food – Page 2 – dangermouse.net

Drying out; phone birding

Friday was wet again, but the rain stopped early in the afternoon and by nightfall the sky was clear. I actually saw stars when taking Scully out before bedtime.

I had my usual ethics classes, and in the evening was online board games night. We played games of Mountain Goats, Jump Drive, Settlers of Catan, Just One. We played five games of Jump Drive, and I did miserably in the first four. And then I thought I was going to win the fifth game, as I was ahead by several points and could reach the winning score of 50 points in my next turn… but one of my friends managed to score much more than I did on the last turn and beat me by one point!

Today was sunny! No rain! I think we were up to something like the past 5 weeks having only 4 non-rainy days. Everyone was well and truly sick of the rain. But today was beautiful – blue skies, a little warmer, and humidity down around 50% instead of 80-100% like it has been for weeks on end.

My wife and I took Scully for a walk down to the harbour side park near our place. Scully ran around and chased a tennis ball, and then I spent some time photographing birds. I only had my phone, but it was good enough to get the following photos.

Laughing kookaburra:

Masked lapwings:

Australian wood ducks:

White-faced heron:

And an Australian magpie spotted on the walk back home:

This evening we went out for dinner to Garfish, a nice seafood restaurant. We really like this place, but don’t go too often as it’s a bit pricey. The salt and pepper squid appetiser is really good, but this time I tried a new menu item: battered zucchini flowers stuffed with snapper and prawn.

And for the main dish I had grilled mirror dory with mash, spinach, and kaffir lime beurre blanc.

All really nice.

Did I miss yesterday?

I’ve realised with some shock that I totally forgot to write up a blog post yesterday. I don’t know what happened – I must have got distracted around my usual evening routine and it slipped my mind and I went into autopilot mode and never got back to it. Oh well.

Yesterday wasn’t especially interesting anyway. The most noteworthy thing was that it rained most of the day. We’re in a very wet spell, which is supposed to last another week or so. I did venture out in the car to a kitchen shop to buy an induction plate for our stove top. My wife bought a small Italian coffee maker, the sort that you put on a stove top to boil the water and it percolates up through the coffee grounds. We had an old aluminium one, but since it didn’t work on induction we got rid of it when we switched from gas to induction. My wife found one with a steel base that claimed to work on induction cookers, but it turned out to be too small to be detected by our cooktop, and didn’t work. You can buy these steel plates with a handle that you stick on the induction zone and it gets hot, and you can put the coffee pot on top, and it works! So she tested that and it works a treat.

For dinner I cooked spaetzle, and decided to make a cheese sauce to go with it, kind of like macaroni and cheese. I’ve never cooked mac and cheese in my life before, so I had to look it up. But when I found a recipe that said it was basically just a roux-based cheese sauce, I knew what to do without any further help. It turned out pretty good, although I made too much sauce!

Overnight I had an interesting dream: I was a scholar studying appearances of mysterious chefs throughout history, as documented by contemporary accounts. A chef who would suddenly appear out of nowhere with an assistant, cook amazing and revolutionary recipes for the poor and then vanish without a trace. I concluded they were all the same chef time travelling through history. Then one day as I was studying this, the assistant appeared and said he had come to take me back through time, because I was the mysterious chef, since I’d studied and learnt all of the original recipes that I’d introduced to the world.

Today my wife had the day off, so this morning we walked up to the nearest pre-polling centre for Saturday’s election.

Unfortunately I misread the rain radar and it was absolutely pouring for the 20-minute walk to the polling place. By the time we got there, my trousers were soaking wet from the thighs down, my socks and shoes were soaking wet – despite using an umbrella. But we voted, and won’t have to do it on Saturday, when it might possibly be pouring just as much and when everyone else will be voting. Fortunately the rain stopped while we were voting, and the walk home was dry.

For lunch we drove over to Two Chaps at Marrickville. This is a fantastic vegetarian cafe we’ve been to a few times. I tried the hash browns with poached eggs and mixed greens:

My wife had the sourdough crumpets with baked cauliflower, almonds, and capsicum sauce:

Yeah, they both taste as amazing as they look!

Last night I had the first class for this week’s new ethics topic, Flight, and tonight three more. It’s an interesting one, as we talk about the history of light and possible futures where we consider if people will have to fly less to help reduce climate change, and the challenges that might pose.

