Today we celebrated the Winter Solstice.  Yes, yes, I know that technically it was on Saturday, but I was working, so shhh, the kids don’t know that.  It was TODAY, okay?

As you may have guessed, we have a programme, and here it is:

1. Watch the sun rise at Sunrise Beach.  Yes, this was early.  And cloudy.  So we climbed on the seats instead, and yelled a bit, because there was a campervan that looked all tucked up right near us.  I suspect free campers at MY beach access.  Hippies.

2.  Go out for breakfast at Bistro C (which looks onto Noosa Main Beach).  This was much more my style.

3.  Wear something yellow.  I wore a hair clip of Coco’s as a brooch.  And I forced certain family members to wear fake sunflowers in their hair for a few minutes. That counts.  Never let it be said I don’t go all out for this stuff.

4.  Listen to our Solstice CD, which has contains classic songs like “You Are My Sunshine”.  We all sighed with relief when it was finished.  All thirteen tracks.  Who thought of this tradition?

5.  Bake sunflower seed biccies and decorate the house with plastic sunflowers.  Box up said biccies and give them out to unsuspecting others, because frankly, they are a bit shit.

6.  Watch the sun set.  The highlight.  Hands down.

This year we had an added bonus of sharing a lovely lunch cooked by one of my gorgeous friends who reports that she “loves cooking and entertaining”.  So clearly, she is a complete idiot, but man she can cook.  We had delish food, wine, more than a few laughs and two beautiful surprise guests.

The winter solstice has well and truly ended here.  Everyone is abed- the kids exhausted, and Nath with what could quite possibly be a terminal case of Man-flu, leaving me with some repeats of Black Adder and a Hot Toddy.  Winter, generally you suck, but today, you weren’t all bad.  The 23degrees didn’t

Roll on Summer, roll on.

Do you celebrate the solstice (because it means Summer is on its way)?

…From The Ashers xx

Want to know what is wrong with the world these days?

I’ll tell you.

Kids.

And not in the way you think.  Sure they are annoying, rude (honest?), silly, time consuming, wake-up too early on Sundays, don’t eat without messing up the whole floor, make too much noise in cafes, expensive and all that, but the real reason is that they are idiots.

Last weekend we didn’t do the normal shop online because we were suffering from memory loss due to alcohols away on a mini-break, so Nathan trundled down to our local Coles on Monday arvo to get the staples.  As we mostly shop online, we sometimes go a bit craycray when we get to see all the produce up close.  Our normal two hundred or so buck shop can blow out to almost three, with Grain Waves and fresh blueberries and warm bread-type products to touch and feel.

From the shops he sent me this:

Want these?

Oh Sweet Baby Cheeses, you bet I do!  Snowballs??!  I haven’t had one of those babies since the great Altona Softball Club Snowball Drive of 1982.  So he got them and I dutifully doled them out to the waiting lunchboxes, rubbing my hands together at all the praise I’d be getting that night for being THE BEST MUM.  After school, I opened the lunchboxes, expecting accolades but instead finding two plump snowballs.  With nary a bite out of them.  I flew downstairs flabbergasted and fearful.  What was wrong with the kids?  Were they sick?  Dead even?  Upon interrogation questioning it was revealed that they “really didn’t like them” and “they were too sweet”.

What?

Too sweet?

What does that mean?

What good is a lolly if it doesn’t make your teeth tingle all the way down to the dentine?

Who are these children, where did they come from, and what is wrong with them anyway?

I checked the other compartments of the lunch boxes: Apple? Gone.  Sandwiches? Eaten.  Carrots and snow peas? Finished.  Crackers, cheese and tomatoes?  Nowhere to be seen.  Even all of the water out of the drink bottles was gone.

I have no idea what is going on here.  Are they taking the piss, throwing out all of the healthy food in an attempt to send me gently insane?  Or do they really not like the marshies?  Really?

I’m in the kitchen right now, concocting a little litmus test.  I’m baking them a slice made with the world’s second best ingredient (condensed milk) that will be so sweet their taste buds will bug-out and their feet will flutter.

If they don’t eat it, I’m calling an ambulance.  Or the men in white suits.  (For me).

Do your kids eat sweeties?

