The Ultimate Brownie Recipe Guide

Over on Relish.com, Tessa Arias has done us all a favour, and experimented with how to make different types of brownies - what happens when you use brown sugar, what happens when you add an extra egg.

For the brownie lovers out there, I suggest you take a look!

Friends, it has been a while.

To be fair, one of us was busy getting married, and the other has been busy doing a Masters. (Another one, god knows why.)

So, we are about to attempt to get our brains around blogging again. Hopefully we can come up with some good stuff!

In the meantime, enjoy this magical video of Stephen Merchant, Jimmy Fallon and Joseph Gordon-Levitt having an epic lip-synching battle.

Are you past-oriented or future-oriented?

Fascinating lecture about the way we think about time, and how this changes just about everything about our culture and lifestyles. The bit about challenges in modern education was also super interesting (to me, anyway, but you people should know by now that I'm a big old nerd).

For more lectures like this, on a wide variety of topics, search YouTube for RSA Animate. It's good stuff.

Porcupine eats banana, has nose, sounds adorable. Is named Kemosabe.

Veronica Mars!

Hi guys, I know it's been a while. I'm back from the USA, and I'm going to attempt to post more often...although I feel like this is a promise I've made before...

Anyway, in news that is super exciting to me, and possibly no-one else I know, the first footage from the Veronica Mars movie is available online!

The film, which apparently picks up several years after the last season of the cancelled series, was given the green light due to an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign, that helped it secure additional funding and whatever else happens in Hollywood. Looks like all the original cast members are returning, too!

Happy Friday!

Cocktails for Easter!

Ah, Easter. Long weekend, time off work. BBQs, parties, trips away. Family parties, hanging out with Grandma. Easter eggs, marshmallows, more chocolate than you can handle.

Chances are that in amongst all that, some of you will be doing some drinking this weekend. While beer, cider and wine are some of my favourite things, the long weekend means there's absolutely occasions for cocktails.

Some of these seem to be for a climate a lot colder than Brisvegas, but anyway, here's a few suggestions for Autumn-y and Easter-themed cocktails:

Sparkling Pomegranate Punch (source)

• The Stone Fence - A delicious-sounding apple cider and bourbon number
• Sparkling Pomegranate Punch - see pic, it looks fab!
• Vanilla, Pear and Vodka Cocktail - simple and gorgeous
• Limoncello Champagne Cocktails - the best thing for brunch
• Raspberry Beer Cocktail - could make for a fantastic and unusual barbeque...
• The Salty Dog - for you and your favourite uncle
• An Old-Fashioned - for those afternoons with Grandma
• Mulled Cider - this recipe will probably take you into winter (the two weeks we get in Brisbane, anyway)
• The Hummingbird - a gorgeous-looking garden cocktail

And, especially for Easter, some rabbits and pastels:

• The Apple Jackrabbit
• The Bunnytail
• The Fizzy Bunny
• Chocolate Caramel Easter Egg Cocktail
• The Easter Basket Cocktail
• The Bunny Drop Martini, the Flower Power Martini and the Fuzzy Bunny Martini
• The Blow Pop Martini
• The Easter Egg and the Easter Bunny

The Bunnytail (source)

G.I.N.A.S.F.S.

"Homophobic language isn't always meant to be hurtful, but how often do you use it without thinking?"

The Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services at the University of Alberta in Canada has set up a website called NoHomophobes.com, which monitors the use of casual homophobic slurs on Twitter. The figures are astounding. (To me, anyway.)

The website has three tabs; Today, Last Week, and All Time. The numbers are collected on the website in real time, so you can actually refresh the page and watch the figures climb.


Between March 7th and March 13th (ie Last Week), the word 'faggot' was used in a tweet/tweets 322,576 times. The phrase 'so gay' was used 77,878 times.

In the count for Today, 'faggot' had been used 31, 419 times at the time of writing this blog.*


From the NoHomophobes.com website: "Words and phrases like “faggot,” “dyke,” “no homo,” and “so gay” are used casually in everyday language, despite promoting the continued alienation, isolation and — in some tragic cases — suicide of sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ) youth."

* I'm not sure how the 'Today' count interacts with world time zones. 3.22pm in Brisbane is 11pm in Edmonton, Alberta, but the fact that this number might represent a whole day rather than a partial day doesn't exactly make it better.

Yay for scarves!

