It’s been a while since I’ve done a link love post here on Yummy Lummy.
I want to share some link love with two bloggers for whom there is a canine connection. Both own dogs and one blogs about her dog every day. The other blogs about a couple of webcomics she writes and she has a dog. I know this may be a tenuous connection but I needed a hook for the title and I communicate with each of them nearly every day through social media.
Jennifer P
The first blogger is Jennifer P. I’ve mentioned Jennifer a few times previously on Yummy Lummy. Jennifer is an independent author of fiction for children and teens as well as the creator of a couple of webcomics. She is very artistic.
Sarah and Choppy
The second blogger is Sarah. Sarah likes to travel with her dog Choppy. Although of late, Sarah and Choppy have limited their travel to daily walks.
The nice thing is that Jennifer and Sarah know each other.
The Canine Connection
So what’s the canine connection with Jennifer I hear you ask? Jennifer has recently started posting to Instagram and she has a great Vimeo channel. A recent video (on her Patreon site) was of her dog, Siggi going on a walk. Siggi has this bright blue illuminated collar which he wears to increase his visibility on footpaths. Jennifer has mentioned that sometimes cyclists ride on footpaths and it sounds like little Siggi can be easily missed. The collar is like a high visibility jacket.
Webcomics
Jennifer has a couple of webcomics and derives some money from a patreon account and the sale of webcomic-related merchandise. One of the comics, viz., Little Monster Girl is not safe for work NSFW. There’s nothing particularly offensive about LMG except it’s about Zela a little monster girl and her adventures in her comic realm. The thing that makes LMG NSFW is that she’s usually topless and she has large boobs. Then there is Lulu, Lulu has no knees and she has even larger boobs.
So Sarah has a dog, viz., Choppy (F) and a cat, viz., Schooner (M) [BTW Jennifer has a cat too, viz., Mr Ashe]. Choppy features in four blog genres.
Where’s Choppy? In these posts Sarah shoots a photograph of a scene with Choppy in it. It’s usually not obvious where Choppy is. It’s the reader’s task to find Choppy. Sarah usually follows up within a few days with the location.
Howlidays are basically memes where Sarah hangs a sign around Choppy’s neck with a funny quote or slogan. Sarah also writes on a card and places it in front of Schooner’s fore paws. I’m guessing Schooner won’t let anything hang around his neck. The words on the card are usually a smart reply to the words on the sign around Choppy’s neck. Sometimes there are outtakes suggesting Schooner is very much his own cat. I’m hoping for some video violence in the future to add some excitement!
Dog walk challenges are daily posts with a photograph of at least Choppy or a scene on Sarah’s walks plus some walk statistics.
Corny dog jobs are irregular, associated often with holidays, but consist of up to a handful of memes featuring Choppy, usually in some fancy dress and jokes written in meme form. Most of these will give you a giggle, some make cause you to scratch your head and occasionally you will LMAO.
Choppy is a very forgiving girl and I often wonder about the relationship between her and Sarah!
I know you want to know what I’ve eaten and what else I’ve photographed this week!
Last night I caught up with a friend from the Northern Territory. She’s now a rural and remote general practitioner but when I knew her she was an excellent medical laboratory scientist who I worked with across the NT. She was in town for the Rural Medicine Australia conference. About nine of us dined at Aubergine. The reservation was set for 8.30 pm. That’s the time I go to bed. I was surprised I stayed awake but it was a fantastic night. I had so much fun. The food was also fantastic. We had a four-course meal plus canapes.
Salad of local asparagus, crispy quail egg, grilled avocado and toasted buckwheat.
Lamb rump and sweetbreads, broad beans, black garlic and celtuce.
Beef rib eye, mustard butter, cippolini onion, pumpkin and zucchini.
Brown butter ice cream, almond praline, and frozen lemon myrtle milk.
No photographs because I was too busy talking and eating.
Click on the play button above for the audio podcast. The YouTube video is below.
Pork and cabbage soup on Canberra labour day 2016, what a great idea! A great way to use leftover slowly cooked pork shoulder.
