Plum Pudding (Christmas)

Page 123 on my (becoming rapidly tattered and splattered) 52nd edition CWA Cookery Book and Household hints. This book, amongst other useful snippets of information such as how to cure scaly legs in poultry, quantities for making pea soup for 120 people and a recipe for brain patties has THE ULTIMATE recipe for Christmas pudding. This is a traditionally English dessert for Christmas day but is whole heartedly adopted by Australians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_pudding
I start to make this in November.  You need to get all of the fruit together in a big, air-tight jar and pour over a bottle of brandy.  The one we use is Chantelle Napoleon from France - not because it is particularly expensive or wonderful but as it is what I can buy here! So every so often when one of us thought about it we would grab out the jar filled with the fruit and brandy and shake it around.  By the beginning of December there is no brandy to be seen as it has all been sucked up into the fruit.
I like to make the puddings in the first week of December so that the flavours, once made have time to develop.
The rest is fairly adhesive to the recipe - however:

• Carbonate of soda is bi-carb soda
• I put the beef suet through our mincer when it is slightly frozen to get it all tiny
• Cream of tartar serves absolutely no other purpose in my kitchen other than in this recipe and sits in the back of the cupboard feeling lonely and being picked on by all the other bottles.
• I have noticed that my book does not stipulate when to add the mixed spice (which is a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice) and so the first year I made this I left it out completely, remembered four hours into the steaming process and was mortified.  Convinced I had ruined Christmas, I anxiously took a bite on Christmas day to find it wasn't all that bad.  30g seems like a lot of spice but this is a ginormous recipe and it certainly isn't over spiced. I just chuck it in with the dry ingredients (and have marked my book so I remember in future makings!)
• I don't use lemon essence.  Because I had none the first time I made this recipe and it tasted so good I couldn't justify ever adding it since.
• I make two big molds (probably about 8 cup capacity) and 4 little one cup molds.  The little ones make cool gifts.  I have always used bowl shaped, stainless steel molds greased liberally with butter (hey there's half a kilo of cow fat in here, why try to get healthy now??) and have never had them not cook through or stick.
• To remove them from the mold I have a cool circle of bendable, thin metal that's intended use is to be curled into the neck of a wine bottle to allow the wine to come out in a nice stream and less glugs.  However as I don't really care if my wine comes out in glugs I use this device for sticking in around the rims to loosen the puddings.  Sometimes teamwork (one person holding the mold, the other bashing on its base) is required.
• I put the puddings in my biggest lidded pots with about an inch of water in the bottom but raised up so the base of the pots aren't touching the water.  This year we found using some of Justin's reloading dies convenient for this!
• I covered the puddings tightly with two layers of aluminium foil which usually ends up touching the top of the pudding as it does raise slightly but never seems to affect taste or appearance.  I fill the molds to about a quarter inch below the top.
• Then the waiting begins... Eight hours of listening to the lids of the pot go RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE as they slowly simmer.  I usually need to top them up with more water about four times.  I take the little one cup ones out after about three hours.
• The hard sauce recipe I make comes from another Australian classic cook book - 'The Margaret Fulton Cookbook'.  Mom had a copy of this and I can remember flipping through the pages as a child and looking at all the pictures and reading the things mom had written around each recipe she tried, a habit which she has passed down to me.
• I never resteam them to serve, partly through laziness (a character trait not to be concealed over the holiday season I believe) and partly because normally on Christmas day it would be far too hot to get all that steam going in the kitchen! Each piece only needs under a minute to be beautiful, warm and soft.
• Some of us (not the author) are not as passionate about hard sauce and prefer to have the pudding smothered in custard.  I understand that Australian/English interpretation of custard differs in solidity to the American one, the consistency we are going for here is if you mixed equal parts of sour cream and milk together. 

My camera and memory card are currently out with Justin - so I will put up a photo for drooling purposes later.

And yes I did eat a huge piece of pudding while composing this entry. :)

A very merry Christmas!