B is a big fan of scarves. Woolly winter scarves, floaty summery scarves, the occasional bandanna, you name it. She's excellent at acccessorising with them.

So, when I found this Scarf Knot Master List, complete with instructions and some really gorgeous photos, I couldn't help but think B would probably be interested...

(x.)

Possibly not what Tchaikovsky had in mind, but...

Holy toast, this is amazing!

Kiva

The other day over lunch, we were talking about charitable donations. I've been making a few, to organisations that work on things that interest me, but my aunt had a new suggestion for me - www.kiva.org

Kiva is a non-profit organisation based in San Francisco that, thanks to micro financing, the internet, the global exchange rate, enables random folks across the world to loan funds directly to borrowers, to facilitate projects and alleviate poverty. Kiva collates all the loan applicants, and puts together a profile for each, so you, the donor, can pick someone out that you'd like to help. Instead of donating to a huge charitable organisation that has to funnel some of your money into bureaucracy and publicity, you can loan cash straight to someone who'll use it to improve their life.

And then they'll even pay you back.

For example, there's a dude in El Salvador who needs $400 he needs to buy two new bulls for his farm. He's got a repayment term of 14 months, the bank he's come through has a risk rating of three and a half stars, and if farming's your thing, you could add $50 to this guy's project.

If not that dude, why not the lady in Colombia who's started a shoe business, and has too many orders and not enough capital to fill them? A total loan of $575 will help her sustain her business, and you could spare $25. Or you could help a dude in Mongolia with the $1,100 he needs to finish building his house and installing a heating system.

 The applicants are vetted by different financial institutions, and you can see who's repayed previous loans, and work out who you think might be a good bet. They've been sorted into categories like 'housing', 'youth', 'start-ups', etc. so you can pick out a project you're into. And then once they've repaid your loan, you can then funnel that cash back into other projects.

It's quite a different scene from the automatic-monthly-debits you sort out with other charities. I'm pretty keen to get started, though - I've got a spare $50, so I think I'll help a dude buy some bulls!

• www.kiva.org
• Kiva on CharityNavigator

Earworms: A Nightmare for Our Times

Anyone who knows me in real life knows I get songs stuck in my head with alarming regularity. It's a thing; if I hear Robbie Williams on the sound system in a shopping mall, or someone singing a nursery rhyme under their breath, or even if I catch just a snatch of a Miley Cyrus tune from the window of a passing car, sometimes I'm doomed to have it niggling in my brain for hours.

Sometimes I don't even have to have heard it; sometimes I get a song stuck in my head that I haven't heard in months. I've even woken up in the morning a few times, and had a song stuck in my head before I'm even properly conscious. (Appropriately, this happened most recently with the theme song for Degrassi. Don't go listen to it, though; damn song is catchy!)

According to this article, people try all sorts of things to get rid of ear worms. Listening to other songs, distracting themselves with work (as if that would help), and even not drinking (why would that work?). But, like the pink elephant in the room, trying not to think about the song you've got stuck in your head is actually the worst thing you can do.

In my experience, that's actually very true. I've found that ignoring the strains of If I Could Turn Back Time as it circles endlessly around in my poor brain actually almost never works for getting rid of the damn song. On the contrary, the thing that works the most often is getting hold of a copy of the entire thing and listening to it the whole way through a couple of times. Which, when the song stuck in your head is something excruciating, is usually the last thing you want to do. But sometimes it's the only way.

Even if it means downloading Call Me Maybe.

(Sometimes you get to be this guy though. That's cool.)

Review: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

(Source.)

I finally read The Book Thief!

Almost two years ago, when B and I first began this blog, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak was on my list of books, the ones I owned but had never read. And it continued to sit there, unread, until, ironically, I bought a copy for my Kindle and read it on that. What can I say? The Kindle is handy for holidays.

But anyway, the book itself absolutely and completely lived up to all the good things I had heard about it. For those who don't already know - and honestly, I'd be surprised - The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young German girl living in the shadow of the Nazi Party and World War 2. She first comes to the narrator's attention in 1939, when her younger brother dies as they are travelling by train to Munich and has to be buried by the tracks. Liesel steals her first book - The Gravedigger's Handbook - even though she can't read yet, and so begins a pattern of biblio thievery that lasts the next five years of her life.

And the whole thing is narrated by Death.

