EuroRock!

We enjoyed the green onion cakes while watching Eurovision 2006.

And between 10pm and 11pm, as the idiot co-presenters dragged out the end of procedings, I cheered with each addition of points to Finland’s score, and laughed in delight when they were announced the winners with 44 more points than any other country.

What a riot: Lordi win Eurovision 2006 . 

There were a couple of other good songs (and I’m such a subversive I really liked the Lithuanian entry, which came in sixth) and some real horrors – the French entrant, singing out of key in a nasal voice which had me cringing; and the Shakira wannabe from the Ukraine semi-yodelling Show Me Your Love and something which sounded remarkably like "I’ll be your butt to show you I care".

I’ve never watched the contest before so I think this year was a good year to begin what I hope will be a long and lasting relationship.  God Bless Terry Wogan!!

How to look like pregnancy has made you lose your marbles

I have always been one of those people who can’t cut up onions without sobbing as though it’s the final scene from The Big Blue when Jacques, while narced, chooses to swim for the dolphins instead of back to his pregnant lover.

Perhaps I subconsciously decided to use a scene from a diving movie because I used to use my full dive mask when cutting onions; now I have streamlined and use mere swimming goggles.  Unless they’re particularly pungent onions, in which case goggles allow my nose to burn and I have to revert to a mask.

You may be able to see from the photo that I’m not just cutting up onions, but mere spring onions – even these make my eyes water.  As I use spring onions frequently in cooking, the sight of me, all agoggle, waving around a sharp knife, is not a rare one. 

To complete the look, I am sporting wide-legged jeans which make my legs look about 6 inches long, and a super-attractive pelvic girdle to help with my various aches and pains. 

Don’t I just look a picture?

Incidentally – when we had our transmission fixed a month or so ago, the head mechanic was a dead ringer for Jean Reno as he is playing Enzo, complete with super-thick glasses and exotic accent.  Except our mechanic wore a blue jumpsuit unbuttoned to the waist with his hairy chest proudly poking out.

What am I cooking with spring onions tonight?  Chinese green onion cakes.  They used to be one of my favourites as a teenager, and then I moved out and promptly forgot about them.  Something stirred my memory last week, and so I’m cooking them tonight to serve beside a stir fry and rice.  Yum!

Stuffity stuff

Am I the only one using Typepad who finds the over-colour corrected pants worn by the seated lady on the log in page highly disturbing?  No?  Good.

It rained muchly overnight.  As it turns out, our gutters were stuffed with leaves and so part of our roof filled with water, thus shorting out a bunch of wiring.  It took the sparky over an hour to isolate the problem (he was a very nice sparky – much impressed with my doggy, and said he has his own ten year old foxy) and he will have to return in the morning with someone else in order to lift part of the roof to get at the problem.  And he hoped that it would not rain more tonight; if it had a chance to dry a little he would be able to repair rather than replace.   Oh well, I’m glad I’m not paying.  The relief of renting.  We’ll have to be proactive about cleaning out gutters though.  Sigh – I thought we’d left all that behind with bushfires and water tanks.

Speaking of the puppy, it’s been quite pleasant having him.  He’s totally deaf now, so although I can’t call him and have to be extra careful when out and about due to his vulnerability, it is nice not to have him barking at every noise.  Poor Mark though – Archie knows that Mark always takes him on extended walks and so Mark is the go-to.  I’m almost miffed; Mark’s the interloper, the newcomer, and yet it’s not me for whom the dog pines at the door, and Archie certainly doesn’t jump on me as much as he leaps onto Mark when he returns from work.  Mark finds it amusing that when he walks A. in the evening people coo and exclaim over the ‘cute puppy’.  Inwardly Mark laughs and wants to tell them the dog is geriatric.  But apart from some greying hair and a little loose skin here and there, the deafness (not an obvious thing) and a slight bit of milkiness to the eyes, he’s a very sprightly dog.  He’s certainly doing better than many dogs his age.

Here he is, pining for Mark wo dared to work on the other side of the door.

Gastronomic gimmicks

Or: When The Hell Are They Going To Get Over It?

I was thinking of Mrs Delicious and her gastronomic travels when we ate out last week, and I wondered what she thought of gastronimc gimmicks, or the Trendy Meal Accesory du jour.

A couple of years ago it was candied balsamic vinegar.  This gave lots of people the horrors.  I admit I liked it enough to boil away a saucepan full of balsamic and sugar to make some myself (which later led to a fridge disaster when the bowl tipped up…) and pooled under olive oil it was scrumptious with Turkish bread.