The joy and despair of roast vegetables

I’ve realised that although I love roast vegetables, the reason we seldom have them is because I really hate cooking them. I find it unenjoyable to make roast vegetables, compared to cooking most other things.

My wife and I were talking today about what to make for dinner to go with the last slices of leftover lentil loaf from Easter lunch. She suggested roasted vegetables: potato, pumpkin, onions, the usual sort of thing. My heart sank.

I’m not even sure why I dislike making roast vegetables. It’s not like it’s difficult or time consuming, other than just waiting for the oven to cook them. There’s something about all the oil, and the mess in the roasting pan… I don’t know. I love eating roast vegetables, but I really really dislike making them.

Anyway, my wife decided to take the reins and do the cooking tonight. So I got to eat roast vegetables without having to prepare them! So that was pretty good. She was home today because of the Easter Monday public holiday, and in fact only has three days of work this week due to Anzac Day being on Friday.

This evening I completed the last two ethics classes on the “Memories” topic. I did the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm experiment results with all my classes, and now that the topic is completed I can report the final result: 33/47 kids said they remembered seeing the word “sleep” on a slide that did not include that word. So that’s over 70% success rate in giving them a false memory, compared to a reported rate of about 44% for tests over many subjects. I saw that it’s more likely to work with adults and less likely to work with children, so my result is a little against the trend. But of course the numbers are not really high enough to make any significant conclusion, other than yes, it really is easy to induce false memories in people.

I claim this is ethical because I explain to the kids afterwards what happened, and how it works, and we discuss the consequences of the fact that our memories are unreliable, and how we should take this into account in our lives. It was a really good topic!

Missed Monday and a special seaplane lunch

Wow, Monday was so busy that I didn’t even realise I forgot to post aa blog entry until my wife asked me a short time ago, “Did you post on your blog yesterday?” It wasn’t exciting-busy, it was just a lot of online ethics classes, and walking Scully, and cooking dinner, so not really much to write about. Which is maybe why I forgot it.

Today, however, we had a special day out. My wife had the day off work and we booked a restaurant for lunch. A nice one, on the harbour shore, with a view. Unfortunately the weather turned overnight and it was chilly and cloudy and windy, but not uncomfortably so from our table on the wharf.

The restaurant is the Empire Lounge, at the Sydney Seaplanes terminal in Rose Bay. This is the only seaplane terminal in Sydney Harbour and they do scenic flights over Sydney, as well as shuttle services to some locations just north of Sydney where there are fancy secluded waterside restaurants that have a seaplane wharf for guests. There are no actual destinations that the seaplanes fly to, as they’re just not practical for any destinations within range. But the site was the old terminal for Sydney’s first international airport, receiving the Empire Flying Boat service from Southport in England, which took ten days to reach Sydney.

For lunch we had some of the hummus with focaccia to start:

Then I had the pan-fried snapper (with a side of green vegetables shared with my wife, no shown):

And for dessert a baked cheesecake:

The meal was pretty good, everything tasty and delicious.

Back at home I did some story planning stuff for Darths & Droids. I tried to write a new strip, but needed to work on background material to get the story arc straight in my head first, and also look up some old strips for continuity.

This evening I had the first class in the new week’s ethics topic: Memory. I have some interesting questions about reliability of memories. I used the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm test, showing a set of words related to sleep, but not including the word “sleep”. And then hid the words after about 15 seconds and asked the kids what words they remembered. The very first word “remembered” was “sleep! I wasn’t sure how well the test would work in getting them to remember something they never even saw, but it was very successful.

On TV, I’ve started watching the new season of Black Mirror. I really like this series, but with the first new episode I got a feeling of dread, like it was giving companies ideas, kind of like the infamous Torment Nexus. … Time to watch another one!

Sunday brunch and Incognito art

This morning I got up a bit early and did my 5k run. I needed to go early because I had to cool down and have a shower and change in time to walk up the street with my wife to meet up with her mother and brother for a morning tea at a local cafe. Although I’d had quick breakfast before my run, I was hungry after the exercise and turned it into a brunch by ordering the French toast, which came loaded with maple syrup, berry compote, and melted white chocolate. My brother-in-law joined me for a substantial brunch as he hadn’t had breakfast yet, while the others had lighter snacks.

