I've discovered an excellent burger place in the city - the wagyu steakburger is a killer. The steak is literally melt in the mouth - I can't ever remember biting into a "minute steak" and not finding myself chomping and gnashing at it in an effort to bite off a chunk, and ending up with a slice of tomato sliding out and landing on my shirt.
The burgers are good.
The chips are pretty good too - big, fat chunky things. The perfect antidote to skinny little french fries.
The sauces that you can have with your chips are bloody good - especially the aioli.
Just one issue.
The burgers cost around 10 bucks. That much is made clear from the big board behind the counter.
I figured out the chips cost $3.50 a serve by ordering some with a burger and then subtracting $9.90 from the total price. I've been there 4 times, and am yet to find a menu that lists the chips and their cost.
The killer is the cost of the sauce - 2 bucks for a little tub of sauce. Yes, the sauce is fantastic, and I love dipping my chips into it, but I hate the fact that I only worked out the cost by ordering a burger, chips and sauce and then subtracting the cost of the first two items from the total cost. Two bucks is a lot to pay, which is probably why they do their best to shield you from the cost. By the time you've handed over more than 15 bucks, it's too late to retract the sauce. You're hooked. You're suckered.
And you're very well fed. I like the food. It's the transparency that sucks.
That said, if I had known the first time how expensive the sauce was, I never would have ordered it, and I never would have found out how good it was. Colour me torn......
Thursday, 4 April 2013
Monday, 1 April 2013
Since when did breakfast cost 25 bucks?
I took advantage of the Easter break to put some extra miles on the bike. Saturday's foray took me to a stamping ground that is becoming familiar - Danks St in Waterloo. There are a number of fine looking cafes along a strip about 100 metres long, and I've decided to work my way through them as time permits.
As most of the cafes were closed that morning when I got there, the choice came to the Sonoma Bakery or Societe wine bar.
I chose Societe. I wish I'd read the reviews on Urbanspoon first - most were pretty unhappy with the place.
Let me add my unhappiness to the list.
Coffee - not too bad. No complaints.
Service - fine, but there were only 2 of us in the whole place.
Decor/atmosphere/seats - no complaints
Food - when I pay $21.50 for an omelet, I expect a world class experience. Instead, I got something that was so dry, I was sure the chef had simply dropped a few yellow kitchen sponges into the frying pan and then tossed a few other ingredients on top. It took me a while to chew through it, and it wasn't that tasty. I like my omelets to ooze, and to be bursting with squishy flavour. I got anything but that.
I forgot to mention what toast I wanted, so I didn't get any at all. 1 out of 10 if you're lucky for both quality and value.
The pricing might have been Easter pricing with lots of loadings, but it was still a freakingly expensive meal for one. And given how poor it was, I might as well have given 25 bucks to a wino and watched him spend it on cheap port.
I didn't even consider ordering an iced coffee - they wanted 7 bucks (yes, seven bucks!!!!) for an iced coffee, and I couldn't be bothered trying to haggle them down given that I don't want any cream, ice cream of chocolate sprinkles or syrup polluting my coffee. When I saw what they wanted to charge for something so simple, I knew I was in trouble. So actually the completely rooted omelet was not that much of a surprise when it arrived.
The upside is that there are at least half a dozen more places to try along Danks St, and even more along Bourke St, so one failure isn't anything to worry about.
As most of the cafes were closed that morning when I got there, the choice came to the Sonoma Bakery or Societe wine bar.
I chose Societe. I wish I'd read the reviews on Urbanspoon first - most were pretty unhappy with the place.
Let me add my unhappiness to the list.
Coffee - not too bad. No complaints.
Service - fine, but there were only 2 of us in the whole place.
Decor/atmosphere/seats - no complaints
Food - when I pay $21.50 for an omelet, I expect a world class experience. Instead, I got something that was so dry, I was sure the chef had simply dropped a few yellow kitchen sponges into the frying pan and then tossed a few other ingredients on top. It took me a while to chew through it, and it wasn't that tasty. I like my omelets to ooze, and to be bursting with squishy flavour. I got anything but that.
I forgot to mention what toast I wanted, so I didn't get any at all. 1 out of 10 if you're lucky for both quality and value.
The pricing might have been Easter pricing with lots of loadings, but it was still a freakingly expensive meal for one. And given how poor it was, I might as well have given 25 bucks to a wino and watched him spend it on cheap port.
I didn't even consider ordering an iced coffee - they wanted 7 bucks (yes, seven bucks!!!!) for an iced coffee, and I couldn't be bothered trying to haggle them down given that I don't want any cream, ice cream of chocolate sprinkles or syrup polluting my coffee. When I saw what they wanted to charge for something so simple, I knew I was in trouble. So actually the completely rooted omelet was not that much of a surprise when it arrived.
The upside is that there are at least half a dozen more places to try along Danks St, and even more along Bourke St, so one failure isn't anything to worry about.
Saturday, 30 March 2013
Hard work (for someone else)
When the kids were younger, I thought about getting one of these kid-bike things that you bolt onto the back of your bike in order to tow the youngster around.
Glad I didn't - watching this bloke struggle up this ramp put me right off it. His kid was just lying back, feet off the pedals, not doing a thing to help. Then again, the excess baggage around my guts probably weighs about as much as his kid plus the bike, so who am I to talk?
Friday, 29 March 2013
I just realised my headmaster must have read Xenophon
I stumbled upon "Spartan Society" by Xenophon today, and his description below bears some eerie similarities to my boarding school experiences...... The whole thing is worth a read.
4. Now that I have explained about procreation I want to give a precise account of education. Elsewhere in Greece those who claim to give their sons the finest education put their children under the care of servants as tutors and dispatch them to schools to learn reading and writing and music and the art of wrestling. They make their children’s feet soft with shoes and their bodies delicate with many clothes. As for food, they let them eat as much as their stomachs can hold. But Lycurgus, in place of the private assignment of slave tutors to each boy, stipulated that a man should take charge of them as Train-in-Chief. Lycurgus gave this man authority both to assemble the boys and to punish them severely. He also gave him a squad of young adults equipped with whips to administer punishment when necessary. The result has been that respect and obedience in combination are found to a high degree at Sparta.
5. Rather than letting boys’ feet grow soft in shoes, he told them emphatically to make them strong by not wearing shoes, in the belief that this practice should enable them to walk uphill with greater ease, jump better, and run faster than the one with shoes. And instead of their clothes serving to make them delicate, he required them to become used to a single garment all year round, the idea being that thereby they would be better prepared for cold and heat. As for food, he instructed the eiren to furnish for the common meal just the right amount for them never to become sluggish through being too full, while also giving them a taste of what it is not to have enough. His view was that boys under this kind of regimen would be better able, when required, to work hard without eating, as well as to make the same rations last longer; they would be satisfied with a plain diet, would adapt better to accepting any type of food, and would be in a healthier condition. He also considered that a diet which produced slim bodies would also make them grow tall.
6. On the other hand, while he did not allow them to take what they required effortlessly, to prevent them suffering from hunger he did permit them to steal in order to ward off starvation. Clearly a prospective thief must keep awake at night, and by day must practice deception and lie in wait, as well as have spies ready if he is going to seize anything. So clearly it was Lycurgus’ wish that by training the boys in all these ways he would make them more resourceful at feeding themselves and better fighters. Someone might ask then, if he considered theft a good thing, why on earth did he inflict many lashes on a boy who was caught stealing? My answer is, because people chastise anyone who does not perform satisfactorily. After making it an honor for them to snatch as many cheeses as possible from the Temple of Artemis Orthia, he commanded others to whip them, thereby demonstrating that a short period of pain may be compensated by the enjoyment of long-lasting prestige. With the intention that even in the absence of the Trainer-in-Chief the boys should always have someone ein charge of them, he authorized any citizen who happened to be present at the time to give the boys whatever instruction he thought proper, and to punish any slip they might make. By this measure he gave the boys a greater sense of respect. To ensure that someone should be in control of the boys even when no adult happened to be on the spot, he deputed the smartest of the eirens to take command of each squadron. As a result the boys of Sparta are never without someone in charge of them.
7. The time when boys reach their teens is the very moment when others remove them from tutors, remove them from schools and have nobody in charge of them any longer, but rather leave them independent. Here, too, Lycurgus took the opposite view. Because he appreciated that at this age boys become self-willed and are particularly liable to cockiness — both of which produce powerful cravings for pleasure — this was the age at which he loaded them with the greatest amount of work and contrived that they should be kept occupied most of the time. In his wish to see a sense of respect strongly implanted in them, he have orders that even in the streets they should keep both hands inside their cloaks, should proceed in silence, and should not let their gaze wander in any direction, but fix their eyes on the ground in front of them. Certainly, you would sooner hear a cry from a stone statue or succeed in catching the eye of a bronze one than a Spartan boy. And whenever they attended the mess, they were only allowed to respond to questions the men put to them. Such, then, was the attention he devoted to youths.
8. However, he displayed the greatest concern by far for the young adults, in the conviction that they had the most influence for the good of the state if they were of the right character. From his observation that when people have the strong innate spirit of competition their choruses are the ones most worth watching, he came to think that if he could also urge the young adults to compete in excellence, then they would attain the height of manly gallantry. Let me explain how he used to urge them.
9. From among them the ephors select three of those in their prime. Each of these picks 100 men with a clear explanation of why he approves some and rejects others. As a result those who do not achieve the honor are at war with both those who have dismissed them and those chosen instead of them, and the two groups are on the lookout for any negligent act which may go against the accepted standards of honor. This is also the type of competition most highly favored by the gods and best suited to a citizen community — in which the conduct demanded of brave men is spelled out and each of the two groups independently strives to ensure that it will always prove superior. But should any need arise they would as one protect the city with all their might. They must keep themselves physically fit too, since their rivalry brings on fights whenever they meet. However, all passers-by have the right to separate the combatants. Anyone who defies the man attempting to separate them is brought before the ephors; they levy a stiff fine in their desire to establish the principle that anger must never prevail over respect for the law.
10. As for those who have passed beyond the youngest grade of adulthood, other Greeks, after removing their obligation to keep up their physical strength, nonetheless require them to go on serving in the army when necessary. Lycurgus by contrast made hunting the noblest of pastime for men of this age, so that they could stand up to the exertions of campaigning just as well as the youngest men. This then completes my account of the training Lycurgus prescribed by law.
11. When Lycurgus too the Spartans in hand they were living in separate households like Greeks elsewhere. He concluded that this was the cause of a great amount of misbehavior and so devised his scheme for common messes, thinking gthat these would reduce disobedience. The rations he fixed in such a way that they should have neither too much nor too little food. There is never a shortage of food on the table, yet neither is there a lavish spread. When it came to wine he stopped excessive drinking — which causes both physical and mental degeneration — and just let each man drink whenever he felt thirsty. In his view this is the least harmful and most enjoyable way of drinking. With common messes of this type how would anyone ruin either himself or his household by greediness or alcoholism?
12. In other cities men of the same age generally congregate together and respect only their own social group. But at Sparta Lycurgus mixed ages together in the belief that it is beneficial for the younger men to learn from the older ones. Indeed, it was the custom that any noble act on the part of any citizen was discussed in the messes, so that there was limited opportunity for drunken behavior. Eating out certainly brings out more benefits. To get home the Spartans have to walk, taking care not to trip and fall under the influence of wine. They also have to do in the dark what they do by daylight; men still liable for military service are not even allowed a torch. Lycurgus further noted that the same rations improve the complexion, physique, and strength of hard workers, whereas they give lazy people a bloated, ugly, and feeble appearance. It would certainly not be easy for anyone to find men healthier or more physically adept than Spartiates.
13. Lycurgus definitely held the opposite view to the majority of Greeks in the following ways too. In other cities each man is master of his own children, slaves, and property.. But Lycurgus, in his wish to arrange that citizens might enjoy a mutual benefit without injury to anyone, caused each man to be master of other people’s children just as much as his own. Should any boy ever tell his father that he was beaten by another, then it is a disgrace if the father does not give his son another beating. To such a degree do Spartans trust each other not to discipline children carelessly or dishonor good order. He even authorized them to use other people’s household servants too if anybody needed them. He also authorized the sharing of hunting dogs. They have the same arrangement with horses, so that if someone needs to go somewhere fast and happens to spot a horse anywhere, he just takes it, and then duly returns it after use. He also arranged to have food caches stocked throughout Sparta so that those in need could break the seals and take what they needed. By sharing with each other in this way, even those who possess little can benefit from everything in the polis whenever they are in need.
14. There are also the following practices instituted by Lycurgus which are quite the opposite from those elsewhere in Greece. In the other poleis everyone naturally makes as much money as possible; some are farmers, others ship owners or traders, while crafts support others. But at Sparta Lycurgus banned all free men from the pursuit of wealth and prescribed that their sole concern should be with things that make cities free. Lycurgus demanded that provisions should be contributed on an equal basis and the way of life be uniform, thus doing away with self-indulgent passion for wealth. There is no point in making money even for the sake of clothes, since it is physical vitality which gives men a distinctive appearance not lavish dress. There is no point in amassing money to spend on fellow members of the mess either, since Lycurgus instilled the idea that the person who helps his companions by undertaking physical labor is more reputable than the one who spends money — the former service comes from the heart, whereas the latter is a function of being rich.
4. Now that I have explained about procreation I want to give a precise account of education. Elsewhere in Greece those who claim to give their sons the finest education put their children under the care of servants as tutors and dispatch them to schools to learn reading and writing and music and the art of wrestling. They make their children’s feet soft with shoes and their bodies delicate with many clothes. As for food, they let them eat as much as their stomachs can hold. But Lycurgus, in place of the private assignment of slave tutors to each boy, stipulated that a man should take charge of them as Train-in-Chief. Lycurgus gave this man authority both to assemble the boys and to punish them severely. He also gave him a squad of young adults equipped with whips to administer punishment when necessary. The result has been that respect and obedience in combination are found to a high degree at Sparta.
5. Rather than letting boys’ feet grow soft in shoes, he told them emphatically to make them strong by not wearing shoes, in the belief that this practice should enable them to walk uphill with greater ease, jump better, and run faster than the one with shoes. And instead of their clothes serving to make them delicate, he required them to become used to a single garment all year round, the idea being that thereby they would be better prepared for cold and heat. As for food, he instructed the eiren to furnish for the common meal just the right amount for them never to become sluggish through being too full, while also giving them a taste of what it is not to have enough. His view was that boys under this kind of regimen would be better able, when required, to work hard without eating, as well as to make the same rations last longer; they would be satisfied with a plain diet, would adapt better to accepting any type of food, and would be in a healthier condition. He also considered that a diet which produced slim bodies would also make them grow tall.
