food – Page 2 – dangermouse.net

Getting a pie card

Today was mostly spent working on comics and then doing more of my Halloween special ethics classes on Witch Hunts this evening.

I took Scully on a walk for lunch, to the pie shop at the station, where I haven’t been for a while. They had two new special pies today: pepper steak with cheese, and butter chicken. So I had to try those, and they were both very good. The woman there asked if I had a pie card, and I said no… they must be new! So I grabbed one and she clipped two of the little pie icons, and then she winked and said, “And I’ll do two more for last time.” And she gave it to me with 4 of the 10 icons clipped. Only six more and I get a free pie!

In the afternoon I decided to take Scully on another walk to get a bit more exercise. But when we got outside the air was full of smoke. Authorities have been doing controlled burns of bushland around the city today to reduce fuel before the summer fire season, and the prevailing wind blew it in my direction. It was quite thick and awful, so we cut short our walk and took a shortcut home. And when I got home I closed up all the windows to prevent the smoke getting in.

For dinner before my classes I made a Moroccan chick pea thing with tomato, spices, and some haloumi cheese. And for a bit of vegetable I threw in some broccoli, though I don’t think that’s very Moroccan. Unfortunately I tasted it and thought it needed aa bit of saltiness, so threw in a stock cube, and it ended up too salty. I should have only used half maybe. But I added some lemon juice and made rice to go with it, and it was okay.

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A low key day off

I had grand plans for my day off today. I was going to find some place to go with Scully and spend some time out. But the weather was a bit grim, with light showers giving way to strong winds and quite chilly temperatures.

I searched the net for some place that has good meat pies that I hadn’t tried before, but almost all of the ones filling those requirements were south of the Harbour and in inner city suburbs where parking is difficult. I didn’t fancy dealing with all that. I found a bakery called Berkelo in Manly, but again that is a bad place for parking. But then I saw they had a shop in Mosman, closer to home and easier to park.

So I just went there. They only had two types of pie: chicken or pumpkin. I chose the chicken pie, and a sausage roll. I reviewed the sausage roll (with photos) over on my sausage roll blog. The pie was okay, but nothing to write home about. But then I looked inside again for a sweet treat and they had… almond lamingtons. Like a lamington, but coated in almond crumbs, and filled with an almond cream. I took that away and ate on a nearby park bench. It was delicious.

After returning home, I spent some time making sourdough bread and pizza dough for dinner. And a comic. And… I really don’t know where the time went.

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A so-so bakery

Today daylight saving started here. I was hoping to sleep in to catch up on sleep as during the week I’d had several interrupted sleeps. But Scully decided to defy her usual habit of sleeping until we get up and wanted to get up before 7am (which felt like 6am because of losing the hour to the DST change). So I had to get up and after a while take her outside for a walk. So I was pretty tired today.

I did my 5k run though, nice and early, which was actually a good thing as it was warm and heating up quickly to a maximum around 30°C.

We went out for some afternoon tea, driving to a bakery a couple of suburbs away. I’d been there once before to try their pies, and thought they were pretty average. But now we were trying sweets: I had a slice of almond orange cake, and my wife had a date scone. After we’d finished them, I asked her how it was, and she replied that the scone wasn’t very good. My almond orange cake was also pretty mediocre. Not bad, but just not good either. So… I guess we consign this bakery to the ranks of uninspiring and avoid going there again.

Also while we were there another couple arrived and sat at the cafe table next to us, eating char-grilled chicken and Vietnamese rice paper rolls that they’d bought from some other shops nearby. They didn’t buy anything from this cafe at all. And then the guy went inside and grabbed some serviettes! Now I don’t know about other countries necessarily, but here if you sit at a cafe table you’re expected to be buying something from that cafe, not just eating whatever other food you’ve brought from somewhere else. The cafe staff didn’t shoo them away though, which really surprised me.

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Sushi and pizza day

First thing this morning was picking up the groceries from the supermarket. We had to get a new bottle of olive oil, and that one item added about 30% extra to our normal weekly grocery bill. It’s expensive stuff!

