So much for the safe route

When I cycle, I am always on the lookout for a safer route. Even roads that are supposedly cycle friendly can be death traps. This photo, taken on the way into town, shows part of Lilyfield Road. There is a bike lane down the side of the road, but halfway down the hill, there is a bus stop, and there are usually 2-3 bloody big buses parked in it and of course the bus area is not wide enough for a bus.

Duh.

So the big fat arsed buses stick out into the bike lane and no one in their right mind would stay in the bike lane and try and squeeze between the buses and a car. You'd end up being very squished.

The good thing about this bit of road is that it is fairly steep, so you can easily hit 50km/h going down it without trying too hard. Well, I can at least. Lot's of wimps just coast and then have problems when they try and merge into the traffic beside them that is going 50 km/h.

Anyway, I have recently taken to cycling around the Casino on the way home because it saves me crossing at a very nasty intersection near Darling Harbour. It is one of those wierd intersections that is quite safe when you are heading into town and a total death trap on the way home.

Going around the Casino was working out quite well until one night this week when I was sitting at some traffic lights at the entrance to the Casino car park, they went green, I took off and this bloody Chinese woman P-plater turned left in front of me - from the right lane - and had the temerity to beep as she went around me. I was too gobsmacked to give chase and give her a piece of my mind - I just couldn't believe it. Some people are so stupid, it makes my eyes water.

Making the perfect pizza dough

I have been trying for some time now - years in fact - to make the perfect pizza base at home. I have tried using different flours, such as several types of white flour, wholemeal flour, gluten and some wierd flours that we got from a health food shop.

I have found that a 1/3 wholemeal to 2/3 plain flour is a good start, especially if some semolina is thrown in to add to the crunchiness (we all hate pizza with a soggy base). However, the bloody things never rise. They sit there like sheets of cardboard when cooked.

I was reading an article in the paper last week by a chef on the subject of bread making and he mentioned making a starter of just 100gms of flour, yeast and water and leaving that for some hours (or even overnight) before adding the remaining ingredients. I tried that, mixing it up in my mixing bowl and leaving it covered on the bench overnight.

The next day (which was a weekend), I made pizza for lunch.

The photos that I have attached show the results. The base was light and puffy with some huge air pockets in it. You could fit a ping pong ball in some of them. Clearly, using the starter was the best thing since... sliced bread. Plus, it gave the dough and incredible yeasty smell, which is something that I love.

The pizza itself was very basic - just bocconcini, basil and a bit of parmesan. I was out of the gooey cheese, so we just had a two cheese pizza. It was rather excellent. Only problem is that I am always short of basil these days. I had to buy a packet of seeds today in the hope that I can germinate 10 plants or so - that's how many we need to keep up with basil consumption.

Ice Baird

I think I spotted Bruce Baird at Bondi this morning. It looked like he was preparing for the rough water swim. I wonder if he survived?

I used to see Peter Debnam running on the beach when I went down for an early morning swim before work. He's a fit looking sod.

Bruce is not.

Bondi breakfast

I have pretty much given up on the Bondi Kiosk, so I have started going next door to Aqua Bar. It used to be two cafes next door to each other, but the other must have gone belly up as both are now combined into the one cafe, although they are still two premises.

I don't like it as much. The tables are small, so you can really only have 4 people for a meal. I don't mind as I am on my own most of the time, but it will be a problem when the whole family attends.

Still, I asked for poached eggs and crispy bacon, and they managed to do that without totally screwing it up. The coffee was not too bad. The service was a bit touch and go as my waitress spoke so softly, I couldn't hear and bloody word she said. Either that, or my ears were full of salt. Good thing I can partly lip read.

The worst thing about the place is that it is full of Paris Hilton wanna-be chicks. The Kiosk was great because the regular crowd were people like me - men and women of all shapes and ages who had been down for a good swim, and now wanted a good feed. It was the sort of place that you could sit there happily in your wet speedoes and no one would give a damn. Aqua Bar, as the name suggests, is a lot more pretentious. Women wear lipstick at Aqua, whereas at the Kiosk they just have wet hair.

I am now conflicted.