How huge am I gonna be now that this is happening?

Oh sweetness, mine

…From The Ashers xxx

I know I’m the second last person in the world who should be bloggin’ about food, but some peeps have been asking for my crockpot expertise.  As you RRs know, I’m nothing if not lazy, so I like to make my life as easy as possible.  Plus, I hate the fowl, (see what I did there?) fatty liquid at the bottom of the slow cooker to be wasted.   So here goes nothing…

Dinner One: Roast Chook

Cut up the veggies of your choice to be roasted, and chuck them in your crockpot.  Put the (extra-large organic) chook on top. Season and put a halved lemon on top.  I like to arrange the lemon on top of the chicken’s breast so it looks like boobs.  Makes her look a bit saucy…  Cook on the low setting, by weight of your bird, according to the instruction book (6hrs or so).  About half way through, squeeze the lemon over the chicken and discard.  Bye bye little chicky breast implants.  Turn the oven to full whack, and put the chicken and vegetables in for about 15-20minutes or so, to crisp ’em all up a bit.  Use some of the liquid in the crockpot to make a kick-arse gravy.  Don’t chuck the rest out, you’ll be using it in a minute for another dinner.  Now blanch your greens and serve up a delish roast to the family.

Once the chicken has cooled, get all the meat off.

Lunches:

If you get an extra large chook there will be enough meat for chicken sambos for tomorrow’s lunches. Yum.  A bit of mayo and shredded lettuce (Or Liam’s personal fave; chicken and American mustard).

Dinner Two: Italian-style Chicken soup.

Before all the fat starts to congeal in the crockpot, get onto the second dinner…  Get out your biggest pot for cooking soup.  Slop in a few glugs of olive oil, and brown off some garlic and onion.  Tip the liquid in from the crockpot as your stock, and add the rest of the chicken, a tin of tomatoes, a couple of chopped up celery sticks and some italian style herbs.  This week I used a handful of fresh basil and some dried oregano.  Let that simmer for a while, adding some hot water if required.  That’s it until tomorrow night. I’m so lazy I put the whole pot in the fridge as is, until the hungry hoards descend.  When that happens, put the soup back on the heat and make sure there’s enough fluid, adding more water if required.  Add one cup of macaroni or whatever small pasta you have hanging around.  As that’s softening, just check the flavour.  Sometimes I need to add salt, or a chicken stock cube, or even some sugar.  Once the pasta is cooked, you’re good to go.  Serve it up with stacks of grated parmesan (don’t be stingy with the cheese) and some yummy bread from Breadlovers at Sunrise Beach (FY:I Paul is the best baker in town, so anything he has is perfect.  I like the Vienna loaf with this.. In fact, whilst you’re there, why don’t you grab one of his family pies, and that’s tomorrow night sorted.  Serve it with some mashed potato and peas, and you can pretend you’re back in the 70s).

So there you go, a couple of dinners and the lunches done.  Dinner two is so easy you can cook up a quick batch of biccies or coconut macaroons (NOT Macarons)* at the same time.  I shit you not.  If the self confessed worlds’ worst cook can do it, anyone can.

* Coconut Macaroons: Mix 500g desiccated coconut and a tin of condensed milk.  Pop tablespoon sized dollops on a baking tray and cook at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes.  Sweet pleasure.

Here ends what is probably the worst food blog I’ve ever read.  I was even too lazy to take the pics that usually go with a food blog.  I won’t hold my breath waiting for my recipe book deal.  You probably won’t get another one for a while.  Unless I find some more recipes containing nutella.

As Carlsy would say: Bon Apps  …From The Ashers xx

….I saw this tweet and it made me have some nostalgia feels.  Here they are….

***

Sunday morning.  Mouth feeling like the bottom of a cockatiel’s cage.  Skin too tight.  Burning in my abdomen.  A sign of a good night.  Or a bad one.  I don’t remember which.  But I woke up in my own bed and that is a good enough start.

What to do with the burning and the spinning head and the aching when I try to lift my arms?  I lie still, trying to ignore the pain that the weight of the doona inflicts on my hypersensitive skin.  I know the cure.  It’s not that far away, but far enough that in this moment, in this body, it feels further away than Everest’s elusive summit.