6. On the other hand, while he did not allow them to take what they required effortlessly, to prevent them suffering from hunger he did permit them to steal in order to ward off starvation. Clearly a prospective thief must keep awake at night, and by day must practice deception and lie in wait, as well as have spies ready if he is going to seize anything. So clearly it was Lycurgus’ wish that by training the boys in all these ways he would make them more resourceful at feeding themselves and better fighters. Someone might ask then, if he considered theft a good thing, why on earth did he inflict many lashes on a boy who was caught stealing? My answer is, because people chastise anyone who does not perform satisfactorily. After making it an honor for them to snatch as many cheeses as possible from the Temple of Artemis Orthia, he commanded others to whip them, thereby demonstrating that a short period of pain may be compensated by the enjoyment of long-lasting prestige. With the intention that even in the absence of the Trainer-in-Chief the boys should always have someone ein charge of them, he authorized any citizen who happened to be present at the time to give the boys whatever instruction he thought proper, and to punish any slip they might make. By this measure he gave the boys a greater sense of respect. To ensure that someone should be in control of the boys even when no adult happened to be on the spot, he deputed the smartest of the eirens to take command of each squadron. As a result the boys of Sparta are never without someone in charge of them.
7. The time when boys reach their teens is the very moment when others remove them from tutors, remove them from schools and have nobody in charge of them any longer, but rather leave them independent. Here, too, Lycurgus took the opposite view. Because he appreciated that at this age boys become self-willed and are particularly liable to cockiness — both of which produce powerful cravings for pleasure — this was the age at which he loaded them with the greatest amount of work and contrived that they should be kept occupied most of the time. In his wish to see a sense of respect strongly implanted in them, he have orders that even in the streets they should keep both hands inside their cloaks, should proceed in silence, and should not let their gaze wander in any direction, but fix their eyes on the ground in front of them. Certainly, you would sooner hear a cry from a stone statue or succeed in catching the eye of a bronze one than a Spartan boy. And whenever they attended the mess, they were only allowed to respond to questions the men put to them. Such, then, was the attention he devoted to youths.
8. However, he displayed the greatest concern by far for the young adults, in the conviction that they had the most influence for the good of the state if they were of the right character. From his observation that when people have the strong innate spirit of competition their choruses are the ones most worth watching, he came to think that if he could also urge the young adults to compete in excellence, then they would attain the height of manly gallantry. Let me explain how he used to urge them.
9. From among them the ephors select three of those in their prime. Each of these picks 100 men with a clear explanation of why he approves some and rejects others. As a result those who do not achieve the honor are at war with both those who have dismissed them and those chosen instead of them, and the two groups are on the lookout for any negligent act which may go against the accepted standards of honor. This is also the type of competition most highly favored by the gods and best suited to a citizen community — in which the conduct demanded of brave men is spelled out and each of the two groups independently strives to ensure that it will always prove superior. But should any need arise they would as one protect the city with all their might. They must keep themselves physically fit too, since their rivalry brings on fights whenever they meet. However, all passers-by have the right to separate the combatants. Anyone who defies the man attempting to separate them is brought before the ephors; they levy a stiff fine in their desire to establish the principle that anger must never prevail over respect for the law.
10. As for those who have passed beyond the youngest grade of adulthood, other Greeks, after removing their obligation to keep up their physical strength, nonetheless require them to go on serving in the army when necessary. Lycurgus by contrast made hunting the noblest of pastime for men of this age, so that they could stand up to the exertions of campaigning just as well as the youngest men. This then completes my account of the training Lycurgus prescribed by law.
11. When Lycurgus too the Spartans in hand they were living in separate households like Greeks elsewhere. He concluded that this was the cause of a great amount of misbehavior and so devised his scheme for common messes, thinking gthat these would reduce disobedience. The rations he fixed in such a way that they should have neither too much nor too little food. There is never a shortage of food on the table, yet neither is there a lavish spread. When it came to wine he stopped excessive drinking — which causes both physical and mental degeneration — and just let each man drink whenever he felt thirsty. In his view this is the least harmful and most enjoyable way of drinking. With common messes of this type how would anyone ruin either himself or his household by greediness or alcoholism?
12. In other cities men of the same age generally congregate together and respect only their own social group. But at Sparta Lycurgus mixed ages together in the belief that it is beneficial for the younger men to learn from the older ones. Indeed, it was the custom that any noble act on the part of any citizen was discussed in the messes, so that there was limited opportunity for drunken behavior. Eating out certainly brings out more benefits. To get home the Spartans have to walk, taking care not to trip and fall under the influence of wine. They also have to do in the dark what they do by daylight; men still liable for military service are not even allowed a torch. Lycurgus further noted that the same rations improve the complexion, physique, and strength of hard workers, whereas they give lazy people a bloated, ugly, and feeble appearance. It would certainly not be easy for anyone to find men healthier or more physically adept than Spartiates.
13. Lycurgus definitely held the opposite view to the majority of Greeks in the following ways too. In other cities each man is master of his own children, slaves, and property.. But Lycurgus, in his wish to arrange that citizens might enjoy a mutual benefit without injury to anyone, caused each man to be master of other people’s children just as much as his own. Should any boy ever tell his father that he was beaten by another, then it is a disgrace if the father does not give his son another beating. To such a degree do Spartans trust each other not to discipline children carelessly or dishonor good order. He even authorized them to use other people’s household servants too if anybody needed them. He also authorized the sharing of hunting dogs. They have the same arrangement with horses, so that if someone needs to go somewhere fast and happens to spot a horse anywhere, he just takes it, and then duly returns it after use. He also arranged to have food caches stocked throughout Sparta so that those in need could break the seals and take what they needed. By sharing with each other in this way, even those who possess little can benefit from everything in the polis whenever they are in need.
14. There are also the following practices instituted by Lycurgus which are quite the opposite from those elsewhere in Greece. In the other poleis everyone naturally makes as much money as possible; some are farmers, others ship owners or traders, while crafts support others. But at Sparta Lycurgus banned all free men from the pursuit of wealth and prescribed that their sole concern should be with things that make cities free. Lycurgus demanded that provisions should be contributed on an equal basis and the way of life be uniform, thus doing away with self-indulgent passion for wealth. There is no point in making money even for the sake of clothes, since it is physical vitality which gives men a distinctive appearance not lavish dress. There is no point in amassing money to spend on fellow members of the mess either, since Lycurgus instilled the idea that the person who helps his companions by undertaking physical labor is more reputable than the one who spends money — the former service comes from the heart, whereas the latter is a function of being rich.
Great cake disasters
Cakes - I really know how to make a mess of making them. My baking experiences are a litany of blunders and mishaps.
I made one last weekend, and didn't cook it for long enough. The middle bit was just a tiny bit squishy - but the rest was edible. Problem is, we had a hot week, the cake didn't go in the fridge and it started rotting from the squishy middle bits after 2 days. Blunder one.
I whipped up a chocolate cake this morning - not very Eastery of me, but I don't have a recipe for chocolate hot cross buns. I was a bit cavalier when I took it out of the oven - instead of sliding it carefully onto the bench, I dropped it.
The cake collapsed faster than a Cypriot bank. It now resembles a swimming pool or a deep fish pond. The icing in the middle must be at least an inch thick.
I made one last weekend, and didn't cook it for long enough. The middle bit was just a tiny bit squishy - but the rest was edible. Problem is, we had a hot week, the cake didn't go in the fridge and it started rotting from the squishy middle bits after 2 days. Blunder one.
I whipped up a chocolate cake this morning - not very Eastery of me, but I don't have a recipe for chocolate hot cross buns. I was a bit cavalier when I took it out of the oven - instead of sliding it carefully onto the bench, I dropped it.
The cake collapsed faster than a Cypriot bank. It now resembles a swimming pool or a deep fish pond. The icing in the middle must be at least an inch thick.
Too many ambulances
It's been a long time since I've seen a crashed rider requiring an ambulance - and then along come two such crashes this week.
Both happened in Pyrmont before I got there. I was riding into work and a pack went past going in the other direction. The last rider called out "Watch out - there's a rider clown up ahead". "Rider clown?", I thought. WTF?
When I got to the next intersection, there was a rider down. He already had his helmet off and was just lying there with a few other people around him, obviously waiting for an ambulance. No point in me stopping, so I pushed on. No idea what caused him to crash. He wasn't bleeding, but he was obviously in a lot of pain.
Coming home that night, and just a bit further up the road, I spied an ambulance and police car on the side of the road. When I got up to them, the ambos were treating a rider. Again, no idea what brought him down.
I reckon these things come in threes, so I spent the rest of the ride home trying not to become casualty number three.
---------------
Postscript.
On the way into town that morning, a taxi pulled up next to me at the lights and the passenger would down his window and asked me about my ride to work. It turned out he had just started riding to work, and I told him that it was great and safe and he should do it more often.
10 minutes later, I passed the downed rider.......
Both happened in Pyrmont before I got there. I was riding into work and a pack went past going in the other direction. The last rider called out "Watch out - there's a rider clown up ahead". "Rider clown?", I thought. WTF?
When I got to the next intersection, there was a rider down. He already had his helmet off and was just lying there with a few other people around him, obviously waiting for an ambulance. No point in me stopping, so I pushed on. No idea what caused him to crash. He wasn't bleeding, but he was obviously in a lot of pain.
Coming home that night, and just a bit further up the road, I spied an ambulance and police car on the side of the road. When I got up to them, the ambos were treating a rider. Again, no idea what brought him down.
I reckon these things come in threes, so I spent the rest of the ride home trying not to become casualty number three.
---------------
Postscript.
On the way into town that morning, a taxi pulled up next to me at the lights and the passenger would down his window and asked me about my ride to work. It turned out he had just started riding to work, and I told him that it was great and safe and he should do it more often.
10 minutes later, I passed the downed rider.......
Monday, 18 March 2013
Freedom conference
Unfortunately, as per the last post, I'll be too busy to make this conference on 6-7 April. But you should get along.
Too busy to scratch myself
Blogging has indeed been slow - got lots to do. Work has been insane lately, and the home life didn't get any better when the kids went back to school. Just too much to do and not enough time to blog. It comes down to a choice between blogging and sleeping - and I choose sleep.
Monday, 4 March 2013
It's March, and I still haven't watched live TV this year
I was flopped on the couch, reading a book, when I looked at the TV and realised I have not watched anything live on it so far this year that grown up in nature. I think I've watched one recorded movie, and that's it. The kids get to watch ABC2 (the kids channel), but if I happen to be in the room when they're watching it, I'm either reading or snoozing on the couch.
No news. No current affairs. No cooking shows or reality stuff. No historical series or movies or comedies. No sport. Not even NCIS, which had me hooked for 6 seasons. I just haven't found a reason to turn it on and channel surf.
In fact I probably haven't really watched anything on it since November.
Of course come June 21, this will all come to an end. For three weeks. I'll definitely have to invest in a new DVR before then so I can stop falling asleep on the couch an hour into each stage of Le Tour.
No news. No current affairs. No cooking shows or reality stuff. No historical series or movies or comedies. No sport. Not even NCIS, which had me hooked for 6 seasons. I just haven't found a reason to turn it on and channel surf.
In fact I probably haven't really watched anything on it since November.
Of course come June 21, this will all come to an end. For three weeks. I'll definitely have to invest in a new DVR before then so I can stop falling asleep on the couch an hour into each stage of Le Tour.
Riding bikes is so much comfier....
From here - http://www.explosm.net/comics/3098/
Thanks for the tip, Agro.
Sunday, 3 March 2013
The incredible weirdness of the internet
http://www.breadedcats.com/
Breaded cats. Need I say more?
Cav - this is something to look at, not something for you to do with your damned cat.
Breaded cats. Need I say more?
Cav - this is something to look at, not something for you to do with your damned cat.
Who the hell smokes dope at quarter to seven in the morning?
One of the oddest things about my commute up and down Lilyfield Rd is the frequency with which I smell someone smoking dope. In the afternoons, it tends to waft from the windows of utes driving by - hopefully, only the passenger is partaking, and not the driver. But what stuns me is when I smell it first thing in the morning. The earliest time so far was last week at 0645hrs. It didn't seem to be coming from a parked or moving car, so I presume it was emanating from the Housing Commission apartments that line that section of road. What sort of dope smoker has the inner fortitude to wake up at that hour of the day and light the first cone?
And yes, I know what the stuff smells like. I haven't inhaled in a long time - at least a decade or more. I even partook in trying to grow it when I was at uni - each attempt was a fiasco. Although our group included numerous farm boys who have since gone on to grow enough grain to feed large sections of the third world, we were woefully inadequate at coaxing a weed to flourish. Perhaps it was because they were much better at killing weeds than growing and smoking them.
Only two crops showed any signs of producing a reasonable crop. The first disappeared when some thieving bastards came over the back fence and made off with the whole lot. The second disappeared when the mother of one of the farmers turned up one weekend to tidy the garden in the share house. Whilst we were all recovering somewhere else from a party and a hangover, she removed a trailer load of weeds (good and bad) to the tip. None of us felt like driving out to the tip to fossick through a mountain of garden and vegetable scraps to find them.
After that, we tended to stick to brewing our own beer. That was generally more successful - except when we added too much sugar to one batch and the bottles exploded one by one in our holding area under the stairs. We weren't game to go near them in case one exploded in our faces, so we waited until all 30 bottles had exploded before cleaning up the mess. That took about a week. By the time we moved in with shovels and a rubbish bin, the under stairs area had turned into an interesting mix of broken glass, the remains of dried beer and mold.
I don't think we brewed any beer after that experience either.
And yes, I know what the stuff smells like. I haven't inhaled in a long time - at least a decade or more. I even partook in trying to grow it when I was at uni - each attempt was a fiasco. Although our group included numerous farm boys who have since gone on to grow enough grain to feed large sections of the third world, we were woefully inadequate at coaxing a weed to flourish. Perhaps it was because they were much better at killing weeds than growing and smoking them.
Only two crops showed any signs of producing a reasonable crop. The first disappeared when some thieving bastards came over the back fence and made off with the whole lot. The second disappeared when the mother of one of the farmers turned up one weekend to tidy the garden in the share house. Whilst we were all recovering somewhere else from a party and a hangover, she removed a trailer load of weeds (good and bad) to the tip. None of us felt like driving out to the tip to fossick through a mountain of garden and vegetable scraps to find them.
After that, we tended to stick to brewing our own beer. That was generally more successful - except when we added too much sugar to one batch and the bottles exploded one by one in our holding area under the stairs. We weren't game to go near them in case one exploded in our faces, so we waited until all 30 bottles had exploded before cleaning up the mess. That took about a week. By the time we moved in with shovels and a rubbish bin, the under stairs area had turned into an interesting mix of broken glass, the remains of dried beer and mold.
I don't think we brewed any beer after that experience either.
Saturday, 2 March 2013
Kid friendly cafes - are they worth it?
If you'd suggested to me 10 years ago that I even set foot in the door of a "kid friendly" cafe, I would have run screaming for the horizon. Nowadays, I'm more likely to be standing at the door at 0759hrs with my kids waiting for the place to open.
