they looked perfect. I was working up the courage to visit these long coveted scum-holes when I noticed they started to clean them up for re-use. Shattered. I left it for a while and only started thinking about abandonments again 2 weeks ago. This is when Jim chose to mention the location of an abandonment he knew to me. The timing was perfect. Join Jim, Josh and I on an adventure to the darker side of life....

Our intention of course was simply to explore and leave everything un-disturbed- such is the code of the Urban Explorers. Jim said to watch out for homeless people here, so I crept close up behind Josh to use him as a skinny human shield in case we encountered any hobo-trouble. Soon after we entered the first section, we saw the signs of homelessness. It wasn't until I took a photo that the flash illuminated everything in the area and we could really ee what we were dealing with..

Jim lead the way with only a flashlight to guide us. He seemed confident, having been here before. Naturally, we headed for higher ground...

The views from the rooftop were just amazing. We stayed up there for a while chatting but eventually climbed back down to do some more exploring in the scary part... where we found an empty bag...

Nothing to loot here - it had already been looted. We then did a walk of the perimeter to check out some of the other buildings on site. Some of the graffiti out here was really cool....

I love this blue graffiti. I didn't realise how cool it was until later - I new wish i got a photo at a better angle! We made our way into another building - apparently the one with all the machinery. I kept thinking that someone with a really good camera could get some super amazing pictures here...

How cool is that? Jim then suggested we check out the "Crack Den" house in the corner of the property. We approached it very quietly and shone torches in through the bars to see if anyone was around. Not a soul. I don't know what I would do if there was someone.... run? Probably run. Anyway it was all clear so we went in...

It was a pretty dirty and depressing place, but somehow Jim was compelled to sit on the mattress...

It looked wet, but it was actually dry. It was clear that we were in a place of great magic here...

Not sure what all this was... it looked very interesting though! Maybe the "real world" was below this - like on the matrix with all of those pods for the people. These are some connections to the slumbering drones. Anyway, after wandering around for a while, we jumped the fence back into civilization and i somehow ended up with rocks in my shoes from the landing....

So, my verdict? Urban exploration is amazing. I think next time I won't drink before-hand, and I will wear better shoes/clothing for exploring. In the dark you can't see the uneven ground so all of the loose stones and rubbish create quite the treacherous path for a dizzy dame such as myself. I'll certainly be keeping my eyes open for more cool places to explore :) If you know of any, I'd love to hear about it!

Snow Fall in Saitama

2011-02-23T16:43:00.000+11:00

Close your eyes....... Wait, actually keep them open. Otherwise you won't be able to read along! Pretend your eyes are closed. What do you think of first? I think of presents.

You know how as a kid, someone telling you to close your eyes and keep them closed is just the best (or worst) form of cruelty? It's nearly impossible to do simply because you know there is going to be something amazing in a few seconds and you fear your body might explooooddee with anticipation! Well, keep pretending your eyes are closed, and at the end of this sentence... open them:

Cool huh? You're in another world now, a snowy wonderland! My friend Shiho took this picture from her balcony in Japan! She lives in the Saitama region, about 1 hour bullet train ride inland from Tokyo City. We have been e-mailing eachother since her return home and often talk about our weather woes. For example, I tell her about the Cairns cyclone, Brisbane flooding, Perth fires, Victoria Flooding etc etc and she unfailingly types "chooo sammuuiiiii" Meaning it is SOOOOO COOOLLLDDDD!!!! I didn't quite realise HOW cold until she sent me this picture! She doesn't have her driver's licence yet so naturally she has to ride a bike or walk to school each day. In that. Poor Shiho :(

I felt inspired to write this because I think I am getting sick *dun dun DUNNNN* Josh has being doing placement at another Primary School and picked something up, which may have spread to me, nooo! I have felt very poopy these last few days and feel like I am on another level than usual. Kate at work asked me how I felt yesterday morning and I eventually managed to blurt out my half-hatched thoughts of how I actually feel. I told her "You know when you're sick... and you're like surprised?..... By life?" she just laughed and asked me to elaborate. It was so hard, I should have just said "Meh." I think I meant.. I felt as though I were in a dream state and possibly still half-asleep therefore surprised to feel that way and still be living your daily life. Maybe. I'm still a big congested in the ole' brain box up there! When I try to talk it comes out sounding like that scene from the movie "Tomorrow When the War Began" when they find Chris and he is baked and starts philosophising. Picture a guy who did character research for a stoner by watching an overacter play the role of a stoner. You know what I mean. You should watch it, it's painful!

Also, speaking of Japan and Subarashii... I watched AKIRA the other night - a classic Anime movie. I thought I knew what was going on for most of it, but then I got really confused really quickly. I watched it with my housemate Maki and we were just laughing and giving audience commentary by the end. It was visually amazing, and the first few songs blew my mind, but yes... no idea. I should look up an explanation for the reasons any of it was happening. Oh yeah, i forgot to explain my segway! "Subarashii" means Marvelous or Wonderful, and in the movie one character kept saying it and I got really excited! It was subarashii, much unlike my segways today. ACHOO!

~!!~How Utterly Camp~!!~

2011-02-17T16:57:00.003+11:00

Hello my lovely readers, it appears we meet again! So, do you come here often? I think you might. Maybe not as much as you would like, maybe a little too much and it scares you. Whatever the case, I appreciate you reading this :) What you are about to read is a post I must say I am excited to present! For those of you who find my erratic post themes confusing, let me remind you of the thick and juicy vein snaking through subarashiiblog, connecting all the posts and supplying them with life-blood direct from my heart. The List.
Remember the list? The quaint old bucket list I made shortly after my 23rd Birthday to ensure I get more out of life and become more proactive and involve myself in new scenarios and potentially remove myself from my comfort zone. I am LOVING IT. Let me refresh your memory by showing you the list again, this time complete with pseudo highschool graffiti.....

I think i will add to the graffiti over time. I like it. If it's anything like the back of my school books it will just have in-jokes about Bio-Dome and the word "hey" written in fancy font EVERYWHERE. So, the list. I have make OK progress i think, I still need to cook a few more things, write a few more poems, and check out some new vego restaurants among other things. The garden looks better every day so I'll end that as late as i can! Anyway you may notice a few things ticked off that you don't remember me actually completing, and you may be thinking "Hey bitch, hold up, hold up!". Well don't get those knickers in a twist just yet, I'm here to tell you that I have SMASHED a few more things off the list in the last week alone. Grab your galoshes and brolly, and let me take you on a journey into my world dot dot dot dot dot dot dot

Some friends of mine started organising a camping trip a few weeks back, and I naturally jumped on board. I was eager to go proper camping with neither electricity or toilets, in order to see how I handle being out of my physical comfort zone. Now, I'm not exactly a princess. I come from Tom-Boy origins. Sometimes I wear the same clothes AND underwear (turned inside out of course) for two days in a row to work if i randomly stay at Josh's place. I wear 'house clothes' which are torn, food-stained and are invariably made up of tracksuit pants and a t-shirt. One weekend i didn't shower for 48 hours. I even continue eating my lunch if i drop it in the toilet bowl. Wring it out, it's alright! Nah that one's a joke. I swear. The point is, I wanted to see how primal I could really get without being ashamed. I should point out that the one time I went camping in the past (November 2004) was where I met Josh - at Schoolies in Lorne. We had electricity, toilets, showers, music, jaffle irons, even a hammock which i stupidly forgot to bring along this time. Everyone said "Pfft, that's not REAL camping!" to which I swore I would experience one day. But if I hadn't gone, I would never have met Josh and be as happy with him as I am today, over 6 years later! eeeee *heart swell*

Anyway, enough mush! Let's talk about bush...

So off we went on Friday morning. Not only were we all excited to be going camping, we were exponentially excited due to the fact that we were NOT going to work :) Double yayz! We drove up to a place called Cobram. A place where you can walk around with no shirt or shoes, where Ute's are more common than the flies buzzing around your unwashed hair, and where the very best Op-Shops can be found. It is situated 262 km North of Melbourne on the banks of the Murray River. What I somehow failed to realise the whole time I was there was that on the other side of the Murray was New South Wales.. but NOW I know. As do you! So, as I have never driven around these parts, I am deeming this item 16) Road Trip to a new location COMPLETE. You may say "Well obviously if you go camping on item 15, you've gotta road trip it - they are like the same thing!".. wrong. I could easily have set up a tent in my spacious backyard or at the park up the road and become 1 with my dog and cat and learned to live as they. That would be weird. Anyway, the weather forecast was not looking good. Rain and flooding were forecasted. I was worried that my camping trip dream was going to become un-hinged. Luckily we were all invested balls-deep in the plan so we still went for it. While the boys got super-wet and set up ramshackle shelter...

....we girls went foraging for mushrooms and more importantly... bug corpses:

It was like 'Naussica of the Valley of the Wind' up in there! You might say that our transcendence into camping bliss was quite similar to the birth of a bug. For example, we sat in the safe cacoon of the car watching while the elements outside were too fierce for us. When they calmed down and the time was right, we emerged from the car refreshed and full of energy to explore our surroundings and start to potentially .... bug.... the others. Haha ok, that pun was a stretch, but here's a picture I made of bugs having a tea party to distract you from my inadequacies as a comedic writer...

This bug collection was moved onto the back shelf of the car unbeknownst to the driver. When he found my morbid little collection later on, he came back to the camp fire saying how his car was a bit too "Silence of the Lambs" for his liking. Oops. That's all part of my charm. I was only collecting them so I could give some kid a cool present. "Hey little kid, come over here. Aunty Jade's got something for you....." hmmm. I actually forgot to take them home so I don't know what became of them. Back to reality (oops there goes gravity), Nat and I faffed around while the boys made a great shelter so we could start drying fire wood and eventually set up tents. Here's Nat playing with my new umbrella:

How cute! Some time and tummy grumbles passed and we worried that the second car of friends wouldn't make it through the muddy tracks, and it was getting late. Eventually they rocked up in a blaze of mud and spinning tyres and we commenced making dinner #1!

Note: this is not how a well managed kitchen should look. Cooking by lantern light was cho subarashii though ^_^! We didn't have much to work with so I made little tin-foil vegie parcels to go with the burgers, and man... they were awesome. I put some Dill in there, and blew some minds, let me tell you. Here's the boys cooking the boigers, just before the 3rd car turned up!

