Week 52 2012 Christmas

2012/12/25 by Gary Lum

I hope I have one more post for 2012 to close out the year. This post however, will focus on the lead up and execution of Christmas 2012.

The last weekend was another quiet one. I didn’t have much to do besides wash clothes and clean the apartment. I’d completed all my Christmas shopping and so I enjoyed a weekend of lounging and watching DVDs. I ended up seeing the end of series three of Breaking Bad and watching what in the US is the first series of Strike Back. Apparently in the UK, there were six episodes shown before the US saw the seventh episode which it calls the first episode. I don’t understand the reasoning. The story can be found at IMDB and Wikipedia.

Because I was travelling for Christmas and New Year I needed to go through the contents of my refrigerator. Toasted sandwiches are always a good weekend lunch option.

Tomato, tinned red salmon and pumpkin seed bread.

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For dinner I had a scotch fillet steak.

I served it with a mango salad that also had salad leaves, cherry tomatoes and lots of Australian feta cheese. I made a light gravy from the marinade which was sherry, oil and soy plus some honey and mixed herbs and some minced garlic. I thickened it with some corn flour and used a little red wine to deglase my fry pan. I like my steak rare so this got about 90 seconds on each side and was rested for 10 minutes.

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On Saturday night a storm brewed but we didn’t see any rain. The clouds though were very pretty. I captured this image from my balcony but there were some much better ones from other IGers.

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I forgot to mention in my last post, that on Thursday evening when dining with my friends they gave me a book for Christmas.
http://garydavidlum.com/2012/12/22/week-51-2012-christmas-party-season/

I like watching Jamie Oliver on television and if you search this blog for Jamie Oliver you’ll see a number of references.
http://garydavidlum.com/?s=Jamie+Oliver&submit=Search
I’ve heard though with Jamie Oliver’s recipes that sometimes they’re wrong, that is, quantities can be significantly off. This doesn’t always get corrected. If you know enough to know that’s fine but if you’re pretty ignorant like me, that can spell disaster.

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WARNING Sad Image

One of the saddest images I’ve captured is this one. Last week I posted this image of a friendly blue tongued skink. Sadly it was run over in my apartment car park.

From last week

What I came across on Sunday morning.

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I love pistachios

Snack time.

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Another toasted sandwich for lunch.

This time with blue cheese because like bacon and butter, everything tastes better with blue cheese.

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On Sunday night I cleaned out the refrigerator.

Salmon with mango salad and blue cheese.

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Normally when I’m walking back from the post office you can see heaps of people at work.

Barren on Christmas eve.

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There are no calories for the next two weeks.

Caramel doughnut.

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I was tempted, but this was for a work friend.

Jam filled doughnut.

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Because a work mate was ill last week when we went to the snag stand, we went back with her on Monday.

Spicy cheese kransky on brioche. This was delicious. Our plan is to eat through the entire menu.

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I finished work early on Christmas eve and I went to the airport as soon as I could.

A White Christmas snack at the Qantas lounge.

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I also had a couple of chilli beef pastizzi in the lounge

They were a little hot.

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I managed to secure an upgrade on flight QF960. The flight was meant to leave a little after 1745 however a couple of storm cells hit Canberra and to keep the ground crew safe they were evacuated from the tarmac and we stayed in the aeroplane for more than an hour connected to the aerobridge. If you follow me on Twitter you’ll see were we able to use our telephones.

For dinner I had the crumbed beef. The crumb also contained feta cheese. While the beef was well done and tough, everything else was very nice.

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When I got to my parent’s place I put out presents for them and my girls (who I’ll see later this week).

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It’s Christmas Day. I had a poor night’s sleep, not through Christmas excitement, but because I’m sleeping on my childhood bed. Dad woke up early and we sat together for a couple of hours while he told me stories.

I had a light breakfast in anticipation of a big lunch. The breakfast of champions, vegemite on toast with a couple of coffees.

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And so lunch preparation begins…

This is chicken after we’d tightened the skin with boiling water.

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Mum made a 1000 islands dressing for our lunch time prawns. If you click on the image you can work out the ingredients in a chat with Hilah from hilahcooking.com

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The poultry preparation continued with a duck drying and draining.

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The bowl may not look elegant but that mattered nought.

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I love prawns.

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I could not help capture an after image.

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The duck had a reasonable neck attached. You can tell my intent by the strategically placed Chinese meat cleaver.