When we got home I did some comics stuff and got ready for my ethics classes, beginning from 4pm today. And I made some green curry broccoli and rice for dinner.

My wife has been making some artworks to send off for an anonymous fundraising art event, called the Incognito Art Show. Anyone can register and submit up to three pieces of original art, which are then displayed online, and selected works in a public display gallery. People can buy the art without knowing who made it, which is only revealed after purchase. You can view and buy art online if you wish, and they ship internationally, so if you’re interested you might want to check it out. The artworks aren’t viewable or buyable yet because they’re still accepting submissions, but they will go on display from 26 May and on sale from 31 May.

Pretty cool!

Roti pies and German smallgoods

After breakfast this morning I went for a 5k run.It was a bit warmer and more humid than last Saturday, but I ran a similar time, so I’m happy with that. Although I was pushing hard and thought I’d done a bit better than that.

We made a special expedition for lunch today, driving all the way to Narrabeen, in the northern beaches region of Sydney, to try a new place that has really good reviews for their pies: Roti Pies.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it turns out the pies are pretty much exactly that. The crust is made just like Indian roti, and the fillings are all various Indian curries. My wife tried the cauliflower & chick pea korma pie, while I had a butter chicken pie and a lamb achari pie. They were really delicious, and the unusual roti pie crust was amazing with the spicy and juicy fillings. They leaked a bit, and it was a bit messy, but we sat at one of the outdoor tables there and had plates to catch it all, so it was fine.

After this, we went two doors down to a gelato shop and I had scoops of apple pie and coconut, cherry, chocolate gelato. I ate it as we crossed the road to walk along the grassy patch by the lagoon there, which was nice, and gave Scully a chance to walk on the grass a bit.

On the way back to the car we passed Brot & Wurst, a German smallgoods and grocery shop. We browsed around all of the cool stuff and bought a few things: German mustard, pfeffernusse gingerbread, stroopwafels, and a bottle of gluhwein syrup for mixing with red wine to make gluhwein. That should be nice with winter on the way!

Speaking of which, the weather still seems warm, with temperatures around 26-28°C during the day still. But there are signs of autumn, with the London plane trees lining many streets starting to go brown. The Bureau of Meteorology has released the long range winter forecast, predicting it will be another very warm winter, following on the last two which were the warmest two winters on record for Sydney. This one is likely to be similar again.

For dinner tonight I made calzones: one mushroom and one spinach, which I split and my wife and I had one half of each, with a basil and oregano tomato sauce that I whipped up.

Chicken fried rice and board games night

Today is online board games with friends. My wife is also out having dinner with her friends, so I’m minding Scully at home. We went out together (me and Scully) for an early dinner before my wife left.

We walked up to the new shops area at St Leonards. I was thinking of trying the chicken place again for a kebab wrap or a burger. But next door was a Chinese place that did noodles and rice dishes. I grabbed a table outside and tied up Scully and went in to order. I tried the satay chicken fried rice. The woman behind the counter was super friendly and came out to say hi to Scully and bring her a bowl of water. The serving size was very generous and not expensive. It was nothing super special, but decent and filling and good value, so I’m happy with that.

Back home and we’re into our online games. I’ve played a couple of games of Jump Drive, then won my first ever game of Marrakech, which was nice. I’ve played this game many times and never managed to win before. I think I was lucky with the die rolls though. Then we played a game of Space Base, which I also won. And then Word Traveler. And Harmonies, which I hadn’t played before, and was really fun. I’ve seen it on the BoardGameGeek hot list and was keen to try it, and yeah, it’s great.

Other than that, not much else to report today. I worked through a few things I needed to do for Standards Australia and ISO work, including applying for funding for my trip to Berlin in June to attend the next ISO Photography meeting there. And I tidied up some random chore-type things in my inbox, dealing with tasks like tax payments and setting up two-factor authentication for a site that’s requiring it soon. All the boring stuff.

Finding a place for a special lunch

On Tuesday next week my wife is taking a day off and we’re planning to have a nice lunch somewhere. Unfortunately the place we sometimes go to for such things, Otto in Woolloomooloo, isn’t open on Tuesdays. So I had to find a new place, with the constraints that it has to be open for lunch on Tuesdays, and has seating which allows dogs so that we can take Scully.