OMG! One camping fantasy I had went all the way back to childhood. See, I used to be obsessed with the 1993 movie "The Sandlot Kids" or as it is called in the US, simply "The Sandlot". You know the one, all those cute little boys playing baseball to a rad 50's soundrack and there's that monster dog and James Earl Jones features in it? Ah, I can see them all now: Smalls, Squints, Benny the Jet, Ham, Yeah Yeah, Timmy & Tommy, and of course Wendy Peffercorn. In one unforgettable scene (to me, they all are) Ham explains to the n00b Smalls what a S'more is. Here is an excerpt from the scene:

Ham Porter: Hey Smalls, you wanna S'more?
Smalls: Some more of what?
Ham Porter: No, do you wanna S'more?
Smalls: I haven't had anything yet, so how can I have some more of nothing?
Ham Porter: You're killing me Smalls! These are s'more's stuff! *motions to the confectionary surrounding him* Alright, now pay attention. First you take the graham, you stick the chocolate on the graham. Then you roast the 'mallow. When the 'mallows flaming... you stick it on the chocolate. Then cover it with the other end. Then you scarf. Kind of messy, but good!

Well, obviously I had to make s'mores! The best part was that while I was making them, Ruari, Stevenz and I had fun quoting the movie to each other. Actually, the best part was the taste :) I couldn't get hold of "Graham Crackers" at such short notice so I got some Arnott's wholemeal cookies instead. The "Aussie equivalent" it seems. I wrapped them in foil and popped them in the embers to melt. Amazing.

Yum. This was not the end of my cooking adventures though, oh no! Stay tuned for more!

Let's jump to the morning after the first night. I was so hung over. I suppose part of this recollection is to outline the things that were uncomfortable about my trip. Going to the toilet was probably the worst for me. There wasn't much in the way of shrubs to hide behind so peeing in the daytime was annoying. You had to pick the perfect spot and keep your eye on camp. If anyone made eye contact while i was peeing.. that would have been just creepy. "Yes, I'm urinating. What of it?" The worst thing was that the further back you went, the more of camp you saw and assumed everyone could see you too! The boys just told me to come swimming and pee in the river. I didn't want to admit that it was the best idea I'd heard all day, but eventually I was 'talked into it'. We were all swimming around and they were like "have you peed yet?" every now and then. Mortified. But really, the current was so strong where we were on the first day I just had to make sure there was no-one downstream of me and it wasn't so bad :) But yes, as you can imagine... AGB's are not great in the bright morning light, having to squat with no cover or balance. I didn't make that mistake twice. After the AGB episode I came back to camp to find Jake and Corey making tea and snags for breakfast. Saints. Absolute saints! They kindly gave me some as my Muesli was looking as appealing as kitty litter at that point! After the heary breakfast we did the only rational thing possible: we drove to town and went op-shopping. Obviously. I bought $11.50 worth of GOLD, but i forgot to take pictures - sorry :)

Back at camp, we decided to go fishing and swimming. Of course, first we needed worms for the rod, so I helped dig for worms, and then in no time it was all three girls elbows deep in mud yelling "I got a BIG ONE!". That's when we noticed this guy and had a bit of a 'girly moment':

After the screaming died down, we realised he was actually a bit cute! He was pretty scared so we put him back and set off to find a good fishing spot :) We found this amazing still lagoon which would later become the scene of yet another list item being SMASHED! If that's not a lure to keep reading, i don't know what is! While Jake fished, and Corey foraged, I rambled on incessantly to Jake - who i had only just met - and got my feet nice and muddy. It felt so good...

Ok, I'm jumping out of chronological order for a second to tell you what we did late that night at this very lagoon..... we went:

Oh yes! That's right! In this spot, we went night-time skinny dipping! Three girls, two boys, no clothes, and so dark that everyone just looked like a pale blur. I have taken the liberty of labelling the diagram for you.

Point A: This log is where we left our clothes (and a house key which is gone forever)
Point B: This is out toward the river's current and where we sat on a log doing tumbles into the water.
Point C: The Jumping Tree. This is where we did bomb dives. And this is also where I scraped my tummy and boobs clambering up into the tree looking like a dead rag doll slumped over it apprently.
Point D: Allllll the way back towards camp is where my friend placed my glasses for safe keepings when i did my bomb dive from the tree.

I asked my friend to hold them but she swam all the way back to shore and proceeded to walk for about 3 minutes fully naked until she found an ambiguous enough place to leave my glasses. Needless to say that we searched for ages afterwards shivering and clutching towels and clothes to ourselves. We actually gave up but on the way back to the camp, she said "Oh, a fence! I hung them on this fence!" and there they were. I still don't know why she swam and walked soooo far, it's pretty funny though.

So with the Skinny Dipping challenge complete, there was yet another item I knew i could complete. Fruit challenge! I bought another new fruit to eat. The final one of five. This time....

Amazing! It wasn't a good idea wearing white shorts while eating them, in fact it was a poor choice wearing them all together. I liked the pomegranate, but I got bored of eating it well before I was satisfied. It was like pulling little teeth out of some bitter white gums, but tasted nothing like teeth. I should know. Eew. Ok, so bringing it back around... before the skinny dipping we made out second dinner. Corey and Jake had some pasta ingredients and I had a few gourmet touches to add as well so we ended up with the most gourmet camp pasta ever!

In that rich looking dish was: Onion, Garlic, chilli, butter, oil, white wine, salt and pepper, basil, salami, some left over blue cheese and brie, and some philly cheese... I think that was it. It was so rich and amazing. After scarfing that I was commissioned to recreate some vegie parcels for those who missed out on the first night....

And then naturally we started playing drinking games, namely Kings. Below is a photo of boxhead/drinkbitch. As if it isn't humiliating enough being the slave who gets everyone's drinks, you have to wear a box on your head and almost trip into the fire while doing so...

That was really fun, especially when one of the rules became that we had to talk in European accents until the next Rule card is drawn. There were some interesting sounding British accents out there, that's for sure. I didn't realise Borat lived in London :) Ok so it was after this game that we were charged up enough to go skinny dipping, then danced and sang until around 3.30am when i fell into blissful sober yet exhausted sleep. I was awoken at about 6am when the others went to bed. Glad it wasn't me ;)

On the sad drive home, I had a peanut butter sandwich made with squashed white bread and spread on with the back of a plastic spoon. It was one of the nicest things ever. It was the last stop on my journey back to childhood.

It was also the last thing i made camping style. I am hereby saying that all the camping food i made counts as 1 dish on my list of 52 dishes. So, Dish 37: Camp food. Wee! JUST after I ate the sandwich, they suggested we stop and get a country bakery pie - one of my other favourite things ever. So naturally, i had a second lunch.....

Then I fell asleep on my pillow and snoozed for an hour or more, and woke up minutes from home. The fun memories and the acheivements unlocked are still fresh on my mind. Even for the first few hours of being home, or at least until my first shower, one little fly kept buzzing around my face. I think I unintentionally brought a little bit of Cobram back with me ;)

Late Night Shopping: Good/Evil? You be the Judge! A Comparative Essay...

2011-02-15T12:22:00.001+11:00

Throughout the ages, certain contentious issues have seen neighbours, nations and religious groups divided. Today, we are faced with yet another pressing issue. That of whether or not Late Night Shopping can be considered a 'good thing'. First and foremost, let me just draw your attention to the title of this essay. It should be noted that you are supposed to pronounce the punctuation marks. Therefore, you should say: Late Night Shopping colon Good slash Evil question mark You be the Judge exclamation mark A Comparative Essay dot dot dot. I inadvertently took inspiration from 30 Rock Episode 2.07 when Tracy Jordan talks about the name of his book... "Betrayal. Semi-colon. What Really Happened With My Baseball Team. Comma. Disaster at Knuckle Beach. Question mark." Quite unlike the essay topic, the fact that this line is extremely humorous script writing cannot be disputed. So let's begin with an explanation of my involvement in the issue in question.

The other night, after a hearty dinner, my housemate Maki asked if I wanted to go with him and his girlfriend Mel to the 24 hour K-mart later to buy a printer. I was feeling full of verge and vigour, and knew there was nothing I actually needed to buy so I agreed. First we watched a movie, inconsequentially it was named "Easy A", and it was then that we set off on our late night adventure. Instead of showering I was comparing prices of shower gel. Instead of getting into my pyjamas I was to be browsing the sizes and styles in the sleepwear section. Instead of tripping over my shoes on my way to bed and once again not putting them away, i was setting out to buy even MORE shoes. You get the picture I'm sure. It wasn't until I saw a car outside K-Mart sporting a boot on the tyre that I realised just what this late night shopping was all about. Of course I made an obligatory wise crack about how the lady who owned the car was probably still wandering around the aisles of K-mart lost, dazed, emaciated and survivng only on stolen candy. We all had a good laugh about it, but behind my chuffed smirk was the faintest whiff of realisation that I could possibly be right - we could bump into a shop-aholic who had fallen off the grid entirely. The thought scared me a little. If it were some crazy M. Night Shyamalan script I was playing part in, I worried that perhaps I was in fact somehow the shop-aholic trapped inside and the car was MINE *dun dun dunnnn* But then I remembered that M Night Shyamalan hasn't had a loophole-free script in a while so I breathed a sigh of relief and kept walking.

Approaching the well-lit entrance I thought "I don't need anything really...just going for a look..." but part of me knew I would walk out with something. It was as though there were a greater power at play. The ghosts of all who have perished in a shopping frenzy at 4am were beckoning me forth. Once inside, I suppose the first thing I thought was "How Convenient that Mel can buy her printer after 10pm!". Indeed, it is very convenient. Sure you can jump online and order a printer at any time of the day or night too, but you'll be sitting there twiddling your thumbs for a few weeks until you actually get it. So for shift workers, insomniacs, part-timers, junkies, road-trippers, forgetful people... or even bored people, it is very convenient to be open so late. Perhaps it is not so good for shop-aholics though. It can lead to some unwise considerations....

