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!

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.

Lucky Coins

On Saturday I melted this 5c piece to the ice that was forming on the taps at The Local.

By Sunday it had a thick glassy sheen of ice over it (and its two friends that I had also added after taking the photo). I suppose it is wrong that this was what I was most proud of myself for over the weekend.

Last night (early this morning?) I woke sobbing after having a terrible dream. The Boyfriend found it very hard to understand why I was so cranky with him. After all, I suppose it was all only in my dream that we went on a road trip to meet up with his other girlfriend and he couldn’t understand why I was so upset. (That’s the short version – in reality it was a very long and complicated story and involved a vast array of characters.) Odd how dreams can seem SOOO real! I blame the Steak, Mushroom, Guinness and Oyster Pie I made for dinner. (Or perhaps I just wanted to show off about they yummy dinner I made last night.)

Toilets and Teeth

Work has been keeping me pretty busy lately. At least I am finally starting to feel like I can do the job. You know I can always still make time for popping in to The Local. Last night I put my footy tips in on the way home. Someone’s been drinking in the toilet again. Weird. Who does that? Then again, I suppose, who takes photos of toilets with drinks left on them with their bad mobile phone camera.

I suppose it’s no worse than the photo I took on the mobile phone last weekend at The Local. One of the local boys was worried someone would take his beer. So he put his false teeth in his glass. Mmmm, tasty.

Pig Out

I think I must have swine flu. Why? Because I ate like an absolute pig yesterday. Perhaps it’s related less to swine flu though and more to having stayed out too late the night before drinking beer and watching the State of Origin match at The Local.

I have a habit of eating my way out of a hangover, but I did outdo myself yesterday. I had the following:

• Junior Whopper burger with cheese
• Toast with cheese spread
• Home made steak and mushroom pie
• 1 Jam filled Krispy Kreme doughnut
• 2 Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts. One of which I bought for another girl at work but found I ate it before I had a chance to give it to her.
• Cheese and crackers
• Garlic bread
• Large-ish bowl of pasta

Yes, I know you all think I am a pig now, but there was no way I was leaving a post up about my poor underwear choices over the long weekend, was there!

Any Other Time I Would Have Been Angry

Yesterday I was on my way to work. I was feeling pretty tired and second hand after a late night cheering up a friend with a broken heart. I must have looked a sight. Of course, there was no seat available on the train – there never is when you really need it!

It was pretty chilly and I was wearing a read coat that only buttons up high and flares out to mid thigh level. A bit like this one, but possibly less fitted around the waist.

A young man who was sitting near me caught my eye and very politely said “Excuse me, would you like my seat?” Halleluiah! I gratefully accepted, on account of the fact that I felt a million years old, had not enough hours of sleep behind me and a raging hangover. As I thanked him and sat down, he frowned at all the men nearby and murmered something along the lines of how he hated it when men did not stand for pregnant ladies.

I was torn for a split second while it computed in my brain. Flared coat that is not fitted around the belly. Tired looking woman. He thought I was pregnant! It took only a moment to decide between telling him he was mistaken and giving his seat back or leaving it as it was. I smiled at him really sweetly as I thanked him and rubbed my belly in the way I have seen pregnant women do. I like to think I made his day for his thoughtfulness – he would have bragged that all over the office. He sure made mine, and I got an extra 25 minutes of shut eye on the trip that was desparately needed. And I paid back karma wise by making myself almost miss my train home that afternoon by stopping to let work security know someone had left their headlights on in their car which was parked in the work carpark. Oh, and it made a screamingly funny story to tell later at The Local.

A Little Bit at a Time

Last night, The Boyfriend and I headed down to The Local after dinner. We had missed the place for the last week or two. We had been avoiding the place, along with many others, in a kind of protest about one of the staff  members who’d gotten a bit snappy with a local and punched him in the nose. Sure, the local in question was being a tool at the time, and should possibly have been sent home, but there was no need for violence. Money talks, and after a week or two of dwindling patrons, the staff member in question no longer works there. Funny, that.

A pair of slightly scruffy looking characters wandered in, and asked the bartender if the hotel had accommodation. I happened to be standing nearby at the time, and tried to help. The two guys were looking for cheap pub style accommodation, but most of the nearby pubs have stopped providing this service over the last few years. The Boyfriend and I were trying to give advice to where the cheapest places would be, we made a few phone calls for them to check availability, that sort of thing. They just seemed like nice, good people, and we hated the thought of anyone (and by the look of them they were pretty hard up) struggling to find a place to sleep that they could afford. After chatting for a while, I asked them what brought them to the area. They had travelled up from country Victoria to buy a car that they’d found online. Why did they need a car? Theirs were burned. In the bushfires.

