Dish 3) GNOCCHI

HEY NERDS! Haha i watched some 30 Rock recently and I'm all Liz Lemonish righ now. Sweet, anyway. You know when you are just so BLAH and you want nothing more than to just get up and walk out of work and get the train home - napping all the way - then crawl into bed and sleep for the rest of the afternoon wondering how you even got there? Well i feel that way right now. I hope i'mnot getting sick. I will tell myself that i am in perfect health and totally fine. I'll whisper sweet lies into my own ear. Well I hope i am not sick because i have a ball to attend tomorrow night!! It is for Josh's Uni - every year they have an "Education Ball" for the students studying education. those 3 words sound strange together. Anyway last night Josh wanted to get involved in the list so we made some Gnocchi at his place!

The recipe said 750g Desiree potatoes to 1 1/3 cups plain flour. However when we bought the potatoes we just guessed and ended up with 618g and feeling a bit like this dish wasn't going to turn out. So first you boil the potatoes whole (skin on). When that's done you have to peel them while they are hot!

Then you mash 'em real good!

Go Josh GO!!!!!! Then you have to let it cool down a bit and then add the flour and knead briefly.

Then you divide the dough into 4 equal portions and roll each one out with your hands into a tube, and then cut the tube into little 1.5cm lengths. Then you tip the lengths on their flat end and squash them with a fork

While I was doing that, Josh made a sauce. We used some fresh onion, mushroom, cherry tomatoes and some italian herbs. Then we got this nice jar of sauce. It was actually "Pasta Bake" sauce but it toally worked. You need a pot of water boiling and you put in a handful of gnocchi and wait until they float. When they are floating you give them another 10seconds then use a big slotted spoon to take them out and add to the sauce..

I added some parmesan cheese through the sauce, and then i put extra on top because i looove cheese!

And it was soooo amazingly tasty that we scoffed it in about 5 minutes flat. Then Josh had seconds!!

The only thing i would do differently next time is weigh the potatoes and use to correct amount of flour just to see if it makes much difference to the finished product. Oh and i would boil the potatoes a little longer than we did so that the mash is lots smoother. But aside from that, a winning dish! Josh and I gave it 4/5 YAYYYYY!

PS> This could very easily be vegan as long as the pasta sauce is vegan :)

week 2 dish - slow cooked vegie stew

hi y'all! so now it's week 3 of my list and i have to report on my dish from last week! I have always wanted to use a slow cooker, and i realised my mum has one so i snatched it for this! I reeeeally wanted to make a lamb casserole, but thought i'd try it out with a cheap recipe. Behold the mighty slow cooker...

So i gathered my vegies, including the cool red potatoes i got at the Trentham farmers market about hmm... a month ago..? that explains the little eyes growing from it...

i just thought the colour was amazing!! They were pretty yummy too :)

I sauteed it all in a pan with some oil, garlic, bay leaves, spices and cooking sherry for a little bit, then transfered it to the slow cooker. I added some mustard seeds and lentils then put it on low for about 5 hours, then turned it up to high for the next 3 or so hours.

totally forgot to take a picture of the finished product though, oops! I was busy in the garden and mending a dress. I will have to show you the pics of the dress, very exciting!! But yes, that was my first slow cooker experience!! It was pretty melt-in-your-mouthy... cant wait to try it out on lamb! Wonder what the electricity bill will be like after my new slow cooker phase haha.... oh god *tugs at collar*

gettin' bizzay in the backyard

So. My backyard. This is part of my list of wonder so i spent another sunny weekend day getting busy to make it look nice. This is what it looked like about 2 weeks back...

There is 1 of everything there. And a low fence. Gross. When I say there is one of everything, i don't mean that the yard is abundant with plants... quite the opposite actually. Of each plant that is present, it is the only one. They are scattered about in no discernable order, and they make me sigh. *sigh* So... add a few donated trees, namely:

...lemon tree...

...port wine magnolia...

...something...

...and another something... all of which aren't looking too crash hot right now. Then to add to these donated trees, i had to get creative and work with what i've got! I have this MONSTER agapanthus plant near the back door, and a few baby ones scattered around it too. The good thing about this is that you can divide it. Little did i know that it would be nearly impossible to dig out haha...

