sjh - mountain biking linux geek spice

[leisure/food] Pip...

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:41:00

So I am not sure this should be in a leisure category, however it is about food. Recently the mandarins available changed, where before the loose skinned, seed free, or close to seed free and tasty mandarins were readily available everywhere. In the last few weeks these have disappeared at most fruit shops, or where they are still available have been bordering on being bad (ripe, or rotten, or something else wrong).

In their place is a larger variety of mandarins, however most of them seem sour. There are large mandarins, small mandarins most of them seem to have tight fitting skin and they all seem to contain a lot of seeds. Today 2 of the 7 pieces of fruit/veg I had on my desk at work to eat during the day were mandarins of the sour, small, tight skinned and many seeded variety. I was amazed to find there were 20 seeds in a piece of fruit so small when I ate my first, so it was even more surprising to find there were 30 seeds in the second mandarin today. How can there be so many seeds in such a small piece of fruit and still have any fruit surrounding them.

[leisure/food] Chai Green Tea with a Penguin

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:22:00

Chai Green Tea (fullsize)

With a Penguin (fullsize)

A little while back I noticed a new organic food shop near ANU, the mob from the Belconnen markets, As Nature Intended had opened up another shop in one of the new building developments near the Rydges hotel. They have some good (though expensive) supplies for cooking, and they have a cafe (also a little expensive) with very good coffee served.

So breakfast was had yesterday at the cafe, the Vegan Big breakfast on their menu (it may be downloaded), really good home made baked beans, marinated tofu and roast veggies (they had run out of mushrooms alas) all with toast. After breakfast looking around the shop there were many tempting things. I mostly restrained myself until I saw the item pictured to the left.

As a Linux geek, someone who enjoys green tea and someone who has been drinking a lot of chai recently I was unable to pass up buying this box of tea bags. It is a penguin propped open in half with a guy drinking tea in the middle and it is chai green tea. I almost suspect I will need to keep the box in my office once I finish drinking the tea contained within. How cool.

[leisure/food] Roti round 2

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:01:00

Yesterday I mentioned my first attempt at Roti, last night to help finish off a rather nice pumpkin, spinach and chickpea curry I thought I would take to heart some of the lessons learnt and information gleaned online. So I made more Roti.

This time I used a heavy base stainless steel pan, not quite a Tawa, however I think it is the closest easily available item I had to use. I added a little bit (a few dribbles) of oil to the dough mix before starting to add water. The pan was cleaned off between the cooking of each individual Roti. A quick spray of canola oil was used on the pan surface between each Roti rather than excessive amounts floating in a wok as happened in round 1. Oh and I used self raising flour wholemeal flour.

The bread tasted and felt a lot healthier than round 1, less oil throughout. The bubbles appeared during cooking once the pan base was hot enough, the first two or three Roti were cooked before the pan was hot enough I think. The main problem this time was the bread was not as flaky as good Roti often is when you get it at a restaurant, this may mean I need to fold it over some dribbles of oil once the dough is made as some sites suggested. The other even more annoying problem was that the good bubbly Roti was awfully dry, so it cracked when handled and bent a lot rather than a nice malleable bread you can easily tear and scoop with. I wonder if making the dough just a little moister will help with the dry feeling.

As yummy as it all was it took a lot longer and was more labour intensive to make Roti than simply heat or cook some brown rice, thus I think I will keep Roti for occasional meals and when eating out and stick to brown rice with most of my curries and other Roti friendly dishes.

[leisure/food] Roti round 1

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:32:00

Last night to accompany the curry for dinner I tried my hand at making Roti, I followed the directions on one of the first google hits for Roti Bread recipes (here), however this did not specify the amount of oil to cook with, or the need for a pan or griddle like a Tawa (heavy cast iron, thick base sort of thing). Also the lack of backing soda or SR Flour means they did not bubble much.

On the whole they were still yummy and very enjoyable with the curry to eat and scoop the curry with. However I think too much oil was used in the cooking, and I used a wok, I should have used a heavy based pan or similar. Anyway I learnt a bit and plan to try again, definitely a good basic bread to make and tastes yummy fresh and hot with a curry or similar.

[leisure/food] Wines from Plonk!

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:32:00

So I had been wondering what to get my mother for her 60th birthday celebrations, the actual celebration is tomorrow even though her birthday was yesterday. However I will give her a gift tomorrow, I feel I can safely write about it here as she never actually reads this unless bludgeoned with a link to a particular entry.