It’s been two long weekends in a row. Not a bad thing. This weekend also marked the beginning of daylight saving in some states and the Australian Capital Territory. Getting an extra day to manage a slightly earlier start is a good thing.
The weather in Canberra has been good. On Saturday and today, we’ve had rain and overcast skies. Sunday was bright, shiny and relatively warm. I managed to get out for a walk around Lake Ginninderra and shoot a couple of photographs. I wanted to play with some new software. It seemed to produce a couple of nice pictures.
Lake Ginninderra photographs
The cabbage soup
On Sunday, I put a boneless pork shoulder in the slow cooker and had a nice simple pork and cabbage dinner. Today I used some of the leftover pork and boiled some cabbage along with some coconut milk to make a nice soup.
What went into the cabbage soup
Leftover pork shoulder in bite sized chunks
A quarter of a small drumhead cabbage finely shredded
One packet of salt reduced French onion soup
Use a single jalapeño pepper and red chilli sliced with the seeds included
Two hundred and seventy millilitres of coconut milk
How to put the cabbage soup together
In a large saucepan boil the cabbage and French onion soup until the cabbage is soft.
Toss in the pork and bring it back to the boil for a couple of minutes to heat the pork through.
Drain out most of the water and add the coconut milk and bring it to the boil and then turn down the heat and allow it to simmer for a few minutes.
Ladle the soup into a large bowl and then garnish with the chillies and peppers along with some chopped chives.
How does the cabbage soup taste?
It was pretty good. I thought about adding some curry powder, but the chilli and peppers added the right amount of spice while the coconut milk gave it a creamy texture.
Final words
As a kid, I didn’t like cabbage very much but as an adult, I’ve come to enjoy it as a vegetable that can absorb flavours much like pasta can. While boiling it removes the nutritional value, the fibre is still in it and it makes a great filler.
If you try this recipe please let me know what you think.
The 2016 National Clubs Carnival for Gymnastics Australia is being held in Bendigo at the Bendigo Stadium at the moment. It’s the reason for my road trip. My two youngest daughters, viz., Miss15 and Ms19 competed. Well, Ms19 competed and Miss15 got a 0.00 score because a few weeks ago she fractured her fifth metacarpal in her dominant hand while training on the balance beam. It was a clean fracture which hopefully will heal without repercussions. Anyway, Miss15 was listed to compete, so on the score sheet, she scored 0.00 for all apparatus. Looks silly really. She was allowed on the floor with her teammates so she helped with video recording their routines and doing other tasks to assist her coaches.
Ms19 competed injury-free and did well in the L10 division.
Bendigo
Given Bendigo is a little over 600 kilometres from Canberra it was a good reason for me to take a few days recreation leave and drive down on Wednesday 14 September. I’ve never driven to Bendigo, I’ve never been to Bendigo, I knew almost nothing about Bendigo. What I did know was it is a large country town in Victoria and had a start in gold mining. I learnt in high school there was a lot of racial tension with the Chinese who came in and extracted gold from the waste left behind by others.
[Read with sarcasm] Being Victoria, I knew they speak another language. They refer to things like snot blocks and potato cakes. I knew I had to be careful amongst these aliens. I knew I could ask for a vanilla slice but they wouldn’t have a clue what a potato scallop is. I figured if they didn’t know what a potato scallop is they probably didn’t know how to cook a decent one anyway. For confused readers, I wrote this paragraph with heavy sarcasm, after all, I was born and bred from the greatest of the Australian states, viz., Queensland and lived for twelve years in the greatest of Australian territories, viz., the Northern Territory of Australia.
The plan
Before embarking on this trip I consulted with a close colleague from another government agency who is widely regarded as a vanilla slice connoisseur with an excellent knowledge of rural Victoria and New South Wales. I even made an MS Excel spreadsheet containing my extensive ‘research’ findings. I passed this on to my friend and his only warning was to lock my car in one of the towns I mentioned.
