Snergling

Another gardening update

2011-10-30T21:17:00.000+11:00

So just to keep track of what I'm planting and seeing how it goes, here's the seeds I planted today:
8 climbing beans (3 bean mix from diggers) in a row
11 beans from Elena (she's my godmother)
5 small gourds (phoenix)
5 watermelon - sugar baby (diggers)
5 zucchini blanco (diggers)
4 silverbeet (diggers)
5 pumpkin (diggers)

I've turned the soil with a little compost, and did some weeding before that. The chilli in there is doing okay, and some of the garlics so far are doing alright. Out of the 5 original cloves, 3 are doing well - and one out of the 2 I planted later.

Cabbages seem to do okay leaf-wise, but I need to try again to cook them. Carrots also seem to have done rather well. I look forward to seeing how they go. Maybe I should try collecting seeds from them too?

The seeds from the daikon radishes seem to develop randomly. The ones I've collected have been all different shades from green to brown. On the bright side, they are the same size as the original ones I planted so hopefully they do well. I want to see if they improve in terms of adapting to the local soil.

The broadbean harvest was 400g in the first batch, + some spare for planting next year, and 800g in the second batch with some more also for drying. There are still plenty to go. The first batch we just ate in a simple recipe as the bulk of the meal - boiled, then cooked with some fried onion. This batch I'm planning on turning in to tamiya/temeya.

Minor gardening update

2011-10-15T18:52:00.001+11:00

In the interests of recording how things are going, it looks like:

3 daikon radishes came up and bolted
1 onion has come up
1 silverbeet has come up
any rocket coming up in the last month or two simply bolted
the first batch of broadbeans are going gangbusters. Took a first haul off them today. I will be keeping some and drying them out for next year! I need to build them a zimmer frame next time as they have very soft stems and keep falling over. It's quite difficult to keep them dry in there, so I'm worried about rot. Also, some leaves have started to grow some kind of rustiness on them.
Any of the bolted mustard lettuce seems to attract aphids. I do want to collect the seeds though. Similarly, I want the seeds from the old daikons from the first batch. They seem to take ages to mature, although I have no idea when they are ready to collect.

Gin sours are very tasty!

2011-09-17T15:02:00.000+10:00

So I was out with some lovely friends last night, and at the Union Hotel in Newtown, we hit the cocktails. Started with Martinis, moved on to Manhattans, but then I wanted something else gin-based that wasn't pink and fluffy.
After a bit of a conversation with the lovely bar staff, we agreed on attempting a gin sour. I'm writing this here because it was absolutely awesome. To balance out the Tanqueray, there was some Cointreau added as well. Add lemon, eggwhite (whisked of course), and sugar syrup and you get 11 different kinds of delicious. I need to recreate that. When I do, I'll put up the recipe here.

Next things being planted

2011-08-06T17:58:00.002+10:00

Today I managed to plant a bunch of different things to see how they go. Planted were - including where the seeds came from:

Small gourds - Phoenix Seeds
Onions (creamgold) - Diggers
Daikon raddish - Diggers
Celeriac (alabaster white) - Eden Seeds
Silverbeet (5 colour mix) - Diggers
Mini cabbage - Diggers

Also, on the need to rethink list is choi sum (or was it pak choi?) Either way, they botled over winter without even thinking of making enough leaves to . Yes winter was a little warm, but still I would suggest it didn't work. The only other option I have is to plant them in the shade and see if that works better.

There are also some broccoli but they don't seem to do so well. Broccolini also bolts. I'm also trying alternatives to regular corriander. I've planted some seeds that are a different leaf type (purchased from diggers), and also a perennial corriander tasting other herb I had posted to me.

Some of the current harvest

2011-08-05T17:27:00.002+10:00

So it looks like daikon radish is the way to go here! Much more impressive than the carrots (which I haven't given up on yet). Also a winner has been the mustard lettuce and the snow peas (although the plant has gone a tad mouldy).

Current Soap Experiments

2011-05-15T16:29:00.004+10:00

Okay, so I've made soap a few times now, and I'm trying to find a good recipe that I like the result. The most successful one so far was the one involving some lard. I'm now seeing what happens if you put even more lard in there. Also, for comparison, I've done a batch to exactly the same recipe except for replacing the lard with tallow. And a different colour so I can easily identify them. I should add that the animal fats are there to make the soap harder wearing, and therefore longer lasting. This is something that can really be noticed over the humidity and heat of summer. From the research I've done, the choices for making soap harder wearing is adding either animal fat or palm oil to the mix. I've gone with animal fats.

This is what they look like:

Pretty boring but at least you can see which one is which. The pink one is the lard, and the yellow is tallow. To the left is also some pure "Castile" soap. It's 100% olive oil. Apparently Castile soap should be white, but this one went a yellowy colour. Any ideas what conditions are required for Castile soap to go white? I made it hot process, using a NaOH lye.

Things and stuff

2011-04-06T13:02:00.005+10:00

So the weather has been a bit strange this year. This is the cumquat going in to flower in a big way while there are still fruit developing:

The smell of blossom was very nice and rather strong. The small lemon tree out the front is about to go in to flower again, but of course out of sync with this one.

I've also had another go at making Hunan-style salted chillis. This time I've grabbed a more appropriate chillis and acutally measured the salt.

Packed in to a jar:
And now to wait for it to be ready. Oh and to work out what to cook to taste these with. The method/recipe came from : Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province by Fuchsia Dunlop. I just need to choose which thing to cook.

In unrelated news, after the last carrot harvest, there were some other undeveloped carrots still left in the ground which were now ready:

Surprisingly they seem to maintain their colour even after microwaving:

Fresh and delicious!

Last but not least, the correa and lavender also seem to be enjoying this strange weather:

You'll need to click on the image to see the correa flowers more clearly. The chickens have also decided that the lavendar tastes great again. We'll see how long that lasts.

Finally a charity for me to join in

2011-03-01T19:29:00.003+11:00

So the usual big do something silly charities don't really work for me. I have a mo, so Movember isn't much point. Similarly shaving for a cure doen't seem like much of a challenge since I shave my head twice a week anyway.

Time for something new and different. Something less folically oriented. Time to don the cape for Capril (their facebook page has some photos). While it doesn't seem to have taken off just yet, I'm hoping it does. The money for this one goes to Beyond Blue.

An afternoon in picures

2011-02-17T21:15:00.002+11:00

Blackbird cafe

Grasshopper Laneway Bar

Marble Bar

Zeta Bar

Current harvest!

2011-02-12T15:09:00.003+11:00

So some of this years harvest was fairly feeble. Planed an awful lot of corn, but only 3 stalks came up. This left us with only 2 cobs:

We also experimented with trying to grow carrots. Not the most amazing results, but encouraging and clearly worth doing again:

Margate revisited!

2011-01-16T15:53:00.003+11:00

So this time when we went to the Margate Train, it was open!!! (As opposed to last time). Well, it was mostly open. Oddly enough there were still some shops closed.

While we did go through a few of the shops, we ended up here:

I had a good chat to the guy running it who wasn't there in 2009, but had since taken over the shop and started on a quest to convince other shop owners that it might be good to be open during tourist season.

We bought a refreshing drink:

which was rather tasty. Well, a sweet soda taste (reminded me a little of creaming soda). Rather pleasant and I'd get it again. According to Wikipedia, the Dandelion and Burdock soft drink recipe has been going since around 1265.

The main booty which we brought back was:

Mulled-wine flavoured lollies (top left), dolly mix (top right), soor plooms (the green ones at the bottom; apparently first invented in 1337), a Kendal Mint Cake, and the Nipits (licorice pellets) as well as Tunes (they just looked tasty). There was a lot in that shop. Yes, I was a kid in a candy store.

