food – Page 14 – dangermouse.net

A nice lunch in a new place

Today I worked on my class plan for the older students, who are discussing Fashion this week. I know this is a topic which some kids might think will be uninteresting at first, but I think there’s some though-provoking questions for them to ponder. The most basic ones at the beginning ask the kids to think about what fashion really is, and how important it is. I get them to imagine a world without fashion… there are no choices you can make in clothing, or hairstyle, or shoes, or accessories. Everyone wears the same thing all the time, like a uniform. And then ask if the self-expression that we all exercise whenever we choose to wear this shirt rather than that shirt is an important part of human existence and culture.

Anyway, it should be interesting!

Scully had her regular groom today, clipping her hair down from unruly to neat. My wife dropped her off and then we went out for lunch to a nice restaurant that I’d found yesterday by searching for a good lunch spot. We could sit inside, without Scully! It was a delicious meal. I had Murray River cod with dashi broth, spinach, and pickled mushrooms. I saw it on the menu, but was still surprised when I tried the mushrooms and found them vinegary – it’s not a flavour you expect from mushrooms! It was good though, balancing the savoury aspect of the broth.

I also had a dessert, which was a crema catalana with burnt fig. Again I was surprised by the flavour. I expected the sauce to be sweet caramel, but it was a complex fruity flavour of the fig, with some citrusy sourness. It was surprising, but contrasted nicely with the sweetness of the cream, balancing it out.

Overall the meal was really good!

Back home I made a leek and potato soup for dinner – just something light as we were both so full from the lunch. Then three classes in the evening on the animal communication topic.

New content today:

Big lunch and little dinner

This morning I did a 2.5k run, for the first time since last Wednesday. Last weekend I felt more like just resting and trying to get over this lingering COVID cough, but I thought this morning that I should get some exercise. I took it a little easy, but wanted to go a bit faster than last time, which I managed okay.

It was my wife’s day off work and we took a long walk with Scully, stopping at a cafe to have a nice lunch. I ordered a chicken schnitzel burger, which turned out to be enormous, bigger than I’d expected. And it was really delicious too! But very filling. My wife’s haloumi and avocado toasted sandwich was similarly generous.

Even though that was around midday, we decided a light dinner would suffice. I made some salad with falafels and a tahini dressing.

This afternoon I made more of that recent batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips that I photographed last week. Apart from that I kind of didn’t achieve very much. Oh, I did some overdue website updates – boring technical stuff mostly. I had to change the links from Irregular Webcomic! to the Fantasy and Cliffhangers books sold by TopatoCo, because they’re no longer available there. I had them send me some of the leftover stock and recycle the rest, so now the only way to get any of the few remaining books is to contact me directly.

New content today:

Anaesthetic-free dentistry

I had an appointment with my dentist first thing this morning. I had a tooth filled back in January because it was giving me some pain when eating. The dentist then said that one of the old fillings was flexing, and he replaced it. It was fine up until last week when I chipped the tooth while eating, so I made the appointment for this morning. I thought it might have been the filling again, but the dentist took one look and said with relief, “Oh! It’s not my filling, it’s the tooth that broke! I feel a lot better now!”

Then he said he’d try to repair the chipped area without anaesthesia, and to just let him know if it hurt. Then he started drilling. In fairness, there wasn’t much drilling and indeed it didn’t hurt much – there were a couple of quick twinges, but nothing horrible. The whole thing only took about 5 or 6 minutes. So overall, avoiding having an anaesthetic was a plus. And as a bonus he didn’t charge me for the quick repair work since it was a follow-up on a tooth he’d fixed recently.

From the dentist’s office, I walked over to my wife’s work to pick up Scully and take her home. We went a long way, doing a 6 km loop via the Naremburn bakery, where I grabbed a croissant for energy to walk home again.

With no teaching today, I concentrated on writing and making Darths & Droids comics. At lunch time I took Scully for a drive, to the Drummoyne Bakehouse, which is not too far and has nice meat pies. I had a chicken bourguignon and a Mexican beef pie, and a small ricotta tart as a dessert. I got Scully to run around the park near the bakery for a bit before we drove home. She had a lot of exercise today and slept much of the rest of the afternoon.

Here’s a photo!

For dinner tonight I made calzones, filled with spinach and ricotta, with a hot tomato sauce to pour over the top.