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I want a role on The Game of Thrones as an executioner.

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Because everything is better with bacon.

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Side by side, don’t they look a treat (and very cute too).

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Mum makes a mean stuffing. Check out
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s183/sh/b0224e03-ecac-4ec6-93cd-7f8246b75d18/45f16c08058a64d34147000cbd21095d
for the details. I had my eye on the Maryland at the top of the image. It has the cloaca attached. I love a chook’s cloaca when it’s been roasted.

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With the duck added. I like to cut the breast off and slice it. It makes it easier to eat because you bite end on into the grain of the meat. Do you see the size of the duck’s neck and cloaca? I’d already bagsed (
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bagsed
) them.

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Because of the small size of Mum’s kitchen and oven, rather than roasted vegetables, Mum made a potato bake yesterday and we heated it up in a small toaster oven at lunch time. We also had broccoli, asparagus and peas.

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This is my plate. Mum made a nice orange flavoured sauce too. It was sublime.

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The neck has such nicely flavoured meat. I also managed to dissect out the trachea too. This started a nice little chat on twitter and instagram.

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So that’s it for now. Mum decided against making a pudding or a pavlova. This evening we’ll have fruit and some cheese. I’m pretty grateful. I don’t really want to blow out. I can fit into a pair of shorts I like to wear at Christmas time so I’m happy holding back a little.

I hope everyone reading this blog had a wonderful time if you celebrate Christmas. I hope your day was full of happiness and peace and good food.

Merry Christmas friends,

Your friend and fellow blogger

Gaz

Things and places mentioned in this post

Kransky sausage
Wiki entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kranjska_klobasa

Strike Back
Wiki entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_Back_%28TV_series%29

IMDB entry
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1492179/

Pastizz
Wiki entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastizz

Another week in Instagram and schoolies week (garydavidlum.com)

Week 51 2012 Christmas party season

2012/12/22 by Gary Lum

Saturday night I went to a Christmas barbecue with some friends. It was a good night with lots of tasty food and good company. I’d like to say it was unseasonably cold, but this is Canberra. It’s snowed close by on a Christmas day before. What can I say, I’m looking forward to being in Queensland for Christmas where the weather is more to my liking.

Again like Friday night I was a bit slow with my iPhone and I didn’t capture images of the nibbles. There were lots of nibbles. Lots of nuts, dips, cheese, pâté, crackers, bread, chips, and stuff. For dinner we had a barbecue with steak, hamburger patties and sausages plus potato bake, coleslaw and other salads.

Like a lot of my previous posts I’m using images from my instagram profile. You can get more information on each image by clicking on it to see comments from other IGers.

The spread

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My plate

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Some of my friends queried my burger contents of steak, sausage, hamburger pat tie, coleslaw and potato bake. I thought it all went well together.

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For dessert we had pavlova.

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I was cold

I was cold. I’m glad I brought a hoodie and was given a wrap.

View the twitter conversation here and here and here

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I spent most of Sunday relaxing. I did a little grocery shopping and then got into watching series two of Breaking Bad. This is a surprisingly good series. Like The Walking Dead I’m addicted.

I felt pretty full from the night before so my breakfast and lunch was an iced coffee banana smoothie.

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You can tell it’s Christmas with cars wearing reindeer antlers and candy canes. I’m not a fan

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I love pineapple and a pineapple smoothie was in order for afternoon tea.

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I took home a left over potato bake from Saturday night so now I have potato bake for a few nights this week.

This meal was a piece of salmon, some potato bake and some salad.

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On Monday morning as I was checking out my post office box the new art was standing proud, all shiny and new.

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One of my work friends turned 32 on Monday.

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Monday evening’s dinner was a rasher of pork, some salad and some potato bake.

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I read today the new terms and conditions of use for Instagram. If Instagram wants to use my images I really don’t mind, I can’t imagine any of them are worthy. My only concern is that some of my images contain people and I may not always have permission to include them. Many IGers moved to Flickr. I received more e-mails from Flickr in the last few days than in the few years I’ve had an account.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/garydlum

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Tuesday night’s dinner was a piece of salmon, some salad and the last of the weekend’s potato bake. The drink is made from pineapple and mint leaves plus some lime cordial.

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On Wednesday I forgot to make my lunch.

This was a smoked salmon and capers quiche from Urban Bean Espresso Bar. It was very nice. The raspberry soft drink was also pretty good too.

