I created this dish as an homage to the spring garden...and for a wine tasting event called First Crush that will be happening very soon. Our resto has been invited to attend and tentatively, this is my contribution. Although we are waiting to see what the other restaurants will provide. We can't be completely over the top if the next booth is passing out bbq ribs.
Very simply, it's a five element dish... bacon lardon-smokey, pomegranate reduction- sweet, baby cilantro top- fresh, greek goat feta- savory, Oregon Royal Ann cherry- sour. Together they comprise a fully rounded flavor that wakes up your mouth and gets it ready for a glass of good wine. Enjoy!
( Sorry for the dark picture guys. My camera is not good at close-ups.)
Here is a few books I intend on reading this summer.
Today is supposed to be 90+ degrees today. Three days ago it barely broke 60. Wacky spring!
Here are some black and white photos to help cool me down, it is already quite warm!
I'm afraid that it would be too late to help her to deliver the baby and she might need to go for a cesarean, so I sent her to stay in the clinic. The vet said that the latest would be 2 days from now until she gives me a grandpuppy :)
I hope she won't cry much tonight. I think she might feel so unloved when I left her at the clinic :'( I'm really worried about my dear baby...
`
More random things about me - for SandyU who tagged me........
1. I love Plain Non-Fat yogurt. I have it for lunch every day. My lunch has never been stolen out of the work fridge.
2. I do not watch any "reality" TV shows - I seem to be the only person I know who doesn't. However, I did watch the first season of Survivor all those years ago.
3. I have peroneal tendonitis in my left foot. I have had it for 2 years now. I don't think it is ever going to get better - it is an "overuse" injury and I just can't see how you can not use your foot.
4. I admit to having owned some Abba cassettes - but surely I did not purchase them myself! :-)
5. For seven years I lived in a 12-storey apartment block with hundreds of others and only learnt the name of one neighbour. Ophelia! A fabulous name - I wish I was called Ophelia. My father wanted to call me Fleur - I'm glad my mother resisted - though Fleur would be a good Vox name.
6. I think of worst case scenarios for every situation. I am a "what if worrier". What if robbers suddenly appeared to rob that armoured truck as I'm walking past, what if my waiter just sneezed all over my plate and has some incurable disease spread by "droplets"; what if the plane really does have to make a water landing; what if the life jacket is not under the seat; what if ..... you get the idea!
7. I have morning "tea" at 10am every morning - weekday & weekends. Though this actually consists of coffee rather than tea; if I miss out for any reason I turn into a very nasty person.
8. I have probably eaten tons of chocolate in my lifetime. I have still not perfected the art of making a box last longer than a day. I intend to continue practising on this!
W will be here in less than an hour and I'm bouncing off the walls here. I don't know if I'm more nervous or excited - I guess it's a mix of both. What's that line from Armageddon? Why is it I can never think of a movie quote when I try. Not that I'm comparing this date to the end of the world. Not by any means!
I've packed enough crap to spend two days on that bloody island, so if we get lost we'll definitely survive. I hope he won't object to playing pack mule along with me; I can't possibly carry everything myself.
If I shoot in JPEG I can take over a thousand photos today. I think I'll go back and forth between JPEG and RAW. I'm really hoping for some dramatic shots of the horses and I'd love those to be in RAW so that I have a little more license in processing. I'm not suire even I can take 1000 shots in an afternoon. I never have, at least.
OK, gotta get off here and pace a little more. Have a great weekend! Talk to you soon.
I was up at the crack of dawn (thank you mobile for hissing at me) so I dragged my pathetic sorry arse out of bed and got ready for my day ahead. I really hate working Saturdays but today ended up being a rather good day.
I was eager to get home as it has not stopped raining and is bloody freezing cold in Melbourne and really rather miserable looking but I love it this way. Anyway, enough about the weather as I’m sure you really don’t want to hear about it. So I digress, I was eager to get home, throw the PJ's on, grab onto Elvis and use him like a hot water bottle and sit down to watch the muchly anticipated music doco “Punk Attitude”.
I have attempted to watch this doco on at least 3 occasions but have always been interrupted by someone or something. Today though I got myself organized. I unhooked the landline, switched my mobile off, put my laptop away (to help prevent any distractions) locked and double locked the front door and had a glass of V8 juice to my left. PJ’s on, heater on, blanket covering my shoulders and let the doco begin.