My choice was made simple this morning as Aqua did not have a free table, whilst the Kiosk was half empty. That is a bit of a turnaround. Aqua used to be half empty and the Kiosk would have a queue at the door. I queue for no one, so I ate at the Kiosk again today. I asked for crispy bacon, and didn't get it. Never trust a blonde waitress who can't remember what type of coffee you ordered.

The worst thing about this morning was the drive home. Due to the water temp, my balls were seriously frozen. When I sat in the car, they started thawing and were quite uncomfortable as they expanded back to their normal size and position. If I was swerving all over the road, you can blame thawing balls.

It's summer right?

I missed having a swim at Bondi yesterday, but made it today. When I got there, I found that half the beach was closed off for a rough water swim. Normally, when they have some kind of carnival like this, it is impossible to park within cooee of the beach and the boardwalk in front of the North Bondi surf club is crowded with people. You can't get into a cafe for love or money.

I didn't notice any overcrowding in the cafes when I walked by from my usual parking spot in a back street close to the beach. The boardwalk was quite clear of bodies. There were not many people standing around on the sand (almost none in fact) and no one in the water having a warm up swim.

I soon found out why. As I strolled down to the water, a life saver asked me if I was going to be long as they were going to close off that park of the beach in 20 minutes to prepare for the race. Since I can't swim out of sight in a week at the moment, and the waves were breaking too close in for comfort, I doubted I would be 20 minutes.

When I hit the water, I found out why there were so few people around. Normally, the water temp is around 20 degrees. When I swam on the 1st or 2nd of July, it was still 19 or 20 degrees. Cold and miserable out of the water, but not bad in the water.

Today it was 16.

Almost froze my nads off. My forearms hurt when I put them in the water. I had trouble with my breathing when I stuck my head under. Through my goggles, it looked like my fingertips were going blue (they weren't). I gave up on the idea of a swim and caught a few tragic waves - essentially they dumped me in about 1 foot of water.

I struggled out of the water less than 5 minutes after I went in. I passed the life saver and she laughed a bit. She was how I found out what the water temp was.

As I was walking up to a cafe for breakfast, I heard an announcer on the tannoy giving instructions to the entrants. He said something about the cold and mentioned that if anyone got into trouble, they should just stick their hand up and wait for a rubber ducky or board to pick them up.

I think they would have been busy.

Can't bake, can't washup...

One big problem with the markets is that it is really hard to avoid impulse buying. You are in a huge hangar surrounded by lots and lots and lots of food. Some of it looks good. Some looks downright wierd. It all looks cheap. Not a trip goes by without me impulse buying a couple of items.

Last week it was passionfruit. I ended up with a bag full, which equates to a bit over a kilo. Now I like passionfruit, but eating a kilo suddenly looked really daunting when I got home.

Solution - bake a lemon cake and cover it with passionfruit syrup. I didn't make that up of course - thank Donna Hay.

So I whip up the cake and stuff it into the oven for 40 minutes as directed. At the end of 40 minutes, I stick a skewer into it and it comes out a bit gooey. So I give it 5 more minutes. Then another 5 minutes.

Then I find that I have overcooked the bugger. It's dry. No amount of syrup poured over the top will save it.

Only one solution - eat it with lots of runny cream. That seems to do the trick.

I feel like a bloated frog as a result.

Blood jelly

I am not having much success in certain aspects of the culinary arts at the moment.

I have just tried to make plum jelly the old fashioned way. It does not involve opening a packet of Aeroplane jelly and tipping the crystals into hot water. Instead, you cut up some plums, add sugar, vanilla and water and boil for a while, then strain out the lumpy bits and add gelatine. It seems to be a lot of effort to make a few little jellies. The only thing that makes it feasible is that I was able to pick up plums at the markets for $2 a kilo. They were not great looking plums - Coles would never sell them - but they were perfect for chopping up for jelly.

I don't think I added enough gelatine - I now have stuff in the fridge that looks like partly congealed blood. Part of the recipe instructions say, "strain through fine muslin cloth", with the aim being to create a clear jelly. I don't have any fine muslin cloth, so I do not have a clear jelly. Like I said, it looks like gooey blood.

If they don't set, I am just going to add them to vodka and drink them.