What a great day... despite the roads being closed so we can't get fresh deliveries of fruit and vegetables, despite the mail being unable to get through and some of us being a few presents short, despite the temperature already getting to over 90 by 9am and despite the humidity making it all kinda sticky.... I HAD A GREAT DAY.  I like what Chris said - yes it deserves shouting.
We were at mom's by 7.30am for apricot brandy, coffee, Christmas morning muffins (Nigella Lawson's recipe) and home made mince tarts (made by mom).  We exchanged some presents and then it was onto Justin's dad's place to celebrate with that side of the family. Justin's dad has remarried a wonderful woman named Ann many years ago who has always treated Justin like her own and is a kind hearted, lovely person. Ann's son/Justin's step brother Stephen, his fiancee Sarah and their 2 year old Mathew.  While we were there Justin's brother phoned (he lives in Perth and couldn't get off work to come home for Christmas) to tell us that he proposed and she said yes! It is really nice news, they have been together for three years and the four of us get on like a house on fire, wish we all lived closer.  After a breakfast of BBQ eggs in bread (one of my favourites!), hash browns, bacon, sausages and a few beers (hey its Christmas morning - you're allowed!) we went off to see some good friends of ours who have kids who are 13 and 7 that we always buy presents for (mainly because I am a sucker and love all of the girly things on the market for that age group - sparkly nail polish, lip glosses, etc ,etc)
Then it was home to our place to unwrap more pressies, relax and eat.  A cold glazed ham (Justin's recipe) and warm turkey roll, mom's really delicious rice salad, a potato salad and some bread rolls and some serious aircon!
Much later (about three hours I think!) we moved onto sweets... I can't describe how good this plum pudding is... so much so that I am going to put a step by step post up here next of how to, Leigh I know those directions are a bit vague (mom also says they are written in Australian causing some translation issues :-P) and so much so is my love for this pudding that I think it is necessary to force it upon my loved ones in far flung Northern places.... (Both Northern Qld and Northern AK!)
Then when it FINALLY cooled off enough to venture outside (y'all know its hot when even the Aussies won't go outside) it was beers on the back verandah.. and assessment of damages.... Lets just say that Justin holds a grudge and will recklessly use electrical tape as wrapping paper and the consequences can be brutal!

 The tree at our house, perhaps time to get a larger one - the presents are taking over!

 The tree (or twig?) at mom's house.  Small, but it has my favourite tree topper and very pretty lights.

 A cockroach with solar panels,when charged it jumps around like a real cockroach. 

Everyone needs one really.

 Some Bud-Bling.  Its the end of a 357 magnum shell (the calibre she shoots) with a yellow diamond for the primer and TLO stamp and gold nuggets.  Some of the coolest jewelery I have ever seen!



Present unwrapping carnage!



And then? That quiet moment of Christmas day.... sitting on your couch, a ham and cheese sandwich in one hand, a book in the other and a cat on the lap. BLISS.

I love this time of year.

Dreaming of a wet christmas

You have all heard the crazy things going on in this town (and some of you who read this blog are experiencing them first hand!).  We had 210mm of rain on the 17th from a big monsoonal trough that passed over us, then it went inland from us and dropped a whole lot of rain over our river catchment areas.  It all happened so fast that the town got flooded from the rain on the 18th and then a river came down and caused more flooding on the 19th... and boy did it come down.  It peaked at 7.9m and it is the biggest river we have EVER recorded.  So apart from all that devastation, lost houses, crops, roads what it has done is completely isolate the town.  You can only drive about 10ks in any direction before you hit the sea or a levy bank that's impassable or a ruined flooded road that's impassable.
And so that means no trucks can deliver anything.... mail, fruit, veg, meat, milk, medicine, presents, bread....
Luckily our household is already pretty well stocked in most of these areas, a quick last minute grab of what we could at the shops yesterday and that was it! The cats have food, we have a ham and homemade Christmas pudding, plenty of beer and wine and we are gonna have Christmas! Floods or not!

Rivers, rain and the 'D' word

http://www.bom.gov.au/gms/IDE00005.latest.shtml

See that swirl on the left?? That just about on us!

45 Celsius on Saturday, humid and still yesterday and 60km hour winds forecast for this Saturday night.... Very strange.....