After some classes, I took Scully up the street to get some sushi, both for my own lunch and also some for my wife to eat after work before she headed back to work for a special exhibition in the evening. Her work runs art classes and they were having an exhibition of pieces done by the students, with sales to raise money and stuff. They’re also doing it on Saturday morning, so she has to go in and do some stuff there for that too.

While she was doing that, I went to a friend’s place for board games night. I didn’t have too long, because I needed to leave by 9pm to pick up my wife from her work. But we got in a game of Flamecraft, which is all about dragons doing cutesy things to collect resources and spend them in various ways to create enchantments and score points.

We paused the game for pizza when it arrived. The place we got it from had a couple of very interesting pizza toppings: pulled pork and coleslaw, and one with Szechuan prawns. They were both delicious.

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Pancakes for dinner

I’ve been trying to feed my sourdough starter a bit more frequently to get it in a healthier condition, so I’ve been generating some starter discard. And so I’ve been looking for ways to use it. Tonight my wife went to a painting class, so I made diner for myself, and decided to use the discard as the basis of a pancake batter. I just added an egg, a splash of milk, and some baking powder, and it came to the right consistency. I had the pancakes with ricotta, fresh strawberries, and maple syrup.

They turned out really nice! It’s a little strange having a sweet dinner, but it can be fun every now and then.

Today was the fourth lecture of the image processing course, with the professor back after I filled i for last week’s lecture. he reminded me that it wasn’t actually my first official coursework lecture – I did lecture 4 (today’s topic) last year when he was away! I wrote about it back then. He read my blog and pointed out how I was now Wrong On The Internet, so I feel duty bound to correct it. 😀

I decided after the lecture to head home on the normal train rather than the new Metro, since the best walking route home fro the Metro stop is still messed up by work on the pedestrian crossing lights, necessitating a significant detour. I think the old train is quicker overall at the moment.

I also went ot the post office this morning to mail some more Magic cards to a buyer. And while there I hopped over to Moon Phase (the croissant place) and tried one of the char siu buns. I’ve wanted one for a while, but they’ve been sold out the last couple of times. But today I got one. And wow, it’s amazing. It’s a next level steamed pork bun (char siu bao). Instead of the steamed doughy bun, it’s light flaky croissant pastry with a super crispy top. It was so good.

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Sampling the menu at Moon Phase

This morning I worked on a new Darths & Droids comic. I was over a week ahead recently, but have now let the buffer slip back to nothing, so I needed to get one made today.

I had to decide today whether to eat the last falafels in a wrap with tahini, cheese, tomato, lettuce—my usual home lunch—or leave it for tomorrow and go out to get lunch somewhere. I had one day’s lunch supply at home and two days to go until the next grocery shop on Friday morning. I decided to let the Fates decide and used a die rolling bot to choose randomly. It rolled odd, which I’d decided was eat out today. So I took Scully up to Moon Phase to try sampling some more of their menu. I’ve been there maybe 5 times now, and haven’t had the same item more than once. Today I decided to try the “hot dog” pastry—a frankfurt encased in flaky croissant-like pastry, with mustard and some other condiments—and a “kimcheese” pastry.

They warmed them up for me as I waited at one of the small tables outside with Scully. I would have preferred to be indoors because it was bitterly cold and very windy. Both of the pastries were okay. Enjoyable enough, but I think I prefer the other savouries that I’ve had on previous visits.

In the afternoon I sorted out some piles of Magic: the Gathering cards, to try to bring some order to mixtures of sorted and unsorted piles and half-deconstructed decks. I’m consolidating them all into sorted collections so I can see just how many of each card I have before I sell them off in a systematic way.

Tonight I had the first three classes on the new “Empires” topic, from 5-8pm. So I made a quiche for dinner before hand during the afternoon and had one slice before 5, and the second slice after 8. And my wife could eat whenever she was ready, though she chose to eat pretty early. I think this Empires topic is not bad. I was a bit worried about it, if I’d have enough material and if the questions would be ones the kids could relate to well enough or not. But having them pretend to be the Emperor of Rome and presenting them with some governance problems and asking how they’d respond seems to be a good tactic!

