Minestrone soup, the soup with many ingredients. The soup you make that uses up the veggies in the bottom of the fridge. Minestrone muffins, the muffins you make to clean out the “pantry” aka your drawer in the kitchen.
These muffins were made on my standard muffin recipe but my additions were not the usual berries but mint chocolate, rasins, walnuts and sunflower seeds. I was sure about the last three ingredients but wasn’t too sure how the mint chocolate would pan out. I am pleased to report they are very tasty 🙂
Yesterday I took an RDO to renew my drivers licence as it expired today. My last photo was taken five years ago (though my fingers thanks to work want to type 60/12 instead of five years), I was wearing a high school music shirt, I was on the left side of the frame and I didn’t have braces.
SE QLD has had a lot of rain the last 36 odd hours. This is what our backyard looked round noonish today. (photo by Ryan Sodziak)
I picked up my Food Connect box yesterday arvo and I haven’t posted a photo of the last box, here is the box from last fortnight and from yesterday.
I’m off to the orthodontist tomorrow and I’m at a point where I really just want this whole metal mouth experience that has been going on since 1996 (more than half my life) to be over. I know that I am on the last stretch now and I only have about 12 months ( sounds less than saying one year) to go with braces and then I can get an implant but I want it to have been over by now. I want to move to new horizons but it is impractical to move from Brisbane when I have to go back to the orthodontist in the city every 4-6 weeks. It is like the pause button has been pressed on one part of my life but not the other parts.
Mum left for Central Australia today, she is going to spend the next 2-3 weeks tripping round the centre looking at all things interesting. It was only a few weeks ago that she came back from her big trip round the South of Africa.
The Townsville trip was really fun. I had a great time hanging out with Sam, exploring Townsville, getting lots of work done, paying the final money on our Bali trip and generally having fun.
Here are my bags waiting for the taxi at my parents house.
The view from my room 🙂 It was very pretty looking out over the boats.
And here is Sam at the Watermark on Friday arvo just before I left.
My Amazon order arrived today 🙂 Full of some books for me and some books for Matthew. I am looking forward to spending some time reading in the next few weeks.
I am now up to watching the fourth season of The West Wing – I have watched three seasons in about three weeks… Just plain good drama. I love it.
It was Charlie’s birthday at work the other week. Charlie and I sit with our backs to each other on a connected desk. During the day, I sometimes swivel round on my chair and say “Hi Charlie Girl”. Charlie just laughs. Charlie had said she didn’t want a cake for her birthday so I made biscuits instead. They went down very very well and I now know that offering pretty biscuits to people will get me just about anything I want.
I really like this quote that is floating round the net at the moment.
Until you dream, there isn’t a mold. Until you speak, there isn’t a promise. And until you move, there isn’t a path
I am about to go on my first work trip 😀 To say I am excited is a little bit of an understatement. I am going to work in/be the Townsville medical office for the coming week whilst the Townsville med manager has a few days off as well as going to the medical conference.
It’s my first work trip and I have a travel allowance and cabcharges and swanky accommodation. And even better, I’ll get to see Sam 🙂
Such a delightful day it was. I went out to the South Melbourne Markets first thing and had a average chocolate croissant from the Aromas. That was funny. They had no signs up as to what the baked goods were called. So I asked for a pain au chocolat. The lady behind the counter after she stopped talking to the stall holder in the next stall over, looked at me like I had three heads. She asked what did I mean? So I asked for a chocolate croissant. She then went “oh” and handed me the baked goody. It was average though, pretty much the same as the ones from the Highgate Hill Bakery that you get at the various markets in Brisbane. Oh well. I could cross them off the list of places to go back to. I had a stroll round the markets and they didn’t excite me as they had in 2007. I did however pick up some goodies – I picked up two ciders and a wheat beer to taste with Matthew from Swords, the first cider is the organic cider from Samuel Smith’s in the UK and the other was Coldstream Cider from the Yarra Valley. The beer is the blackberry wheat beer from Redoak.
One of my reasons for going to South Melbourne was that I was hoping that Chef’s Hat would have 30×40 biscuit trays for my oven. Sadly they only had them on back order. I did however pick up a the measuring cup that I had been looking for. Mum has an Anchor Hocking Fire-King 1 cup measure that has 10 ml increments on it. In the shops here I could only find Pyrex ones that only had 50ml increments. Chef’s Hat had the same cup as Mum has. I bought it 🙂
Had a lovely browse in a home wares store though I guess it would really be called an interior decor store called Pomegranate. So, so, so, so many lovely goodies. I picked up a very lovely hook to put on a wall or a door somewhere/sometime. It is a sheath of wheat with two hooks a the bottom => so lovely. I will have to take a photo of it. Had a look at an op shop that I had read rave reviews of on the net. Found it just the same as the stores up in Brisbane. That is actually what I found at all the op shops I went to check out. Really just the same stuff as back home. Headed back to the hostel and dropped my loot off before catching the tram to Fitzroy to spend the day mooching round the streets. Went down and up and round Johnston, Getrude, Brunswick and Smith St, picked up a few things, had a good browse, saw some weird stuff, had some good food and basked in the Melbourne sun. My first stop was Meet me at Mikes to hopefully buy the book, the man behind the counter told me they don’t sell it. I went WTF? really surprised me with that. It was an interesting shop full of all sorts of little goodies but I sort of expected it to also have random crafty supplies which it didn’t.
