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not the day

There is all this stuff I want to say but it doesn’t feel like the right time to say those things at the moment. I need to dwell on them for a little while longer. It is frustrating. I’m looking for that fast forward button. I want things to start now. Moving on.

Yesterday morning, Mum and I dropped Matthew at work and headed off to the Hotel Broadway markets. We parked the car at the Kangaroo Point Cliffs and walked the rest of the way to the Hotel Broadway. It is a relatively small market but it was good. We got some Mangrove Honey 🙂 We walked home via the specialist food shops on Balaclava st, which open at 7am every morning! We had a good walk, window shopping, garden shopping, people shopping watching and I had fun taking some photos.

The Markets
Hotel Broadway Markets

The Gabba
Woolloongabba

The Cliffs
Roo Point,19/366

The Story Bridge
Bridge & Sky

The Valley
Gipps St Red

Windsor War Memorial
Windsor War Memorial

The Park
the park

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three up

Last night I went to catch a 9pm session of Atonement with Thor. There were four other people in the cinema with us, when the movie finished and we walked out, the others had disappeared. weird. Sweetness was the choc tops we got. Made at the cinema, the sticker on the package cheerfully proclaimed, they were choc tops from outer space. a real ice cream cone (as in conical), real chocolate instead of that weird tasting stuff but what really topped it was the ice-cream. I had after dinner mint and it was a nice pale green in colour and full of flavour. Atonement was good, I liked it, well I liked the first 95%. The ending was such a cop out though. Now I know you can’t always have happy endings but if you want to have a sad/angry ending, how they did it was not the way.

Popcorn, that was actually hot for once.
popcorn & atonement, 14/366

When I was at QAG on the weekend, I picked up this little beauty in the QAG store for 40% off, because two weeks into January, who wants a 2008 diary? I do! A limited edition 2008 Moleskine diary plus a cahier.
2008 diary

Sunday; Pabbi, Matthew and I went to the bookfest. They brought home a wall of books each. I on the other hand brought home a couple of books that I had been looking for and a stack of Delicious and Australian Gourmet Traveller magazines, 15 for $3, bargain.
Bookfest bargain, 13/366

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Pabbi in the Kitchen

Pabbi Cooking

This is my papa, as of course you very well know. I had been out in the garden trying to get some photos of the wild wind we are having at the moment. I wasn’t able to get my shutter speed as slow as I wanted it though (need to pick up some ND filters) so I came inside and took some photos of Pabbi getting tea ready. I have no idea what he was looking at when I took this.

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Christmas Morning Tea

Morning Tea

Morning Tea on Christmas Day is always a sugar filled event; rum balls, apricot balls, vanilla rings, lebkuchen, loftkökurs. Then a touch of savoury with pineapple dip and salmon dip.

It is also a time for all of Grandmum’s good china to come out. I think Grandmum would roll over in her proverbial grave if we used anything but the good china (proverbial because she was cremated). The glasses are one of the most treasured pieces in the good cupboard, my aunt brought them back from Venice many years ago, it does feel quite refined drinking lemonade out of those glasses 😀

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6 past 6

It is now 6 past 6 on Christmas Eve. Mum is in the kitchen preparing dinner.
The tree is now decorated and the presents are under the tree.
I am sitting here listening to a mix of Dar Williams, Joni Mitchell and Eva Cassidy. Pabbi has not yet broken out the Mahalia Jackson, possibly because the record player is downstairs connected to his computer. I have actually just added some Mahalia into my playlist.

We talked to Karl for a while this afternoon which was really nice. Yay for Skype! I have had a headset for a while now but the mic port on my old computer didn’t work. It certainly works on the new computer. We have now talked to Karl twice in the past couple of days. It is almost like he is living down south which is why he doesn’t come over for tea or home for Christmas instead of up north.

It would be nice to have Christmas in Iceland one year though (Mum, Pabbi. hint, hint). Next year looks like it could be a very nice Christmas though as one of my brothers and his family are planning to have an Australian Christmas.

I have been going through my photos from a concert the other night, which at this rate will probably be up some time after Christmas.

I am about to go set the table and then it is the waiting game till it gets dark enough to light the candles and eat dinner (another reason why daylight savings is bad for Queensland, I don’t want to have to wait till 8pm on Christmas Eve to have dinner).

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to market

On Wednesday I went to market. to market.
I walked up and down.
Tomatoes, $8, great for sauce
Rockies, $2 a carton.
Cherries, super sweet.
Listening to their calls.

Some stand and watch you, waiting for you to decide that the price & quality is right. Others see you coming and do their best to talk you into buying from them.

There is no partridge in my pear tree but I do have 20kg of tomatoes, 8kg of capsicums, 5kgs of cherries and 4kg of mushies.

Which will become/has become
frozen mushies & capsicums
semi-dried & dried tomatoes
dried roasted capiscums
pasta sauce
frozen cherries for baking
cherries for eating 😀

We picked up two cherry pitters from the shop which made it so quick and easy to pit the cherries for freezing. I also picked up a curved paring knife, which has made coring the tomatoes a dream. It is now Monday morning and I just put on the last lot of capsicums to dry and there is one last tray of tomatoes that will be dried in a few hours. For some reason, I am guessing the weather it has been taking a lot longer to dry the tomatoes & capsicums than usual.

I spent a period of time each day, sitting at a little table on the back cement, with a box of tomatoes on one side, my drying trays on the other and the waste bucket between my legs. I core, halve or third the tomatoes depending on size, pop the backs, squeeze out some of the excess juice, arrange them on the trays and pop them in the dryer. Some of the tomatoes I have seasoned with some salt and pepper but the others are 100% tomato.

The dried roasted capsicums are possibly my favourite though, they have this slightly smokey intense capsicum flavour, are about 2mm thick and have a texture similar to a fruit roll-up. Quite nice.

Today is Christmas Eve, it about 8:30am here and we are about to put up the Christmas Tree, like a good Icelandic family, we decorated the house yesterday and put our outside lights up last week. Mum and I went to the farm yesterday to get our tree and of course to decorate Grandad’s house ready for Christmas Day at the farm.