Kazza the Blank One

In a team meeting a while back Con mentioned that he had the "Stove" cake out of the Australian Women's Weekly Childrend's Birthday Cake Book as a kid.  I filed that away and when it came time for his birthday, I made it.

Start with one butter cake, this one baked at 160C for 25 minutes.  I made this on the Wednesday night.

Turned out to cool. 

Next morning was time to assemble and decorate. 

You're meant to cut a 10cm, an 8cm and a 10cm section, but that would have made the proportions all wrong (my pan was like 27cm long not 28cm), so pretty much just eyballed it.  Use a bunch of toothpicks to hold the back piece on.

Looks pretty good.  I could possibly have trimmed that middle bit slightly.

Then I had to make some icing and coat it.  This is where the wheels fell of slightly.  I really shouldn't have agreed to a lift from Chrissie, as she has a set start time and I didn't want to make her late, so I had a deadline, and it was going to be a struggle to meet it.  So it's a rushed job and there's crumbs all through the icing.

You're meant to use green musk sticks, but I couldn't find any.  I also didn't have time to be fussy about trimming them and lining them up nicely.  I couldn't find any string licorice (I'll probably have to buy the stuff online) but I did find some in wheels, which I hastily cut in two to make the hotplates.  The frying pan I made out of cardboard on Tuesday night so had that ready to go (I couldn't find any toy utensils small enough to work).  The oven door is missing a handle and tea towel because I simply didn't have time.

But given how rushed it was I'm amazed that it actually turned out as well as it did!

XL won this for Christmas last year and gave it to me to do.

Unboxed

And the pieces spread out

Finished!

This was originally from RecipeTinEats, I first made it in December 2023.  With a couple of modifications, this is my official version.

So ingredients are a pack of risoni, two punnets of cherry tomatoes, a red onion, 200g block of danish fetta, garlic, a litre of stock (any stock will do, you choose), oregano and oil and pepper.  Skip the salt.  There's enough in the stock and the cheese.

Add the sliced onion, the tomatoes, garlic to taste, oregano and some pepper to a large baking dish

Toss with some olive oil

Roast for like 25 minutes

Then add the risoni, half the cheese (chopped) and the stock (hot).  If you're going to eat all of this at once (eg if you're serving a crowd) you can skip adding a cup of extra hot water.  If you do add it, it will be quite liquid still when serving, but will soak it all up for leftovers.

Mix it all up again

Then roast it for another 20 minutes or so.  At the end add the rest of the cheese and some basil if you have any.

Definitely simplier than Nagi's version!

Sunday.  28th.  Stu cooked a nice pea and ham soup for dinner. MacGyver, earlyish night.

Monday.  Slept mostly okish?? Tried to get stuck into proxy doco, but too many problems, mostly with the proxies. Did get a bit done in the afternoon though. Stu didn't feel like cooking anything, so he had leftover soup and I had a tv dinner. MacGyver then email sorting and catchup blog posting.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish?? Had a pretty good day of getting lots of proxy doco done without too much other crap to deal with, so that was nice. Stu cooked up a tuna bake and brussels sprouts which was nice. MacGyver and photo stuff.

Wednesday.  1st of July.  Half way through the year. Hrmmm. Awake for chunks of the night. Busy day not achieving much. Neil and I tried out the gems at Spud Bar.  They were ok, but a bit tough and not as crispy and awesome as I do them.  Very filling though!

Classic gems with chipotle aioli

Baked a cake .. !!

Thursday.  Awake for chunks of the night. Decorated a cake .. !! Before work .. !!  Busy day not achieving much. Presented said cake to Connor for his birthday. They had a long service award thing at work where they recognised Neil's 50 years!!  Relatively busy drinks which was good. Mills&Grills prosciutto and chorizo pizzas for dinner.

Chorizo - olives, parsley, chorizo sausage, fresh tomato and mozzarella, and Prosciutto - prosciutto, cherry tomato, mozzarella and parmesan cheese.  Both yumm!

Friday.  Awake for chunks of the night. Mostly finished the proxy doco I wanted to get done. Still some bits and pieces to do. Kievs for dinner then started rewatching Black Mirror, with the sweetie this time around. Then watched Twins which I haven't seen in like 30 years at least.

My gems are better than Spud Bar's!

Saturday.  Okish sleep maybe. Day of house stuff and hobbies. Rearranged the study a bit.

I moved the purple "comfy" chair over to the left so Stu can read by natural light and see the fish and not be distracted by my screen.  Moved the spare computer desk over to the other side and the little music cube towards this end.  We won't mention the fact that the first thing he did there was start listening to peeps talking over ham radio which didn't grate on my nerves At All.. !!

Also.  As Mr Spock would say (via Aristotle).. Nature abhors a vacuum.  Didn't take long for these shelves to get filled up (after I moved them so we could get the aircon installed).

We tried to find Jo's bower bird but no sign of him.  Then went for a walk around the water tank to find some birds.

Started Neil's Space Shuttle/747 Lego. Cooked RecipeTinEats' creamy risoni, or my variation thereof.

Watched another episode of a birder Stu follows, and then Enola Holmes 3 which was a bit silly but a bit of fun.

