On Christmas Day in the Morning...

We attended Christmas Day service at the church today. Service was lovely. It was a very traditional christmas and it was the first time I sung christmas hymns that I had not heard of before. Most were written in the 1700-1800.

It was a hot day with the temp hitting 31 degrees at mid day. Everyone was dressed nicely and the picture on the left, is my summer Christmas Day outfit!

Sunnies on, big rattan bag, flat shoes.... all good for a hot day.

Simply having ... a wonderful Christmas time!

cheryl

Have Yourself A...

cheryl + alex

Celebrating Christmas Early

Alex's parents will be away on Christmas Day. So to make up for it, they treated us to an early celebratory dinner at the Hyatt Hotel. We were all looking forward excitedly to having the buffet dinner at the hotel. A buffet line is the one place to gorge on seafood and dessert :) This is something about Penang that I definitely miss. In Penang, the opportunity to indulge in buffets never ends. Every hotel has a buffet line and in the name of competition, the hotels often change their menu's in effort to entice customers be it returning or new customers to their tables. Themed menu's are all the rage in Penang. One can never be short of choice on that island when it comes to food.

The Hyatt is the one and only hotel that has a buffet line in Canberra. Boring ol' Canberra. With that said though, I think its the shortage is just about the same in all the other Australian cities. People here must not like eating huge selections of food much. But then again, Australia ranks pretty high on the obesity list. How then can buffet lines not be popular?

Here are some pictures from last night.

Prior to going in

Before our indulgence

Food food food!
I didn't take many pictures of the spread- just managed the cold section, cheese platter and the desserts. Didn't wanna look like a hill billy at her first buffet line :)

I enjoyed the food last night. But my ability to stuff myself has somewhat decreased over the years. All I could keep down was 4 semi filled plates (as pictured above - the partially filled plate is mine - yes I like my food separated from each other where possible) of cold selections and main courses. I sampled only 50% of the selection of desserts and even then I only ate half of each piece. I don't think I ate my monies worth!

I know the hotel definitely made $$$ off me but I did my best. I definitely could not stomach more. We walked away from that buffet line stuffed to the brim.



And to that I can say, I am happy... :)




cheryl

Bug-ged Out (in more ways than one)

I have one major peeve about cooking. For some people, cooking is a chore because of the all the washing up of crockery and kitchen utensils that comes with it. For others, it could be the complexities of the ingredients used in the production of any dish. For me however, the biggest turn off is having to wash vegetables before cooking them.

I HATE washing vegetables. To be specific, I hate washing green leafy vegetables.

This is why. (You may have to read this twice just to understand where I'm coming from)

I dislike the fact that leafy vegetables typically grow in random forms. No branch, stem or leaf is in similar placement to the next branch, stem or leaf and as such, each branch/stem/leave gets tangled with its neighbour making it impossible to wash the vegetables equally. By equally I mean using roughly the same amount of time or water cleaning every branch, making sure that every inch is clean. Well, I could try.. but it would take hours to work through the lot. And the fact that I can't do that, irritates the heck out of me.

So what do I do? I fill the sink up with cold water and dunk the lot in with hopes that it will get equally washed. The only problem with this is, there usually is so much of vegetable piled atop each other that I can only rinse the top layers of veg with my hands and I can't get to rinsing the bottom lot without getting all the leaves and branches tangled up. That AGAIN irritates me.

On top of that, leafy vegetables always attract bugs, worms and insects of every kind. Each time, I kinda shrink back from sticking my hand into the water to rinse the bottom lot because there always is a worm hiding somewhere. One may crawl up my wrist in attempt to avoid a drowning death. And because this paranoia somewhat prevents me from washing the veg properly, I am again irritated!

ARGH. Its a no win situation with vegetables.

I found this in my pile of veg in the sink the other day.



Ok.. so its not as scary or as yucky as a worm. In fact, I felt quite a bit of compassion for this little fella so I scooped it out and sent it flying out of my window.

