Hungry Hungry Hippos

I loved that game as a kid. Must have driven my poor mum mad with the noise of it!

I decided to host a party next weekend. A Divorce Party, to celebrate the fact that my divorce is official after lots of time and money have been invested! (Remind me next time I think it would be a good idea to get married, to just find someone I don’t really like very much and just hand them a cheque for several hundred thousand dollars, it will save wasting time next time). Anyway, apparently a divorce party is not a very nice reason, it’s been turning a few heads. The caterer (for once, JUST ONCE, I want to spend an entire party having fun rather than cooking food, and have hired a mob to make spit roast lamb and pork) paused when he asked the reason for the party and I told him it was a Divorce Party, then said “Well, how about we just put Christmas Party on the booking form then, shall we?”

So the hippo alluded to playing the game was me earlier this evening. I bought some nibblies for the party this afternoon. Since then I have eaten some brie and bickies, smoked salmon and cream cheese on mini toasts, and some garlic chive cheese. I do believe it is important to do a proper taste test before a big event. I think we mught just call it that.

Fruity

I bought some snacks the other day. The Boyfriend, on looking at the box, asked me what children I had bought them for. I thought they looked like delicious fruity goodness, all shiny and plastic like and perfect for work.

Does this opened example look like the picture on the box? NO! It looks nothing like it! This is a fruity relative of the shit cake from last week – Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Shit Poles!*

* Should anyone reading have shit that looks like the above, please see your doctor.

Let Them Eat Cake

Yesterday The Boyfriend’s mum gave us a chocolate cake. I shit you not, the thing is the flattest cake I have ever seen. I am not sure how I managed to thank her and then wait to laugh until I was safely home. The funnier still part is that her next door neighbour cooked it and gave it to her.

I’m wondering if The Boyfriend’s mum’s neighbour was trying to say something by giving a complete fail-cake to her. I’m wondering why The Boyfriend’s mum would say in actions, if not words, “Thanks for taking our son off our hands, here, have a shit fail-cake because we don’t want it”. She gave me half a banana cake too, and then said in response to my thanks, “No worries, it’s dry and burnt on the bottom, by the way”. heh.

Check out the chocolate cake – it barely reaches the first joint on my index finger – and I have short stubby little fat sausage fingers. I’m thinking I might whip up a heap of cream and make it into some kind of swiss roll.

Almost the end of the week, which can come around any time now, and hurry. The end of the week means meat. We need to get through some more meat at our place. This was our haul from last Friday’s meat raffle at The Local – 4 meat trays full.

Roll on, weekend, I need you!

Cheesed Off

Tips to remember when making cheese:

If the instructions say “Keep between 8C and 15C”? Keep the cheese at that temperature. For if a heatwave happens one weekend your entire batch will be ruined, only to be discovered really rotten and really really stinky several weeks later. It smelt so bad words just fail me. I would say I may never eat cheese again, but this happened on Saturday, and I ate some on Sunday (not the bad home made stuff – I bought it from the shops and stuffed a chicken breast with brie and scallions, served with a cranberry glaze).

Tips to remember when selecting a dress:

Remember that bloody awful dress from the fancy dress part last Christmas? I saw this in a shop window near work last week.

Remarkably similar pattern, I thought. The area near my work’s head office has many clothing shops that are wholesale only, selling in bulk to retail shops. They often seem to have the weirdest of clothing on display but seriously – don’t tell me I could cut the kaftan sleeves off my old fancy dress outfit and be wearing something not out of place today! (I am not going to do it, by the way! There is not enough beer in the world!)

Add This to my List

Apparently it’s not normal to have a list of lists. What’s wrong with that, I say? I have lots of lists – a master list surely is a smart thing to keep all those lists in order. When I recently announced to my family that I have a master list, to keep track of my lists, and that each list is hyperlinked from the master list? Yeah, they all went very quiet. Then they all slowly shook their heads. (Well, I need a few lists – they keep me calm. Yes, I do realise I have a touch of OCD. But who doesn’t need a list for weekend holidays (two holiday houses, so that’s 2 different lists already), a list for overseas trips, a list of what needs renovating in my house (a looooong list, that one), a list of things I need to do, a list of what is for dinner that week each night, a grocery list, a work to-do list – you get the general idea.)

I bet none of them have cheese that looks as good as mine does though.

I hope it’s going to feed me well – the big R is going on at work (*shudder* – redundancies). I have to reapply for my job. Yep, the one I got bullied talked into applying for earlier this year.

Cheesy

Ah, Mondays. Don’t you just love them. Mine was even worse given that I had to get up an extra hour early to salt my cheese. That sentence may make sense after the weekend tales are complete.