Some time last year, a very kid-oriented cafe opened up in Wareemba called Hopscotch. I noticed it one day as I was riding down to the end of the Abbotsford peninsular, and then filed it away and forgot about it. You're probably wondering, "Where the hell is Wareemba"? The only reason I know how to find it is because I was riding through one day and saw these big blue signs that said, "Welcome to Wareemba". I think the whole suburb is about 4 streets by 4 streets - a 'pocket' suburb so to speak.
http://www.hopscotchcafe.com.au/
Today was the day when I got to give it a go. I've tried every cafe in Five Dock and the two other cafes in Wareemba. Frankly, none of them do anything for me. There's something about each and every one of them that gives me the shits. Mostly, it is the requirement that you have to be an Italian or Greek insider in order to get decent service in any of them. If you're not part of the local wog mafia, forget it. The food that a lot of them serve is pretty rubbish too. You might think that an area stuffed full of Italians would produce good food - and you'd be wrong.
Thankfully, Hopscotch is the odd one out. From what I can gather, the owners are from Chile, so they are definitely not part of the wog establishment. The place is very kid friendly - there are two primary schools within walking distance, so they definitely have the local mums lined up as their target market. As far as being kid friendly goes, I reckon they've hit the spot. However, it's not an overwhelmingly kid cafe - the food is very grown up, and you can safely eat there without sprogs.
First thing - I would definitely go back again. It has two big common tables - I like these, because when the place is half empty, they give me plenty of room to spread the newspapers out and eat in style. The food is also tasty and the omelette I had today would have stopped an elephant. It certainly stuffed a wet and hungry cyclist who needed stuffing.
Amazingly, the coffee is also first grade. When I got home, I googled some reviews and found that all the coffee snobs gave it very good marks. They use Paul Bassett beans - whatever they are.
http://www.beanhunter.com/cafes/review/hopscotch-cafe/34828
If you're the sort of person that makes a fuss about organic this and home made that, then it ticks all the right boxes. I don't really care for any of that - I just care whether the end product is any good. Doesn't matter if you start with organic eggs from home raised chickens fed on organic corn - if you can't cook an egg for nuts, the ingredients are immaterial.
There were a few kids eating with mum and/or dad when I was there. Every now and then, something would go crashing to the floor - but the place was not overwhelmed with the noise of screaming, uncontrolled children. It struck me that the clientele of this place actually know how to discipline and manage their kids, which is something of a first.
The only downer was the price - it was nearly $20 for an omelette and a coffee. Sure, it was first grade stuff, and the service was good, but that's still a big hit for breakfast. Then again, it seems to be pretty hard to avoid having the wallet pounded anywhere these days.
Insert rant here:
Kid friendly cafes - a sure sign that society is on the decline. One of the primary functions of parents is to socialise their offspring - to teach the little buggers how to behave in private and in public. Kid friendly cafes are a cop out - they allow useless, degenerate, hopeless parents to inflict their undisciplined little brats on an unsuspecting public. Kids should be taught to sit down, shut up and quietly amuse themselves without interfering with any grown ups in the vicinity who are trying to concentrate on a newspaper and a good coffee. There is a place for hyperactive little monsters who need to be fed - it's called McDonalds.
End rant:
Friday, 1 March 2013
3am kebab guts
Had a bad case of 3am kebab guts today, and unfortunately, it had nothing to do with having a kebab at 3am.
What are 3am kebab guts?
The only reason why anyone has a kebab at 3am is if they have been drinking solidly since about 5pm. The impact on the guts the following morning of too many beers topped off with an early morning kebab is usually catastrophic. The kebab of course is not the cause of the problem - it is the maraschino cherry of stupidity plopped atop a massive banana split of overindulgence.
3am kebab guts are a bloody awful thing to have on a bike. Apart from the embarrassment of possibly letting rip in the face of the person riding closely behind you, there is always the chance you might draw a bit of mud. I don't fret about the embarrassment when commuting, as I don't know any of the other cyclists around me. However, it's a different story when I do a weekend ride.
Enough of that. Possibly too much information. The result was the slowest ride home in a long time - I just couldn't risk pushing it overly hard and thereby putting any excess pressure on the guts. Got no idea what I ate to induce this intestinal horror, but it was nasty.
What are 3am kebab guts?
The only reason why anyone has a kebab at 3am is if they have been drinking solidly since about 5pm. The impact on the guts the following morning of too many beers topped off with an early morning kebab is usually catastrophic. The kebab of course is not the cause of the problem - it is the maraschino cherry of stupidity plopped atop a massive banana split of overindulgence.
3am kebab guts are a bloody awful thing to have on a bike. Apart from the embarrassment of possibly letting rip in the face of the person riding closely behind you, there is always the chance you might draw a bit of mud. I don't fret about the embarrassment when commuting, as I don't know any of the other cyclists around me. However, it's a different story when I do a weekend ride.
Enough of that. Possibly too much information. The result was the slowest ride home in a long time - I just couldn't risk pushing it overly hard and thereby putting any excess pressure on the guts. Got no idea what I ate to induce this intestinal horror, but it was nasty.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
Putting condoms on light bulbs
Geez, I must be getting past it. Until this week, I had no idea that you could buy condoms for light bulbs.
I'm talking about fiddly little bulbs that light up your car dashboard and things like that. The last bulb in my instrument panel gave up the ghost recently, so it was time to replace the little suckers.
I did a bit of reading on line and figured that the best thing to do was to replace the old bulbs with LEDs - they supposedly last for much longer. Although given the way I am falling apart, a new set of old fashioned bulbs might well outlast me.
I bought a set of LEDs online, and they arrived from the UK within a few days. Hoorah - I could rip the dash out and once again see how fast I was going at night.
Just one small problem - in "modern" cars, the bulbs sit in a socket, and the socket screws into the instrument panel. It's been a long time since I pulled a car to bits, so this was all new to me. In the old days, you just screwed the bulb in and that was it. However, it looks like bulbs have shrunk quite a bit during the intervening years, so you need the socket to avoid smashing the tiny little bulb when installing it.
And guess what? The LED lights need a different socket to the old style bulbs - aaaarrrrrggghhh! That's an LED socket below by the way - it has a big fat dish in it to accept an LED.
So I got my bulbs. But the old bulbs were green and the new ones were clear - what to make of that?
Thankfully, the old bloke in the shop didn't laugh out loud at my stupidity - he carefully lifted a bit of the green covering to show that it was a clear bulb covered in a green condom. Like the ones above.
Of course I should have bought some condoms as well, because when I pulled the blown lights out, I found that bits of the old condoms had welded to the lights over the years. I managed to refit two complete condoms and one partly torn one. I'm afraid some of the lighty bits are going to leak out and my speedo will get pregnant.
And how do you fit a bulb condom?
Funnily enough, exactly the same as a normal franger. Whilst I stuffed up getting them off, I managed to roll them on in a few seconds flat. And the bloody things are a damned sight smaller than the old fella. I've lost none of my touch.
All of this took a fair bit of stuffing around. The dash has been off and on four times this week. The first effort took me 90 minutes. The last effort took a bit over 15 - see, I can learn. I even remembered to test that the lights worked before screwing everything back together.
I now also have a packet of LEDs - unused. When these globes blow in 10 years time, I'll never be able to find them, and I'll have to go through all this crap again.
I'm talking about fiddly little bulbs that light up your car dashboard and things like that. The last bulb in my instrument panel gave up the ghost recently, so it was time to replace the little suckers.
I did a bit of reading on line and figured that the best thing to do was to replace the old bulbs with LEDs - they supposedly last for much longer. Although given the way I am falling apart, a new set of old fashioned bulbs might well outlast me.
I bought a set of LEDs online, and they arrived from the UK within a few days. Hoorah - I could rip the dash out and once again see how fast I was going at night.
Just one small problem - in "modern" cars, the bulbs sit in a socket, and the socket screws into the instrument panel. It's been a long time since I pulled a car to bits, so this was all new to me. In the old days, you just screwed the bulb in and that was it. However, it looks like bulbs have shrunk quite a bit during the intervening years, so you need the socket to avoid smashing the tiny little bulb when installing it.
And guess what? The LED lights need a different socket to the old style bulbs - aaaarrrrrggghhh! That's an LED socket below by the way - it has a big fat dish in it to accept an LED.
Since I couldn't afford to wait for a set of sockets to arrive from overseas, I popped down to my nearest auto store and bought some bulbs. I made sure I pulled a socket out (and the bulb) before turning up with it, as I've discovered that manuals no longer tell you what part number to ask for. That really annoys me. When I had lights blow on older cars, I could front up at the parts shop and ask for a WY8904C-8 and they'd go and find some for me - and I knew what to ask for as the manual had a table of parts in there for these sorts of things. The bloke in the parts shop said it's a way of forcing you to get all your stuff via a dealer.
So I got my bulbs. But the old bulbs were green and the new ones were clear - what to make of that?
Thankfully, the old bloke in the shop didn't laugh out loud at my stupidity - he carefully lifted a bit of the green covering to show that it was a clear bulb covered in a green condom. Like the ones above.
Of course I should have bought some condoms as well, because when I pulled the blown lights out, I found that bits of the old condoms had welded to the lights over the years. I managed to refit two complete condoms and one partly torn one. I'm afraid some of the lighty bits are going to leak out and my speedo will get pregnant.
And how do you fit a bulb condom?
Funnily enough, exactly the same as a normal franger. Whilst I stuffed up getting them off, I managed to roll them on in a few seconds flat. And the bloody things are a damned sight smaller than the old fella. I've lost none of my touch.
All of this took a fair bit of stuffing around. The dash has been off and on four times this week. The first effort took me 90 minutes. The last effort took a bit over 15 - see, I can learn. I even remembered to test that the lights worked before screwing everything back together.
I now also have a packet of LEDs - unused. When these globes blow in 10 years time, I'll never be able to find them, and I'll have to go through all this crap again.
Tuesday, 26 February 2013
More pain for Bruce
Where was I? Ah yes, devouring the delicious tea cake that I made for dessert tonight.
And so begins another cooking rant.
I have grown fonder of cakes as I have gotten older. I think I was put off them by some pretty dry and ordinary specimens that I was presented with at smoko when working in shearing sheds in my school and uni days. I know the CWA has created a reputational idea of farmer's wives being great cooks - but sadly, it wasn't always so. Some were fantastic cooks - they would have put many a chef to shame - but others made boarding school food look good.
If my kids had their way, all we'd eat around here would be chocolate cake. I don't mind a good chocky cake, but I do need some variety from time to time - hence the desire to make the odd tea cake every now and then.
The first thing you need to know about tea cake is that it does not contain tea. I presume it's meant to be eaten with a cup of tea, or for morning or afternoon tea. I am yet to read a recipe that explains the meaning behind the name. So stop worrying if you don't have any tea in the cupboard.
Every cake recipe requires you to cream butter and sugar together. Some even mention that the butter needs to be softened. Now here is my gripe - how soft is "soft"? For those of us that didn't go to catering school where chefs yelled at us all day about the different stages of butter softness, stating that it needs to be "soft" is a bit useless. Does it mean you can cut it with something slightly blunter than a cleaver, or does it mean that it's about to collapse into a puddle under its own weight?
Here's what I'd like to see. It's easy to buy thermometers with probes these days. How about writing a recipe that says, "Allow the butter to soften to a point where the internal temperature of the slab is 12 degrees" - or whatever the appropriate temperature is. Alternatively, give us a table of softening times for a range of ambient temperatures. That is, if the temperature in your kitchen is 25 degrees, you need to take the butter out of the fridge 22 minutes before using it.
You know it makes sense. If recipes were written by blokes, they'd include useful technical information like this.
This cake is really bloody simple.
125gm butter - chopped
1/2 cup firmly packed sugar (don't ask me how much that weighs)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Throw the butter, vanilla and sugar in your mixer and mix it for 6-10 minutes on high speed. I find that is what it takes for it to become "light and fluffy". Again - a gripe. What the fripping heck is "light and fluffy"? It's ok if you've spent 4 years with a chef yelling at you that your mix is not yet "light and fluffy", but the rest of us need a bit more to go on. Hence my advice is to beat the living daylights out of it for at least 6 minutes. I set the timer on the microwave to make sure it gets beaten for long enough.
You've now got 6-10 minutes to do the following:
Hunt around in the cupboard and find a 20cm springform tin. I broke my 20cm tin, so I use a smaller one - it makes no difference. Grease the inside with margarine, slap a circle of baking paper on the bottom and strips of baking paper to the sides and put it down somewhere where you won't trip over it. It helps if you only grease the inside of the tin - it gets a bit slippery if you do the outside as well.
Turn the oven to 180 degrees and get your shelves in the right places. Nothing worse than having to rearrange stinking hot shelves when you need to toss the cake into the oven.
Find two apples and peel them. Quarter them, chop out the cores and then thinly slice the quarters. Remember - you'll be eating this cake with a spoon. You don't want slices so thick that you need a serrated knife to cut through them. Make the slices thin. Not paper thin - just thin. If you can't cut them with a spoon when cooked, they're too bloody thick - is that clear enough for you?
What sort of apples? The recipe says royal gala, but I love pink ladies. So I used pink ladies (that's all we had in the house). Does it matter what sort of apple you use? Dunno. I suspect the only reason some recipes tell you to use a certain apple is that is all the cook had to use when they first made the cake - and they stuck with that variety. If the recipe said that the acid content, sugar balance, cell structure and fruit density of a particular variety made it the best type for certain recipes, then I'd give it some credence. But I hate using one apple over another without an explanation why.
Hell, you're running out of time here. Grab your sliced apple, find the cake tin and either gently lay the apples slices in the bottom in a beautiful pattern, or toss the whole lot in and give it a shake until the bottom is evenly coated in two layers of apple slices. Whatever works for you. I am not the neat kind. I don't "do" decorating. I do cooking and eating.
Pour a few teaspoons of golden syrup over the apples. I used 3 generous teaspoons tonight. I could have used more. But 3 was a good start.
Find 2 eggs. If your sugar and butter have been beating for at least 6 minutes and now look "light and fluffy", crack an egg and toss it in to the mixer. Remember to take it out of the shell first. Let it beat for another minute or so, then chuck in the other egg. Give it at least another minute - it has to incorporate properly.
Last bits.
Turn off the mixer, remove the bowl and tip in the following through a sieve:
- 1 cup self raising flour
- 1/2 cup plain flour
Pour in 3/4 cup of milk.
Mix the whole lot up with a spatula or spoon until it's the consistency of wet cement. Don't over mix it and for heaven's sake, don't use the bloody mixmaster - that will kill it.
Tip the batter over the apples and bake for 35-40 minutes. It took closer to 55 in my crap oven. Stick a skewer in the middle to see if its cooked - if any cake sticks to the skewer, give it another 5 minutes.
When it's done, pull the tin out of the oven and let it stand for 10 minutes. Then remove the spring form side and baking paper and invert it onto a plate. Invert means "tip upside down". Remember to put the plate on top of the cake before you tip it upside down. The apple bits will then be on top. You can eat it once you've remembered to remove the last bit of baking paper.
Eat with whipped cream or ice cream. And a pot of tea, if that takes your fancy. Or even coffee. See if I care.
And so begins another cooking rant.
I have grown fonder of cakes as I have gotten older. I think I was put off them by some pretty dry and ordinary specimens that I was presented with at smoko when working in shearing sheds in my school and uni days. I know the CWA has created a reputational idea of farmer's wives being great cooks - but sadly, it wasn't always so. Some were fantastic cooks - they would have put many a chef to shame - but others made boarding school food look good.