Animals along the way

2011-01-12T21:54:00.003+11:00

These are some of the characters we ran in to on the walk around Coningham. No idea who this little chappy was, but there were a lot of them and they move quickly Glad to get even a vague photo.

We were lucky to see the pair of these twice and get some happy snaps. It's suggested that it's a Swift Parrot. That makes me feel quite privileged (although happy to be corrected).

And finally, here's a shiny beetle:

Hopefully more photos soon!

Vistas from Tasmania!

2011-01-11T22:05:00.003+11:00

All of these photos were taken with a (BlackBerry 9800) smartphone, and then pasted with the current version of Hugin. Hugin did well to paste together the rather badly taken photos. I have to say that for whatever reason, apparently my concept of horizontal is somewhat lost when taking the photos with the smartphone instead of a camera.

Either way, here's some of what we saw.

Here's the view from Mt Wellington on Boxing day, straight after a sudden "snowstorm". It was pretty cold although the ground was too warm for any snow to settle.

Here's what we saw on the way to Hartzview.

The next two were taken along the walk at Coningham:

In the next exciting installment.... more photos!

What I did on my holidays

2011-01-10T21:56:00.003+11:00

An essay by Mr Snerg, esq., aged that and three quarters.

I made stuff! Did things! Went places!

Just wanted to post a few piccies of things to remind myself of what I got up to, now that I'm back at work.

I made some soap! Here's the 3 different soaps I made. The first two batches, on the right, are my usual recipe (vegetable oil, no palm oil), are also as usual rather soft. So the third one I made using about 1/3 lard. I haven't used the lard one yet (still curing), but I am looking forward to finding out the difference. Apparently hard wearing soap is achieved by using either animal fat or palm oil in the recipe.

I'm rather happy with how the colours turned out, and the fragrance seems right too (that one is green tea and jasmine; the other two are frangipani, and lavender).

In the next exciting episode...

Beans, pickles and stuff!

2010-12-05T21:36:00.003+11:00

Not a shabby weekend. Finished most of the post-turkey-day-cleaning, although we still have a mystery hat with an unidentified owner. I also pickled the left-over jalapenos (around 400g of them). Never pickled anything before so I'm curious how these will go! I got the brine recipe from http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2009/04/pickled-peppers/ but sliced them instead. In the second jar I topped it up with carrots and onions. Looking forward to it.

We're also keeping track of our beans. So far, so good:According to Digger's club, we should get 1.2kg per vine. That's a lot of beans!

We also have this little guy who seems to be completely unafraid of the chickens:
Unafraid to the point where we recently had an egg inside the coop that was broken in to and then eaten out.

The fridge is ready for Turkey Day!

2010-11-25T23:26:00.002+11:00

One turkey is defrosting, the other is brining using the recipe from the Pioneer Woman.

Cooks river eco festival

2010-10-10T20:16:00.003+11:00

So in between other gardening endeavours, we took time out to go to the Cooks River Eco festival, held at Ewen Park in Hurlstone Park.

Sadly there weren't many people there to enjoy it. It was quite cool. Had a few stalls with lots of helpful enviro stuff, a few stalls about cleaning the cooks river and surrounds including information about sightings of long-nosed bandicoots in the GreenWay corridor (Iron Cove to Cooks River) that I just had no idea about. There was plenty of kids entertainment including theatre and stilt walkers, workshops for the grown-ups, and also a UNSW demo of a solar powered Wii.

We did get to eat some tasty food. I had a kafta roll and an iced lime juice. We also got some goodies like a shower timer and an LED touch light.

The river around Ewen park looks like this:There was plenty of stalls. These ones were selling jewelery, soy candles, yoga tea as well as eco information:
In the distance is the stage and solar Wii:

On the walk back to the train station, we saw some lawn that looked like this:
Any idea what these are?

Saturday out and about and around the house

2010-10-10T19:46:00.003+11:00

So on Saturday we went out for breakfast and coffee (first coffee was from Bean Tampered in Summer Hill and was awesome, second coffee was from The Last Drop in Dulwich Hill and was much less good; glad we bought some beans from Bean Tampered!). After that, we went to some gardening places again! This was the result:

It's jasmine planted at the bottom of the lattice. The funky objet d'art looks like this front-on:
Also that day, the parrots decided to visit the tree next door. Very cool:

Well that was a lovely weekend

2010-09-26T20:37:00.002+10:00

So apart from the great weather, it's been quite fun and also productive.

Friday night started with a delicious Mexican flavoured birthday dinner with some Finlaggan for dessert.

Saturday involved ferreting around in the back yard, trying to finally fix the chicken free zone. This involved needing to move a post to a spot that had a suspicious ceramic pipe in it. Originally I thought it was some kind of water run-off, but after digging around it turned out that they were short sections that didn't interlock. And one side was a dead-end. So I was happy to remove the middle chunk to let me put the post where it needed to be for the gate to shut.

After digging, went to another delicious party in the afternoon. This party was cake themed, and not only very tasty but also had many calories. After far too much cake, I got back to things around the house. Did some late night cementing to do a little more finishing on the wall.

Sunday was another beautiful day and involved much gardening. I finished moving the fence post and fitted the latch. I also finally put up the wires for the runners to grow on. I planted some tomato seedlings, and seeds: beans, corn, and carrots. Also some lettuces, and broccolini. Also giving some coriander and tri-coloured sage a go. That was oddly difficult because the planter I went to use had soaking wet soil that wouldn't dry out, as well as far too many root eating grubs. The chickens enjoyed the grubs. I also planted some tomato seeds in some punnets. Might have to order some more seeds from Diggers in the near future, but that Plants Plus was useful for buying some seedlings and a bird bath.

After all that I had a beer and some pizza.

I think I'll sleep well tonight.

Found a new garden centre!

2010-09-05T20:15:00.004+10:00

Well, actually, this weekend we went to a nearby garden centre down a street we hadn't been before. For all you Ashfield/Strathfield area people, it's not that far. It's in Kingsgrove. You can get an idea of the place from their website.

So what was it like? It doesn't do bulk landscaping dirt or rock supplies, but it does do a lot of plants and other usual garden stuff. Was very pleasant to walk around. They were about to launch a new catalogue of stuff, so they were a little low on some things but overall well worth wondering around if you are looking for plants or garden things. It also had a decent looking cafe. I didn't try the actual food, but the pistachio friand was great, and the coffee was as tasty as it looked:

Macchiato art

2010-09-05T20:00:00.002+10:00

Because I don't drink caffellattes. I've been drinking double macs for a while now, and recently one place has started arting up these tiny delicious caffeinated morsels. Here's what I've been drinking:

We have a real backyard now

2010-08-14T18:56:00.001+10:00

I dug up this:

All real backyards have toy army jeeps lost in them.

Fuzzy tree!

2010-08-12T19:47:00.003+10:00

So our tiny tree, while it hasn't grown, has decided that spring is good!

It's a lot of fuzzy blossom for such a tiny tree!

The sunroom makes a good greenhouse!

2010-05-20T09:39:00.003+10:00

So a few weeks ago, I planted some "Purple tiger" (a.k.a. Trifetti) chilli seeds I got from a friend - some in the sunroom, some in the courtyard. Turns out the sunroom worked well as a greenhouse. 5/7 came up there, as opposed to the courtyard where 0/8 came up.

They look like this now:

You can see the purple tinge in the leaves. They won't be very hot as chillis but they should make a decorative plant as well as a milder chilli option.

Gardening and chickens

2010-05-01T21:32:00.003+10:00

So working on the back yard again at the moment. The removing of some grass gave the chickens the best day of their lives. Am a bit worried about the brown chicken (Godzilla). She's got a lot of patches where the feathers seem to be snapped off. Not sure what is going on there. She seems happy enough, and there doesn't seem to be anything visibly wrong apart from the broken feathers.

