Thoroughly demoralising week at work.  Still got issues with the app that went out last week.  Painful.

Thursday night a small group of us went out to 2 Yummy again - two weeks in a row!

Friday after work the sweetie and I had a drink at Capitol Bar and Grill.  I'd been there before when it was still just the Rydges hotel, but it's gone all funky now.

Then we went and fed Potty's fish and picked up some frozen stuff on the way home to cook for dinner.  Watched Downfall with the sweetie which was pretty good.

Saturday morning said goodbye to our old dishwasher and the new one got delivered and installed.  After lunch we bought the sweetie a new car.  Then did our food shopping and came home.

I made a white chocolate caramel slice out of my Women's Weekly "squares and slices" book.  Had some of that after dinner, was pretty yummy.

I also cooked some duck breasts with roasted veggies for dinner.  I've never cooked duck breasts before.  They turned out pretty well!

Watched 12 Monkeys with the sweetie, and then a doco on Queen.

This morning I cooked an imitation breakfast raclette, cleaned the kitchen, downloaded and blogged some photos, and put dinner on to cook a bit after 1pm.

So a very foodie weekend that's for sure.

But the sun is out.  I know we should really get out and get some exercise and some vitamin D ....

So the week at work started out ok, got worse, got hopeful, release went ahead anyway, a moment of panic on my behalf, a moment of panic on everyone else's behalf, and finally an early mark to go to the pub for Connor's birthday.  Phew.

But going back a little.  Last Sunday night I decided to use up the last of the potatoes we had in the house, and some leftover sour cream and some past its use-by date thickened cream to make this potato bake.  It was a bit of a case of "would you like some potatoes with your cream and cheese?" and it became our entire dinner.

Tuesday I tried out Le Wrap's nachos.  There were ok, but nothing special.  The cheese was a little cold when I got it, so had solidified and glued all the chips together.  Salsa and guacamole and a bit of salad on the sides.

Thursday I snapped this using Dad's telephoto lens from Aranda oval.

Neil has been doing various winter drinks over the past few weeks.  There's been hot cider (with or without rum), mulled wine and last Thursday there was hot mead.  I'd never had mead before.  It was very drinkable warm!

After work Friday, met up with the sweetie for a drink at A Baker.  I was surprised how uncrowded it was for a Friday night.  There was a DJ playing, but the music wasn't loud, so we could chat which was nice.  Then we went over to J&Y's for drinks and nibbles.  We chatted for ages before discovering their extensive collection of eighties music, so we put on a stack of songs from 1988/89 and Y and I sang our hearts out.  It was like singstar without the microphones or words.  Lots of fun :)

The weekend was pretty quiet.  We went on a mission to buy a new dishwasher yesterday (our old one blew up just before I went to Turkey, did I mention that?).  Was successful in that mission.  In the evening we enjoyed an incredibly rare Saturday night to ourselves and watched The Wind Rises, which was sweet and sad, as per most Miyazaki films that I've seen!

Today the mission was food shopping and feeding Potty's fish.  We mostly bought food from the edges of the supermarket, which always looks like we're pretending to be healthy (it doesn't show the six different kinds of cheese we bought!)

Tonight I cooked a roast pork and I'm still quite full.  I also forgot to properly document it.  Oops!

Last weekend was such a long time ago I've forgotten what we did.

On the Saturday morning we went and dropped off @CLBradley's car (thanks heaps Chris!) then we went into the city for brunch.  Had smashed eggs at Mocan and Green Grout (super yummy), and a lemon meringue tart at A. Baker (even yummier!).

After that we wandered around for a while hacking portals, then did our food shopping and came home.  

Can't remember what I did all afternoon, but in the evening cooked the coq au vin.

Sunday was a complete nothing day.  Didn't do lots of things I was wanting to do which was somewhat annoying.

Work this week was even crazier that the past few weeks.  Spent three days fighting with a problem that I should have known better about.  *sigh*.  Got everything working by Thursday though, so Friday was much more relaxed.

After work on Friday I went into town to meet the sweetie and we went to Molly and by some stroke of luck found a table.  We shared a couple of whiskeys and a yummy meat platter.

Saturday morning was spent food shopping and cleaning the house, and then getting dinner ready before Marc and Jo arrived.  Tragically the morning was bright and sunny with blue skies, but by the time they arrived it was freezing and pouring with rain.  So we went for a drive around Canberra highlights, but didn't even get out of the car.  Mount Ainslie was completely enveloped in cloud.  Oops.  Told them they need to come back again and stay longer and see the place in sunlight.

Got home and nibbled on cheese and stuff and chatted for a while, and looked at some of our holiday slideshows, and played a couple of games of Buzz.

Dinner was a beef stew that had been going all afternoon.  It was yumm.  No pics of the finished product unfortunately.

