haresfur

After crawling back to bed, getting up and starting the blog, I decided I needed some sustenance before heading out for the day. I'm not much of a breakfast person but I'd been awake for long enough to handle my version of one of my father's breakfasts: fried spaghetti. It's called that, no matter what pasta I find left over in the fridge. This time it was green fettuccine. Here it is part way through cooking - apparently I didn't get the finished product. My father made it pretty plain - fry the pasta to crispy in butter and scramble in some egg. I use olive oil and tend to doctor it up, depending on my whim. This time I used oregano, garlic, and dried chilies with lake salt and pepper put on at the end. I try to fold the eggs in fairly gently as they cook so I get bigger bits. I found some bacon at the back of the fridge and it didn't kill me yesterday so it went in, too. I'll get to the day's activities in a bit but after I got home I sent the dogs outside with a chicken frame each and made some Darjeeling tea. The tea pot is from an unknown Minnesota potter - I picked it up at Warren MacKenzie's studio and is a classic Mingei-sota style of wood fire. It pours well but is rather hard to fill because of the lack of clearance between the handle and lid. Still, I think it is really sweet and I decided to pick up pots that spoke to me rather than having to get one of Warren's. The mug is from a friend in Bellingham Washington, Michael McDowell. If you think you will be needing a cremation urn sometime soon, be sure to check him out . The plate and sugar bowl are random. The Jaffa Cakes were at the perfect point of starting to go stale to give them a little tooth.

Anzac biscuits have their origin (at least by that name) with World War I when they were sent to the Australia and New Zealand Corps soldiers. They were made from rolled oats, coconut, etc. so they would keep well for the journey. I haven't tried making them yet but they are really good. Anzac Day is very close to Easter this year but I haven't seen any tins yet - just the packages. I need a tin for my office because we have quite a mouse infestation this autumn. ETA: Oh yeah, the mug: Thanks for the compliment, I made it. I put a fair bit of thought into the handles and I think they are pretty comfortable when I get them right.

G'day! My name is Evan but you know me as haresfur. I'm an FOB (Fresh Off the Boat) transplant to Bendigo Australia. Bendigo is a Victorian era gold rush town in the State of Victoria, southeastern Australia. It is a "Rural City" - quite the oxymoron, about 150 km from Melbourne. The population is about 110,000, which is I think the 3rd largest city in Victoria. That gives you an idea of how sparsely populated it is once you get out of the Melbourne area. I'll keep the blog focused on food but context is important to me, particularly as I discover a new culture. First, I'd like to recognize and thank the traditional owners of the land, the Dja Dja Wurrung people. Bendigo is a "City in the Forest" but the box-ironbark and mallee Eucalyptus across the street from me were looking rather sad when I arrived after 13 years of drought. Record rainfall in the last year has seen an amazing renewal in the undergrowth. The wattle in the teaser picture was happy last spring. Anyone know if all wattle seeds are edible or just some species? The gold rush starting in 1851 saw an influx of people including a substantial number of Chinese, some of whom came by way of the California gold rush. Many never left and I was told the town helped look after the single aging miners and now the Bendigo Chinese Association is a major supporter of health services. Easter is the time when the only Imperial Dragon in the southern hemisphere Sun Loong wakes to take part in the parade. He's hard to wake up so the day before Easter, the Lion Dancers and drums make a lot of noise followed by 100,000 fire crackers. As Anna N noted the Chinese population is well integrated and the greater community takes part in the lion teams, Chinese pipe band, and dragon teams. It takes a lot of people to carry 100 m of dragon. I encourage you to visit the Golden Dragon Museum website to learn more. Well enough of that. Bendigo is 17 hours ahead of the west coast of N America so many of you will be seeing this a day early. I'm a bit intimidated by the level of culinary expertise and passion here but I'll try to show a bit of my food life and have you explore the area with me. So my day started with a wet nose shoved into my face at 4:00 AM. It was a legitimate demand for food from the young Dalmatian, Spock (a rescue that came with name Spot, but I couldn't deal with that). He and the old Dalmatian, Misty, missed supper after having chicken frames for tea because he was asleep and Misty could lose some weight. The cats got tuna and I had Anzac biscuits and orange juice. Wattle's feeding station: Pinot's feeding station (I could use the counter space but have to keep the cat food away from the pups). Better kitchen pictures later.

