the alien coffee machine

the coffee machine needs a post all of it's own. it's a bodum granos and looks like it landed from outer space in a 50s TV show. so as well as getting to drive the ute and operate the chainsaw to cut logs for our fire, john is the official master of the coffee machine (i kept doing things like forgetting to put any actual coffee in the thing because i was so excited about all the flashing buttons. oh, not all the time, it just happened the once...but it's always nicer when someone else makes it for you anyway).

adventures in pavlova

discovering the secrets of pavlova magic!

we made a pavlova through the strange genius of the pavlova magic plastic egg thingy. i got to use the kenwood chef, which is a kickass mixer, and the resultant pavlova batter was absolutely beautiful. amazing how artificial stuff can look so, well, perfect (ok, ok, not really that amazing i know).

the finished product

we watched fellowship of the ring on the huge plasma screen while the pav cooked. when it was done, we heaped a whole bunch of stuff on there.

sadly, however, although it looked amazing, it wasn't quite how i like pavlova. i prefer the base to be quite chewy with a lot of shattery merengue, but this one was really sort of foamy in the middle. so, lesson is (which we already knew): artificial looks perfect, but made-from-scratch tastes a million times better.

dispatches from the menagerie

staying the weekend with bek and john at a property in woodford in the blue mountains. it's delightfully peaceful, i have a waterbed, and as you can see from the picture, today i got to feed campari the horse with sarafina and shea, bek's niece and almost-niece.

there are also dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, sheep, goats and alpacas. they all have names, except the three brown ducks which are known as 'little duck's girlfriends' (little duck is a belligerent white duck who wags his tail a lot).

it is so nice to finally have a couple of days' space. my head has needed clearing for quite some time...a couple of weeks would be nice, but as that won't happen until Christmastime, a few days here and there will do nicely.

we have to find one of the cats now. then we are going to go cook a stir fry, drink some schnapps and perhaps watch firefly, or maybe house of flying daggers.

life is so hard.