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!