Impulse buying at its scariest. While it can be said that these things are indeed a little bit wrong, it's not to say that they aren't hilarious! We laughed and laughed, oh how we laughed! The entertainment factor is alive and well in 24 hour K-mart. I think the entertainment level is contingent to the number of people you are with. If you are with a group of laughing wise guys then I think you can expect a good thorough browse and chuckle. If you are on your own, you may feel the eyes of every lost soul in the store on your basket wondering what you are buying late at night. They will do this regardless, but it's easier to handle when you've got a posse behind you, so you can be all "Whatchu lookin' at esse? huh? huh? Choo wanna start somethin? Didn't think so... yeah you BETTER run...". But yes on your own, late night shopping would be a bit more depressing. Maybe you aren't depressed yourself, but seeing the other people wandering around aimlessly might be a bit confronting. I haven't attempted a solo mission yet, but I know that I had so much fun in a group and would recommend it to anyone - it definately kills boredom!

One thing is for sure, without the distraction of people and noise, you really come to realise some of your slightly under the surface fetishes. There was no reason for me to be there but I still managed to buy all of this:

Well OK, some of this looks useful and neccessary right? This wasn't even half of it. I also got 6 couch cushions which maki was carrying haha! Goodbye 70's cartoon pillows. So yes, unrealised fetishes.

Fetish number 1: cheap flats
I bought 2 pairs @ $5 each. Pink... and silver. Silver. SILVER! I can't imagine when I am going to wear silver shoes... but at least now they are in the pile of cheap cool shoes I have picked up along the way and may wear one day. I do this A LOT. People ask "Oh cool, new shoes?" and I go "err.... sort of. I bought them a year ago and haven't worn them yet...." This also applies to jackets and clothes. It always seems like a good idea at the time.

Fetish number 2: Wrapping Paper
At $2 per roll, how could I say no? Exactly, I couldn't! So I bought some. I have to make sure I have a wrapping paper for every occasion, for both males and females, and it has to look cool. I always picture what it will look like with a ribbon around it, and if it passes the ribbon test I buy it. I have a large bag of wrapping accessories in my garage, and it is growing larger with every late night shopping spree.

Fetish Number 3: Bras
I always buy pretty bras and now have like 10 or so, but I always seem to wear the same 2 or 3. They are: my favourite (black/grey leopard print with hot pink interior), Josh's favourite (red push-up with white polka dots), and of course the boring T-shirt bra (does not even deserve an explanation). The others get a tad neglected but it's always a treat when I wear them and then Josh does the whole "Oooh, new bra?" thing where I guiltily look down at my 'new shoes' and go "er....yeah....whatever just rip it off!"

Fetish Number 4: Umbrellas
This is the scoop guys, this fetish is just blossoming. For the last... 6 months.... I have been fantasising about developing my umbrella collection. I had a rainbow one for, like, I dunno... close to 10 years; but it was tragically stolen from, or should I say WITH, my car. Perhaps I am trying to fill the void by slutting around with other umbrellas? Who knows. I bought a clear one in winter which broke after 1 use. Now I have this new frilly pink one I picked up in my late night k-mart frenzy. She is pretty good. Stay tuned for more news on my developing collection. I have my eye on about 4 more and am yet to buy :)

Ok, that's enough about fetishes.. let's talk about the difference in VIBE at late night shopping. It is different. Maybe it's got something to do with this guy....

Everyone is suspicious of one another, and as mentioned earlier they all stare at what you have bought. I swear I saw one staff member waiting for me to walk past so he could open a packet of lollies. He was stacking the shelves and was taking a while to hold one packet with both hands near the opening, fingers pinched on either side. I was walking toward him to get a basket for my growing collection of stuff and he eye-balled me the whole way until I turned around and I swear I heard him tear open the packet! So if the staff feel comfortable shoplifting, imagine the message that passes onto the customers: us. See Mel's basket of stuff?

....All stolen. Nah just kidding. But look at the lack of people and lack of staff involvement. If you wanted to shoplift, now would be the time. But seriously, here is us leaving with all our stuff....

I spent about $115 in this one trip. I got: 2 pairs of shoes, 1 work top, 1 umbrella, 1 bra, 1 bustier, 1 pair of nderwear, 1 roll of wrapping paper, 1 can deoderant, 1 shampoo, 3 lollipops, 3 skirt coat-hangers, and 6 couch cushions. I am pretty sure that's it. I did well, i think.

So, to conclude... I think shopping at this time of night is better as I dislike bogan crowds and noise and waiting in line for change rooms or registers. I also enjoy people watching, and it is funny at this hour of night. My relaxed attitude meant that I could have a better look around at everything, which ultimately meant I made more purchases, but if I keep this behaviour occasional I'll be fine :)

Side note: I also made this new dish! It's an adapted version of Jamie Oliver's 30 minute feasts. It is Piri Piri Chicken!! I thought it was great! I added sweet potato and potato to it to make it more stew-like...

Loved it! Well, I must be off! Maybe I will remember the recipe one day and update this post :)

Food heaven continued

2011-02-07T16:38:00.000+11:00

Guys, if I was a gambler.. I'd be on some hell of a winning streak right now! I have had win after win after win in terms of meals lately. Ok, so the last post showed you my dinner on Friday yeah? Mega win. Now I'm gonna show you a bit more of my food exploration on Saturday. So Josh and I slept in until midday, as you do, and then went out around 2 o'clock for some breakfast... lunch... dunch... i guess you'd call it. We went to the Green Refectory cafe on Sydney Rd, Brunswick - more affectionately known as illy. I'm sure I've explained this before - it's the coffee cup brand or something but the illy advertisement sign is bigger than the cafe's sign. Anyway I didn't feel like eggs, so I got some lunch stuff. I thought everything would be small portions so of course I ordered way too much, but it's cheap so it didn't matter! I got a lamb, coriander and pine nut parcel and a trio of salads. Beetroot, lentil and coriander, and rice with cranberries. It was all A+ standard :)

Then later we hit up the supermarkets to buy some provisions for a light dinner - basic pizzas. I picked up fruit 4 of 5 - RAMBUTAN! Looks a little weather beaten - but I think it adds to the character...

Then we discovered how much fun you can have with the shell...

Quite a bit actually. The taste was very similar to Lychee I thought, and so was the texture and shell etc. Perhaps I should have researched some fruits before buying willy nilly. Looks like i ate two fruits from the same family or something. Man their parents are gonna be pissed at me. Awkward.

Oh yeah, I have been meaning to post this for a few days now! Here are the paintings I made for Maki and Mel's birthdays! Mel got Marilyn and Maki got Morrisey. Haha, all M's....

I think they are pretty good. For an amateur of course :P Back to food heaven, I also had a big home-made Japanese feast last night with Miso soup, bento boxes with Japanese curry, yakitori, grilled tofu, salad, tuna etc etc. MMMMM! Then I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's with everyone, and I really liked it! A bit long, and sooo different to the book - i think I like the message behind the book better - the movie totally defeated what Capote was trying to say by changing the end. Funny. Poor Capote.

Today I ate left over japanese bento, and tonight I'll be going out to Lygon Street for dinner and a movie with my boys (Josh, brothers and dad). Coooooooooooooooool! I think we're seeing True Grit :D wee-hoo!

Smoke on the Water

2011-02-07T16:00:00.000+11:00

Ahoy ahoy! What a fantastic weekend I had! I want to - hold on.... Sex on Fire is playing near me and for some reason i want to smash the radio to pieces right now.. I am grinding my teeth so hard and tensing my back... i could explode... Ok i have changed the station. Rage supressed. Anyway, I want to show you some amazing things I did starting with Friday night! So one of our 'couple friends' Megan and James invited us out to Maha in the city, not only because the food is amazing but because of the Shishaaaaaaaa! So Josh and I got all dolled up and got the train in to Flinders Street. I was standing at the lights about to cross over, fussing with my skirt and jacket and clutch bag - trying to hold it all in place and avoid flashing my lingerie all over town due to the crazy winds. When we were about half way across the intersection, the rain fell. Hard. It was instant saturation, and I remember thinking "Fuck fuck fuck, my hairspray!!" as i ran to the shelter of 7-11... well it was the best running i could do in heels being assaulted by rain and wind. Everyone was screaming and running in all different directions. We thought we might wait it out...

But it just kept coming down! Josh suggested we head towards Flinders Lane so we might be able to sneak around undercover to the restaurant. We got to the next corner and waited there for a while until it died down slightly, but it was more the waves of water carrying leaves and rubbish along the gutters and up onto our feet that got us moving. It felt like a sinking ship!

Finally at the restaurant, we were absolutely drenched. The lovely staff took out dripping jackets and showed us to the hand-dryers. I felt so silly fluffing my hair up under the hair dryer and standing one legged with my foot contorted around to get a hot blast. I was just praying nobody came in and exposed me for the ragamuffin I really am. Luckily nobody did and I remained one of the most well dressed people dining that night - the other 3 being my dinner dates naturally! So once my shoes were emptied and Josh's white shirt had ceased being a free ticket to the nipple-show, we waited in the lounge with cocktails, chats and our grape shisha!! Of course they made sure I went first....Inhale...

Annnddd Exhaaalllleeeeeee.............

Haha! So good! Another thing crossed off the list - and done in style no less :) Think shisha, think no burn, no cough - Just the intersection of flavour street and cool avenue located in the heart of Awesome City. Speaking of awesome city, do you like my giant rose? Very Sex and the city inspired, I do declare! Anyway, we all played around with the shisha for a while...

I totally want to photoshop this picture hahahaaaaaaaaaa *evil*

wi-wiew megan! What a fine specimen of woman-kind :) After the shisha fun, it was onto the meal!! We were first welcomed by an aptly named Egyptian hibiscus welcome Tea:

It was a little shot glass, with this dark, sweet, thick, and most importantly yummy liquid inside. We ordered a bottle of Maltese Delicata wine too- available at this restaurant only apparently. YUM! We had locked ourselves in for the 4 course Soufra. First course was berid mezze - small cold dishes. We got beetroot dip, olives, fennel with dill, cheese balls (forgot the name), hot bread and these amazing tomato and asparagus soup shots. But it was like clarifiied tomato... amazing...amazingly blurred photo....