The plan for the drive from Canberra to Bendigo was to leave early and have breakfast on the road in Gundagai. This nearly came unstuck because Apple in its wisdom released iOS 10 on the morning of Wednesday 14 September. Being an early adopter (but not brave enough to use β versions) I woke up at 4 am to download iOS 10. Bloody hell, Apple also wanted me to download an updated version of iTunes which was >250 MB. iOS 10 was >1 GB. My ADSL is pathetically slow so I only managed to update my iPad and I was late leaving my apartment at 6.15.
First stop
My first stop was the town of Gundagai. I’d been to Gundagai before and seen the dog on the tucker box. Would you believe my kids didn’t know about the dog on the tucker box? What do they teach kids in school these days? I had decided I’d have a coffee and some sort of carbohydrate-laden product for breakfast. I went with a scone and butter. I did this with trepidation. I have irritable bowel syndrome and my gastrocolic reflex is reasonably good and it is the reason I usually never leave ‘home’ without eating, even if it’s for a morning walk. Being caught short is a constant fear for IBS sufferers.
The Gundagai Bakery is pretty nice. The person who served me was very friendly and I got a large scone, some butter and a decent flat white coffee for $4.50. That was the best bargain of the trip.
I got to Tarcutta and the urge to purge struck. Say no more I hear you think!
I posted a photograph to Twitter and mentioned my dunny stop. I received a mention from a fellow food blogger who tweeted when she was younger her father frowned on her use of the word dunny. I like that as an adult I can be as vulgar as I want.
By the time I got to Holbrook it was raining cats and dogs. I couldn’t see the submarine out the window as I drove. I figured it had been carried away by the storm water runoff. When I got to the Holbrook Bakery the gutters and sidewalk were like a white water rafting course. I really hate having wet shoes and socks when driving. Oh well I thought, I’m here for a reason, having wet shoes isn’t the end of the world.
Holbrook Bakery in the rain
English breakfast tea and vanilla slice
So this was my first vanilla slice of the trip. It was pretty nice. Not the best in terms of texture, taste and consistency but I’d happily eat more of these.
Lunch
Two years ago I drove to Geelong for the National Clubs Carnival and broke up my trip by spending the night in Wangaratta. This time, I was driving straight to Bendigo so rather than dinner in Wangaratta it was lunch.
I decided to have lunch at Cafe Derailleur. The café has seating in the front behind windows, some outdoor seating and an area out the back. I chose to sit inside near the main counter. I was feeling a little peckish so I went with duck fat garlic potato wedges with miso mayonnaise, beetroot sweet potato fritter, avocado, mushrooms, poached egg and spinach, along with a beetroot ginger carrot apple juice. It was pretty good. A word of warning, though. Having eaten a beetroot fritter and enjoyed a beetroot drink, don’t be surprised if you do both you may have a little scare in the bathroom the following day, especially if your tired and feeling a little vague. I’m glad I don’t need to visit the endoscopist again.
Afternoon tea
I had never heard of Violet Town before last week when I started planning this little holiday adventure.
As I arrived I noticed a nice Lions Park with public amenities so I stopped for a dunny break before afternoon tea.
The Violet Town Café had a nice looking vanilla slice in the display cabinet. I could see the passionfruit seeds in the custard and the icing. I had to have one. I really like a little passionfruit in my vanilla slices. While I also like a pink icing, it’s the passionfruit I really like.
Comfort Inn Julie-Anna Bendigo
I chose to stay at the Comfort Inn Julia-Anna on Lake Weeroona. I got a room with a spa bath. While it hasn’t been a really cold winter in Canberra, I’ve been crook for a while and I was looking forward to a daily soak in a spa bath.
This is a short video of my room
Dinner
I had thought I might go to the Bouchon Bendigo for dinner but I wasn’t feeling the best and figured I’d have dinner in the motel restaurant. When I checked in, the person at reception mentioned how much effort they’ve been putting into getting the restaurant up to a really high standard.
The menu looked good. I went with the parmesan crusted braised lamb shoulder with pea purée and mashed potato. It was delicious. I really enjoyed the mouthfeel of the crispy parmesan crust on the little brick of compressed lamb shoulder meat.
