Blue Mountains Day Trip

14 June, 2010

Megalong Valley PanoramaWe went for a day driving trip up to the Blue Mountains yesterday. This is a World Heritage Area right on Sydney’s doorstep and contains some beautiful scenery.

There are just two roads out of Sydney to the west. We took the lesser travelled Bells Line of Road and turned off to the tiny village of Mount Wilson, where I’d never been before. It turned out to be tiny indeed, with just a few residential properties, a small church, and a Bush Fire Brigade building. No shops, no post office, nothing. The main reason for going there is to admire the beautiful gardens that many of the residents keep, and let open for public viewing. We dropped in at one, Windy Ridge, but being winter it wasn’t at its best. There were a few flowers out, but most of it was just various shades of green and brown. It was still interesting and would clearly be a wonder in spring.

We also stopped in at the Cathedral of Ferns for the short walk through luscious rainforest populated by enormous tree ferns, and then at Wynne’s Lookout for a view over part of the National Park.

From there we drove over to the Great Western Highway (the other route west from Sydney) and grabbed some pies for lunch at Mount Victoria, before heading out to Hargrave’s Lookout on the Shipley Plateau, south of Blackheath. The view from there is shown in the panorama at the top of this post. I’d not visited this spot before, but I’ll definitely be going back. It has possibly the best view of the Megalong Valley and Blue Mountains National Park regions that I’ve ever seen from any lookout spot.

On the way home, we popped in at Katoomba for some afternoon tea. I spotted a wine shop there and found some interesting regional NSW stuff. I bought 4 bottles: a late-picked Verdelho from Cowra, an ice wine from Orange, a bottle of spiced mead(!), and a bottle of hot chili wine – no grapes involved, it’s made entirely from chilis! The woman behind the counter saw me looking bemusedly at the bottle and offered me a taste. Wow… I had to buy a bottle after that. More details later when I give it a proper tasting.

Stonecroft 2006 Hawkes Bay Gewürztraminer

11 June, 2010

Stonecroft 2006 Hawkes Bay Gewürztraminer
I’ve never had a Gewürztraminer before, so I was keen to see what this was like. It’s from Stonecroft in Hawkes Bay on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island. A note by the bottles when we bought it said that it was good with fatty fish. So we booked a table at Garfish tonight and had a nice relaxing Friday evening dinner. M. and I both chose the grilled salmon with chips, after a starter of buttery garlic bread. So lots of oily food!

From the first sniff I could tell this was a very different type of wine to anything I’d had before. It was citrusy, with strong lemon-lime notes. There was also something else very distinctive present, but it took me halfway through dinner to start identifying the other components. After the first glass I finally nailed part of it down as floral aroma, something like a cross between jasmine and rose. And there was also a hint of musk as well… sweet and a tiny bit cloying. A very interesting mix of smells.

In the mouth, the initial burst was a slightly sweet lemon-lime flavour, matching the aroma. There was some fermentation prickle. After sitting in the mouth a bit the flavour mellowed out into something very mild and almost creamy, with those hints of floral aroma. Like Turkish delight, now I come to think of it – yes, that was definitely it. It wasn’t anywhere near that sweet – it was just a touch of sweetness that made it very different from a dry, tart wine like a sauvignon blanc. And then the most astonishing thing happened. The creamy texture starting developing a distinct spiciness – cloves perhaps, and then peppery flavours. Subtle at first, but on swallowing there was a mild peppery sensation all the way down the throat.

It was really complex, with lots going on, and very interesting and enjoyable. I feared M. might not like it, but she really got into it, and said it was great. It complemented the fish and chips beautifully.

Even liking it so much, there’s no way the two of us can finish off an entire bottle of wine over dinner. I have no idea what other people do in this situation. (Tell me!) We take our vacuum sealing pump to the restaurant (it fits into the wine chiller bag with a bottle) and seal it up once we know we’re not pouring any more, then take the remainder home again. It’s a little conspicuous pumping air out of a wine bottle at the table, but nobody’s ever looked twice at us doing it, yet.

Anyway, this wine was a fantastic experience. I’ve just now looked up some more information on Gewürztraminer, and see that it’s known for a bouquet of lychees – which, now that I think about it, matches very well to the lemon-lime thing I was trying to put a better name to. Lychee – I must remember that. Furthermore, Stonecroft’s tasting notes on its 2009 Gewürztraminer says that it has notes of – wait for it – jasmine and rose petals! I’m now feeling very pleased with myself and my slowly developing wine tasting skills.

Eclipse!