Next was soukhoun mezze - small plates. There were 2 dishes. The first was like rabbit cigars, they tasted like baklava with meat. Very yummy! This one was Eggs coated in chicken and spices with an apple and chive salsa.

Then came sahen kbeer - large plates. There was fattoush salad, slow cooked pork belly on onion puree with pomegranate and other bits on top. There was also twelve hour roasted Mt. leaura lamb shouler with pistachio and green olive tabouleh, and Turkish "baldo" pilaf with dill, apricot and pine nuts. OMG...

Finally was helwayet - sweets. We got turkish delight filled Maha doughnuts sprinkled with crushed candied almonds. In the middle... i forgot - something fluffy and creamy and coffee-ish. It was amazing. Then Basil Ice cream with Rose Jelly and berries, and dehydrated sponge cake....

Then delicious tea, and complimentary hand cleansing oil, and vials of maha spices to take home and create your own special meal! After all that we waddled up stairs to the door and into the rain, and the lovely staff gave us some umbrellas to use and said just bring them back if we're ever passing by... wow

Happy to be dry!! The poor things had to get up at 4.30am the next morning for an interstate flight! Wouldn't have gotten much sleep I don't think :( Ah well, I'm sure basking in our glorious company for the night was worth it :D Anyway, I'm planning an elaborate dinner for these two to say thanks for a great double date night! Watch this space!

Wassup wit me? Wassup witchu?

2011-02-04T12:50:00.003+11:00

Well folks, would you believe that I am currently working on a few of my list items this week? Finally, I know! Today I went back to the market on my lunch break, this time with my boss. He wanted to go buy some eggs, and I wanted to go scope out the chickens for sale! Live chickens, of course darlings! List Item 21 is to build a chicken coop and get some chooks before the deadline (June 30). The motivation behind this is.. well... I'm a big kid, and waking up to find a little fresh egg in the pen would totally blow my socks off! I got given this rabbit hutch by Josh's younger sister and was planning to buy a little bunny, but now I think i will renovate it and use it for little chickens.

I was thinking of getting small bantems but while at the market I saw some darling little quails for $7.50 each.

They are ready to lay, and I would love some little quail eggs to cook with :D ha, that sounds so barbaric! While we were wandering around the market I decided to buy a fruit I have never eaten before. I stopped at a stall to buy a fig as I've only ever had dried figs before! It was $2.40 on its own - quite expensive I must say! While I was putting my change away, I noticed a box of little spiky fruits that were advertised as XXL cherries. Knowing that it must be wrong, I asked what they were. The asian man said they were lychees and i got a little embarrassed as i should have known! He asked if I had ever had one before, to which I replied that I've only had the canned variety - never fresh! He plucked one out of the box and started peeling it for me and handed it over for me to finish peeling and try. I wanted to take a photo then and there but I nibbled at the cloudy white flesh and was amazed at how strong the flavour was. I told him thanks and that it was really nice and sweet, and he said "oh yes, it's a fruit for ladies!" - how cute! It's a nicer thing than the wine man said to me, that's for sure!

So I nibbled and remarked at it all the way back to work and took a few shots. It reminded me of a hard boiled egg in the shell. You peel back the shell and the little egg inside just pops out. It is about the same jellyish yet firm consistency of an egg too, but more juicy obviously because it is a fruit. Anyway it was not very big but so sweet and a tad peppery that I could not imagine having a second one after that! I quite liked it but maybe it is a 'sometimes' fruit :)

I then got back to work with my fig, and remenisced about the Sex and the City episode (2.3 - Freak Show) where Charlotte is seeing the guy called "Mr. Pussy" named so because his favourite thing to eat is... well... you can guess. She tries to make it into a proper relationship but all he wants is his favourite meal and nothing more. At dinner (a real dinner at a restaurant) she tries finding out about his personality and life etc, and asks what he wants to do that night whereupon he picks up half a fig, turns the flesh out and licks and sucks it until it is all over his face. Ha! Gross and funny. So I was eating my fig thinking of him. The fig was nice - crunchy, not too sweet, slippery, earthy. It looks like a cross between an eggplant and an avocado and a pear from the outside.. yes I think that's a fitting description.

So there you go, now i have had 3/5 new fruits!!! WEE!

Oh, and tonight I will be smoking the shisha, if you know what I mean. Well, no double entendre implied. Actually yes, i did imply it for fun, but I will actually be smoking from a shisha. Quite excited to dress up and go to this fancy restaurant and smoke-a da shisha! Another one off the list!

AND NEXT WEEK I WILL BE GOING CAMPING! Proper camping with no toilet or electricity :) It will be a road trip (3.5 hours) to a place I haven't been before which I could potentially cross off the list if I wanted to... i will also be going camping, and possibly doing some bush tucker/camp cooking, and i may just sleep under the stars one night :) I may leave the skinny dipping for another time when I'm more... alone.... or with Josh of course! Wish me luck! Can't wait!!

Lunchtime Adventure Challenge: Free Samples Lunch @ QVM

2011-02-03T15:44:00.001+11:00

Good day everyone! So for those of you who don't know, I sometimes go on little adventures in my lunch break - destinations carefully selected by my cousin or friend who live interstate. We check out google maps of the eateries surrounding each other's work places and select a place for each other to go and sometimes set challenges. Today my destination was the Queen Victoria Market and the challenge was to eat a lunch comprising of free samples. I'm quite shy in person and don't usually ask for samples, but today I left all inhibitions at my desk and went guns blazing and mouth open into the belly of the free sample beast. I took Kate along as photographer so you believed I actually did it. She and I had a grand old time which began in the fruit section, where free samples are encouraged....

Here I ate 3 little bits of pineapple. Mind you, it was a $7.90 organic pineapple and was absolutely DELICIOUS! Also in the organic section, I stopped for 1 macadamia nut and 2 roasted cashew nuts...

We had our eyes peeled for another little bowl somewhere, and here i found it with some yellow nectarine. I got 2 little cubes maybe 1cm square or less haha..

Next was on to the cheese! I hit this place first, and tried the King Island Brie, the Cheddar and the Blue. The Cheddar was worth a mention :)

Then we hit another cheese stand which the photos of me were horrendous... and i tried the blue cheese there. Next was onto a place where I was going to ask for an olive sample before we got distracted by this:

We asked what it was and the man explained it was a Greek dessert made from sesame...tahini, nuts, and chocolate. those were his words. He said the whole thing could sell for $250 - $300 but you can buy small sections for about $8. That was interesting enough for me so we gave it a go and:

FIREWORKS! This stuff is amazing!! It has the strangest texture like fairy floss/nougat combined! The guy suggested that we should crumble it over ice cream and we nearly jizzed it. That would be AMAZING! I want to check out a recipe and see if it is actually something that some non-greek nobody like me could pull off :D wee-hooooooo!! Next was onto the African stall, I was actually just checking out the spice mixes as I'm planning to make some african soon ;) I have a feeling I could pick this up in Footscray cheaper, as it's $12 for the medium jar... or i could possibly make it myself?

Next was onto the nut shop. I had to think of something obscure enough to ask for and act as though i was interested to try it. I picked dried blueberries as i didnt think i had had them before.

I was genuinely interested after eating them and asked whether they reconstitute in muffins or pancakes etc when you cook them but they didnt know anything haha. Oh, next i was determined to get an olive. We went to this place that had all different kinds of stuffed olives and i pretended like I wanted to know what i was getting in case I didn't like it. And i was:

No samples! OUCH! Then i hit another cheese stand and tried their brie, cheddar and blue. All three = amazing! I will definately buy some of the blue.. it was a gorgonzola dolce something. I'll remember when i see it.

Oh, then it was on to dip central! This place had the best green olive dip for sampling and also a sun-dried tomato pesto for sampling. Then i was cheeky and asked to sample 2 more flavours - one of which was carrot and coriander dip - which i have never had!

That face is the face of positive assessment! There was a strange woman next to me who urged me to try another flavour - spicy hommus. I felt like i had taken too much from them already and the shopkeeper only agreed to let me have a taste 'as long as i don't ask to sample every flavour'. I promised, and the spicy hommus was in my mouth. Of course it was tainted with guilt so didn't taste so great.

Next door was the wine cellar. They advertised 2 wines available for tasting. This one:

And a rosé. I tried both and didnt like the rosé, but the moscato was great! I asked the guy if it really has white chocolate flavours in it, and the lovely man (sarcasm) said "No, it's just there so girls like you get all excited and buy it." before walking off to get me a glass....................................... hmmm. Here he is:

I'm not sure if he was actually a see you next tuesday, or if he was trying that schoolyard cheeky thing on me, a bit reminiscent of 'the game'... negs and all that shizz...

I drank to 'all the girls like me' out there. All the girls who slept in and had 8 minutes to get ready thus didnt put on makeup or do their hair :P Then we checked out the French shoppe. Crazy stuff in there..

Oh yeah (oh my god we went everywhere) then we hit the juice bar which had a sign saying "please ask for a free sample" so i tasted the lemon cheesecake yoghurt and then the apple and rhubarb yoghurt (yuuuummm) but then she noticed the camera and got a bit funny...

Then we went back to the first cheese place I was at because there was a new person serving cheese. It must have been all 2 sips of that wine i drank going to my head and imparing my judgement for me to think it was a good idea. The lady actually said the boy's name and asked "Why have they got a camera!?" and then everyone looked at eachother awkwardly and we walked off in a hurry. hahahaha. I should have gotten up on my soapbox and said "there is no rule as to how many samples you can have god damn it!!!"

I tried 1 sunflower seed but i didnt realise it was in a shell until i was almost choking on it :P

Then we hit the fruit place again as nobody cared who ate what...

