food – Page 5 – dangermouse.net

Sauna weather

Not weather to take a sauna. Weather that is like a sauna. It was really steamy today. The minimum temperature overnight was 24°C, and really humid. I took Scully for a walk first thing in the morning, before breakfast, to avoid the hotter middle of the day, and it was already warm and steamy. When I got home I had to take my sweaty shirt off and let it dry in the bathroom while I changed into a fresh one.

Around midday we had a brief burst of thunder and heavy rain, but it didn’t last very long. It cooled things down briefly, but the temperature began climbing again afterwards, and the wet roads emitted steam into the air. I took Scully out for a short walk and toilet and the air was thick, like breathing in hot soup. I was very glad to return to the air conditioned comfort inside.

I tried to find some cicada shells to photograph and show here, but despite looking around on dozens of trees while out with Scully I didn’t spot any. Just the other day I saw three one on small tree!

I had more ethics classes on “Points of View” and I think I’m getting a handle on how to present questions to the kids on this topic. We’ve been having some very interesting discussions about it.

Oh, it’s also the start of mango season! We had a couple of Calypso mangoes last week, and this week I bought an R2-E2 mango, which I just shared with my wife. It’s good trying all of the different varieties, as they’re quite different once you compare them and get a familiarity for the different flavours and textures.

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Cicada summer

One very noticeable thing about this summer we’re rapidly steaming into: cicadas. The past few years there’s been a distinct lack of cicadas, but this year there’s clearly been a huge hatching. The buzzing of the trees with cicadas is loud and obvious, especially in the early evening. Last night we had to turn the TV up louder than usual to hear it – even with the windows closed.

I’ve also seen a lot more cicada shells left behind in tree trunks as the moulting insects leave them. They’re all over the place. The common Australian species Cyclochila australasiae (“green grocers”) and Thopha saccata (“double drummers”) are different to the North American cicadas, and don’t have the famous periodical breeding patterns. They seem to be a lot less predictable, maybe related to the climate or predators or something. The Australian species are also known for being the loudest insects in the world. Which I can testify to.

It was another hot and humid day today, perfect for the cicadas. Overnight the temperature didn’t drop below 20°C, which is a bit too warm for comfortable sleeping. Tomorrow should be hot too, but with late rain moving in to cool things down for the next few days.

First thing this morning I had to go see my doctor for a routine checkup and blood test results> Rather than brave the heat and walk like I normally would, I took the train there, and then the Metro back, stopping off on the way home to pick up a pastry from Moon Phase (right next door to the Metro station). I think there were only two things on their regular menu that I haven’t tried yet (apart from a tiramisu and an Earl Grey tea thing, which I won’t ever have because of the caffeine). So today I tried the pistachio and rose concoction. It’s a squat cylinder of pastry topped with flowery pink icing and, as I discovered, filled with a substantial pistachio cream filling and raspberries. It was much denser and more filling than I’d assumed.

In the afternoon I did some Darths & Droids comics stuff and made a sourdough loaf. And then had three ethics classes in the evening. I revamped some of the questions and think the lesson plan runs better than last night’s one.

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A bit of a goof-off day

This morning I had two more ethics classes on the Robots topic. I was done before lunch and then had a falafel wrap. Normally I have a large tortilla, spread with some tahini, then cheddar cheese, tomato wedges, heated up falafels, and some chilli sauce. I’ll also add cos lettuce if I’ve remembered to buy any recently. But sometimes my wife buys a jar of sweet zucchini pickles from the local farmers’ market – she got them one time on a whim and they turned out to be really delicious, so she keeps restocking when we run out. Anyway, we got a new jar recently and today I added some to my wrap to add a bit of zing. Very nice.

I took Scully for a walk over to Naremburn. We haven’t been there for a while. I sat at the bakery there and had a lamington as a sweet treat. The day was a bit warm, but not too hot. Nice weather.

When we got back home, I had a few things I could have done, but I was feeling like a lazy afternoon after yesterday’s long walk, and the past couple of weeks when I’ve been busy marking assignments. So I just cued up some fun YouTube videos and watched those for a while. Sometimes it’s good to just be lazy for a bit! Well, before three more classes in the evening!