Punk Attitude is a music doco, which explores the history, generation and genre of the punk rock music scene beginning from the early 70's in the USA and UK. The doco was written and directed by Don Letts who is a British DJ and musician who is credited as bringing together punk & reggae music. He has spent a good chunk of his life documenting the punk explosion that hit the late UK 70’s.
It was an amazing doco that showed the cultural impact punk had on the music world. There were amazing interviews with Henry Rollins (sorry Cat, I had to mention The Man once again!) Chrisse Hynde from The Pretenders, Jello Biafra from The Dead Kennedys (another truly amazing and inspirational man), filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth and many others.
It was awesome seeing bands like The Ramones, Iggy Pop/The Stooges, MC5, Sex Pistols, The Velvet Underground, The Clash, New York Dolls and on and on.
It was awesome seeing the scene from someone who basically was responsible for creating the scene and seeing it go through from the 70’s to the 80’s to the present day.
I was buzzed to have finally seen the entire doco from start to finish with no interruptions! Now, that I have seen it I need to own it and I wont rest until I get my own copy in my hot little hands.
All I have to say is get your hands on a copy and prepare to be blown away!
Reney
Tagged by leppardfreak aka Leann
- Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
- People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
- At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
- Don’t forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they’ve been tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole story
1. Since trying to shed some weight in Feb. I have gained 4 kgs. Diet working well wouldn't you say?
2. My mother thought about calling me Cindy before I was born. A Cindy I am not.
3. I love to eat boiled salted peanuts. Show me a bag of the little guys and I will return it to you empty shortly afterwards.
4. I have an incredible fear of heights. I always feel as though I will be sucked over the edge or not be able to control myself and toss myself over the edge. Whoops silly me there I go...you know the problem. My husband always wants to build "height" into our vacations and acts stunned EVERYTIME when I say not me fella. We have been married 31 years when is the man going to listen? I do not do heights. Happy for him to do so. I will sit in the coffee shop and drink numerous drinks while he has he fun....but he says he wont if I don't. So he doesn't. I think he is actually frigthened of them too, and doesn't want to leave on, so is pretending because he knows I will reject the idea. I am his cover story.
5. I was married at 19, had our first child at 21, 2nd at 23 and 3rd at 27. Exhausted ever since.
6. My first TV crush was on David McCullum who was in the Man from U.N.C.L.E. (but there were two of them wasn't there, David McCullum and Robert Vaughn, so it was the Men from U.N.C.L.E.) I though David was so cool in his little black turtle neck sweater (I was about 10 at the time, that is as raunchy as it got) I was heart broken to see him play that weird Ducky on NCIS - such a let down but a man has to eat I suppose. After him I went for Michael Cole from MOD SQUAD. It must have been the curly hair.
7. The first song I learned to play on the guitar was House of the Rising Sun. Followed by Leaving on A Jet Plane....my first guitar teacher also had curly hair.
8. I was 13 when I got my first kiss. Nothing like that first kiss. Pity it was that guy though....
I tag anyone who wants to spill their guts about themselves (excuse the french as we say)
To offset the accommodation costs the night before, we free camped just shy of Fogg Dam. This is outside Kakadu but still stunning. We fell for a bit of a trap here. It was a roadside stop near the wet plains with lots of bird traffic. The trick was the mozzies turned up when the sun set. I guess it makes sense when you put two and two together.
Next morning we waited for the sun to rise fully so only about 2 thousand mozzies were waiting for us to pack up the van. Easy peasy. Dropped the top then gave them a good serve of surface spray for the days trip. This was after having removed 2 little lizards to the great outdoors.
Fogg Dam is renowned for being worth a visit and we were not disappointed. A 2.2 k return walk out on the dam wall for starters. Once out there we saw a big Jabiru having a successful fish along with heaps of other birds. Up on a bank was a croc sun baking. Friends who visited earlier this season said a Japanese bloke near them went down to the waters edge for a photo till they urged him back. I can understand the place sucking these guys in. It looks so calm and relaxed.