On the flora side of things, we've been planting things in the back yard too. Mostly natives, like this correa reflexa (Australian native fuchsia):

The wire cage at the back is protecting the fig tree from the chickens. Turns out that they find the leaves irresistibly delicious. It needs two layers of protection to keep the chickens out, otherwise they reach through and pull the leaves out.

No more treekey

2010-04-26T18:03:00.005+10:00

So I thought I'd update what the front yard looks like now that the dead tree, bougainvilleas, palms and other stuff has been removed:

While we could and did do a lot ourselves, we resorted to paying some nice people to remove the palms. They certainly earned their money that day and I'm glad we paid people to do it. The replacement plants are mainly banksias, with a hakea planted in the front corner (behind the succulent in this photo). At least when these grow up they should provide a good habitat for native animals that wander around.

How treekey of them!

2010-03-21T19:14:00.003+11:00

So in the process of cleaning up the front garden to replace the dead plants, bougainvilleas and other things with some more native and easier to manage plants, we got to this stage:

Which looks like this from the other side, but with one intriguing detail. If you look closely:

You'll see this:
I'm rather glad that changing house keys was one of the first things we did. Yes, it does match the original key we were given with the house. Given how long it would have been out there, it seems to be a better idea than hiding a key under the door mat.

More soap making fun!

2010-01-17T19:08:00.004+11:00

Okay, so the first batch looked good. The second batch looked good too. Time to make it more challenging. How do you do that? Well, you try to make clear soap.

Turns out that one method for making clear soap involves adding some amount of ethanol and dissolved sugar to the mixture. And some glycerin as well, although why should I do that just because some recipes do and some don't?

Well, attempt number 3 of soapmaking (the first attempt at transparent) went horribly wrong. The soap didn't even saponify properly. That was before I acquired some nice measuring stuff. I now can measure with impunity! Anyway, 3 was a disaster. 4 worked really well for part 1, the saponifying. Part 2, the clarifying, was interesting. With the use of a blender and some Britta filtered methylated spirits (I figured it was the best source of ethanol I was going to get), I went about estimating from some vague online recipes the amounts of ethanol I needed given the amount of Lye. It certainly did turn out translucent, and with my new set of dyes, I went to make bars of translucent soap! Now it turns out that either my calculations were broken, or that glycerin(e)/glycerol actually does something I should know about. Anyway, I now have a bunch of liquid soap that looks like this in close-up:

I have also acquired some pH test strips which clearly indicate 1-14 using 4 different indicators. Very cool. Also, quite sure my successful soaps are good now and not going to burn anyone's face off.

Saponification is complete!

2010-01-02T10:47:00.002+11:00

DestructoMeg gave me the bits and pieces for Christmas, so I took the contents of these:

And made this:

(okay, yes, some food colouring and essential oil was added). After carving, they look like this:

Made them using the hot process, so they should be usable straight away although a little drying out would be good for them. I would like to be able to test the pH to make sure I've made sap for humans and not for cleaning ovens, but sadly the pool testing kit can't tell if it's in the right range.

Afternoon tea

2010-01-01T16:12:00.002+11:00

Afternoon tea

is served....

First ever corn cob!

2009-12-23T17:35:00.002+11:00

Far more exciting than those beans :)

Although the tomatoes are a little feeble.

We also had a second one that had a lot of red kernels rather than the blue above. Taste test: boiled them for 12ish minutes and they were rather chestnut textured. A little floury I guess? Tasted very corn like but not sure if they were boiled enough, too much, or that's the reason why other coloured corn isn't sold mainstream. Have to say it would be a lot more substantial than the usual corn but the texture was a bit strange at first.

Beans!

2009-12-04T20:54:00.002+11:00

First crop of the season! Yay!

Which one goes with which?

2009-11-27T21:18:00.003+11:00

So of the two of these chickens (ignore the non-laying one at the back):

One big chicken, one giant chicken. Both on the lay. Two eggs.

Can you guess which chicken laid which of the eggs? What I want to know now is how big an egg the smallest of our chickens is going to lay!

And for those of you wondering how our vegie patch now looks:

The tomatoes are starting to flower, but are still quite small compared to everything else. The exiting thing is the real cobs of corn! Curious to see how they turn out!

Random stuff around the house

2009-11-22T22:21:00.003+11:00

So here's a delightful chap we found in the back yard. Apparently the chickens didn't think this was food, which is a little surprising. Been ages since I've seen a c.cada!

Next photo is in our courtyard where I planted some succulents provided by our neighbours. The flowers have grown to be even more plentiful now.
And here's a bunch of kangaroo paws from my folks. Yay!

Our courtyard has a water feature

2009-10-27T18:56:00.003+11:00

Now that most of the foliage has been disposed of, and the water has been appropriately and mostly channeled out of the garage and down the pipe that doesn't quite go anywhere useful, this is the result during a downpour:

Gardening news with pictures!

2009-10-27T18:49:00.005+11:00

Okay so what does our back yard view look like now without palms? Rather colourful! Yes there is still most of the debris there, but at least the flowers are nice:

And the "we're not quite sure of the name of it but apparently it's from New Zealand" tree attracts a lot of these noisy chaps which is rather nice:

And as for the vegie patch, looks like the pumpkins may yet take over the world. It hasn't been that long since they were seeds. All of these seeds were planted at the same time.

I hope the pumpkins are tasty, and I hope the chickens like the taste of the plant to keep it a bit under control!

More chicken news!

2009-10-25T12:56:00.004+11:00

So now we've tried integrating the chickens. Yesterday we clipped the wings on the youngsters and chucked them in with Godzilla. Much squabbling. Much fighting. Decided to let them all roam around the yard and it worked a little better although they still were being menaced.

By late at night it seemed slightly better. Godzilla went to bed earlier and the other two looked forlornly at the site of their temporary house. We locked them all up overnight and it seemed not too bad. This morning there is still squabbling but they are hanging out near each other. Slowly but surely it seems to be getting better.

Chickenflash! Monday night:
So tonight, it looks like the younger pullets went to "roost" with Godzilla! They might be squabbling during the day but it looks like they are getting clever enough to sleep in the right place. Yay! (Last night Nessy did but we had to round up the last one....) The younguns are even allowed to eat food once Godzilla has finished :-) Only when she's finished....

Chicken update and general farming

2009-10-20T20:29:00.002+11:00

Just a few words on what's happening down at the farm....

So we're still keeping Godzilla separate from the pullets. Point of lay is in fact 18 weeks, and they are now 15 weeks old so 3 more weeks at the most before we shut them in the coup together to see what happens. The different food and living space is a bit of a hassle, but there's still a little too much menacing. From 18 weeks they certainly won't grow anymore, but until then we'll still need to keep up the pullet food. Fingers crossed we can cohabit them at 16 weeks and do the wing clipping.

So another weird thing... a few days ago someone stole our tulip bulbs from the front yard. Bizarre.

And our vegie patch is getting there. Beans, tomatoes, corn and pumpkins looking good. Lettuces doing mildly okay. No sign of any carrots, strawberries or the new lot of chillies.

Notes on mixing hens and pullets

2009-09-27T12:08:00.004+10:00

So far not so good.... Godzilla ended up with both black and white feathers flying and can terrorize the new pullets easily. Pecking order is to be established, and it isn't a fair fight.

We've separated them in to a new protected temporary cage, but they are still stalked by Godzilla. Not idea, but we'll see how they go. In 4 weeks time they should be equal size but hopefully we don't need to wait quite that long.

Edit: So it looks like Godzilla spends much of the day menacing the other two despite the cage separating them. They also know their place and hide despite the protection.

Chickenflash: 1st October - Godzilla still menacing them through the cage although they are getting a little more brave and exploring sooner.

Chickenflash: 12 October - Gradual improvements in braveness from the pullets but looks like another fortnight before we'll mix them again. They are around 14 weeks old now.