Then we played a little singstar before crashing before midnight.

This morning we went to Pulp Kitchen for breakfast and luckily got a table.  I had my favourite - breakfast raclette with sides of Pulp Kitchen bacon and streaky bacon.

Came home then Marc and Jo left to go home.

So had to put on some John Williams so that I wouldn't slump into a heap.

We had Stu's car serviced the other week.  But there's plenty of issues with it, and Stu has been wanting a new car for ages, so we thought it might be time to get him one.

But my car's overheating problem came back as well, so I took it in to get looked at and hopefully fixed before my next Sydney trip, which was last week.

Turns out it's the head gasket :(  Coolant is leaking into the cylinders, which explains the loss of coolant without any noticable puddles.  So I'm looking at $1000-$1500 to get *that* fixed, assuming it hasn't caused any more serious issues.  Super super bad timing.  We really don't want to be buying two new cars at once.  And I needed a car to get to Sydney that weekend.  hrmm.

So I'm still debating what to do.  Most of me wants to get it fixed, because for $2000 I could probably get my car working again.  A new car, or even a brand-new-second-hand car would still see me out of pocket a lot more and then I don't know what I'm letting myself in for.

*sigh*

@CLBradley very nicely loaned me a car to take to Sydney, which Stu appreciated rather a lot, as it meant he didn't have to take the bus to work that week...

During our Turkey trip, I started having focussing issues with my camera (actually dad's camera, but my old lens).  Especially in low light, and mostly at full wide angle.  I had a quite a few failures, and it was most frustrating in the basilica cistern to get any photos that would work.  If I persisted and changed the focal length it'd usually come good.  But quite disappointing.

When I got back I didn't use it all that much, as I mostly use my phone for photos.  But I took it to the poultry show and it was having even more issues.  A week later and it was pretty much dead, completely unable to focus.  Even in bright light, it would just chug the motor back and forth and simply not focus at all.  

I tried taking off the UV shield to have a look, but it was wedged on pretty good - one side had jumped a thread by the look of it.  I think it might have happened in Turkey when I was taking photos out the bus window.  We went over a pretty decent bump and the camera got shoved nose first into the window.  I think that might have been what damaged it.  

I've seen youtube videos of people pulling apart the lenses to replace the auto focus flex cable, but it might not even be that.  There's definitely something loose in there though, as it rattles a little when I tip it upside down and back.

So it's all very sad.  Can't decide what to do - either get it fixed, get a replacement, or go the L series 24-105 .. which has less range on it than my 18-135, which is why I've been reluctant to get it...

Yeah it's been that kind of couple of weeks.

On the Saturday of the long weekend, Stu made a Cantonese custard with pork mince.  It was yummy!  But quite a lot of effort.

Sunday morning we had brunch at the Coffee Club, although it was so late I had an early lunch.

Then we went to the poultry show at Epic.  We didn't think it was still on at first because there was hardly anyone around at Epic.  But as it turned out, it was on, just in a smaller pavilion.  Apparently there'd been a bit of a faction split of some kind, and a lot of people weren't there.  We saw a whole heap of Kath's chookens that had won prizes.  Hers are very friendly chickies that don't mind being patted.

Then did our food shopping and came home.

On the Sunday night we had "Effan C" over for dinner.  I did the boeuf bourguignon, and prior to that we had quite the little party of cheeses.  And afterwards we sampled quite a few of our whiskeys.  And there might have been singstar that went til 2am!

Monday was mostly just culling down Turkey photos for sending out to people.

In the evening we went to Stu's sensei's place for shabu shabu beef.  Yumm.

I actually thought about creating a whole new blog for this.  Well not this specifically, but for all the recipes in the Women's Weekly French Classics book I bought the other week.  Much like in Julie and Julia, but a lot less complicated!  But for now it can all stay in here.

The first recipe I made from the book was Boeuf Bourguignon.  We'd planned to make it on the June long weekend Monday night, but then we remembered we were already going out that night, so decided to do in Sunday night.  But this was while we were out shopping on Sunday afternoon and there wasn't going to be much time to slow cook it.  We decided to go ahead anyway, and invite people over to share it. 

The recipe is *huge*.  It called for 2kg meat!  So much food it wasn't going to all fit in the slow cooker.  So I decided to split the food into two.  One lot to be done in a big saucepan on the stove, and the rest in the slow cooker for leftovers.

So here's the starting ingredients.

Beef, mushroom, shallots (recipe called for small brown onions, this sufficed), bacon, garlic, parsely, thyme, bay leaves, butter, oil, wine, stock and flour.

Here's everything prepped (except the parsely).

So next we're cooking off the butter, onions, garlic, bacon and mushrooms.  The recipe said to cook until the onions browned, but there was so much stuff in this pot this wasn't happening.

