Came home and jumped in the pool - instant refreshment!!

Then headed out again to Nat's birthday dinner.

We gave her a Totoro hat..

Dinner was the Turkish Grill Restaurant in Erindale.  They kept bringing out all this food, and I'm eating it happily.  They stopped bringing food and I'm all "I'm totally full" .. and then they told me that was just the entree?!?!?  Gah!!  So didn't get to each much of the mains - was simply too full! Doh!  Nat asked me to blog the pictures I had of some of the food.. it was pretty good food!  And heaps of it with the banquet..

Quite enjoyed the book.  Again, the stories give a great insight to American (kids) life in the 1860s.

Didn't put noodles in - we already had wayyyyyy too much for two people (leftovers, hurrah!).  Stu said it could have done with a touch of fish sauce for saltiness and a little sugar.  Next time :)

As promised, a riot of colour!

End result - yumm!

Had our Japan travelling friends - Nat and Andrew, Natty and Sandra over and ate lots and were quite merry.

Had a brilliant day for it.  If anything a little too hot heh.  There was even this storm that came through *after* we'd finished up.

Stu preparing some sushi (cucumber and pickled radish and tuna)

The hanami setup (a blue tarpaulin is a must!)

Stu's sushi

Nat arranging the Pocky and the Crunky

This random dog turned up and stayed all of lunch.  No idea where it came from - never seen it before!  It was very friendly but kept threatening to steal the food ;)

The food - sooo much food!  Lots of leftovers!

Everything and everyone setup

A bee

Andrew hanami-ing (yes Dave, that's my cap :) )

After lunch we played Trivial Pursuit.  We actually started with my very lame 80s trivial pursuit (which wouldn't have been so lame had any of us actually not been just kids in the 80s), but switched over to "real" Trivial Pursuit.  Lots of fun.  I think Stu won :)

Nat made this super awesome swirl cake with white chocolate icing :)

And then everyone went home.  And I got depressed cause I had to come down off somewhat of a high :(

But then we watched this cool documentary on Yellowstone National Park, and followed that with Fantasia 2000.  Really must get myself a copy of that Bluray some time.  Except for the very minor detail that we don't have a Bluray player .. hrmmm.

And so endeth the weekend.  

Well Tuesday we had Jeff & Ruth over for dinner.  Nothing fancy, just pasta, but some nice nibbles beforehand.  Conversation got all philosophical-like. heh.  Then we watched Stu's Japan photo dvd.

Thursday went out for dinner to Ginger & Spice in Gungahlin with Scott and Kerry and Jeff and Ruth.  I'd had a few beers by this point, so evening was perfectly pleasant ;)  They'd ordered by the time we got there, so when we arrived, so did the food.  So didn't get much conversation really.

Yesterday had a fairly slow day.  Went for a walk up Mt Rogers.  Then had Nat and Andrew over to play Wii.  Played some really freaky rabbitd game, and then some Mario Kart.  Actually managed to unlock two new cups to play. 

Today I came pretty much as close as I'll ever get to finishing the Olympics (as anyone who reads my Twitter feeds will have been bombarded with ;) ).  The only things remaining are Wario and Amy's 110m hurdles in mission mode, the perfect 10 in vault emblem, and the perfect scores in skeet and archery.  When I got the last trophy today, it put up a special congratulations screen and started playing game credits, with a "thankyou for playing" screen at the end :)   

I should point out that I was enjoying the glorious spring weather today while playing Wii.  Had doors and windows open and was gazing out at our cherry tree which is *going off* at the moment :)

So we arranged to meet in Dickson .. when they called .. which they said was going to be quite late.  So that was fine.  Except they didn't call til nearly 9pm, and then said we were going to Queanbeyan .. and needed to be there by 9:30 .. *sigh*

So epic stress making.. but made it just in time.

Serving sizes are just as huge as always, altho since the renovations not quite as good.

Anyways, they're all here now, better run! :)

Tonight we met up with Nat and Andrew and went the all you can eat restaurant in Dickson (Dickson Family Food Court).  It wasn't too bad.. for an all you can eat :)

After dinner went back to their place and played a little Sngstar and some random old Gamecube game.. very.. random.. heh

And so endeth Stu's 100111st.

Thought I'd give these slow-cooked lamb shanks a try.  Had to make a dash to the bottle-o this morning tho when I realised that we didn't actually have any red wine in the house!!  So marinated a couple of lamb shanks in red wine, garlic and parsley.  Quickly fried/deglazed, and added half an onion, more garlic, paprika (replacing chilli powder), some bay leaves (which I removed ;) ), worscestershire sauce, more red wine, little bit of stock and a tin of chopped tomatoes.  Chucked them in the oven after our lunch (of nommm La Famiglia garlic bread). And waited all afternoon in anticipation!  

The end result was meat that literally disintegrated (yes, there was a warning this might happen! ;) ).  Epic nommm!  For my tastes just slightly too tomato-ey, but Stu said it could have done with some more tomato paste to strengthen it up a bit.  So I guess it worked out just fine :)

(bit of a crap photo)..

The restaurant is set out with several large tables (about eight tables holding eight to sixteen or so people).  It does mean that if there's only a couple of you, you'll have trouble getting a table.  Most of the tables were reserved today, and we saw some people leave again straight away.

We got there just after twelve, and ordered their Sample Paddle - a 60ml sample of seven different beers, with a half pint of whatever was your favourite.  This was a fantastic idea!  Getting to try all these different beers together was great.  They suggested starting with the light beers and moving up the the heavy darker beers.  Well I drank the first, light, beer, then decided to do a mouthful of each up the line.  When there were only two mouthfuls of each left, I went back down the line in reverse order, on account of not really liking heavy beers and preferring the lighter ones. :)

A while after receiving these, maybe twenty past twelve, we ordered our food. Entrées eventually arrived, however I didn't order one, as usually if I have an entrée I'll have trouble finishing the main.  So I had one of Chris' salt and pepper squid thingies, and one of Stu's mussels.  And then we waited.  Ages and ages.

It was nearly 2pm by the time our mains arrived.  Now we were having a nice time anyway, but that really was very slow service.  I got the pork belly, which was delicious and nice and crunchy skin, although the portion size was a heck of a lot smaller than I expected.  Stu got some sausages which were pretty good too.  

By the time we'd finished, Nanette and I decided we were still hungry, so ordered some wedges to actually fill us up.  We shouldn't have had to do this! Seriously!

So anyway.  Nice enough lunch and the beers were good, but very slow service, and portion sizes left a lot to be desired.

So an a hour and a half of prep time and about an hour and a quarter cooking time and we had this:

Actually there was enough "meat" sauce and pasta sheets for three lasagnas. I made two because that's all the baking dishes I had available.  I might make up some more bechamel sauce and do a third on the weekend.

The only problem I had was perhaps leaving them in the oven a little too long - they were very slightly overcooked.  But oh so delicious!! :) Definitely a leftover winner! :)