I feel sorry for the neighbours....

2009-09-26T18:28:00.002+10:00

So last weekend while we were down in Ballarat for a lovely wedding, we asked our goodly neighbours to look after our pets. No worries we thought. Easy. Free eggs as payment.

When we came back, we discovered that we were down to one chicken. There was a Godzilla but no Elvis. What had happened? The neighbour returned our keys the next morning and explained everything. Apparently on the first day they were looking after the chickens, there was already one less. Elvis was just lying there... so the nice easy job with eggs as payment didn't work out so well.

This weekend we drove down to Tahmoor to get some friends for Godzilla (and more eggs for us). We got a white one (Leghorn x New Hampshire) and a black one (Australorp x New Hampshire). They are 12 week old pullets and we've now just introduced them to each other and Godzilla. There's a bit of squabbling with sorting out the pecking order so it'll be interesting to see how well this goes......

Gardening update!

2009-09-13T22:44:00.004+10:00

So now that the weather is getting better (a little too good today - what's with cracking 30 degrees already??) it's getting time to be a little more inspired to do the gardening. The tree fern has moved:

There's a clear view of how much work needs to be done to the retaining wall:

For that, I'm thinking the wall needs to go and so do the palms causing it to collapse. Then they can be replaced with something more sensible and hedge shaped.

We also have a little white tulip saying hello:

And a pink tulip up and coming:

Today there was also the creation of a chicken-free zone. This is the last time the chickens will be allowed to scratch up this patch of dirt.
Last but certainly not least, my parents gave us some orchids from the garden. They are still going strong 2 weeks later!

Daffodil time!

2009-07-30T20:15:00.004+10:00

Okay... maybe too many exclamation marks in these last two posts, but it's been a while. Anyway, this is our first daffodil of the new house :-) Some fundraising bulbs were purchased. I don't have any faith in the tulips happening, but the fresias are showing promise.

I had a birthday!

2009-07-30T20:11:00.004+10:00

So my lovely wife took me out to celebrate in style!

Champagne High Tea!
Followed by the Tea part of the High Tea!

Yay for High Tea in the QVB!

More NZ stuff... food this time!

2009-05-19T20:41:00.003+10:00

Ok so I still want to blog some stuff that happened in NZ before I forget too much of it. I'm sure there's a few more posts to go....

So this one is about some of the food we had. Below is what we had for the main course at the Shearer's Inn. Lamb and venison... two of the great products of having lush grazing on the west coast. The venison had a blueberry sauce I believe. It was delicious! And the accompanying Speight's wasn't too bad either.

In Able Tasman we had two lunches... this was lunch, part 2 at "The Anchorage". The delicious feast was purchased from a supermarket in Nelson, including Verker's salami, locally made cider and a cheesy bread roll with spectacular scenery while we waited for that ferry to turn up... it was a little late if I remember rightly.

Back at Kaiteri, we had dinner at what I think was called the blue whale. Or something. I'll correct that if I remember the name. Anyway, we were as close to be beach as we could be, and the food wasn't half bad despite the fact that we were almost the only people there (the locals apparently don't go out late at night on a Saturday before Anzac day). Despite all that, it was really quite good! They still cared. This is what my dessert looked like:

Lunch in Wanaka was a bit more disturbing. Wanaka is the slightly less touristy area where apparently you can do all the extreme sports but with less tourists. Still did seem very touristy. The road on the way after Haast gave us enough extreme driving, so it was time to eat some extreme food. Below is what was their pancake. We went to the pub as there seemed to be not much open, and what was open generally looked a bit wrong. We were also a little late. Anyway, after some trepidation I ordered the pancake. The bacon and banana pancake. I won't be doing that again. This is just proof that it was purchased. I did in fact eat it so I could say that yes I have done that once and won't be doing that again. I do not understand maple syrup on bacon and banana pancakes. I do not understand bacon in a sweet pancake.

Finally, some food that was art. In Christchurch, in a restaurant whose name escapes me entirely at the moment, we over indulged completely. This was one of the desserts.

Thank you everyone!

2009-05-17T19:39:00.002+10:00

Dear everyone,

Thank you all for the lovely presents you gave us above and beyond your presence at our wedding. We had a had a lovely dinner this weekend where we got to use some of those delightful gifts! The following two books were instrumental:

The entree section looked a bit like this:
And the dinner itself looked like this:

Sadly, we aren't as good at this as we should be because we forgot to use the splayds. There were heaps of other gifts, all very much appreciated. This is just what I managed to photograph this time around. I'm still happy that so many of you made the time to come celebrate with us!

Cities around NZ

2009-05-10T20:55:00.004+10:00

The larger cities we went to in New Zealand were Wellington, Nelson and Christchurch. Wellington was rather unique with a thriving sense of creativity. Nelson was also artistic but a bit different, and Christchurch looked like a little slice of Europe.

These first few photos are from Wellington:

This one is a view of Wellington from on top of Te Papa museum:

And this one is a panorama of Wellington from on top of Mount Victoria. We were very lucky with the weather on this one.

This is the main strip of Nelson:

This is Christchurch square from our Hotel room:
And a cute water wheel along the Avon River, which was apparently part of the early industry in Christchurch:

And here is part of the Arts Centre, near the Botanic gardens in Christchurch.
So... Christchurch is full of cute little parks and beautiful buildings, Nelson has a Cathedral (which gave it status as a City despite the lack of population) although the world of wearable art was also very cool, and Wellington is rather arty, vibrant and modern, with everything close by. I'd visit them all again.

In and around Twizel

2009-05-03T17:13:00.002+10:00

So this was the corridor in the original workers accommodation in Twizel. Does look rather homely, doesn't it?

After staying in Twizel, we went for a drive around the hydro electric lakes. I really should look up the names of them to remember while I can, but whatever it was called, this one is full:

So here is where two of the lakes meet. One is river water, the other is glacial meltwater. They don't really like mixing straight away, and you can see the difference in colour.

Finally, here is some of the view on the way to lake Tekapo. We could finally see the snow capped mountains! Yay!

Abel Tasman national park

2009-05-02T16:56:00.002+10:00

So, going backwards in the trip, here's some views in and around Abel Tasman national park.

Here's a view of Split Apple rock, just off the coast from Towers Bay in between Kaiteriteri and Marahau.

We were dropped off at Te Pukatea beach where we had a nice spot of lunch (part one), before taking a walk up to Pitt head. On the way up, you could get a full view of Te Pukatea:
After Pitt head, we made our way to "The Anchorage". This is the kind of view on the way.

Finally, after we were collected from the Anchorage after consuming Lunch (part two), we went for a drive back through Motueka and up Takaka Hill. This is the view from Takaka Hill back towards Motueka, with quite some zoom.
After this was back down the hill again and back to Kaiteri Lodge for the evening, including an attempt to wash clothes that ended up in quite a bit of damp clothing that became increasingly unpleasant through the rain we were going to face.

Some photos down the west coast

2009-05-02T14:46:00.004+10:00

So what did we get to see despite the weather down the west coast? Here is a shot of Pancake Rocks in Punikiki. You can see the weird layering although I have a lot more photos of this area as well that show it a bit better.

Here is the main drag of Hokitika the next day before we went to check out the glaciers (and the vast amounts of rain!)

Somewhere in this photo is the terminal face of Franz Josef glacier. The big rock is Sentinel Rock.
Fox glacier, despite the main access road being closed due to the rain, was a little more visible.
That night we sought refuge in the "Hard Antler". We had some generous pub food and tasty beer, and were intrigued by the decor.

On the next day though, we decided to have breaky on the beach. This is Haast beach as we got to see it. A little colder, rainier and greyer than it could have been, but certianly an experience to enjoy.

It rained on the west coast

2009-04-30T09:21:00.004+10:00

So let me set the scene. This was in between Franz Josef (the town) and the walking track to Sentinel Rock where we saw the glacier face. As you can see, it was raining a little.