On Friday night I gathered a group of friends from The Local and off we went to watch our footy team’s last home game for the season. It was great, especially given that we won. On the way home, we stopped in at a bar. I was refused entry. “We can’t let you in ma’am, you are wearing a football jersey”. I might add, this was one of the seedier establishments in the area. I responded “We are in Parramatta, right?” The bouncer agreed. I continued. “Parra just won a home game, in this very suburb, right?” The bouncer agreed again. “And I am not allowed in because I have a Parramatta jersey on?” Yep, that’s right. I obviously looked oh so threatening, I’d have been frightened myself if there had been a mirror nearby.

Once Saturday morning rolled around, I said to The Boyfriend that I was taking him somewhere special. I should possibly have let him know that it would not involve me feeding him, as he got all his nice clothes on and thought we were going out to lunch. I wondered why he got all dressed up. The Boyfriend drove, so I gave just the address. No other clue – a street address. His response? “What, the homebrew shop?” Yes, folks, my boyfriend seems to know the address of the homebrew shop off by heart. I did buy him something special, of course – all the ingredients needed to make a tasty Stella Artois style beer. And let me tell you – hops smell nasty. Very, very nasty. While at the homebrew shop, I bought myself a cheesemaking kit – just a small one that makes brie/camembert style cheese. I started the culture on our return home on Saturday and I’ve been making the bloody stuff ever since. We watched footy at The Local yesterday afternoon – well everyone else did, I was running home every hour to turn the cheese over. Anyway, I have a new appreciation for why nice cheese costs so much. This stuff had better taste good. Little Miss Muffet curds pictured below.

On Saturday night, after deciding to have an early night with a DVD, The Boyfriend arrived in the bedroom with this nice little tray of pickles, cheese, and milk before bed. OK, Kahlua and milk, but close enough. I think I’ll keep him.

I sure hope my cheese turns out as nice.

Snippets

On Friday I accidentally won another huge beef roast at The Local. I’m getting pretty good at making roast beef now, that’s for sure. Although I am getting a bit sick of roast beef sandwiches. This week’s roast was 2.5kg (5.5 pounds) and it was boneless so not any part of that weight was from a bone. Last week’s was even bigger. Luckily, I am not thinking of turning vegetarian any time soon.

The last 3 weeks have been rather boss-free at work, with him being on holidays. He’s back today. Something tells me I won’t be getting home early all week this week. Or coming in late. Gee the last 3 weeks were good though.

This financial year is the first year I am in charge of a budget at work. We are 1 month into the financial year and I have discovered already items that are regular charges that I did not budget for. This should be an interesting learning experience!

This is my little Ned. Ned likes to fall asleep while reading books. Ned was named after Ned Kelly the bushranger.

I booked a holiday in December. A cruise. It was a bargain price or I probably would have opted for something more exciting. I found out that someone from my work has booked the same cruise. Actually 2 people have – they both work at my work. I am friendly with them because I learned long ago to be nice to people at work, and they will remember that and help you out when you need it. If I didn’t have to be nice according to my rule I would say they are both wombats (waste of money, brains and time). Must spend next 4 months working out avoidance strategies and studying the layout of that ship.

Meat

I love a bit of raw meat. However winning 3 huge meat trays at The Local’s raffle on Friday night has produced somewhat of a meat glut in the house.

On Sunday I roasted the world’s largest roast beef. I’m great at roast lamb and roast pork but had only ever tried roast beef once before. That time? I threw it in the bin and got a pizza. This time I harnessed the power of the interweb, and googled “how to cook roast beef” before commencing. Apparently you cook it in a slow oven, not medium like a leg of lamb or pork. Actually, not even just apparently – it is true, I sealed it on high for 20 minutes then reduced it to a low oven temperature and slow roasted it for 4 hours. It was so delicious and tender. Roast beef sandwiches this week for leftovers have been an added benefit. Although only on day 2 of roast beef sandwiches and with about 6 bajillion slices of roast beef yet to get through I am concerned I’m over it already.

What on earth am I going to do with the rest of the meat? The freezer is so full of meat I ended up writing a list of what was in the freezer. It’s something like this:

• 1 pack of 8 sausages
• 1 pack of 4 sausages
• 1 pack of 4 huge pork chops
• 2 packs of 4 big lamb forequarter chops (which I don’t like much – might have to casserole these)
• 1 pack of 3 T Bone steaks
• 4 rashers of bacon
• 2 packs of 5 lamb stewing chops
• steak and mushroom pie filling (home made and frozen ready to pop in a big pie crust)
• chicken and leek pie filling (also home made but only enough for a snack size not a huge pie)
• 1 packet of mystery meat. No idea what it is. Looks like it might be steak. After finding this, I labelled the rest as I froze it.

That’s just the bits I remember. Shame I really feel like chicken tonight.