For dessert, I went with the vanilla cheesecake which came with chocolate soil and a raspberry coulis.
Thursday 15 September
Breakfast
Rather than have a motel breakfast, I went searching for a café. I had been told about The Dispensary in Chancery Lane but when I arrived it wasn’t open. I went for a little walk around to see if I could find anything open.
I came across Queen Victoria. Victorians really seem to like her.
Then I saw that the Pall Mall café was open and I went in and had Eggs Benedict. It was a pretty good breakfast.
My two youngest daughters, viz., Miss15 and Ms19 are gymnasts. They both compete for Delta Brisbane. Delta Brisbane has a very good record at national championships, regularly winning champion club. Unfortunately, Miss15 recently fractured the fifth metacarpal in her dominant hand. She did it while training. It was great that she was still permitted to travel with the team and help her Level 8 teammates. Both of them have had their share of injuries including fractures of vertebræ, elbows, and arms plus torn ligaments, tendons and muscles. It’s a tough sport but both of them love it so much. Ms19 is at Level 10 and was competing in the combined levels 9 and 10 division.
It was great seeing them both and spending some time with them. Needless to say, over the two days of competition for levels 7, 8 and 9/10 Delta Brisbane won the best club title for all three divisions.
I’ve created a SmugMug gallery of photographs that I shot during the event. I should explain the images are not that good. I was some distance from the competition floor and so I cropped these photographs considerably and had to use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to reduce a lot of noise. I was using a 24–240 mm f/3.5–6.3 zoom lens and shot at 1/500 second with the ISO at 6400 and exposure compensation at +1 stop.
The gallery will run as a slideshow automatically. There are 25 images and they change every 3 seconds.
This is a video of Ms19’s uneven bar routine from Thursday 15 September
Dinner
After the first night of competition, I was again feeling a little poorly so ate in the motel restaurant. This time I went for the duo of pork. This consisted of a
crumbed rillettes of pork shoulder plus a piece of braised pork belly. This was served with sweet potato purée and a ball of spinach. This was a particularly delicious meal. The crackling was nice and the fat had been rendered out nicely.
Friday 16 September
Breakfast
I slept very poorly. My snoring was out of control and my chronic cough kept me awake most of the night. I decided rather than going in search of another café I would eat breakfast at the motel.
The poached eggs with Hollandaise sauce, smoked salmon, and spinach was delightful to look at and delicious to eat.
Thursday and Friday Lunch and Friday dinner
The best sporting event meal I know is potato gems and chicken salt. The chips at Bendigo Stadium didn’t look that enticing. I could have gone out between events on Friday evening but I had a really good seat and I didn’t want to lose it. In addition, Ms21 made a surprise appearance. It turns out Ms19 had decided to retire from gymnastics after 16 years of training and competing. This was to be her last competition and with each apparatus I could see she was looking happier with the completion of each routine. Would you believe I spent $16 on three potato gems meals!
After the trophy presentation on Friday night, four gymnasts announced their retirement from the sport with Ms19 being one of them. When I got a chance to congratulate her, I started crying and couldn’t stop. All of us had leaking eyes. Gymnastics has been a major part of her life for 16 of her 19 years. It’s helped give her discipline and purpose. My Mum often says that Ms19 is very much like me. Dogged stubbornness and determination. I’ve often said, I’ve never seen anyone so young with the mental toughness of Ms19.
Saturday 17 September
Friday night ended late and well past my bed time. I had another crapulent sleep. I had planned to leave Bendigo at about 6.30 which meant I would need to be out of bed at about 5.30 given I hadn’t packed and I wanted one last spa bath.
After being awake until about 3.30 I fell asleep and woke at 6.30 with a start. I was running late. I still had a bath and was out of the motel room by 7.30.
Breakfast
I decided I would skip breakfast in Bendigo and planned to eat something in Benalla. Just before I got there though the instant coffee I had in the motel room kicked in so a rest stop was needed.
My target for breakfast was Hides Bakery. I got there a little after 9 and requested a coffee and scrambled eggs with bacon on avocado spread sourdough toast.
