Work – Page 5 – helenthura.com

January 24, 2009January 24, 2009

Christmas Truffles

I’m moving house in a week today and one of the things I hope to have done by then is to have finished blogging about Christmas 2008. So here is another post to bring me a little step closer to the end of the 2008 Christmas Extravaganza.

I have wanted to make chocolate truffles for quite a while now and on more than one occasion I have brought cream with the intention of making truffles but ended up using it for something else.

For Christmas I made two types, the first where Peppermint Dark Chocolate and the second where White Rum, White Chocolate. They were rolled in a mixture of toppings, crushed Candy Canes (any idea how hard that is?), coconut, cocoa and sprinkles. I was not 100% happy with how they turned out so I won’t be sharing a recipe but here is a link to a search on FoodBlogSearch where I got my basic recipe from. My main problem was getting the consistency right and looking back now, I can also tell you that the Brisbane weather might have a little bit to do with it as well.

The truffles were rolled over two sessions. The night that I made the mixtures Karl and Matthew came over for a little gathering. We tasted one of Karl’s beers that he brought with him. By far the best tasting beer I have ever had, if I could get a case of it I would. We sampled different liqueurs and port with ice-cream and then we rolled truffles and we rolled till the mixture warmed up too much and the table warmed up as well.

When it comes to crushing candy canes, let me tell you the following things do not work; using the end of a rolling pin and a soufflÃ© dish as a make do mortar and pestle, placing them in a plastic bag and whacking them with a rolling pin or placing the bag between chopping boards and whacking the top board, trying to grate them. I ended up chop, chop, chopping the candy canes till I had the pieces reasonably small enough to coat the truffles in. My “fun” crushing the candy canes resulted in Matthew buying me a nice beastly mortar and pestle for Christmas 🙂 What lovely brothers I have.

The next truffle rolling session was the day that we picked Erica and Ash up from the airport. Having learnt our lessons we knew how to roll them now and Mum’s house has air-con which made it a bit easier to roll them 😀

The following photos were taken by Mum.

and this is how we roll

They were a lot of hard work but oh my they were pretty tasty and they do look pretty!

FYI for the future though. Crushed candy canes absorb moisture from anything and turn into liquid candy canes. Eat them shortly after making them.

I’m thinking that this year truffles will be made for winter celebrations not Christmas!

Also you can read Karl’s account of the truffle adventure here – Food, truffles, sausages and possums

And speaking of Candy Canes, here are photos of the girls with candy canes they were given by the Station Master at Albion train station. Anna, the girls and I went into the city before Christmas to do some shopping and check out my office – the idea was to look at the view but I think they had more fun having their height and weight measured by one of the nurses who is my work mum #1 (I have two work mums at work :D) and listening to everyone gush at how cute they were. 😀

November 18, 2008

day 18

A blog a day in November, what on earth was I thinking?

Today I got up had a shower/breakfast and rushed out the door to work, then it was home for a bite to eat and then over to Group for another night out with the SES. We spent the night travelling to various homes that placed calls since Sunday night to see if a) they still needed assistance or b) what assistance they would need. It’s raining a lot more tonight than it was last night. I have now been home long enough to grab a shower and start this post and all along all I can think is that man oh man I just want to go bed but I’m not about to pike on making a post a day when I have managed to stay on track for the last 17 days.

Today though apart from been work, rain and SES also marks the day in two weeks time that Karl will be walking off a plane at the Airport to spend Christmas with us. Excited? Very! Then the following day Toti and his crew arrive! Two weeks! and I will have my brother home (well one of them)

November 4, 2008

Melbourne Cup

If someone had told me a few months ago that I would have won Best Dressed at the work Melbourne Cup event I would have laughed. Somehow though I managed to pick up the prize. It wasn’t till sometime yesterday arvo that I decided to wear a hat for the happenings today. After SES, I stopped off at my parents and ummed and ahhed over the various hats. Then Matthew suggested I wear Karl’s WW1 Brodie Helmet, a little bit of fabric and a few ribbons later I had myself a hat which would protect my head from shrapnel and was classy enough for the “field”.

May 31, 2008

a mish mosh life

My life is in a bit of a weird place at the moment. The internet is still not connected at our flat yet so to use my computer/the net I have to come home and when I do come home I don’t really like using the computer – sort of feels like I am in a Net Cafe with my 30mins of allocated time ticking away. To check my emails – which I can do via the web but I just don’t have the time at work to do so that often, Mum reads me the senders out over the phone. So funny, what an interesting way to check emails. Then I know what is waiting for me to find time to check at work or come home and read.

Last night Andrea and I (and later on a friend of Andrea’s) went down to one of “our (new) locals”, to grab a Pub meal and to enjoy a night of fReTfEST featuring amongst others Rob Longstaff (his website seems to be down at the moment) and Georgia Potter, a post with pictures is coming shortly.

