Entries from October 2009 ↓

Just back from another lovely weekend in Blenheim – so much rain! Everything is very green and we only went outside once to walk around the block. Such a relaxing time for us doing nothing but drinking coffee, eating cake, chatting, reading Aidan stories and telling him the name of everything he pointed to. Good times – thanks for having us guys!

You have to see it to believe it. I knew it was a diner/grill place with great plates of meat and chips with a stack of white bread and that’s just what it was, a step back in time.

Again I was amazed by going somewhere different and seeing a whole other set of people, different to the people you’re used to seeing – not necessarily familiar faces that you see over and over again, but as a population, they’re familiar to you. The crowd at Green Parrot was totally different – mostly in their 50’s I’d say, in groups of 4 or more, good hearty folks in for good hearty meals.

And what meals they were. I’d see the website beforehand but seeing the meals in the flesh (ha ha) as a sight. Huge white plates filled with piles of chips, rough cut iceberg lettuce salad, great slop of potato salad and a big piece of meat of your choice. I had a ham steak, the Mister and enormous fillet steak and Short Dark Friend had chops (on recommendation from the waitress that it was one of the smaller meals … yet it was 5 big chops!!!)

When we left to pay we saw the grill behind the counter, god there was a lot of meat on it. One steak looked like it was off a brontosaurus! The Mister said his steak was one of the best he’d had in Wellington for a while – I’m not surprised – those guy probably really know how to grill – not really any prep or other cooking methods!

All my clothes and hair smell of fry-up and I am very full.

At the end of our monstrous run of working and grabbing food on the run or whatever hurried thing we could rustle up last week we decided to do ‘planned meals’ this week. We went through the folder of scraps of paper and bits torn from magazines and shopped for specific stuff at the weekend. We’ve had some simple but very delicious meals so far:

• Sunday night – Blenheim corn fritters* with tomato/basil salsa
• Monday night – lemon, basil, parmesan spaghetti
• Tuesday – pea**, parmesan and parsley risotto (my god this was surprisingly good. I haven’t made risotto solo for a few months now, I really enjoyed it which I know contributes to a good brew but the Mister was late home and it sat for much longer, which was probably an important factor too.)

* Discovered a new fav lunch snack the next day. Cold corn fritters are just like some kind of savoury cake. All good!

** Capitol had a special on offer when we were there on Saturday night – pea ravioli – got to be one of my favourites so am in a kind of pea mood right now. The first and I think only other time I’ve had pea ravioli was at Brasserie Flipp – upstairs bistro on Ghuznee Street about 15 years ago. Restaurant has gone now. I kept the menu because it was such a memorable meal!

Since I’ve moved up to the more advanced class, our teacher kindly sends out an email reminder each Wednesday for the class the next evening. I guess now that he’s operating on a month to month basis he has to do what he can to keep attendance up.

Lately in his emails he’s started putting in little ditties, proverbs, interesting bits so I might keep them. They make me smile. Here are the ones from the last couple of weeks.

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What on earth do vegetarian meatballs have in them?

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A short selection from the recently announced IgNobel prizes:

• The physics prize went to a study of why pregnant women don’t tip over. Usually.
• The chemistry prize was awarded to scientists who turned tequila into diamonds.
• The veterinary medicine prize was given for finding that cows that have names make more milk than those who remain anonymous.
• The medicine prize went to a physician who, for fifty years, cracked the knuckles on only his left hand to test his mother’s contention that knuckle-cracking causes arthritis. His conclusion: mother was wrong, although his study was self-controlled and not blinded.

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When you wake up in the morning, what is the first thing that you say to yourself?

Pooh’s answer: What’s for breakfast?
Piglet’s answer: I wonder what exciting thing is happening today?

Pooh’s riposte : It’s the same thing.

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I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.

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If all is not lost, where is it?

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I managed to get a copy of this magazine sent over from the States – thanks SF Girl

Recognise my brainy friend David? On. The. COVER!

You can also read the article online.

I’ve long thought that I’d like to be a person who always has champagne in the house. A couple of years ago we managed to stockpile to an impressive 18-bottle high when an unexpected box arrived but now the racks and fridge are bare. Oh if only we were rich enough to make popping a couple of bottles into the trolley (cart for my American friends) part of the normal weekly visit to the supermarket, but alas, that is just a dream.

So I will graciously accept bottles as gifts. Any size, any Champagne house. The tiny Piccolo and larger 375ml bottles taste just as delicious and are often more useful, thereby offering a range of price points!

Houses in rough preference order would be:

• Veuve Clicquot
• Taittinger
• Laurent Perrier
• Moet & Chandon
• Louis Roederer

Really irks me when product writers put those of us who are damn good at our jobs to shame. Or perhaps in this case there was no product writer, that they thought their users would ‘just figure it out’ or they left the writing of instructions in the geeks hands … don’t get me wrong, geeks are brilliant, it’s amazing what they can do, but they and the people that employ them need to realise that there are just some things they’re not good at. And that that’s OK.

It’s just a small thing, and yes I did figure out what to do, but I ALWAYS notice stuff like this and get annoyed by it:

Errr, where’s ‘No’?