I hope we get a river out of this but this can only happen if lots of ran falls inland.  We haven't had a river (ie - any water flowing on the surface of our upside down river) for well over a year which means all the water underground that the growers use to produce the beautiful Carnarvon fruit and veg is drying up. The scary "D" word is even being used by some plantation owners....... (Shhhhhh - say it quietly! Drought)

As you can see from this http://kumina.water.wa.gov.au/waterinformation/telem/stage.cfm we have big fat nothing yet..... The Gascoyne is our river that flows pretty much right through town and the Lions river feeds into it further inland at Gascoyne Junction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gascoyne_Junction,_Western_Australia I added this link because I like how the population at the Junction is 46.  I think I know all those people!

So here's hoping that big swirl moves inland and we get a festive river flowing!

Regional Visit

As part of my work as a hospital pharmacist I have to travel the smaller remote siteswithin our region (The Gascoyne) and conduct a 'regional visit'.  I was lucky enough to be able to co-ordinate this with mom this time as she needed to go up there to for her work.  We drove up on the Monday, a four hour drive north from Carnarvon to Exmouth.  What is interesting is passing through Learmonth and seeing all of the communication towers and runways and signs saying "Do not enter' in the middle of nowhere about 50km before you get into Exmouth.  I have heard all sorts of stories about what used to happen here, that because of the soldiers stationed here from the US they used to ship in brands of US food, that there is a duty-free wet mess and they used to be able to invite friends in to drink for cheap and that there are all sorts of buildings there that you can't see from the road! I don't know how much of it is true or how much is just a good story but it certainly makes that last half hour of the drive pass a little quicker!
When we arrived in Exmouth it was lunchtime so we went to Kailis http://www.exmouthwa.com.au/accom_result1/exmouth-fish-co/ for lunch.  They catch tiger and king prawns in the gulf there so we bought a beautiful box of fresh steamed prawns with seafood sauce and a warm bread roll for lunch.  There would have been photos but I figured it wasn't a good idea to operate my camera with prawny hands! Before lunch we took a quick detour over the road from the big prawn to Charles Knife Gorge, just beautiful.  One of those places where pictures don't do it justice.

After lunch there was some work involved.... After work we went to dinner at Mantarays Restaurant at the Noveotel Ningaloo Hotel, it has won all sorts of fine country dining awards and we could both see why.  One of the nicest dinnersI have had in ages :) Beautiful setting, great service and really, REALLY good food. http://www.novotelningaloo.com.au/eat.html

The next morning (after a bit more work!) we drove onto Coral Bay nursing post, via Pebble Beach.  As the name suggests, it is a beach made entirely of really cool looking pebbles! Perhaps not so good for jogging on (rolled ankles galore) but very pretty all the same...

It really is a beautiful place where we live!

And I will call it.....???

Leftover potatoes, yams, bean casserole, turkey chopped up small and gravy.  Stirred around together to form a mush.  Dropped into a pan with sizzling butter.  Fried till golden.
Served with blobs of tomato sauce.

And I will call it? Leftover turkey smash? Turkey ala Carnarvon? Thanksgiving fry up? Whatever the name... I am making this again next year and eating it with a couple of runny fried eggs.... MMMMmmmmmmmmm

Thanksgiving

I can't believe that my little house last night had a full sit down cooked thanksgiving dinner for thirteen people.  Quite comfortably actually! To start with we had stuffed celery with bluecheese/cream cheese and pineapple/cream cheese and nuts and olives and sweet pickles.  For mains we had a HUGE turkey, bean casserole, Pioneer Woman's creamy mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes/candied yams grilled with butter and brown sugar, mom's amazing stuffing balls, bread rolls, gravy and coleslaw.  It was all sooooo good.  Clean plates all round! After dinner we had cherry pie, pumpkin pie, cream and ice cream, followed by our newest invention - pumpkin pie shots.  Its a mix of vanilla vodka and pumpkin spice syrup (Thanks Leigh <3) topped with a squirt of whipped cream and sprinkled with pumpkin pie spice (thanks again :) )They looked so pretty! And tasted pretty good too!
It was fun to cook these things for a room full of Australians who had no idea what was traditionally eaten at a thanksgiving meal or what the point of thanksgiving is (explanations were necessary)
To add to that it was about 30C/86F and 90% humidity! Without the aircon we would have melted!
It is lots of work to co-ordinate that many dishes coming together hot at the same time! Couldn't have done it without mom's help... She's the best (and her stuffing is out of this world..did I mention that already??)
Alas - no photos.... as we were clearing the table we remembered that we had wanted to take a couple! Too late! But here's a photo before it all started.
I am thankful for friends and family... and mom's stuffing.