Yep, these two fellas turned out to be from a small country town that had been totally devastated by the recent bushfires. From their town, only 6 houses remained standing – and none of the saved houses belonged to the young guy or his dad. The older man showed me some photos – it was heartbreaking hearing him say “this is my house burning down, this is when I got surrounded by flames and thought I was going to die, this is the remains of my tools – which were uninsured, this is the melted car which I had bought the day before and not insured yet” – it just went on and on. Both guys now have no jobs because the businesses they worked for have burned down. Both said they have yet to see a penny of the grant money the government promised them, and the reason why they looked scruffy was because they were wearing donated clothes. One of them barely escaped on a dirt bike, just outrunning the flames. He’d been trying to help his boss save the trout farm he worked at, unsuccessfully. His boss only survived by jumping in a trout pond. It was 20m deep and still it bubbled and boiled from the heat.

Soon enough we wished them luck, and they headed out towards the cheapest accommodation we had been able to find for them. The Boyfriend’s best mate was nearby, and I told him the dreaful story we’d just heard. He was up like a shot and ran after them. He offered them all he had to offer – free accommodation in his spare room that night, which they gratefully accepted and came back inside. As their story worked its way around the pub, they also found they had shout after shout being pushed into their hands. Each person only gave a little bit – but I like to think it made all the difference. As they left with The Boyfriend’s mate for a well earned rest, the young guy turned to his dad and said, “Wow. We picked the best pub to walk into and ask for directions tonight”. I like to think that they did, too.

New Year

NYE went off without too many, or possibly even any, hitches. I got all the food prepared on time, which surprised even me, and got the keg set up so that when the first visitor arrived we were sitting back, relaxing with our first drink and looking like it had all been totally effortless.The keg lasted all night, with around 4 schooners left in it the next morning. By 1/4 to 5 when there were still 3 people left, we stopped being so polite and told them to go home so we could go to bed.

One guest, the ex publican, arrived with an extra keg. I’m not sure if I should be proud or checking myself into AA, but we finished that off by the end of the long weekend too. It became a bit like a drop in zone for 4 days, so it’s not like the boyfriend and I managed it solo. In fact, one morning we were woken before 9 by a knocking on the door. One of the boyfriend’s mates, wanting to come over and play. I was all for kicking him out right there, having applied antiseptic to his scraped knee after he’d fallen over in our yard the day before from being a tad too lubricated, but the boyfriend chatted to him for an hour or so before he got the hint and left. The rest of the time we must have served up heaps of cheeses, dips, pate, bickies, etc et al.

I chatted to the boss today about my experiences while he was away – he laughed when I told him I knew why he’d been cranky in the past because I sure went home a bit stressed and cranky every night while he was gone. This was all part of a warm up routine – he gave me Thursday & Friday off this week and Monday & Tuesday next week.

Woo! 6 day Holiday!

And in totally bizarre news? I’m feeding the old publican’s cat for the next week (small price to pay for a free keg, I figure). He lives over The Local. So guess who has a key to The Local!!!*

*Of course, I would never use it for evil, but I like the thought that I have it

NYE

The old year is drawing to a close. Tonight a dozen or so friends are coming over for a BBQ at the boyfriend’s house. He did get a little pissed off when I told him I bought a keg, he was frightened hordes of strangers would crash the party. But hey, what else can you abuse your relationship with The Local for if not to have them bring a keg to you, give you free gas, set the whole shebang up for you, then a select few of them even come over later to help you drink it  (like the old publican, the one we like heaps more than the evil new publican. Although new publican isn’t so evil since he wheeled a keg of beer up the street and brought free gas and ice to the door).

I’m at work. I seem to have forgotten that I had to work when I assured the boyfriend I could easily whip up salads and nibblies for 12 people. (HOW? HOW DID I THINK THIS? I AM AT WORK!) Somehow, between 4:30pm this afternoon when I get home (yep, am abusing my newfound powers and letting everyone go home at 3:30 today) and 6:30pm I need to make spinach dip, cheese platters, a particularly yummy special recipe potato salad, a pesto pasta salad, a garden salad, and probably a million other things. I suppose at least I didn’t plan on cooking satay skewers, chops and snags should be easy enough to sort out.

Countdown to New Year? It’s already started here, but it’s the countdown to 3:30pm! 25 minutes to go, and counting.

Have a fun NYE!