I’m noticing more and more these trendy garnishes; I eat it at one restaurant, and within weeks every single cafe/bistro/bloody corner shop has them.

One that I think is old-hat enough that it will go out of fashion soon enough: the baked peelings of sweet potato.  Very tasty, but difficult to eat gracefully (let alone publically) and I find it annoying to have to remove a mountain of the things ot get to my half-raw cow.

And the latest one I’ve noticed: overuse of snow pea vine in salads, as a garnish, to pile meals on top of because apparently mashed potato looks better with some curly vine peeking out from beneath.  It’s stringy, gets stuck in your teeth, and tastes pretty ordinary.  Get over it, people.  Move on.  Go forward!  Whip it, whip it goo…  sorry, got carried away there.

No. 7

Beautiful Thing (BT) No. 7 – Yesterday – the sound of the gate opening at lunch time – Mark made it home for lunch.  And then when he made it home for dinner he came bearing red gerberas.

A Collection of Beauties.

Prompted by a comment by my sister in law last week, I’m going to keep a collection of small but beautiful experiences, sights and sounds that make each day a pleasure to live.

It started when we were out to lunch, and it was a stunning sunlit autumn day (April/May are my favourite months) and I held up the little sachet-thing of honey (it came with my chai latte) so I could watch the sun shining through it.  Sun through honey is one of the wonders of the world. 

The next day, it was the 60-something woman at a makeup counter in a department store, swinging her legs under the chair like a four year old.  Such a contrast.

Arriving at my parents’ house to find my mother slightyl inebriated (the first time she’s drunk more than one glass of wine in a night in a very long time) and giggling at everything.  It was wonderful.

Yesterday I had lots of moments: The beautiful, voluptuous African woman in a frilled dress which accentuated her shape and made her a standout – I couldn’t stop watching her from the other side of the weekend markets.

As we left the markets, three couples on the footpath met up – an octopus-like tangle ensued while they tried to hug/kiss each person in greeting.  Each person had to navigate around those they’d already hugged, and arms went up in false starts and mismatches.  It took them a few minutes to complete the rounds.

And a trip to the supermarket last night.  We shop at either of two supermarkets, different chains, and the one we chose last night is in a suburb known for its population of junkies (the suburb is home to some of the methadone programs in the city) and shopping there is always a great people-watching experience.  It’s a stand-alone shop – not attached to a shopping centre or indeed any shops at all, just sitting by itself, and island in a carpark sea.  Most times there are several elderly people sitting on benches outside, just passing the time; sometimes there are younger people waiting with dogs. 

Last night it started raining just before we got there, though, so there weren’t many willing to brave the sprinkle.  As we drew near the end of our shop, I passed the open loading-dock doors near the dairy section (in a search for the King Island Dairy White Chocolate Creme Dessert) and through the doors I could hear the sudden drum of torrential rain.  I could stop a simle of joy because I love severe weather, especially of the sudden sort, and I chuckled to a random shopper that you can tell it’s bad when you can hear the rain inside over the top of the musak.

I met up with Mark, and as it happened he glanced at the shelves and there, tucked at the back, were the desserts.  He grabbed two, and the power went out.

Gasps from the shopping herd.

There was some light still coming from the produce section but it was dark enough that when I turned around and looked straight down the aisle and out the front windows, each lightning bolt silhouetted wildly thrashing eucalypts along the road and the absolutely teeming rain.  The trees were being twisted and whipped all over the place.

After a minute the generator kicked in and everyone went back to filling their trolleys.  I noticed my footsteps were remarkably loud, and that everyone else was very quiet.  At first I thought that perhaps people were hushed out of a hurry to get finished and get out, but then I realised: the generator doesn’t power the muzak!  For the first time in my life, I was able to complete a trip to the supermarket with no background drone or announcements.  And it was a real pleasure.  I only wish it was available more often.

The only downer to the experience was the checkout kid who was four times slower than any other checkout chick in the world.  He took almost a minute to scan three tins of tuna; the girl at the next checkout had put three full trolleys through in the time he took to scan ours.  He kept stopping to look outside at the weather, or to turn around to listen to the floor staff discuss the effects the weather had had on operations; he oh-so-carefully packed a stray stem of spring onion that had become detached from the bunch and struggeled to replace the cardboard cover from the washing-up wand until Mark told him not to worry about it.  Cody, from M. Woolies, you need to pick up some speed.

Frustrating, but it’s the little details that really make an experience.

My sister told me that if it ever happens again, to clutch my belly and yell "Mark, I think the baby’s coming".  But then Cody was such a young tacker he most likely would have become fumble-fingered and therefore even more slow, if presented with a drama.  Just look what effect the weather had on him!