So there you have it... 5 bits of pineapple, 2 bits of yellow nectarine, 1 macadamia, 2 cashews, 9 cheese samples, 2 halva samples, 1 taste of berbere spice mix, 4 dried blueberries, 4 dip samples, 2 wine samples, 2 yoghurt samples, 1 sunflower seed - complete with shell, 1 bit of white peach, and 1/4 of a strawberry. I just thought the cumquats were funny :) So even after all that scabbing about 3 hours ago, i am hungry. surprise surprise! I have some steamed vegetables to eat just in case (yay). Kate had said I wasnt allowed to have a back-up lunch otherwise i wouldnt have the determination to get as many samples. She changed her mind as she was impressed by my forwardness and was happy with the amount i got. We agreed that we probably couldn't have got any more and had robbed enough local farmers for one day. On the plus side, I now love halva, know where to go for an amazing green olive dip and also where to go for the best blue cheese. Hooray! Oh and i picked up a bottle of that cool moscato to drink with my friend Mel who gets back from Hawaii today. She is a 'girl like me' who can appreciate a cute bottle of wine ;)

wikka wikka

2011-02-02T16:16:00.000+11:00

What up people? I have spent a bit of time today going back and reading some of my posts from months and years gone by. Quite interesting reading, I must say! The reason I did this is because my younger brother DK wants me to make a speech at his 21st in a few weeks (eep) and I was looking for material i may have written in here previously. All I found was that story about how he wanted to pretend to be homeless. Oh dear. But there was some good reading to be had. Perhaps you should try it, pick one of my tags on the right and take the trip!

Speaking of trips, I finished reading Trainspotting a few days ago and really liked it. It was dark and dirty and interesting. I liked the chapters that were written phonetically in Scottish, I found it easy enough to follow along. Josh thought I would struggle but I sure proved him wrong :) I think it comes from practice. See, when I was about 12 I remember writing a story for school based on some Irish settlers in Australia and I wrote their dialogue phonetically. Haha. I was years ahead of myself, a child prodigy if you will. Irvine Welsh and I are like kindred spirits or something. I've often wondered if I will ever write a book. I still don't know. Maybe. It would be a cool thing to do, but of course I've had no formal training and it would be more of a hobby than anything really. I'd just love to set up an old type-writer in my cottage in the woods (it's coming) and tap it out. I know that's sooo not practical but I need to have my imagination :) I read an interview with Irvine Welsh who explained that he never really meant to be a writer and had quite a mediocre life and dabbled in drugs quite a bit which kind of kept him in the one place. It sounds as though some of the content of Trainspotting comes directly from his own life! Crazy! Hmm... so what can I write about in my debut novel....? At the moment I think Psycho Family Drama is the main thing I could take from my life to entertain and shock people. Maybe I should keep a journal and look back on it in a few years when I'm not so involved. Watch out for it!

Oh yeah, I went to the Video Store (do we still call it that?) on Monday night to borrow Trainspotting. I've never seen it and wanted to compare it to the book - as you do. I had a bit of a look and couldn't find it, then the dude told me that all copies had been stolen! How fitting!! HA! So I'll watch it sometime soon, my friend Roo says he has it - how exciting!! I seem to be doing a bit of the Movie/Book thing at the moment. The book before Trainspotting was "The girl with the dragon tattoo" which I liked. I then noticed had been made into a movie but I don't think it will be good. Someone tell me otherwise please. And now I've just started reading Truman Capote's 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'. I really like it! It is surprisingly cool and a little bit crazy. I have never seen the movie and totally mis-judged the whole concept and the quality! So I am keen to see what happens to Miss Holly Golightly and I already have the DVD lined up to watch :D Truman Capote, your collected works are about to be eye-raped by me!

Hmm, I am keen to get home today. I have a few things I want to do... like hit the supermarket, go to my friend's house to borrow some Nigel Slater cookbooks, start working on a present for Shiho, clean out my wardrobe, watch an old movie from the set Jim gave me, AND wrap Maki and Mel's Birthday presents! They are getting back from Hawaii soon and I can't wait for them to open them! I can't say much more until then, but I am proud of my efforts and will put pixxx up soon. The reason I need to clean out my wardrobe is because firstly I found a great sale and bought a whole bunch of stuff for around $100 total. Out with the old, in with the new! I got a dress, a bag, 2 pairs of shorts, 3 singlet-ish tops, 2 skirts, 2 dress shirts, and 1 oversized cream rose brooch. All for $100AUD.. amazing hey? I also came home yesterday to find a bag of clothes from my mum in my front doorway. They are from a friend of a friend of someone! The bag was FULL of dresses. There were maybe 10 or so. I modelled them all last night and am keeping i think 4....! They all have a vintage look to them! So good. I don't know exactly where they came from but I am very grateful and can't wait to wear the first one on Friday night! I'm going out to Maha in the city, and having a fancy dinner, drinks and SHISHA! Finally crossing shisha off the list! WOO!

Hopefully this old horror movie I watch tonight won't be actually scary, cos I keep watching horrors when I'm alone at night and freak myself out. In a way I like that irrational fear from scary movies, like how you become convinced someone is in your house. But on the other hand, I really don't. I've been at home alone most of the last week or so because my housemate Maki is in Hawaii and the other guy, Hayden, is staying at his girlfriend's a lot. So I stupidly watched Martyrs, and Funny Games recently for the rush. Well last night it caught up with me. I went to bed around midnight in the empty house and had my window open for the cool breeze coming through. I kept hearing noises outside my window and MUST have started dreaming something freaky. Anyway around 12.45 i hear the front screen door slam shut, but not the main door or anything else, so in my half-wake I convinced myself that someone opened the screen door and tested the wooden door, and when they couldn't get in, they let the screen door slam before walking off. I somehow fell alseep again, then was woken up by something clattering to the floor in the kitchen. Now I was really convinced. I could see light coming under my door and I was frozen sitting upright in bed with my heart pounding and my ears straining to hear. Phone in hand I stood at my bedroom door listening. I heard 2 voices and I thought I could hear a new zealand accent. Haha. I almost called the police but first i thought i should call hayden just in case it was him and if it wasnt, just to let him know i was about do die. I dialled and waited... then i heard his phone ringing. Relieved, I walked out into the house and had a weird conversation with him and Julia where we were all apologising to one another. Them for waking me up so late and scaring me, me for acting so crazily, and possibly Julia for being 95% naked holding something up to her front. Haha. I went to bed pretty quickly after that and fell into a deep sleep. So deep that i woke up late for work again. Ha!

Anyway, I must be off now, hope we shall meet again soon! :)

Katsu Katsu Katsu-don!

2011-01-31T15:50:00.001+11:00

AHOY MATEYS!!! Well, lookie here. Dish numero thirty five-o COOKED! This little old dish is a Japanese dish involving meat schnitzel over rice. Anything suffixed with "-don" just means it's a rice dish! So this is a cutlet (katsu) rice dish (don). Ever literal hey? I found the recipe online of course at J-simple recipes. They have some cool things on there! I got myself some Pork steak from the vic market... possibly not the right meat to use?? Dunno. Maybe i should have just tenderised it, it was uber tough.

Ingredients: (serves 4)

4 eggs

1 onion

4 deep–fried breaded pork cutlets

4 servings steamed rice
150 ml bonito soup stock

5 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons sugar (the original recipe used double this but i found it too sweet)

The recipe used pre-cooked cutlets, so i had to crumb and cook them my own way. I used panko crumbs - the japanese breadcrumb. Ultra crunchy! So yeah, cook them in oil....

Then chop them up into slices on a board but try to maintain the structural integrity of the whole piece if that is possible. Meanwhile, boil the bonito soup stock, sugar, soy sauce and onion for 3 minutes on medium heat. When it is ready, add some of the liquidy onion stuff to the frypan and lay 2 of your schnitzles in the liquid and let it go for a few minutes...

Then crack your eggs into a cup and beat gently, then try to pour 1 per schnitzel:

Then serve over rice, and garnish if you wish, then crack a japanese beer and relax.

The last integral step is to eat so much that you feel actually SICK and wish you had made a salad... voila! So, it's about time I start cooking some HEALTHY dinners right? What kind of example am I setting for the children of the world?! But seriously, It can't be great. My dad actually patted my belly after i finished lunch yesterday at my brother's birthday celebration... I know how to non-verbally communicate dad, I know what you were saying. That is not good. If anyone actually says anything though, I would literally eat their head off. Not even joking, I may be hungry..

purezentoooooooo

2011-01-25T16:12:00.000+11:00

My Japanese friend Shiho has gone back to Japan for good :( Before she left though, she gave me a bunch of presents!! So nice!!! Below are 12 cans of Japanese alcohol i remember fondly....

She also gave me heaps of beer snacks which Josh and I will sample tonight!! Japanese night!! :D

She gave me a lovely cup to replace the one i broke!!

Some cute chopsticks to add to my collection....

A wind chime for under my pergola...

AND THE BEST!!! OKONOMIYAKI BANNER declaring that i make/sell okonomiyakiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!

WOOHOO! So i am working on an amazing package to send her to say thanks :) we'll see how the beer snacks go!!!!

DISHES 31-34... UPDATE

2011-01-25T15:28:00.000+11:00

Oh my gosh! I have fallen so far behind in my recipe posting!!! I suppose it's a good sign that i am powering through them!! Here are a few more recipes I have always been interested to try out, and have finally made!! The first is Yoghurt Baked Lamb! I made a yoghurt marinade with greek yoghurt, chili, saffron, curry flavours, pepper, lemon etc and slathered it all over the leg of lamb, and baked it in the oven with some roast vegies. DELICIOUS! So tender!

That was awesome! I also picked up a bunch of cool pasta from the Italian Deli, and decided to use the giant shells ad make stuffed pasta shell bake.

So I used ricotta, mashed potato, grated cooked carrot, salt, pepper, cooked diced onion, spinach, parsley, parmesan, 1 egg... and maybe a few other spices.. and filled the boiled shells with the mixture.

I then made a tomato sauce, and put a little on the bottom of a baking dish, and lined the shells up, then spooned the sauce over everything, and added a little more cheese (he he he) and baked for a bit...

I THEN used the Risoni to make this vego dish I've had my eye on for ages! It's artichoke, fennell and spinach risoni. So I left the quantities at home again (this is becoming a habit) but it was... butter, olive oil, fennell, onion, artichoke hearts, white wine, asparagus, spinach, 300ml cream, 1 tbsp dijon mustard, lemon. And of course Risoni pasta...

Pretty good, but it was lacking some OOMPH. So maybe if i make it again i need something a bit more POPPY in it!