The next day, on the way out of Haast, we could see it was an unusual amount of rain. A nice little land slip across the road to cross carefully in our Toyota Platz was interesting.

Then a second landslip.

A bit of water across the road.

We could tell it was raining more than usual near "The Gates of Haast"....

But the final thing that made me think about the weather was when we had to cross this:

This was between Haast Pass and Taras. The nice enormous vehicle with a giant brush swept a lot of mud and debris away and told us it would be fine now. It was still interesting to drive across.... We had another one later to cross as well but was nowhere near this size.

The next morning reading the newspaper in Twizel, apparently the river (Pepin creek?) burst its banks at around 11:30am, and State Highway 6 was closed at midday. We were quite lucky. Also looks like now the rain kept going up the coast and people have been evacuated from Greymouth, where we went through only a few days earlier.

Galavanting around New Zealand!

2009-04-30T08:12:00.004+10:00

Well... we've just come back from our trip to New Zealand so I'm jotting down what we did, and I'll keep re-editing this, before I forget....

So we got in to Wellington airport quite late. Weather was a bit bad so we got in after midnight, and then checked in to the Duxton hotel. Next day we went to Te Papa, and then walked the length of Wellington city via Cuba Street, ending up at Omega Car rentals. We rented a Toyota Platz. No, I hadn't heard of one either. So what is it? 1.3L of raw power through an automatic gear box. New Zealand has a lot of hills. 1.3L doesn't give you much zoom up those hills.

So that night we checked in to the Shearer's Inn hotel, on the other side of Wellington. Possibly the swanky suburbs (the houses nearby were really quite pretty). Tasty venison and Speights on tap. Yum. So the next morning we drove through Mt Victoria tunnel down to Seatoun. We couldn't find the funky cafe that is supposed to be both sides of the road but hey... the scenery was great. We then drove up Mt Victoria to see the view. The weather was clear and the view was great! We then went for a drive up the Hutt River. Past the Lower and Upper Hutt all the way to Kaitoke regional park, and back again. That evening we looked at the Wellington Museum as well, before having some tasty tasty beer at the Mac's brewhouse. Best beer ever. We were at the same hotel that night so we could get up nice and early for the 8:25am Interislander.

So we spent as much time in Picton as it takes to get out of it. Nothing personal, just had other destinations in mind. We drove through Blenheim and on to Renwick. The checked in to the Wayfarers Way (something with too many w's) and hired their bikes to go wine tasting and riding. It's very flat in that region. I managed to get quite tired riding the bike, thinking I'm just way unfit, but turned out that the wheel was in fact digging in to the frame so it was like having the brakes on all the time. I ended up borrowing a spanner set from a nice winery (Nautilis) and we could ride home in comfort. We did stop on the way to pick up 2.5kg of locally grown apples and pears from a very nice man. Very tasty apples of a variety you can't get here.

Next day we went to Nelson where we walked around the town and went to the World of Wearable Art museum. We stayed at the Paradise Backpackers which was a little unexpected because the first couple of places we checked we actually (surprisingly) full. It wasn't supposed to be tourist season!

On the next day we went to Kai Teriteri and checked in to the Kaiteri lodge. We got a Sea Shuttle up to one of the bays (went past split apple rock on the way) and got to walk a little around the bottom end of the Able Tasman National Park. That afternoon we drove then up to Takaka Hill to check out the view and the local sinkholes.

Next day (Anzac Day; drove past quite a few ceremonies) we drove down to Hokitika via Greymouth, and stayed in the "Stumped" bar/accommodation. The other pub in town had a 21st birthday party so were out of everything except bunks. We wanted to stay in a pub this time because we could. The next morning we spent wandering around the crafts of Hokitika, but as it was Sunday there were no people carving greenstone (nephrite Jade), and a lot of the shops were manned by schoolkids. There was the artists collective shop which was staffed by the artists in the collective and had some cool stuff. Mind you, the greenstone stuff there was also quite good. That afternoon, we headed down the coast to check out Franz Josef and Fox glaciers which were hard to see in the weather, before we headed down to and stayed the night in Haast at the Wilderness Backpackers because sadly the Hard Antler didn't have accommodation.

From Haast we battled the elements to go stay in Twizel with a few scenic stops on the way including Wanaka. In Twizel we sayed in the huts (called "Twizel Lodge", High Country Lodge & Backpackers) that were part of the original shanty town to build the hydro-electric scheme.

The next day we drove around the lakes before gradually making our way down to Christchurch, staying in the Millenium hotel. Sadly, that was our last night, although was again very picturesque. Next day it was on a plane in the afternoon and back to Sydney.

There were a number of other townships we stopped at on the way that I should name at some point, but I can't remember them without a map in front of me so until next time, this is version one of my diary.....

In the Neighbourhood....

2009-03-01T21:25:00.002+11:00

So this is just a shot of something I drive past every morning. Maybe it's the angles as I drive past it, but for some reason it just looks really intriguing to me. One day I might even go in there. It's like a weird portal disguised as a garage.

This, on the other hand, is something that makes me giggle when I go past:

Was Sunday today!

2009-02-22T21:38:00.002+11:00

So I did stuff! I started trimming the tree that was brushing the power lines. I was hoping to trim it fairly savagely as the tree itself is (1) not a native tree and (2) mostly strangled by ivy and (3) brushing the power lines.

I ended up going for a much more subtle trim when I found this:

I'm sure breeding season will be over soon and I'll continue then.

I also had the delightful Mr Chen and his wife drop by today. They gave us housewarming pressies :-) In fact, these:

I have seen the lychee one but never tried it. Can't remember ever seeing the pear brandy one! We were told that the way to drink it was to soak a sugar cube in it and suck on the cube. I understand why. It's pretty concentrated. Was very tasty with some ice melted in it as well as the sugar!

Dredging through old photos for the panorama-ing

2009-02-15T19:00:00.004+11:00

Hokay so there are some old photos that I meant to do this to years ago. I still need to learn to use an airbrushing tool to take care of the final bits of detail like the trimmed off sky, but apart from that they turned out okay. The first two are from my trip to Darwin in 2005. They are taken from the viewing platform of Fogg Dam. If I remember rightly Fogg Dam was built so they could harvest rice in Darwin. Only the torrential flooding and hungry native wildlife put an end to that.

The next two photos are from the Shoalhaven, taken in 2007. The first one is the view from the top of the hill at the Two Figs Vineyard.

I can't remember which vineyard the next one was. I suspect we didn't buy much wine there and only made a nuisance of ourselves (see small child in half wine barrel photo, wherever that may be...)

Well at least I did something I've been meaning to do (for a very long time) this weekend!

Chicken newsflash!

2009-02-15T12:51:00.002+11:00

After two days ago with the first of our chicken-egg events, there was no chicken news yesterday. This morning was different. Megzzzz went in to have a look, and behold! A shiny, new, warm egg!

The one on the left is our first bit of real produce (the first one was broken and leaking so probably not a great idea to eat... good point there Mz Speedy). Aaaaanyway... the left was the fresh, shiny, new egg and the right is a normal 59g egg from shop-bought free range eggs.

The yolk was smaller than usual and quite tough, but after some convincing it contributed to the omelette for breakfast.

Space saving chickens!

2009-02-13T20:27:00.003+11:00

No... not the kind that save outer space from aliens. More, the stackable kind:

on the bright side though... when their powers combine, they did make this:

which, as you can see from its condition, was laid fairly and squarely on the concrete. Go team chicken!

I made dinner and drank stuff

2009-02-09T21:45:00.003+11:00

Been a while since I made salt and pepper chicken. So I did! Was also a good excuse to bowls and chopstick rests bought in Japan.