If my kids had their way, all we'd eat around here would be chocolate cake. I don't mind a good chocky cake, but I do need some variety from time to time - hence the desire to make the odd tea cake every now and then.
The first thing you need to know about tea cake is that it does not contain tea. I presume it's meant to be eaten with a cup of tea, or for morning or afternoon tea. I am yet to read a recipe that explains the meaning behind the name. So stop worrying if you don't have any tea in the cupboard.
Every cake recipe requires you to cream butter and sugar together. Some even mention that the butter needs to be softened. Now here is my gripe - how soft is "soft"? For those of us that didn't go to catering school where chefs yelled at us all day about the different stages of butter softness, stating that it needs to be "soft" is a bit useless. Does it mean you can cut it with something slightly blunter than a cleaver, or does it mean that it's about to collapse into a puddle under its own weight?
Here's what I'd like to see. It's easy to buy thermometers with probes these days. How about writing a recipe that says, "Allow the butter to soften to a point where the internal temperature of the slab is 12 degrees" - or whatever the appropriate temperature is. Alternatively, give us a table of softening times for a range of ambient temperatures. That is, if the temperature in your kitchen is 25 degrees, you need to take the butter out of the fridge 22 minutes before using it.
You know it makes sense. If recipes were written by blokes, they'd include useful technical information like this.
This cake is really bloody simple.
125gm butter - chopped
1/2 cup firmly packed sugar (don't ask me how much that weighs)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Throw the butter, vanilla and sugar in your mixer and mix it for 6-10 minutes on high speed. I find that is what it takes for it to become "light and fluffy". Again - a gripe. What the fripping heck is "light and fluffy"? It's ok if you've spent 4 years with a chef yelling at you that your mix is not yet "light and fluffy", but the rest of us need a bit more to go on. Hence my advice is to beat the living daylights out of it for at least 6 minutes. I set the timer on the microwave to make sure it gets beaten for long enough.
You've now got 6-10 minutes to do the following:
Hunt around in the cupboard and find a 20cm springform tin. I broke my 20cm tin, so I use a smaller one - it makes no difference. Grease the inside with margarine, slap a circle of baking paper on the bottom and strips of baking paper to the sides and put it down somewhere where you won't trip over it. It helps if you only grease the inside of the tin - it gets a bit slippery if you do the outside as well.
Turn the oven to 180 degrees and get your shelves in the right places. Nothing worse than having to rearrange stinking hot shelves when you need to toss the cake into the oven.
Find two apples and peel them. Quarter them, chop out the cores and then thinly slice the quarters. Remember - you'll be eating this cake with a spoon. You don't want slices so thick that you need a serrated knife to cut through them. Make the slices thin. Not paper thin - just thin. If you can't cut them with a spoon when cooked, they're too bloody thick - is that clear enough for you?
What sort of apples? The recipe says royal gala, but I love pink ladies. So I used pink ladies (that's all we had in the house). Does it matter what sort of apple you use? Dunno. I suspect the only reason some recipes tell you to use a certain apple is that is all the cook had to use when they first made the cake - and they stuck with that variety. If the recipe said that the acid content, sugar balance, cell structure and fruit density of a particular variety made it the best type for certain recipes, then I'd give it some credence. But I hate using one apple over another without an explanation why.
Hell, you're running out of time here. Grab your sliced apple, find the cake tin and either gently lay the apples slices in the bottom in a beautiful pattern, or toss the whole lot in and give it a shake until the bottom is evenly coated in two layers of apple slices. Whatever works for you. I am not the neat kind. I don't "do" decorating. I do cooking and eating.
Pour a few teaspoons of golden syrup over the apples. I used 3 generous teaspoons tonight. I could have used more. But 3 was a good start.
Find 2 eggs. If your sugar and butter have been beating for at least 6 minutes and now look "light and fluffy", crack an egg and toss it in to the mixer. Remember to take it out of the shell first. Let it beat for another minute or so, then chuck in the other egg. Give it at least another minute - it has to incorporate properly.
Last bits.
Turn off the mixer, remove the bowl and tip in the following through a sieve:
- 1 cup self raising flour
- 1/2 cup plain flour
Pour in 3/4 cup of milk.
Mix the whole lot up with a spatula or spoon until it's the consistency of wet cement. Don't over mix it and for heaven's sake, don't use the bloody mixmaster - that will kill it.
Tip the batter over the apples and bake for 35-40 minutes. It took closer to 55 in my crap oven. Stick a skewer in the middle to see if its cooked - if any cake sticks to the skewer, give it another 5 minutes.
When it's done, pull the tin out of the oven and let it stand for 10 minutes. Then remove the spring form side and baking paper and invert it onto a plate. Invert means "tip upside down". Remember to put the plate on top of the cake before you tip it upside down. The apple bits will then be on top. You can eat it once you've remembered to remove the last bit of baking paper.
Eat with whipped cream or ice cream. And a pot of tea, if that takes your fancy. Or even coffee. See if I care.
My first pavlova
What can I say? Sorry Bruce - you'll just have to suck it up.
Pavlova is something that I ate a lot of as a kid, but it fell off the menu about 20 years ago and I've probably had one about every 3 years since. I had an auntie that was a wiz at making them - she lived on a small farm just outside the town I lived in as a little kid, and she kept chooks. And ducks. And geese. However, only the chook eggs went into the pavlova. I'm now wondering whether you can make pavlova from duck eggs? And no, I'm not going to try. That was just my brain meandering across the lupin paddocks of my childhood.
The chooks were certainly under pressure to produce eggs - as soon as they started faltering, I would be dispatched to the chook shed with an axe and we'd have chicken casserole for dinner. That made a change from rabbit casserole - although my uncle could never tell the difference if he'd spent a few too many hours at the pub. I was hopeless at beheading the chooks - I was paranoid about losing a few fingers in the process, so more than one half-headless chook had to be chased around by a 12 year old with an axe. And my bloody uncle was too lazy to sharpen his axes. I much preferred being sent to the office to collect the 10-.22 from the gun cupboard or to the barn to collect the rabbit traps and then being told to thin the rabbit population.
Why cook the rabbits and chooks in a casserole?
One - they were pretty tough and stringy when they went into the pot, so they really needed slow cooking. The "tough" cuts of meat that we get at the supermarket these days are nothing like the dry, stringy inedible cuts we had to put up with 35 years ago. It was genuine peasant food - bloody awful bits of meat cooked long and slow to make it palatable.
Two - the bits of lead that I didn't extract from the rabbit before it went into the pot would fall out and end up in the bottom of the casserole where they were easy to find.
Three - my uncle and auntie were pretty bloody lazy. They took the easiest option with everything in life, and one pot casseroles are wonderfully easy to do if you cooked them 5 times a week.
There's a thought - I had a great childhood because I spent a lot of time with my lazy relatives. Most branches of the family tree got the hard working genetics. One branch got stuff all. That meant I got to do lots of fun stuff that they couldn't be bothered doing. Paddock needs plowing? Send the kid out on the tractor. Dinner needs to be put on the table? Send the kid out with the rifle/fishing rod/yabby traps. Uncle needs collecting from the pub? Send the kid out in the ute. Trees need trimming? Find the kid the chainsaw. Blackberries need pruning? Send the kid out with a 5 litre drum of petrol, a pile of newspapers and a box of matches. I'd be running (or driving) around the farm at 14 years old shooting or setting fire to things whilst auntie would be napping on the couch in front of the cricket. With a glass of sherry or three. And then I'd have to drive to the pub to get uncle home for dinner. That would take a while as I'd have to stick around in the pub for a few beers as uncle liked a chat and was very hard to extract from the front bar.
Another good point about casseroles is that they are very forgiving of being overcooked. It didn't matter if it took me two beers or 6 to extract uncle from the pub - the casserole wasn't going to be burnt by the time we got home.
In case you are wondering about the dangers of drink driving as a kid, just remember that the current population of the "town" I am talking about is less than 60. Not 60,000. 60. I think it's grown a bit since I was last there.
Anyway - pavlova. Needless to say, I was also the one sent out to the chook shed to collect the eggs and to sort the rotten ones from the fresh. I should mention that uncle was pretty blase about collecting the eggs, so screening them was absolutely essential.
If there was a surfeit of eggs, auntie would whip up some enormous pavlovas. She had a huge oven, and for the time, a top of the line mixmaster. Looking back, I think she specialised in pavlova because it was so easy - separate eggs, whip whites with sugar for 10 minutes and then bake at 150 degrees. Any kids in the vicinity would then be given the job of whipping the cream, slicing the fruit and decorating it. At that point, auntie would retire to her favourite chair for another glass of sherry.
Which gets me to Bruce. I whipped up some chocolate pots the other day that required more egg yolks than whites, so I made some mini-pavlovas with the left over egg whites. My first ever. Piece of cake. Baked them for 30 minutes at 150 degrees and they turned out beautifully. So beautifully, that most were gone soon after one of the kids opened the oven and discovered them cooling off. You should try it some time.
Pavlova is something that I ate a lot of as a kid, but it fell off the menu about 20 years ago and I've probably had one about every 3 years since. I had an auntie that was a wiz at making them - she lived on a small farm just outside the town I lived in as a little kid, and she kept chooks. And ducks. And geese. However, only the chook eggs went into the pavlova. I'm now wondering whether you can make pavlova from duck eggs? And no, I'm not going to try. That was just my brain meandering across the lupin paddocks of my childhood.
The chooks were certainly under pressure to produce eggs - as soon as they started faltering, I would be dispatched to the chook shed with an axe and we'd have chicken casserole for dinner. That made a change from rabbit casserole - although my uncle could never tell the difference if he'd spent a few too many hours at the pub. I was hopeless at beheading the chooks - I was paranoid about losing a few fingers in the process, so more than one half-headless chook had to be chased around by a 12 year old with an axe. And my bloody uncle was too lazy to sharpen his axes. I much preferred being sent to the office to collect the 10-.22 from the gun cupboard or to the barn to collect the rabbit traps and then being told to thin the rabbit population.
Why cook the rabbits and chooks in a casserole?
One - they were pretty tough and stringy when they went into the pot, so they really needed slow cooking. The "tough" cuts of meat that we get at the supermarket these days are nothing like the dry, stringy inedible cuts we had to put up with 35 years ago. It was genuine peasant food - bloody awful bits of meat cooked long and slow to make it palatable.
Two - the bits of lead that I didn't extract from the rabbit before it went into the pot would fall out and end up in the bottom of the casserole where they were easy to find.
Three - my uncle and auntie were pretty bloody lazy. They took the easiest option with everything in life, and one pot casseroles are wonderfully easy to do if you cooked them 5 times a week.
There's a thought - I had a great childhood because I spent a lot of time with my lazy relatives. Most branches of the family tree got the hard working genetics. One branch got stuff all. That meant I got to do lots of fun stuff that they couldn't be bothered doing. Paddock needs plowing? Send the kid out on the tractor. Dinner needs to be put on the table? Send the kid out with the rifle/fishing rod/yabby traps. Uncle needs collecting from the pub? Send the kid out in the ute. Trees need trimming? Find the kid the chainsaw. Blackberries need pruning? Send the kid out with a 5 litre drum of petrol, a pile of newspapers and a box of matches. I'd be running (or driving) around the farm at 14 years old shooting or setting fire to things whilst auntie would be napping on the couch in front of the cricket. With a glass of sherry or three. And then I'd have to drive to the pub to get uncle home for dinner. That would take a while as I'd have to stick around in the pub for a few beers as uncle liked a chat and was very hard to extract from the front bar.
Another good point about casseroles is that they are very forgiving of being overcooked. It didn't matter if it took me two beers or 6 to extract uncle from the pub - the casserole wasn't going to be burnt by the time we got home.
In case you are wondering about the dangers of drink driving as a kid, just remember that the current population of the "town" I am talking about is less than 60. Not 60,000. 60. I think it's grown a bit since I was last there.
Anyway - pavlova. Needless to say, I was also the one sent out to the chook shed to collect the eggs and to sort the rotten ones from the fresh. I should mention that uncle was pretty blase about collecting the eggs, so screening them was absolutely essential.
If there was a surfeit of eggs, auntie would whip up some enormous pavlovas. She had a huge oven, and for the time, a top of the line mixmaster. Looking back, I think she specialised in pavlova because it was so easy - separate eggs, whip whites with sugar for 10 minutes and then bake at 150 degrees. Any kids in the vicinity would then be given the job of whipping the cream, slicing the fruit and decorating it. At that point, auntie would retire to her favourite chair for another glass of sherry.
Which gets me to Bruce. I whipped up some chocolate pots the other day that required more egg yolks than whites, so I made some mini-pavlovas with the left over egg whites. My first ever. Piece of cake. Baked them for 30 minutes at 150 degrees and they turned out beautifully. So beautifully, that most were gone soon after one of the kids opened the oven and discovered them cooling off. You should try it some time.
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Another stupid recipe
I got a craving earlier this week for jelly cakes - something I haven't had since I was a kid. I remembered them as a cube of sponge cake dipped in red jelly and then rolled in shredded coconut. Sort of like a lamington, but with a jelly coating instead of chocolate.
I dug up a recipe and bought the ingredients to make some mango jelly cakes.
The recipe was a disaster as far as being easy to follow went. There are three parts to it:
- making the cakes
- making the jelly
- making mango cream to go into the finished product
I like to prioritise my cooking so that things are done in the most sensible order. To me, that order is:
- make the jelly (because it takes time to cool down enough before you can dip the cakes into it)
- make the cakes
- make the mango cream
It got the whole thing arse about, and instead of separating the ingredients for each step, it mashed them altogether into a confusing jumble.
Here's my easy way of doing it.
The jelly
But a tin of mango and a packet of mango jelly.
When you open the tin, it should contain 4 mango cheeks. Drain them and throw all four cheeks lot into a blender or food processor. You can keep the syrup if you like.
Boil 1.25 cups of water, pour it into a bowl and throw the mango jelly into it. Stir to dissolve the jelly. Put a sieve over the bowl and force HALF your blended mango through it. This will ensure you don't have any lumpy or stingy bits in the jelly. If you like sweet jelly, pour in some syrup. You will have left over jelly afterwards that you can set in the fridge. Mix your sieved mango and jelly together and stick it in the fridge.
You don't want the jelly to set hard - you want it to set slightly so that it's not all runny and liquidy, but just a bit thickened.
The cakes.
Turn your oven on and set to 180 degrees.
Go find a friand tray and grease the holes with butter. Don't use margarine - this batter sticks with margarine.
Stick 10gm of butter into a small bowl and pour 2 tablespoons of hot water in as well.
You can do this next part with an electric hand mixer or a food processor with beaters. I used a hand mixer.
Crack two eggs into a bowl. Beat them for 10 minutes with the hand mixer. Yes, that's a long time to stand around beating eggs - this is why you could use a food processor instead. I let one of the kids take over at the 5 minute mark and ended up with egg sprayed over half the kitchen.
After 10 minutes, slowly tip 1/3 cup of sugar into the eggs as you are beating them. Don't bung it all in at once - do it slowly. Continue beating until the sugar has dissolved.
