Easter Friday (& early birthday present mystery)

What a deliciously beautiful easter weekend it has been! We've had a wonderful, relaxing, yet satisfyingly full weekend. On Friday we ventured out into the glorious sunshine, tried to go to jafa for breakfast, sadly it was closed, then ambled on to Occam for a lovely breakfast in the sun.


I took my early birthday present with me (I think the prevalence of non-cell-phone photos in this entry is sufficient clue to the nature of what it is!) and got decidedly snap happy.

After breakfast we took a leisurely drive (the queues were too long and slow for it to be anything other than leisurely) down to Mission Bay. The incredibly busy Mission Bay at that. And of course, we indulged in the obligatory (in Simon's case - rapidly melting) ice-cream - although we didn't quite have the endurance required to queue at Movenpick.

More on the weekend when I get a bit more time. Right now we're fighting to get twiki working at home. Oh dear. Fighting and losing for now!

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

I adore Vietnamese spring rolls. The refreshing taste of fresh coriander and the tang of mint and just the overall feeling of clean, fresh flavour. Divine.

Preparation


Those Delicious Herbs (and noodles in the background)



The Finished Product

Random Update

(Cliche warning...) a picture is worth a thousand words and this random update is brought to you (mostly) by the following picture (once again, apologies, taken on my tragic phone camera and then enhanced (badly due to my lack of patience) with IrfanView)

Exhibit A - divinely delicious fruits back in season! Wehoo! Passionfruit and Feijoas. I'm truly in heaven!

Exhibit B - plastic cup half filled with water - I made myself the most wonderful salad of coriander, basil, cos, rocket, carrot, spring onion, brocolli sprouts, cherry tomatoes, shredded chicken and dressed with fish sauce, lime juice, chilli and wine vinegar for lunch at work today. Unfortunately when I steamed the chicken in the microwave, it superheated (as it is wont to do of course) but I most unskillfully removed the cling-wrap in such a way that I have acquired a very painful, very distracting steam burn on my index and middle fingers on my right hand. The cup of water - for dunking my fingers in when the pain gets beyond bearable. :( I've taken a couple of nurofen+ which I have to say, does seem to be helping.

Exhibit C - mouse - I'm at work. And should be working. But pain and ibuprofen and codeine are making that rather difficult. Blathering about a photograph is so much easier than engaging my brain at this point.

Exhibit D - tiny little square of black plastic in the back left quadrant of the photo - this detached itself from my wonderful noise cancelling headphones the other day. I have no idea how. I took them off my head and said plastic blitty bit fell on my keyboard. It's broken, not just fallen off. Ah well, it was cosmetic only fortunately.

Exhibit E - DVD-R stack - I have the tedious task of creating backup copies of a library of 8 DVDs. Tedium. I've started delegating this task to my team after getting really bored with it. :)

Exhibit F - not pictured! Dear friends have announced the anticipated arrival of their first born! (ok, not until much later in the year, but still anticipated!) I know they're telling people (because they told me yesterday) but I don't know if they're telling 'everyone' so shan't say who for now. But wehoo - and yes my friend, you have indeed mentioned recently that you are going to be a dad soon. :) Congratulations to you both! Simon and I are getting very good at Aunty and Uncle duties btw.

Blathering off.

Kierkegaard

I cleaned out my 2007 calender last week after returning from leave.

I rescued one quote from the bottom of the 24th December which I shall record so I don't lose it. :)

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves.
-Soren Kierkegaard.

And this sort of sums up my view of philosophy, worldview, religion, however you choose to see it. Personally, I'm the sort of person who needs to work the sum out for myself. And it's not a simple sum, it is my life's work to explore and better understand it (note I don't say solve!)

Mum's Bean Salad recipe (so I don't lose it!)

Best Bean Salad
WARNING: this is Mum's catering menu and feeds an army. Seriously! We're going to be eating bean salad for weeks!

Ingredients

2Kg Cooked Beans (Approx 1kg dry mix)
2 Onions
1 Cup diced celery
1 Green or red pepper
Carrots
Gherkins
Plenty of finely Chopped parsley

Sauce

1½ Cups Vinegar
2 Cups Sugar
½Cup Water
2 tsp Salt

Instructions

Soak beans overnight & cook 1– 1½ hrs until soft
When cool add everything bar sauce ingredients.
Boil together Vinegar, Sugar, Water & Salt.
When cool pour over beans, mix well & chill 24hrs before serving.
Add Black Pepper

Guess what I ordered... (otherwise known as 'What the...?')

If you can guess what I ordered that saw the above being delivered to me (and Simon, yes, there were 2 of these) in the South of France, I'll buy you a kiwi-version of one if you live near me! First correct entry only! (and not for my workmates who I've already had this conversation with!) And by the way, I also have the receipt to prove that what I ordered is indeed what I got, and not something else due to my appalling French skills!

Summer! How did that happen?

Well, yes, we're back home again. We arrived to a deliciously hot, summers day. As we walked out of the airport towards our waiting taxi I couldn't help but notice that it even smelt like home! The smell of sun-dried cut grass is so wonderful and reminds me so much of holidays spent at Whangamata as a kid. Bliss!

The one thing I have really really missed food-wise while we've been away has been coriander. And on catching up with all of the blogs I try to read, I stumbled on Wino Sapien's Mango Salsa. Before we left I'd been making a huge variety of salsas, with a different one every couple of nights, but mangos had not quite been of a palatable price at that stage! However they're now not too bad - so I picked up a couple of mangos, some coriander (yay!) and chillis - they didn't have any that looked hot enough, so I upgraded to one of these (and no I didn't use a whole one! in fact I only used about 10% of it, and yes, it certainly threw quite a punch!).


I also bought an avocado and 2 nights later this was delectably ready, so I concocted a huge bowl of mango and avocado salsa (a slight variation on the one above - I ran out of lemons so used white wine vinegar, oh, and of course I added a chopped avocado) which I planned to serve with a bbq-ed rack of lamb. Sadly however our fridge seems to have been underperforming and just as we were ready to slap the lamb on the barbie, we both took a whiff of it, noted it's slightly green-hue and promptly trashed it and desperately tried to find something else to throw on the hot bbq! No luck there sadly.

Plan C - 2 nights worth of mango and avocado salsa became the mainstay of the meal, accompanied by a can of rather bland salmon - but the chilli needed something bland. :) And potatoes which of course had been prepared in readiness for the lamb! A slightly odd meal perhaps, but the salsa was devine. Albeit a rather firey kind of devine. :)


(once again - apologies for Cell Phone photographs).