It was accompanied by the following drinks:

So what are the Taverners Honey Ales like? Well they both taste fairly strongly of Leatherwood honey. Good, bad or other, decide for yourself. The Strong Ale was lighter in colour than the Honey Ale, and sweeter. Overall that made the regular 4.0% one tastier than the 5.2% Strong Ale. While I'm drinking... we also tasted these:

They both had very strong tastes. In fact, the Wicked Elf had almost too much flavour as it warmed up, but I'd certainly drink either of them again!

Back yard BBQ math

2009-01-26T17:50:00.003+11:00

Why won't our chickens eat all the spiders in the yard?

2009-01-19T13:05:00.004+11:00

I thought they were supposed to be controlling our insects. They left these behind:

Do they eat spiders or did I get the wrong ones?

My day in the kitchen.

2009-01-12T18:30:00.007+11:00

This was the lovely set of drawers our kitchen came with:

As you can see, the middle drawer wasn't a drawer, and the drawers were so tight (mmm, chipboard) that the knobs couldn't pull the drawers:

So they had to go:Then for the Pikea:

Luckily I had preassembled the Pikea otherwise I don't think I would have had enough time to do it today.
Et voila:
The toll included one hammer:
a couple of bent jigsaw blades, and a few trips to the hardware store. I also put sealant between the benchtop and sink and between the benchtop and wall. Not neat, but should at least stop it leaking everywhere in to the chipboard. Breaking the hammer gave me a good excuse to buy a fubar. I also wish I had bought the jigsaw earlier as it would have got me through one of the early bits faster.

We now have trained guard chickens!

2009-01-09T15:11:00.003+11:00

Kill, Cujo! Kill!
An unsuspecting juvenile kookaburra looks on...

And the extreme training regime continues....

All the cool kids are doing it!

Christmas adventures!

2009-01-02T21:55:00.006+11:00

So this year, Christmas was spent down at Margate. So what mayhem did we get up to down there? Well, some of us became Wii statistics, but in our spare time... here was my first ever balloon animal:

It's a dog. Can you tell? We also went to Salamanca markets where I was forced to have a tasty tasty German sausage.

I ended up with the Pork Bratwurst as the Weisswurst wasn't cooked yet.
I also needed to have the Gillespie's Alcoholic Ginger Beer through a traditional paper straw. Very tasty. While we were eating, a Town Crier came by although he was rather quiet. More ringing than crying.

On our walk around the harbour, we came across this:
Extreeeeeme pudding delivery!!!!!

In the IXL building further along the harbour, they've made a water feature out of one of the original jam pots:

In one of their shops, they had this:

which fills me with confidence. Prawns in a tetrabrick.... perfectly natural!
Here's a photo of the Margatian landscape:

and another (on the way to Margate Train which was shut for some reason during peak tourist season..... who would have thought there would be no Pancakes in high tourist season? Maybe they were all up in Hobart for the Taste of Tasmania)

Here's a lovely vineyard, although the cafe-ness of it was more interesting than the wine. It's a very nice cafe!

We had delicious scones with coffee!

One little bit of Margate decoration was the mosaic on the concrete barrier on the Channel Highway in Margate.

It was done by local school kids according to one of the panels, and sponsored by local businesses.

On our walk around the bay in Margate, we found a bush television.

We also went to the Taste of Tasmania before we left, where we had some lovely food and wine. When I spotted this:

So I *had* to have the Ancient Mariner. With a name like that, I had to find out... it looks like this:

And tastes delicious! It had blueberry, raspberry and vanilla icecream along with blueberries, raspberries and cream. Of course, the weather was very Tasmanian right up to the last:

When we got home, the warriors of Christmas gifts were set up to defend the kitchen!

Destructomeg's little Iron Chef looking egg cups.

So where did 2008 go?

2008-12-31T15:38:00.002+11:00

Just wondering where I spent the year. Things I can think of include in no particular order (and will be updated if I think of more of them):

- Graduated MBT (not much effort really since I did the hard work in the previous 4 1/2 years)
- Visited Melbourne (40th)
- Visited Brisbane (funeral)
- Visited Hobart (Christmas)
- Visited Mudgee (Wine!)
- Visited Oberon (Driving lesson for my Bro; only popped out for the day)
- Visited Terrigal (although that was work)
- Bought a house
- Got engaged
- Camped at Glenworth Valley (mmmm.... Festival)
- Got my RSA
- Got my ITILv3

Just trying to keep track of where the time goes, and reassuring myself that I'm at least trying to use my time well.

Ritmo Brasil festival, Sydney 2008

2008-09-21T21:07:00.004+10:00

These photos were taken at the Ritmo Brasil festival in Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour. The festival was today, and the highlight was a performance of the Maracatu performed by Umbela Brasil. Apparently, this particular celebratory dance hasn't been performed in Australia before.

The guy in green below danced a lot. The weather was hot. Luckily he has someone to keep him well watered. It also gives you a bit of an idea of how many drummers were involved.

This was back on the stage again back at Tumbalong park.

My Parents' Garden has Funky Plants

2008-09-21T19:17:00.001+10:00

See? Funky!

A lovely day

2008-09-07T21:22:00.003+10:00

Had a lovely day out today. We spent quit some time at Burwood fair. I didn't take many photos there but I eventually used the ol' camera phone and took a piccie of some hungry ducks on the pond.

For dinner we ended up going out to Bagan in Strathfield. It's a Burmese restaurant. Were supposed to be going with some friend who sadly couldn't join us, but we decided that since we'd booked and we were hungry we'd go anyway. Below was one of the specials, the mango salad. Very spicy (not recommended if you don't like chilli) and very tasty.

This was the deep fried melon and some other spicy chicken whose name escapes me. Managed to take a photo of the melon before we scoffed it all.

We also had some delicious fried rice. The bill was surprisingly low, and there was so much on the menu that we are definitely going back. Mighty tasty. Oh and way too much food.

Funky knitted thing!

2008-08-29T18:35:00.002+10:00

Some clever person made this thing for me :-)

Random photo time!

2008-08-17T13:12:00.002+10:00

I took this from the carpark roof in Burwood Plaza. Turned out well enough that I decided to share.

And in totally unrelated news I again have access to a blender. It allowed me to make these:

Note that no animals were harmed in the making of these Toblerone cocktails. I made them without the honey but with slightly more cream and a fair bit of ice. The new blender turned the ice in to smooth cocktail goodness very quickly.

Yay for funky birthday outings!

2008-07-27T21:50:00.004+10:00

Destructomeg took me on a great outing for my birthday! It all started with bacon and egg rolls with BBQ sauce in the comfort of our own home. After that, we took a train in to the city, and then went to Cockatoo Island which has some of the Biennale stuff on it. Spent some hours there (there was lots to see). We then went back to the city and stopped in at the history of Sydney Pubs at the Sydney Justice & Police Museum before being whisked away to a fabulous dinner at Sander's restaurant in Cabarita. There's a few photos of the day which I might put up on Flickr, but in the mean time, here's some that I've tried to paste together. They are all taken from Cockatoo Island.

I am going to grumble about the quality of them. I have some trouble at the moment with the exposure blending, and the last one shows that lining up the photos at the taking them stage is also a lot harder than I realised. Anyway, here they are:

Panorama time!

2008-07-05T17:12:00.002+10:00

So I finally found the time to put some panoramas together. I downloaded the latest version of Hugin (they've really worked on the user interface) and put these together:

This is in Japan, on one of the bridges outside the royal gardens.

This is in Singapore, on the island of Palau Ubin looking towards the mainland.

This is another panorama at Palau Ubin looking at an old mine.

And this final one is from last weekend in Brisbane, taken from Storey Bridge.

Stuff from Japan and Singapore

2008-07-05T13:22:00.003+10:00

So we went to Japan and Singapore last year and I haven't posted anything yet, so here's a random sample.