Remove the beaters. Get a sifter and sift 1/2 cup of self raising flour and 2 teaspoons of cornflour into your egg/sugar mix. Fold that into the egg/sugar without beating the living daylights out of it.
Fold in the butter/water mix I told you about earlier. Don't beat the crap out of the batter! Be gentle and don't over mix.
Put a spoonful of the mix into each friand hole. The mix will rise, so don't fill the holes level with the tray or it will overflow a lot. Fill to below the lip.
Bake for 12 minutes. Or if you have a crap oven like me, back for 16 minutes.
When you put them in the oven, find a wire rack. Put a sheet of baking paper on top of it. Leave it on the benchtop.
After 12 or 16 minutes, pull your cakes out of the oven and immediately tip them onto the baking paper on the wire rack. Or, if you used margarine to grease the tray, use a knife to lever them out.
Dipping the cakes
If your fridge is like mine, and you were pretty quick at making the cakes, your jelly won't be quite ready yet. Check it anyway. Bugger off for a while and mow the lawn or something. Let the cakes cool and the jelly set. Just don't fall asleep on the couch. If the jelly sets, you're stuffed.
When you are ready, grab a flat bowl and put lots of shredded coconut in it. Give the cakes a good dipping in the jelly - if you let the jelly set too much like I did, they won't absorb enough jelly. But not too much dipping, or they will disintegrate.
Roll them in the coconut. I use my right hand to dip and put them in the bowl, and my left hand (which is dry and clean of jelly) to get more coconut out of the coconut container and sprinkle on the top side of the cakes - because you never put enough coconut in first time.
Put the finished cakes on a tray and put them in the fridge for half an hour. DON'T START EATING THEM NOW. They'll be better in half an hour. Be patient. Stick the left over mango jelly in the fridge to set properly.
The cream
Clean your beaters, find another bowl and whip 300ml of cream. Find the other half of the mango you pulverised and stir it through the cream. You can also finely chop half the mango instead of blending it if you want a chunkier cream. The mango cream is delicious. DO NOT EAT ALL THE CREAM BEFORE THE CAKES ARE READY.
Finishing them off
Chop the cakes in half, bung some mango cream in the middle and put the two halves back together. Then scoff. I find chopping them in half to be really difficult - mine just don't want to cut cleanly. You can always just spread a dollop of cream on top and eat them that way. When you run out of cakes, eat the left over mango jelly. With mango cream on top if you like.
Afterwards
Ride 132 miles to work all that off.
I dug up a recipe and bought the ingredients to make some mango jelly cakes.
The recipe was a disaster as far as being easy to follow went. There are three parts to it:
- making the cakes
- making the jelly
- making mango cream to go into the finished product
I like to prioritise my cooking so that things are done in the most sensible order. To me, that order is:
- make the jelly (because it takes time to cool down enough before you can dip the cakes into it)
- make the cakes
- make the mango cream
It got the whole thing arse about, and instead of separating the ingredients for each step, it mashed them altogether into a confusing jumble.
Here's my easy way of doing it.
The jelly
But a tin of mango and a packet of mango jelly.
When you open the tin, it should contain 4 mango cheeks. Drain them and throw all four cheeks lot into a blender or food processor. You can keep the syrup if you like.
Boil 1.25 cups of water, pour it into a bowl and throw the mango jelly into it. Stir to dissolve the jelly. Put a sieve over the bowl and force HALF your blended mango through it. This will ensure you don't have any lumpy or stingy bits in the jelly. If you like sweet jelly, pour in some syrup. You will have left over jelly afterwards that you can set in the fridge. Mix your sieved mango and jelly together and stick it in the fridge.
You don't want the jelly to set hard - you want it to set slightly so that it's not all runny and liquidy, but just a bit thickened.
The cakes.
Turn your oven on and set to 180 degrees.
Go find a friand tray and grease the holes with butter. Don't use margarine - this batter sticks with margarine.
Stick 10gm of butter into a small bowl and pour 2 tablespoons of hot water in as well.
You can do this next part with an electric hand mixer or a food processor with beaters. I used a hand mixer.
Crack two eggs into a bowl. Beat them for 10 minutes with the hand mixer. Yes, that's a long time to stand around beating eggs - this is why you could use a food processor instead. I let one of the kids take over at the 5 minute mark and ended up with egg sprayed over half the kitchen.
After 10 minutes, slowly tip 1/3 cup of sugar into the eggs as you are beating them. Don't bung it all in at once - do it slowly. Continue beating until the sugar has dissolved.
Remove the beaters. Get a sifter and sift 1/2 cup of self raising flour and 2 teaspoons of cornflour into your egg/sugar mix. Fold that into the egg/sugar without beating the living daylights out of it.
Fold in the butter/water mix I told you about earlier. Don't beat the crap out of the batter! Be gentle and don't over mix.
Put a spoonful of the mix into each friand hole. The mix will rise, so don't fill the holes level with the tray or it will overflow a lot. Fill to below the lip.
Bake for 12 minutes. Or if you have a crap oven like me, back for 16 minutes.
When you put them in the oven, find a wire rack. Put a sheet of baking paper on top of it. Leave it on the benchtop.
After 12 or 16 minutes, pull your cakes out of the oven and immediately tip them onto the baking paper on the wire rack. Or, if you used margarine to grease the tray, use a knife to lever them out.
Dipping the cakes
If your fridge is like mine, and you were pretty quick at making the cakes, your jelly won't be quite ready yet. Check it anyway. Bugger off for a while and mow the lawn or something. Let the cakes cool and the jelly set. Just don't fall asleep on the couch. If the jelly sets, you're stuffed.
When you are ready, grab a flat bowl and put lots of shredded coconut in it. Give the cakes a good dipping in the jelly - if you let the jelly set too much like I did, they won't absorb enough jelly. But not too much dipping, or they will disintegrate.
Roll them in the coconut. I use my right hand to dip and put them in the bowl, and my left hand (which is dry and clean of jelly) to get more coconut out of the coconut container and sprinkle on the top side of the cakes - because you never put enough coconut in first time.
Put the finished cakes on a tray and put them in the fridge for half an hour. DON'T START EATING THEM NOW. They'll be better in half an hour. Be patient. Stick the left over mango jelly in the fridge to set properly.
The cream
Clean your beaters, find another bowl and whip 300ml of cream. Find the other half of the mango you pulverised and stir it through the cream. You can also finely chop half the mango instead of blending it if you want a chunkier cream. The mango cream is delicious. DO NOT EAT ALL THE CREAM BEFORE THE CAKES ARE READY.
Finishing them off
Chop the cakes in half, bung some mango cream in the middle and put the two halves back together. Then scoff. I find chopping them in half to be really difficult - mine just don't want to cut cleanly. You can always just spread a dollop of cream on top and eat them that way. When you run out of cakes, eat the left over mango jelly. With mango cream on top if you like.
Afterwards
Ride 132 miles to work all that off.
Green fatcats want to grind the faces of the Spanish poor
Thanks to Bishop Hill for the link:
The clanger for me in the source article is this:
Imagine that - solar and wind subsidies push up electricity prices to unaffordable levels.
Foreign investors in renewable energy projects in Spain have hired lawyers to prepare potential international legal action against the Spanish government over new rules they say break their contracts.
It is unclear how much claims might be worth, but international funds have more than 13 billion euros ($17 billion) of renewable energy assets in Spain and say that the government has reneged on the terms of their investment.
The Spanish Parliament approved a law on Thursday that cuts subsidies for alternative energy technologies, backtracking on its push for green power.
The clanger for me in the source article is this:
The problem was that the cost of the subsidies were not passed on fully to consumers because that would have pushed prices to unprecedented highs.
Imagine that - solar and wind subsidies push up electricity prices to unaffordable levels.
Great literature hits the shelves
Che! The Lost Diaries is now available in a dead tree edition.
As I have given up buying dead tree books for Lent, I'll have to wait for the Kindle edition to hit the intertubes. But if you are still buying bits of paper glued together, get your hands on a copy now.
As I have given up buying dead tree books for Lent, I'll have to wait for the Kindle edition to hit the intertubes. But if you are still buying bits of paper glued together, get your hands on a copy now.
Thursday, 14 February 2013
Another day, another trio of retards
Being an equal opportunity kind of guy, I'm happy to heap abuse on stupid people no matter where they are or what they are doing.
Stupid person 1 - the cyclist who blasted through all the red traffic lights in Pyrmont this morning. I watched him do 1-2-3-4 in succession, amazed that he wasn't collected by a car as he shot through each intersection without so much as a sideways glance. When he reached the Pyrmont Bridge, he proceeded to fang it across the bridge, ducking and weaving through the small number of pedestrians on the bridge at that time of day.
You might be wondering how I saw all this. Simple. The lights went green not long after he shot through the first three, and because I am reasonably quick, I managed to keep him in sight all the way to the bridge. If someone had taken him out, I would have ridden over to him lying on the ground and given him a mouthful.
Stupid person 2 - I'm riding along and I notice that there's a big tailback of cars from an intersection where I've never seen more than 5 or 6 cars queued at peak hour. The lights go green way up ahead and the traffic hardly moves. I've got no idea what's going on, so when the lights go red and the traffic stops moving, I filter up to the front.
There's a broken down car in the left hand lane, right on the stop line. A sorry looking teenage girl is behind the wheel. She's done the right thing - hazards are on and she's calling a tow truck. The lights go green and off I go - and the moron behind her starts honking at her. Talk about clueless and stupid.
Captain moron of the week - I'm blasting down a hill at 60km/h. At the bottom, there's a big lane of green paint to show motorists bikes are coming through, and a stop sign to prevent cars from taking out high speed cyclists.
Ute approaches the stop sign, and just rolls right through it right in front of 4 of us. Brake levers are grabbed, tyres start smoking and we manage to slip and slide around the ute. The ute pulls over. I do a U turn and go back and give the driver a VERY LOUD assessment of her driving ability (using lots of words I never use in front of the kids).
She's on the phone. She doesn't remove the phone from her ear during my diatribe. She cares not a whit that she just put the lives of others in danger - she's on a very important call to someone or other. She doesn't care that she drove through a stop sign, or that she was driving whilst yapping on her mobile. As a final insult, she winds up her window on me.
It's at times like these, I wish I was carrying a pair of sidecutters with me. I'd simply walk around the car and snip the valve off all four tyres - that would make her day.
I curse myself for not grabbing her phone or car keys and hurling them into the bay.
About an hour later, I started to wonder if she was very pissed or totally stoned - she was way too calm and out of it. Definitely should have tossed her keys into six feet of murky water.
Stupid person 1 - the cyclist who blasted through all the red traffic lights in Pyrmont this morning. I watched him do 1-2-3-4 in succession, amazed that he wasn't collected by a car as he shot through each intersection without so much as a sideways glance. When he reached the Pyrmont Bridge, he proceeded to fang it across the bridge, ducking and weaving through the small number of pedestrians on the bridge at that time of day.
You might be wondering how I saw all this. Simple. The lights went green not long after he shot through the first three, and because I am reasonably quick, I managed to keep him in sight all the way to the bridge. If someone had taken him out, I would have ridden over to him lying on the ground and given him a mouthful.
Stupid person 2 - I'm riding along and I notice that there's a big tailback of cars from an intersection where I've never seen more than 5 or 6 cars queued at peak hour. The lights go green way up ahead and the traffic hardly moves. I've got no idea what's going on, so when the lights go red and the traffic stops moving, I filter up to the front.
There's a broken down car in the left hand lane, right on the stop line. A sorry looking teenage girl is behind the wheel. She's done the right thing - hazards are on and she's calling a tow truck. The lights go green and off I go - and the moron behind her starts honking at her. Talk about clueless and stupid.
Captain moron of the week - I'm blasting down a hill at 60km/h. At the bottom, there's a big lane of green paint to show motorists bikes are coming through, and a stop sign to prevent cars from taking out high speed cyclists.
Ute approaches the stop sign, and just rolls right through it right in front of 4 of us. Brake levers are grabbed, tyres start smoking and we manage to slip and slide around the ute. The ute pulls over. I do a U turn and go back and give the driver a VERY LOUD assessment of her driving ability (using lots of words I never use in front of the kids).
She's on the phone. She doesn't remove the phone from her ear during my diatribe. She cares not a whit that she just put the lives of others in danger - she's on a very important call to someone or other. She doesn't care that she drove through a stop sign, or that she was driving whilst yapping on her mobile. As a final insult, she winds up her window on me.
It's at times like these, I wish I was carrying a pair of sidecutters with me. I'd simply walk around the car and snip the valve off all four tyres - that would make her day.
I curse myself for not grabbing her phone or car keys and hurling them into the bay.
About an hour later, I started to wonder if she was very pissed or totally stoned - she was way too calm and out of it. Definitely should have tossed her keys into six feet of murky water.
Saturday, 9 February 2013
The inaccuracy - it burns
"Standing stock still, her finger suspended over the trigger, she stares through the sight of her Dragunov rifle". So says the SMH today.
Let's have a closer look at the "Dragunov".
Hmm. Looks awfully like the FN L1A1 SLR that I carried many years ago.
Here's a Dragunov by comparison.
This simple inaccuracy makes me question the whole story.
By the way, sticking a scope on an SLR no more makes it a sniper rifle than sticking fat tyres on a taxi makes it a race car.
Mise en place - more
Since the body is not up to riding this morning, there is only one solution - bake a chocolate cake!
I'm not going to provide the recipe. Instead, I'm going to write about prep.
Junior keeps talking about moving out of home at the end of the year. Before he goes, I'm trying to show him a few things so that his new flatmates won't boot him out after two months. One of those is keeping the kitchen in a usable state.
See, he has this habit of getting hungry around midnight, and his favourite stomach filling night time snack is mee-goreng with bacon and fried egg on top. Whatever. For all I know, that could be a culinary masterpiece that's about to sweep the planet.
I can deal with his weird selection of food. What I can't deal with is walking into the kitchen at 0600hrs to find grease encrusted frying pans and plates and pots filling the sink. It drives me nuts, because I discovered long ago that cooking a meal is so much easier if you've cleaned up the kitchen before you start. I can't get over how many people try and cook something without first clearing away any mess in the sink and on the bench tops. Failing to do so is just a recipe for frustration, chaos and disaster. He still hasn't worked out the connection between him making a mess at midnight and me kicking him out of bed 6 hours later to clean it up. He thinks it's very unfair.
So before I do anything these days, I do a quick clean up first.
- empty the worm bin into the worm farm. No point in trying to stuff more food scraps into an already full worm bin. Start with an empty bin, not a full one.
- empty the kitchen bin into the big outside bin. Nothing worse than trying to cram a few empty foam meat trays into an overflowing kitchen bin - and then watching the compacted rubbish slowly expand and the meat trays popping out to land on the floor. Start with an empty rubbish bin
- wash, dry and put away anything left around the kitchen. When I finish prep, I don't want to be looking at a stack of dirty dishes and wondering where I'm going to put my dirty prep stuff. Start with clean bench tops and an empty sink
The cake is now in the oven. As soon as it went in, I cleaned everything up. So now the next person to go into the kitchen will be able to make a meal using a clean slate.