I cannot really describe the amount of irritation I feel regarding the washing of vegetables but I'm sure somewhere, someone else has to feel the same way as I do about this. The unfortunate thing is, I have to face this irritation on a weekly, if not daily basis because the vegetable dish is a must on the dinner table every day. And for the chinese, the leafy vegetable is the most common dish served so there is no getting way from it.

Vegetables.. for all the benefits that supposedly come with eating it, I'm not quite sure its worth all the irritation I have to endure just to get there. Leafy vegetables... BAH!

cheryl

Hall Market

These are some pictures from Sunday. We were at the Hall markets which is located at the outskirts of Canberra. It was my first time there and I was hoping to be able to pick up something nice or find something that would pique my interest. Items I were looking for:

1. Quaint kitchen wall clock
2. Metal wall sculpture -frame like - to hang on my balcony wall
3. Woollen socks
4. Decorative items for the house

Markets here usually sell handmade items - wood carvings, furniture, metal sculptures, trinkets, ornaments, accessories, gifts.. etc. As such one can sometimes make a fantastic find especially if you have an interest in such things. Unfortunately nothing really caught my fancy on Sunday.

Though I came home empty handed, I do have some pictures.

People strolling around the makeshift tents

There was a man (pictured below) selling a very good idea of a chicken coup. There seems to be a bucking trend of people rearing chickens in their backyard in Canberra. This man was selling his idea of a mobile chicken coup which can be extended in case you think your chooks need more exercise. The fact that it is mobile, decreases the possibility of your backyard stinking of chicken poo (moving the coup around means less concentration of poo in one spot) and you run less risk of receiving hate mail in your inbox from your neighbours. There are many other selling points to his idea but he mainly caught my attention because he brought a life prop with him.



A very tame chicken sitting atop his shoulder... the children loved it too because they got to pet her. I gave it a go and really, chicken feathers are really soft! Soft and warm!

Thats the chicken sitting atop his coup design. I do think his idea was very functional. I would have considered it if I was in my 60's with an empty backyard and a major love for eggs. :) I must say though, if you had reared the chook for some time and it was time for it to go from pet to roast, would you be able to find it in your heart to slaughter them?

I digress. :) Back to Sunday.

It was a rather hot day and after walking under the burning hot sun for an hour, I rather welcomed the thought of a cold refreshment. We spotted a very long queue of people, lining up in front of a very run down, pink colored, ice cream truck. It was selling home made milkshakes, thickshakes, sorbets and ice creams. The sign next to the truck had several unfamiliar flavours listed so I decided to give it a try. I ordered a double scoop ice cream on a waffle cone. My flavours were chocolate plus ginger and fig. Being homemade ice cream, it wasn't as sweet as the ones you would normally buy from the shops. The ginger and fig was alright. I wouldn't say that I would get it again.

The run down pink truck

The many flavours : goats milk, soya milk, rose petal, mandarin & mint...etc

My double scoop, chocolate on top, ginger and fig below.

It was a nice way to spend Sunday afternoon. The weather is warming up and while its great for outings, its starting to get a little too warm to sleep in bed at night without a fan or air conditioning going.

cheryl

Shepherd's Pie

I made shepherds pie for the first time today. I have had it before but have never made an attempt to make it nor seen it made before. I'm the sort of cook who eats, tastes and kinda automatically knows what goes into making the dish. I guess its a gift that I have. I am also an opportunist cook. By that I mean I only cook dishes when I know I already have the ingredients in my pantry or fridge. Either that or I substitute things along to way to make up for the lack of some ingredient. I'm also the sort of cook who cooks by instinct and as such, I do not use accurate measurements in my cooking. You know how it is... its always salt and pepper to taste, several dashes of soy sauce, a touch of chilli and etc.