10 June, 2010

Someone at work was talking about the 2012 total solar eclipse, which will be visible from Cairns in northern Queensland. Of course eclipse enthusiasts are already planning their trips, and Cairns has a tourism site devoted to it. I said it would be cool to go see it, but organising a trip is such a hassle, especially when the place will be crammed with thousands of people going there at exactly the same time for the same reason. (In fact, we’ll see a roughly 65% partial eclipse from here in Sydney, so that’ll be moderately cool.)

Then someone said we could just wait until 2028

The total solar eclipse of 22 July, 2028 will be visible from Sydney. Not just as a partial eclipse either – the path of totality crosses the city. And not just scrapes across an edge of the city – the path of totality completely covers the entire city. Check NASA’s page which has a Google map with the path of totality marked on it, and zoom into Sydney. Yeah, keep zooming in.

Everywhere from Wyong to Wollongong will see totality. The centre of the path of totality passes less than 5km from my house! It passes within a few hundred metres of the astronomy department of the University of Sydney, where I studied astronomy! It passes right over one of my favourite restaurants!

I’m sure I’ve heard of this eclipse before, but previously it was always “too far in the future” to really think about, and I’d never had such a detailed look at the eclipse track before. I’m stunned. Only 18 years before the world will fall all over itself to come to Sydney and the entire city will experience over 4 minutes of eclipse totality. Suddenly it doesn’t seem all that far away.

I can’t wait.

Kitchen gadgets

7 June, 2010

I decided for no apparent reason to make a list of our kitchen gadgets, and how often we use them. Begin pointless infodump!

Electric gadgets:

  • Blender – We made smoothies and stuff with this for about a year after we got it, but that ended suddenly. Has been used maybe once or twice in the past couple of years.
  • Food processor – Used once a week or so for things like pureeing pumpkin or potato for soup, chopping nuts, pureeing fruit, etc.
  • Microwave oven – Used a few times a week, mainly to reheat food, but also sometimes to melt butter, or cook vegetables like cauliflower or broccoli.
  • Electric wok – We used to use this a lot for stir fries, but it’s large and stored inconveniently so we’ve moved away from it. Gets pulled out maybe once a month or two.
  • Ice cream maker – Used to make a batch of ice cream every few weeks. We’ve got a lot of use out of this!
  • Electric hand mixer – Used frequently for beating ice cream mixture (see above), cake batters, pancakes, whipping cream, etc.
  • Sandwich press – Used two or three times a week for hot sandwiches, mostly on weekends.
  • Toaster – Used nearly every day to make toast.
  • Electric kettle – Used daily to make tea and coffee.
  • Electric scales – Battery operated. Used to measure ingredients when baking cakes and stuff.

Non-electric gadgets:

  • Garlic press – Used this a couple of times, years ago. It’s impossibly fiddly to clean, so we gave up using it.
  • Apple corer – I use this occasionally to core apples or pears for baking.
  • Tea balls – Used regularly for loose leaf tea.
  • Citrus reamer – Used occasionally for extracting lemon juice.
  • Wine bottle pump – Used a few times a month to keep half-drunk bottles of wine sealed and oxygen-free.
  • Bamboo steamer – Used a few times a year to steam Chinese dumplings.
  • Pizza pan – Used frequently to bake pizzas.
  • Various cake and muffin tins – Used a couple of times a month for baking.
  • Cooling racks – As above.
  • Potato masher – Not used much; we never have mashed potatoes. Occasionally used to mash pumpkin for soup.
  • Egg rings – Occasional use for making neat fried eggs to put on hamburgers.
  • Wooden trivets – A few times a year for presenting hot food dishes on the dining table when guests are over.
  • Hotplate heat dispersers – Used frequently to avoid the gas flame from over-heating saucepans.
  • Cookie cutters – Never used as far as I can remember.
  • Corkscrew – Used on wine corks, which is only about 20% of the bottles these days.
  • Corn holders – Used when we have corn on the cob, a few times a year.
  • Pastry brush – Used rarely, it’s so evil to clean that I hate using it.
  • Chopsticks – Never use these at home.
  • Meat tenderiser – Used maybe once, ever.
  • Teapot – Almost never used; we usually make tea one cup at a time.
  • Coffee percolator – Used once or twice years ago; I don’t drink coffee and M. prefers instant to percolated.

The usual suspects, used fairly frequently:
Cutting knives, eating knives, spoons, forks, wooden spoons, serving spoons, slotted spoons, tongs, vegetable peeler, can opener, oven mitts, colander, spatulas, egg-flips, cheese grater, ice cream scoop, cheese knife, various pots and pans, cutting boards, casserole dishes, pie dishes.

Some more-or-less common gadgets we don’t have:
Rolling pin, mortar & pestle, bread maker, rice cooker, lemon zester, deep fryer, egg cups, blow torch, pressure cooker.

Not listed:
Crockery and glassware – that’s a whole ‘nother post (except it would be even more boring).