New Years Crap

One of the spectator points for the fireworks was quite near us at the end of Timbrell Park - the park backs up against the water, so you have an uninterupted view over the water towards the city and the big sky sparklers.

Hundreds of people turned up to yell and scream and generally yahoo on the night. I don't know why they bothered - the fireworks looked like little poof-poofs from where we were. Five Dock is just too far away. The only way to experience fireworks is to be right underneath the buggers, so that the noise is deafening and you get sprinkled with bits of exploded, burning firework. Of course the safety nazis don't allow that kind of thing anymore, so fireworks for me are about as much fun as mowing the lawn.

Anyway, on the 2nd I decided to have my first swim in the ocean for the year, and that involved driving past where all the yahoos had been carrying on. Surprise, surprise, the bay contained the largest floating slick of empty bottles that I have ever seen. It was like an aircraft carrier of crap. You'd almost need a small barge to scoop them all up.

Happy new year. Let's welcome it in by throwing crap everywhere. Yay!

Kipper spuds

I have a nice collection of recipe books. Enough to fill an entire shelf about six feet long. Some of the fancier ones wax lyrical about kipfler potatoes, but I have no idea why. They're just spuds right? Plus I have had a gutful of celebrity chefs going on and on about this silly kipper potato.

There is a spud guy at the markets that sells nine different varieties of fancy spud. Yellow skins, purple skins, really dark purple skins and yes, the kipper potato. I have always turned my nose up at this celebrity spud, but relented last weekend in order to make a spud salad for new years eve.

The kippers are an odd looking spud - more like a sweet potato tuber than a normal round spud. I steamed them and then had a taste. What do you know - they are the king of spuds! Unbelievable.

The great thing is that the spud guy sells them for $3 a kilo, which is less than what I pay for ordinary mashing spuds at my local supermarket. So we're going to be eating kippers from now on, and I will be able to look down my nose at people that serve ordinary spuds.

Fireworks

We viewed the fireworks from the North Shore last night - the Cremorne foreshore. Normally, I'd never have attempted to get down there through the hordes, but friends have a house nearby so we had dinner there and then trotted down to the water.

Having seen about 50 million fireworks in my time, I spent half the night fiddling with my camera trying to get some good photos. I failed utterly. The camera has a fireworks setting, which essentially means it leaves the shutter open for 2 seconds and that is it. I forgot to take my tripod, and there was not room to stand, let alone put the camera on something solid and shakefree. I had to make do with holding the camera and trying not to wobble too much.

Two or three photos came out like those above - a nice blob of colour. Next time they are lighting up the sky, I will take the tripod.

Canoe

Since we live near the water, we have been thinking of buying a canoe for a while - something cheap on eBay. However, I have always wondered how we would get it from our backyard to the water.

This photo shows the way ahead. A bike, a bit of rope and just tow it across the grass.

Near death at the markets

I went shopping at the Flemington markets yesterday. Can't fault the place - I did the grocery shopping for about a third of what it would cost me at the local supermarket.

The only problem with the markets is getting out of them alive. I had a good look yesterday and did not spot a single person with blonde hair. As far as the eye could see, the place was a heaving mass of Chinese and other ethnic types - those that are way to smart to shop at Coles. Good on them for spotting a bargain a mile off, but they should be forced to park a mile away from the place. There are cars constantly on the move looking for a parking spot or trying to get out, and the Chinese drivers just can't drive. You really take your life in your hands everytime you cross a road at the markets.

And never get in the way of a Chinese woman trying to do her shopping. A sharp elbow in the guts will be your only reward.

Filthy poms

I say "filthy poms" in the expectation that Bondi will be overrun with poms celebrating the new year tonight. On the way back from the beach, I listened to an interview with a DJ who was playing at Bondi tonight, and of course he was a pom.

In previous years, the beach and surrounds have been a disaster area the morning after. No swim for me on new years day - I don't fancy walking down to the surf through a sea of beer bottles.

The council has prepared a bit better this year - the sea wall is lined with rubbish skips from one end of the beach to the other. Big bright yellow things. Somehow I get the feeling that they will not be well used by the revellers, who will just drop their crap on the ground where they stand.

New years eve becomes more of a pain in the arse with each passing year.

