Mind dump Tuesday

Hola chicas and maybe some chicos(?)! My mind needs a clearing, some of this could be put into the Awesome part of Thursday but too funny not to share with y'all.

* Overheard from the kitchen:
The A: (burp) oh sorry George (said really quietly)

PAUSE

God George that's disgusting!

You can't fool me A!

* Overheard last night:

The A (sleep talking): Karate Kid chicken tee hehehe!

Then he fell asleep again.

* Why should the Australian tax payers hand over the money to help these guys out? They are adults, who knew what they were doing and decided to climb aboard another boat. Suck it up and deal with the consequences! They want the Japanese to deal with the consequences of whaling (ie having the Steve Irwin and Sea Shepherd always nearby) but aren't willing to take what comes their way when they do something illegal. Pah!

* I never like the fact that I have dishes to do, but once I get started it's actually a little bit fun. (I'm strange)

* We have yet to go to the beach near us. First time that this has happened in a summer. Usually we are dying to get in the water.

* i-cords are a lot of fun to knit

* I wish there was a Costco in Perth. Then we could buy things in bulk and not run out halfway through the week.

* I made frozen yougurt! In shot glasses :p

Fingers crossed

This is the remains of my breakfast:

Yes, I had chocolate mudcake for breakfast. I'm currently overexcited about an opportunity that *fingers crossed* turns out well. But I can't say what it is as I don't want to jinx it.

It's still early, as we had to get up at 4am for The A to get to the airport in time. Thankfully he's only away until Friday. And that's it, all my news in three small paragraphs!

The budget and saving

This January, The A changed jobs. He had previously been paid monthly, but with this new one he is now paid weekly. This threw me through a loop as in Europe and with all my jobs I had been paid monthly. Trying to wrap my head around the whole weekly thing has been hard, and as a result we have had to change the way we budget, especially as I am still out of work!

Talking about money is hard and in the past used to stress me out. But we sat down and honestly went through what we thought we spent on different things for the year. We then tried out an accruement style of budget. For example we put $60 for buying books every month, on a 31 day month we accrued $1.93 a day to go towards books, only buying something once we had accrued the amount we wanted to spend. It seemed like a great system (originally from That Wife Blog) but it just didn't work for us.

We want to save money every month so we ended up streamlining our budget to the bare essentials.

We reduced the amount spent on groceries only by a little, with the added lifestyle change of eating out less and cooking more at home, as well as reducing our meat intake. Added to that we decided to buy our meat from a butcher (just up the road... convenient!), and not shopping at Woolworths but at the local Veg shop and IGA. Changing venue has actually made our shopping cheaper! Toiletries and house cleaning supplies are included in this.

This system has actually made me think more about what we have for dinner, making me plan and look through all the cookbooks that The A and everyone else has given me over the years. Our vow not to eat out as much as before has made it necessary to make dinners and other meals that bit more exciting. It also means we are BOTH less likely to put stuff into the trolley that we don't need or are not on the list!

Our 'other' sections have been smooshed into a 'weekend' section. We each get $50 to get whatever we want, including anything I eat or drink at knitting, books, make-up and clothing etc. We also have included a $20 that we can spend with each other, usually a bottle of wine!

So far it's worked but it took a while to find something that does. Do you have a budget, and how sis you decide upon it?

Update in Pictures: Tasmania 2 (food and wine)

No explanation necessary.

Mundaring Truffle Festival

Every year the town (or Shire as they like to call themselves) of Mundaring hold a Truffle festival.  As someone at The A’s work lent us his car we decided to drive into the hills behind Perth and have a look around the festival.

Even though we didn’t have anything with truffles in it we managed to eat till we burst! Turkish bread with fresh Tapenade and Hummus, REAL Pork Rilletes with French bread, a dessert tray and on the way home a Devonshire tea with mutant giant scones.