It occurred to me that Mum and her partner drink wine with food and like to try out a variety of different wines. After getting some wine recommendations from Jane I set about finding somewhere to buy some nice wines from knowledgeable staff. I had Plonk at the Fyshwick Markets suggested and they sounded good as they focus on smaller labels and more variety than you may find from a large bottle shop chain.

I grabbed my car from home at lunch today and drove over to have a look, I walked away with what I think will be a reasonably nice gift of 8 bottles of wine from them, 6 whites and two reds. The wines I got are.

Lake George - Pinot Gris
Lake George - Shiraz
Brindabella Hills - Chardonnay
Pikes Clare Valley - Reisling
Krinklewood - Verdelho
Pizzini - Sangiovese
Tohu - Sauvignon Blanc
Garden Gully - Sparkling Shiraz

The Tohu comes from Marlborough region of New Zealand, apparently this is quite an award winning wine. Three of the wines as you can see are very much local and the others are all Australian. I liked the guys I talked to in the shop and we even talked about the possibility of them supporting some mountain bike stuff with CORC.

[leisure/food] My weekend in food

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:47:00

So over the weekend I was down in Melbourne, I ate a lot and did a fair amount of shopping. (one of the items of clothing I bought were some new Jeans, made by Helly Hanson, how cool is that, I can sort of think of it as if I were buying outdoor/race gear made by Helly Hanson and it is instead functional clothing I wear the rest of the time). Anyway one of the things that occurred over the weekend was consumption of a lot of really yummy food.

I suppose I could say it all started on Friday evening before catching the flight down when I made some pizzas topped with organic tomato paste, onions, pumpkin, fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, olives, capsicum, sun-dried tomatoes and kingland soy cheese. Yummmm, ate too much and then got a lift to the airport, the plane was running late which was fortunate because dinner took a bit longer than expected.

Saturday morning Soulfood Cafe was the venue for breakfast, Jane (sister) was in Melbourne for a few weeks for PhD conferences and research, also a mtb friend moved to Melbourne recently and is living a block or two away from Soul food in Fitzroy so they were at breakfast to catch up. Had a yummy chocolate cup cake, a blueberry muffin, a big veggie breakfast and a fruit salad, oh and a great soy mocha.

Lunch was had at Vegie Bar with a slightly laksa like broth that contained some very good sesame dumplings, some good Roti with Dhal and then a spectacular stuffed vegan mushroom. Dinner that night was at Lentil As Anything in St Kilda, getting there late there was not a lot left, however what was there was fantastic. A really yummy spicy pumpkin soup followed by a curry platter (a beetroot curry that worked well due to the sweet beetroot and savoury curry, a Moroccan hot pot curry and a pea and potato curry of some sort. Both the dishes were served with good Roti once again. At the end of this day I was somewhat full of food and almost rolling around the streets I think.

Sunday morning was breakfast at InVita Cafe at the Queen Vic markets, they had fresh out of the oven hot vegan blueberry muffins that were to die for which I followed with scrambled tofu on pumpkin bread. Lunch was at Silly Yaks cafe in Northcote where I was able to tuck into a Mexican bean burrito with salad and a good bruschetta (the bread had an obvious potato taste but was actually fairly good I thought). This was followed a few metres down the road at Coco Loco, an organic, fair trade chocolate bar. They had vegan Chocolate Mousse that was fantastic, rich, creamy, held its fluff and worked really well (something I really want to work out how to make, maybe using agar and soft tofu in a blender will help... who knows), vegan waffles in deep rich dark chocolate and they had something they call Kashew Mylk, somewhat obviously a milk made using Cashews. So I had a rich dark chocolate and orange hot chocolate with the Kashew Mylk. All very satisfying.

At one point on Saturday evening I had wanted a snack and Lord of the Fries seemed appropriate. So I had a cone of fries with French Canadian sauce (using vegan cheese) and damn that was good (though definitely waistline expanding) this on Sunday afternoon heading toward the airport I wanted to try out their Vegan nuggets, alas they were out of stock, however I had more fries with the same sauce and a yummy vegan hamburger. Then ran for the airport thinking the plane would be leaving before I got there. Upon arrival at the airport they rushed the checking and then the plane was delayed for 2 hours. Oh well I had a fun, if somewhat waist expanding Melbourne weekend.