This was early on in the trip near Ueno or Asakusa. Just a regular street with regular people following instructions.

This is a picture of Himeji-jo. That place was far too photogenic. I took a lot of photos there.

This is one of the posts of ichi-no-tori (if we read the map correctly) in Nara. It's supposedly one of the oldest recorded/documentable gates in the country.

Here's a taste of Singapore from the shopping centre we were waiting in before heading over to Sentosa.

I also had to try one of the local desserts (and what would my blog be like without food photos anyway?). In Japan I had sweet potato flavoured soft serve amongst other delights, but here I got to try something in a natural shade of green. Well, I liked it.

More of Mudgee because I can!

2008-06-26T21:11:00.004+10:00

We stayed at the lovely Horatio which didn't have a stovetop that we could use. Well, with necessity and optimism (sadly the optimism wasn't mine), there was no desperation at all.

Amazingly it actually worked!

This was a view on the way back of the vast plains and vast wine.

This is how you control weeds organically. Black faced Suffolk are the brains of the operation.

This is the view from Windamere dam where we had lunch (tasty pizza leftovers from Lithgow. Who knew Lithgow had good pizza?)

That'll do for now!

Mudgee has food too!

2008-06-25T22:49:00.003+10:00

While in Mudgee, we went to a very tasty restaurant. It looked like this at the back:

And like this out the front:

And like this if it was made out of chocolate:

Tasty tasty giant ravioli. Apparently you could actually call it a raviolo (the small ones are apparently still called ravioli in singular). Anyway, this one was stuffed with chunks of roast pork and apple.

The fish was also quite tasty.

And I had of course my favourite dessert. Mmmmmm. Blowtorch.

And we ordered wine by the glass which also rocked. Also, apparently this is Sydney style food, not country. As opposed to giant hamburgers that don't cost very much which are available from the local pubs. Either way, I'd go back.

Ranty McRant (why do I have to buy a new one?)

2008-06-23T19:36:00.002+10:00

I forgot to have this rant earlier. As you know, dear reader, I like to reuse things where possible. I have successfully had my television repaired (still going strong now!) and had speakers repaired too. Last week I went to have my hair clippers sharpened and low and behold, the very place I had it done last time doesn't sharpen them anymore! Only new ones! And they didn't recognise my clippers because although they sold them to me the first time, they only have cheapo ones now. Why did I have to buy new blades? What is the world coming to?

Anyone know a place that sharpens hair clipping blades?

Mudgee has wine n stuff!

2008-06-22T12:41:00.005+10:00

Last weekend we got to drink lots of tasty wine out at Mudgee. One of the coolest bits of staying in Mudgee is the nice buildings they have kept. The streets have a really good character, so hopefully they will keep the new proposed mall at bay for a while yet.

This is one of the churches on the main street.

The town hall is also quite lovely.

I have no idea what this was.

They also have a new shop where you can buy whatever. What-evah.

I Like Oberon

2008-06-09T13:59:00.003+10:00

With its sweeping vistas
and the many many sheep

the lack of speed limits

the wide road down the main drag

the local council digging up the park

and a shop for when you need to buy an exotic bird and a bicycle, and don't want to go to separate stores

In fact, they also had other farming supplies, chainsaws and... well... exotic birds...

What's a Fizzy Vimto?

2008-06-08T15:41:00.003+10:00

Well, I'm glad you asked. It's one of these:And it looks like this:

The taste? Well, this one is grape, blackcurrant and raspberry, made with actual fruit juice concentrate and somehow manages to taste just like creaming soda. Not a bad thing, but not what I was expecting. If you feel the urge to obtain some "incredibly fizzy Vimto", you can get it up at the lolly shop in Leura, along with other random sweets from random countries.

Edit: Apparently you can obtain Vimto in cordial form in the local supermarket. Who knew???? (Well, I didn't....)

Living on the caffeinated edge

2008-05-18T16:12:00.002+10:00

or... the perils of liking a good coffee!

Okay so my usual coffee is a double macchiato, which I affectionately call a Mac Daddy. I drink these because I like a strong coffee. One shot usually isn't enough, hence the double. Secondly, if the coffee isn't quite awesome enough, the teaspoon full of milk is enough to take away some of the edge. I don't put sugar in there.

What can go wrong with this beverage? Well I'm glad you asked. One confusion is that when I order it as a double macchiato, they put in quite a lot of milk to go with it and it ends up resembling some kind of strong latte. In Melbourne I can call it a long macchiato but in Sydney that usually results in far too much explaining what they need to do.

The reason I started on this rant in the first place is that twice this year so far I've asked for a strong macchiato, and, much to my surprise, I've ended up with a strong mocha. The first time was up in Terrigal and quite frankly what they gave me was vile. The second time was this weekend in a French patisserie in Stanmore. Not vile but I really wasn't after a warm milkshake.

What I'm looking for now is suggestions on how to order my beloved Mac Daddy and actually get what I want without being condescending to the maker of the coffee. I know that when I'm out and about there's already a risk that I'll have a not so good coffee; hence the tiny bit of milk insurance policy, but I really don't want to end up with a mocha again.

p.s. in case you are wondering why I don't take them back, I've really not wanted to wait again for something else potentially equally bad to turn up. I drink what I can to get my vitamin C, and then find something a little tastier.

Cutting out the middle man

2008-02-22T14:36:00.000+11:00

Coffee grinder laybacks.

That is all.

Happy Valentines Day!

2008-02-15T18:06:00.003+11:00

Okay... so it is a bit of a commercial entity now, but it's still nice to stop and think of the ones you love. Not in an overcrowded go out to dinner like cattle kind of way, but in a little gesture kind of way. Thankyou Mz DestructoMeg! I don't think anyone has actually given me flower(s) before, and it was very sweet :-)

Not sure I entirely understand why, but it was a really cool thing to do. Maybe because it was so totally unexpected? Anyway.... I'll stop blubbering before this blog gets coated with mush.

Iron Maiden? Excellent!

2008-02-10T17:17:00.000+11:00

Well I liked it. Nothing like 3 lead guitars. Yes they had Adrian Smith, Yanick Gers and Dave Murray. Nicko on drums, and the other two usual suspects. Freakin awesome. I still await the power of the internet to provide me with more images of the gig. Rest assured there was much fireworks, lots of giant flames, a rather large cyborg Eddie and plenty of buffoonery. They played for 2 hours. Missed the first support act (Steve Harris' daughter Lauren) since she must have been on stage for all of 5 minutes. We got in at 8:30, she was supposed to start at 8, and the 2nd support act (Behind Crimson Eyes) was abusing the crowd and winding up. Anyway... if Maiden are in the area again, I'm there.

Last weekend was Cat Empire, Beautiful Girls and Blue King Brown out at Kippax Lake. Bit of a change of gears from that gig to this one. That one was outdoorsy mini festival, and also a blast but very different. And also had trouble supplying enough beer to the masses. But there was plenty of food and stacks of good music. Coffee... hmm... less good.

From the plane...

2008-01-14T15:11:00.000+11:00

We had to do a few loops on the way back from Melbourne (flights were delayed due to Sydney weather), and this was a view of the sunlight on the pools of water below. Well, I liked it.

Best. Request. Ever.

2008-01-04T12:15:00.000+11:00

So this guy walks up to the IT service desk here and says:

"I need to see someone in 2008."

End quote.

MegDay 2007

2007-10-30T22:32:00.000+11:00

The toaster is nice and slim from this angle.

I think it might be Jacaranda season in Sydney.....

The Corso is rather nice.

The local rescue team decided to play with their toys.

We made a new friend on the way to Shelley's beach.

And Sydney does lovely sunsets.

Beans lots of beans lots of beans lots of beans

2007-10-23T07:44:00.000+10:00

Time to harvest the broadbeans!

Even after shelling them there was quite a bit of bean harvested. Weighed in at 1.1kg.