There’s a bit of a poor overlap between fancy dining places and restaurants that allow dogs. But after some searching I found the Empire Lounge, which is on a wharf in Rose Bay, a suburb on Sydney Harbour. It looks pretty nice and after confirming they’d be okay with Scully I booked us in for lunch next week.

In other food news, I took Scully for a walk this morning and decided to visit Moon Phase for a pastry. They had an Easter special: a carrot cake pastry!

It was delicious. A warm and spicy carrot cake centre, surrounded by crisp flaky pastry, topped with cream cheese icing, crunchy glazed pecans, and… some dill! I’m not sure why dill, but yeah, it worked.

Today I mostly worked on writing new Darths & Droids strips. I’m trying to build up a three-week (or more) buffer as quickly as I can, to cover my trip in June. So a day dedicated to it was sensible at this stage.

Tonight I made lentil dhal with potatoes for dinner, and had a little before my first online class started at 5pm. I’m busy teaching from 5-8pm, so I can’t eat at a normal dinner time. I had a little before to tide me over and then had another bowl afterwards.

But the good part is finishing an hour earlier than during daylight saving time!

A Roman Holiday in a pastry

Today I had my last two ethics classes before taking a week off from them because of this weekend’s upcoming trip to New Zealand. After those, at midday and 1pm, I took Scully for a walk to the patisserie Moon Phase to celebrate.

The last few times I’ve been there I’ve seen a new special pastry called a “Roman Holiday”, which I really wanted to try, but those times I was after a small sweet treat, not a large savoury. But today they had it again, and I decided I had to try it.

It’s a base of flaky pastry topped with a ring of sliced cherry tomatoes around the edge and a mini burrata cheese plonked in the middle, decorated with basil leaves. The pastry is also filled with some tomato and pesto and I think there was some other ingredient in there but I didn’t identify it. Anyway, it was really really good, as have been most of the pastries I’ve had from this place.

Tonight I’m planning to relax and then get an early night, since I don’t have any online classes as I usually do. The goal is to get used to getting up an hour or two earlier by Friday when we fly out to New Zealand. Since the time zone there is two hours east of us, so we’ll have to be getting up earlier there.

Saga of a door

Our new front door was supposed to be painted today. The workman arrived in the morning, but then vanished for a few hours. When he returned he said that he’d been driving around to different hardware stores looking for the specific moulding style and size that is on all of the other apartment front doors, so that he could install matching moulding on ours before painting. But he’d been unable to find it anywhere.

So he asked if I’d be around next week and said he’d go further afield and try to find the matching moulding, and then come back to affix and paint next week. So we have another week with an unpainted wooden door.

After lunch I took Scully for a long walk, around the harbour shore. I stopped at the Grumpy Baker in an attempt to get a snack, but after waiting a few minutes with nobody serving me (I was the only one waiting to be served), I gave up and left. This bakery used to be really good, but their service has always been slow, and I’ve soured on them a bit recently. Instead I went to the nearby cafe which opened recently and decided to see what they had. There were a few muffins and small cakes, and they had a caramel slice that looked good, so I got one of those. It turned out to be delicious, with chewy caramel, which is not usual in a caramel slice. Really good. So I’m glad I went there!

Down by the water we met a woman with a small caramel-coloured dog, and as she approached she picked up her dog and carried her past. I said hello and she explained her dog was very shy. I said Scully was a bit too, and she stopped and carefully put her dog down. It was named Indy. The two dogs both approached one another very carefully and slowly, and eventually had a close sniff and hello. Scully is very gentle with other dogs and the woman was happy that Indy seemed to be friendly with her. She said it would be good for Indy to have positive experiences with other dogs. So I stayed there for several minutes as the two of them got used to each other and relaxed. It did seem that Indy was more shy than Scully. The woman seemed very happy with this, so that was good.

This evening I made a new experimental pasta sauce, using half a left over sweet potato from last night’s couscous dish. I boiled it up and then pureed it with semi-dried tomatoes and paprika to make a pasta sauce, served over fusilli, with chopped almonds for some crunch. It was pretty good.