I feel like this is a gambit that could easily have not worked, but in this case it does. The strange framing offered by Death's narration adds a new perspective and feels like a new way to tell a story about ordinary Germans dealing with the privations of the war, their instincts to help their Jewish friends and neighbours, and the need to avoid attracting the punitive attentions of the Nazi regime. It also draws constant, inescapable attention to the fact that, in Germany in this period, Death was everywhere. Literally. The soldiers, the Jews, the German civilians. The body count was immense, and with Death's narration this book is rightfully steeped in it.

However, part of the reason it works so well is that Zusak pays attention to Death as a compassionate force. The narration has a particular voice, one that mixes omniscience, bad jokes about its profession, and a huge amount of sympathy for the humans it encounters (by which I mean the dead ones). Death is unable to prevent the terrible things humans do to other humans, but it does its best to be there for all of us in the end.

The focus of the story, though, is Liesel. Her train trip in 1939 was actually a separation; her Communist parents seem to have been forced to give her up, and so she was travelling to Munich to be fostered out. Through her grief, she discovers and eventually embraces her new family, which consists of Rosa, her bad-tempered new mother who has a heart of gold below her angry red face, and Hans, her unbelievably kind, caring new father, who plays the accordion and bonds with Liesel over her nightmares. He's also the one who - crucially - finally teaches her how to read. Liesel also develops friendships with the neighbourhood kids, especially Rudy Steiner, the boy next door who insists that one day she will let him give her a kiss.

As The Book Thief explores Liesel's life, it maintains an excellent balance between the mundane day-to-day and the terrible events of World War 2. The complexity of the situation is fully explored, and starkly depicted. Liesel's family were hard-up before the war started, and as the German economy suffers, their circumstances grow worse and worse. Liesel and Rudy don't just steal books, they occasionally get hungry enough to steal food as well. Despite their poverty, though, the family doesn't hesitate to hide a Jewish man in their basement when the opportunity arises. Max, the Jew, becomes a friend to Liesel, and even manages to make a book for her. She keeps him secret, even as she and Rudy have to take part in the Hitler Youth Program and Hans has to join the Nazi Party. Then come the parades of Jews, marched through the town by Nazi soldiers. Dachau is, after all, just down the road.

Somehow, even with all this, The Book Thief still has a kind of youthfulness. Maybe it's the simple yet evocative language, maybe it's that Liesel, the focal point, is so young. A key aspect of her character is that she is honestly too young to understand why these terrible things keep happening to her. She grieves, she hates those responsible, yet she struggles to survive purely because she doesn't know how to do anything else. Janet Maslin at The New York Times mentioned 'Harry Potter and the Holocaust' in her review, and in a way, that's a strangely accurate parallel: The Book Thief - like Harry Potter - successfully marries loss on an extreme scale with an unsentimental kind of compassion. Human beings are capable of horrendous atrocity, but some of them resist, and at least Death is generous.

Reference:
The Age
The NY Times

Sydney and the Excellent Weekend! (Pt 2)

Monday

Garry. Or possibly Muriel. (Photo from www.xray-mag.com)

Mondays are always so much better when you don't have to go to work. Our Monday in Sydney was sort of cloudy and grey, and when we went outside it was hella windy. We walked through the city down King Street, to Darling Harbour again  because our plan for the morning was to go to the Sydney Sealife Aquarium - another tradition for these trips. Last time we came down, we named the dugongs, and so this time we wanted to check in on Garry and Muriel.

Sentimental attachments to zoo animals aside, the aquarium is a super-interesting place to visit. (Avoid the weekend crowds if you can, though, seriously.) The displays seem well set up and pretty well cared for, and I'm a fan of those underwater walkways they do. It's always so cool when a huge sting ray swims right over your head, you know? And the fish themselves are kind of awesome; I always come out wanting to watch Finding Nemo, cause damn that movie is accurate.

We took another ride on the ferry afterwards, back around to Circular Quay. We were headed in the direction of Jamie's Italian, which is just off Martin Place and the Sydney installment of the Jamie Oliver cooking empire. They don't take reservations, so we fronted up for lunch at around 12.15 and waited in the bar for a table.