Ok, I'm in. I'm still puzzled about compiling here rather than individual forums or recipeGullet, but here is my conversion with tweak of Chris' pimento dram recipe from my post. The conversion was done by weighing dry ingredients and rounding to nice numbers. Liquids were converted to mL. 375 ml Inner Circle Green 375 ml Captain Morgan Dark 50 g 1/2 c allspice berries, crushed 0.4 g 6 black pepper berries, crushed 1 g 10 cloves, crushed 14 g 2 cinnamon sticks, broken 7 g 1 nutmegs, crushed Infuse with Inner Circle for 1 week add Captain Morgan and infuse for 2 more weeks Strain through metal strainer and coffee filter. Add to simple syrup made with 300 ml water and 340 g raw sugar. Bottle.

I don't think this is quite right. The french fry plants (in the US at least) demand big round smooth potatoes so they can get long fries efficiently. To do this they like sandy soil and lots of water. Makes for inefficient water use and groundwater contamination.

I'd think about the gateway factor in the choices. Sacrilege maybe, I'd consider bourbon instead of rye because I think it's more approachable. It also opens up the sipping factor - not only another drink option but to start learning about tasting for balance. And starting with sours isn't a bad idea.

It seems to me that your conversion makes your results more consistent but the only way of knowing if it is right is by judging the results. And unfortunately shared conversion factors may be convenient but they don't get around the original problem with using volumes in the first place. I think the change should be a 2 step process: Convert the recipe using your best conversion factors - either ones you have developed yourself (possibly by measuring both ways on the fly), or ones you look up. Then you have to judge the result and figure out what to adjust. The trouble is some of us don't have the skill to know that part for some baking/cooking or the patience to do the record keeping. It seems to me it is a daunting task for a group to go through the process for all but the most popular recipes and I'm not sure how to compile the results in a useful fashion.

Sounds intriguing. I wonder if the remains would make a good tortilla soup.

In eastern Washington State, my friends eagerly await the start of asparagus season and asparagus <insert meat> on the lunch menu at the local Chinese place. It's a fine way to mark the changing of the seasons. Australia imports less of its produce than the USA, as near as I can tell, so I expect most restaurants will focus more on seasonal items (as opposed to this year's nonexistent bananas).

Some of my best dining experiences and stories are from communal tables including Basque.

Great looking rellenos! I had my first in Santa Rosa NM on a marathon trip from the east to Arizona and have never come close to the goodness since. But that looks like a worthy contender. And thanks for the photos of the pottery.

The almond biscuits who's name I can't remember well enough to even find on Google are quite nice. And the Jaffa Cakes are very good but not quite as nice as LU Pims (aka PMS biscuits - not that that's a problem for me).

Does a Bacardi cocktail made with any rum other than Bacardi count? ETA: But I like Bacardi's bat label and their support for Bat Conservation International

I moved from a government contractor where, if you brought in a bottle of wine for someone who had performed a favor or a home brew for someone to try, you had to go out in the parking lot to make the transfer upon threat of termination. They did have an auditorium building that was privately owned and alcohol was allowed with very strict restrictions - especially on how it was paid for. At my current employment no one drinks during the week but my we have a Friday after work beer club where we rotate through different beers and rank them on taste and on 'wank' (a factor more or less related to the degree of pretentiousness of the bottle and label design and text). It is run mainly by the young computer wonkies and discussion of work is generally frowned upon, although jerking managers' chain is encouraged when they show up. The beer costs $3.00 (reasonable by Australian standards) and people drink at the most 2. At the end of the year profits went into personalized stubby holders and an evening of lawn bowling. If I were running a company I doubt I would provide free alcohol with no bartender - that's asking for a lawsuit from someone's next of kin. I think you could do as much or more for morale through a stock of fruit juice and power drinks (and a good espresso machine). I know my own productivity would go down with even one drink during the day but IMO societies tend to do better when moderate drinking is supported in the appropriate situations rather than developing a binge culture.

I like having Fee's orange bitters on hand to complement Regan's. The Fee's can be a nice way to add orange notes without adding sweet (or much bitter but frankly that doesn't bother me - they are what they are and I don't see any reason they need to conform to anyone's pre-conceived idea of how they area supposed to taste). Try 1/2 and 1/2 with Regan's, too. I think Dr. Cocktail had a hand in developing their Peach Bitters, but I haven't tried them. I could see how they would be fun to play with. I like the old fashioned bitters quite a bit and usually use them when Angostura is called for. Fee's are quite inexpensive compared to other brands so you might consider that either a reason to buy a variety to try or a reason to avoid them and spend the extra on the brands such as those made by others on this forum. And I think Fee deserves a medal for keeping the US in the bitters business through the long cocktail drought of the late 20th Century.