New content today:

COVID day 9

Feeling mostly better from COVID, I did another rapid antigen test today, expecting it to be clear. But, lo… it tested positive. Apparently my body is fighting it off nicely, but hasn’t vanquished the foe fully yet.

This morning I felt well enough to go on a 2.5k run. I felt like I took it a bit easy, not wanting to strain myself, but I ended up recording exactly the same time as my last pre-COVID run. Although in hindsight, that was probably during the incubation period, before I’d started noticing any symptoms, so I might have been a bit affected then, too.

After the run, I did a housecleaning, since I missed it last weekend due to being sick. Washed the bathroom and shower, vacuumed everywhere, emptied and refilled the damp absorbers.

Also did a long walk with Scully and my wife (who is still home sick from work, of course). And a shorter one in the early evening, when I took the chance to pop into the small local supermarket to buy some biscuits and mascarpone to make myself some pseudo-tiramisu for dessert, since we’re out of any other sort of sweets. I made a variation of this recipe for peanut butter and jam tiramisu. I made it with hot chocolate instead of coffee, because I don’t eat/drink coffee. They’re in the fridge chilling, and I’m looking forward to trying one later this evening.

New content today:

The Incinerator Cafe

This morning I worked on annotating the slides for one of the science classes I did with the individual student a while back – the one on weather. I planned to do that and the recent one on photography by 10am, but by 10:30 I’d only finished the first one! It takes a lot longer than I realise. After that I had to work on some comics to keep them ticking over.

For lunch I took Scully for a short drive to a new place. I searched for dog-friendly cafes in the area and found one I hadn’t heard of before, The Incinerator Cafe. It’s in an old heritage-listed garbage incinerator building. It was fairly nice, and I had the beef burger.

It was okay sitting outside, as it was cool and very overcast today, though it didn’t rain at all. We’re supposed to get some rain over the next few days, but the temperature will warm up again to around 30°C.

Tonight I’m starting the new week of ethics classes, on the topic of photography. I’m using a lot of my own photos as examples, to discuss the ethics of taking photos of strangers, editing photos in different contexts, photojournalism, and photos as art. I think this will be an easy week, compared to some topics that take a lot more work to get the kids talking about.

New content today:

A new cafe for lunch

After my two morning classes this morning I took Scully for a walk and I decided to try a new place for lunch. There’s a cafe just a block off one of our usual walking route, so we took a short detour to the Botanica Garden Cafe at Waverton. We walked down the hill from this overlook spot, where theres a view of Waverton Station, looking towards the city:

The cafe has an open garden area outside, with shady roofing and umbrellas and trees. The menu seems southeast-Asian-inspired, and I ordered some chicken, pork, and calamari spring rolls with a Vietnamese salad.

It was delicious! There were some other nice looking things on the menu as well. So I’ll have to add this to the list of places within walking distance where I can take Scully for lunch.

This afternoon I worked on comics, as well as some planning for tomorrow’s Dungeons & Dragons game.

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but I’ve also started work on learning Japanese on Duolingo. I figured with a trip to Japan coming up in June, it was a good time to start, even though I’ve also fairly recently started on German. I wondered if Duolingo would concentrate on teaching spoken Japanese, but the very first lesson throws Hiragana characters at you! So it looks like I’m learning those.

New content today:

Fruit classification

Well, the weather forecast for Monday has been increased in temperature to 38°C for Sydney. Which is going to be the hottest day here for over 2 years (because of the unusually cool weather we’ve been having due to the La Niña for the past few years). Good news: our new air conditioner has been delivered. Bad news: it still won’t be installed until Wednesday. So, we’re stuck without a functional air conditioner on the hottest day for over 2 years. It’s not going to be fun here tomorrow.

Today I assembled a week’s worth of Irregular Webcomic! strips, and wrote and made a new Darths & Droids strip. I also planned some new future lessons for my ethics classes, which in a few weeks will tackled the topics of Photography (for ages 10-12) and Death (ages 13-15).

And for a bit of fun today I drew up a diagram of fruits by botanical definition. This is a long-standing humorous topic between me and my friends, when we point out that various things are or aren’t fruits by various definitions. I was prompted to actually make a list and then a diagram by my current reading of Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, which contains technical information about many foods.

So here’s the diagram:

Diagram of fruits

The groupings are by botanical definitions. The green line encircles what people generally refer to as “fruit” in culinary terms. I showed this to some friends and got the comment that they didn’t consider avocados to be culinarily a fruit. I was a bit surprised. I don’t eat avocados myself – they’re one of my least liked foods – but I did have the impression that most people considered them to be fruits. (I consider them to be horrible slimy things.)

