Category: General

The One with the Birthday

Morgan Avery2 Comments

Jesus, 29?  How can this be?  I feel like a kid.  But 29 isn’t kiddily at all, is it?

Anyway, we had a few friends out to dinner at Canton, and it was good.

Finite Morgan recursion.
My new favourite t-shirt.

A declaration of ownership, in a manner of speaking.
My new favourite tattoo.

The Dylan
An underexposed Dylan.  I’d rather have a dark photo than use a flash, you see.  It mostly works, as long as I get my settings right.

Francois and Melanie.
Francois and Melanie.  One of the waitresses was playing with his baby at the time.
Karl & Louise
Karl trying to get Louise drunk.

Cthulu? Is that you?
This is either Matteo, or Cthulu.  I’m hoping for the latter, the sooner we have our souls devoured, the sooner the pain is over.

Mmmmmmmmm, so chickeny, so lemony.
Lemon chicken.  Very good, but not as good as the crispy roast pork (shutter speed was too slow to capture that, it was all gone in under 1/60th of a second.

Anyway, today I’ve been binging on birthday cake-pie-pudding – banana cream style.  Awww yeah

Everyone who came: thank you.  Everyone who didn’t make it…  Maybe next time, eh?

The cheese makerer

Morgan Avery

After wasting my morning in the jury room at the Auckland District Court (not being drawn in the ballot, and having to hang around for three fucking hours while they clown-arsed around as if it was their first time ever running a jury) I decided the rest of the day would be well spent being creative, first on the list was something I’ve never done before – cheese making.

I decided to do a really simple one to begin with.

Ingredients are simple and easy to find, milk, vinegar, salt.  That’s it.  The recipe I found was a bit bigger than I wanted (eight litres of milk? no thanks), so here is the pared down version:

500ml milk.
3 teaspoons of white vinegar (normal malt vinegar might be okay as well).
1/4 teaspoon salt.

Heat the milk in a pot to about 90C (don’t let it boil, if it looks like it’s about to, pull it off the heat right away).
Milk on the stove.

Add vinegar to the milk.  Give it a gentle stir.
Immediately afer adding vinegar.

It’ll start to seperate right away.
The curd seperates from the whey very quickly.

Leave it to cool.  Doesn’t take too long from that heat.
Left to cool a while longer, it continues to seperate.

As you can see, the seperation is quite dramatic.
Well seperated and now ready to pour out.

Pour the curds and whey through a sieve.  Gently.
Poured through a sieve.

Mmmm, delicious whey.  Ok, not delicious really.  I tasted it, it’s a little bit sweet, quite weak flavoured.  Nothing too scary, but I wouldn’t want to drink it every day.
Yes I did taste it. It's okay, weak and slightly sweet, but not great.

Curds!  Looks just like cottage cheese.  There’s a reason for that.  Add the salt to the curds, mix it in well.  Add more salt if you feel like it.  Do it to taste.
There's the stuff you want.

Time for the taste testing.
Just like a bought one.

Claire said it was very good.  I said it would do nicely piled into a couple of toated sandwiches with a bunch of chilli beans.  I was right.

My lovely city.

Morgan Avery

You know what’s good, right?  Fireworks.  Yeah.  What else?  Japanese food.  It’s true.  What would be great?

So last night we decided to grab a bite to eat at Fuji San (we love that place, it’s definitely top 3 Auckland Japanese places for us, along with Tanuki (not Tanuki’s Cave) and Sharaku.  Due to 1. quality of service – attentive yet discrete, no one comes to hassle you or see if everything’s okay, but they watch the room like hawks ready to swoop to your side if you give them the slightest flick of the head. 2. price.  I mean, really.  3. Well, the food is really good too.  Which helps, you know?

Anyway, I got a nice crumbed pork thing, Claire got her normal freaky fried tofu thing, and a pile of california rolls, so good.  (Incidentally, the next table over featured none other than David McPhail.  Crikey he’s got a great voice.)

We then wandered down Queen St, grabbed a white chocolate mocha, and headed up to Albert Park where I had a nice spot in mind for the Skytower fireworks.  I think it worked out pretty well.

Skytower Fireworks

Nice evening.

Pie sandwich and other fooding tricks.

Morgan Avery1 Comment

Ok, so a while ago I posted evidence of one of my experiments with sandwich technology, the "Diagnosis: Chronic Heart Disease," I was pretty widely ridiculed.  But that’s to be expected when you’re way out here on the edge of gastronomy.

Today, I present my latest discovery: the pie sandwich.

Pie sandwich. What?

I think it pretty much speaks for itself.

In less messed up crazy news, I’ve been greatly enjoying one of my Christmas presents, a Chasseur cast-iron grill pan.  Crikey I love heavy enameled cast-iron cookware, but it’s such an expensive habit I have to let other people do all the buying.

Chasseur cast iron grillpan. Delightful!

I’m a better cook than you are.

Morgan Avery2 Comments

I’m sorry if this comes as a surprise, but it’s a proven fact.

In fact, I’ve been a good cook since I was in my early teens.  I have creativity and attention to detail, as well as a quite highly educated palate.

Lately I’ve been playing the role of house-husband to Claire’s bread-winner.  This includes making up a delightful lunch for her every day.

Her lunch for tomorrow includes, along with a yogurt and a packet of jaffa cakes, a bowl of roasted vegetables (carrot, caramelised red onion, potato, and kumara), and a big moist slice of fresh baked banana bread.  Delicioso!