I'm not totally sure what I was expecting, but honestly, the overall experience was pretty top notch. It might be a chain restaurant, but it didn't really feel like one. The venue and decor were pretty nice, and seemed well-considered. The drinks were great; there were some lovely Italian wines on the menu. The food was delicious, too, and I know the fresh-twist-on-classic-dishes is a thing he does, but it works really well in this case. The service was really good, too. It seemed like they put a lot of effort in, but they pulled it off without seeming like they were trying too hard or taking themselves too seriously. Plus, reasonably priced. Two thumbs up from me!

Following lunch, we rode our post-food mellow back into the city and wandered around for some more shopping. Sadly, we visited Kinokuniya again, and I may have bought one more thing... (Considering I bought about twelve items on one previous visit, three total still seems tame.) We did a bit of Christmas shopping, and a bit of looking at beautiful things we could never afford to buy. (Jo Malone cologne is delicious, and anyone who wants to buy me something expensive should come talk.)

Over this trip, we'd been for a couple of walks in Hyde Park, and it's honestly one of my favourite things to do in Sydney. You can go and sit on the grass, or get a bench in the avenue under the fig trees. It's a great place to sit and have a chat, or listen to the buskers. We happened to sit near a couple of young guys playing Christmas Carols on a pair of what looked like tiny tubas. (Possibly euphoniums? Or alto horns?*)

For dinner, we met up with a buddy of ours, and went to the Nippon Club, which was amazing! It's very unassuming-looking - the decor's not unlike an RSL - but it's got Japanese beer on tap, lots of kinds of sake, and delicious Japanese food including an in-house sushi chef, who makes THE BEST fresh sushi. Delicious!

Tuesday

Our friend from dinner Monday night (and Saturday's basement bar crawl, incidentally) offered to get us in to the Francis Bacon exhibit at the Gallery of NSW for free, which we were naturally pretty excited about, so on Tuesday morning we walked into the Domain to take in some art.

The exhibit was excellent. It was a retrospective of his work, containing pieces arranged according to decade - the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s, as well as source material from his workshop and a documentary about the exhibit. What I liked about the arrangement was that it let you see how Bacon had developed as an artist, and how the themes and imagery he used evolved over time. In the descriptions and blurbs, there were also tantalising tidbits about his life, and the art scene in London in the 1950s and 60s. All of it was very interesting; I'm thinking about tracking down some kind of super-gossipy autobiography or something.

(Image from tripadvisor.com)

Once we'd enjoyed the show, we headed back into the CBD for lunch. Notice how I didn't mention breakfast? We didn't have any; the plan was to go to another of our favourite Sydney spots. Diethnes is a very old-school Greek restaurant on Pitt Street, away from the mall, down past Bathurst Street. It's an older restaurant, established over 50 years ago, and the food is awesome (and incredibly filling, hence the no-breakfast thing). Last time we were here, we ate Diethnes and Ichi Ban Boshi on the same day - mistaaaaake.

After a delicious lunch, we wrapped up our trip with some more shopping and last-minute Christmas-gift-hunting. We went for another walk in Hyde Park, then headed back to the hotel to pack before the gig we were going to**.

Thus tragically ended our Sydney holiday! We took the train to the airport at ass o'clock the next morning, and were back in Brisvegas by around 10.30am. (I went straight to work, it was awful.) Overall verdict was that it was totally worth it, though. An early-December mini-break is a great way to relax in advance of the Christmas season, especially if you can go somewhere low-key, and enjoy yourself with lots of good food and good shopping.*** Merry Christmas, folks!


*I tried to work out what these instruments were, but I'm really not sure. Meanwhile, how hilarious are sousaphones?

**Alexisonfire, on their Farewell Tour, at the Hordern Pavillion. Too excellent to write about.

***I guess other people like to exercise or do things on their holidays or something? I don't know. For me, walking places and drinking beer and eating things equals good times, what can I say?

New Years Eve 2012

NYE is over rated. Let's just all admit that and get on with things. I love the reason for celebrating because it is so universal and uncontroversial. I wish NYE was the best night of the year. But it just isn't.

Which is why, to mark the passing of 2012, Jane and I decided that what we really wanted to do was eat, drink and be merry in good company and that's All. For a while it was just the two of us, but as it turned out we had quite a few friends at a loss for something to do. In the end, 13 NYE orphans gathered at my apartment for an end of year feast.

 Taking up every available square inch of bench space to prepare.

 Before dinner, we made all our guests sit down to watch 'Dinner For One', a German NYE tradition.

If you haven't seen it, you're missing out on one of life's simple pleasures.

 Friends up from Melbourne. 