Morning tea
Before leaving Hides Bakery I bought a vanilla slice to go. I found a rest stop halfway between Wangaratta and Wodonga and enjoyed the treat. It was really nice.
Lunch
I’d promised myself that on this adventure I would also enjoy a meat pie or two or three. Surprisingly, that hadn’t happened. I went in search of a good meat pie. My search led me to Henri’s Bakery in Wodonga where I enjoyed a minted lamb pie. It was a perfect meat pie. Not too hot, chunky meat and recognisable vegetables.
Coffee stop
My final planned break on my journey was the Interchange Café in Tarcutta. To be honest, I was relieved when I entered the café to see a display case bereft of custard filled treats. No vanilla slices and no other pastries that looked appetising. Instead I had a small coffee. It was very good. I really needed it. I had started to feel very tired driving.
How was the drive?
I really like driving and despite not feeling the best, the drive to and from Bendigo was enjoyable. There was a lot of rain on the way south and on occasion there was sufficient water on the road that I had to slow down and carefully drive across the few centimetres of water that was flowing across the road surface. The roads in Victoria aren’t particularly good. There were a lot of pot holes to avoid.
I spent my hours in the car listening to podcasts. One of my favourite podcasts is Quackcast by Mark Crislip. Mark is an infectious diseases physician from the United States. He does a great job at demolishing the quackery of alternative and complementary medicine including acupuncture, naturopathy, Chinese herbal medicine and homeopathy. You can find the podcast in the iTunes store and I assume in the Google play store if you’re an Android user.
Getting back to Canberra
On arriving I filled the car with diesel and went and bought some food for dinner. I made a simple ramen noodles and lup cheong meal. Nothing fancy. Just light and easy.
Final words
What can I say. I enjoyed the short holiday. A good drive is always fun.
My favourite meal was the duo of pork at the Comfort Inn Julie-Anna.
My favourite vanilla slice was the takeaway treat from Hides Bakery and eaten on the side of the road.
My favourite moment was hugging Ms19 at the end of her competition and telling her how proud I am of her.
Every time I look at this photograph it brings tears to my eyes. Ms19 has been a gymnast for sixteen of her nineteen years. It’s taught her discipline. It’s helped her develop an understanding of physical fitness. It’s made her powerful and strong. Most importantly it’s developed her as an individual and as a member of a team. This year she captained Queensland at the national championships. A lot of people criticise gymnastics because of the injuries, it’s true gymnastics get injured but the benefits far outweigh the injuries. Well done Ms19 I love you so much and I am so proud of you.
Have you been to Bendigo?
What did you think? What did you eat? What did you do?
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So in this post I’m going to do a weekly wrap up and highlight when Australian asparagus is featured.
Sunday 4 September
Last weekend was pretty wet. I managed to get out for a walk around Lake Ginninderra and shoot some photographs.
The blossoms are looking good.
It was a bright and beautiful morning in Canberra and on the lake.
For dinner, I slowly roasted a shoulder of lamb with the bone in. I had it in the oven in a heavy casserole for four hours at 150 °C. It was so succulent.
Monday 5 September
Work was good. I have been working on a new matter which has engaged some areas of my brain that I haven’t used for a while.
You’ll also recall from last week’s post that one of my hospital colleagues gave me a book as a gift. It is a very special book and it helped me complete my collection of editions of the “Manual of Clinical Microbiology”.
For dinner, I had a simple meal after a big weekend of eating. A simple piece of salmon with some coleslaw.
Tuesday 6 September
My package of asparagus arrived via Australia Post. Vikki had arranged five bunches, one large bunch of luscious spears, two medium bunches, and two mini bunches. These were in a reusable bubble bag.
Vikki had also arranged for a Media Release and a fact sheet on the nutritional value of asparagus.
So on Tuesday night for tea I had a medium sized bunch of asparagus plus some salmon.
Wednesday 7 September
I had a busy day. I had some heavy reading and writing to do. I didn’t even record how I made my dinner.