You might well think you’re a good cook, and possibly you are, but next to me you ain’t shit.

In other news, we went to the Chinese New Year thing at the showgrounds with Dylan, Melanie, and Harrison on the weekend, it was okay I guess.  I had some very nice (but quite greasy) noodles, grape juice, and very pedestrian chicken satays.  Oh, and a Chinese biscuit.  Unfortunately being a daytime even there was no opportunity for fireworks – which we really enjoyed when it was in Albert Park the last couple of years.

I just got the banana bread out of the oven, I think I’ve surprised even myself with how perfect it is.

Self-effacingly yours,
The Monkey

A weekend with friends.

Morgan Avery

Saturday night we have Harrison over for dinner, he brought Dylan & Melanie with him. I’ve got a feeling he’s going to be a little ladies man, especially with that sketchy godfather of his.  He certainly does like to cop a good grope.

Claire & Harrison

Claire put together a very nice spread of mixed salad with balsamic, absolutely perfect tuna steaks, and even made a fresh rocket pesto for the potatoes.  Delicious.

Salad with balsamic, tatoes with rocket pesto, and perfect tuna steaks with lemon juice.

Sunday we had Adam & Sandra over, decided we’d like something easier this time, and got some very good fish & chips from a place at Greenwoods Corner.

Claire & Sandra preparing their meals.

The fish (snapper) was really good, the chips were just about perfect, and the potato fritters were crispy and wonderful, about the only thing they don’t do really well is a humble burger, I’ve had bacon, egg & cheese burgers there – the patties tend to be pretty crappy, and the buns are small and boring, last night though I went for a terakihi burger which was pretty good, same disappointing bun, but the fish was far better than their patties.  Also got some crumbed prawns which were good, and Sandra had a crab stick, I don’t know what she thought of it.

This morning, as Claire was getting ready for work, I noticed that she’d warmed up the coffee machine, so while she was drying her hair, I whipped up a ristretto espresso for her, but that’s not all – con panna!  Yum.

Espresso Con Panna

We got a new burr grinder, which is nice, I made the espresso with Allpress beans.  Man the house smells good when I’ve been making coffee.

What did you do on your weekend?

Listless.

Morgan Avery

I don’t know if I’m feeling a bit of a post-holiday depression or what, but the last few days I’ve been feeling increasingly listless, or do I mean shiftless.

There are a lot of things I want to get done this year, and it makes sense to make a start, but I just can’t be bothered right now.

At least I managed to build up my motivation to a sufficient level to get some baking done, you should smell my banana bread, oh boy.  Just 15 minutes to go and it comes out of the oven.

Things I want to get done, well Claire actually listed a couple of them on her site, but let’s see now…

  • Sell a painting.  I really enjoy painting, lately I’ve been playing with a new direction in style and I think it’s working out really well – you can be the judge of this I guess, look at the painting I gave my mother for Christmas, that’s what I’m talking about.
  • Finish one of my books.  Any one of them will do, but it looks like the stupid sci-fi with the terrible name is furthest along now.  I’d hoped to start off my massive;y successful publishing career with the zombie story, but it doesn’t like it was meant to be.  But anyway, I want to finish one of my books, I probably won’t try and get it published properly, and will just get a small run printed off by on of the POD services, for distribution to friends – or enemies, depending on how well it turns out.
  • Get a more reliable income.  I love running my business, and it makes me rich from time to time, but other times it just pays the bills.  So I might make the business part time, and work with someone who has deep pockets for a while.
  • I want to shave off my beard.  I’m a bit tired of it now, I want to try being clean shavewn, which is something I haven’t done in well over ten years now.  I don’t know if I can stand it though, I have no idea what I look like with no beard.  Also, Claire doesn’t want me to shave it off now – when I first got it, she wanted it gone, now I’m thinking of razing it, she wants it to stay, not helpful.
  • Start back into karate (or something) I really want to get back into some really strenuous physical activity, I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to Seido if it wasn’t for the other people that go.  I don’t know if I’m very excited about doing it again this year, but it’s on my long term list.  I’d like to get my brown belt (which, theoretically, is my next grading, but in reality after as long a break as I’ve had, who knows?)  What I don’t want to get is the aggressive, over-competitive, arsehole, bullshit, cultist crap.   This is a real risk, it was only after I’d stopped going for a while that I realised how much complete bullshit was involved.  But I loved how hard the exercise was, and it made me feel good to be really fit.
  • Change cars.  I really like driving Claire’s hot little hatchback, and I don’t so much like driving my 4wd.  So I’m thinking about getting rid of the 4wd and getting a hatch of my own, or maybe a small station wagon.  I still like the Toyota Caldinas.  Maybe a Toyota Echo, though, I’ve seen some of them around the city that looked pretty sweet.  (And some that looked like a tarts handbag, but let’s ignore them, shall we?)

Ok, 90 seconds to go on the banana bread, so I think I’ll round this off now.  Bye bye.

Panda hippo gnu deer!

Morgan Avery

I’m a little light-headed, so forgive me if I’m short…  Or typo ridden.

We had a delightful little get together of wonderful people.  It was good.  We’re glad the weather held up, as there’s just no way everyone would have fitted into our living room and such.

I hope everyone who came had as good a time as I did.

My cigar was long and fat.  My brandy was fruity and delicious.  Word to the wise: don’t plow through three glass in short order.

(I didn’t, but the person who did…  you know who you are.)

That’s all.

Happy new year.

Hope this one is even better than the last, and I hope the last was fantastic.