I've never cooked for 13 before and I was worried I'd under-catered. In fact, I had a whole extra dish that I didn't complete because it required filo pastry and I forgot to read the damn instructions (you have to take filo out of the freezer a day early and prepare it, etc. blah blah). I went a bit nuts on using recipes I've never tried before from recipes books I got for Christmas, but I think it's fun to discover new favourites. Fortunately, there was plenty of food and no complaints about the cuisine.

 Waiting for the cook.

Tucking in. It looked better than this photo, honestly. 

As always, resolutions came up in conversation. None of us had made any and were generally not keen to commit ourselves. Personally, I think resolutions work best if you have a plan for how to keep them. I have a lot of goals for 2013 but no real 'resolutions'. The best suggested resolution for the night, and which I think I might adopt was 'Get my shit together'. Simple, effective.

One project for the year I have decided to take up is based on an idea I read about that seemed appropriate for me. I had a rough 2012, not a lot of good stuff seemed to happen and it was generally very draining. So my project for 2013 is to write down in a little notebook whenever anything positive occurs and then at the end of the year I can read all the good things that happened to me and remind myself that life is great. They don't have to be big happenings. For instance, in there at the moment is a really sweet compliment someone paid me and a reminder of a glorious day I spent at the beach. Life has few big happy moment but lots of little happy moments and they are just as important to remember. 

My notebook.

 Happy New Year Everyone!

Sydney and the Excellent Weekend! (Pt 1)

So, I have this buddy, and we go to lots of live music gigs together. Every other year, we try to find a gig in Sydney, to give us an excuse to go down for a relaxing weekend of food, beer and shopping. Oh, and whatever the gig is. We stay in the CBD, and this time we had a super-fun four days at the beginning of December, to give us strength to face the holiday season.

Saturday

Charlie and Co. Roadside
Chicken and Bacon Burger

We arrived in the CBD around midday, and checked in to the hotel, etc. Then, the first place we went after that was the new Westfield. Sydney CBD gets hella busy in the weeks before Christmas, and this new shopping centre was no exception. Great burgers in the food court, though.

Itty Bitty Basement Bar Crawl
Saturday evening, around 5pm, we took ourselves out. I had been researching places to drink, and found a bunch within a ten block radius that, coincidentally, were mostly basement bars. Sydney might be having some kind of trend or something, I don't know. Anyway, I don't know if what we did could strictly be called a bar crawl, exactly, but we went to four bars in one evening, and they were all downstairs or in basements, so...

• The Assembly: Come in off Kent Street, or go downstairs in 501 George Street. Assembly is a great bar, hidden away, with dark timber interior and some nice beers on offer. There's an "outdoor" beer garden in the foyer outside, with astroturf and a tiny picket fence. 
• Mojo Record Bar is in the basement at 73 York Street; go downstairs, past the record store, and through the door to the underground bar. As a huge music fan, this was possibly the best bar I've ever been to in my entire life. The walls are covered in band and gig posters, and framed cover art from classic LPs. The music they play is awesome; we heard Talking Heads, Nirvana, James Brown, Stone Roses...
• Stitch Bar is also on downstairs on York Street; keep an eye out for the sewing machines in the tiny front entry way. Once you're through the tiny doors, they've got a surprisingly amount of space, with a great old-time-speakeasy aesthetic and a big old bar as soon as you walk in. The bar serves some amazing drinks, from cocktails to high class whiskey, and while we didn't try the food, the stuff other people had looked (and smelled) really awesome. 
• Grandma's Bar: Is tiny. And furnished like it's half Tiki bar, half your nana's house. Hence the name, probably. The bar itself is cramped and a little hot, but the cocktails and jaffles (jaffles!*) they serve make it worth it.  

So, we had a fairly glorious start to the weekend, and even though it made it a touch harder to get up on Sunday morning, an itty bitty basement bar crawl is totally worth doing!

Sunday 

The following morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed at a relatively reasonable hour and walked down to Circular Quay to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art. Sadly, most of the levels were closed, as they were hanging new exhibits that were about to open (which we would miss out on, bad timing). 

(Photo from lightswimming.com (There's some excellent
photos of the exhibit on that blog.))