Oh my gosh, my lovely cousin Bec sent me this book for Christmas. It has childhood memory recipes like toffee apples, musk sticks, candy hearts... amazing! So i started at recipe number 1... peanut brittle!

I got out my candy thermometer (never used) and set to work. Literally 20 minutes later i was staring at the finished product wondering what the hell i was worried about in the first place. Super easy, you just have to watch the temperature and add things at the right stages.

Bec said i should push some peanut brittle through the phone for her, it made me laugh :) The book is rad. Hopefully I will make some more awesome things from it... there is a recipe for Lollipops for crying out loud... LOLLIPOPPPSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!! So those are dishes 31-34... tonight i am making number 35... a Japanese Dish, CANNOT WAAAIIITTTT woo woo woow ow wowowoowowowwowow

how much fun can you have with a hair extension or two?

2011-01-25T12:53:00.000+11:00

THIS MUCH!

I wanted to know what i'd look like with long hair as i'm thinking of growing it (OMG), so my cousin Nikki and I were mucking around with her extensions. We remenisced about her Grade Prep photo with the awesome fringe and decided to recapture the moment...

So silly.. my stomach hurt from laughter. good times!

it's about time...

2011-01-24T16:28:00.000+11:00

HA! End Post. No not really. While that photo is indeed about time, the real message here is that it's about time that i pulled my finger out of my anus and started making some more progress on the house! I decided to paint, and the colour i wanted was one similar to what my dad used when renovating. It was picked for him because it complemented the blue laminate kitchen at his house, and obviosuly was the cheaper option as apposed to purchasing a new kitchen. And as my house is decked out with blue carpet (shudder) I figured it would match too. Luckily he still had about 4 litres left so i can use as much as i need. I think it looks much cooler....

I am going to do one more wall, as it looks funny just having that corner done. Now that I know it looks good, i'm going to amp it up! Wieew! Also, I have an electrician coming on saturday morning (7am) to install all my lights finally. I bought them sooo long ago! I was quite busy over the weekend!! I also set up the worm farm i got for christmas....

And here are my little wormy friends. I have 1000 worms to start with, and we'll see how they go! I think i can start feeding them now :)

After all that hard work, i sat down to a cup of apple and cinnamon tea in my new teapot and tea cup! Josh got me the teapot for xmas - he thinks it is garish but its the one i wanted, so he got it for me anyway just to make me happy :) what a nice boy! And i got the cup from my friend Claudia! It matches the blue ones i have :D awesome!

Also, i did lots of cooking! I will post up the proper recipes in another post, but for now here is one dish i invented. I can't make it count towards the total 52 dishes cos there was no recipe, and i didnt really like it but i wanted to use my giant tube pasta i got from the Italian Deli in Williamstown...

It fogged up the lense so i did a soap opera pose... as you do.....

Ok, yeah so it was one of those nights when i didnt know what to do... so i made bruscetta and also pesto (with waaay too much garlic - oops!!) and then sort of put it all together into a pesto pasta nest with baby bruscetta topping!

Visually it looks awesome but i didnt quite get it right. I might thik about it some more and attempt it another day :P I'll be back tomorrow with more food stuffs :D wooo hooooo!!!

Jerk it

2011-01-18T15:50:00.001+11:00

Hey party people! I have had this window open for literally hours and not done a thing until now. Facebook notified me that my cousin Andrew had updated his website so when I checked it out I saw that, much to my elation, he had created a blog back in July. He has abandoned his photography job, friends and life here to have himself an amazing New York adventure. From facebook I could only guess as to what the photos represented and the meaning behind the status updates was. I could barely pull myself away from his blog in order to update mine :) Once I read every post and caught up on everything he's been through in the last 6 months with astonishment painted on my face, I came back to my little blog. I guess my blog's cool and all... but the content is totally not as adventurous as his. He's a rap dancer for sure :) Not in the true sense of the word. Or maybe he is. He probably is.

So instead of trekking around the globe physically, I have been doing so culinarily. In my defence, I have been doing it from a distance of 26km from home. Rather exotic, don't you think? So, while I was house-sitting, the rains that devastated parts of Queensland merely annoyed me as I sat inside staring wistfully at the pool and reading about the horrific events in the North in the daily paper that was delivered to the door. Being house-bound, and having realised I am no longer good at reading piano sheet music, naturally I turned to TV for something to do. And because they had Foxtel, the cooking channel quickly became my closest companion.... apart from Josh of course ;) I got to watch some of my old favourites (like the cook and the chef and Jamie Oliver), I got to explore shows i had seen only once or twice (like Nigella), and I got to see NEW shows which I now LOVE... like Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers. Good Times! I also saw one show called World Kitchen where the host focused on Jamaican Food for the episode. I had always wanted to try Jerk Chicken, but after seeing some Jamaican dudes cooking it in the forest I was determined to try my hand at it... although in a suburban kitchen as apposed to underground smoking techniques. Mind you, if I could have, I would have tried. So I did some obligatory research and made a list of ingredients then somehow convinced poor Josh to join me at Footscray Markets on a muggy rainy day. If you were there, you would have spotted us.. we were the bored looking and nasally assaulted boy and the over-excited girl whose eyes were glazed over like a stunned pikachu as she surveyed the produce going "pi----kaaaaaaa". Needless to say, I had fun and it was cool to be back in Footscray. I want to go back again soon to do some people watching, it is a mecca for people who are for lack of a better word... characters.

So back at the house, I gathered my ingredients...

That may seem like a lot of ingredients for marinated chicken, right? Yes, in fact you are right. But it is worth it. If I may borrow one of Jamie Oliver's catch phrases, this is DEAD EASY. This is the second time i have forgotten to bring the recipe with me so I will post it in a few days, but for now please enjoy my brief explanations of each step :)

STEP 1) Basically put everything except the chicken in a blender and you have your Jerk Marinade....

STEP 2) Cut up your chicken. You can butterfly it, but I wanted two smaller peices to start off with so I cut it in half with some heavy duty kitchen scissors... Josh looked like he was going to vomit all over the bench when i was snapping the bones. attractive...

STEP 3) Take a childish photo. I couldn't resist......

STEP 4) Pierce the chicken all over with a fork, then spoon the marinade over it. It is recommended to leave it like this overnight, but I only left it for a few hours...

While it's marinating, prepare some nice soothing and cooling salads to combat the fiery heat of the chicken.

STEP 5) Cook it. I wanted it to have a charcoal flavour so we opted for the barbecue cooking method. We had the heat up high and placed them on the hotplate with the body cavity side down. We turned the heat down, closed the lid and left it for 15 mins. Then we turned them over to give the breast and leg a bit of a blast and left it for another 15 mins. I basted it a little along the way with the left-over marinade to ensure the flavour was there in full force. This was our cooked product:

STEP 6) Cut it up. Every recipe I read or saw on tv/youtube called for it to be cleavered up into smaller pieces which I was pretty chuffed about. In the absence of a meat cleaver, I opted for a big ass knife and cut it up, cracking through bones to reach my goal...

STEP 7) Serve up, and EAATTTTTTT:

Oh my god, it has been such a long time since I have had such deliciously succulent chicken! I don't know what I did to make it so good but we all agreed that it was superb. SUPERB. Everyone got seconds, if that's any indication! If you follow my lead, you should reach the same effect. I'll post the recipe soon, so please give it a go. It's super easy. I didnt use enough habanero chillies due to my unfamiliarity with their heat so it wasn't spicy, just.....orgasmic.

So there you have it, dish THIRTY out of 52! How exciting! I have already got many more dishes that I want to make of course. Probably none of which are low-fat :P All this heavy food has made me do the un-thinkable today... WALK half an hour to the train station this morning. Wow. Then I went for another 30 min walk at lunch time. Unthinkable! I feel good though. Oh I just remembered, I'll be doing some PROPER camping next month. Another tick off the list. I better get moving hey? ;) Time's running out. And don't even tell me that I missed the December Poem... I am fully aware of my blunder. December was an exceptionally hectic month for me, so i'll be doubling up this month :) I'm sure nobody really cares except me anyway so we cool!

JERK CHICKEN RECIPE:

- 1 chicken (un-marinated)
- 3 habanero chillies (i only used 2 and it wasn't hot)
- 2 medium brown onions (you can add spring onions too for another layer of flavour)
- 8 cloves of garlic
- 2 Tbsp each of: fresh thyme, ground allspice, Sugar, Salt
- 2 tsp Ground black pepper
- 1-2 tsp: cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/2 soy sauce
- Juice of 1 lime
- 1 cup orange juice
- 1 cup white vinegar

Blend it all up and rub it on the chicken, pierce the chicken with a fork here and there. I butterflied my chicken to get the most marinade on it. Leave overnight or as long as you can then BBQ it. :)

house-sitting and cooking :)

2011-01-11T16:27:00.001+11:00

Yoyoyo! So this is the lovely place i have been calling home for the last week and a bit! make pretend is fun!

We have two dogs and 7 guinea pigs to look after here. The dogs (Leo and Lilly) both love going to the back beach and frolicking on the rocks.

Unfortunately they also like running inside and peeing on our clothes if they are left on the floor. Which they usually are. Just half an hour ago Josh's work pants fell victim to one of their urinary revenge displays. Can't work it out... But that's ok cos we have been playing around in the pool most days with Josh's new waterproof camera and pulling funny poses. to ease the pain. For example this is me insulting josh in my spectacular new bathers....

I have been enjoying doing some cooking too. The first 'new' dish i made here was garlic prawns. I added some greens at the end to make it a little more substantial.