[leisure/food] Cooking breakages

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:40:00

On Saturday night while cooking three of the yummy recipes from Veganomicon (the book Davyd has referred to a bit). (the recipes were "Greek style tomato zucchini fritters with fresh herbs", "Jamaican yuca shepards pie with sweet potato kidney beans and plantains" (though we used purple sweet potato and banana), and "eggplant potato moussaka with pine nut cream". We followed this with a yummy chocolate cake with soy cream cheese with lemon and jam filling and chocolate with fresh berry icing) I managed to break some cooking implements.

While I was trying to press some ingredients down into a blender I cracked the handle of one wooden spoon. So I got another wooden spoon out of the drawer and then while pushing the same ingredients down I pushed a little too far and the blender tore a chunk from the middle of the spoon. Oops too wooden spoons sacrificed in the name of the dinner party. All the food was incredibly yummy, the 12 people at the dinner all had a great evening and all I really need to do now is go and buy myself more wooden spoons. Maybe I had better buy a few spares. Oh and no one there was allergic to wooden spoons, so all was fine.

[leisure/food] Looking for some ingredients

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:18:00

So for something I wish to cook the recipe suggests Cassava (Yuca, Tapioca) and Plantain. So sure I could possibly get away with sweet potato and banana. However the recipe already contains sweet potato as well and the banana (even with green bananas) may not be quite right. So I was wondering where in Canberra I could possibly get these ingredients. I rang some organic food stores and they have Tapioca flour, however none of them have the roots whole.

I have also rung a few Asian grocery shops, one of them said they had Cassava so I could head out there, however I have not found Plantains yet. I guess I should check out the Fyshwick Markets tomorrow to see if I have any luck there.

[leisure/food] Yummy new dinner

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:34:00

Just so I do not forget this dish I thought I had better record it here. Tonight for dinner I fried together onion, garlic, eggplant, tomato, 4 bean mix (can) and spinach with chinese five spices, mild paprika, cinnamon and pepper added. In the microwave I heated some sweet potato in some water with brown sugar and then added some sweet potato to the fried mix and the rest mashed up. Put the mix of stuff into a baking dish, spread the sweet potato on top, poured sesame seeds over the top and dribbled olive oil over it all then placed in the oven for half an hour at 190c and then grilled on high for a few minutes at the end. Damn that was one heck of a yummy meal, I decided on doing this while I was wandering around the markets buying fruit and veg today. Ate a yummy salad with it all, most enjoyable.

Next time I think, for a bit more bulk, and for the colour variety, I will do some potatos mashed and in the mix as well so I can swirl the orange and white colours together on top.

[leisure/food] Cookie recipes galore

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:28:00

Soft chocolate chip, apple, coconut cookies (or snickerdoodles) are one of the foods I like to make for racing and long rides. However I am sure many people will appreciate that any cookie is a fairly good food in all manner of situations. Thus I was happy to see this link on Metafilter today, a list of what the author thinks are the 50 best cookie recipes on the Internet.

Some of these really do look wonderful, as soon as I can exercise again (and thus burn off excessive amounts of chocolate, sugar and butter) I need to look into trying out a lot of these. I think Crash should show the list to Jo, after all I know she likes to bake the odd yummy item, and he benefits from that anyway. Maybe I should challenge Jo to a long term bake off, we could both bake one of these recipes a week, swap some of the finished product and try them all out over 25 weeks or so.

[leisure/food] Count the superfoods

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:38:00

Many articles online recently have mentioned various plans to include so called superfoods in a diet. Because I recently bought a lot of fresh blueberries and have since been eating them with breakfast I thought I would see how many of these foods I have been eating most days.

Of those mentioned, so far today I have eaten Apples, Avocado, Blueberries, Dark Chocolate, Honey, Low fat yoghurt, Oats, Oranges, Tea, Tomatoes, and dried Apricots (Dried superfruits). I expect by the time dinner is over I will have added Beans, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Garlic and Onions at least.

Of course one problem is trying to eat these in suggested quantities, such as 1-2 cups of fresh blueberries per day, a practice which simply is not economically viable in Australia (even if you had weekly access to the fresh blueberry farm). I suppose some people would point out I tend to be a bit of a health and fitness nut here though, after all I have also done 50 KM of fast paced road riding today, a stretching class and on Wednesday evenings would normally do a 10KM paddling time trial too.