But what was available was very good. They were showing Volume One: MCA Collection, which is a selection of the gallery's permanent collection, specifically pieces by Australian and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. There were drawings by Vernon Ah Kee, video art and paintings by Richard Bell, sculptural pieces by Ross Manning and Nicholas Folland, photography by Rosemary Laing and Tracey Moffat... I found it a strong and unique collection.

After the gallery visit, we walked around to Opera Kitchen for lunch by the water, and then took a ferry ride around to Darling Harbour, via the Luna Park stop. (Is it just me, or is the fact that the Luna Park clown face thing has eyelashes really creepy?)

We walked around the harbour for a while, then headed up into the CBD again for some shopping. I have a huge weakness for Kinokuniya, the massive bookstore in the Galleries Victoria. I love it, I could stay there for hours. This time, I escaped with only two purchases - very restrained!

We decided to head to a bar for a drink - it was only 3pm in Brisbane, but that meant 4pm Sydney time, so it was a totally appropriate hour for a beer - and we found an old-man bar** on Park Street that was miraculously offering jugs of James Squire for $7.50. So we had a few of those, and sat around listening to Cold Chisel and Crowded House (and oddly Jurassic 5 and a Tribe Called Quest).  

Then: RAMEN. We went to Ichi Ban Boshi for dinner. This place is a favourite, and has been since our very first trip to Sydney. It's almost a tradition to go and eat our weight in delicious fresh ramen noodles; some trips we go more than once, and the extended belly you get from noodles and soup and beer is like a badge of honour. (Unfortunately, the restaurant is next to Kinokuniya. Fortunately, the bookstore was closed by the time we got back there.)

After delicious ramen, we rolled ourselves back home to our hotel room, and collapsed in front of the TV. We wanted to be in good form for the next day - you've got to pace yourself - so we took it easy.

Tune in for Part 2!

*I understand we have some international readers. For those of you who don't know, a jaffle is a grilled sandwich, but more awesome because it's made in a jaffle maker (which is almost like a waffle iron but for sandwiches). They usually contain cheese or some combination of ham, cheese and tomato, but you can also use anything from chicken to tinned spaghetti to bolognese sauce to apple and cinnamon sugar. These sandwiches (and experimenting with fillings for them) are a valuable childhood relic, and exactly the sort of thing your nana made for you because eating would shut you up for five minutes.

**Someone asked me what constitutes an old-man bar. An old man bar is the kind of bar where you get a wave of stale beer smell from the carpet as soon as you walk in. The kind where there's a drunk in the corner discussing things loudly with the bartender, regardless of whether said bartender is listening. The kind where there are TVs showing only sports, and they've always got specials on XXXX or Vic Bitter. The kind where half the exterior walls - and interior walls -  are covered in glazed tiles, the kind where the bathrooms are dodgy. Old-man bars. Good times.

100,000 Stars

Google has done some amazing modelling of the solar system, which shows the closest 100, 000 stars to the sun. (I think.) Anyway, it's AMAZING. You need Google Chrome to run it, I think, but it's totally worth it.

(Make sure you zoom all the way out, it's unbelievable. So huge!) (Also, make sure you click on the individual stars, there's heaps of info and a close-up graphic of what they look like!)

The Easiest Christmas Ice Cream Dessert Ever

I mean, come on, I make this. It'd have to be easy, or I'd never bother.

Just a little disclaimer, though, I didn't invent this recipe. I think I was told to make it by my mother, and she possibly got from a Gourmet Traveller or some other kind of food magazine. So, if I'm ripping someone off... Thanks for the awesome dessert recipe? It's delicious!

Now, here are the things you need to make this excellent dessert:

2 loaf pans or bread tins (although I guess you could make a round one if you wanted...)

Baking paper

1 large mixing bowl

A couple of sharp knives and a mixing spoon

A cutting board

A freezer

Now, I've just realised that I never measure any of the ingredients, so here's a vaguely-guessed-at list:

• 2 x 1L Sara Lee French Vanilla Ice Cream
• About 300grams Morello Cherries (buy a jar and use as many as you want) (oh my god, do yourself a favour and get the pitted ones, seriously, pitting is a nightmare) 
• About 200grams of fruit mince (I usually get Robertson's, and you need about half a jar)
• A handful or two of dry roasted almonds (sorry, it's useless of me, but I can't remember how big the bag is that I usually buy) (maaaaaybe 200grams? Ish?)

First, line your tins with the baking paper - you'll thank me later when you're not trying to excise your dessert from a frozen metal tin.