Then i had a brilliant idea. I didn't get my friend Claudia a birthday present - as her bday is a few days before xmas and i am shit at organising multiple things at once - so i told her i'd make her a birthday dinner sometime after christmas. i figured now would be a good time for a catch up seeing as i don't see her as much as i'd like to, so i got out my thinking cap and blew the layer of dust off it and came up with a brilliant idea. PAELLA! Not long ago i once again found myself in a conversation about food. She told Josh and I about how much she loves mussels and how her and her dad and grandpa would get a big bucket of them and go to town on them. I also remembered an earlier conversation about how much she enjoyed eating paella in Spain. THEN on a lazy walk down to Gem Pier in Williamstown Josh and I saw a little boat which advertised fresh mussels for sale - currently on holidays but returning Jan 9th. So we set up the birthday dinner for that very day and i started doing my paella research. In the lead-up I also saw a farmers market advertised for the SAME day. To my surprise when i left the house in the late morning, i discovered that the farmers market was directly across the street at the reserve. amazing. So i wondered across and got some cheese samples before brekky and picked up some flowers and fruit. Then... THEN.. it was time to get the seafood. I walked down to the pier and saw the bustling little business in full swing.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm quite the seafood noob, and i was nervous when approaching the boat. I got in line and when it was my turn would you believe that I put on my naive little girl voice and asked for a small order of 12 prawns and 12 mussels? I did. They gave me a straight faced explanation of how they only sell mussels by the kilo. "fuck" i thought, then i noticed they were only $5 a kilo anyway so i got a kilo, plus my 12 prawns. You could get fresh oysters for $1 too and eat them nearby with some lemon. Not that i am interested in natural oysters AT ALL but it seemed like a cool vibe for some. I picked up the rest of my supplies from the local deli and supermarket and went home to prepare!

True to the history of the dish, i used left overs (chicken) in the paella, along with some pancetta and chorizo. I took inspiration from multiple paella recipes icluding ones by Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and Nigella Lawson. This is my ideal Paella recipe, and i think it turned out pretty awesome!

This is one of the few times i have used saffron in a dish, and i had fun using it if you'd believe that. Nigella suggested to infuse Sherry and Saffron together on a low heat and then add it in, so that's what I did! Thanks Nigella :)

Ok, so this is a photo montage of what i did, but i'll put the recipe at the end so you can look back at these pics for explanations... but as if you'll need to as this is the easiest dish EVAAAAAAAAA...

YUM. time for another bowl of leftovers i reckon...here's the recipe I used:

PAELLA:

2 chorizo sausages, sliced
6 slices pancetta
handful of leftover chicken (or use 1 breast of fresh)
king prawns (I used 12)
mussels (I used 10)
1 large onion, diced (i used half a red and half a brown)
4 cloves garlic, sliced
1 capsicum, diced (or half red and half green like i did)
*chilli is optional
1.5 cups paella rice (i used aborio)
1.5 litres HOT chicken stock
a few glugs cooking sherry
a pinch of saffron
sweet paprika
olive oil
dry white wine
salt and pepper
handful or 2 of peas
1 chopped tomato
chopped parsley for garnish
lemon wedges for garnish

PROCEDURE:

Heat the stock in a saucepan and keep hot on the side ready to add.
Heat olive oil in a large paella pan, add onion and garlic.Cook for a few minutes.
In a seperate little pan, heat the sherry and saffron.
Add capsicum and salt and pepper, cook for a few minutes,
Add Chicken, pancetta and chorizo. cook until meat starts to brown.
Add rice and stir to coat it in all the oils.
Add a few glugs of white wine to get the 'risotto style' cooking process started.
Add the sherry and saffron to the mix as well as the paprika, and stir through.
Add all of the hot stock, cover and let simmer for 15 mins. Don't touch it.
Lay the seafood ontop and the peas, tomato and some parsley. Put the lid on for a minute or two to partially steam the seafood. Then stir it all through the rice gently.
Sprinkle a bit more parsley all over the top and arrange the lemon wedges around the sides.

Serve on the table with some spare bowls for the shells and maybe a water bowl to clean your fingers!!

Yummo. Needless to say everyone enjoyed this delicious dish and Claudia liked taking the remaining 10 or 15 mussels home for dessert ;)

I have to think of what else i can make. I have been watching the food channel heaps and saw this lady make jerked chicken. I am pretty sold :) So there you go, another 2 dishes made toward my total. I've lost count but i'll figure it out soon! Maybe i'll make a few more yummy things before i go back to work next week :O

CROQUEMBOUCHE... COMPLETE!

2010-12-29T14:38:00.000+11:00

Ello, ello, ello! Well, it's that time of year again! The time between Christmas and New Years where you feel neither here nor there and feel like you've suffered a beating of the worst kind. Happy Days! I have something to tell you.... i have finally made a croquembouche! BOOYAAAHHHHH

It was completed at my friend Jess's house over 2 days. I think i jinxed the family and stressed them all out to be honest. Hope everything's ok over there now! So... we started off with the profiteroles!

Choux pastry was OK to make, although you have to add the egg 3 teaspoons at a time and beat, and there are 6 eggs in each batch we did! Good thing there were mix-masters going. Then the next day we did the Cointreau custard and assembled the whole thing!

That's me nursing a toffee burn on my knuckle, trying to get in finished quickly. I think if i ever ever ever make one again... i will not use toffee cos i don't like having scabby knuckles. sounds so bad... haha. It tasted really good, everyone was a big fan :)

Anyway, that's one more thing off the list, how exciting!

cookin' up a storm

2010-12-22T12:46:00.000+11:00

Hello fair ladies and gentle fellows! I have some news on the cooking front! Recently I made this asian vermicelli noodle salad for dinner. I didn't have much to work with in the fridge so i grated some carrot and cucumber to mix through the noodles, found a spring onion, some mint and some bean sprouts in the fridge too. oh and i put some finely grated purple cabbage through and added some splashes of sauces....

It was really yummy, although being the big eater I am, it wasn't enough to fill my tum tum. but by the time i got hungry it was late.... i often find myself contemplating second dinner around 11pm...but i almost always resist and turn in for the night. Oh, also, a few days ago i had quite the baking day! I made shortbreads, banana bread AND made a recipe i have been wanting to make for a long time!! CANDY CANE COOKIES! Let's watch:

Here are my Christmas stars... I thought i had a decent 5 point star cutter, but turns out i have this weird 4 point star cutter. who ever heard of 4 points? it looks a bit like a nazareth star...if that's a 'thing'. I'm talking shit again. Ok, so i used the lavender to make lavender shortbread love-hearts. Apparently got rave reviews... Also i used the over-ripe bananas to make banana cinamon bread. yummo...

And the Pièce de résistance... CANDY CANE COOKIES!

I have looked at this recipe every christmas for the past 5 years i reckon. Laaaazy! I finally unlocked the door to this cool recipe! Thats another 2 recipes off my list! But they were kinda fun to make.... actually they were really fiddly and the dough was almost like trying to work with water so they were annoying to make. But worth it.

That's the finished product. I put them in gift bags last night for some lucky people, but about 3 of them broke........ god damn it al to HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!

So Christmas is in a few days..... woo! I am not feeling organised but i no longer care. This year i am feeling kind of grinchy about the whole christmas thing. I know decorating my house and baking cookies doesnt seem like grinch behaviour... but believe me, i was more excited last year haha. Need to be more positive about this time of year. promise to be next year. It should be a nice festive season, and I'm lookig forward to New Years Eve too cos I'm hosting the party this year and it's gonna be "Frat Party" theme. I hear Lady Gaga is making an appearance. I'll make sure I get a photo with her in my toga.. :)

In the Lygon Street Zone!

2010-12-15T14:15:00.000+11:00

Do Y'all know Lygon Street? I'm sure if you're from around here then you would for sure. It's the Italian restaurant mecca of Melbourne. Very famous etc etc. The problem for me is the abundance of "Ferrari restaurants".. you know the dark 70's style decor with faded Ferrari posters on the wall? Yes, those. Well I had a few Ferrari experiences around here so I'm always looking for nice new places to go! Josh and I have come here quite a bit as it's near my work and his uni, and we occasionally go the the NOVA cinema on Mondays when tickets are $8! The place directly across from Nova is called "Tiamo" and i love it! But going there 3 times in a row was starting to feel a tad.... thoughtless. So we tried a place closer to the city end which was OK, and then on Monday night Josh and I tried "D.O.C" onthe corner of Faraday and Drummond.

Let me just say: I really liked it! From what I can gather from the Italian menu, it is a concept restaurant which is kind of like a mozzarella bar with multiple cheeses on offer. They had some antipasto on offer, and a selection of pizzas with what I can only imagine are carefully designed with the nicest ingredients in stock. No Don salami here. On the back of the menu they have descriptions of types of cheeses and salamis on offer...

So we drank some Italian Beers while we perused the menu and stared around at the passers by...

And then got our pizzas very quickly and they had that "minimal" vibe to them which i like, especially when everything on it was top quality and tasty! If we go there again (I'm sure we will) I'll get the pizza which had cremy broccoli something on it :)

I demolished mine!! And I even had a bite of Josh's too! Make no mistake people, I have a healthy appetite! A fact which many old people like to tell me, and a fact which I suppose I should embrace. It's just a shame that this deliciously relaxing dinner was spoiled by the movie we saw afterwards. Josh gave me the option of two movies.. one set in Tokyo and one set in Finland. So can you guess which one I chose? Yah, Tokyo.

We saw "Enter the void" - a French film in English about an American guy living in Tokyo who dies during a drug deal and comes back as a ghost to revisit past experiences and watch over his redneck fucking dickhead stripper sister who is incestuous and fucked up from growing up in foster homes. It comes with an Epilepsy warning... maybe I should have heeded the warning. But no, I chose the movie and we sat through almost 2 hours of it while a few people left, and then we called it quits after the abortion scene. As did the man sitting next to us. Maybe I'm not "cool" enough to appreciate the message behind it, but whatever. It was boring and repetitive, and each time i saw a light or lamp in a scene i was fearful because the ghost camera hovering around the room goes into the light and you are assaulted by a white screen of strobe for 20 seconds, then the ghost backs out and flies around some more and watches his sister fucking her gross sleazy boss. I dunno, i dont want to recommend it, but i think it would be interesting to see what point you get sick of it and walk out. i couldnt imagine sitting there for another half an hour or whatever was left of the movie... and i felt gross and depressed for the whole night and all of yesterday from it. I'm kinda past the assaulted feeling now and just dislike it. I liked the opening credits and the scenes near the very beginning where they were walking around Tokyo... i felt very nostalgic. And there was one scene during a flashback where his sister is taken away from him which was genuinely sad, and not a punch in the face like other shit going on it the movie. hmm.... thats about it. But it was so indulgent and wanky.