Meanwhile, brown off all the chunks of meat.

Since the recipe wanted the onions browned, when all the meat was browned I fried up the onions a little as well.

So then you add some flour til it thickens, then the wine and stock.

At this point I split the meat and the onion/bacon/mushroom mix.  Half into the slow cooker and half into the saucepan.  The slow cooker half was looking a little empty of fluids, so I added the rest of the bottle of wine and a bit more stock.

So I cooked the stove version on as slow as the stove would go, which was still a pretty decent boil.  It was there for probably four hours.

And oh my!  It was amazing!

The onions had their bottoms kept on so they'd stay whole while cooking.  But that didn't quite work out.  The onions completely disintegrated, as did much of the meat.

The finished product, served with the parsely, and a some rice to soak up all the lovely gravy.  Doesn't look like much, but our dinner guests were pretty impressed :)

We left the slow cooker version on low overnight, but probably should have turned it off earlier.  It still tasted great, but the meat was a little dry.  I'd topped up the liquids too before leaving it overnight, but they didn't really boil away, so it was a lot more watery than the stove version.

I'd definitely make this again, but I'd halve the recipe and just do it in the slow cooker all one afternoon.

Generally had a quiet weekend.  Stu was still sick (yeah two long weekends and three days leave in between and he was sick the entire time :( ).

Friday I did a bit of house cleaning and watched Four Weddings and a Funeral in the afternoon.  I might have also made some Anzac Biscuits.

Saturday we celebrated our anniversary by going out for brunch at Pulp Kitchen.

The we did some food shopping and came home (via the church where we got married six years ago)

I put dinner on to slow cook (beef stew nommm).  Didn't do much at all in the afternoon (that I can remember).  

Enjoyed our dinner and watched Twister together in the evening.

Sunday I did a bit of stuff around the house then went to the War Memorial to see the model of Gallipoli, except the whole section is undergoing a big renovation at the moment til the end of the year :(  So had a bit of a wander around and had a play with Dad's camera there.

On Good Friday we headed out to the club.  I left Stu to read stuff for uni, and went off to help hazard reduction.  That is, pulling dead branches into piles to be picked up later for transport to the fire.  Spent a couple of hours on Friday afternoon doing that.

With all the rain a few weeks ago, mushrooms have been sprouting up all over the place!

John was chainsawing larger logs as well, and he found this bat inside a hollow log!!

Friday night we played some Phase 10 (a commercialised version of "Frustration" we played in Queensland a couple of years ago) with A&J and had a relatively early night.

Saturday I burnt wood.  Piles and piles and piles of it.  This was at the end of the day.

Afterwards I had a refreshing dip in M&M's spa (I'm even claiming the last dip in the pool for the season after the morning's bonfiring)!

We didn't end up bonfiring at night, but I did make some meringues using some leftover egg whites..

Sunday we came home fairly early (Stu's uni work had been a bit of a disaster, as he had a sore throat for two days that turned into a pretty nasty cold).  I didn't do much at home, just pottered around and changed some passwords.

Monday was a pretty fail day.  Did pretty much nothing around the house or on my todo list .. ended up feeling completely blah, and we got pizza for dinner.

6.4.14 - 15.4.14

After the Airport Open Day I headed up to Sydney.  Got to mum's and headed straight out to the Turkey planning meetup/group get together thingie.

Mum and I spent the rest of Sunday and then the evenings and most of the next weekend sorting out the piles and piles of metal that dad had collected over the years.  There were *many* boxes worth of cabling, which if you chop the ends off will give about $2/kilo for the copper (and $6/kilo for some of the really good bits).  There were several boxes worth of small (and a few large) transformers, which got about 70c each.  There was 38 kilos of lead at $1/kilo - dad brought home some lead pipes in the eighties (I remember bending them and thinking it was super cool that I could bend metal pipes like that).  He then melted them all down and cooled them into nine tuna tin sized ingots which he then stored under the house never to be touched again.  And lots of boxes worth of aluminium at 70c/kilo.  There was even a little bit (4kg) of brass at $4/kilo.  And then the boxes and boxes of steel and electronics bits and pieces that aren't actually worth anything, but we could dump in a skip that gets sent off to South East Asia where the whole lot is melted down and separated.  All up we made about $300 from metal recycling over the course of the week.  Which paid for approximately three of my trips to Sydney.  Given how many trips I've done now I'm definitely economically still behind, but at least I know it's not all just ending up in landfill.

A small fraction of the cabling we got rid of

Transformers are super heavy.  We couldn't move them in this box, this was just temporary dumping

Lead ingots!

This line feed module was tested ok in 1974 - forty years almost to the day ago.  I doubt that it's ever been used in the past forty years.

Neil recognised these switches off a Datto

Starting to see progress - clean shelves!