Unlike Hillary, I won’t be going ‘because it was (sic) there’, but because I must.  Reparation, Repentance and Rejuvenation lie within its lurid walls.  It’s cushioned booths will beckon me with their stop-sign red cushions, but I will choose the position of shame.  The seat of the Sunday morning uncoupled.  The stool at the bar.

Strangely, the bar seating, although not revered by those in the throes of love, or Saturday-Night-Becoming-Sunday lust, are the best seats in the house.  They are where you receive not only eerily prompt and cheeky service, you don’t need to entertain yourself with the drivel of the Sunday papers, you can be entertained by the staff, watch their frenetic activity and become almost one of them, for a time.

Somehow, by some superhuman feat of endurance I’ve managed to get weekend presentable, find a park (albeit two kilometres away, it would have been easier and perhaps almost closer to have walked) and drag my haglike countenance to a stool.

Jimbo is behind the bar.  Good.  He knows what I am going through and he has the elixir at his disposal.  I just nod my head.  Not too much or my brain will hit my frontal bone and bounce back to my occiput, pinging and ponging until I am completely still again.  Jimbo is a good egg.  He starts proceedings.

One: Bloody Mary with extra tabasco and don’t even think about adding a celery stick.

Two: One double-shot cappuccino with as much froth as you can muster.  For Jimbo that is a lot.  He is a master.  I know, people say they are supposed to be milky, but I don’t drink capps for the milk, I drink them because they are a coffee and a dessert in one.  And Jimbo doesn’t fuck around with stupid coffee pictures, the art is in the beans.  And these beans will blow my hangover further than any beanstalk.

Three: Eggs Benny.  It goes without saying that the eggs will be runny. They will not be on toast.  They will not have salmon, bacon, rocket, spinach, or any other bullshit the chef dreamed up when he wanted to get rid of shit left over from last night.  They will be on muffins and the muffins will be buttered and soft.  There will be ham off the bone.  The sauce will be bright yellow, not some insipid, poor, pale, vinegar-tasting imposter.

After, and only after I have eaten more than 63% of my meal will Jimbo nod in my direction, eyebrows like Macca’s arches, and perhaps, if the coffee is performing it’s healing, I will push my sunglasses up on top of my head, and say, “Think so. Think I’m still alive.  I’m never drinking again.”  And Jimbo will laugh, like he does, and bring me another capp, this time saying, “Here’s one on the house, for resuss purposes.  As long as you never drink again.”

I will nod, and we will smile at each other, full of knowing that I’ll be back next Sunday to do it all again.

***

I can’t believe you’re gone Dr Greasy Joe’s.  Such a sad thing for St.Kilda.

Do you have a place you lament the passing of?  Is there some shit Coffee Club there?

…From The Ashers xx

As you know, I is well fancy, and I might have mentioned to you once or a thousand that I had dinner with Jamie Oliver last week. Which is amusing to me mainly because I hate cooking and most things to do with cooking.  Other than the eating bit.  I’m fine with the eating.

Which is why I decided to score myself, and some lovely ladies who lunch, a ticket to go and get fed by one of the judge-chefs from My Kitchen Rules.  I have watched the show enough times to know he is the ‘mean one’ and so I was gleefully rubbing my hands together (maniacal laugh), thinking of all the things I was going to find wrong with his cooking, and then write them up here on this blog for all to see.  I’ve dined with JO, remember.  So I’m basically a food critic, yeah?

Problem 1:  Colin wasn’t doing the cooking.  They were his recipes, sure, but the Berado’s dudes were cooking them.  So there went that blog idea.  Fkit.

So I thought I could still make some funny about him anyway.  Because he’s the mean one, right?  So that means open season, doesn’t it?

Problem 2:  When the dude got up to speak, he was blushing.  And kinda cute (that makes it hard for me to be mean right there- call it a character flaw of mine).  And we all* know I’m a sucker for an Irish accent.  Then as he spoke, we found out that he wasn’t the mean one at all, he was really very charming and candid, and grounded, with a wife and family, and the same concerns about making a living and a life that we all have.  He told us how he went on the show to promote his brand and his restaurants, at a time when friends of his in the industry were being forced to shut their doors due to the global financial concerns.  He told us about how hard he works, and why he is a chef (Yep, it’s a passion for food), and told us a bit about his creative process.