Right Now

eating:: orange and poppyseed cake with orange cream cheese frosting;

feeling:: happy that the laundry basket contents have more than halved, that The A will be here until Monday and that he will be gone only for a week, then a week back then again a week away;

listening:: Tori Amos (American Doll Posse) and some birds outside;

watching:: the tv is off and I'm looking at the palm trees waving around in the wind;

loving:: the new shampoo and conditioner I bought yesterday. My hair was getting frazzled and this stuff has worked MIRACLES and was half price at Coles.

admiring:: the paper tissue flowers I tried to make last night. 5 sheets of 500x750mm at $2 each makes these a cheap and lasting craft. I can make loads and use them as fake flowers to brighten up the flat (after I use them in my bouquet of course!)

enjoying:: checking off the things on my to do list, emailing people the forms they kindly said they would do for us;

researching:: how best to cook the two lamb shanks I bought yesterday for dinner tomorrow night, TAFE courses and jobs

Tagine cooking

The Archaeologist and I received an engagement gift card and decided to get ourselves a tagine last month (something we've been wanting since going to Morocco) and when we first got here we found a fantastic Moroccan cookbook on sale at K-Mart. He's been wanting to cook with it for ages and last night got the chance to cook a dish that we both loved, Kafta aux Oeufs (kaftas with eggs) It turned out really well and tasted as good as the original, I got a break from cooking too!

Photo post!

I realised that my last few posts have been photo-less (how boring of me) and I know from reading other blogs that I don't tend to pay much attention when there aren't photos!

Currently:

Wedding planning with coffee (I made the full amount in our coffee machine, that's 10 cups. I don't know if that was a good or bad idea!). That is my wedding planner folder and one of our 'engagement mugs' (we bought 2 in Margaret River on the day the Archaeologist proposed, I love them and use them all the time)

Here's the inside, I put our colours on the front page. I did go to the Spotlight sale (BUSY) and managed to score the loot below for only $25. I already had the white and red fabric (I put it in there for those interested) I bought 1 m of the blue fabric ($3), some flower arranging wire stuff and a pinking rotary cutter. I'm going to use these for the fabric flowers.

Close up:

On a different yet exciting note I found this today:

If you can't read the label that's Fontina cheese (I have never seen it with a wax but maybe they do that when shipping it) I might use it in a risotto or in a lunchtime quesadilla with pastrami (yes I have weird taste in lunch meats! I also like corned beef and once ate a pack of 10 slices on it's own)

Morning in Freo

I had a great morning, I just got back from Fremantle. I had to take in my labrary books and pay some bills. I got out a fantastic Risotto cookbook that I will have to try out sometime this week and then save some recipes that the Archaeologist will like when he gets back. I also got out P&P which I want to re-read thanks to 'Lost in Austen' which is on ABC 1 on Sunday nights. Episode 2 will be on this Sunday and I'm looking forward to it. (The birth debate show is on again now so am catching the start of the programme which I missed)

I also spent loads of time in the Freo Markets, I had a really yummy ham, cheese and mushroom crepe, an organic iced coffee, a Sri Lankan vegetable patty, and bought some gift fillers for 'someones' birthday which is coming up soon. I know that when people come to visit they will spend a lot of time (and money) there.

On my way back I had to go to our local veggie place and get some salad for my dinner, I managed to score a genuine 750ml Perrier with lemon for only $3!! Am siting on the couch drinking it from the bottle (which we can keep to put water in to take away with us) Reminds me of France.

This n That

We had another rental inspection today which we passed (though we apparently need to make the bathtub and sink in the bathroom whiter, which is hard when it's so old!) It's funny that they are so paranoid over here that they do inspections every 3 months, in the UK our landlord came over once to change the washing machine and then didn't come again until the moving out inspection and even then he was more worried that the stuff we had in a corner for friends to take would be gone than anything else! I suppose renters and landlords have different rights here.

Every morning I watch the French news on SBS, mainly to get some international news which features so little here (you would think Australia is the only country on Earth!) Apparently Jade Goody is dying from her cancer (I had no idea she even had cancer!) and is getting her last moments televised for lots of money that will go to her children. France 2 had little to say over the matter except that many English commentators are shocked.

Last night I made a fantastic veggie curry. I used Rogan Josh paste with onions, sweet potato, potato, spinach, tomatoes, corn and lentils. Huge whammy of goodness, along with popadums and cous-cous. Tonight it will be scotch steak (rib-eye) with mini zucchini.