Take away coffee

On the way to Bondi this morning, I was stopped at a set of lights when I spied a pedestrian getting ready to cross. She was wearing exercise clothing, and was carrying a coffee in a cardboard takeaway container.

That is one bloody American import I reckon we can do without. I don't mind drinking coffee in the car when I'm on a long drive and I need a bit of stimulant, but I don't get this idea of walking around with a steaming cup in your hand. When I drink coffee, I like to sit down somewhere nice and drink it. I like the pleasure of whiling away 15 minutes or so in a cafe with a paper or some friends and just relaxing. There's nothing relaxing about running around with a takeaway - it just exudes "I'm a very busy person", which to me says "wanker". No one is too busy to stop once a day and just sit down and enjoy life.

I would support the greenies if they started a campaign to ban those stupid cardboard cups.

Then again, maybe not. Somehow I think that I don't want to sit in a cafe with the types of people that order takeaway. Maybe it is better to get rid of them and to send them out onto the street where they belong.

My Bondi mornings are rooted

I went back to the beach this morning for another nose clearing episode, followed by breakfast, and had my morning ruined by the Bondi Kiosk. The people running it now have definitely fiddled with things. I eschewed the Spanish omelette this morning and went for something really simple - poached eggs with mushrooms.

Problem number 1 - they were out of turkish toast, so I opted for some multigrain stuff. Personally, I think multigrain is only fit for feeding to birds. But it was that or nothing, so I went with it. The bread came out as a big, inch thick slab of dried ick. On the side was a little circlette of butter - enough to cover about half a slice of toast at Ethiopian diet thickness. The staff were too useless to ask for more, so I just put up with it.

Problem number 2 - the eggs were poached to within an inch of their life. I like my eggs gooey in the middle. When lightly poked, yellow stuff should explode out everywhere. The only way these things would have exploded is if they fell on a land mine. They were as hard as a hard boiled egg with the shell still on.

Then came the mushrooms. The Kiosk used to be the only place I ordered mushrooms due to the special way they cooked them. They used only small button mushrooms, and oven baked them with sweet Indonesian soy sauce and oregano. The result was delicious. The new mob have ditched that method, or the cook took his secret with him, and they are now just sliced and poached in butter. Sorry, but that is not for me.

The coffee was also not that great. The thing I like about lattes is that they are smoothe. They go down very easily. Not so the coffee this morning - it was a bit of a struggle to get it down. I didn't finish it, which is heresy.

So that is my last visit to the Kiosk. Unless it changes hands again, and I will give the new owners a go.

I now have to decide whether I can be bothered getting off my arse and writing them a letter telling them all the ways they have ruined my favourite breakfast haunt.

And to cap it off, there was no surf this morning. But at least my nose was 80% clear by the time I got out of the water. At least they can't bugger up the water.

Crusty pizza

A new pizza parlour has opened up in our neighbourhood - it is called Crust, and it is a gourmet pizza establishment. You can tell it is gourmet by the price - a large pizza is $20.

We decided to try them out the other night. Well, I decided to try them out as it has been ages since I have eaten a smoked salmon pizza. The last one was one I made myself, and I had this idea in the back of my mind that a gourmet place should be able to do a better salmon pizza than moi.

So I drove up to the shop, placed my order and sat back to watch the crew make pizza. The shop layout is quite simple - it is purely takeaway, and the counter that you order at is where they make the pizza. Two blokes stand there behind glass putting on the toppings and then it is fed into a conveyor oven. You can see the entire manufacturing process right there in front of you.

A few things stuck in my mind as I sat there on my trendy red cube watching things happen.

For starters, they had a fancy roller doo-dad for rolling out the dough. One bloke stood there and fed a lump of dough into the top and a lovely round pizza base popped out the botton. I was gobsmacked. Rolling out dough usually takes me a few minutes per base when I get the dough right, which is about 1 in 5 occasions. I don't want one - there is no room for it in our house.

The next step was smearing on the tomato sauce. One bloke was doing that, and he was really working at it. I just spoon a few blobs onto the base and whizz it around with the back of a spoon, but he was concentrating on it so hard that I figured he was a plasterer during the day. Each base was perfectly covered with an even layer of sauce by the time he was finished. When you think about it, he was wasting lots of time. When you eat a pizza, do you really care if the sauce is evenly spread?