One thing I especially liked was how he claimed all of the recipes in his new book (which he just so happened to bring about a hundred copies of along, ready for signing) are the result of mistakes.  Of things he tried, found to be wanting, made some variations and eventually resulted in something tasty.  (I suspect the fennel icy-poles in the book are still in the development stages.)  I think that’s a great reminder.  I still don’t give a shit about the cooking idea, but I like it as a metaphor for other stuff in our lives.  Mistake>Edit>Correction>Success.  Or something like that.

So all in all, in a week of two chefs, it was a funny one for this little food-bogan.  I met Jamie Oliver and he was exactly like he is on telly.  Casual, a little scruffy, funny and just like one of my mates.  Just like I thought he would be, in fact.  I met Colin Fassnidge and he was nothing like he is on telly, and so probably has to spend a whole lotta time not reading stuff about himself on the socials, and explaining how he isn’t like that actor at all.  So basically, the opposite of how is presented.

I know who I’d rather be.

Perhaps there’s a lesson in that…?

“Be yourself.  Everyone else is taken.”  -Oscar Wilde

PS I forgot to say, Colin let it slip who wins this season of MKR… I can tell you, but I will require recompense.**

*Well maybe YOU didn’t, but the entire staff and patronage of PJ O’Brien’s circa 1997 does.  (And now so do you.. Don’t say I never tell you anything.)

**I may be lying, but you will have to hand over the moula to find out.

…From The Ashers xxx

Look over here!

I found another new cafe for y’all.  If you are from my end of the Sunshine Coast you’ll know the spot I mean if I say, “German Restaurant”.

I know, I know, that site has been an eyesore for most of the time I’ve lived up here, and guess what?  Tom and Kako and some of their mates have transformed that place into something special.  A space that makes you feel healthier just by turning off Noosa Eumundi Road, to a little place in the sun. Sunspace.

Follow me, I’ll take you on a little tour….

All bright and shiny-new. With an ever changing menu, based on whatever they picked from the garden THAT DAY…

Before we go inside, I’ve gotta show you the outside areas.. You see, this place has lots of little pockets all over the place, so you can find your own little fave space in the sun…

A sunny little nook

See those pots? They are biodynamically grown greens for use in the cafe.
Food miles = zero

Very cute stumps to sit or play on over there.. and over in the distance: more goodies from the garden, straight to your plate.

Now we can go in.  Isn’t it fresh?  And again, you’re spoilt for choice on where to recline… By the window? On the window seat?  In the lounges?  Next to the kiddie’s area?

A perfect spot for blog writing…

Who doesn’t love a window seat, to eat lunch, chat, do some craft…?

Lounge around with cushions by Ami (a name to look out for in design)…

Added bonus: you can do a quick shop for tonight’s dinner.  Now THAT’S what I’M talking about.  No need to “pop into the supermarket” and come out a lazy pineapple* lighter.  From what the owners are saying, the best is yet to come on this front.  They have plenty of room for more stock, so as the demand grows, I’d hazard a bet the amount of fresh produce will too (See what I did there? Grows?)

Don’t faint, but even I would eat these veggies

Nic’s Bics and Nic’s Nuts. I’m loathe to admit it, but maybe activated nuts do taste better… Maybe... (Hangs head in shame)

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: What kind of cake can you get in a healthy joint such as this?  Now, never let it be said that I won’t go all out to source you the best chocolately tastes this Universe has to offer.  Ignore the words: organic, raw, chia and cacao, and just hear this: delicious, sweet tasty chocolate mousse cake.  With a yummy Little Cove Organic Coffee to savour along with the rich goodness.

And not one bit of guilt.

Now THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

If you haven’t been, might I suggest you get yourself over to Sunspace and check it out?  This place is going to get crazy busy I think, so I am going to get myself known now, in the early days, so I can get special treatment once the joint is pumping.

*That’s fifty bucks, in the local parlance.

***This is not a sponsored post, and I paid for my own delicious treats (as well as looking like a total knob going around taking photos of the place and trying not to get photos of the other customers.)  The lengths I go to for you all…***

…From The Ashers xx