Pre-Thanksgiving

I know, I know - its Thanksgiving and we are all about turkey, stuffing, bean casserole and pie BUT we all have to eat something the day before thanksgiving and this is it.  Technically that is the day before Fairbanks Thanksgiving and two days before Australian thanksgiving.  Nothing to do with time difference but everything to do with work commitments interfering with cooking commitments on the Australian side of things leading to a rescheduling of Thanksgiving to Saturday night.
So this has become a staple dish that we make at least once a week.  I have been working to 6pm every night and since the sun hasn't set yet we were working in the back yard till about 7 before we decided we had no clue what to have for dinner... so we turned to this.  So easy to make and its one of those meals that we always seem to have the ingredients for... Particularly now that we grow our own spring onions!

Which is clearly the only reason I uploaded this photo - to show off our spring onions! Here is a better shot of the recipe below.

It takes about fifteen minutes from start to eat... and part of that is because i like to use my chaseur fry pan for the steaks to get them really rare and that takes a while to get to 'molten-centre-of-the-earth' hot.

The finished product

Leftovers????

Wildlife.

Found yesterday at Carnarvon Pistol Club.  Too big to fit into Justin's cupped hand.  Not that he was going to pick it up.  Just poke it with a stick maybe.  Big enough to eat small children and scare the crap out of thirty-one year old pharmacists.

Friday night

And here it is again! Friday night - can't believe my luck!
Pizza tonight

On the top we have BBQ meatlovers with pepperoni, salami, smoked ham and bacon with smokey BBQ sauce in place of pizza sauce.  On the bottom we have vegetarian with  home made pesto, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, capsi and kalamata olives.  Not pictured is the trashy but compulsory Hawaiian ( I told mom it was my Australian taste bud's fault) with plain ol ham and plain ol pineapple out of a tin with plain ol cheese.  There's a time and a place for these things y'know?
The stormy afternoon went well with the gin and tonics out on the back veranda (30 Celsius, grey, clouds, light rain and about 70% humidity - kinda feels cyclone-y) but as an after dinner drink I think we might move onto these:

Talijancich ( http://www.taliwine.com.au/home.php ) is a little winery that is conveniently located on the road out of Perth on the way back to Carnarvon.  It is in an area of Perth called the Swan Valley which has lots of wineries and places to buy beautiful produce.  We are always going through there in a rush to get home or to get to Perth but we try to stop at Talijancich when our stash of this runs low at home! (and don't worry that this bottle is only half full - we have another!)
Just for the record it DOES taste better when drunk from these cute little port sippers.....
Happy Friday!

Ramblings.....and Malaysian curry

Just this morning, lying in bed on my day off being lazy and reading a book (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, seen the movie more than once but this is my first time reading the book) I had a thought....How long is it going to be before no one OWNS books anymore? They are heavy (being an 'in bed' reader this often is a problem for me), expensive, they wear and (Justin's main complaint) they take up boxes and boxes or shelves and shelves worth of space in the home. It seems so quickly that letters became a thing of the past (when was the last time you got a handwritten letter... or wrote one yourself?) and emails replace this.... to further support my ramblings there was a segment on a crappy morning show this morning about how people are using social media like facebook to announce important life events (births, deaths, proposals) so much so that a beautiful invitation or that first picture of the new baby are less of the norm.
And then tonight, as I am looking online to find a picture to upload to this blog of one of my favourite cooking books I find this:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Mdfacqx2UaQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=charmaine+solomon+complete+asian+cookbook&hl=en&ei=HE3iTJ3gMcfXcbiwnIcM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

I am a little deflated.... My favourite cook book, all 512 beautifully presented A4 pages of it are available online from a quick google search.  I guess this is great - no need to spend the money on the book, a quick key stroke or two brings you to the recipe you want and you're away!
I guess my point is I would rather have my turmeric stained, sticky paged, dog-eared tangible book than a quick download...
But then I guess my other point is I'm tired of reading heavy books at night in bed and really would love an iPad.
I'm torn.
So anyway you can all quite clearly see what I am having for dinner tonight - in the Malaysia section - page 231; Gulai Kambing. Made with beef because we didn't have any mutton and almond meal because we didn't have any candlenuts but we had everything else in the cupboard.
And its delicious!
Served with rice and sliced cucumbers and chilli sambal.  And Gula Melaka for desert (its on page 237 but I cheated and mine came out of a jar.....SHHHhhhhhhh)

Warroora photos

Taken from the verandah at the front of our house for the weekend



 The inside of the beautiful house - from the lounge room looking out to the verandah

 On the verandah stringing up halloween decorations

 Driving south from 14 mile camp, headed towards pelican point.