After that, it went to the topping guys. They had lots of fancy pizzas, which you can lookup at www.crust.com.au. I watched them make a few dozen, as they were fulfilling orders that were phoned in. One that stuck in my mind was a Morocan pizza. It was topped with spicy lamb mince, and the bloke that was making it layered it on about an inch thick. Then the owner turned up, took one look at it and told the guy off for spreading it too thin! He proceeded to lay on another half inch or so. I was stunned - I think less is more when it comes to pizza, and these guys were totally into more-more-more. My salmon pizza ended up with several packets of salmon on it. It was too much - way too much. I ate half the pizza when I got home and binned the rest.

I also ordered a vegetarian, and that didn't go down well either. The vegies were shoveled on half a foot thick, and they weren't cooked very well.

They did get the crust right though - it was very good. Pity everything above the crust was such crap. Well, not crap, but certainly not worth $39 for two pizzas. I was really disappointed.

I also worked out that something was missing from the salmon pizza - sour cream. Thankfully I had some in the fridge, and that improved the pizza by about 500%. I normally also put caviar on my salmon pizza, but they weren't that fancy.

In the end, I decided that I can make over twice as many pizzas for the same money, and make them better. Which is a bugger, as it means I have to cook them from now on. No more takeaway pizza for us.

Iced coffee

I found out this week how to make a really bad iced coffee.

For months now, I have been making it at home with instant coffee and the results have not been that bad. Not great, but drinkable.

On the way back from the country last week, we visited some friends who are a long way from the nearest cafe, so they have an expensive, whizz-bang coffee maker in their kitchen, and they buy in deluxo beans from somewhere. I was in need of some coffee for the last push into town, so I thought I'd make an iced coffee using a short black from this superb coffee machine as the base.

Well that was a blunder. As it turned out, it made really bloody awful iced coffee, and it needs full fat milk, not the skim rubbish that they had in their fridge. For some reason, iced coffee has to be made with el-cheapo crapo instant coffee. It doesn't even need to be fancy instant coffee. Well ok, I have not tried making it with that really, really cheap muck that comes in a tin, but fancy beans are a waste of time when you are going to ice it.

Who would have thought that?

Saint Bob

I think I will write to His Holiness, The Pope and ask him to nominate Bob Geldof for sainthood.

In Somalia, the recently ousted Islamisists are complaining that the invading Ethiopian Army are crusaders (as they are Christian).

The Somalians have been trounced partly by Ethiopian air power, which includes a stack of aircraft bought from Russia in the 1990's. I read somewhere that they spent $US250 million after being whacked around by the Eritreans.

Live Aid reportedly raised $US280 million. Hmm, I see some symmetry in those numbers. Bob Geldof raises money from the West to re-equip the military of a Christian country. That Christian country then invades a muslim country, sparking off accusations of a crusade. Crusade is quite succesful so far.

In that case, Sir Bob should be made a saint for financing the first succesful crusade in about 900 years. Never figured him for a muzzie whacker.

How should pancakes be cooked?

We have a small difference of opinion in our household about pancakes. If I want to eat pancakes, I have to whip up and cook my own as no one else will eat them. Conversely, if J cooks them, I find them inedible. It's amazing that something made out of milk, eggs and flour could turn out so differently depending on who is making them.

I usually avoid pancakes when eating out. They're usually thick, cold and covered in 10 types of crap that I don't want. I like to nibble on what someone else has bought, but I could never chew my way through a meal of them on my own. Yes, I like whipped cream and berries and maple syrup, but I like them in small amounts. I don't like a huge mountain of the stuff strewn over a pile of cold, rubbery pancakes. It looks good and goes down like a wet dish cloth.

Me, I like them plain and simple. Eggs, flour and milk, beaten to a thin, non-lumpy consistency. When poured into the frying pan, the mix should immediately head for the four corners of the pan (metaphorically). They should be cooked in butter over a medium heat - not so hot that the butter burns, which is just plain yuk. It goes without saying that they can only be flipped once, and I normally flip when the top has dried out (ie, no more wet stuff sitting around in puddles). If the mix is good and the pan the right temperature, bubbles should form all over the surface of the uncooked side.