The interesting thing here I think is that I had not even considered my food intake against the superfood list until I looked it up, so realistically anyone could be careful about eating healthy even if they are not in the mood for the amount of exercise I participate in.

[leisure/food] When crass commercialism is a good thing

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:13:00

It seems offensive when we see Christmas shopping, decorations and advertising sometime in August, we probably often have similar behaviour to the early ramping up on Mothers and Fathers day in the commercial sphere. However I have to say one aspect of this seeming crass commercialism that I noticed this week that appeals to me does exist.

I have mentioned in the past that the annual festival of the spicy fruit bun is a good thing because I adore hot cross buns. I could almost live on the things (okay ignoring for a moment they do not contain enough of a balanced diet to do that). I am able to purchase hot cross buns in Woolworths already, in early January, I do not need to wait until March. Rock on.

In other news I just realised my leisure/food category had completely disappeared from my laptop, probably during a recent fsck. Time to look through my laptop backups and compare against what is on the system to see if anything else is missing that should not be.

[leisure/food] Great coffee and some mango wine

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 21:31:00

35 KG of coffee roasted at a time (full size)

As I suggested the other day, I spent Thursday up in the table lands checking out some local produce of interest and looking around Kuranda. The produce of interest was local coffee, and I had a look at a Mango winery simply for the novelty value.

The photo to the left is the bean roaster at the NQ Gold Coffee plantation, this was a good plantation to visit I reckon. Not far outside the town of Mareeba, the plantation is owned and operated by a family, all the coffee has been grown with no pesticides sprayed on it for the last 14 years. They do a free tour for you and will serve a fantastic coffee there. The beans are sun dried there and all processing is done on the premises. In addition to their three coffee varieties (light, medium, espresso) they sell chocolate covered coffee beans, dried fruit (mango and others) and mango jam. All of which I ended up buying. After this visit I decided not to go visit one of the larger more commercial coffee plantations as I was well satisfied with the details I got from this visit. The woman who gave the tour mentioned there is one restaurant in Canberra that serves their coffee (possibly the Chill restaurant in Campbell, I forget).

Afterwards I headed off to the Golden Drop Mango Winery mostly to satisfy my curiosity as to what it could taste like. They had three varieties of wine, Dry, Medium and Sweet, they also sold Mango Port and Mango Liquor, Mango Champagne plus a few other fruit based liquors. I generally prefer dry wines, however I was worried that mango wine would all be somewhat sweet, I was pleasantly surprised to find the dry was indeed a rather good tasting dry wine. The most noticeable thing is there is an almost overpowering Mango aroma from the wine. I liked the novelty of the drink, however at the price (AUD $25 per 750ml bottle) it would not replace a standard drinking wine for many people who drink wine regularly.

After this I headed back to Cairns via Baron Gorge and Kuranda to check out the views and township.

[leisure/food] Snicker Doodles

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 22:41:00

The cookies I make fairly often (with apple, choc chip, oat and coconut) are a basic soft sugar cookie recipe. I recalled that there was some slang name for this basic soft cookie in the US however I can never remember it. A few minutes ago I saw an email address with the word Smackerdoodle in it and remembered the cookies were called something doodle. A quick google for "cookie doodle" has reminded me the US slang term for the basic soft sugar cookie is "Snicker Doodle".

[leisure/food] Tea with a coconut aftertaste

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 21:42:00

Sam and Ben purchased some tea from the Daintree Tea plantation when they were up there a few weeks ago. Ben prepared a pot of it a few minutes ago that I am drinking now. Damn good taste, I especially like the slight coconut flavoured aftertaste. I am happy to see I can order this tea online to be delivered to Canberra. (they also have US and Canadian importers) Who knows I may have found a tea to supplant my Twinings Irish Breakfast habit as my favourite tea. I had better sample this a lot more to make sure.

As for things to do up here, I am tempted tomorrow to head up to Mareeba to some local coffee plantations and a Mango Winery as mentioned in this food itinerary. I love fresh coffee, and Mango wine sounds good.

[leisure/food] Yummy eggplant bake

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 10:19:00

I get The Australian newspaper for most of the year for AU $15 through a university staff and students deal. The Weekend Australian is delivered on Saturdays and the Sunday Telegraph is delivered on Sunday, the week day papers I pick up on campus through the week. All of this is to explain why I have the Sunday Telegraph at home (I would never willingly purchase it otherwise, snob that I am <g>).