But luckily my trusty family helpers came over again with power tools and upper body strength - both of which i lack. We (they) got the plant out and then we divided it up into little babies. As you can see it's pretty easy to know where to divide:

I was surprised by the crazy dreadlock matted root system:

Pretty similar to orchid roots imo. So as i was dividing those, my dad cut down the bottlebrush! Hoorayyyy! Ding dong the witch is dead!

and then he dug me some holes! Check out the difference between the soil in these 2 holes. One is soil and one is clay...stupid garden...

I got to dig one hole with the post-hole digger and it was crazy! You have to hold on so hard so it doesn't kick! Then i went and planted all the little agapanthus around to make it look nice and green! We also dug out these african grassy looking things that were basically a clump of dead tall reedy grass. The only good thing is that as it had died all the grass made some nice compost, and the soil around them was beautiful and mulchy. I took little clumps of it and put it at the bases of most of the new plants...

haha, i still have the mystery tree from my old house - the one that just started growing in the vegie patch. It is somehow still alive so i planted it and we'll see what happens! You can barely see it in the above photo, it's the little stick next to the lavender. I also have to trim those other big trees back. i wanted them gone but mum thinks they will look ok if i cut them into shape. We'll see!

ah yes, and here are my camelia bushes donated by my aunty. I chopped all the flower buds off so that all the energy goes into growing this spring rather than flowering. Hopefully that theory works :) Wow my body hurts just thinking about the work we did. We also planted some of the 5 billion agapanthus plants in the front yard, and got rid of a dead tree or 2 from out the front. It didn't even have a root system it was that dead. I'm surprised the wind hadn't blown it over sooner :O So here i am at stage 2 of the garden reno. I haven't spent a cent yet on it. I have been very lucky! Maybe next weekend I will buy some good soil and mulch and fertiliser to look after all the new plants! WEEE! Oh yeah and i found out that i will be getting back $1,900 from my tax return so looks like the pergola is a go-go! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

phallus

Hi Everyone! Do any of you eat something from a restaurant and go "I'm going to figure out how they made this..."? Well I do. At the moment I am obsessed with Turkish red lentil kofta wraps from the Vic Market. They are $3 and I am getting one soon for lunch. I did a mini masterchef challenge a few days ago when i got one and was picking through it, studying it, and eating tiny bits of peppercorn or bulghur wheat going "oh nyes, i thought it was that!"... i'm glad nobody saw me. So yeah needless to say i guessed most of the ingredients but i wasnt 100% sure so i looked up some recipes and was pretty close! I am going to make them one of these days - it is on my list :D ps. i'm back from lunch and i was so hungry that i forgot to take a photo right away and i ate half before i remembered. Here is the lentil wrap:

And i got a zucchini wrap too, in case i get hungry later... or it may become my dinner again hehe. I had the same scenario happen on tuesday. Except it was a falafel wrap i had for dinner! I have never tried the zucchini wrap before. Here is that one too:

Looks great! So this weekend i am going to be doing more gardening! It will be 15C and sunny (better than nothing hey) on Saturday so that will work. I realised the other day that in the backyard there are some random agapanthus plants scattered around and I found out you can divide them up into smaller plants! This is agapanthus:

Not mine unfortunately, mine have no flowers and there are only about 2-3 big ones. They are very common here i thinksss! It's actually considered a "weed" as they can get pretty out of control in the bush (i cannot picture these in the bush) and apparently the leaves are toxic and animals stay away for a reason. I saw this vigilante on a plant forum going "DIG UP YOUR AGAPANTHUS AND SAVE OUR CHILDREN!" haha. Aparently all you do to divide it, is dig it up then use a knife or shovel to cut up the root cluster like cake slices and plant all the little slices individually and it keeps growing into a bigger plant. Cool! instant garden border! So i'll be attempting this on Saturday. Is it bad to kill a native tree? I have a bottlebrush in my backyard and it's, like everything in the garden, the only one there and placed in an odd spot. also it is gnarly and gross and ugly and i hate it. My dad is going to come and chop it down, as well as these other dead trees hanging around near it. Can't wait to have a nice green backyard :)