Cheesecakery

6 June, 2010

Orange-lime cheesecake
So I decided to make a cheesecake, of the chilled, non-baked variety. I’ve never made one before, but I saw a great looking cheesecake recipe book while browsing around in Borders the other week. I was tempted to buy it at the time, but decided against. And then a week later we received some Borders book club coupons, one of which was 40% off a cookbook! So it was duly acquired.

The book is split half-half between baked cheesecakes (my favourite type), and non-baked. I thought I’d start by trying a classic non-baked cheesecake, before moving on to some of the more exotic types in the book.

Being my first time, I tried to follow the recipe as closely as I could. After making a reasonably successful biscuit-crumb base, I turned to the filling. The recipe said to start by dissolving a teaspoon of gelatine in a tablespoon of water, by using a heatproof cup in a saucepan of simmering water to heat it gently. That worked fine. The recipe said to set it aside for 5 minutes to cool, while mixing the rest of the filling.

Fine… I got the rest of the filling mixed up. Cream cheese, sweetened condensed milk, some orange zest, lime juice. It looked fine and tasted right. Then it was time to add the dissolved gelatine. Only the cup which had the gelatine and water in it now held a solid, rubbery plug of jelly. It was no longer liquid at all! I tried mixing it through the filling mixture, but it was like trying to mix a lump of rubber through it. I had to fish it out and make an entirely new batch of dissolved gelatine. This time I mixed it into the filling before it had a chance to cool down and solidify. Hopefully it will turn out okay and the filling will set properly.

Vineyard Cottage Twin Trees 2001 Shiraz

2 June, 2010

Vineyard Cottage Twin Trees 2001 Shiraz
The wedding we went to last month was in the Hunter Valley, a few hours drive from Sydney. So we drove up on Friday and stayed the Friday night before the wedding and the Saturday night afterwards, before heading home on Sunday. We stayed at Twin Trees Country Cottages, which was nice. The property had a small vineyard on it, and they make their own wine. We were given this bottle as a complimentary when we checked in.

South Australia is better known for shiraz than is the Hunter Valley, plus this was a freebie, so I wasn’t expecting any great things from it. Although the 2001 vintage could be taken as a good sign, because (as far as my still rudimentary knowledge goes) shiraz tends to age well and improve as it gets older, so 9 years old should theoretically be better than a vintage from just 2 or 3 years ago.

I’m also a bit reticent about shiraz as so far I’ve consistently found it to have a distinct “petrochemical” smell, which also translates across into the taste. Strong and a bit like (what I imagine it would be like) drinking kerosene.

This one, however, was pleasant on the nose, without that sharp, pungent smell. I couldn’t pick anything particularly identifiable in the odour, but I noticed it didn’t smell like what I’ve come to think of as “typically shiraz”. And the taste was amazing. It was smooth and light, with a very distinct flavour of fresh raspberries. Totally not what I was expecting. After a bit of development in the mouth, the distinctive shiraz spiciness came through, though not with the power of some others I’ve tried. I was looking for black pepper, but it wasn’t that – it was more like cinnamon and aniseed.

I have no idea if this would be considered a good shiraz or not, but I really liked it, which is a first for me and shiraz.

Fan vitriol

1 June, 2010

Being one of the creators of Darths & Droids, I take some time every now and then to trawl forums and blogs for new comments and reviews of the comic. The comments are generally good, although there are the odd few people who say, “I looked at it, it sucks.” But we can live with those.

One interesting trend I’ve noticed is just how much people seem to hate the Star Wars prequels. I mean not just dislike but actively hate. As in they think George Lucas went back in time and raped their childhood and shot their dog and the prequel films should be burnt, stabbed through the heart with a stake, and buried at a crossroads.

The slightly disturbing thing about this (besides that these people should try directing their passion into something positive for a change) is that it’s instantly leapt to when Darths & Droids is mentioned. A typical mention goes something like this:

Hey, check out this webcomic. It’s hilarious and it actually makes the prequels entertaining. This is the only possible justification for the existence of the prequels. Ha ha! look at the fun they’re poking of the stupid prequels! Hilarious!

Now, while it’s nice to have a reason why people like our comic, this actually worries me a bit. Because another thing that many of these posts seem to do is assume that we’re making fun of the prequels. As in just the prequels. I fear that many people haven’t read the FAQ, in which we state that we have a storyline plotted for all six movies.

What’s going to happen when we reach the end of Episode III, and start on Episode IV? Are people suddenly going to think we’ve stopped poking fun at the hated prequels and are now desecrating the original classics? I don’t know.

I’m not poking fun at the prequels because I hate them. They’re not masterpieces, and there are certainly groanworthy moments that are difficult to watch, but they’re still fun if you don’t treat them like they’re supposed to be the ultimate expression of cinema. I prefer the original trilogy, but I wonder how much of that is just nostalgia. There are also cringeworthy moments in those films.