Normally I have Chicken Maryland on Wednesday and Thursday evenings but when I was shopping the previous weekend there weren’t any single pieces so I bought a packet of Coles brand pork sausages (six sausages) and ate three snags with a medium sized bunch of asparagus.
Thursday 8 September
I received a nice surprise in the mail. It was a book celebrating “60 years of Aiming High”. My primary school, Stafford Heights State School, held a celebration last weekend in Brisbane. I didn’t attend but I bought a book. I had contributed to it with a couple of pages of memories. It’s been good reading some stories from friends and teachers.
For dinner, I made curry pork sausages and asparagus using the large luscious bunch of asparagus.
Friday 9 September
For dinner, I had surf and turf (rump steak and prawns) from the Canberra Southern Cross Club Jamison.
Saturday 10 September
For breakfast, I had a fried egg on a piece of fried bread with some smashed avocado.
For lunch, I had a bunch of mini asparagus with some crispy bacon and a fried egg.
In the afternoon I went for a walk and shot some photographs.
For dinner, I had some leftover lamb from last Sunday’s dinner plus some pearl barley couscous and the final bunch of asparagus (a mini bunch).
Australian asparagus is tops
You should try it. If you haven’t tried asparagus, it’s worth a go. It’s easy to cook and great to eat. Don’t forget you can get the AAC has a free cookbook at Download FREE e-cookbook.
Final words
I’m hoping I can get into a more regular blogging and vlogging rhythm soon. I’d really appreciate your visiting my YouTube channel, liking some videos and subscribing. The videos are short and I hope to make them more entertaining.
Thanks for visiting. Please check out the rest of Yummy Lummy. I’d love it if you shared this site with your friends.
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Tonight I’m writing a weekly wrap up of 3 highlights from this week plus a whole heap of other stuff
Saturday 27 August 2016
My youngest brother became Mr45
I started the day with avocado on toast
Lunch was a Garlo’s lean beef and mushroom meat pie
Dinner was a plate of beef burgers coated in crumbs made from Panko and fried shallots
Sunday 28 August 2016
I started with a nice walk around Lake Ginninderra
Breakfast was eggs Benedict with salmon
Lunch was another Garlo’s meat pie
Dinner was slowly roasted lamb shoulder
Monday 29 August 2016
A relatively uneventful day at work, busy but not hectic.
Dinner was salmon and prawns coated in crumbs made from panko and fried shallots
Tuesday 30 August 2016
Nothing to report from Work
Bad news
Miss15 broke the fifth metacarpal on her dominant hand while on the balance beam. This means she won’t be competing with Ms19 at the National Club Championships in Bendigo later in September. I am so sad for Miss15. She’s already had a couple of fractured vertebrae last year as well as an injured ankle.
Dinner was baked salmon with avocado on a bed of pearl barley couscous
Wednesday 31 August 2016
Highlight #1
Performance review time. I came away very happy.
Highlight #2
The plumber came and fixed a leak in my en suite hand basin, repaired the taps in my laundry and tightened the taps in my shower. For those querying, yes I could do this myself but all my tools are still in storage and as a renter I shouldn’t be doing my own running repairs.
Dinner was chicken Maryland with macaroni and Brussels sprouts
Thursday 1 September 2016
It wasn’t pay day so it wasn’t an exciting Thursday. I did have a good meeting though at Russel Offices.
Dinner was a piece of chicken Maryland on a bed of crispy crunchy ‘instant’ noodles with Brussels sprouts.
Friday 2 September 2016
Hospital day!
Highlight #3
I received a gift from a workmate who had just passed her Part I examinations for her Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. She bought me a first edition of the American Society for Microbiology’s Manual of Clinical Microbiology. I have every edition of the Manual but the first which was published in 1970. This made my day. I was so happy. In fact, this made my week.
Dinner was leftover lamb shoulder with red quinoa and brown rice done fried rice style except rather than soy sauce I used Worcestershire sauce for an English touch.
Saturday 3 September 2016
It was raining cats and dogs so no walking today.
Lunch was a Garlo’s sausage roll and beef and mushroom hot pie
Dinner was Coles Australian pork slowly cooked pork ribs
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