He's a teenager, so of course it will take him 20 years to learn these things for himself.
I'm not going to provide the recipe. Instead, I'm going to write about prep.
Junior keeps talking about moving out of home at the end of the year. Before he goes, I'm trying to show him a few things so that his new flatmates won't boot him out after two months. One of those is keeping the kitchen in a usable state.
See, he has this habit of getting hungry around midnight, and his favourite stomach filling night time snack is mee-goreng with bacon and fried egg on top. Whatever. For all I know, that could be a culinary masterpiece that's about to sweep the planet.
I can deal with his weird selection of food. What I can't deal with is walking into the kitchen at 0600hrs to find grease encrusted frying pans and plates and pots filling the sink. It drives me nuts, because I discovered long ago that cooking a meal is so much easier if you've cleaned up the kitchen before you start. I can't get over how many people try and cook something without first clearing away any mess in the sink and on the bench tops. Failing to do so is just a recipe for frustration, chaos and disaster. He still hasn't worked out the connection between him making a mess at midnight and me kicking him out of bed 6 hours later to clean it up. He thinks it's very unfair.
So before I do anything these days, I do a quick clean up first.
- empty the worm bin into the worm farm. No point in trying to stuff more food scraps into an already full worm bin. Start with an empty bin, not a full one.
- empty the kitchen bin into the big outside bin. Nothing worse than trying to cram a few empty foam meat trays into an overflowing kitchen bin - and then watching the compacted rubbish slowly expand and the meat trays popping out to land on the floor. Start with an empty rubbish bin
- wash, dry and put away anything left around the kitchen. When I finish prep, I don't want to be looking at a stack of dirty dishes and wondering where I'm going to put my dirty prep stuff. Start with clean bench tops and an empty sink
The cake is now in the oven. As soon as it went in, I cleaned everything up. So now the next person to go into the kitchen will be able to make a meal using a clean slate.
He's a teenager, so of course it will take him 20 years to learn these things for himself.
Knackered
When I went to bed last night, I was thinking hard about riding this morning.
The body told me otherwise this morning. I couldn't even lift my legs up to get my feet into a pair of shorts. I had to sit on the edge of the bed to get dressed.
Me thinks I pushed it a little too hard a few times this week.
The body told me otherwise this morning. I couldn't even lift my legs up to get my feet into a pair of shorts. I had to sit on the edge of the bed to get dressed.
Me thinks I pushed it a little too hard a few times this week.
What apps do the fast guys use?
I finally relented last week and installed an app on my phone which tracks me when I go for a ride. The only reason I did it was to get some data on how much climbing I am doing (it's cheaper than buying a GPS) - but after a week of data collecting, I found that it can't tell that the Anzac Bridge goes up and over a body of water. Instead, it thinks I ride on water.
Ah well.
The day after I started using it, emails started appearing from the software maker telling me how good I went the day before. Nifty. It's a daily encouragement to exercise more - the same as having a personal trainer nag you each day to get out and do some sit ups (now there's a thought).
The email also tells you how you did in comparison to everyone else that has recorded their times along particular sections of the route you took. I was stunned when it told me I was in the top 1% on a number of sections, including the hilly bits. When you're as old and big as me, you don't climb anywhere near as well as the skinny young blokes. However, there was the email telling me otherwise.
What gives?
I can think of a few reasons.
First, people aren't riding flat out on my route - it's not a race (even though when you pass a lot of blokes, they turn it into a race). I ride hard - but not "race" hard, which is where you get to the end and fall sideways off your bike because you don't have the energy left to unclip your legs. I don't feel like arriving at the car park at work and then collapsing on the concrete in a gibbering mess. I'm giving it up to 90% rather than 100%, and I reckon a lot of cyclists are content to commute at no more than 70-80% of their potential - it means less sweat to wash off when you get to work.
Second, the really fit and serious guys probably don't bother recording their commutes as they aren't "proper" training rides.
Third, who can be bothered recording their commute every day? Are people that anal about it that they record even the boring and mundane rides?
Fourth, I don't think the pros are using this particular app. Strava seems to be the favourite app for the really serious cyclist.
In other words, it's telling me that I'm a really fast hubbard. Which is like saying you own the best looking Ford.
Ah well.
The day after I started using it, emails started appearing from the software maker telling me how good I went the day before. Nifty. It's a daily encouragement to exercise more - the same as having a personal trainer nag you each day to get out and do some sit ups (now there's a thought).
The email also tells you how you did in comparison to everyone else that has recorded their times along particular sections of the route you took. I was stunned when it told me I was in the top 1% on a number of sections, including the hilly bits. When you're as old and big as me, you don't climb anywhere near as well as the skinny young blokes. However, there was the email telling me otherwise.
What gives?
I can think of a few reasons.
First, people aren't riding flat out on my route - it's not a race (even though when you pass a lot of blokes, they turn it into a race). I ride hard - but not "race" hard, which is where you get to the end and fall sideways off your bike because you don't have the energy left to unclip your legs. I don't feel like arriving at the car park at work and then collapsing on the concrete in a gibbering mess. I'm giving it up to 90% rather than 100%, and I reckon a lot of cyclists are content to commute at no more than 70-80% of their potential - it means less sweat to wash off when you get to work.
Second, the really fit and serious guys probably don't bother recording their commutes as they aren't "proper" training rides.
Third, who can be bothered recording their commute every day? Are people that anal about it that they record even the boring and mundane rides?
Fourth, I don't think the pros are using this particular app. Strava seems to be the favourite app for the really serious cyclist.
In other words, it's telling me that I'm a really fast hubbard. Which is like saying you own the best looking Ford.
Sunday, 3 February 2013
Mise en place
Mise en place - frog for "everything in its place" - a particularly important concept when working in the kitchen.
It's always used in terms of prepping to cook. However, it struck me the other day that whilst lots of emphasis is put on getting ready to cook, no effort appears to be put into minimising the amount of washing up that any given meal produces.
The catalyst was getting up at 0600 and finding that Junior had cooked himself a midnight snack of bacon and mee goreng. The evidence was all over the kitchen - splattered fat on the cook tops, dirty dishes, pots and pans in the sink and a slab of uncooked bacon left sitting on the bench top. He'd managed to feed himself, but the effort of putting away the unused food and cleaning up was clearly beyond him. Poor petal. I was so caring and considerate of his weakened physical state that I waited until 0700 before booting him out of bed and putting him to work at the sink.
I'm not a big fan of washing up, so I do my best to generate the minimum amount when producing anything to eat. When I cook something, after I've done it the first time, I think about how I can do it then next time with less washing up. Can I order the way I prepare and cook the dish to ensure there isn't a sink full of muck at the end?
This stuff is never covered in any cookery books that I've ever read. It's like the people writing recipes have never done any time and motion studies into how to make them more effectively. I need to minimise the amount of dirty stuff I produce because we've got a small kitchen - we simply don't have space to pile up masses of used pots. It's a bit like cooking in a submarine galley.
Here's a simple example. I made semi-fredo not long ago. The recipe tells you to separate eggs, whip the yolks with sugar over a double boiler then whip the cream, then whip the whites and then fold the whole lot in together. It such a simple thing, but if you whip the whites first, you don't have to wash the beaters before moving onto the next items. The whites won't whip as well if the beaters and contaminated with egg yolk or cream, so if you do them last, you have to wash them. If you do the whites first, it doesn't matter if a bit of egg white ends up in the cream etc etc. That simple change in steps saves a bit of time and means you don't have to stick your hands in the sink during preparation.
I do this with all my recipes, trying to save a dirty bowl or two for each dish in a meal. If you're putting something together that involves multiple dishes, it can save a lot of washing up. I think some people say they dislike cooking not because they dislike the cooking part, but because they dislike the cleaning up afterwards part. To me, it makes a lot of sense for recipe book writers to reconstruct their recipes in a way that creates less muck and havoc.
It's always used in terms of prepping to cook. However, it struck me the other day that whilst lots of emphasis is put on getting ready to cook, no effort appears to be put into minimising the amount of washing up that any given meal produces.
The catalyst was getting up at 0600 and finding that Junior had cooked himself a midnight snack of bacon and mee goreng. The evidence was all over the kitchen - splattered fat on the cook tops, dirty dishes, pots and pans in the sink and a slab of uncooked bacon left sitting on the bench top. He'd managed to feed himself, but the effort of putting away the unused food and cleaning up was clearly beyond him. Poor petal. I was so caring and considerate of his weakened physical state that I waited until 0700 before booting him out of bed and putting him to work at the sink.
I'm not a big fan of washing up, so I do my best to generate the minimum amount when producing anything to eat. When I cook something, after I've done it the first time, I think about how I can do it then next time with less washing up. Can I order the way I prepare and cook the dish to ensure there isn't a sink full of muck at the end?
This stuff is never covered in any cookery books that I've ever read. It's like the people writing recipes have never done any time and motion studies into how to make them more effectively. I need to minimise the amount of dirty stuff I produce because we've got a small kitchen - we simply don't have space to pile up masses of used pots. It's a bit like cooking in a submarine galley.
Here's a simple example. I made semi-fredo not long ago. The recipe tells you to separate eggs, whip the yolks with sugar over a double boiler then whip the cream, then whip the whites and then fold the whole lot in together. It such a simple thing, but if you whip the whites first, you don't have to wash the beaters before moving onto the next items. The whites won't whip as well if the beaters and contaminated with egg yolk or cream, so if you do them last, you have to wash them. If you do the whites first, it doesn't matter if a bit of egg white ends up in the cream etc etc. That simple change in steps saves a bit of time and means you don't have to stick your hands in the sink during preparation.
I do this with all my recipes, trying to save a dirty bowl or two for each dish in a meal. If you're putting something together that involves multiple dishes, it can save a lot of washing up. I think some people say they dislike cooking not because they dislike the cooking part, but because they dislike the cleaning up afterwards part. To me, it makes a lot of sense for recipe book writers to reconstruct their recipes in a way that creates less muck and havoc.
Saturday, 2 February 2013
Cold
It's summer down here. And it's cold. How cold?
I downloaded the Bureau of Meteorology stats for daily max and min temps for Sydney.
Today is the 4th coldest 2nd of Feb on record - since 1859. Here's the other stats:
1899 - 13.7 degrees
1919 - 13.9 degrees
1933 - 13.9 degrees
2013 - 14.1 degrees
These stats were taken from the Observatory Hill station, which these days is surrounded by concreted and tarmac roads - which is only of interest if you think the urban heat island effect has any impact on recorded temperatures.
The max temp for today was 21.3 degrees - the 14th lowest on record since 1859. The lowest maximum for Feb 2 was 17.5 degrees in 1909.
It was the 4th wettest Feb 2nd also with 48.6mm so far - and the day still has 4 hours to run.
1868 - 83.8mm
1934 - 54.9mm
1980 - 54.8mm
2013 - 48.6mm
Interestingly, the BOM says we got 0mm of rainfall yesterday, even though I almost drowned on the way home it was raining so hard.
I downloaded the Bureau of Meteorology stats for daily max and min temps for Sydney.
Today is the 4th coldest 2nd of Feb on record - since 1859. Here's the other stats:
1899 - 13.7 degrees
1919 - 13.9 degrees
1933 - 13.9 degrees
2013 - 14.1 degrees
These stats were taken from the Observatory Hill station, which these days is surrounded by concreted and tarmac roads - which is only of interest if you think the urban heat island effect has any impact on recorded temperatures.
The max temp for today was 21.3 degrees - the 14th lowest on record since 1859. The lowest maximum for Feb 2 was 17.5 degrees in 1909.
It was the 4th wettest Feb 2nd also with 48.6mm so far - and the day still has 4 hours to run.
1868 - 83.8mm
1934 - 54.9mm
1980 - 54.8mm
2013 - 48.6mm
Interestingly, the BOM says we got 0mm of rainfall yesterday, even though I almost drowned on the way home it was raining so hard.
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Friday, 25 January 2013
Clearly, a horrific injury
Getting some attention ... a cyclist is treated by ambulance officers after breaking a pedal during the Tour Down Under in South Australia. Photo: Kathryn Watt/www.wattshotz.com
Treated for breaking a pedal?
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Knob of the day
The idiot driver of this Audi gets my "knob of the day" award. I was going to present it to them personally (ie, bang on their window and ask them in which cereal packet they found their driver's license), but when I pulled up behind them, I noticed a dangly thing hanging from the rear view mirror.
We all know what dangly rear view mirror things mean.
They mean a clueless, incompetent moron is at the wheel. Someone so far down the evolutionary scale, it's no point even trying to engage with them on the short comings in their driving skill set.
So I just took a photo of their car and posted it here.
Their crime?
They weren't parked across a bike lane, or something silly like that. The driver went straight through a Stop sign and nearly bowled me over. A bit of emergency braking was required to stay off their bonnet. It's not like they stopped, looked through me and then took off. They just didn't stop at all. It was peak hour, so I guess they were in a rush and were desperate to take any gap in the traffic they could get. Just one problem - I was in that gap.
We really need some open carry laws in Sydney. I would have improved those four rings in the Audi symbol by putting a 9mm round through each of them. Or perhaps made a smiley face. I have done the smiley face at the range - with two nostrils instead of one.
I think I busted a tit
The thing is, I rarely have to extract the rear bidon, so my muscles aren't used to the action. When I pulled it out at the lights tonight, I ripped the pectoralis minor (I think) something wicked. I almost fell off my bike with the pain of it. It was agony from nipple to armpit.
The pain subsided after about 5 minutes - for a while there, I was riding with my arm across my chest like I had a broken collar bone. I couldn't bear to grab the handlebars or pull on the brakes.
The stuff that happens to you as you get older.....
What's wrong with chocolate milk?
What's wrong with it?
Absolutely nothing. I often make myself an icy Milo when I get home from a long ride. If the kids have not consumed every banana in the house, one goes into the blender with lots of Milo, milk, ice and a dash of honey.
In fact, it might be described as the perfect sports drink.
Go read the rest at the above link.
This video is well worth watching - just to see how a modern athlete gets enough energy into them to keep moving.
Absolutely nothing. I often make myself an icy Milo when I get home from a long ride. If the kids have not consumed every banana in the house, one goes into the blender with lots of Milo, milk, ice and a dash of honey.
In fact, it might be described as the perfect sports drink.
Common sports drinks such as Gatorade supply those carbs, as well as fluids and electrolytes lost through sweat. However, more recent research suggests that adding protein to the mix may further hasten recovery. Hence the new wave of drinks such as Endurox R4 that include protein as well as higher doses of carbs.
In the study, nine male cyclists rode until their muscles were depleted of energy, then rested four hours and biked again until exhaustion. During the rest period, the cyclists drank low-fat chocolate milk, Gatorade, or Endurox R4. During a second round of exercise, the cyclists who drank the chocolate milk were able to bike about 50% longer than those who drank Endurox, and about as long as those who drank the Gatorade.
Go read the rest at the above link.
This video is well worth watching - just to see how a modern athlete gets enough energy into them to keep moving.