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Satay pizza for dinner

Monday morning was busy with ethics classes. I had three new students across a couple of classes today. It takes up a couple of minutes doing an introduction to the class for new students, but I’ve done this so many times now that I can pretty much recite it without thinking.

At lunchtime I took Scully to the post office to mail off some more Magic cards. The weather wasn’t too cold and it looks like warming up to 20-21°C later in the week, which is much more bearable than temperatures in the teens.

This afternoon I photographed the second half of that batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips that I started last week. That gives me a total of six weeks of new strips, although the first week has already been published last week.

For dinner tonight I made pizza. We had some leftover fried puffy tofu from a str fry on Saturday, so i wanted to use that, and we had broccoli. So rather than make the pizza with tomato sauce, I made a spicy satay sauce with peanut butter and chilli and some other ingredients. It goes really well with broccoli and tofu, but I wasn’t entirely convinced about tofu on a pizza. But it turned out pretty good and was delicious.

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Two Chaps and Marrickville Organic Market

This morning I went for a 5k run in the cold. It was a bit tough backing up from yesterday’s 7.5k. My legs are very worn out now. Not sore, but I can definitely feel them when walking around.

To make up for this, we went on an expedition, driving over to Marrickville and Two Chaps cafe for lunch. It was very busy when we arrived just before midday, and we had to join a list of people waiting for tables. But they said that the waiting list was for indoor tables, for which half of them in an annex were okay for dogs, while the outdoor tables on the street kerbside were up for grabs as soon as we saw one free. After waiting a few minutes we saw people leaving an outside table, so we grabbed it.

Here’s Scully enjoying the cafe ambience.

We ordered our meals. I got sourdough crumpets with peri peri, fried cauliflower, capsicum salsa, and smoked almonds:

I’d never really considered crumpets for a savoury dish like this. At home I usually just toast them and have them plain with butter, or with honey. I have tried melting cheese onto them a few times, but generally I think of crumpets as more of a sweet topping carrier. But this dish was spicy and really delicious.

My wife got the quinoa porridge with warm lemon and plum compote, mixed fruit and nut granola, topped with rose petal and pistachio:

The food here is all vegetarian, and insanely delicious. We really enjoyed the lunch. They do pasta nights on Fridays and Saturdays, and we keep thinking we should try that one time.

After eating, my wife asked if there were any markets nearby. I found the Marrickville Organic Farmer’s Market, just a block or so away. We walked over there and found it was larger than I expected, with a lot of outdoor stalls selling both produce and also assorted bric-a-brac. And dozens of food stalls doing a brisk lunch trade. Plenty of people, many with dogs, walking around. It was pretty cool. My wife bought a bag of freshly made plantain chips, and a cheap bag of mandarins.

After this we drove back home. I made up a sourdough loaf to use for lunches during the week and did my early evening classes online. For dinner in between I made fried Brussels sprouts with mushrooms, garlic, chilli, and miso. And now later in the evening I’m baking the bread and will head off to watch some TV soon.

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Carbonara Sunday

Well, I end my week of food-related headings with an interesting story.

I had two ethics classes tonight from 6-8pm, which is inconvenient for dinner. I’d had a late lunch so wasn’t hungry before hand and my wife wanted to eat before 8pm, so she made herself something while I did my classes. After finishing at 8pm, I made myself some spaghetti “carbonara”, with just the egg and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, no meat. I don’t make this much and found a recipe online to follow. It suggested warming the plates before serving to maintain the warmth in the pasta while eating. And it said you can warm plates by putting them in the microwave….

Now I’m pretty sure that won’t work. But my wife had just made a cup of tea, and I had pulled out a shallow bowl to eat from, so I thought I’d warm my bowl by pouring in some boiling water.

