I do some of my best thinking in the shower. I mentally draft blog posts, mull over problems and ponder recipes for upcoming feasts. The other day I had an “eureka!” moment while showering and thinking about fried chicken. A sudden flash came to me about how Thomas Keller’s fried chicken could be improved:
PANKO PANKO PANKO.
This week: more exciting than the previous week (I told you!). Sweets at the Immigration museum, ramen, Easter treats at Phillippa’s and fried chicken 2.0.
Disclosure: Alastair and I ended the Sweets Festival preview courtesy of the Immigration Museum.
Do you have a sweet tooth? My sugar loving friends, this post is for you. (And see the end of this post for a giveaway.)
This week I was invited to the Immigration Museum for a preview of one of their upcoming exhibitions on sweets. In March, the museum is launching a program called Sweets: Tastes and traditions from many cultures. There’s an exhibition, a festival, and a dinner, which will explore sweet foods and drinks from several Victorian communities: Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mauritian and Turkish.
Do you remember how exciting it used to be to collect stamps in your passport? It was always fun to flick through and see all the stamps from different countries. But passports these days aren’t the same – not as many stamps are used with the new style passports that contain electronic chips. Also, rather annoyingly (at least for NZ passports) they’re only valid for five years, not ten. And doesn’t five years go by incredibly fast?
Recently my passport was due to expire and I needed to sort out a renewal. I had to get a reference for my renewal application, so off we went to visit Dany. While we were visiting, I saw that she had a copy of Indochine – a recent birthday present from her workmates.
Hmm, after looking at my Instagram photos this week, I realised that I hardly posted anything. I was sick, and work was busy, and all I wanted to do was stay in bed. Wah! Oh well. This post will be short and sweet then.
Oh, I’ll be emailing the Better Homes & Gardens winners tomorrow. 🙂
What’s the best way of taking ice cream to a picnic? One option is to load up an esky (chilly bin) with ice and hope for the best. OR you could get a bit inventive – and make ice cream cone cupcakes.
Okay, so it’s not technically ice cream, but look at how cute they are!
I’d seen this idea on blogs before, and a recent Australia Day picnic was the perfect excuse to try them out. If you haven’t seen these before, the cupcakes are baked in the ice cream cones (no they don’t burn) before being topped with frosting so they look like ice creams. So. Cute.
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There’s an inner glutton in me. She is mostly tamed and kept deep down inside, but occasionally she rises to the surface. Normally she comes out in the presence of other gluttons ie Ms Kat. However, I discovered the other night that my glutton is only a glutton in training in comparison to Kat.
Kat wanted to go to Chinese Spicy and Barbie Kitchen to eat Sichuan food and “shit on sticks” (my terminology – translation: meat/vegies on skewers). Since it’s my side of town, I was keen and we gathered up Thanh, Kat’s partner Josh, Alastair and Bro for a visit one night last week.
This week: there’s not that much to see here. Apologies! Hey, have you entered my Better Homes and Gardens competition?
Long time readers will know this about me: my gardening skills suck. Need evidence of exactly how terrible a gardener I am? I once tried to grow cat grass and was unsuccessful. GRASS, folks. I couldn’t grow GRASS.
I keep trying though, because I live in hope that one day I will have a wonderful, lush, green garden to go with my effortlessly stylish, clean house.
Yes, I’ll keep dreaming.
Disclosure: We dined with Thanh, who is friends with the staff at Steer. The Chef put together a tasting menu for us. So – special treatment alert. However, we did pay for our meal.
This post is for all the beef lovers out there.
Steer opened just over a year ago, starting off as a steakhouse with a Brazilian influence. Since then, it has evolved into a New York steakhouse, obviously still with a focus on beef. Just after Christmas, Alastair and I had dinner there with Thanh, Michele, April and her hubby. With all our stomachs stretched from Chrissy, we were ready to eat ourselves some meat!