Assemble your ingredients! Keep one of the tubs of Sara Lee ice cream and stick the other one in the freezer. (If you're in Australia, chances are the tub will be appropriately melty by the time you have to use it, but if not, there's always the microwave.)

Chop up your cherries into small-ish chunks, but not too fine. Put them into the mixing bowl with the whole tub of slightly-melted ice cream, and mix together (just with a spoon, not a mixmaster or anything). 

Pour the ice cream and cherries mixture into the tins, filling only to half-way. (You end up with a lot of ice cream, and I suppose you could halve this whole recipe to make one tin, but I'm usually making it for the whole extended family, so.)

Put the tins into the freezer and get out your second tub of Sara Lee. Wash out your mixing bowl - take as long as you want, to give your second lot of ice cream a bit of time to melt, and the ice cream in the tins more time to set in the freezer.

Chop up the dry roasted almonds - again, not too fine, you want them big enough to crunch. You need enough to distribute nicely through your second lot of ice cream. Mix the nuts and ice cream in the mixing bowl, and add some of the fruit mince. (Essentially, you're adding all of this stuff to taste, so put in as much or as little as you like.)

Get the tins out of the freezer, and pour the nuts-fruit-mince-ice-cream mixture in on top of the cherry mixture, to make a second layer.

Put everything back in the freezer, and tidy up!

You'll probably be making this well before your meal, but just so you know, you need to give the ice cream at least an hour to set properly. If you're leaving it in the freezer over night, make sure to cover it or seal off the tins somehow.

When you're ready for dessert, up-end the tins onto a serving dish and pull off the baking paper. Don't scoop - serve in slices, to make sure everyone gets both flavours. Enjoy!

Important summer recipes

Ah, summer. Heat and humidity. Swimming pools and sunburn. Christmas and Australia Day. Good times.

I don't know about you, but I'm girding my loins for the upcoming party season. I don't actually plan to host anything, but I'll attend! In honour of my attendance at your parties, I've decided it's time for some more recipes! Here are some delicious things you could make this summer:

Avocado Lime and Coriander Salsa

Avocado, Lime and Coriander Salsa - fresh, delicious, and perfect with tortilla chips and beer.

Spaghetti Caprese - Fresh basil, tomato, mozzarella - simple and classic.

The Best Healthy Tacos - I don't really know why I think of tacos as summery, but they are. Deal with it.

Lemon, Chicken and Parmesan Rissoles - I haven't made these, but they look tasty!

Jamie Oliver's Shell Pasta with Peas and Bacon - Haven't had this in a while, and honestly, it's not really that summery. But it's light and delicious, plus there's bacon. You cannot go wrong with bacon.

Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wraps with Avocado and Blue Cheese Sauce

Pasta Primavera

Pasta Primavera - Okay, so technically you make this with spring vegetables, but it's not like that really matters in Australia, right?

Grilled Pork Tenderloin Glazed with Bourbon and Molasses - BBQ, anyone?

Fresh Spring Rolls with Chicken and Avocado






Can't have a party without dessert!

Classic Ice Cream Sandwiches

Nectarine, Marscapone and Gingersnap Tart

Banana "Ice Cream" with Toasted Coconut, Almonds and Dark Chocolate

Aaaaand now for the drinks!

Blackberry Gin Fizz

Blackberry Gin Fizz

Honeycrisp Apple Sangria

Pimms Italiano, with Mint, Lemon, Cucumber and Fernet Branca

And beer. Always beer.

If you're all very, very lucky, I might post one of my favourite recipes, for a layered ice-cream cake with cherries, roast almond and fruit mince - perfect for Christmas!

The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters

In September, I was given a Kindle for my birthday. In October, I finally got it out of its box and started to use it (it always takes me a while, I'm not one of those people ripping it open and booting it up on the day). I went through the set-up, then started looking through the catalog to find a book to read while travelling to Melbourne. I searched on a few authors whose writing I knew I liked, and came across The Chemickal Marriage, by Gordon Dahlquist. At that point, I'm pretty sure I made a noise only dogs could have heard. It was the third in a series of books I had been dying to finish.

Because, you see, way, way back, in the beginning of time (in 2006), I worked with a woman and we talked about books a lot. We'd read promos for this book called The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters, and thought it sounded like a good time. Then we discovered that the publisher was releasing the book as a serial; once you subscribed, they would mail you an installment, one week at a time - similar to the way Victorian folks used to get Charles Dickens books, for example. These special installments were only available in the UK, but my friend had an aunt there, so after a few months, I received a lovely package of slender blue volumes in the mail.

