Month: August 2008

Australian Idol 08 – Opening Night


Can you believe it’s that time of year again!?!
Chef is THRILLED*.

Basically I think the show has seen the success of SYTYCD, been a little spooked and acknowledged the world truth that if it works, copy it copy it and copy it some more.
I’m pretty happy with the changes to this year – Ricki Lee – I believe she’s Australia’s answer to Kat Keely.
I am SO pleased that Mark has gone. Last year he was beyond loopy. BEYOND.
I am one of the few who think Kyle Sandilands is pretty much on the money every single week. This week he perfected the totally inappropriate dirty smutty old man routine which is sure to get people on some righteous band wagon. Delicious.

Favourite quotes
‘You can be Australia’s own all singing, all dancing eunuch but it’s a no from me.’ – Dicko
‘ Even though you look more like the guy who’d abduct me from the side of the road, musically you were excellent. Is that some weird sort of felt vest?’ – Kyle
‘Go get a job with world vision because you’re not going to save the children with your voice.’ – Dicko
‘Look at you! Holy guacamole. Look how orange you are.’ – Kyle
‘ The theatre crowd can never shake the theatre cancer.’ – Kyle

To watch:
Sarah Carnegie
Casey Freeman
the musical theatre girl

Audition shows every night this week, Top 100 next Sunday.
It’s all good.

On other news…
Oscar was part of his dance group’s routine at the Sydney Eisteddfod (you know, the one they basically denied him last year) so Felix and I sat through 25 dance routines by primary school kiddies. Yeah, more on that later.

* Not so much.

Countdown

Only about four hours until the start of Australian Idol 2008.

Random

today featured a bush walk. That’s right, a bush walk! It was glorious. Pictures tomorrow or when I find the cable to connect it to my computer.
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New dishwasher is very fancy. Mum bought it. So that means it’s top of the range. It has a ‘hygenic’ clean component and tells me how long to go. I can’t stop staring at it.
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Been making lots of biscuits of late. Anzacs are the family favourite. I am not a fan. Typical.
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Am addicted to WordTwist on Facebook. Spending way too much time on it. By ‘way too much’ I am estimating we’re in the ‘hours per day’ scale. Seriously. I’ve been sitting on fourth amongst my friends for weeks on end. Then tonight, I notice that my personal best is now 155 and I have no idea when it happened. And now I’m ranked first. FIRST!. Seriously. It’s like the pre-cursor to playing the polkies all day at the local r-ie.
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Next to WordTwist comes Pathwords. I’m first on that too with 820 points. In a way it’s more fun than WordTwist because you can find the same word and it still counts and when you find a word worth 130 points. Oh my.
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Not that I’m competitive. Or prone to obsessive compulsive tendencies of repetitive action…
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But it does explain my lack of blogging. To busy WordTwist/Path-ing
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The most irritating Olympic commentator comments so far:
‘She has the face of an angel and the heart of a lion’ – Bruce McAlvaney (who I actually have a soft spot for for some utterly bizarre reason) on Stephanie Rice
‘She’s little but has a big heart’ – some guy tonight commenting on a runner.
That female commentator for Channel 7 on the gymastics (I think she also does the Winter Olympics) just shits me to tears.
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I hanker for a return to classic sports for the Olympics. No necessarily involving naked men, chariots or lions, but the inclusion of sports like tennis, basketball, sailing, beach volleyball (wtf?) and something I saw the other night which looked remarkably like dodgeball just shits me. Almost to tears.
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Why is it that in the floor routine the gymasts don’t wear country themed leotards? I also don’t see what is particulary rhythmic about rhythmic gymnastics. Rarely does any of it go to the music, it’s all backflips and twists and flying jumps to nowhere. Impressive none the less. Almost as impressive as how badly Australia consistently performs in gymnastics overall. And why are so many of the coaches fat and ugly?
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Did you hear that the Chinese Olympic Committee are no longer holding daily press conferences due to the grilling they were getting about empty stadiums, over-zealous security and so on and so forth?
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There’s this massive lump on my hip from where I fell yesterday. It hurts. A lot.
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Chef is at a buck’s night tonight. A buck’s night! GOD next we’ll be going to someone’s 18th.
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This week:
Tackle the laundry room (and the laundry pile which today blew out exponentially for some reason)
Prepare all medical reports we have for Oscar from birth to now for the new paediatrician
Make appointment with accountant
Make appointment for Grover’s (now late) immunisations and appearance of excema.
Maybe see doctor for my own suspect sinus issues that are now giving me significant tooth-ache pain