I saw on TV that Costco is planning on 9 stores in Australia including a couple in Brisbane and more Sidney Suburbs. I'm not sure if they were looking at more in Melbourne. The commentators were speculating on how this would affect Woolies and Coles. I can't see it having a huge impact on them but any increased competition would be good IMO.

Old Fashioned, Americano, Dark and Stormy

snip... "spatial effect" implies that the drink was composed with the aesthetic, sensory, side of beauty in mind as opposed to the symbolic, exemplary side and it was also composed using spatial intelligence instead of linguistic. snip... the divide between the symbolic and the aesthetic can also be used to explain most of the new cooking that is happening. what we call things like "molecular gastronomy" or "modern cuisine" could very usefully be called "aesthetic cuisine". this new cuisine can be undeniably delicious and beautiful, but is detached from traditional techniques (sometimes no longer economically viable) and "if it grows together, it goes together" juxtaposition. this new cooking is mostly powered by spatial thinking. hopefully i did the idea justice? Thanks. I had to read this a few times and let it simmer. I think I was with you up to the "molecular gastronomy" part. It seems to me that all that making food look like something else or have completely different texture from that we normally associate with the taste is much more symbolic than anything. I can see that the two aren't mutually exclusive but I would think that bacon flavoured bourbon is more about the (symbolic) surprise of the taste of breakfast in a glass than about the aesthetic that diner breakfast pairs well with with bourbon.

Just finished my dram following along Chris' lines: 375 ml Inner Circle Green 375 ml Captain Morgan Dark 50 g 1/2 c allspice berries, crushed 0.4 g 6 black pepper berries, crushed 1 g 10 cloves, crushed 14 g 2 cinnamon sticks, broken 7 g 1 nutmegs, crushed Infuse with Inner Circle for 1 week add Captain Morgan and infuse for 2 more weeks Strain through metal strainer and coffee filter. Add to simple syrup made with 300 ml water and 340 g raw sugar. Bottle. Now am sipping a Lion's Tail and pondering. There's a bit of a bitter taste in the tail that I'm not quite sure about. Maybe it's from the extra week I left the spices infusing. Still, I think I'm going to have fun with it.

The pierogi look great! I'll have to try to make some. I went to Polish friends for Boxing Day pierogi, fish and bigos. It was really a great meal.

Beat me to it, although I might have posted this in another thread. I was 7 years old, in a small town in Italy with my family. I got a heaping plate of mussels in a wonderful spicy sauce. The taste was amazing and only made better by my vegetable-hating brother ordering something on the advice of my father, which turned out to be cold green beans in olive oil. I'm not sure it was an epiphany as much as a start of a process but my parents did not like olives and had warned me away from them - in spite of our otherwise diverse eating habits. I finally tried a green olive and thought, "This tastes disgusting. But what an interesting disgusting taste!" From there I moved on to black and all the great varieties.

What's panama renegade rum like? Comparable to anything I might recognize? Oh, and what do you mean by "spatial effect"?

Sound's like a consistent order helps in becoming a regular, but isn't necessarily required. At the local coffee shop where I used to live, I learned that we were all much happier when I went to a consistent mocha order that was the same as my wife's (she went there more often). That way I could just say, "two please" if I was bringing her one. If there was someone new taking my order it was really hard, "Um, I'd like a pretty big mocha with 2 decaf and 1 caf and a little extra chocolate. Oh, yeah skim milk." To which they would reply, "Oh, E's drink". If I wanted iced, I'd have to announce it as I walked in the door before they started making it. The person working the drive-through would look down the line of cars and call out the names of the drivers so they could get the drinks started. The owner made a point of being open Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings so people could prepare themselves for the day.

I'm a bit confused on how much sugar to add. Gumbo Pages recipe uses 1.5 pounds per 2 1/4 cups 151 rum for a total liquid volume of 5 1/4 cups, Chris' above uses only 12 oz sugar per 3 cups (half overproof) for a total liquid volume of 4 1/2 cups. That seems like quite a difference.

I was bicycle camping in England one time and got a withering look when I asked for UHT milk. I had to guzzle the liter of fresh outside the shop but it was the best milk I have ever tasted. That being said, shelf stable milk is vastly superior to on-the-edge or over-the-edge "fresh" milk. I don't go through a lot of milk and even new containers of fresh milk, especially plastic can taste a bit off. The shelf stable milk lasts a long time in the fridge after opening. Most stores here have the eggs on the shelf. Perhaps this helps the difficult to peel hard-boiled egg problem. Fresh tofu is vastly superior to the shelf-stable packs if it is really fresh.