On a super awkward note, i had an uncomfortable run-in with the tenants who lived in my house before i had to kick them out and move in. They moved a few houses down the road and let me tell you... they did not want to move. They are in their 50's and had been renting the house for 7 years or something - as soon as it was built - then along comes me late last year and bought it. Because i got the first home buyers grant from the goverment, i was required to move into the house within 12 months of buying it, and live there for at least 6 months. So I let the tenants stay for the first 6 months after buying it, and collected rent from them, then i had to give them notice to vacate and shift in myself. So they weren't happy and ended up shifting down the street but really want to come back. They are great tenants and would love them to come back, but i can't get my shit together and finish all the improvements on the house. Then once the improvements are done i don't think they could afford the rent :s Plus... where would i go?? AHHHH i don't want to think about it yet. OK so yeah i keep getting their mail, and i usually drop it in their letterbox every few days. This morning i was driving out of the street on my way to the station and pulled over to quickly drop it in, when a car drove toward me and pulled into their driveway. The lady got out (who i have never met - i have met her hubz) and i was awkwardly walking up her driveway to introduce myself. She asked how the house was going and I explained that i'm working on the gardens and starting on the pergola soon and she got excited. Then i said "How's your new place going...?" and her face fell and she was all "Yeah, we don't like it here...". I didn't know what to say. And then she said "Oh, but we're so happy for you, being able to buy a house at your age!!" and i said thankyou. Then i said i had to get going to catch my train. awk-ward. Wow. We all laugh because the man keeps getting mail from the casino and poker magazines and the "VCGR" (Victorian Commission of Gambling Regulation) and when i moved in, there was a poker chip key-ring on the keys they gave me. I'm a mail stalker haha.

Anyway! Tomorrow I will be having a buffet lunch at "Melba Restaurant" at the Langham Hotel. I have heard amazing things about it, so i bought my mum a voucher for lunch last Christmas... and she is using it now for her birthday! I'm excited to see all the amazing foods!! Should be awesomeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Ok, that is the regulation amount of excitement per blog post... right...(WEEEE!!!!!!).. now.

mother ducker's house

Wassup pimps? For those of you who know me or my blog, by now you probably know about my mum's burnt out house. If you live around my neck of the woods you have probably seen the front but not the back. I was there the other day and took some pictures of the progress. Here is a before shot (just after the fire) and a shot of how it looks now....

it has been over a year now. Her partner is re-building it/extending but it is the slowest build i have ever seen. Mum must be dying to move in. The plan is that he is going to Africa around mid-September and the majority will be finished so that mum can take over the internal renovations. Her birthday is tomorrow and she said she doesn't want a present, she just wants us to help with the house. Pretty fair deal if you ask me. I'd love to pick up some more skills so i can renovate my own bombshell one day :) I have a dream house slowly materialising in my mind and one day i will have it.

List Update: July poem, Dish 1, gardens...

How-dee-do folks! Well it is now August, so let me just say.. WHAT THE FUCK OMG! How time flies hey? We all know it. I don't know why i bothered to say it really, it just took me by surprise...again! So in my list of wonder I challenged myself to write 1 poem per month and cook 1 new dish every week for the next year, well until my 24th Birthday on June 30. So I was out on Saturday night (July 31st) and it was about 10pm when I realised that I only had 2 hours to write my poem for July! ~*pAnIc MoDe*~ I certainly didn't want to start screwing up the list and letting myself down within the first week, so I was that idiot yelling "Does anyone have a PEN?!?!!" at a nice bar where surely nobody is carrying their usual bag of tricks. Much to my embarassment nobody had a pen....but everybody had an iPhone. It was like being interviewed on my way out of a court hearing, there were iPhones aimed at me everywhere. Being the noob that I am, it took me a good...i dont know... 3 hours to write this lame haiku:

Apples and friendship

Can be crushed into cider

Bulmers in my hand

It's a haiku so it's not meant to make sense. I was drinking a pint of cider though, that part is true! Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions that were actually a lot better than my ideas, it was a shame that I have to write the monthly poems (monthlies lol) on my own... a culmination would have been better by far haha. Seriously i'm so slow with iPhones.. and technology in general. Don't ask me how i'm able to maintain a blog, i just drool on the keyboard hoping that it short circuits and magic does the rest of the work for me. It's worked so far! Seona took a picture of me looking thoughtful writing the poem...and Ruari in the background crunching some big numbers...