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Food regret

Jess went out for doughnuts and I said yes. I shouldn’t have. It came from Breadtop in Woden. The Breadtop franchise has grown well in Australia. See below for details.

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A friendly visitor

This cute blue tongue lizard greeted me when I alighted from my car in the apartment garage.
Wikipedia entry

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Wednesday dinner was a pork rasher and mango salad. It was delicious.

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On Thursday we had our branch Christmas morning tea.

Many sections, branches and divisions have out of office get together. When we’ve tried that in the past something has gone wrong like a health emergency necessitating staff to return to the office. It’s just part of working in an emergency management team.

These were amazing. Cylinders of crunchy nutty brownie goodness topped with a chocolate ganache with a white chocolate tipped strawberry which is sitting in a white chocolate disc for stability. The person who made these has made some great strawberry based treats in the past, especially her chocolate drizzled strawberry and marshmallow kebabs. I think nearly everyone in the branch has a cooking or food bent. It’s amazing.

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Everyone in the branch received an end of the year award.

I think everyone knows I love capturing images of food and then posting them to Instagram.

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At lunch the other SES (Senior Executive Service) staff from the division went to lunch. We went to The Palette which is in the Beaver Galleries.

I’m sorry this is so blurry. I was so excited to be having crumbed lamb brains with a capers and vinegar side. The piquancy of the capers and vinegar offset the fattiness of the brains perfectly. The brains were lightly crumbed and not overcooked. Kept into small portions like these, the taste is delicious and not overpowering. Lambs brains brings back great childhood memories of Mum cooking crumbed lambs brains with a white sauce with onion and parsley.

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The Beaver Galleries are a landmark of Canberra art and culture. I’ve been there a couple of times now. The gallery is full of exquisite pieces. That said, the prices are very high.

One of my favourite food bloggers is Hannah of Wayfaring Chocolate fame. Earlier this year she did a review of sweet selection at The Palette

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The trifecta for Thursday was Christmas dinner with dear friends.

We started with freshly cooked prawns. These were cooked in sea water, yes sea water that had been specially collected.

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The main was a roast pork and vegetables. The crackling was sublime.

The peas were home grown in the garden along with the snow peas.

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For dessert we devoured a violet crumble semifreddo.

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While Friday was not the last day of work for 2012, it had a very holiday feel. Ursula, our branch executive assistant gave me a toy car filled with lollies for Christmas.

I played vroom vroom throughout the day.

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I moved offices as part of my new role. In my old office I had a big pin board on which I could hang my favourite flags. The top one is Queensland’s flag. A quick search of this blog will reveal how I feel about being a Queenslander and Queensland.

The bottom flag belongs to the Northern Territory of Australia. Brisbane may be my home town and I am a passionate Queenslander, however, Darwin is my spiritual home, it’s where my soul lives. For that reason the flag has always been hung upside down in my office. An upside down flag is a maritime distress signal. I want to return home. I expect Australian readers to recognise it’s upside down, for my non-Australian readers, the stars represent the Southern Cross and it is upside down.

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We’d heard some weeks ago about the Snag Stand. A new franchise from Sydney and Melbourne had opened two outlets in Canberra, one very close to where we work.

They cook and assemble onsite. It’s a pretty busy place.

The menu for the Sydney outlets is here and for the Melbourne outlets here. They don’t have the Canberra ones posted. I assume they are similar.

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We brought our food back to work.

I chose a Swiss Bratwurst. It was topped with a really yummy Sauerkraut

It was excellent. Not too big and not too salty.

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Last night I needed something light.

Organic free range chicken drumstick and salad.

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This morning on my walk I tried the new Instagram Mayfair filter when saying hello to the Owl Statue.

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I hope at the end of next week to write a short piece about 2012. It won’t be much. Hopefully I’ll be enjoying myself in Brisbane where it will be warm and moist.

Places and things mentioned in this post in more detail.

Breaking Bad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/

http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad

Breadtop

http://www.breadtop.com.au/

http://www.westfield.com.au/au/retailers/breadtop/woden

Google maps http://goo.gl/maps/Z5Bdv

View Larger Map

Beaver Galleries

http://www.beavergalleries.com.au/

Google maps http://goo.gl/maps/Di7Yr

View Larger Map

The Snag Stand

http://snagstand.com.au/

View Larger Map

http://www.westfield.com.au/au/retailers/snag-stand/woden

Google maps http://goo.gl/maps/Z5Bdv