 Amazing blue ocean and white sandy beaches, this is at Sandy Point

Birthday dinner - cooking with wine!

 Greek salad to go with skewers

Don't you wish you were here?

Time flies.....

Ok Ok Ok its been a month.
But let me state my defense! The last post was the 3rd of October I think...on the 5th Justin's grandmother on his mother's side passed away.  She has been pretty sick for a year now so it wasn't really out of the blue but it is still shocking.  She was already in Perth in hospital, she has two children - Justin's mum who lives over on the east coast of Australia and Justin's uncle who lives in Carnarvon.  So we made a mad dash down to Perth, Wednesday after work we drove 5 hours to Geraldton, stayed with friends then drove the rest of the way to Perth on Thursday getting there at lunchtime.  The funeral was Thursday afternoon and then we drove the 9 hours back to Carnarvon with Justin's mum on Friday.  Somehow in between all this we managed to clear a space in our spare room so we could have his mum stay with us for a week.

This photo was taken back in 2007 but it was a great day! We met up in Sydney after coming back from the US.
It was really good having Heather stay with us, we ate lots of delicious things and drank lots of wine! I wish she could come more often.... Yes I know you are reading this! Come back!!
While Justin's mum was here it was his 28th birthday.  It was really nice for him to have his mum around for the celebrations.  We had my mom come over for birthday dinner and presents.  Birthday dinner was Pioneer Woman's steak with blue cheese sauce and desert was Nigella Lawson's gingerbread with fresh ginger.  DELICIOUS.
Heather went back to Queensland a few days later and then it was onto Mom's 60th!!!
http://www.warroora.com.au/images/waroora_map.pdf
A great time was had by all.  Between the gin and tonics, halloween decorations, beer, cheeses, beaches, sheep, skewers, roos, fourwheel driving, sharks, wine, cooked breakfasts, presents, turtles, champagne and orange juice, olives, mussels, beer, swimming, fishing, beer, bbqs, falling asleep listening to the ocean and beer there was a bloody good time had by all.
In between all this happening I will admit that I MAY have forgotten the password to this blog and had what we Australian's call a 'dummy spit' trying to navigate through the not-so-helpful help pages to figure out how to reset the damn thing.

A Beach Day

Even though there is plenty of house work to do.  Even though we need to do some serious work in the garden at our other house.  Even though it's blowing a gale outside.  I can always be convinced to change my plans and go to the beach! Justin - not so much... but there were friends in town to see and we had a fridge full of beer and they had bait so fishing it was!

Driving along the beach to get to the best spot to catch whiting. Actually last time we were here we timed it perfectly with the incoming tide and caught about thirty whiting.  We gave them to a friend's mum who is Vietnamese and they dry them with lots of lemongrass and spices and then freeze them.  Then you put them on a barbeque grill and toast them up and eat them like chips, they are a really good snack!

We drove along the beach under the jetty to get there... Its always a little bit scary because driving in sand you have to keep your speed up so you don't get bogged but in order to drive under the jetty you have to thread the car through those pylons carefully to come out the other side!  The jetty is one mile long (hence the name One Mile Jetty!!) and there is a little touristy train that runs out to the end and back... I have walked to the end but never taken the train. 

Stopped on the beach, "Where are you guys?" they had gone to a different part of the coast about ten minutes drive away so off we went!

This is grampa Grant and the beautiful four month old Ainsley May - enjoying her beach day too!
We didn't end up catching as much whiting this time, only about six, and a few other awful fish like flathead and yellow tail that got thrown straight back (awful to eat!!). Next time we catch a whole lot of whiting I want to try to make rollmops again... I tried a few years ago but must have added too much sugar or the recipe just didn't taste like I expected it too! Anyone have a recipe I can borrow?