As a resource for making the comics, we drew up a list of “Stupid things we need to explain” for each movie. People seem to think it’s hilarious when we point out how stupid something is in one of the prequels. Plot holes, bizarre character actions, ridiculous technology that defies physics and/or common sense, and so on. But you know what? We have lists of pretty much the same length of things just as stupid in each of the original trilogy films. When we use these to point out something silly in the original films and make jokes about it, what are the readers going to think?

Honestly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if our readership dropped by half or more when we move from the prequels to the original trilogy. I hope it doesn’t, and that the story we are telling keeps readers hooked, and that the majority of people approach it with the same view of affectionate parody that we’re actually aiming for in the prequels, and stay to enjoy it. But I’m not sure that will happen. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Relaxing

25 May, 2010

I was just thinking when was the last time I got home from work and did nothing but slump on the lounge and watch TV all night. Or at least the equivalent – just relaxing and essentially doing nothing but passive activities. And I can’t recall the last time that happened.

I’m always buzzing around, doing stuff. Making comics, or writing annotations, or composing puzzles, or tinkering away with code, or doing some 3D rendering – or writing blog posts. Occasionally I’ll do some housework or home maintenance stuff, or if I get really wacky I’ll start pulling out ingredients and make a batch of cookies or something. If I really don’t feel like doing any of those, and it comes down to the last resort, I go through my collection of unprocessed photos and play with them in Photoshop and post some to my Flickr page.

I don’t just kick back and say, “What’s on TV?” I watch some TV, when I know there’s something on that I want to watch. But I never channel surf. I’ve always got half a dozen more interesting things to do.

I’m beginning to think that for me, noodling around, playing with ideas, making things, doing creative activities – is relaxing. Sitting in front of a TV isn’t.

Cabernet Merlot by Brad

17 May, 2010

Cabernet Merlot by Brad
Here’s one of the wines we bought yesterday – we cracked it for dinner with lasagne. This is an inexpensive cabernet sauvignon/merlot blend from “Brad” in Western Australia’s Margaret River region. M. was drawn to it by the admittedly catchy pop art labels.

The back label claims tastes of dark chocolate and plummy blackcurrant with a touch of mint. I couldn’t detect any chocolate notes at all, but I got plum and blackcurrant, and a faint hint of mint in the aroma, though not the flavour.

Red wines are really difficult to wrap my head around. I’m more confident in picking the differences between various whites and identifying some of the flavour components, but the overwhelming taste I get from most reds is still “red wine flavour”. It’s really hard work dragging out something identifiable as the various fruity flavours that the wines claim to have. I can tell this isn’t spicy, like a shiraz, and that it’s probably one of either cabernet or merlot (or a blend) based on comparison to others I’ve had before, but actually identifying the specific flavour notes is really really hard. I fear I’m a bit biased by the labels on the back of the bottles, which usually claim something like blackcurrant or strawberry or whatever, and I just sip the wine and nod, and go, “uh, huh, yeah, I can taste that.” I’m trying not to, but it’s hard knowing how much that’s influencing me. At least with this one I can positively deny being able to taste anything resembling chocolate!

But anyway, the label art is cool.

1944 Vintage Port

16 May, 2010

Seppelt Para Liqueur Port, Vintage 1944
A few weeks ago I went to a wine shop a couple of suburbs away for the first time. It was an Aladdin’s cave of delights, even to my raw and naive wine skills. It was where I bought my first Beaujolais.

The shop is in an old bank building, and the vault is still in there, now filled with rare and expensive wines. One of the things I spotted in there in that first visit was a bottle of 1944 vintage port. At the time I had no idea if it would be any good, and it was $99 for the bottle, so I left it sitting there in the vault. When I got home, I did some searching and found that this particular brand was the premier Australian vintage port, and the 1944 vintage was supposed to be pretty good. People have drunk bottles form this vintage recently and been most impressed. And everywhere else that offered a scant few bottles for sale were asking the order of $150 each.

Today we went back for the first time, mainly to pick and choose a dozen bottles of wine to store away and work our way through slowly. And the 1944 port was still there. So we made it an uneven 13 bottles. I’ve left the dust on it, to retain the character.

The Seppelt family have been producing vintage ports in Australia since the 1880s. They actually used to have a “100-year vintage” program, where they stored part of each declared vintage (they don’t have a port vintage every year), to release them when they were 100 years old. They still do a 100-year tawny port release. Pretty amazing stuff.

Anyway, I now have this astounding bottle of wine, more than 20 years older than me! I’ll probably try to drink it sooner rather than later – no sense missing out! But I’ll wait for a good occasion, and probably share it with some friends. Something to look forward to!