food – Page 12 – dangermouse.net

Honey cakes

Today we had my wife’s mother, sister, and brother over for lunch. Just a simple thing with sandwiches. But her brother brought a selection of honey cakes from Christina’s Honeycakes to have after the sandwiches. There were six flavours and we cut the squares in half so people could try a wider selection. I really liked the peanut butter one.

Having guests over meant cleaning the house before they arrived, so that took up part of the day too. I also had a bit of a mess with Outschool admin to deal with – parents asking for class times that were already full and me getting in a tangle offering an extra place (maximum one) to two different parents without realising it, then having to deal with the issues when one signed up and the other couldn’t. Ugh. Its still not settled yet either – I’m going to have to deal with this more tomorrow.

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Fancy lunch with free dessert

During my three classes this morning, my wife messaged and asked if I wanted to meet her at a local restaurant for lunch, during her work break. So I took Scully up and we sat at a table outside. The weather was nice. And the restaurant turned out to be having a “23rd birthday” special for the month of August, offering either a free glass of wine or dessert with any lunch menu item. They’re actually open for breakfast and lunch, but not dinner. They used to be open for dinner years ago, and we enjoyed going there a few times, but since they decided not to open for dinner any more we’ve rarely been back, so it was nice to try it again.

I chose a barbecue pulled pork burger, and the dessert, which was a sticky date pudding. The burger was good, and the dessert was too, although not very big. I wonder if it was a special smaller serving for the free offer.

This afternoon I assembled another few Irregular Webcomic! strips from the last batch of photos I took, which will last for this week. For next week it’s time to write new strips and take more photos again.

In weather news, I ran across this mid-range outlook forecast by the Bureau of Meteorology, showing October-December this year.

2023 Oct-Dec forecast map

Yeah, it’s gonna be a hot summer.

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A new French bakery!

The only real event of note today was that we went for a short drive across the harbour to Surry Hills, where there is a bakery that my wife wanted to visit. It turns out it’s the bakery that had the stall at the French market a few weeks ago, where I got the chocolate Parisian flan. It’s called Tonton Bread.

We parked a few blocks away, because parking in that area of the city is horrendous, and walked over with Scully. It’s a small hole-in-the-wall type of establishment, with two tiny cafe tabes outside on the footpath, one of which was miraculously free when we arrived. So we sat and enjoyed an almond and apricot croissant, and a pain aux raisins. The croissant was truly amazing, one of the best pastries I’ve ever had. The apricot was in the form of blobs of a thick jam-like substance, but not as sweet as jam, which was good because the rest of the croissant was. It was really more like mashed fresh apricots. So good. As we left I also got a cinnamon twist to take home for dessert tonight.

Otherwise, I did some comics stuff, and three ethics classes this evening. The weather has turned a bit greyer and colder and will apparently be this way for a few days.

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Kondoing the bookshelves

This morning I had the first older student ethics lesson on Probability. Unfortunately only one student turned up, and that’s always a bit challenging because we end up going through all the questions a lot faster, especially if the student isn’t very talkative. I ran out about 5 minutes before the end and had to wing it by making up some more questions on the fly.

At lunch today I took Scully on a walk around to one of the local cafes where I had lunch. Last time I had the “Ultimate Sandwich” and chose the pulled pork option. But they also have a grilled chicken option, which I tried today.

Yeah, that’s pretty ultimate. I did actually manage to fold the bread roll and encase most of the filling and eat it with my hands like a sandwich, but there were a few chunks of chicken and salad that fell out. It was good, but I think I slightly prefer the pulled pork version.

After lunch I dedicated a couple of hours to cleaning up the bookcases. They’ve been needing a proper dusting for a while, which is a chore I always put off because we have a lot of random little knickknacks and stuff on most of the shelves in front of the books, so it’s tedious. But I also had a pile of new roleplaying game books sitting on my desk that needed to be shelved, and I had to rearrange some things to fit them in. So I bit the bullet and tackled the job.