Saturday... and Why I Am Not A Great Blogger

So I have decided that I am probably a poor candidate to have a blog.... Although I have plenty of experiences, recipes, occasions etc that are worthy of being blogged about I am terrible at photographing them all. There it is, it's all out in the open now.  I can't take a photo of that great meal I have just cooked - not because I am a bad photographer but because I am greedy and want to eat it.  I can't capture that great laugh and smile that someone had on their face because I am too busy enjoying the joke to whip out the camera.  And I can't show you how great that sunset was because I was too busy drinking my beer and watching it for real. So now that I have put this out in the public forum we will have to agree that on this blog there is likely to be much more typing than pictures!
This morning mom came over and we had homemade breakfast sausage on the barbeque with fried eggs, toast, smokey beans and then a fruit platter for brunch.  It was all very good! Australia does not make a breakfast sausage that tastes anything like American breakfast sausage so it has to be DIY.  I have found a good recipe (and interesting blog to read) here:http://homesicktexan.blogspot.com/2008/02/breakfast-sausage-to-begin-day.html
After that then it became a regular Saturday: reloading, cleaning guns, putting brass from last week in the tumbler, picking up all the spent primers off the floor, missing one and stepping on it and swearing..... fairly typical Saturday stuff. We usually have about 100 rounds each to use every Saturday for a club competition and can get it done in about 45 minutes.

Yes this is the same table in the foreground that minutes previously was a breakfast table.  We have a small but versatile house!

Business trip to Perth

Half of my job is being a retail pharmacist at the chemist in town, the other chunk of my work life is taken up with being a hospital pharmacist.  Twice a year all of us Regional Hospital Pharmacists are flown to Perth for a meeting to discuss issues in pharmacy, policies, etc.  There are only seven of us there (WA is divided into 7 different regions) and being a smaller meeting it seems that lots can be achieved in one day! I had to chair a few of the discussion topics along with the Regional Pharmacist from Port Hedland (a predominantly mining town about 800km North of us)
Travelling on my own has never really bothered me...a good book and an iPod and I can be amused for hours. The flight from Carnarvon to Perth takes about two hours and from the Perth airport I got  taxi to my hotel in the Perth CBD.  I got in pretty late on the first night but room service and the mini-bar make it bearable!



The meeting is normally held on a Friday but this time the head offices didn't have a meeting room free for use so the meeting was held on a Wednesday.  The next flight back to Carnarvon however wasn't departing until 4pm on Thursday so I had a whole 24 hours in Perth to wile away!



The western streets of the CBD have undergone a face lift since I used to work in the area.  King St now has Gucci, Louis Vutton and a Tiffany & Co.  I am not a big fan of Tiffany's jewelery but it is a nice spot for a bit of window shopping!

Having not lived or worked in Perth now for almost ten years I can begin to enjoy it! I used to work in the mall parallel to this one in a pharmacy as an assistant.  It wasn't the best place for job satisfaction and I had to commute a 2 hour round trip each day and understandably the 'fun' of going to the city to shop was lost.  Coming back now for a quick trip a couple of times a year I really like to wander around the malls (looking like a real tourist I'm sure).  Both big department stores already had their Christmas decorations out... the older I get the more I like Christmas, the cooking required in the lead up, the decorating, the small traditions that are starting to become familiar... but more about that in a few months!

Flying out of Perth in daylight it really makes you realise what they mean by the words urban sprawl.  While the city is a pitiful collection of a dozen or so tall buildings when viewed from the air; the back to back quarter acre (and less!) blocks with homes are smashed  together for miles.  I understand that the 'suburbs' of Perth spread about 50km either direction.  Flying away always makes me happy to be getting out of there and back out into the country

Ahhh now THAT'S more like it! And that's all there is of Carnarvon.  And it suits me fine.