Yeah I promise the August poem will be a long awesome one! YAY! Ok, now to the topic of food! What a great topic! I cooked my dish for Week 1 on Friday night. I have decided that I will cook a total of 52 dishes, but there are now only like 48 weeks until my bday so some weeks i will have to double up. Also, if I hit 52 new dishes before my Birthday i might think of some more! I made a list which is quite long :P Last week's dish was Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto Pasta:

I kiiinda winged it. I had a recipe for the pesto but it got soaked in sundried tomato oil leakage and got ruined! ROONT! Basically i made the pesto, cooked some onion, bacon and chicken, then added some white wine and pesto, then the cream. I thickened it with flour and a bit more cheese. It was yummo!

Ok now onto ANOTHER list item!! My aunty said i could have lots of her plants from her courtyard. There are so many!! I took quite a few but left some for another person who wanted some ferns etc. I might get more down the track cos she wants absolutely ZERO greenery. So here is the outside of my house before en-ay-thang has been done.

Yeah nice huh? *screws up face* I was in the gardens for 3 hours a few weeks ago mowing and toiling the soil cos it is like clay with some rocks in it for good measure. Pretty dissapointing. At the moment I am trying to get the grass to grow over those faded patches. It's hard work, I need to go out there and massage the soil in the moonlight, sing the grass and weeds sweet lullabyes. Once it looks a little thicker I'll give it a mow. It's weird having to think about this stuff- I never noticed it when i lived at home. So yes that's the before. Don't ask what's with the 2 random little plants near the front window - i moved them to the backyard. To the left of where i am standing there is a massive lavender bush and behind me the council just planted some frangipani trees :) After I picked up the plants from my aunty, we headed back home with a trailer full of: 1 lemon tree, 1 port wine magnolia tree, 1 big leafy tree, 1 tropical looking plant, 2 yuccas, 5 camelia bushes, and a bunch of mondo grass. Like i said there is probably more if i want it. which i do. Here is my dad helping to dig holes - much quicker and less painful than shoveling...

Here is the front of the house after the plants went in. Don't know what's going on with that curved and messed up Yucca. I'll stake it up straight soon.

I think it's looking a little better! The majority went in the backyard just because i want the front to look tidy for when i have to find new tenants down the track. I will probably separate the mondos a bit as they grow more, but i just needed to get them in the ground so they can enjoy all the rain that's coming! I couldn't take any pics of the back-yard as the sun had set and we were working in darkness haha. And that was Saturday arvo, and i havent been back there in daylight hours since. Maybe tomorrow arvo...or Wed morning...? Anway ~*^*~Funniest Home Video Moment~*^*~ ...when one of my helpers was filling up the water bucket, he turned the tap so much that the handle came unscrewed and the water pressure shot it up and hit him square in the forehead!! haha so bad, then the water was shooting into the sky higher than the roof - hilarious! If it wasnt so cold i would have stripped off and done my nude-in-public list item. Actually that would have been wierd - you know... family around etc... Yeah so that's how i'm going with my list after 1 week or so! I am excited! Who knows what i'll cook this week! Not even I do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

list progress

Hi thererererereererrrr! In case you are wondering, no I have not abandoned my list of wonder. In fact i am well on my way, from misery to happiness to-day. uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh.. yeah i know... but what can i do when my brain is leaking from my ears? meh.

What i mean to say is that I have been actively making plans to complete my list. To satisy item 18 (Cook 1 new dish every week) I have been creating a list of recipes i've always wanted to cook, or ones that I tried to cook which were a disaster. I have to add a little * to that one to explain that it is 1 every week or a total of 52. There arent 52 weeks until my bday but i'm going to make it so i have to do 52 dishes anyway. It's much more "Julie and Julia" haha. So this is week 1, and i am going to make a new dish tonight - Sun-Dried tomato pesto pasta from scratch. Maybe not the actual pasta from scratch - don't think i have le time. But it should be delicious. I hope it's delicious because I got my ingredients from the Queen Vic Market and those $8.40 sundried tomatoes and $8.30 parmigiano reggiano are making this one gourmet dish! I will report on my efforts a little later.