After the first walk we went on another that went through woodlands out to the marshes. This was a beaut too. Check out the size of the spider. Lots of butterflies accompanied us through the first part of the walk. On the way back I managed to miss this snake by something less than a meter. Earlier I had been running my hand along the hand rail but thought better of it. I reckon I would have hit his tail if I had continued. Never even saw it until Liz told me to turn round and check it out.
I hope it was a Water Python because they are harmless.
Photo 1 gotta keep your eyes open for these babies.
Photo 2 a Jabiru successfully feeding
Photo 3 my friendly snake as it sat on the fence post
Photo 4 A close up of his beautiful head
I was thinking about this yesterday. Who would I like to be when I grew up? I came up with the following people. Sorry to non Australians but the serious contenders are Australian, which when I thought about it was kind of nice, to have the people you most admire to be your own nationality. Warning: Britney did not make the list. Neither did Martha or Oprah who trade on our lack of self-esteem and sense of guilt at not being a "better" person.
1. Mary Kostakidis - newsreader par excellence!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mary_Kostakidis&oldid=204882979
Because she is wise and courageous, willing to speak her mind despite a claimed culture of fear and silence in her workplace (SBS News!) She would not allow the collision of vaules that has been homogenising, commercialising and anglicising SBS, our multicultural telesivision network and forming a "boys club" to take her down. And managed to look great all that the same time. Bravo Mary. May I please be you when I grow up. Plus she can say all those foreign names without so much as a pause, rolling all her rrrr's in the right spot. My idol.
or if I can't be I would like to be one of the following, in order of preference
2. Maxine McKew - erstwhile member for Bennelong
http://www.maxinemckew.alp.org.au/
The woman who unseated a Prime Minister - yes please. Former journalist, now Labor politician, I would happily walk in your fine shoes anyday. Anyone who can achieve the impossible and get John Howard shown the political exit door is the woman for me!
3. Antonia Fraser - author of history and fiction, Lady Antonia is the daughter of the 7th Earl of Longford. She has survived an assaination attempt on the lives of her then husband, and Caroline Kennedy who was staying with them as the time. The mother of 6 children she went onto have an spectaluar society affair, divorce and remarry. And still manage to write. Life on the large scale is the life for me - Lady Antonia would please me at number 3.
4. Melinda Gates. She gets its all. A man to handle all the technology bits for her, lovely children, and money mpney money. Money to give to charity. A heart of gold. A good person through and through. I could handle the life of Melinda Gates.
5.Quentin Bryce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Bryce
Quentin Bryce is the current Govenor of Queensland and will shortly become Australia's first Govenor General. She gets to kick political bottoms if they misbehave too much! If you have to stay with the monarchy at least at a woman helping out the team. One of the first women elected to the Queensland Bar, she lecturered in law, raised 5 children, headed the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner and much much more. Quentin is a female wonder woman. Not bad for a girl from Longreach!
(Quentin is the one on the right, the guy on the left is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd!)
6. Now number 6 is a very late one to the list and only came to mind after a comment Karen made - ERMA BOMBEK (yes I know she is dead, but I could be beamed up or cloned or something. It is my list I make the rules! ) Erma showed that life is sometimes a train wreck, it is tough, and that often we are all holding our families together with sticky tape and rubber bands. And any woman who requests the epitaph "Big Deal! I'm used to dust" is a role model in my world.
I asked some of the people I work with who they wanted to be when they grew up and got some interesting replies
Lee wanted to be Dianne Keaton - but before she started making movies with Mandy Moore, and not the bits that touched woody Allen. If not she would settle for the days I wasn't Mary Kostakidis.
Gay wanted to be Wonder Woman, but I said I made the rules and they had to be someone human. So she picked Dame Edna Everidge, who I guess passes for human. She picked Edna because that meant she got to be male and female and so had the best of both worlds.
Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.
- Dame Edna Everage
Ron wants to be Lachlan or James Murdoch (whoever is in with Daddy best), Bruce Sprinsteen or Jon Bon Jovi - obviously the man wants to rule the world one way or another!
And poor Jordie was stumped. He is only 25. I guess he is too young to know who he wants to be when he grows up. I guess he still has a year or two to dream. He wilted under the pressure of the life decision.
Who do you want to be when you grow up?
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