Once flipped, I don't like to cook them for too long. I hate them to be dark brown. Just a nice, light shade of tan will do me fine. If the mix is not too thick, they will be cooked all the way through. If the mix is like tar and the pancake is half an inch thick, you need to blacken them on the outside before the inner bits stop being raw.

Once cooked, straight onto a plate for dusting with sugar, sprinkling with freshly squeezed lemon and then rolled up and eaten straight away. No pancake should sit on a plate for more than half a minute. Any more than that, and they start to cure like rubber.

The only option for me is maple syrup, and I usually work my way through a stack with 75% sugar/lemon and 25% syrup.

J goes the other way. She throws a stack of cinnamon sugar into the mix, and cooks them in oil. I fry pork chops in oil, but never pancakes. Each to their own. I guess it is like how some people are folders and some are scrunchers. You can never convince someone else to change.

What a way to crap up Christmas

My flu bug finally seems to be on the way out the door. Might even be able to remount the bike next week and pedal into work on the first work day of 2007. Just one annoying thing to get rid of, and that is the bucket of snot that is still stuck up my nose. I have been coughing and sneezing this gunk out for two weeks, and it shows no sign of abating.

So I pulled out the number one ace snot cure this morning - a trip to the beach. The best snot cure seems to consist of getting dumped in a big surf half a dozen times, but alas, that was not to be this morning. There were waves, but the ocean was like a large washing machine and the waves were uncatchable. I had to make do with swimming to and fro in the chop and blowing out hunks of green goo every now and then. I really needed to catch a few waves and inhale some salt water up my nose as I am still a bit clogged. I don't know what it is about body surfing that puts so much water up your nose. Maybe once you catch a good wave you don't notice all the spray hitting your face and going up your snoz. Whatever it is, body surfing is the only truly effective nasal clearance technique.

No swim at Bondi is complete without a good breakfast, and I have been looking forward to returning to the Kiosk for 6 months. I haven't swum since June or July, and I have been missing the place. Last time I ate there, it had just been bought out by a guy who went to my school. I had a long chat with him the day after he signed the papers and he swore he wasn't going to tamper with the place too much. I continued to go back month after month, and the only thing that changed were the staff as they slowly rotated. However, the replacements were a good bunch - friendly, good hearted and chatty. The cook thankfully remained the same, so the food wasn't screwed up.

Then I walked in the door this morning after a 6 month absence and the decor had changed. Some stuff behind the bar had changed slightly as well - but not enough to make a big difference. The big change was the staff - the cook was nowhere to be seen, and not one of the staff was familiar. To cap it off, there was a really thickset older woman doing the serving, and a silly young chinese thing with too much rouge taking orders. If there was one constant at the Kiosk, the staff were attractive. Not stunning, but attractive. Male or female. Apart from the cook, they all looked like they had risen at dawn, run along the beach and then been for a swim. They were fit and toned.

The new lot looked like a bunch of rejects from The Biggest Loser. I looked around in vain for a familiar face, and then noticed that the menu had changed. The items were still the same, but the format was new.

Uh oh.

Ordering used to be easy. I'd sit at the bar and the cook would yell out, "Spanish or eggs", meaning did I want a Spanish omelette or poached eggs with mushrooms. The barista would simply plop a latte in front of me. All that is now a fond memory. After 10 minutes, I finally managed to catch one of the staff and give my order. I sat there reading the paper, waiting for my coffee to arrive. I read the first section of the SMH - no coffee. I read the "Drive" section. No coffee. I read the sports section - no coffee. I re-read the front section, and then breakfast arrived.

Uh oh, fucked it up and got the order wrong. I did not order plain scrambled eggs. Back to the kitchen with that lot.

Coffee finally arrives.

After re-reading some more sections of the paper, my Spanish omelette arrives.

It was dry and distinctly lacking in taste. The coffee was a bit burnt and bitter.

Bugger bugger bugger. The only thing that hadn't changed was the price. And it isn't worth it.

Thankfully, there are two completely adequate cafes next door that I have tried from time to time, so I only have to relocate about 20 feet. I might give them a second go in the morning, since I figure I still have a bit more snot to go. Today could have just been a bad day - Christmas rush and all that.

For their sake, I hope so.