Also, I almost have enough money saved for the materials to build my pergola (7), so I think that should be happening in the next month or so :D Oh and my aunty just shifted into a new place and she doesnt want any of the plants in the backyard - like NONE of them - so I am picking them up tomorrow which helps heaps with #8. I will have to take before shots in the morning to prove that anything has changed haha

In regards to #11, I attended a meeting for Big Brothers, Big Sisters about 1-2 weeks ago and have now filled out an application form to become a "Big Sister" (Like on the Simpsons)! How exciting! If that doesn't work out - ie. if i fail my police check haha - I have some backup options of volunteer areas/organisations i have always been curious about.

Hmm, now in regards to item 19 (Write 1 poem every month) I only have today and tomorrow left to write my July Poem. I have had serious writers block, BUT that's why I put it on the list in the first place hey. I want the thrill of writing whimsical poems back! I re-read some of my others but no inspiration is coming. I may have to get out the shisha and use that as inspiration haha. Yah right, if i wanted to take 4 hours to write 4 lines which turned out to be nonsensical mush upon reflection the following day. Well, i must be off now - TOODLES

12) Build a generously endowed snowman

TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!


Aight, so I may have put this one on my list of wonder knowing that i was going to the snow in a matter of days, BUT i know i probably won't be heading back there for a few years so you know what they say... When opportunity knocks, invite it in and have steamy sex with it on the kitchen bench! So my first list item was completed on Saturday, woohoo!! At work we got offered spots on a famil trip to Mt. Buller for $104 for the day. That included bus transfer to and from the mountain, snowboard hire, pants/jacket/boot hire, a snowboarding lesson, a day's lift pass, free beer and some pizza. I think that was it but usually a lift pass is $100 by itself, so yeah as if i was gonna pass this up! So here's me with my glasses under my goggles. fog central...

During the lesson, looking at the amazing view. It was clear skies and about 7C (which is pretty warm), and we were actually sweating. It took me a while and a lot of falling on my bot bot to master the art of snowboarding but i eventually got it and was soon going way too fast to stop. But the easiest way to stop in those circumstances is to stack it. Hard.

After the lesson, i was too sore to continue doing any freestyle boarding so I decided to start on my snowman! All i had to do was kneel in the snow and start digging, and i was suddenly surrounded by Indian kids who wanted to help me :) They were so cute, and they told me i had a pretty name! I get that a lot, and usually it's followed by "oh wow, thats my dog's name!!" haha

So eventually their parents coaxed them away from the strange lady (ie. me) building the snowman and i was left to my own devices. Usually that's where the trouble begins. So without their young impressionable minds around, and with the sun rapidly setting upon my work station, I had to hurry up and finish my rude snowman. Here we are getting all hot and heavy:

We got along famously! Hmm, I feel kinda bad cos the little kids gave me the carrot to use in my filthy plot! Haha oh well! If you haven't been, Mt. Buller is awesome! It can get pretty expensive I guess but great times are to be had up there, that's fo sho! It was a great great loooong day, and i came away relatively unscathed - which is more than i can say for my boss who broke his wrist and elbow :O i had no idea it was that bad cos he put on a brave face, but when his hand turned blue and swollen we realised he was probably in a lot of pain. I guess that's what you get for turning down a snowboard lesson and trying to teach yourself on the intermediate run huh? I heard that even after he did it, he kept going and just trid not to land on it!! Oh my gawwwwwd what a silly billy!

So in terms of the other list items, I have to think of a new dish to cook for this week, and have to think of a July poem too. My friend Megan wants to help me achieve list items 15) camping and 20) skinny dipping! AND her boyfriend owns a shisha so she says I can use that to achieve #3! Smoke up smoke up!

24 things...