Stopped in to another crafty shop a little way up the street which had the most gorgeous pressed tin goodies -> boxes, photo frames, rubbish bins etc. If I didn’t have space constraints, one of those pressed tin rubbish bins would have been coo!.
When I started getting peckish, I had a look at the patronage levels of the cafes near where I was on Brunswick St, and picked the busiest one. It was Alimentari and oh I enjoyed it. Had a gorgeous lunch of a haluimi pie with spinach and semi-dried tomaoto. It was similar in construction to a Calzone but had a much harder crust. Washed that one with a reminder of home – a Bundy Ginger Beer. I had a lovely spot to eat my lunch. Up on a stool at the window looking out at the street life in front of me.
More wandering, salivating at some of the pretty things I saw. Crossing off shops on the 12 page list I had with me of things to check out. As I wondered I took a very few photos. I think this day was the day I took the least photos, too busy strolling and looking to take photos.
Had a Chocolate Crossiant at Babka – man oh man that was the best I have ever had or have had in a long time. Buttery, layerey, just wish it the chocolate was a bit more spread out. Oh so good.
Randomly met Tom and Tianna at the tram stop near Johnston St on the way home – so random and very cool. They were on their way to St Kilda to busk. I headed up to Lygon St, where I picked up Meet Me at Mikes at Readings, had a San Churro Hot Chocolate – man oh man they are so good! I ended up having a few more on my trip to Melbourne. In QLD there is a shop at Maroochydore – I can see myself making some trips up the Sunny Coast in the future.
Overall I wasn’t that impressed with Lygon St but maybe it is better in the morning, or on the weekend or later at night when it is alive. I did see a few groups of Italian old men and young men hanging out at the cafes.
Had a late dinner at Brunetti’s of a pizza with a Chai Latte – very yummy. I ended up having a second Chai Latte the following night, so yummy. Spicy, frothy and milky!
Two weekends ago, I used part of my K-Rudd 900 to buy a bike. A very pretty bike, a greener bike, a bike from a local company, a bike to make me more healthy and fitter.
This is my bike.
Is it not just one of the prettiest bikes you have seen? I picked it up from Bicycle Revolution in West End and since I bought it on April 18th I have ridden it to and from work 5 of the 8 days. The other three days were tied up with Grandad and other un-excitable events. Yesterday when I was riding home with one of the guys from work who lives a couple of streets over, a couple rode beside us for a little while praising the prettiness of my bike. They made all sort of comments about technical features of my bike that went in ear and out the other. I thought that was quite cool.
Tomorrow I won’t be riding as I do not yet have the facilities to carry a birthday cake with me whilst I ride 🙂
I was picked up from work this morning to take Grandad to hospital, a couple of hours later, Grandad was in the surgery waiting room waiting to go under for more skin grafts on his legs and I was back at work. I went back to the hospital a little ago to see him after he came out of surgery and he was safely tucked up in his hospital bed -> it is very handy living sort of semi across the back fence from the hospital he is staying at. It means I will be able to visit him each day after work. Don’t know how long he will be in there for yet but last time it was two weeks. So we shall see.
Last night, I picked up my first Food Connect box, I had ummed and ahhed about various fruit/veg boxes for a couple of months now but kept on coming back to Food Connect in that they seemed to provide not only a good value for money, but I liked the newsletter they supply to let you know what is happening with the farmers they use and the office.. Last week though I decided to give it a whirl and called the office, I spoke to a very friendly lady who answered my questions. I settled on the mini mixed box for 4 pick-ups over 8 weeks. This is what I got.
I got 3 avocados, 5 bananas, 2 onions, 3 potatoes, 4 apples, 1 broccoli, 1 celery, a few leaves of silverbeet, a bag of snow peas, a punnet of sprouts, 6 tomatoes, 2 carrots, 5 mandarins and half a cabbage. I think that is all. I am pretty impressed with the swag of produce. It will be interesting to see how it suits me. I know just from my first box that it will force me to eat more fruit, eat a bigger variety of veg and mostly get me to use things I wouldn’t normally buy.
Last night for dinner I made a pot of lamb shanks with lentils, peas and tomatoes. I haven’t eaten many lentils over summer and I had forgotten how much I like them 😀 Dinner was yum.