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Anniversary dinner and Arcs

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary, so my wife and I had a special dinner out at one of our favourite (albeit expensive) places, The Bathers’ Pavilion at Balmoral Beach. Firstly, the view from the dinning room is wonderful.

We were there before sunset and so got to watch the beach and water as night fell. We started with some potato scallops, battered, sprinkled with wakame and topped with a vinegar mayo.

My appetiser was kingfish with rhubarb and pink peppercorns.

My wife had a vegetarian appetiser of wood ear mushrooms with witlof, blackberries, and black garlic. I tried a small bite and this was truly delicious.

My main was duck cooked two ways, a sliced breast fillet and duck sausages.

My wife had roasted cauliflower and kale, with…. I’m not sure what the orange bits or the sauce are.

For dessert we shared this chocolate, passionfruit, and caramel construction.

It was an indulgent and delicious dinner. We drove home and picked up Scully from our neighbours who had minded her while we were out.

Today I did a 5k run in the morning, followed by housecleaning: vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom and shower, emptying (water) and refilling (crystals) the damp absorbers.

Then after lunch we went out to a fabric showroom to choose new fabric for the upholstery on our dining chairs. These chairs are 25 years old and the seats are getting worn and the foam padding is squashed and flat, so we decided to get them reupholstered. I got a quote from a company during the week, and they said we should go to this showroom to choose a fabric, and let them know what it is so they can order it wholesale for us.

The showroom was in Glebe, so after picking a fabric we walked over to Glebe Point Road to get coffee (for my wife) and snacks from a cafe. Then we headed back home.

This afternoon we tried a 2-player game of Arcs. It’s only the second time I’ve payed, after the 4-player one we did at games night a few weeks ago, and I was teaching my wife to play. So it was fairly instructional and strategy-free. (My wife won, but it was only a learning game!)

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New content today:

Trying new pies

This morning I had some Magic cards to send off to eBay buyers. Two packages, plus one person with a local pickup option. The buyer turned out to live in the block of flat immediately next door to one of my friends. This is in Newtown, home of The Pie Tin, one of my favourite pie shops, but one which I don’t get to visit often because it’s tricky to get to. But I can use my friend’s car parking spot if he’s home! So that’s what I arranged to do.

I parked there, met the eBay buyer and gave him the cards, and then took Scully over to The Pie Tin and had an early lunch. I decided to try some new things. They had a pan-fried chicken pie with vegetables, and a tuna mornay pie. I got one of each and went with Scully to a nearby park to sit and eat. They were both really good.

Once back home I went up to the post office to send the other two packages of cards. Then my wife contacted me and asked about dinner, and I realised I should have bought eggs! So I walked up to the shops again and got some eggs, to make quiche for dinner tonight, before my ethics classes.

In the afternoon I had a visit from a guy from a place that does blinds and other window accessories. Our window blinds are aging and in need of replacement, so we booked someone to come measure up the windows and give us a quote for new blinds. I was honestly expecting him to measure them with a tape measure, but he used a laser gadget. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but there you go.

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Chinese Lebanese pizza

My back is much better today. So much so that when my wife got home I went out for a run. I took it a bit easy and only did 2.5 km, instead of my usual 5k. But it went well and I’m very happy that this episode of back pain has healed up quickly.

For lunch today I took Scully for a bit of a drive a couple of suburbs away to try a new place. I actually wanted to go visit the bottle shop to restock on some liquor, and chose a place to eat nearby. It was a Lebanese bakery, which made Lebanese style pizzas and pides and stuff. It was called Cedar Dough Lebanese Bakery, and the sign outside had the cedar tree of Lebanon on it, overlaid with Arabic text. Very authentically Lebanese. And when I went in to order something, the woman behind the counter was Chinese. Not exactly what I expected, but she was friendly and took my order for a folded pizza stuffed with cheese, mushrooms, and olives. I ate it sitting at the table outside with Scully, and it was pretty good.

In the morning before that I wrote up my next ethics lesson plan, on the topic of Hobbies. Tonight I had the first class. it went pretty well, except for one question, which I think I might have to excise from the class.

I asked: Are there any hobbies that could be harmful or raise ethical issues?
I expected: things like hunting, or trail bike riding.
I got: stealing things, committing crimes, bullying people.
In hindsight I’m glad no kid said serial killing…

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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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