Mum and I went to Chermie this morning and I managed to find not only a cardigan which I was looking for but a jacket and a new work shirt as well. I have been very lacking in the cooler weather gear department of items which have more office style than Polartecs. The jacket and the cardigan are both Australian Merino which is pretty nice. I also picked up a recipe book, to start copying recipes from Mum’s handwritten recipe book to my own.

The 2nd Mountain Goats session is finally up on Daytrotter and oh sigh what a fantastic collection of four recordings it is. San Bernardino is such a delicate recording compared to the version on Heretic Pride. I had forgotten how much I loved There Will Be No Divorce and 02-75, what a sweet song that is and well Raja Vocative is Raja Vocative.

Tonight I am going on a boat cruise of the lovely Brisbane River with a large collection of people from work. Thankfully the sky has cleared and the wind has eased a bit! Yesterday, not many of us was looking forward to today!

And because we always need photos here some photos from the last week or so.

March 10, 2008

slightly bigger impact

I was walking home from the bus stop today for the first time in weeks (I have been getting picked up since I did my ankle), as I was walking past one house I looked up over the tiled roof to the blue sky and though to myself it really is a prefect day. I am walking home from the bus stop, the cake box under my arm is empty, my hair is down, I walked out of work at 4pm and my desk was clear, the sky is blue after it was washed this morning and the temperature is just right. Oh and I was also listening/singing along to This Year. That last bit might have had a slightly bigger impact on me realising that today is a perfect day than say the empty cake box.

It also wasn’t just any This Year that I was listening to either it was from the show at Bottom of the Hill in San Fran last week. One thing I have noticed from listening to the recent shows on archive.org and reading blog reviews is that the shows are becoming more and more a big singalong. Am I complaining? No. Incidentally the Mountain Goats are one of two artists who I have never felt uncomfortable singing along to at gigs, the other is Peter Combe, he is/was a children’s artist, that is expected. A ‘Goats show is really just one big family reunion or perhaps it is the growth of a cult, we all look at this man on stage (JD) and his disciples and we say those words along with them. Saying those words from the bottom of our heart. Where it is ok to say those words, not those gigs where people around you look at you and start “bumping” into you if you start singing along at any level above a whisper. Saying those words like they are going to deliver you from salvation. mmmm perhaps I should just put The Mountain Goats in the religion box on facebook.

Which leads me to the The ‘Goats and their upcoming tour. In just about a month exactly I am going to flex off early from work on Friday and fly down to Newcastle see them play and then go to Sydney for the Saturday night show before coming back to Brisbane on Sunday, catching their Tuesday show at the Zoo before going up to the Sunny Coast on Thursday for the last show. Crazy perhaps but as Mum tells me I am footloose, fancy free and working the 8-4. I haven’t bought my plane tickets or show tickets yet but I will be doing that in the next few days.

This is a photo I took on the way home today. A little lost shoe.

And two from the farm yesterday.

February 25, 2008

yesterday was yesterday, today will be yesterday, tomorrow will be today.

Yesterday, I went to Campos and didn’t get a coffee. I got a iced chocolate instead. It was a spur of the moment trip. One girl, five guys (they all had coffee). Where are all the girls with cameras?

I went to Rics, for a Sunday arvo session. It was quite comfortably filled, and every single person had this smile on their face.

I sat round the dimly lit Troubie whilst it was bright sunshine outside. That was weird. Waiting for people to turn up.

I watched a group of people turn the Troubie into a lounge room and listened to a few songs.

I shook my head at boy who has hair like an Icelandic sheep and smirked with a girl who I should always be sitting down when talking to.

Today though.
I set the alarm for an extra 15 minutes.

My lunch was two matching containers of tupperware, one with a chopped up mango (honey gold thank you) and the other with grapes (green please).

I am reading Kabul in Winter. Which must be the fifth, I think, book on Afghanistan post 2001 that I have read in the past few weeks. It is really good to see how a lot of the main people and history are written in the different books.

I have numerous photos that I could illustrate this post with but strangely I have no desire to put photos with these words.

I watched the last episode of Alias season 1. I had forgotten there were only five seasons, I kept on thinking there were seven and I had the timeline stretched out a lot longer in my mind.

I just found out that one of the girls from high school who I have probably kept the most contact with works in a building across the street from where I work. We catch the bus from the same stop each afternoon. weird.

I haven’t taken my photo for today yet.

Tomorrow.
I have a bunch of kids enlisting. That means I get to wrap med docs in brown paper (it was that, not the view that cinched me taking the job). Every week or so it is like Christmas. Wrapping all those “presents”.

I will make biscuits when I get home.

I will wake up at 6am and get out of bed at 6:03am.

I will watch an hour of something trashy on TV and shake my head the entire time at myself for watching it.

I well who knows what else I will do because tomorrow is tomorrow.