Friday Night

A nice Friday night at home....

We were supposed to be going to Paul's work drinks, but after a really long and busy week, we were too tired to head out again after we got home. So we cracked open a bottle of Woodstock '02 Shiraz Cab and opened a packet of crackers. Mmmm... Perfect end to the week!

Ingredient of the Month #1: Pastry

Here's my first weekend of cooking with pastry. I may have gone too hard, too fast and I think I may be pastried out for the month. Here's what I made this weekend...

A chicken roll for lunch during the week. I made the chicken filling from scratch (including mincing the chicken) but I used ready-made puff pastry.

I made Puff Borek with a feta/mozarella and parsley filling. I made the puff pastry from scratch for this one. I was pretty nervous about how it would turn out, but it worked so well. I fried these and then froze them, so I can reheat them in the oven for my birthday party.

Proof that I made the pastry

Finally I made Sigara Boregi, which are spinach and feta filos that I've also frozen so I can reheat them for my birthday party.

Ingredient of the Month

In an effort to get more creative and adventurous with my cooking, I'm setting myself a challenge. I'd like all of my blog followers to help me out with the challenge and join in if they like.

This was inspired by my recent cooking efforts with artichokes. I cooked an artichoke and lamb casserole in the slow cooker based on a recipe in my Gourmet Traveller Magazine. They appear to be such a difficult and fiddly vegetable to cook with, but I found that they weren't so hard to prepare (despite my swearing and minor hissy fit) and tasted pretty good in the end.

I'm going to set a different ingredient each month that I'd like to try and include in a few different dishes. I'd like this ingredient to be in season during that month (if it does have a season) and to be 'interesting'. Because I'm likely to get stuck for ideas I'd like some suggestions from my readers.

Just a heads up, Paul, we can't have chocolate as the ingredient every month!

Because of all the cooking I'm going to be doing for my birthday party, the ingredient for October will be PASTRY. Filo, puff, shortcrust, frozen or made from scratch... anything goes!

Mixed Feelings Over Fev

While I think this story is hilarious, I think it's also quite sad at the same time.

I'm not a fan of Fev, so I think it's really very amusing that Carlton are at the point where they'd pay a club to take him. I also think that in some ways he deserves it. He's acted like a drunken dickhead far too many times, and if he's had the appropriate warnings, then fair enough that he should be dumped.

However, it does remind me of the whole Ben saga. I do think that footy teams have a duty of care to their players. He obviously has an issue and I do think that in some ways Carlton is responsible. If it wasn't for them, his drunken behaviour wouldn't have become big news and he possibly wouldn't even have the problem in the first place. Instead of dumping him, perhaps they needed to look at stricter conditions on his employment contract, compulsory AA meetings or something along those lines. Don't just leave him high and dry when he needs the most help and support.

So let me know what you think...

Just like the Cowardly Lion, I wish I had some courage!

Last night Paul, Tash and I went to a play reading. The play was The Joy Of Text by Robert Reid. It had an amazing cast for the $5 entry fee - Shaun Micallef, Noni Hazelhurst, Heidi Arena, Kat Stewart and Tim Potter.

The play itself was really interesting. It was set in an outer suburban school (semi-rural) and revolved around a battle for the vice-principalship and a students attempt at satire. It was cleverly done.

The reading was great. The cast read from the script, but they acted as well. There were no props, so the director read the set directions from the script. They'd only read it through together once before the day, so was rough in places, but still wonderfully acted. It really did feel like you were part of the production process.

At the end of the play as we were milling around in the foyer, all of the actors came out. I really wanted to talk to them, but I couldn't think of anything remotely witty, clever or interesting to say to them. Somehow "you rock" or "I think you're awesome" didn't really feel right in a room full of artistic types. One day I'll come up with a whole bunch of amazing lines to use in circumstances such as these so I will eventually find the courage to speak to them.

Grand Final Cupcakes

Here are my Grand Final cupcakes. They were a standard vanilla buttercake with vanilla butter cream icing. The Geelong ones turned our tongues blue. :) But there was not enough black in the St Kilda ones to make our tongues black. Paul's tongue was a revolting mass of colours on Friday night after he'd licked all of the bowls and my hands were pretty special. Glad I wore my apron!! Haha!

An Epic Battle and other footy cliches

Saturday's Grand Final was AWESOME! Such a fantastic game of footy. It helps that I wanted Geelong to win, but I wouldn't have been upset had St Kilda won.

We played our usual sweeps/drinking game. I was a lot more sober than I should have been at the end of the day since I had Joel Corey and Brendon Goddard who won me the pool. I guess they must really blend in.

We had lots of great food and I ended up eating way too much! There were home made party pies and sausage rolls, seven layer dip, guacamole, antipasto, beer nuts and loads of chips. There were also my grand final cupcakes - pictures to come later.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the day at this stage, but will hopefully be getting some from Ali and Carter. I'm sure Tash will put hers on Facebook at some point.