We had a bottle of wine last night to celebrate, something new that we had never tried before. Unfortunately neither of us liked it very much and I felt ill all this morning from it. At least we know not to get that one again!

New Zealand goodies

The Archaeologist got back late last night after 20 hours of travelling! Glad to be back and insanely tired, he did take the time to give me some goodies he'd picked up for me while there. One of which was an original glazed donut from Sydney airport, eaten before a photo could be taken of its yummyness so instead here's the wrapper:

He then opened a bag with this inside:

I will probably make a simple rib scarf with them, a really long and colourful one for winter. With the wool was this little guy:

He's hanging from the mirror in our bedroom with the Nessie he got me in Scotland. Today I had to get to the library to renew two books and return some, I was lucky enought to pick up two knitting books that had been returned before anyone else got them:

Twinkle's Big City Knits and Wrap Style. I have them for three weeks so I should be able to get some use out of them, if not I can scan the patterns I like and use them later on (just for me, no copyright infringement here! I won't be handing out copies!!)

The weight debate

I'm going to slim down for the wedding next year and when I went grocery shopping today I decided to go into K Mart to just look around, I ended up getting a calorie counter book that has every kind of food listed and their calorie values (including Red Rooster and other completely Australian foods) They also have protein, calcium, and iron values, which after looking at I might not be getting the correct amount of iron I should be getting!

I will help you, and make you feel guilty...

The book should help both of us be more portion size aware and think about things before going the easy way when we are out for lunch. Sushi instead of Hungry Jacks!

One of the great things is that they have Ready Steady Cook here on Channel Ten, the host is a lot cheesier and more annoying than Ainsley but if they feature French chef Manu I can just about watch it as he takes the piss out of the host in that sly French way. His food is also good and he often goes on tirades about the 'Tasty' cheese they use here (It's a kind of cheddar type cheese that I think is only good enough to use on cheese toasties)

Australian food seems to me to be mostly fusion food (western mixed with Asian) they have a lot of fresh seafood, vegetables and fruit at their disposal so this choice makes sense. Thanks to all the people coming into the country there is a huge choice when it comes to restaurants, as for supermarkets you can find a lot of generic 'foreign' foods i.e. Old El Paso, Pataks curry pastes etc. You can sometimes find some variations on these at Delis. But what I miss most is gooey, smelly French cheese such as Epoisses and the like.

As it is I have been really happy and surprised at the variation of foods available here. Not having those 'luxury' goods at my disposal all the time is probably a good thing, making a trip home to France all the better!

Chicken or choock whatever you call it, they love it!

One thing I have noticed since I arrived in Australia (4 months ago) is that they really do love their chicken. It took me pointing it out and counting how many chicken places there are to show the Archeologist this point.
Not that I have anything against chicken, I love it! Now let me run it through for you...

1. Red Rooster
Sorry to all the others but I think that this is the best one. They do roast chicken that you can buy whole or in bits, they also do burgers, fish, chips etc. Their selling point is that it's roasted for 50 mins and marinaded (drool..) they also promote that they are 100% Australian made and owned.Think of them as the MacDonalds of Chicken. They have some very funny commercials:



2. Choocks
Not as prelevant as number 1 but it tastes good. They give you a choice of either fried or roasted and can come as a full roast dinner (potatoes, gravy and peas)

3. Chicken Treat
Competes with number 1 but we feel that they roast the chicken for too long, making it drier and we also think that they must source their chickens from the midget chicken farms, they are so small! Their mascot is an obese wobbly chicken, which really says something:








4. KFC
Everyone knows KFC so I won't bother describing. They sponsor a lot of the Cricket here.

5. MacDonalds
Now I know what you're thinking "MacDonalds do burgers not just chicken!" but that's where you're wrong, they have just introduced a whole seperate side of the menu with chicken. You can choose either seared or crispy and with 5 different toppings I'd say that was a pretty big choice for chicken!

So, I know that's not exactly chicken crazy but they are more frequent on the highways than MacDonalds and when you go to the mall, KFC and Red Rooster have the longest queues. No one has yet managed to explain why the Australians love their chicken this much, but I'm not complaining! Nothing better than a roast chicken taken to the beach to watch the sun set!