It being freezing at the moment, I'm not feeling much like salads with dinner.  Also, with the craziness of work I wanted comfort food for dinner.  Read, lots of cheese!

This is a recipe I got out of a "Four Ingredient" cookbook.  It has five ingredients.  Although technically the paprika is optional.

So this two bunches of asparagus, juice of one very old lemon that's been in the fridge for month, some melted butter, a pile of grated parmesan cheese, and paprika

Coat the asparagus in butter and lemon juice

Chuck on all the cheese and sprinkle a little paprika on top

Bake for 15-20 minutes

Yum!  Have made this a few times now.

I also did a tomato bake that night - tomato, oil, herbs, mozarella cheese. Love that recipe too.

And did I mention I wanted comfort food that night?

I grated some extra parmesan cheese and baked it for a few minutes at the end with everything else.

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.

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.

Been a bit of a boozy few days.

On Thursday, and dude from McLaren Vale came up to offer a wine tasting, mainly for the bar, but for others as well.  So a small group of us partook.  There were five whites, a muscato, a rose, four reds, a dessert wine, a tawny "port" and a "Delight" - which is much like a Baileys.  It was a fun night, had a taste of some lovely boutique wines, and I bought a mixed case of things.

Yesterday we went along to Whisky Live.  $99 for 100 whiskys in three and a half hours.  Stu and I shared tastes to start with, so we could try more things.  But then it got a bit complicated trying to have any working method of working the room, so I ended up wandering around by myself towards the end.  There was an ample supply of hot food (cheesy risotto balls!) as well which was great.  A fantastic event, I'd be interested in going again next year.

Afterwards we went over to F&C's (who were also at Whisky Live) for a yummy moussaka.  And I ate blue cheese for the first time since 1987 (I've had it a couple of times on pizza, but it's a bit different cooked).  Then we watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  But I just didn't *get* it.  It was funny reading reviews on IMDB as well - people either loved it or hated it.  I'm on the hated it side heh.

Today was fairly quiet.  I finished geotagging my holiday photos, and have started culling them down.

Kit bought three more chickens and two ducks today ..

This afternoon I was craving a roast dinner, but we had nothing to roast, so I popped over to the markets to get something.

So after sleeping beautifully on Thursday night and Friday night, Saturday I was awake for ages in the middle of the night, had a sleep on Sunday, and consequently couldn't get to sleep at all last night :(  It was after 2:30am by the time I got to sleep :(  I'm hoping I'll be tired enough to sleep properly tonight.

Spent most of the morning catching up on emails and had a bit of tidying fun in the afternoon.  Real work calls though so that will keep me busy for at least some of tomorrow.

I also lost $85 in cash today :(:(:(  After travelling and not having stuff in my pockets, I had the notes in the wrong pocket, and they must have fallen out some time between getting to work and lunch time.  Hopefully it made *someone*'s day :/

The sweetie picked me up at work and we did some food shopping, then came home and I cooked salmon for dinner - yum!

Tonight has been spent cooking, washing up, geotagging and catching up on tv.

Last Tuesday night we went to Bellucci's in Dickson for dinner.

For entree we shared some squid which was beautifully cooked and tender

For mains I had the Vitello Saltimbocca (veal) which was *amazing* - tender and tasty

And the sweetie had Confi di Anatra (duck) which was nice enough but nothing special

Saturday I cleaned the house and we did our food shopping.

Nat and Andrew came over Saturday night for a lamb roast and Mario Kart.  Then we played a game of Carcassonne which I won.  Honing!

Sunday was brunch at Pulp Kitchen with Josh and Ally and family.  We'd made a booking for 10:30am, however Pulp Kitchen doesn't pay any attention to bookings, it's still a case of first in first served.  As the place was completely packed we had to wait and wait and wait (in the freezing cold).  It was nearly 11am by the time we got in :(:(

Went to Potty's for a bit, then came home.

In the evening we went to Stu's Japanese class dinner thing, where there was some discussion about the potential changes to the interpretation of the constitution about whether Japan should have more than just a Self Defence Force and be able to send troops to other countries.

This week I've been having fun cleaning up firewall rules :)

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.

Had a pretty productive weekend.  

(we also had our first fogs of the year this weekend)

Yesterday was breakfast at Edgar's (Pulp Kitchen was too crowded to get a table).  I had the eggs bendict which was ok, but the bread was a bit of effort (too tough).

Stu had the rosti stack (which I was looking at too) which was pretty good.

Did some food shopping after that, and then I hacked a bunch of portals while Stu got a hair cut, converting most of Civic for the Enlightened :)

Most of the rest of the weekend was spent clearing out piles and piles of paper.  Three in-trays *full* of paper cleared out, filing cabinet drawers tidied, *kilos* of paper thrown into recycling.  I even vacuumed the pool and put its cover on, although I didn't get to vacuuming the house.

This was really sad, since just that morning there were 2 Terabyte drives for sale in JB for $99 ... this is like two and a half thousand times the price!

Tonight's dinner was very simple - just a pack of bacon bones, some split peas, an onion and a carrot thrown into a slow cooker with a bit of water, and come back in six hours.  And I took Julie Goodwin's suggestion and chucked a handful of frozen peas/corn in right at the end.  Super simple and very tasty.  The sweetie wanted thirds - must have been good!