Time to move

Here's a little update.

If this post is showing in your RSS feed, or you have come to this page by accident, please head over to The Procrastinatrix (http://theprocrastinatrix.com) and update your feed/bookmark.

Thanks to Karen for doing the heavy lifting of moving the blog over to Expression Engine!

a leetle strudel

I made up a strudel tonight for dessert, and it was extremely easy and delicious, so I thought I'd share it here. And as you can see, I don't use precise measurements - basically, add whatever you think would make it yummy.

Bec's apple and cherry strudel
5 sheets filo pastry
2 Granny Smith apples
handful dried cherries (I got them from Norton St Grocers - yum)
cinnamon / mixed spice
tablespoon or so of butter
a few spoonfuls of almond meal
a few spoonfuls of brown sugar
a couple more tablespoons of butter, melted

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Peel, core and chop the apples into rough chunks. Put them in a smallish saucepan with the cherries, spices, brown sugar and butter. Cover and cook over a medium heat until apples are soft.

Lay out a sheet of filo and brush with melted butter. Sprinkle on some almond meal. Lay another sheet of filo on top and repeat until you've used all the pastry. Put the apple filling in the middle of the pastry. Fold the bottom and top of the pastry in towards the middle, brush with butter, fold the sides of the pastry over, brush with butter (so it should be a neat little parcel). Sprinkle the top with almond meal and a little more brown sugar. Bake in oven until golden brown (about 20 mins).

Serve drizzled with cream. Or ice cream. Or just eat it. Any which way, it is very delicious.

long weekend

It's been mostly a good long weekend, though I feel as though I've sleepwalked through most of it. Got up at 5.30am on Saturday to take John to the airport, then after breakfast (and a little WoW) I crashed til mid-afternoon.

That evening was Lucy's 33rd birthday party. A bunch of us turned up to the house that the Barrys are housesitting in Botany for burgers, white russians and sarsparilla in honour of Lu's favourite movie, The Big Lebowski. Mark set up the data projector and I brought speakers and we all had a great time watching the movie. I hadn't seen it since it first came out 10 years ago - it's no less hilarious than it was then.

I couldn't sleep that night. Sunday was also daylight savings, so we lost an hour. So by the time I got up and headed into the city for a City Writing Day at Customs House, I was kind of out of it. But it was good to have dedicated writing time with Karen and Guan, and even though I didn't write heaps I liked what I did write. We had lunch at Wagamama, wandered back to Pitt street, looked in Borders and K and I headed home. I realised we had lost track of time and I didn't have a chance to nap before music rehearsal at church.

That night was Sammi's baptism. She has been a Christian for 10 years, but decided that she wanted to make this public declaration of what Jesus has done in her life and what she believes. She read out her very moving testimony (which had me and George in tears), and I wanted to leap up and cheer as Kurt poured water over her head and baptised her. It was just such a beautiful, brave and hopeful act, and I hope so much that Sammi's friends and family were moved to think more about why she was doing it, and to find out more for themselves. I'm glad that I've gotten to know her better in the short time that I've been at Wild St; she is a great Christian sister (congrats Sammi!).

Today I slept til 11.30, which was bliss. I played WoW for a while, while I did my laundry and wondered whether I should be doing anything else. It was a weird day, weather-wise, grey and rainy, then brilliantly sunny, then rainy again and then windy. I think that may have had something to do with my restless and slightly sad mood. Mum and I had a late lunch at Bondi Junction, I bought some craft stuff, then came home, and made dinner and strudel for dessert (see next post). I feel much more peaceful now than I did earlier today - but the weekend's over now!

blobbing

Have had a lovely couple of evenings with friends. Had Guan and Mary over for dinner on Thursday and an unplanned chicken roast. So good to see M again after weeks and weeks. So good that Guan ate the drumsticks. :) And I love that my friends can hang out and chat to my mum as easily as I can.

Tonight I had Bek's partner John staying over, as he's heading from Coffs Harbour where he's been holidaying, back home to Belfast in the morning. The last time I saw John was in April in Belfast when I stayed with him and Bek, and we all went to that glorious Bjork concert.

So after I picked him up from the airport, we had a catch up and both put on our Bjork t-shirts. He had brought his Wii with him from Ireland (got to go equipped you see), and had been given a Wii Fit as a present while he was over here, so of course we had to play it. It turns out my Wii Fit age is 31 (1 year less than my actual age! Woo!). Then we had to undo the 10 minutes of exercise we did by eating pizza for dinner. We watched Juno and half of Lars and the Real Girl before we were falling asleep.

We have to leave at 6am to take him to the airport. And while I should be sleeping, of course I'm wide awake! Bah. But it's been great to catch up with friends, to just hang out and relax and feel completely unpressured.

what I want

I just want to feel better. I want to wake up with energy. I want to look forward to tomorrow. I want to have an idea and then have the motivation to follow through on it. I want to enjoy other people. I want to feel like I'm making a valuable contribution. I want to feel light.

I hope I will one day. Again.

the marketplace

Terry Pratchett's new book Nation is out! I'm excited about this, as I've been longing for a new Pratchett, and although I do love his Discworld books it'll be interesting to read something of his that isn't set there.

I went onto Dymocks online to see how much it would cost. Normal price $49.95, discounted to $37.95. Guh. Why are books so expensive here?

So I went to the Book Depository to see how their prices compared. Retail GBP16.99, discounted to GBP12.05 with free shipping worldwide. That's about $10 cheaper than Dymocks.

And finally I checked Better World Books because I've used them before and was happy with their service. Retail US$16.99, reduced to US$14.48, and I had a Facebook 10% discount voucher. So with shipping (carbon-neutral apparently), it came to US$17.05, which is $16 less than buying it at Dymocks, and makes a contribution towards funding literacy charities.

Naturally I went with Better World Books. I do want to shop local as much as I can, but sometimes, when it's the exact same product, if it's much cheaper and there are other benefits to buying from a particular shop that isn't in Australia, my money goes overseas.

And now I'm looking forward to my new book.