They also questioned rhubarb. Now I don’t mind rhubarb, but I’ve never bought it or prepared it myself. I personally don’t consider it a “fruit” in a culinary sense (because it’s so obviously a stalk), but I’ve read that a lot of people do, which is why I included it in the green curve.

New content today:

Galettes for lunch

Today we had a family lunch at another branch of the French crepe place that we go to for dinner sometimes. We drove over and sat at an outdoor table that we’d booked. Fortunately the weather was cooler than yesterday and overcast, so we weren’t exposed to the sunshine. The savoury galettes and sweet crepes at this place are great, and we all had a galette, followed by most of us enjoying a sweet crepe for dessert.

After this my wife and I went to a nearby shoe store to get some new sports shoes. My running shoes are starting to get a bit worn out, so I plan to use the new shoes for that, and keep the old ones for a while just for walking around in. My wife also got new shoes for similar reasons, though she does aerobics and not running.

Most of the time at home today I worked on my next class lesson for ethics, on the topic of Exploration. I wanted to get this done today, because I’ll be busy with ISO Photography meetings Monday to Wednesday, and will have less time to do other things like this. And since it starts at 7am tomorrow, I’m going to get an early night tonight…

New content today:

Tiny cafe, good food

Most of today I spent working on new lessons for my ethics classes. I wrote a lesson on “The Future” for the age 10-12 group, and started work on “Sport and Politics” for ages 13-15.

For lunch I walked with Scully up to the railway station, where there’s a tiny cafe. It’s been there for ages, but I’ve only ever popped in to buy a sweet treat like a brownie of a caramel slice or a florentine. Some time back I noticed they have a fairy decent looking food menu, and thought I should try it some day. But for a long time I’ve neglected it, my mind automatically turning to other options when I think about going to get some lunch out.

But I noticed the menu again recently, and today I decided to make the effort to go there and try it out. It’s an Asian menu with a mix of Thai, Korean, and Malaysian dishes. I chose the satay chicken skewers and rice today. (That’s Scully in the background of this photo.)

It was really good. Now I definitely want to go back and try the spicy chicken curry, the bulgogi beef, and also the beef rendang. And maybe one or two other things. They also do burgers. And crepes for dessert!

The really amazing thing is this cafe is super tiny. The whole building is only about 3 by 4 metres in size, with three dining tables crammed in the space in front of a small counter. Behind the counter is a tiny bench with a toaster oven on it. And the whole thing is run by a little old lady. How on Earth she can turn out a dozen different Asian dishes, burgers, and crepes from that tiny space is beyond me. I presume she has a rice cooker under the bench, and … maybe a portable hotplate or something. I dunno, maybe she’s just working genuine kitchen miracles in there.

Anyway, it was delicious and I’ll be going back.

New content today:

Big lunch trip

This morning I photographed my latest batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips. I was very efficient and done by 11:30, so I decided to reward myself by taking Scully on a drive out to the beach, so I could get some nice pies at my favourite pie shop, and then take Scully for a bit of a walk by the beach.

I bought a Thai vegetable pie, a satay chicken pie, and a vanilla slice (the Aussie version of the classic French mille-feuille) for dessert. We sat and ate in a shady spot on the grass right by the beach, looking out at the Pacific Ocean. But as we walked out there from the pie shop, we passed a new gelato shop that has sprung since the last time I was here. I like gelato, so I wanted to try some. So, on the way back after letting Scully run around a bit on a nearby playing field, we popped into the gelato shop.

It was being operated by two girls, about 12 years old, with no adults in sight. It was a small place and there was no door to a back area where anyone else might have been lurking, so I can only assume the girls had been left to run the place completely alone. I don’t know about other countries, but this is not entirely unusual here—to go into some sort of shop and be served by a child—especially given the fact that we’re currently in summer school holidays.

I’d like to report that the gelato was excellent, but in fact it was decidedly average. Not bad, but not great. At least I tried it, and gave the girls some business. Oh, they were very generous with the serving size, I must say – I got way more than I expected.

Back home tonight I started the new week of ethics classes with a new topic: Buying and Selling part 3. This one is mostly about supermarket tactics to get shoppers to buy more stuff, and opportunistic pricing. I had a couple of new students in the three classes tonight, and they seem good. I hope they enjoyed the class and return next week.

New content today: