Woah boy!  It was pretty hot!  There were a couple of reasonably spiced dishes, but mostly they were insanely hot (for me).  Yummy though.

After dinner there were still plenty of leftovers so I asked that they be boxed up.  But when it was time to go, noone wanted to take any because they were all going out to other places after.  So we got all the leftovers.  And it was pretty awesome, because we didn't have to do much food shopping that week - we were set for the whole week with leftovers!  Win!

Yep.

But on a lighter note, it did actually turn out pretty impressively.  Nice filling, and a decent crust.  I thought when I had made it that the crust was far too powdery/flakey to work, but it actually turned out rather well.  And was able to flop the whole thing out without it disintegrating.

I'd say I'd happily make it again, but it was such a lot of work that I just don't know....  Maybe it'd be a bit easier with a food processor.. not so much fiddling with the flour and butter..

This morning was up at a very uncivilised hour (that is a shock coming from me ;) ) to get to Scope at Mt Stromlo by 9am.  Coppins Crossing road was closed for a cycling event, but we didn't see the sign til it was too late, and ended up having to continue 5km out of the way before we could turn around legally, and then back again to go the other way.  Epic grunt.  So ended up arriving ten minutes late.  And nearly got blown off the mountain by the wind - it was insane!!

So we went to Scope to meet up with Fiona (aka @phonakins aka The Little Lioness) and Rish, Lisa (aka @bakebikeblog aka Bake Bike Blog) and Chris (aka @chrispycon), who turned out to be an ex colleague of Stu's from Queensland!  It was a great little twitter/blogger meetup.  We talked about various topics, mostly things like Canberra life, food, travel etc.  

I had their eggs benedict which was pretty decent

Scope has a fantastic location, it'd be nice to go back in weather that was good enough to sit outside and enjoy the view.  And plenty of gluten-free options which made Fiona and Lisa very happy :)

Popped into town to pick up Stu's car which had been there since Friday night, then did our food shopping, then came home.

Having a busy afternoon catching up with stuff.

I separated the jigsaw into its six identical 999-piece sections and stacked them up so they don't take up as much space, to give me room for other things I want to do.

Planning a roast dinner tonight, and hopefully an early night!

Managed to squeeze in one beer at drinks before being picked up.  Made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.  Had already checked in, so just needed to drop off bags, but no automatic machines that I could see at Canberra airport for plebs, so went to counters to drop off bags.  Went into the Qantas lounge for drinks and snackages.

Then Stu got a notification on his phone that flight was delayed.  Oh well, more snackages.  And delayed again.  Flight was nearly two hours late by the time we got away :(  Got a beef stroganoff of some description for dinner on the plane.

People please, stand back from the luggage carousels so other people can see the bags going past and actually get to the carousel to pick up their bag!!  Sheesh!!

Because the flight was so late, the car rental place was closed.  So had to walk all the way back into the terminal to pick up the keys, and back out again.  At that time of night it wasn't much fun.  And their computer system was down as well.  Hurrah.

Finally got the car and headed off, thinking we'd use the toll roads and get there a bit quicker.  

Big mistake.

Night roadworks on the M1 meant we were stopped for long periods of time in several places along the motorway :(:( 

We had a hybrid car, so the stop start traffic was kinda quiet and fuel efficient.

Finally arrived - very very late - but still ended up talking til around 2am before going to bed.

Flight to Canberra was pretty quick and uneventful.  Took off from Sydney to the west and straight on down, approaching Canberra from the south in very windy conditions.  But the landing was a lot smoother than I thought it would be, considering how much we were getting buffeted.

Had to walk out onto the tarmac (love it when that happens :) ) - where we'd just gone from beautiful t-shirt weather to suddenly cold and wet and windy.  Craziness.

Went inside and then waited to see if our bags had made it.  Which, miracle of miracles, they did!!  Was very impressed with Qantas making *that* happen :)

So got home very late and pretty much just crashed.

Had a lovely few days.  A nice relaxing weekend, good company, fun times and even read plenty of my very behind news feeds.

Same time next year guys :)

So a couple of miscellaneous pics from the week..

Some vertical balancing.. I call it Vertical Art

Another foggy cobweb.  I really have trouble getting sharp photos of these things :(

Saturday we went into town for breakfast and to take photos of the Diamant Hotel after the fire.

And in the evening we went out for a (sort of) surprise birthday party for Andrew at Mecca Bah.  I was feeling anxious leading up to going out because I knew I wouldn't know the majority of people there and I'd more than likely have to talk to lots of strangers.  Sure enough, that's what happened.  But the sweetie was able to keep up some conversation, and a little wine certainly didn't go astray!  The food at the restaurant was really good, but almost completely inaccessible - none of the dishes came with any kind of serving implements (we ended up asking for some), and the pide wasn't cut (one of them came with a regular dinner knife, but not all of them even had that!).  It was also crazy expensive for the banquet ($42.90 per person).  Still, we really did enjoy the food, when we could get at it!

Have spent a lot of the past week on the jigsaw.  Made pretty good progress too.  Here's a couple of pics comparing last Sunday night with tonight.  I've basically done the majority of the animals in the middle this week.

Cooked a super awesome roast pork with potato bake tonight.  Massive amount of crackling that turned out really well, unfortunately at the expense of the meat which was a little dry.  

And suddenly the weekend is over and it's back to the grindstone tomorrow...

Sights on the way down..

Climbed that mountain (Majura) the other week

Wind turbines

Cute farm house

Braidwood Poplars

Finally got a photo of this mansion in Lilli Pilli.  Noticed it for sale the next day, although couldn't find anything online for it.

Other strenuous activities included..

Eating pizza (a large Big Mama)

and a medium margherita with feta.  Leftovers were consumed over the next two days.

Eating chocolates (and drinking beer)

Watching the surf

Walking the Benny

Watching the birdies

Doing a jigsaw

Drinking beer

Going in the spa.  Sleeping.  Crosswords, kenkens and sudokus.  Cooking bacon and eggs.  Eating lots of junk food.

And watching the weather change

As usual, a lovely weekend.

Thursday night after drinks we went out for dinner to Thai Chiang Rai.  We got the $35 banquet, but in my mind it was over priced.  There wasn't that much food, or variety for that matter.  I only remember two meat dishes and a vegetable dish for mains.  That place is always pretty hopeless though. 

Then we headed up to AMF for a couple of games of bowling.  That was lots of fun, even though I did pretty badly (I always do!)  76 and 86 for my scores  I did beat a couple of the guys though, so that was pretty nifty :) 

The computer system at AMF is completely borked.  I didn't get registered for spares I got - not once but twice!  After the first time though we figured out how to reprogram the actual scores, because it got them wrong over and over again.  

I got one strike, in the very last frame of the first game

Documented the "Square Peg in a Round Hole" (as Doc has dubbed it) sculpture.  RiotACTed too :)

Then walked home with Tony

Had a shower then headed out straight away to meet up with Dave and Steve (the sweetie was meant to come but he had to go to Melbourne for work) to see Much Ado About Nothing.  As always I spent the first part of it trying to figure out who was who and what was going on.  That mostly sorted itself out and I might have actually enjoyed it, except I had restless legs through the *entire* thing and spent more time getting stressed out about that concentrating on the play.  Two and a half hours of sheer torture :(:(:(:(  Makes me question whether I can *ever* go to the theatre again :(

The sweetie wasn't going to be home til mid afternoon, so I did some menu planning for the week, then went out grocery shopping.  By myself.  First time in three and a half years!  Freaky ;)

Cooked a variation of Alan's Beef Stew (no sour cream and much more tomatoey), and redid the Violet Crumble Cheesecake slice.  This time I found a more solid cream cheese instead of the "spreadable" stuff, which made the slice firmer which was better.  I also bought four big bars of violet crumble, since you can't buy pieces in bags in Australia anymore :(:(  The real violet crumble was a lot nicer that the dodgy-brothers brand, although probably three times the cost. Oh well.