Monday, 21 January 2013
The.worst.iced.coffee.ever
I don't see the point of drinking hot coffee in the middle of or after a ride. You're already bloody hot - why make yourself any hotter? So for me, iced coffee is the drink of choice. But it must have the following properties:
1. Iced
2. Coffee
The third ingredient of course is milk - otherwise it would just be cold straight coffee, which would be awful. Some people like to fill them with sugar - I detest that. I just want:
ice
coffee
milk
You'd think that would be nigh well impossible to fuck up. Well, you'd be wrong, as cafes manage to balls it up no end on a regular basis.
For starters - ice. In order to be icy, you need a requisite amount of ice. Not too much ice - otherwise there's no room for the milk and coffee. But there still needs to be plenty of ice - otherwise it just won't get cold enough.
Second - coffee. Coffee means coffee. As freshly made shot of coffee from a coffee machine. Coffee syrup, or a shot of coffee that was "freshly made" 4 hours ago and tipped into a jug is not fresh. Syrup is not coffee.
Third - milk. Use full cream milk. Not soy. Not low fat. I want milk. Proper milk. You think I give a shit about a few grams of fat after riding 50 kilometres? No. Bring it on, baby.
So let me explain how to make the worst iced coffee ever.
First, pour a small dash of syrup into a tall glass. Use just enough for the milk to discolour slightly, but not enough to impart even the smallest hint of coffee flavour.
Next, fill it almost to the brim with milk.
Lastly, add two ice cubes - small ones at that - because there is now no room to pour a good sized handful of ice into the glass.
Then serve.
I was at a work function when this was dished up to me, so I didn't want to make a fuss. I walked around for 10 minutes with this abomination in my hand, anxiously looking for a pot plant to pour the contents into and a table to dump the glass on. In the end, I found a drain and got rid of it that way - I wasn't in the mood for killing an innocent plant.
But I was in the mood for killing whoever trained the person that made that coffee.
1. Iced
2. Coffee
The third ingredient of course is milk - otherwise it would just be cold straight coffee, which would be awful. Some people like to fill them with sugar - I detest that. I just want:
ice
coffee
milk
You'd think that would be nigh well impossible to fuck up. Well, you'd be wrong, as cafes manage to balls it up no end on a regular basis.
For starters - ice. In order to be icy, you need a requisite amount of ice. Not too much ice - otherwise there's no room for the milk and coffee. But there still needs to be plenty of ice - otherwise it just won't get cold enough.
Second - coffee. Coffee means coffee. As freshly made shot of coffee from a coffee machine. Coffee syrup, or a shot of coffee that was "freshly made" 4 hours ago and tipped into a jug is not fresh. Syrup is not coffee.
Third - milk. Use full cream milk. Not soy. Not low fat. I want milk. Proper milk. You think I give a shit about a few grams of fat after riding 50 kilometres? No. Bring it on, baby.
So let me explain how to make the worst iced coffee ever.
First, pour a small dash of syrup into a tall glass. Use just enough for the milk to discolour slightly, but not enough to impart even the smallest hint of coffee flavour.
Next, fill it almost to the brim with milk.
Lastly, add two ice cubes - small ones at that - because there is now no room to pour a good sized handful of ice into the glass.
Then serve.
I was at a work function when this was dished up to me, so I didn't want to make a fuss. I walked around for 10 minutes with this abomination in my hand, anxiously looking for a pot plant to pour the contents into and a table to dump the glass on. In the end, I found a drain and got rid of it that way - I wasn't in the mood for killing an innocent plant.
But I was in the mood for killing whoever trained the person that made that coffee.
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Why the Greens are the real mysoginists
Who hates women the most? Clearly, it's the Greens.
Which is weird, because apparently a lot of Green voters are young women. Yes, I'm confused too. But obviously not as confused as those young women.
I had this revelation when I was hanging out the washing yesterday. I'd told Junior to hang out an earlier load, and he complained and said we should just stick it in the drier rather than using the heat of the sun to dry the clothes. I quickly filled him in on how much electricity the dryer uses, and how expensive electricity is these days. I told him that if it rained later in the day, and his clothes hadn't dried, he could carry them down to the local laundromat and pay them 6 bucks to dry them. That horrified him enough to get his arse out of his room and to hang the stuff up.
It was at that point that I started thinking about how electricity has eliminated a lot of the drudge from our daily lives - or more particularly, the lives of women. We use electricity (or gas) to remove much of the hard work from washing clothes, from cooking meals, from heating water and cleaning the house. Even though men are doing a bit of housework these days, survey after survey still finds that women do the bulk of the labour around the house.
If you think that modern women have it bad, try washing your clothes and sheets by hand for a week, or walking down to the local park to collect fallen sticks to make a fire to cook all your meals over (no cheating and ordering take away), and using the same fire to heat water for washing and cooking. Electricity has been the greatest liberator of women. Not the pill. Cheap power.
The same goes for cheap petrol. Imagine the drudgery of walking to the shops every day to shop, and then lugging it home. Or walking young kids to school, or wheeling them to day care. Sure, I do this from time to time, but walking to the shops - or walking the kids to and from school - is a choice, not a necessity. Imagine being forced to do it every day.
You can walk to the shops each day quite easily - if you are a single person and live in a small inner city apartment close to shops. I did that myself for years. However, it becomes a lot harder when you have kids - particularly more than one kid. Once the kids start coming, you need all the labour saving devices you can get your hands on. A lot of women don't have the luxury of choosing to walk the kids to school (or sticking them in a cargo bike and riding) - they have jobs to get to, so they need to drive to school, drop the kids off and then drive to work. Choice is a luxury that some people have - most don't. I have the luxury of being able to choose to ride to work - I'd hate it though if someone forced me to do it.
This of course is what the Greens want to do - they want to force you to act a certain way by making it unaffordable for you to do it the way you want to. Yes, the peace loving Greens are using force. Try stealing electricity or gas and see what happens. Force will be used against you, either to remove some of your income or wealth (via fines) or to remove your liberty (via prison).
Why would anyone want to make electricity more expensive if it has the potential to make the lives of women harder and more miserable? The only reason I can think of is that the people doing it hate women.
Which is why the Green vote is concentrated amongst young women with no kids. As soon as they have a family, the Green vote tends to decline. And the other Green constituency is the rich - those that don't have to worry about falling into fuel poverty.
The Greens - hating women more intensely than any other political group.
Which is weird, because apparently a lot of Green voters are young women. Yes, I'm confused too. But obviously not as confused as those young women.
I had this revelation when I was hanging out the washing yesterday. I'd told Junior to hang out an earlier load, and he complained and said we should just stick it in the drier rather than using the heat of the sun to dry the clothes. I quickly filled him in on how much electricity the dryer uses, and how expensive electricity is these days. I told him that if it rained later in the day, and his clothes hadn't dried, he could carry them down to the local laundromat and pay them 6 bucks to dry them. That horrified him enough to get his arse out of his room and to hang the stuff up.
It was at that point that I started thinking about how electricity has eliminated a lot of the drudge from our daily lives - or more particularly, the lives of women. We use electricity (or gas) to remove much of the hard work from washing clothes, from cooking meals, from heating water and cleaning the house. Even though men are doing a bit of housework these days, survey after survey still finds that women do the bulk of the labour around the house.
If you think that modern women have it bad, try washing your clothes and sheets by hand for a week, or walking down to the local park to collect fallen sticks to make a fire to cook all your meals over (no cheating and ordering take away), and using the same fire to heat water for washing and cooking. Electricity has been the greatest liberator of women. Not the pill. Cheap power.
The same goes for cheap petrol. Imagine the drudgery of walking to the shops every day to shop, and then lugging it home. Or walking young kids to school, or wheeling them to day care. Sure, I do this from time to time, but walking to the shops - or walking the kids to and from school - is a choice, not a necessity. Imagine being forced to do it every day.
You can walk to the shops each day quite easily - if you are a single person and live in a small inner city apartment close to shops. I did that myself for years. However, it becomes a lot harder when you have kids - particularly more than one kid. Once the kids start coming, you need all the labour saving devices you can get your hands on. A lot of women don't have the luxury of choosing to walk the kids to school (or sticking them in a cargo bike and riding) - they have jobs to get to, so they need to drive to school, drop the kids off and then drive to work. Choice is a luxury that some people have - most don't. I have the luxury of being able to choose to ride to work - I'd hate it though if someone forced me to do it.
This of course is what the Greens want to do - they want to force you to act a certain way by making it unaffordable for you to do it the way you want to. Yes, the peace loving Greens are using force. Try stealing electricity or gas and see what happens. Force will be used against you, either to remove some of your income or wealth (via fines) or to remove your liberty (via prison).
Why would anyone want to make electricity more expensive if it has the potential to make the lives of women harder and more miserable? The only reason I can think of is that the people doing it hate women.
Which is why the Green vote is concentrated amongst young women with no kids. As soon as they have a family, the Green vote tends to decline. And the other Green constituency is the rich - those that don't have to worry about falling into fuel poverty.
The Greens - hating women more intensely than any other political group.
Saturday, 19 January 2013
Riding in the heat
There was much hoo-ha about the heat here yesterday. It went over 45 degrees in the CBD for a while, and it was hotter out in western Sydney. I went outside the office when it was 45 - it was pretty hot, but not unpleasant as it was a totally dry heat. Really different from the usual Sydney humidity, which leaves you in a very sticky mess.
I was told the ambos treated a lot of people for heat stress - I even saw a motorcycle cop being treated for it during the morning.
So why did I ride in that heat?
Well, by the time I finished work, the cool change had started coming in. The first clouds were overhead, and the temp had dropped to 37. I had a magnesium salt replacement drink before getting changed, and made sure I drank plenty of water in the hour or two before leaving. I stupidly left my bidons on the bike in the morning instead of putting them in the fridge - when I went to have a drink, I found the water in them was about 45 degrees.
And when I hit the road, I took it easy. At least I tried to take it easy - the body is programmed to go at certain speeds or a certain level of effort, so whenever I stopped thinking about going slow, the programming took over and off I went. I then had to consciously slow myself down. This happened a lot.
There were still plenty of bikes on the road, but when I got to the Bay, there was not a single pedestrian. It was a ghost town.
It was around that time that the rain started coming down. I thought we'd get a brief shower, which would do nothing for the heat but everything for the humidity, but instead it started bucketing down. The rain drops were so fat and cold, they hurt. I was waiting for it to start hailing, and was keeping an eye out for likely spots to stop and shelter. At one point, it rained so hard, I almost had to pull over as I could barely see where I was going.
The worst thing about the rain is that I totally forgot about the impact of water on bike braking performance. I almost over ran a stop sign by braking for it as if it was dry. Duh. I was so fixated on it being hot, the brain just ignored the fact that it was also wet.
Here's an odd thing - because I took it easy, I reckon I sweated less than I do on a ride on a cold day. Either the sweat was drying up immediately, or I just wasn't sweating much. I'm used to having sweat dripping off my nose and running down my arms, but instead, I was pretty dry. I certainly wasn't cooking when I got home. The nice thing about being on a bike is the air flow cools you down quite effectively.
I got home to find a barrage of complaints from friends and family about how awful it was catching the bus or train home, or how unpleasant it was to drive with cars breaking down here and there. I don't know what all the fuss was about - I had a comfortable and easy trip home.
I was told the ambos treated a lot of people for heat stress - I even saw a motorcycle cop being treated for it during the morning.
So why did I ride in that heat?
Well, by the time I finished work, the cool change had started coming in. The first clouds were overhead, and the temp had dropped to 37. I had a magnesium salt replacement drink before getting changed, and made sure I drank plenty of water in the hour or two before leaving. I stupidly left my bidons on the bike in the morning instead of putting them in the fridge - when I went to have a drink, I found the water in them was about 45 degrees.
And when I hit the road, I took it easy. At least I tried to take it easy - the body is programmed to go at certain speeds or a certain level of effort, so whenever I stopped thinking about going slow, the programming took over and off I went. I then had to consciously slow myself down. This happened a lot.
There were still plenty of bikes on the road, but when I got to the Bay, there was not a single pedestrian. It was a ghost town.
It was around that time that the rain started coming down. I thought we'd get a brief shower, which would do nothing for the heat but everything for the humidity, but instead it started bucketing down. The rain drops were so fat and cold, they hurt. I was waiting for it to start hailing, and was keeping an eye out for likely spots to stop and shelter. At one point, it rained so hard, I almost had to pull over as I could barely see where I was going.
The worst thing about the rain is that I totally forgot about the impact of water on bike braking performance. I almost over ran a stop sign by braking for it as if it was dry. Duh. I was so fixated on it being hot, the brain just ignored the fact that it was also wet.
Here's an odd thing - because I took it easy, I reckon I sweated less than I do on a ride on a cold day. Either the sweat was drying up immediately, or I just wasn't sweating much. I'm used to having sweat dripping off my nose and running down my arms, but instead, I was pretty dry. I certainly wasn't cooking when I got home. The nice thing about being on a bike is the air flow cools you down quite effectively.
I got home to find a barrage of complaints from friends and family about how awful it was catching the bus or train home, or how unpleasant it was to drive with cars breaking down here and there. I don't know what all the fuss was about - I had a comfortable and easy trip home.
Thursday, 17 January 2013
More on the wrong trousers
I have one concern with buying trousers that will fit around my thighs, and then having the waist brought in.
Hammer pants.
Hammer pants.
Monday, 14 January 2013
The wrong trousers
The holidays seemed as good a time as any to shop for some new work clothes. I desperately need some more trousers - I have a tendency to wear holes in the crotch rather quickly, and there are few things worse than wandering around town with your arse hanging out of your pants.
There's just one problem with trouser shopping - I can't get my bloody legs into most of the trousers cut for my waist size! My thighs have grown fairly substantially since I started cycling, and it appears they are now quite abnormally large. I tried half a dozen pairs of trousers on - I couldn't get half of them over my thighs, and the rest gripped them so tightly, I know I'd burst a seam the first time I bent over, squatted or so much as sat down.
This shrinking waist/growing thighs is a problem. It would be so much easier if I was built like a lot of other blokes my age - stick thin legs and pot bellies.
There's just one problem with trouser shopping - I can't get my bloody legs into most of the trousers cut for my waist size! My thighs have grown fairly substantially since I started cycling, and it appears they are now quite abnormally large. I tried half a dozen pairs of trousers on - I couldn't get half of them over my thighs, and the rest gripped them so tightly, I know I'd burst a seam the first time I bent over, squatted or so much as sat down.
This shrinking waist/growing thighs is a problem. It would be so much easier if I was built like a lot of other blokes my age - stick thin legs and pot bellies.
Friday, 11 January 2013
This commuting business is tough
I'll get back to the beer one day. I promise.
I think I finished the holidays a bit thinner than when I started. I guess that's a surprise to most of you, who are probably rolling around wondering if you can finish that last wafer thin chocolate mint.
The secret? Lots of miles on the bike. These have been the first holidays in years - in fact since I got the bike - when we've been at home over the holidays and I've been free to ride almost every day for up to 6 hours.