In the Body and Soul section of the Sunday Telegraph on July 16th this year there were three very appealing recipes. Spicy Fish Soup with Cracked Wheat, Easy Eggplant Bake and Pumpkin, Pine Nut and Silverbeet Rolls. I have been meaning to try these out for a while, however had not gotten around to changing my normal shopping and food preparation for meals at home. While on holiday I decided to try them out so last night I cooked the Easy Eggplant Bake (recipe) for Sam, Ben and I to eat for dinner.

That is definitely one fantastic vegetarian dish, highly recommended, the garlic and the nutty flavour of the dry roasted couscous are good with the eggplant base. I will probably try the pumpkin, pine nut and silverbeet rolls on Thursday.

[leisure/food] There goes an 8 year stretch

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 22:28:00

Ahh well it was unlikely to ever last I guess, until 6am on Sunday morning it had been 8 years since I consumed any food from McDonalds and around 6 years since consuming anything from there (I had a coffee handed to me while driving to the snow about 6 years ago).

Around 6am on Sunday morning after getting out of a warm sleeping bag out at the race venue for the working week series 8 hour mtb race, as Russ and I started setting up the site ready for the 6:30am rego arrivals and getting everything happening for the race that day Stu (the race promoter) rocked up and handed us both Bacon and Egg muffins. Who was I to turn down free hot food containing bacon.

I guess the main reason I have avoided McDonalds (and since trying it for the first time ever 3 years ago also avoiding Hungry Jacks) is I do not like the taste of most of the food on offer and it is never particularly healthy even if it tastes alright. There is almost always better tasting or healthier (or both better tasting and healthier) food available so I do not see any point in consuming the food on offer from these ubiquitous fast food providers.

I would however live on Bacon and Egg rolls if that were possible so eating a Bacon and Egg muffin almost fits with in that dietary plan. Mmmmm Bacon.

[leisure/food] Oops a rather nice wine

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 23:40:00

Just as a reminder, I really liked the Stoneleigh 2005 Sauvignon Blanc (from Marlborough in NZ). Of course upon getting sick of a bottle of wine rattling around in the fridge, I should not simply assume it was from the dinner party a few weeks ago (after which there were a few half full bottles of wine to polish off over time). This was a half full bottle belonging to one of my housemates, fortunately I was able to find a replacement while out shopping tonight.

[leisure/food] Good coffee with no machine

Fri, 05 May 2006 18:08:00

I saw a review on Dan's Data of the Aerobie AeroPress and was intrigued by the repeated claims in places that this makes good coffee.

I really do not like the coffee produced by the coffee machine in the office at work (some expensive automatic Saeco machine) and thus never drink it, instead I buy my own coffee and at work prepare it in a single cup filter. I have thought from time to time it may be good to have a coffee machine in my office at work so as to make reasonable coffee however I could not get around how inescapably pretentious that would be. This AeroPress however can even be put away in a drawer.

So I bought one, it arrived this morning (AUD $54 delivered, overnight, from the Australian distributor CoffeePress) and I am converted, this does indeed produce coffee as good as can be made in a quality machine.

[leisure/food] The close of the Spicy Fruit Bun Festival again

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 13:40:00

I went to pick up 2 loaves of country grain bread and hopefully more hot cross buns at Brumbys in Lyneham today. Alas the Spicy Fruit Bun festival has ended for 2006, they are no longer making them until March sometime next year. If I become desperate I may have to go the way Mikal planned and Sarah has.

[leisure/food] Good dinner

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 23:01:00

I had some friends over for dinner tonight (Sam, Ben and their children), my sister Jane was in town and bought one of her friends (Louise) along also and one of my house mates was around this weekend so joined in the fun.

The main I cooked was Chicken with Mango, very yummy. With it I made a salad from a variety of lettuce's (is that the plural of lettuce?), pine nuts, sesame seeds, avocado, capsicum, feta, lebanese cucumber, tomato and snow peas all chopped fine to make it easy to get on a fork. Dessert was rice pudding spooned on to a bed of banana, strawberry and peaches with honey dribbled over the top.

Good night with friends, enjoyable dinner, some good wine, followed by a fun game. This game is sort of like Pictionary with words rather than pictures. The game is called Articulate (some reviews of Articulate), I enjoyed playing it quite a lot. It is however a game (much like Pictionary) that is biased if played by people who know each other really well (such as close siblings). Jane and I tend to be scary with our ability to almost read each other's mind in Pictionary and being able to speak and bring easy free association into play in this game I suspect we would also do well. Jane and I played on different teams tonight for the good of the game play.

I also baked up some more cookies today in order to take on a mtb ride tomorrow morning.

[leisure/food] FHFC

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:03:00

Once again some comments on Michael Ellerman's most recent post, he is quiet correct in my opinion when he states Flat Heads Fish Cafe have the best Hamburgers in Canberra. I may be somewhat biased (due to the fact I live about 60 metres away) however they truly are a great hamburger.

On the riding Mt Ainslie note, it is the fastest road descent in Canberra, largely due to the lack of corners, I have exceeded 90Kmh coming down that road from time to time and I know a few people who have passed 100Kmh on the descent. Climbing wise it is also one of the harder climbs in Canberra, it is deceptively easy at the bottom and then gets increasingly difficult and steep as you approach the top. Time wise most people will climb it in about the same time they do Black Mountain, possibly a minute or so faster.

[leisure/food] The spicy fruit bun festival is back, this time with chocolate

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 16:57:00

So the other day I went to buy two loaves of Country Grain bread at the local Brumby's bakery as I do most weeks and what do I see there. Chocolate Hot Cross buns. Neat. As I have said in the past, I am a fan of The Annual Spicy Fruit Bun Festival. Similarly, in a rather unfortunate circumstance for a diabetic, I am a chocolate addict. Thus finding a food product mixing these together was quite an experience. I would like to say these chocolate hot cross buns are damn good, mmmm chocolate, melted butter, coronary...

[leisure/food] I forgot the not make the pan icky stuff

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 21:29:00

I got home from work around 19:00 and hopped back on the bike to get some groceries at Woolworths, I am making a curry tonight which should last for a few days of Dinners or so. I also intended to make cookies again tonight, varying the recipe a bit by adding chopped/crushed cashews and diced dried apricots to the choc chip/oat cookies. I finished getting the curry onto simmer and had rice cooking and was about to start the cookies and I realised, I am out of Glad Bake.

Sure I hear you say I could be a man and simply grease my baking trays in order to stop the cookies sticking to the trays, alas I am not well'ard and dislike washing baking trays to remove icky cookie baking residue. Thus I will get some Glad Bake in the morning and bake cookies tomorrow night. If only I had thought about this and remembered I needed it while getting the other ingredients and assorted groceries.

[leisure/food] Cookies'R'Us

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 16:24:00

I was reading something on Saturday that made me want chocolate chip cookies, so I googled for a recipe, found one (with notes) and baked myself a batch of chocolate chip cookies, using oats rather than nuts.

They turned out fairly well, a soft texture, almost like a cake but still crunchy, this is due to the rise induced by the baking soda. I can understand why nuts or some other variations (adding fruit, etc) may be worthwhile to make them a bit more interesting as a biscuit. Maybe some rice bubbles in the mix would be good also. They went down fairly well on the Tallaganda ride I did on Monday, though when I was eating the cookies at home my milk consumption was rather high as they really did go down better with a glass of milk.

[leisure/food] Tacos rock

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:07:00

So I went over to help a friend out with some computer issues the other day, as a thankyou they served a rather good dinner. Tacos, I have not eaten Tacos for about 8 years, I wonder why not, they absolutely rock. Also very easy to prepare, get some sour cream, some cheese, cut up some tomato and lettuce, get a jar of taco sauce (spiciness to taste) and choose the base sauce, meat base, or refried bean base or something else. And you know what, they taste great. Mmmmmmm tacos.

[leisure/food] Questioned about blogging at the noble palace

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:14:00

I was out for dinner on Wednesday night at a Chinese restaurant in Woden called the "Noble Palace" (noble palace review). Not trying to muscle in on Mel or Rusty in the reviewing space, but I must say it was indeed damn good food. One of the people I was dining with who had recently been travelling throughout a lot of Asia for work (China, Korea, etc) was impressed as heck saying it was on par with the best she had tasted there. I did have one complaint I guess, we had a part of around 20 people and ordered one of the banquet items from the menu. Though the food was good there was not very much of it. Even Kate was still looking for more to eat once all the food had disappeared, and she is not a big eater at the best of times. It was to a large extent made up for by the quality of the dishes though. Oh and their dessert offerings are rather bland and pointless also in my opinion.

Interestingly while there I got up from my seat to walk to the toilet and a diner at another table asked me what the word on my t-shirt means. How do you describe blogging to people that say oh some computer thing? I used the term, it is an Internet diary that anyone can read. Interestingly later in the evening Russ' daughter Avril complimented me on wearing a cool t-shirt, so at least some people at the dinner appreciated it.

[leisure/food] Mango flavour hash browns.

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 10:27:00

I have had a hankering for hash browns for about a week an a half, the shop across the road from my house did not have any in stock. Finally last night I went shopping at a large supermarket to stock up on stuff and they had hash browns in the deli. Yay. Thus dinner last night was mushrooms, scrambled eggs, hash browns and toast, yes breakfast is in fact the new dinner, who needs any of this old fashioned dinner dinner? Of course in the interests of ensuring my hash brown cravings do not go unanswered for as long I bought few more than I ate last night, now I just need a Tardis style freezer I guess.

Speaking of mango flavour (no not the hash browns) I was pleasantly surprised to find one of the bells fruit bar flavours is mango, why I had not noticed this before is beyond me, however eating an orange coloured bar last night I thought, this does not taste much like apricot, then I looked on the packet and found it said mango. Mmmmmmm mangos (well processed barry stuff that has mango flavour in it, but hey). Maybe I should cook the mango chicken on cous cous dish I have had ingredients for sitting around the kitchen for a few weeks, well mango chicken and hash browns on cous cous of course...

[leisure/food] More good food on campus soon...

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 13:50:00

I can understand why Mikey is somewhat pissed off with a certain eating establishment near his office on campus. I have mentioned once or twice in the past how disappointing and overpriced the food from ANU Union caterers is, and I have to say the instance of a catering outlet Mikey refers to really is bad even compared against some of those closer to this side of campus, well at least that is my opinion.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel though, the new JCS building that is being built (or possibly finished already, the big green ugly looking building) on the oval opposite Mikey's work will have a cafe, the owner of a certain eating establishment I like a lot (mentioned and used a lot during lca2005, about 50 metres from my office) has taken out the lease for the cafe that will be in this new building once finished. This will not be a ANU Union establishment, and if the two cafes they already run are an indication (Pickle and Discovery) it will be something to look forward to for all the people on that side of campus. (there really is not much nearby in the way of food outlets over there).

Of course I do not know how public this information is, or should be, ahh well it is out now. Interestingly Nick may price things a bit cheaper at the new cafe in order to encourage people to go there, it may even be worth hopping on the bike and riding across campus if he makes things a lot cheaper.

[leisure/food] Daily grind has a few more opening hours

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 10:10:00

Hmm Hugh got back on the blogging horse and has decided to do posts about places to eat, a bit like Mel maybe, though less veggie focused (I thoroughly recommend Mel's posts btw).

Anyway Hugh mentions having lunch at the Daily Grind over near his office area. I have not partaken lunch there, however have been there at breakfast, thus his "Lunch Only" hours suggested may be somewhat incorrect. I do agree it is a good place, prices are low and the breakfast menu is pretty good and the coffee is up to par, I liked it more than the other place I have been to in that area which AFAIR is on the same street as Hugh's office and a few blocks up.

[leisure/food] Fresh Roasted Coffee

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 14:45:00

Dried bean soup ingredients (full size)

When reading about coffee and what helps ensure good quality coffee, the most often repeated suggestion is to get your coffee as fresh as possible after roasting. (Along with getting Arabica beans). Thus when Crash and Mel mentioned a coffee retailer in Mitchell that sells coffee they roast on the premises I decided I had better try it out.

The shop is "The Fresh Roast Coffee House" in Mitchell, they sell Jindebah coffee. I rode out to Mitchell on Friday morning and purchased two 250g packs of beans. An 100% Australian Coffee, "Premium Dark Roast" and a pack of "Indian Monsooned Malabar" a Strong variety. So far I have ground and sampled some of the Australian coffee, very nice stuff, prepared with a single cup drip filter.

On the subject of coffee maybe I should see if Mum and Norm feel like selling their manual coffee machine, they do not appear to use it (Mum does not drink coffee, and Norm if he drinks any seems to drink Moconna instant) and a coffee machine with a 15 bar pressure capability would be a same to let go unused.