Another foggy morning.  Took a time-lapse of the end of it, but next time I'll try and remember to setup and record the whole thing instead of starting when it's partly cleared.

When I was shopping yesterday, I saw Coles had packs of streaky bacon. They called to me.  Loudly.  So had bacon and egg for breakfast - yummmmmm!!

!!!!

Who knew eight and a half years ago that I'd still be blogging now?? :)

Well after spending a week and a half doing the edge and fish in the jigsaw, last night I did all the balloons.  In just one night.

Progress today was much slower - just sorting all the blue pieces and starting on the water.

We also did our food shopping, and have some lamb shanks in the slow cooker :)

We decided to go to Courgette in Civic.

I even wore a blouse .. *gasp* !

That didn't make me feel any less like I didn't belong there.  I'm just not a fancy restaurant kind of person (not that I wouldn't like to be - I do like nice food, I just feel out of my depth).  

Please excuse the crappy iphone photos.  It would just have been too weird to pull out my real camera, and it wouldn't have focussed on my meal anyway without standing up from the table.  Maybe I should have stolen Dave's camera heh.

We ordered a pre-dinner cocktail (Kir Royal) each, which was a blackcurrant flavoured champagne.

They also brought out these mini cups of crab and seafood bisque with a prawn foam - really really tasty!

We ordered a bottle of Southern Highlands Wines Pinot Gris which amazed Stu.  Will have to find some more for him :)

For entrées, Stu had the "Hand picked mud crab and rare yellow fin tuna sausage, wasabi mayonnaise, crisp rice wafer".  This was cold which surprised me.

And I had "Prosciutto wrapped pan seared scallops, confit chicken wings, pea purée, lemon olive oil, balsamic reduction" which was delicious and tender, although I don't recall seeing any actual prosciutto.

For mains Stu had the "Roasted corn fed chicken, sautéed livers with apple and sherry vinegar, braised lentils, Jerusalem artichoke crème, truffle brioche, brandy jus".  The chicken was delicious but I didn't try any of the chicken livers (should have saved one for Nat ;) )

And I had "Sticky pork belly with roasted loin, caramelised apple pear gallette, celeriac mash, pomegranate seed, white balsamic and cider vinegar split jus" which was pretty awesome except that the big two pork pieces in the middle were actually a bit tough to cut through - I almost had to hack my way through it with the knife when cutting it up.  That would be the only complaint I had for the whole evening.

There was a group of six people on a nearby table, and I swear one of the girls looked naked.  All I could see out of the corner of my eye was flesh..

While thinking about dessert, they brought out some watermelon sorbet which was *amazing*!

We ordered desserts, as well as a glass of Penfolds Grandfather Fine Old Tawny port.

We both had the "Vanilla crème brulee with seasonal mixed berries and short bread finger".  Yumm yumm yumm. Real vanilla, crunchy top, super awesome.

And the sweetie got a coffee as well

So all in all an expensive but lovely night out.

Our wedding anniversary is the same date as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  In the past couple of weeks, in the lead up to the 25th anniversary, there's been a heap of articles on English Russia, and other places as well.  For some reason this disaster totally captivates me.  No idea why.  Silly really.  I even wrote a time travel story in high school that mentioned it.  I was in year 12 at the time.  It was about a girl who suddenly woke up in April 1986 - she'd gone back in time five years.  She remembered that April 1986 was when the Chernobyl disaster happened and was trying to warn people.  But of course noone believed her (except her older brother who realised she couldn't suddenly know calculus overnight unless it were true).  The disaster happened and she went into hiding because suddenly everyone wanted to talk to her.  A month later she woke up back in her own time.  I actually scanned that story (and some others) before I threw out all my school work before leaving Sydney.