I went through everything on the shelves and tossed out some old stuff that I’ve never really used and couldn’t foresee a use for. Also some random things like the polystyrene spheres I used for this Proof that the Earth is a Globe. I also had about 20 card boxes full of plastic card sleeves just taking up space, which I moved to a large storage box to reduce the clutter. I moved some loose art supplies into the art supply box. And so on.

I found a large, folded-up sheet of paper. When I unfolded it, this is what I found:

It’s an artefact from when I ran The Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure for my Dungeons & Dragons group, back in 2017. We drew a large map of Wave Echo Cave as we played. I decided to throw it out, but I took this photo first to have a memory of it.

Tonight for dinner I bought a bunch of fresh basil from the corner store while taking Scully for her evening walk. I made pesto with that, a garlic clove, toasted pine nuts, grated pecorino (I know, but I’d run out of Parmigiano Reggiano), and extra-virgin olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. We had it on penne pasta and it was really good.

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Another big software upgrade

Today I tackled another big task on my to-do list: Upgrading phpBB for my Irregular Webcomic! (and other comic) forums. The forums have been acting up in minor ways lately, and I think it’s more symptoms of the server upgrade from PHP version 7 to 8. So I thought it was time to upgrade phpBB again to make sure it was up to date and fully compatible with PHP 8.

I downloaded the file package, unzipped it, backed up my database and previous installation files, and then copied the new files into the installation directory. Or at least that’s what I thought I was doing. When it came time to run the database upgrade script, it failed spectacularly, both from the PHP web page, and from the command line, with ridiculously arcane error messages that I had no hope of deciphering.

After despairing for a few minutes that I might have utterly broken the forums with no hope of recovery, I realised that I’d installed the new files into a temporary directory where I’d placed files the last time I upgraded phpBB, and not into the actual installation directory. Redoing all of the file copying steps into the actual directory, I held my breath as I attempted to run the database update…. and it worked! Phew.

As a friend of mine put it when I mentioned what I’d done:

That feeling where you realise “oh I did something stupid” is a massive relief because the alternative is that you did everything right but it doesn’t work… Is that unique to working with technology? I can’t see why it should be but it feels much more common than anywhere else.

Another friend thought of something:

I think there’s a similar thing where you get a medical test and you’re relieved that it’s positive because the alternative is that you don’t know what the hell is wrong with you.

Anyway, the job is done. I’m not sure if it’s fixed those intermittent bugs with the forum or not, but hopefully we’ll find that they no longer occur.

In other tasks done, I finally transferred all the photos that I took in Japan on my phone onto my computer, so I can go through them. And I burnt a big audiobook onto CDs for my mother.

I took Scully for a long walk at lunchtime, to one of the bakeries. I felt like the richest chocolatiest treat they had, so got a slab of chocolate brownie to eat after my lunch. It was good, but I felt a bit off for an hour or two afterwards – probably because it was full of coconut oil or something, as it was a gluten-free version, and they tend to have a lot more oil in them. Honestly I vastly prefer my sweet treats to have regular gluten-rich flour in them, because, if I’m being brutally honest, they taste much better and are less queasiness inducing. But it’s so hard to actually find a regular gluten-containing brownie around here these days.

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Le Marché Français

This morning we went to Le Marché, a French market which is held twice a week in a suburb not too far from us. Parking was tricky – we had to park about three blocks away. And when we got there, soon after 9am, it was already pretty crowded.

The market has some fresh produce…

French bread…

Cheese…

French decorations…

And pastries and sweets!

That’s a chocolate Parisian flan, which I had. It was incredibly rich and delicious. I didn’t feel like any lunch afterwards until I had a small snack around 2pm, which was plenty to last until dinner.

This afternoon I mainly worked on comics, until my three evening ethics classes. It feels like it’s been a very full day.

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A leisurely seafood lunch

Friday: Picked up groceries from the supermarket, taught four ethics classes, picked up Scully from wife’s work, went for a 2.5k run, cooked lentils and rice for dinner, played online board games night with friends. We played Decrypto, Evergreen, Jump Drive, Marrakech, Just One, 7 Wonders. And possibly something else I may have forgotten.