[leisure/food] Food Intolerance

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 17:06:00

I tend to get my bread from Brumbys bakery every week, when I go and buy 2 loaves once a week I usually buy another small item or two. So I was eating one of these during lunch after my run today and I notice the paper bag had this big claim about all bread from Brumbys containing no preservative 282. Wondering what this was on about I went googling.

The most informative site on this an a lot of other food intolerance issues appears to be Fed Up With Food Additives (though to some extent it could also be seen as a marketing vehicle for Sue Dengate's books). This has opened my eyes to a large extent to the fact I, and many others should give a lot more thought to what is in the food we eat.

So yeah I started writing this post yesterday evening (when it was dated), it is now about 7:30pm on Thursday night, I am still at work, the rain is pouring rather heavily outside, I should be at home building up my road bike again, however I have yet to build up the want to get my clothes soaked so may as well finish writing this.

Searching google for food preservative information or food intolerance can show up a fair amount more information so I will not discount this site out of hand as a marketing vehicle for Sue Dengate's work and can accept it is probably mostly true and accurate. It does become scary to think how many different seemingly minimal things could cause problems with your own health or the health of your children. Though there is another side in that you do not want to jump at shadows, even using the elimination diet I am sure it can take a lot of time and effort to track down any problems simply sue to the variation in diet most of us go through on a regular basis.

I may read a copy of the Fed Up with Asthma book at least and see what it has to say, I have some asthmatic and phlegm problems, mostly related to doing a lot of exercise, however this does become tedious considering I have an exercise induced cough and phlegm, often when not exercising too, that has not gone away for a number of years. Anything I can read and try out to see if it helps is probably worth the effort.

This post was going to be a lot longer last night when I started writing it, however I had to go to a meeting and did not get time to write more until now, ahh well blog apathy can happen any time.

[leisure/food] Say bye bye Krispy Kreme?

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 16:14:00

Now this is interesting (found on kottke). The article talks about how abysmally enronesque the management of Krispy Kreme was after going public in 2000 or so. A company that has been around for 75 or so years looks like it may go bankrupt. Personally I could care less, I have never eaten a Krispy Kreme product and have no intention of doing so, however Michael seems to be quite a fan of their product, as are a few other people I know. So I thought I would comment on this.

I recently noticed Krispy Kremes for sale from the back of a rent-a-ute trailer at the Belconnen mall carpark here in Canberra (completely ignoring the EULA on the Krispy Kreme boxes saying you are not allowed to resell them), also the outlet Michael noticed at the Domestic airport in Sydney does not cook them on site as it was simply a stall. The point of all this is the article above suggests the best way to save themselves is for Krispy Kreme to revert to their original product of hot donuts made in front of you at the franchise.

I can actually understand the lure of fresh hot donuts, one of the best sources of donuts in my experience is the mini donuts shop on the train platform at the Perisher Valley ski tube station. Even when I am staying in my lodge in Perisher I often make the effort to go to the ski tube centre and down to the platform and buy myself some of the fresh hot donuts there. Cold clammy glazed or coated donuts from some supermarket or similar however are a dime a dozen and hold no real fascination.

Whether Krispy Kreme will go bankrupt or not, I do not know, or particularly care, it is however interesting to see yet another possible victim of going public and dotcom style expansion problems even though they have a product that is not directly tied to computers or dotcom at all.

[leisure/food] The Annual Spicy Fruit Bun Festival

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 18:05:00

So I eat a few Easter buns. By easter buns I mean spicy fruit buns sold leading up to, during, and for a little while after Easter. My rant/beef with all this is that no one appears to sell spicy fruit buns most of the rest of the year. Woolworths some years continue selling spicy fruit buns (even with a cross on top) calling them red cross buns or similar until August, however they do not always continue selling these, and it varies from year to year and store to store.

Some bakeries sell a fruit bun year round, however the few I have tried simply do not taste any good due to the lack of spices. The nearest reliable taste I have found is the Tip Top Retreats Raisin Toast which is what I eat the rest of the year (either as raisin toast at home, or at work as an afternoon snack around 6pm with butter)

The bit I do not understand is why there is no spicy fruit bun sold by any of the bread companies, or by bakeries the rest of the year. I can not imagine consumers would not buy the buns during the rest of the year when they buy so many around Easter.