So how much plant was it for that much bean?

Everyone loves Magical Trevor!

Lavender! And a bee!

2007-10-07T14:37:00.000+10:00

Here's a photo of the lovely lavender growing in our backyard. It's being visited by the local bees. No I'm not procrastinating. At all.

Lunar testing (of my aging camera)

2007-08-28T22:02:00.000+10:00

Ok... so back yard. View of eclipse. 7 year old compact 4MP camera and full size tripod. What else is a boy supposed to do? Well... invest in a new camera at some point. Until then.....

These were taken in order, some time apart.... anyway.... the last one should have been a crescent but apparently my camera isn't up to it. Also, I think everyone is blogging at once because blogger is a little sluggish at the moment. Ok.... procrastination has been achieved!

Two more assignments down!

2007-08-27T17:02:00.000+10:00

So some clever person chose his last two subjects for his degree to have coinciding assignment due dates for both of the assignments. Two were due today (and something has been submitted...) and another two are due in a few weeks. After that it's two exams then fun fun fun!

I'm trying to keep some semblance of social life. There's the Rowany 25 event I'll be going to, but in general I have cut down and have had to say no to a lot of things. Which was to be expected. After all, I'm doing two subjects to get this over with which was always going to be a little harsh. Anyway, enough rambling... I just wanted to say 'Hello, world!'

Man that time does fly....

2007-07-23T19:09:00.000+10:00

So on Saturday I got to hand out with some friends, watching the Asian cup soccer match. Australia almost made it. We went to the Canterbury RSL... who else was going to show it????

On Sunday we got up early and went to the Coffee Festival at the Rocks. For an hour. Then back to fight in a tournament. Followed by shopping and so on... then exhausted by the end of the day. Monday is start of session again with two subjects this time around. Yes they will be the last too (hooray!) but it is still two. Yet to see if that is a good idea or not..... Also means that posting here is unlikely for the next 3 months, but you never know.

Well pickle my cumquats and call me happy!

2007-07-09T20:28:00.000+10:00

The crop was bountiful! (It's a small tree and I think it has done rather well). More to the point, it was ripe for the picking.

So time to turn them into something more interesting. All the recipes I found involved equal parts of cumquats and sugar (measured ever so accurately)

And then top up with suitable brandy....

So now we play the waiting game.

Six months according to the recipes. SIX MONTHS!

Sunshine made me smile!

2007-07-02T09:44:00.000+10:00

The sunshine this morning actually made me smile. Haven't had that experience for a while. Driving to work, the sunlight reflecting off the river, through the bridge railing and into my car somehow made me all happy and made the rest of the drive a mystical journey instead of just a drive to work on monday morning. I felt like I was on holiday. Apparently I like sunshine.

What's with the weather?

2007-06-26T18:48:00.001+10:00

Wow. Washing hanging under the shelter in the back isn't drying. How long has it been since it's been too damp to have clothes dry, even under shelter?

Arbor Martyr at the Alma Mata

2007-06-22T20:58:00.001+10:00

Bucking the trend

2007-06-16T16:42:00.000+10:00

Don't despair! Get a repair! Or something like that...

I was just enjoying my newly repaired television playing audio through my newly repaired speakers. That's right. Repaired. Not replaced. Not chuck it out and buy a new one. Wasn't really that much for the TV, and the speakers did cost as much as replacing them but at least I get a better quality than I would have (and the right one for the box), and according to the guy at the speaker hospital it would last 15 years. So take that, advocates of disposable electronics! Anyway, I'm happy with them.

Yes I may need to eat my hat if the TV fails again within 6 months but I'm feeling all superior at the moment and I'm making the most of it.

It's cold.

2007-06-14T11:58:00.000+10:00

Too cold. Far too freakin' cold. How do I know? Well, apart from the fact that I feel frozen, so does my home computer. I tried switching it on. A number of times. Wouldn't start up. Fan would whizz for a second or so (or 5 seconds sometimes!) and then it would give up. Too cold. How do I know it was the cold? I pointed a fan-forced heater at the inside of the box (i.e. at the motherboard) for about 15 minutes. Tried at about 5 mins, didn't make a difference, but by the time the case was hot to touch (on the other side of the motherboard) it started up just fine. By just fine I mean that it was complaining that the CPU and motherboard were too hot, but it booted perfectly. I'm a little worried about "fixing" my computer by heating it up, but hey it worked.

Another one bites the dust!

2007-05-31T09:27:00.000+10:00

15 pages full of writing. 2 1/2 hours to do the exam. One very sore writing finger.... the only cure? Holding my poor writing finger next to an ice-cold beer. That was my Tuesday.

Not. Procrastinating. At. All.

2007-05-22T12:08:00.000+10:00

Head to head

2007-05-20T19:20:00.001+10:00

Here are the contestants. Brave, proud animals. Well... sheep are honorary rodent as far as Destructomeg is concerned due to their eating habits and intelligence.
As you can see, the sheep ale seems to have a bigger head than the ferret.
Note that for the taste test, we used a neutrally branded beer glass. The ales tasted are in fact English, so the James Boags glass shouldn't favour either of them ;-) Of course the tasting was so serious that we had to appropriately prepare our tastebuds:

As it happens, both ales tasted great. The sheep ale was in fact smokier. As you can see it is a little darker, which comes from a longer roasting. They were both simply delicious ales, so I'll just have to find more suppliers. Or more beers to try.

Mmmm.... fashion and stuff

2007-05-19T12:31:00.000+10:00

So how have I been procrastinating lately? Last night we went to the LunarMorph fashion show. Edge City has been replaced. It's now no longer part of Fashion Week, and isn't on the same weekend as Under the Blue Moon, but it's now part of Newtown's Fashion Week "Flaunt it".

It was awesome. It had motorbikes, extreme piercing with people suspended in interesting ways, someone tied up to the wall as a butterfly, quite some metres from the ground, people on stilts and rollerblades, some great clothing, an amusing compere, and was just a fantastic show all round. Only official media could take photos, but hopefully some will be posted up somewhere. Even the venue was great! It was held at CarriageWorks. I'll let the website speak for itself. **EDIT: Yes, we did get to drink a rather delightful glass of Abisinthe. Which is Absinthe. With the e. Being the French style, not the Bohemian style. It wasn't very green and was very anise flavoured, which seems to be the difference in style. Was mighty tasty and the company does sell the ice water fountain and spoons, so I might have to make an investment, but I think I prefer the taste of the Bohemian style since this one reminded me almost entirely of Sambuca. Not a bad thing, just a thing.

Afterwards, while lamenting the loss of some good bars in Newtown (not sure that The Bank will ever be the same), we ran into some friends in The Town Hall, who told us about Madame Fling Flong. Tiny bar with way too much furniture. We loved it! They also do movie nights which could be fun :)

Anyway.. that'll do for now. I might add more to this later when I next need to avoid studying!

Festival recap, or: Why haven't I posted the photos up already?

2007-04-21T20:02:00.000+10:00

We camped at the festival site from the Saturday night before festival, all the way through to the Tuesday afterwards. Obviously this led to the need to wash some clothes during the week, which lead to a re-purposing of some finely crafted fire-implements.

The guild hall, although taking quite some time to build, is looking pretty good so far.

Mmmmm. Sunsets. Mmmmmm hammocks. When their powers combine:
Yay team Rowany! Alright so it looks like I'm just standing there but I'm sure I was doing something very, very important.

So how dusty was festival? This dusty:
Not sure you can quite make it out in the next photo, but we did get up to some attempts at glass-blowing at festival. Why? Ummm.... not quite sure why we did it but it amused us for hours. Unfortunately none of the "works" survived.

In my next exciting post I'll put up pictures of the Tuesday morning which was fantastically foggy. At least thats what I plan to do when I'm next avoiding doing my assignment.