Industrious

It’s taken until August for me to even consider tackling the shit-fight this house has become in terms of crap being everywhere.
Bathrooms have been scrubbed and for once the boys bathroom doesn’t smell like a public urinal within hours of me cleaning it.
Our bedroom has been cleaned and vacuumed for the first time in, well, let’s just say it’s been a long time.
The bigger boys’ bedroom has been cleaned and more importantly tidied regularly.
The dining room table is clear. As in, you could eat at any spot at the table, as opposed to just the third at the end not covered in mail/school notes/newspapers/toys.
And yesterday?
Yesterday involved me finally facing the littler boys’ bedroom.
Oh sure, it wasn’t a minefield of Lego, Pokemon and Thunderbirds (none of which deserve a capital in my opinion but more a charity bin of clothing. Everywhere.
There were five bags of clothing for a child aged 0-1. FIVE.
They have all been bundled to go to my cousin who just had her second child and her first boy. Mwahahahaha.
A garbage bag full of bunny rugs, wraps, play mats, sleeping bags.
The rest has been sorted into sizes 2 through 6 and into summer and winter.
It took a large portion of the day. Hours I’ll never get back.
But now?
Now you can walk into their room without having to kick anything out of the way.
Wow.
Of course, this cleansing cleaning had a domino effect (or should that be affect?).
It meant the linen cupboard had be to dealt with.
Two stuffed garbage bags of old towels, face washes, tablecloths … snore … sorry, where was I? Oh year, lots of stuff cleaned out. All the swimming gear fits back in there now. As opposed to living in those big Ikea blue bags in the hallway. Which had been shitting me to tears for oh, 12 months.
And then?
The new dishwasher had arrived on Friday and Chef in a new found fit of male handimadnness installed it.
But it meant the cupboard under the sink had to be emptied.
The cupboard under the sink is our plastics junkyard place. So there was a massive throw-out enterprise there as well.
Then I fell down the hallway steps (of which there’s two) carrying Grover, half a cup of (cold) tea, an empty bottle and a roll of garbage bags due to slipping on the pile that had come out of his room to be washed.
Tea all over me, the walls and the bags (luckily closed) for the charity bin.
A very sore hip (now with golf-ball sized lump and surrounding bruising), knee, elbow and lower back.
A crying baby.
Lots of lovely boys running from everywhere to check I was OK.
A rare entire Saturday and night with Chef home.
Homemade pizzas
A scheduled date night with Chef
Which ended with me falling asleep while putting Jasper to bed and only waking when Chef came in at 11.

Can you believe that after no posting you got one about me cleaning?

Almond Biscuits

I’ve already told you of my love of Matthew Evans. This is another one of his recipes from Good Weekend. They are sensational. A luscious light texture and the spices add complexity. Next time I might even add a little lemon zest.

(Sorry, no pics, camera batteries are dead and I think the camera is still in the car and it’s freezing so there’s no way I’m going out there now. Just so you know.)

Almond Biscuits
Matthew Evans, Good Weekend

  • 125g butter, softened
  • 2/3 cup caster sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/3 cups plain flour
  • 1/2 tsp ground ginger
  • 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • pinch of salt
  • 125g whole, unblanched almonds
  • 35-40 (about 50g) whole unblanched almonds, for garnish
  1. Preheat the oven to 180C
  2. In a food processor blitz the almonds until they’re fine but still crumbly – you don’t want it as fine as commercial almond meal – and set aside
  3. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale*
  4. Add the egg
  5. Fold in the flour, spices, baking powder and salt
  6. Add the almonds
  7. Line two trays with baking paper and dot with about 1 tablespoon of mixture at regular intervals, leaving space for them to spread a little**
  8. Press an almond into the top of each one
  9. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until they start to tan up nicely (in my oven this took more like 12 minutes)
  10. Remove from the oven, cool well before storing.

* Because I’ve got a fancy pants processor with different sized bowls, I did the almonds in the small bowl then continued making the recipe using the processor in the bigger bowl
** Mine didn’t spread very much at all, but that could well be because I’d run out of baking powder and Mum’s was out of date…