The fabulous binding was only a preview: The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters is a classic adventure-mystery, with bits of steampunk science fiction/fantasy and erotica thrown in. Set in a psuedo-Victorian-era city, the story follows three main characters - Cardinal Chang*, an assassin with bad eyesight and a fondness for poetry; Miss Celeste Temple, a stubborn, independent plantation heiress; and Doctor Abelard Svenson, a chain-smoking army surgeon attached to the prince of his country as he travels. Separately, the three come into contact with a sinister cabal intent on enslaving the upper eschelons of society and taking control of Europe, and when our heroes' paths' inevitably cross, they team up, intent on thwarting the plot. The glass of the title refers to the cabal's main weapon; a blue alchemical glass that can be used to steal memories and record them for others to experience. Using the glass also produces a feeling of erotic euphoria, ensnaring the hapless user in an addictive hallucination. As the story progresses, so does use of the glass, until a shocking and astounding alchemical transformation takes place!

And so, this began my interest in these books. The sequel, The Dark Volume, came out in 2008, and was an intriguing continuation of the story. It had an infuriating Empire Strikes Back-style ending, though, hence my excitement about the 2012 release of The Chemickal Marriage. And now I've finally read them all, and honestly, I found the conclusion totally satisfying. I thought the style and quality of the story and writing was consistent all the way through (it's always so disappointing when the end of a series is crap compared to the beginning, but that's not the case here) and overall, I find these books such an entertaining read!

They won't be what everyone wants in a novel, I suppose. The story is packed with a million characters, and driven by a crazy series of events - death-defying escapes, betrayals, encounters with members of the cabal, plus the detective-style work the three heroes are doing, trying to uncover the cabal's plot. Each chapter throughout the whole series is also told from the perspective of a different main character, rolling through them in a cycle, which has the advantage of uncovering a wider view of the overall conspiracy than a single perspective could portray, and also exploring how the main characters appear to other people, which is always intriguing. Of course, Dahlquist ends just about every chapter right on a cliffhanger, which is completely infuriating (and excellent). The books are also written in a slightly Victorian style, very much after Dickens, or maybe HG Wells or Jules Verne, and the language sometimes contributes a certain convolutedness for the modern reader.

However, if you can get used to the mannered writing, free-wheeling story and the perspective switches, there's plenty to reward you. Conspiracy, steampunk science, dissolute aristocrats, masked balls and murders. The villains, dastardly though they are, are a lot of fun - there's the Comte d'Orkanz, aristocrat-slash-artist-slash-mad-scientist and the creator of the science behind the blue glass. There's Francis Xonck, younger brother of a wealthy arms maker, who plays at being another dissolute aristo but has a greater ambition within the cabal than he pretends. Then there's the Contessa di Laquer-Sforza, a beautiful, enigmatic con-woman, orchestrating and manipulating even within the cabal. There are others, each convinced they are in control of their conspiracy, and the whole thing is naturally a house of cards, just waiting for the co-conspirators to betray each other.

I also really liked all the main characters. Miss Temple isn't a cookie-cutter heroine, and she refuses to be anyone's damsel in distress. She does start out searching for the fiance who threw her over, but continues to fight the cabal long after her interest in him has dissolved. Doctor Svenson is more reserved, even when the story is from his perspective, but his dry wit and ongoing loyalty, even to those who may not deserve it, becomes a welcome relief in such a mad-cap story. His chain-smoking and fear of heights also humanize him in appealing ways. And then there's Cardinal Chang, the consummate antihero; a talented assassin with a well-hidden reserve of courage and self-sacrifice.

So, if you feel in the mood for a thrilling, action-packed story, of sinister villains and a conspiracy that accelerates like a runaway train until it threatens to unseat an entire country, escalating to a horrifying, epic yet deeply personal climax at the end of The Chemickal Marriage, maybe these are the books for you...

(The Guardian has naturally written a better review than mine, if you need further convincing.)

Note: I hope they don't try to make a Hollywood movie out of these books. They'd have to tear them apart, and that would be such a shame. A really well-produced miniseries, on the other hand, akin to Game of Thrones or something, could be amazing.

*Not a real cardinal.