Sunday.  Took a while to get to sleep, woke up early. Got some more stuff done. Went out around lunch time. Picked up some prescriptions, got some Ali Baba (they very rudely charge $1.50 for extras, even though on their pricing boards it's only $1), then headed to Diddams Close to eat it. Then wandered all around the peninsula and saw some new birds.

Then back home and it was pretty much just time to change Stumpy's bark, prep dinner, download and process photos and blog.

So I got this error a few weeks back on my MyWay+ card:

Expired QR
No Signal or Service
Please check your mobile or Internet connection.

WTF?  I definitely had internet. I asked the driver, he had no idea (most of them are utterly allergic to even engaging with any MyWay+ issues, there's so many), he just said get on.

Nothing on the internet about the error.

It only occurred to me later that I might be out of credit.  Turns out that was it.  You'll get some BS error not anything actually meaningful.  The app will literally not tell you anywhere how much credit you have, you have to go sign into the portal to find out.

MyWay+ is an utter abomination.  They need to fix their $#!+ !!!

Most of these were Jo's.  I smashed many of them out at home so I could get them done and so I could then get them out of the house.  Well the first part of the plan worked, not so much the second.. need to do a Lifeline run some time...

Stu complained that the container number was the same on each of the containers

This one I took in to work so the guys could do it while we were in South Australia.  They only did like a quarter of it though haha

These two Harry Potter ones were "3D" so had hard plastic on one side, but that meant they were really tricky to pull apart without damaging the pieces.

This was another one I took in to work because the guys might have had fun with it, but they never got up to doing it.  So we did it when I got back.  I'd done this one last year.

I'd done this one before a long time ago.

And then we have a few that weren't Jo's.

Another one by Trevor Dickinson.

A bit of rainbow fun

Hidden Cows!!!  The guys probably did more of this than I did when I was off sick for two weeks.

Yeah I'm a little behind...

This was a Christmas present, a print of Trevor Dickinson's

We did this at work, not sure where it came from, it had been sitting in our pile for ages

This one Kellie gave to Mum, but it was too difficult for her so she gave it to me to do.  It was a little tricky because it was all so soft, but wasn't too hard to do in the end.

We did this at work.  I think this might have been one of Jo's but not sure.

This might have been one of Jo's too, can't remember.  But I did smash it out in two evenings, it was really easy.

One of Jo's we did at work

And another (I think!)

And another!

I think this was Jo's as well, but I did this one at home.  It was a bit of fun because the image wasn't *quite* what was on the box, it was a little different in the foreground.

As seen on the way to and back from the Cotter

27.6.26

On Saturday Stu wanted to go see a crested grebe which apparently had been spotted on the western arm of Cotter Dam.

But, because Google Maps is useless (it sends you down roads that have gates on them), we had to walk 1.4km from the car to the lake. 

We setup "camp" in one spot and had our lunch, but the only birds we saw were fairy wrens and thornbills (and one other thing that flew past so quickly I couldn't see what it was).

So we went for a walk round the peninsula and saw grebes and coots and ducks and a darter, but not the crested grebe Stu was looking for. Oh well.

All the birds we saw were over at the far edge over there

Stu got the only bird photos of the day.  They were all far too way away for my camera.

This was the first little black cormorant he'd seen in the ACT

There was a wombat hole right under the path, and another one just behind me

I ate this blackberry

So then headed for home round the south side of the lake, but Google Maps is useless and sent us down roads with gates on them. So we had to go allll the way back.

For my 50th birthday, Ian and Chris gave me a Surrender gift card for endota.  I didn't even realise they had a store in Belconnen, I thought it was only the city.  So that made it Too Hard for a while.  Then last year, well, the C-Word.  But recently I decided I really needed to use the voucher before it expired.  

I tried to book online, but their website refused to show any open time slots.  So one day after lunch recently I just went into the store and booked a session for a month or so out.

So Thursday I was booked for 13:45.  But they called me up in the morning to say one of their therapists was sick and they'd rearranged all their appointments and could I do 15:30? Sure ok. Edit: so after reading Google reviews it seems like this place does this A LOT!

Anyways, I turn up around 15:15 (they say to come in 15 minutes early to "relax" and fill out their forms).

The waiting room is lovely!  And the receptionist was lovely as well.

They want to know some basic medical history.  They also take a bunch of photos at all different wavelengths to assess your skin.

Then a lovely TINY lady took me back to one of their rooms so I could undress.

Then she came back to start the session (maybe 15:45?  dunno). She did ask if there was anything that she should focus on.  I said maybe my lower back, but otherwise I was content to mostly see what they'd do by default.

First up was a whole body massage.  Well mostly whole body.  She did my legs and feet first, then back and shoulders and upper arms, but strangely not my lower arms and hands.

When that was done I had to flip over and she did the facial.  Which was just applying lots of product (oils, creams, who knows) and rubbing some of them off, but leaving others on.  Annoyingly I got restless legs during this and it felt like it went for *ages*.  

I was all done at 17:00.

So the verdict?

Well I did enjoy the massage.  I'd probably get them to focus on my back/hands/feet if I was to go again.  I probably wouldn't do a facial again - I don't really like my eyes being touched.  

Oddly it left me feeling super *heavy*.  I had a shower before I went to bed, because I felt like I was covered in oil/product (I was!).  You'd think I would have slept well, and I did for some of the night, but I was also awake for like an hour and a half at one point.

So yeah.. it was an *experience* !!  Which I generally enjoyed!