I know this can be infuriating to some folk. But I must say this. Cooking is not an exact science. Only baking is. With cakes and pastries, measurement and temperature is everything. However with cooking, the best dishes always come from the heart. So as long as you have the passion for good food, your cooking will always pass the taste test. Heart is the secret ingredient to wonderful food. That's why a mother's cooking is always the best.

So back to my first attempt at a shepherds pie. I had bought about 10kg of potatoes at AUD 4 so I had to figure out some ways to use them up before they become evil (refer to the post about my evil potato) The pie came to my mind immediately because I knew I had mince in the fridge, tomatoes in the pantry and all the other seasonings needed. My simple recipe is as below.

6 mid sized potatoes

~1/2 pack of 1kg mince

2 mid sized onions (I pretty much diced them)

2 carrots

1 can button mushrooms

1 can whole peeled tomatoes (to substitute tomato paste which I didnt have)

2 bay leaves

1 cup of beef stock

2 tbsp of flour

A touch of oregano

Some worchestershire sauce

Salt & pepper to taste

200C in a fan forced oven for 20 minutes.

So the potatoes were cut and boiled to make potato mash. Mash is really easy. Just add some butter, salt, pepper and mash away. Once quite mashed up, add some milk for the smooth texture.

The carrots were cut into small pieces and I boiled them for awhile so it would be soft in the dish. I then fried up the onions in a deep pan till fragrant, added the button mushrooms, carrots and then the mince. After which I added the canned tomatoes, worchestershire, flour then the stock, bay leaves and oregano to simmer till the sauce thickened.

I then placed the mince into the base of a deep glass casserole, shook some parmesan cheese on top and then covered the entire surface with the potato mash. I decided to then make some bread crumbs and sprinkle them on top the mash for some added texture. My breadcrumbs look a little dodgy cos I used leftover bread skins (you know, the first and last piece in a loaf) and I was too lazy to crisp them to the max before pounding on them to make breadcrumbs. After that it was sent straight into the oven.

All my shortcut and substitution methods worked and the shepherds pie was yumminy yum yum. :) And I know what my mom is going to say to this post.

" You write so much about eating and food. You better be watching your weight! Don't eat so much! Make sure you exercise! "

Sigh.... What can I do mom... I love food and you have obviously passed on your cooking genes to me. What to do ah? :)

Till my next cooking adventure.

cheryl

Dinner on Wednesday

We had dinner with Ann on Wednesday night at an Asian restaurant in Canberra's civic centre. Ann was leaving to Melbourne for the uni holidays and wanted to treat us to dinner before she left. We decided on this Asian restaurant which is coincidentally called the 'Asian Cafe.'

I think the cafe is more known for its rice and dishes but because we were kinda pressed for time, we opted for noodles. We ordered Singapore Noodles, Char Koay Teow and Combination Chow Mein. I must say the Combination noodles were great and tasted just like 'Sar Hor Fun' from Penang. The other two were unfortunately nothing to shout about. We will return soon to try out their other dishes. Judging from what we saw on the tables of the other patrons, this cafe holds some hope for yummy chinese food.

Singapore Noodles

Alex and I

Ann and I

Thanks for the dinner Ann! Hope you have a good time in Melbourne. See you in February when you return to Canberra. :)

cheryl

First Day of Summer

Spring is officially over! Today, the 1st of December marks the first day of summer. 3 glorious months of warm weather. 90 days of no sweaters, jumpers, coats, scarves, gloves and ugg boots! Hoorah for the heat!

Goodbye spring! While you have kept me warmer than your predecessor, I am now ready to move up the mercury gage. Thank you for the flowers, the spring breeze and the occasional rain.

To show my appreciation for the beauty of spring, here is a shot of my two mini lavender pots. The purple (or I should say lilac) color of lavender is so pretty and the fragrance so lovely that I decided to trim some wild lavender bushes and use them as decoration in our house.

What will summer have in store for me? I look forward to the coming days in great anticipation....

cheryl