I boiled up the spaghetti, mixed it with some molten butter, a beaten egg, the grated cheese, and a lot of black pepper in a frying pan, and made a passable carbonara-esque sauce. Then I dumped the whole lot from the frying pan into my bowl… Which was still full of hot water.

After a moment of panic I managed to salvage most of it by quickly holding back the pasta with a fork and tipping out as much runny hot water as I could into the sink. But half the sauce went with it. Oh well. It still tasted pretty good.

Around lunch I did a 5k run. It was still very cold then. We’re getting another polar blast which should make the next few days very chilly again.

I also worked on writing scripts for a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! I’m approaching concluding strips for a couple of the themes and have figured out the endings for them. Just need to write them up into scripts.

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Faux Hun Friday; pastie and pizza Saturday

Friday was gaming night at a friend’s place. My lunch was just a falafel wrap that I made with supermarket ingredients. But for dinner I picked up something on the way to my friend’s place. This involves a bit of a story.

When we used to work together at Canon Research, there was a Thai restaurant just around the corner from the office, where we often used to get lunch. It was called Go Hun. And it had some of the best Thai food you could find in Sydney.

When we stopped working there, Go Hun of course remained, but I didn’t have occasion to go out that way very much, except to visit this particular friend who lived nearby for board games night. So sometimes I’d drop in on the way and grab some take-away for my dinner, which was good. But then about a year ago Go Hun closed down! But a new Thai place opened in the same premises. It’s actually named “Charmed Thai“, but we all refer to it as “Faux Hun”.

Anyway, I hadn’t tried anything from Faux Hun yet, so I stopped in on the way and picked up an order of chicken pad kee mao. It was really good!

At the games night there were just four of us. Two of our other regulars both happen to be in Europe at the moment: one on a six-week grand tour with wife and teenaged kid, and the other who popped over to Italy for a week to meet up with his partner who was taking a slightly longer trip there.

We started with Ingenious, which I won. And then played a quick hand of Uno Flip!, which I also won! My friend had found this at a discount store for just $3 and decided to buy it because it was so cheap. It normally retails in regular shops for about $10. Only when he got it home and opened the box, it became clear that it was a Chinese counterfeit version! The box said it contained printed instructions, but it didn’t, and the quality of the cards was awful. They were thin and flimsy, with a weird finish that looked like it’d start peeling off any second, and were already starting to curl. We played a game merely so that he could say he got his money’s worth out of the $3 he’d spent, before he throws it away.

We moved on to the big game for the evening: Architects of the West Kingdom. This is a worker placement game where you choose to place a piece each turn to collect money, collect various building resources, hire workers, build buildings, or round up rival workers in an attempt to (a) restrict them from gaining bonuses and (b) sell them into incarceration for profit. You can also use actions to free your own workers from other players or the prison. The goal is to amass points by building buildings, constructing parts of the cathedral, earning a virtuous reputation, or simply collecting valuables including silver, gold, and marble. The obvious routes to victory involve building a lot of buildings and working on the cathedral. But I got some workers who synergised into a way to collect lots and lots of marble cheaply, and reward me with bonus virtue for marble at the end of the game. So rather than build buildings, I decided to see if I could just collect enough marble to win.

I came last. I think the strategy could have worked if I’d just built another building or two, or found another worker who synergised with the engine and gave me more benefit from the marble that I’d amassed. I didn’t lose by a lot, so I believe the strategy could be viable.

Anyway. We ended the night with a quick game of For Sale. Which I also came dead last in. But I’d won two of the four games for the night, and the other two wins had been split between other players, so I declared myself the grand winner!

Today I cleaned the house up, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom and shower, and emptying all the damp absorbers and refilling them with absorbing crystals. Our weather is still far too damp and humid and I dread getting mould growing in things. For lunch I took Scully for a walk and popped in at the pie place, which had a special beef and vegetable pasty

And for dinner tonight my wife and I went out to Organica, which we tried for the first time a few weeks ago. This time we tried the pizzas there, and they were very good. Thin crust blistered by a wood fire, with buffalo mozzarella and toppings.

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