Today, Saturday, was more leisurely. I’ve started writing a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips, hopefully to photograph in time for new strips to go live by Monday. My wife an I took time out for lunch. Rather than go out for dinner this week in the winter cold (since we sit outdoors with Scully), we decided to have a nice lunch in the midday sun. We went to a local seafood restaurant that we like. I had the grilled salmon with agedashi eggplant on the side, which was really good. And for dessert I tried a new item on the menu, a “dark chocolate fireball”.

It came out on a red plate, a large ball of chocolate perched on a low bed of brownie-like cake. And then the waiter poured over a hot raspberry sauce, which melted the chocolate, revealing an interior with layers of raspberry sorbet and chocolate-raspberry namelaka (which I had to look up after we got home; namelaka turns out to be a type of ganache).

It was delicious! And the lunch was very filling, so we’re planning to have a very light dinner tonight.

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New content today:

Coldest day of the year

Sydney recorded 5.2°C overnight, making it the coldest day of the winter, and the year, so far. It warmed up a bit and the middle of the day wasn’t as cold as yesterday though.

I taught my first class on The Singularity this morning, with some of the older students, and it went well, with plenty of smart discussion by the students.

For lunch I walked Scully up to the shops near my wife’s work and had a Japanese lunch set at one of the restaurants there. They have a lunch special where you get miso soup, rice, salad, and a hot food item, like karaage chicken or pork katsu or teriyaki salmon or whatever. I’ve tried several of the options and was looking to try something new. One of the options was listed on the menu as “jumbo kaki”, and the photo showed what looked like Panko-crumbed croquettes.

I looked up “kaki” on my phone and found it meant “persimmon” in Japanese… but I didn’t think it would be persimmon croquettes. While pondering this, the waitress arrived to take my order, and I asked her what was in this dish. She looked, thought for a second, and declared the croquettes contained “beef and pork”.

Readers who know Japanese at this point: 🤔🤨

Anyway, I ordered the “kaki”. It came with a small bowl with a thick sauce. I tried one, dipping it in the sauce. Sure enough, the sauce tasted a bit like persimmon I thought, so maybe that explained the name in the menu. But the croquette filling definitely wasn’t beef or pork. It was something vaguely animal proteiny, but resembled more like a mushy mass of giblets or something than a cut of meat or a minced meat. It didn’t taste bad, so I just kind of tried to ignore whatever it might be and finished my meal.

When I went to pay, another waitress was at the pay station, and she said, “You had the oysters, right?”

Internally I was thinking, “Oh, that’s what it was!” As well as, “The other waitress really should have known better and not told me it was beef/pork.” Fortunately I don’t mind oysters, although they’re not a food of choice, and honestly if I’d known what the dish was I would have ordered something else. But I just thought now what if I’d had a seafood allergy or something? Anyway, I paid and didn’t say anything. (Also, fortunately I’m not allergic to seafood, although if I was I’d be a lot more careful confirming ingredients in restaurants than I am.)

Looking it up again now, I see that the Japanese “kaki” has several meanings. To quote Wiktionary:

柿: persimmon
垣: fence
牡蠣: oyster (edible)
夏期: summer period
花卉: flowers
火器: firearm
夏季: summer
火気: fire
下記: following
花期: flowering season
花器: vase
和気: harmonious atmosphere

Now I’m pondering a serve of harmonious atmosphere croquettes.

In sports news, the FIFA Women’s World Cup has just begun, with a surprise win by New Zealand against Norway in the opening game in Auckland, and Australia now taking on Ireland here in Sydney. I might go watch the game, and then switch over to the 4th Ashes cricket match in England.

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Bonus cheese

There was some pumpkin and lentil soup left over form last night’s dinner. Not enough for dinner tonight, I thought, so I pondered ways to recycle it into another dinner for two. A bit of searching turned up an idea to turn leftover pumpkin soup into a pasta sauce, by adding bacon.

That sounded good, but I couldn’t use bacon because of my wife not eating meat. So, I thought, what vegetarian substitute could I add? Haloumi cheese, fried crispy! It’s crisp and salty like bacon, and I could cut it into small pieces. Only we had no haloumi in the house.