Hey crew! So lately I have been thinking of direction. Direction of everything in life! As you know I haven't been blogging as avidly as I used to. Part of this is because I lost motivation to do anything that constituted as interesting and felt that nobody really wanted to hear about what I had to say. So i basically stopped. But that is no direction. Now I realise again that I am super awesome and you peasants should feel lucky to read anything that I produce. You're lucky i don't charge you to read this, really. So I decided that the only way is up (BABY)... or forward. So as I have many things i have to work through financially this next year, instead of letting that get me down and being the focus of my life, I am going to create a list of things to keep myself pre-occupied. I'm sick of never meeting my little 'goals' i set for myself, and I'm sick of saying "one day i'll..." or "i've always wanted to...". Those thoughts can S my D as far as I'm concerned. So everyone, behold my amazing list:

24 things to do before I turn 24…

1) Create a piece of Art for the house
2) Have a feast in an African Restaurant
3) Smoke from a Shisha (Hookah)
4) Go to Darwin
5) Make a Croquenbush
6) Have a “Cry Fest” Movie Marathon of the saddest movies ever made
7) Help build a pergola for the backyard
8) Give the Front and back gardens a cheap make-over
9) Visit 5 new Vegan/Vegetarian Restaurants
10) Try 5 new fruits eg. Custard Apple, Dragon Fruit etc.
11) Do some volunteer work
12) Build a generously endowed snowman
13) Visit an “abandonment” and take photos
14) Adopt a foreign accent for a whole day
15) Go Proper Camping… no electricity
16) Road Trip to a new location
17) Weekend Sleep Deprivation test – Do not sleep Friday or Saturday night
18) Cook 1 new dish every week
19) Write 1 poem every month
20) Go Skinny Dipping/Frolic Naked/Nude Beach
21) Build a chicken coop and get some chickens
22) Climb a mountain without hyperventilating
23) Sleep under the stars
24) Have a picnic in a strange location

Ok so it has taken me a few days to get this list to a place that I like. There are a few things on there that I have talked about doing for years - as silly as they may seem I just want to do them. A few other things are those things you always think about or look into or even joke about but never go through with. I didn't want to add anything too hard that i won't follow through with, or anything too expensive that will destroy my budget. Of course they should make for interesting reading/pictures - especially the naked one :P As soon as I push "Publish Post" it is on. If this is succesful by my 24th birthday on June 30th 2011 then my list for next year will be even more amazing and daring! STAY TUNED!

dinner with hollywood

in the usual split second decision making moment in which i come up with a post title, that popped out. I must explain. I have a friend who is an aspiring actress. We used to work at the reception desk of a backpacker hostel together and she left to go to Hollywood to pursue her dream. No joke! So off she went, and now she is back - about a year or more later! Last night we caught up for dinner and she told me all about from when she had lunch with David Wenham in Hollywood all the way up to her audition earlier that day for the role of "dead girl" on City Homicide. I asked if she has been practising laying on the floor and trying not to breathe or blink, and she said she hadn't thought of that yet :O That would be totally hard. So anyway yeah she went to hollywood, and the word "Hollywood" makes me think of these guys:


And these guys used the nickname for a guy from L.A, therefore thats now her name. So Hollywood and I went out for a coffee in Degraves Street where she showed me her paper wallet. That is not a euphemism, she really does have a paper wallet, see:

And that's her being all gangstaaaaaaa with all her $5 and sugar packet ciggie. After that we thought it would be fitting if we went to the same place as our last "date" which happened to be a soup shop in Campell Arcade (the extension of Degraves). This is the creepy yet cool arcade...

And this is "The Soup Place". I got Morroccan Chicken and she got Soup of the day which was potato, leek and mushroom i think. Pretty good, and we got a spinach and fetta borek to share, mmmm-mmm!

Mine was really good, i pretty much inhaled it. I only wish it wasn't so freaking cold outside! It was about 8pm when we left and it must have been below 5C at that point. I was seriously frozen as it was outdoor seating only and no heaters. Yeah then I had to go to Flinders St Station and wait another 20mins in the cold for a train. I was feeling soooooo sore and ill by the time i got home, and was super glad to see Haydz home cos i knew the heater would be blasting. And it was. And it was amazing. And may I add that it was one of the best showers I have ever had! The worst was in a Buddhist Temple in Japan atop a freezing cold hill where the hot water had run out... ordinarily it would have been awesome, but... y'know.