The Smoke Alarm

Happy New Year all!!

Apologies for the hiatus. Here's what I've been doing:
Sick for a week before Christmas
Perth for Christmas
Borneo for a week (where there was LOTS of sweet f.a. done)
Penang for a wedding
Sick for another week in January (gastro/flu)
Visit to the natropath (resulting in some zinc, magnesium, and REALLY nasty Chinese herbs)

And that's pretty much it...terribly exciting? Not really.

Anyhow, I've been looking for something to be thankful for, and today I found it in the supermarket. My shoes were pinching and I was so very tempted to take them off, in true Australian style, but opted to suffer instead. I just couldn't do it.

So instead, I was thankful for the smoke alarm.

Last week MacBoyfriend caught me leaving the dish towel (or tea towel) a little to close to the stove for comfort. I believe a crack was made (at my expense) about setting things on fire. Today it finally came true. I had three burners going for what was ultimately a huge let-down of a dinner, plain fish, broccoli and really out-of-date corn that was spongy. I put the lid on the broccoli and went to change clothes, wash my face, you know. Then we heard it: piercing sounds of the alarm. Now, this is not such a rarity in our house as the alarm tends to go off when you switch on a light. Just a fun quirk about the place. When it didn't go off, and a strange burning smell came from downstairs, my reply was 'oh shit.'

Luckily we were able to make a speedy rescue (with MacBoyfriend using all his firefighting skills). The towel didn't make it in the end though. It was given a garbage bin burial.

So stay tuned for more fun from our house to yours. I don't think the daily blogging fits in with my full-time job, but the aim this year is for once a week. Happy reading.

Debearding Dinner

Because today was more winter than summer, with intermittent rain and temperatures not above 17 deg (50's Fahrenheit?), we ate mussels with frites for dinner. It was my first stab at mussels and they turned out might fine.  There was some question as the stringy clumps of 'beard' came off with a small, white, slimy thing attached if I was debearing the mussels correctly. It seems to have worked. For these little gems of deliciousness, I was thankful two-fold: 1) They are brilliantly easy and 2) They were down-right delectable.

Think leeks, thyme, bay simmered in cider with a dab of wholegrain mustard. It's a River Cottage recipe, and as always, didn't fail to deliver.

(Pardon the food photography, I was WAY to lazy to break out the camera, so these are courtesy of MacBoyfriend's iPhone....I have a pic of the frites, but they don't look very photogenic...).

Today

Now we're up to speed. This one is pretty straightforward.

There was bacon and eggs this morning (with the best crispy bacon in Sydney, still no Nueske's though...), lamb and couscous this afternoon and venison with kale and veggies this evening: I am thankful MacBoyfriend did the dishes this evening.