That is the second movie I have walked out on. The first was that Johnny Knoxville movie "The Ringer" where he pretends to be special needs in order to win gold at the special olympics. The audience were such bogans and were laughing AT the downs syndrome actors instead of along with the movie. It was horrific.

Anyway "Enter the Void"... to see or not to see?? YOU BE THE JUDGE. Some people have never walked out on a movie, it's a good feeling.

CHRISTMAS HAS LANDED

2010-12-13T13:09:00.000+11:00

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! CHRISTMAS HAS LANDED! BE PREPARED! I am just starting to get organised, but I think I will be adding to my Christmas decoration collection a bit this year! Last year i was pretty poor, but this year I may be getting some new things i hope! This is what I have started off with in order to spread some Christmas cheer throughout the house:

And then some more lovely roses from darling Josh....

Can't wait to get some more stuff! Maybe a wreath...or a giant inflatable santa and sleigh to put on the roof!!!!! Just kidding. I need to find a place to hang the stockings too, so watch this space. This christmassy space :D

New Vego Restaurant (2/5) CROSSWAYS

2010-12-09T13:54:00.000+11:00

Howdy Y'all! It has taken me a while to find this place, and I'm going to say it's because i couldn't seem to find it and it wasn't where i thought it was... Yeah that washes. You may know it as "cross roads" the Hare Krishna Restaurant. Basically it's $6.50 all you can eat curry, dessert and drinks (cordial or lassi) and $5.00 for concession card holders - that's YOU students :)

It's on Swanston almost near the corner of Little Collins :) This is the curry they had - a yummy chunky vegie one.

The only problem is that it was about 45 degrees up there and i nearly sweated my face off.. nearly. It was one of those times when the backs of your knees get sweaty. feral. I am sooo not a summer person. Anyway, at least you get to look at their cool pictures :)

And watch people eat funny...

And enjoy the breath of fresh air on the way out :)

If you can stand the heat (figuratively and literally) this is the place to go for your next weekday lunch :)

New Dish 25/52: Roast Beetroot Salad

2010-12-08T16:15:00.000+11:00

Yum. Side note: Going to the toilet after eating a lot of beetroot is.... interesting. And disgusting.

New Vego Restaurant (1/5) WHITE LOTUS VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT

2010-12-08T13:33:00.000+11:00

Ok, you're probably going "omg what a dick head... that place has been around for years....". Well yes, i fucking know that. The 2001 Cheap Eats guide review blu-tacked to the wall made it quite clear that I have officially arrived late to the opening night party of this place. But that's ok, I like the un-pretentious vibe it had and the fact that for a booking of 4 we were given a big round table for 12. I have been meaning to come here ever since i found out the definition of 'Vegan', and now... I HAVE. WHOOPEEE!

You can find this place on Victoria Street near the Queen Vic Market - just past Peel Street. They specialise in mock meat here, and their most famous dishes are mock duck and mock fish. Crazy huh? Here are a few of their beliefs displayed on the walls...

Pretty cool. We ordered some starters - an assorted plate of starters. Eggplant fritters, taro fritters, wontons, and spring rolls. Bear in mind that this is all vegan...

We got a bucket of rice to share - that was cool...

And here are our mains! This is Steak and black bean :

Wasn't amazing, but nice. This next one was just mind-blowing. It is the fake fish. It looks, smells and tastes like fish.... but it is not.

It's in a tamarind sauce. I highly recommend it. I think it was $19... which is pretty much what you would pay for fish at a chinese place. You have to eat it to believe it! Ok, and here was what i got... DUCK:

Again it looked, smelled and tasted like duck. Awesome! It had crispy skin and everything!! We were so impressed we tried to get rad out the front but i had the lighting all wrong and the 2 guys are just blurs of satisfied customers...

Then we went looking for ice cream at Korean Groceries. Corey found this yummy fish.. it was like ice cream cone with ice cream and red bean inside - was cool!

Sacha got a nice sponge cake ice cream coffee concoction which was also good. I am all about sharing ice creams in case you didnt notice already. I didnt want a whole one, but i wanted to try them both. With a little suggesting they happened to pick one that i liked too hhah

Then squelch decided to get some sushi for lunch the next day. Was pretty funny cos none of the assorted packs could cut it so the lady opened about 4 packs and did some swaps so he got the ultimate pack :)

So there you go, a bit overdue but that was the first new vego place i was meaning to try and have done it :)

what's been goin' on!

2010-12-02T13:21:00.000+11:00

Ahoy Noahssss! Well, lately I have been a bit all over the place (what else is new?) and haven't given you news on a massive achievement! MY PERGOLA IS FINISHED! Woo-hooo! My Dad put the roofing on last week. He slaved away with Maki in the heat and wind trying to screw down the colorbond and laserlite sheets. Crazy! But yes, it is done!! So now, I can focus on the yard. The massive yard. And those horribly low fences!

I need to get some crushed rock and mulch and make a nice garden so it doesn't look so desolate out there. So looks like I can tick this pergola item off my list. I did help about 1%... BUT i did financially back it, and it ended up costing DOUBLE what I was told it would cost, so that has pushed all my other plans back :S So I think i helped it get built in a way haha... oh dear. I suck. Watch this space and hopefully i can make my backyard beautiful for you to enjoy! Anyway in other news, Josh bought me some lovely roses...

Lovely roses, bad photo! Sorry, I compressed it heaps for a forum, and cbf uploading it again! haha. Also... in other JOSH NEWS.. He gave Missy a haircut last night, and she is like Patchy McBaldy now. She had heaps of grass seeds and burs and knots. It is bonkers....

Aaaw little missy :) Yeah so TONIGHT I am trying out a new Vego restaurant - as part of my list :) I have to try 5 new ones. Luckily at World Vegan Day I got handed a business card for a BRAND NEW vegan cafe. I lost it though.. that's the bad news!! I'm sure it will work out :) Life always does... life... finds a way...

little shop of horrors: ORIGIN

2010-12-01T14:30:00.000+11:00

Yo yo yo yo yoy oyo yo yoyyooooo!!! So, you all remember Josh's friend Jim, yes? He let me borrow his Dutch cookbook, and NOW has let me borrow his "Creepy Things" DVD set! BEHOLD... 20 great scary movies!!!!!!!!!!!!!

check out some of these promising movie titles...

Did you happen to see the name "Kim Cattrall" next to 1977's 'Good Against Evil'?? Well it's there if you want to look again! T'aint goin' nowhere. Samanth off Sex in the City... the early years. Also, I'm excited to see some of the Vincent Price ones!! I kicked things off last night by watching 1960's Little Shop of Horrors "starring" Jack Nicholson. I do have the ultimate soft spot for Jacky boy, he is an absolute legend. Also, I have the Rick Moranis re-make on DVD too, so I thought I'd start off on a familiar note. It was pretty pretty pretty cool! So, it's 50 years old yeah!! How awesome is that!? It was Black and White, and unlike the stage show and movie re-make, it is NOT a musical! It was a horror... and I think it's meant to be a comedy too. Maybe a black comedy.

There was one scene that made me laugh. It was some dialogue between two detectives on the case. It's in that abrupt wise guy dialogue. Check it (courtesy of IMDB):

Det. Sgt .Joe Fink: How's the wife, Frank?
Det. Frank Stoolie: Not bad, Joe.
Det. Sgt .Joe Fink: Glad to hear it. The kids?
Det. Frank Stoolie: Lost one yesterday.
Det. Sgt .Joe Fink: Lost one, huh? How'd that happen?
Det. Frank Stoolie: Playing with matches
Det. Sgt .Joe Fink: Well, those're the breaks
Det. Frank Stoolie: I guess so.

Haha, so dry. The scenes that were slapstick weren't really my style...contrary to the fact that I actually LOVE physical comedy. There was a show on TV at mum's last night which was a top 20 countdown of injuries. Soooo goood! Anyway. I thought Jack Nicholson must have played a major role, like... SEYMOUR or something, which is what this movie poster would suggest...

But actually, this is Seymour:

Jonathan Haze. He was really good! Jack Nicholson was good too, but he actually played a small character called "Wilbur Force". If you've seen the re-make you'll remember Bill Murray as the masochistic dental patient getting off on the pain? Well Jack was the original masochistic dental patient :)

I remember Bill did a good job, in the scene he knows his way around the dental surgery and puts on his own bib, stuffs his own mouth with cotton and all that stuff ready for crazy sadistic Steve Martin to bring on the pain. In the original, Seymour poses as the dentist and Nicholson convinces his to pull some teeth and leaves with half his teeth gone. Pretty 1960 funny :) If my maths is correct, Jack Nicholson is about 23 years old in that picture. Craaaazy!!

So what should I watch next? Any ideas? I like the sound of "The Brain the wouldn't die", or maybe "The Dead Eyes of London". Weeeeeeeee

november poem

2010-12-01T12:30:00.000+11:00

Kate and the Kung Fu Panda

There's something about Kate that I bet you don't know,

When I found this out, I was simply aglow!

She has a dear friend who she saw once a week

But this aint your average beauty or geek.

Her friend is a Panda. No, I shit you not.

He's black, white and fluffy and owns his own yacht.

Each summer he fills up his boat with bamboo

And sets off in the night with a whispered "Adieu"

He sails the world, and makes video diaries

And sends them to Kate to quell her inquiries.

At the end of last summer, he never returned

And needless to say, Kate was concerned.

They met on Contiki, way back in the day

And went together like mango and sorbet.

It's completely platonic, which Kate made quite clear.

To this news, he drowned his sorrows with beer.

He disappeared to Guam to clear out his head,

Cos he thought without Kate, he'd rather be dead.

He returned years later, and saw Kate was with James.

He almost sent their house up in flames.

He tried so hard to win her affections

All the while with his fond recollections.

Eventually he gave up, and started kung-fu

and with this new obsession, his hurt did subdue.

Next, they were friends and were getting along well

And he bought his yacht and first set off into the swell.

Years passed by, and he kept sailing

His returns were always simply unfailing.

And now he is gone, and noone knows where

And Kate is left wondering about her dear panda bear.

The only sign of the loss she hides away

Is the big red poster she put up at work one day.

She looks at that poster and thinks about life.

If anyone moved it, there would sure be some strife.

As Kate types away at her computer all day

she strangely gets cravings for mango sorbet