Although I've done a lot more kilometres per week than I usually get commuting, I've been nowhere near as tired and sore at the end of the week. It's easier to do say 4 x 80km rides than 10 x 15km rides. The long, sustained rides have been surprisingly comfortable. Because I've mostly been going west, I've had lots of sections where I haven't stopped for ages - the ride into town is punctuated by lots of traffic lights, making it a very stop-start affair.
I'm not going to give up the commuting though and switch to doing a few long rides per week - that would mean catching the bus to work, and that would be a fate worse than death. I'll just have to put up with passing out on the couch at 7pm on a weeknight.
Which is probably one reason why I haven't watched any TV in quite a while. I haven't seen any live TV so far this year, and can't remember the last thing I did see on TV - it was probably at least 3 months ago.
I think I finished the holidays a bit thinner than when I started. I guess that's a surprise to most of you, who are probably rolling around wondering if you can finish that last wafer thin chocolate mint.
The secret? Lots of miles on the bike. These have been the first holidays in years - in fact since I got the bike - when we've been at home over the holidays and I've been free to ride almost every day for up to 6 hours.
Although I've done a lot more kilometres per week than I usually get commuting, I've been nowhere near as tired and sore at the end of the week. It's easier to do say 4 x 80km rides than 10 x 15km rides. The long, sustained rides have been surprisingly comfortable. Because I've mostly been going west, I've had lots of sections where I haven't stopped for ages - the ride into town is punctuated by lots of traffic lights, making it a very stop-start affair.
I'm not going to give up the commuting though and switch to doing a few long rides per week - that would mean catching the bus to work, and that would be a fate worse than death. I'll just have to put up with passing out on the couch at 7pm on a weeknight.
Which is probably one reason why I haven't watched any TV in quite a while. I haven't seen any live TV so far this year, and can't remember the last thing I did see on TV - it was probably at least 3 months ago.
Thursday, 10 January 2013
The wisdom of kids
From one of the kids tonight:
"Big people do big farts".
Got no idea how he made that observation.
"Big people do big farts".
Got no idea how he made that observation.
Bikes
I haven't put up a photo of bikes in ages - can't think what has come over me. I've seen more and more of these lately - I think they fold up and fit in the back of the car pretty easily. My initial thought was that these would be slow and uncomfortable, but I have since done a 40km ride with a bloke who was on one, and he had no trouble keeping up and made no complaints about comfort or handling.
I'm still about as likely to buy one as a pink handbag though.
Pub crawl?
Pub crawl? How on earth can 4 drinks in 4 venues be classified as a "pub crawl"? The promoter of this event should be prosecuted for false and misleading advertising.
When I was at uni, there'd be several pub crawl contests each year. I wouldn't be surprised if they've been banned since then - binge drinking and all that. If memory serves me correctly, we'd form teams of four:
- A drinker
- A navigator
- Two scouts (or buyers)
The job of the drinker was pretty obvious - they were the competitor. They had to be able to run between about 20 pubs, scull a beer in each and keep it all down until the end (vomiting brought instant disqualification).
The job of the navigator was to get the drinker from pub to pub. Obviously after 10 beers or so, the drinker would be heading off in all directions, so a reasonably sober navigator was required to finish the race in the correct pub.
The buyers would leap frog from pub to pub, ensuring that when the drinker and navigator arrived, there was a beer or two waiting on the counter for them - no time to waste buying drinks!
The last pub would invariably be one that served dark and ghastly brews - like the Sail and Anchor in Fremantle. After drinking middies at all the previous pubs, the finale would be the drinking of a pint of stout or dark ale - something guaranteed to turn the stomachs of unseasoned teenage bingers. After downing that, the drinker wouldn't be allowed to vomit for half an hour.
By that time, things would usually be pretty blurry for me, so I have no idea who won these races. You could chart the course between the latter pubs by the puddles or streams of vomit along the footpaths or gutters. Some drinkers would vomit as they ran, hoping that they wouldn't be spotted and disqualified - hence the long streams along the footpaths. After each race, the local papers would be full of indignant letters from local residents complaining about the intolerable behaviour of us young louts.
I have a photo in my collection of a mate with beer vomit pouring from his nose. He protested that because it came out of his nose, it wasn't really chundering, so he should be allowed to continue.
That was pub crawling! Not four measly pubs. The young these days - they really have no idea.
Sunday, 6 January 2013
Why we drink beer from bottles at home
I have been thinking about writing this for a while. It's going to be in quite a few parts, so be patient. It's all about how the bicycle can help us to understand the modern economy and how we live. Freakonomics has been done - and I'm not going to call this Bikonomics.
This brain fart started when I recalled that a much skinnier and fitter mate of mine used to ride to Canberra every year with a group. That's a pretty good ride to do in one day - around 290km. I shudder just thinking about it. I reckon I could make it to Goulburn in one day, and no further. In fact, plenty of riders were collected by the sag wagon around the Goulburn mark, which is 200km. They just ran out of puff, and wouldn't make it to Canberra in time for the big dinner and piss up which marked the finish. I simply couldn't ride fast enough over a long distance to do Canberra in one day. Goulburn - maybe. Canberra - no way.
Apart from drinking lots of beer at the dinner in Canberra, what has this got to do with why we drink beer from bottles?
Stay with me.
Consider the logistics and technology that goes into that group of 30 or so doing that ride. For starters, they're riding on a good quality tarmac surface all the way. The worst grades have been leveled off with cuttings and bridges (although there are still plenty of nasty climbs to do on a bike). The road has at least two lanes in each direction the whole way, allowing plenty of traffic to move quickly. Imagine doing this ride 150 years ago when it would be nothing more than a dirt track through the bush. It would be really tough and slow, even on a modern mountain bike. It would probably take a few days.
And what would you eat over those few days? How would you get your food?
The modern bunch riders carry all sorts of energy gels, energy drinks and snack bars. On a long ride, I go by the rule of thumb that you need to eat something every 20km. Most of these fancy food things didn't exist 20 years ago. On a long, supported ride, you don't have to weigh yourself down with stacks of them either - the support bus that follows the riders can carry hundreds of kilos of them (and icy cold cans of Coke), so you just need to carry enough to get you from one pre-arranged stop to another where you can top up.
Now take away all those fancy space age foods and think about how you are going to get enough food and water in you over that 290km journey. According to this calculator, I'd burn about 11,000 calories riding to Canberra at about 22km/h. Crank that up to 26, and I'd need to take in closer to 13,000. Yes, you could stop at McDonalds and feast, but you'd still need to scoff a lot of Happy Meals in order to ride without collapsing - or 8 Combo Meals. At 400 calories per litre, the alternative would be to drink 32.5 litres of Coke.
Ugh.
In the old days, there would have been roadhouses all the way along the track to cater for travelers so you wouldn't have to pack too much food or water. But the food they served would have been very limited - when your means of transport is a horse of bullock cart, you're pretty much stuck with what's grown in the region or what you canned or preserved from a previous season. You wouldn't be getting out of season tomatoes and lettuce on your steak burger.
Baked Beans keep pretty well and were a staple food for a long time. At 70 calories per 100 grams, you'd need to eat 18 kilos of baked beans just to get to Canberra.
I wouldn't try that on a group ride - not when you're riding close to the bum in front in order to minimise wind resistance.
So we've looked at food and roads. In short, you're probably thinking that cycling is a pretty lousy option. Hot, painful, tiring and possibly gassy as hell. Now imagine cars had not been invented yet, and you had to go everywhere by foot, horse, bullock cart or perhaps a train (if you had a train line nearby). Transporting goods (and yourself) is no longer fast, convenient, cheap and easy. It's slow, uncomfortable, inconvenient and expensive.
Which is why as soon as people get rich enough, they throw away their bikes and buy a car. Until they get really rich, when they go out and buy many expensive bikes and spend their free time riding off their waistlines.
Give me a few more days, and I'll get around to the bit about beer. We've got a few miles to ride yet.
This brain fart started when I recalled that a much skinnier and fitter mate of mine used to ride to Canberra every year with a group. That's a pretty good ride to do in one day - around 290km. I shudder just thinking about it. I reckon I could make it to Goulburn in one day, and no further. In fact, plenty of riders were collected by the sag wagon around the Goulburn mark, which is 200km. They just ran out of puff, and wouldn't make it to Canberra in time for the big dinner and piss up which marked the finish. I simply couldn't ride fast enough over a long distance to do Canberra in one day. Goulburn - maybe. Canberra - no way.
Apart from drinking lots of beer at the dinner in Canberra, what has this got to do with why we drink beer from bottles?
Stay with me.
Consider the logistics and technology that goes into that group of 30 or so doing that ride. For starters, they're riding on a good quality tarmac surface all the way. The worst grades have been leveled off with cuttings and bridges (although there are still plenty of nasty climbs to do on a bike). The road has at least two lanes in each direction the whole way, allowing plenty of traffic to move quickly. Imagine doing this ride 150 years ago when it would be nothing more than a dirt track through the bush. It would be really tough and slow, even on a modern mountain bike. It would probably take a few days.
And what would you eat over those few days? How would you get your food?
The modern bunch riders carry all sorts of energy gels, energy drinks and snack bars. On a long ride, I go by the rule of thumb that you need to eat something every 20km. Most of these fancy food things didn't exist 20 years ago. On a long, supported ride, you don't have to weigh yourself down with stacks of them either - the support bus that follows the riders can carry hundreds of kilos of them (and icy cold cans of Coke), so you just need to carry enough to get you from one pre-arranged stop to another where you can top up.
Now take away all those fancy space age foods and think about how you are going to get enough food and water in you over that 290km journey. According to this calculator, I'd burn about 11,000 calories riding to Canberra at about 22km/h. Crank that up to 26, and I'd need to take in closer to 13,000. Yes, you could stop at McDonalds and feast, but you'd still need to scoff a lot of Happy Meals in order to ride without collapsing - or 8 Combo Meals. At 400 calories per litre, the alternative would be to drink 32.5 litres of Coke.
Ugh.
In the old days, there would have been roadhouses all the way along the track to cater for travelers so you wouldn't have to pack too much food or water. But the food they served would have been very limited - when your means of transport is a horse of bullock cart, you're pretty much stuck with what's grown in the region or what you canned or preserved from a previous season. You wouldn't be getting out of season tomatoes and lettuce on your steak burger.
Baked Beans keep pretty well and were a staple food for a long time. At 70 calories per 100 grams, you'd need to eat 18 kilos of baked beans just to get to Canberra.
I wouldn't try that on a group ride - not when you're riding close to the bum in front in order to minimise wind resistance.
So we've looked at food and roads. In short, you're probably thinking that cycling is a pretty lousy option. Hot, painful, tiring and possibly gassy as hell. Now imagine cars had not been invented yet, and you had to go everywhere by foot, horse, bullock cart or perhaps a train (if you had a train line nearby). Transporting goods (and yourself) is no longer fast, convenient, cheap and easy. It's slow, uncomfortable, inconvenient and expensive.
Which is why as soon as people get rich enough, they throw away their bikes and buy a car. Until they get really rich, when they go out and buy many expensive bikes and spend their free time riding off their waistlines.
Give me a few more days, and I'll get around to the bit about beer. We've got a few miles to ride yet.
Saturday, 5 January 2013
Beating the heat
It hasn't been as hot in our part of town as other parts of Australia. Mother in law reported today that it was 46 down her way. Thank goodness she has a top notch air con system.
It only made it to just over 30 over our way, although it was reading 34 on the bike thermometer when I went out this morning. It told me it was 39 a few days ago, and I didn't believe it - although I did get home with a slight headache from the heat. One downside of helmets in hot weather is your brain cooks just a little bit more.
Here's the funny thing - I don't feel any hotter after a long ride as after a short ride (say 15km vs 70km). And I don't really feel the heat for the rest of the day either. I've been mowing the lawns etc in the noon day sun whilst the neighbours have all been hiding inside with the air con going full blast.
Maybe cycling is conditioning me to being hot?
It only made it to just over 30 over our way, although it was reading 34 on the bike thermometer when I went out this morning. It told me it was 39 a few days ago, and I didn't believe it - although I did get home with a slight headache from the heat. One downside of helmets in hot weather is your brain cooks just a little bit more.
Here's the funny thing - I don't feel any hotter after a long ride as after a short ride (say 15km vs 70km). And I don't really feel the heat for the rest of the day either. I've been mowing the lawns etc in the noon day sun whilst the neighbours have all been hiding inside with the air con going full blast.
Maybe cycling is conditioning me to being hot?
Friday, 4 January 2013
The amazing thing about home grown tomatoes
I've had better luck than normal with the tomato crop - most of the plants that I put in survived my indifferent attention and have yielded a reasonable amount of fruit. One of the varieties that did well was the roma or plum tomatoes. They're crap to eat raw, but they make a good sauce.
I've made tomato sauce before, but not an old fashioned passata. I did a bit of googling and found half a dozen recipes that described making it in six entirely different fashions.
No matter how I cooked it, I wanted the skins off. I didn't want little chunks of skin messing up my sauce.
In years gone by - before I started growing my own - I'd venture out to the Flemington Markets and buy cheap tomatoes by the box. One memory of that time is how hard the little buggers were to skin. I was dreading having to skin a few kilos of the home grown variety. I almost had to use a potato peeler on the ones I bought at the markets.
However, when it came to skinning time, the skins just fell off after doing the X thing across the base with a knife, plunging into boiling water and then into cold water. I couldn't believe how easy it was.
I'm wondering if that's because they were actually ripened on the vine in the sun rather than in a dark shed full of ethylene?
The sauce turned out pretty well too. I can see the attraction at making up a huge vat of it in one go though, and having the entire extended family over to do the skinning, de-seeding and pot stirring.
I've made tomato sauce before, but not an old fashioned passata. I did a bit of googling and found half a dozen recipes that described making it in six entirely different fashions.
No matter how I cooked it, I wanted the skins off. I didn't want little chunks of skin messing up my sauce.
In years gone by - before I started growing my own - I'd venture out to the Flemington Markets and buy cheap tomatoes by the box. One memory of that time is how hard the little buggers were to skin. I was dreading having to skin a few kilos of the home grown variety. I almost had to use a potato peeler on the ones I bought at the markets.
However, when it came to skinning time, the skins just fell off after doing the X thing across the base with a knife, plunging into boiling water and then into cold water. I couldn't believe how easy it was.
I'm wondering if that's because they were actually ripened on the vine in the sun rather than in a dark shed full of ethylene?
The sauce turned out pretty well too. I can see the attraction at making up a huge vat of it in one go though, and having the entire extended family over to do the skinning, de-seeding and pot stirring.
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
Etiquette
The thing about lycra knicks is that they slowly fade away. Or wear away. With every ride and wash, they get a little bit thinner.
Until you can see through large patches of them.
Here's a question for you - you're riding along and you catch up with another cyclist, and as you close in, you discover that you can see their entire bum.
Do you:
1. Tell them about it
2. Look away
3. Follow them for the next 20 km
Until you can see through large patches of them.
Here's a question for you - you're riding along and you catch up with another cyclist, and as you close in, you discover that you can see their entire bum.
Do you:
1. Tell them about it
2. Look away
3. Follow them for the next 20 km
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