Home. <3

comfort food

Soooooooooo yesterday. The house is feral and needs a good clean.  The thing I'm waiting for in the post hasn't come.  Staff are sick and so we were already totaly short staffed.  And there are still so many tourists in town.  So the shop is really busy AND you have to navigate around lost tourists going slow/the wrong way on the drive to work.  Then at work before I can put my handbag down there are rapid fire questions from a couple of different doctors about uncommon medications involving complicated calculations you hope you aren't going to have to do once you are out of university. And I have not one but two students that I am teaching looking up expectantly at me....
Big deep breaths..... YOU CAN DO IT!!! (Insert picture of Jessie with superwoman cape flapping in the breeze)
So my point is - coming home from work and cooking THIS fixes everything.  I don't know how food can do that but it does.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/04/simple-hearty-chicken-rice-soup-itll-keep-ya-honest/

Probably a little too much butter is used in this to classify it into the healthy dinner section (but then who ever thought the words 'healthy' and 'comfort food' could ever both be used to describe the same meal....) Certainly simple, inexpensive, soothing and falls into my favourite category - 'Bowl food'.

Oh and I didn't have yellow food colouring.... I had pink and blue but I just didn't think that would be right.

roadtrip

Mom and I drove to Geraldton last weekend.  We had such a good time! It is a four and a half hour drive down an isolated highway.  We have both done the drive so many times before but this was the FIRST TIME I have ever seen an echidna in the wild! I was so excited - I was driving and I shouted and pulled the car over and spun around to whiz back and go look at it.... unfortunately the poor guy had been made into road kill a few hours ago... But I'm still claiming that as 'seeing an echidna in the wild'. Fair enough right? Another first for that trip was a sighting of a red tailed black cockatoo - they are as big as a crow but fly with the movements of an eagle and have an intense red tail. Very cool.  On that drive it is always a given that you will see goats, pink & grey galahs, cows, roos (alive or roadkill), sometimes foxes and wild cats (usually road kill) and hopefully they stay on the side of the road... but more often than not, especially the cows decide to wander across just as you are driving by... Its best to watch their heads - if the head is down and eating grass then you are probably alright.... if the head is up and looking around your best bet is to drop your speed by half and keep a watchful eye on them..... Hitting a roo is not so bad, their main weight is at the base so they don't normally flick up and do much damage to the car, but cows are much more bulky and dangerous!
The rest of the weekend was full of shopping, eating, talking and beer drinking - all good things.

And of course we had to dress up a little to take ourselves out to dinner - beautiful salmon the first night and a lovely Italian meal on the last night. A really nice weekend away!

The daily grind...

This is what I look like almost every day of the week! Photos were taken in the pharmacy today.

And here is my view from the dispensary

The shop is actually a lot bigger than this photo shows, it is about the same again as wide to the left and another aisle to the right as well.  There is a fairly large (well the biggest in Carnarvon) photography development area down the front on the right.  The counter that I am standing in front of is at the professional services area to the left where people come for advice on medications.  I work mainly at Amcal (the name of the pharmacy) but also work up to ten hours a week at Carnarvon Hospital as a hospital pharmacist, doing ward rounds, checking medication charts, talking with doctors and nurses. I am one of those annoying people who love their job, I have a great boss and work with a group of girls who never fail to make me laugh everyday.  The work is always changing and challanging - new medicines come out, new drug interactions are discovered.  Another plus is that the chemist is less than five minutes drive from home! Not bad for work life balance!
The chemist is in Carnarvon's only shopping centre; it has a Woolworths grocery store, a clothes shop, a bakery, a discount store, a bottle shop an asian takeaway place and a newsagent and thats it!  Even though Carnarvon is quite small the pharmacy really busy, the next nearest pharmacy to us is 450km away!

Donna Hay Asian Chicken

Over the last couple of months I have started to like Donna Hay's recipes.... I have always seen her books and magazines around but the photography was so complicated and stylised that I assumed the recipes would be too.  Luckily for me I was given a recipe book of hers by Justin's brother and his other half and since then I am the converted! Her recipes are simple, beautiful, back to basics cooking.
Last night we made a recipe of hers that has become a routine weeknight dinner in our household.  Chicken breasts are poached for five minutes or so each side in a liquid made up of a splash of sesame oil, 2 star anise, a tablespoon or so of grated ginger, 1/4 cup of soy sauce, tbsp brown sugar, 1/2 cup Chinese cooking wine and a cinnamon stick.  We just serve it with some veggies that have be stir fried in a wok with garlic and chili and a splash of stock and some rice and its delicious! I guess you could thicken up the sauce with some cornflour after the chicken is cooked but just poured over rice is very simple and good.