Okay, I can take Scully for a walk before dinner and get some haloumi from the nearest supermarket. It’s a small local one, more like a corner store than a major supermarket, so I check their web site and yes, they stock haloumi, and it says it’s available for delivery, so presumably it’s in stock.

I walk over with Scully, tie her up outside, and go in to grab some haloumi. No haloumi. The section in the fridge where it should be, where the price label is, is full of feta instead. I dig through it all to see if there’s any haloumi hiding behind all the feta, but no. I ask a staff member who is stacking ice cream into the freezer if they have any haloumi, and he says no, it’s out of stock.

Hmmm. Well. Feta? Yeah, maybe the hard, crumbly type of feta will work okay. I won’t need to fry it either. Okay, so I grab a pack of feta and go pay for it. I untie Scully and we start walking home.

A minute later, as we’re walking, I remember we have feta in the fridge at home.

Oh well. I guess we can always use more feta. Anyway, I get home, do some things, my wife gets home from work, I start making dinner. I get out the leftover soup… and discover there’s a lot more left than I thought. Plenty for two people to have soup again for dinner, with a side dish, and way more than would be needed for a pasta sauce.

So, we have the soup heated up. And don’t use any of the feta at all.

Tomorrow: Search for recipes that use feta.

In other news, I scheduled a new iteration of my 6-week course in Creative Thinking & Problem Solving, with an example exercise in board game design, for kids on Outschool. This one is on Mondays, at a suitable time zone for Australia/Asia (early evening), and Europe (late morning). The Outschool class listing is here.

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First run in a while

This morning I went to pick up the groceries from the supermarket. I order online most things, but choose my own fruit and vegetables before I collect the online order. Today I needed to get onions, but … there were no onions. The place where the onions normally are was full of bags of potatoes. At first I thought they must have reshuffled the vegetable section like they seem to like to do every so often, but scanning the rest of it I couldn’t find any onions at all. A staff member noticed me searching in vain and asked if I needed some help. I asked if there were any onions. He led me over to the organic produce section, where there were a few dozen tiny onions for two or three times the cost of regular onions. I sort of looked askance at this, and without any further prompting the staff member picked up a couple of the onions and said, “I’ll just peel the stickers off for you.” So he peeled the “organic” price stickers off them and handed them to me. Okay. Not one to look a gift onion in the mouth, I took them.

I had four ethics classes today, so there wasn’t a lot of time to do much else. But after the first I managed to fit in my first 2.5k run since returning from Japan. It was a little too cold to be comfortable, and I took it easy since I was out of practice, and clocked just a couple of seconds under 13 minutes.

After that I had a shower and also cleaned the bathroom and shower. Then had lunch and then went out to pick up Scully from my wife’s work. I drove back via a bakery where they had a new product: a mini sticky date pudding. I like those so I tried it. It didn’t have butterscotch sauce which is the usual topping, but did come with a blob of icing on top. And the woman there asked if I’d like it heated up, which I accepted given it’s winter and a warm pudding would really hit the spot. The icing melted and made a kind of sauce, though a more sugary one. It wasn’t quite the same as a sticky date pudding you might get after a restaurant dinner, but pretty nice anyway.

Then it was into three ethics classes in a row – phew! I had another older group among them on the Privacy topic. There was an interesting contrast with yesterday’s class. I ask the question: At what age should children be given privacy by their parents, with respect to things like using email or messaging apps to talk with friends, or with what websites they visit? Yesterday, both students said about age 14. Today there were three students, and the first two said 18, while the second nominated 16.

Which actually reminds me of another interesting thing, from the younger classes. We’re talking about heroes and villains, and i bring up the story of Robin Hood – steals from the rich to give to the poor. I ask the kids is Robin Hood a villain for robbing people, or a hero for giving money to the poor? So far, almost all the kids have said he’s a villain. Stealing apparently feels so bad that it’s enough to make someone a villain. Then we have a bit of a discussion which brings up the point that in this story “the law” is actually being made by the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham.

After my classes, I went out for dinner with my wife, to our usual pizza place. It’s comfy and homey, and a good place to relax, and was really nice after our recent trip away.

Tonight is online board games with my friends. I’m in the middle of losing another game of 7 Wonders….

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