The last week and a bit has been huge. On Thursday and Friday 25 and 26 October I was at Mt Macedon at a Disaster Intelligence Master Class run by the Australian Emergency Management Institute (AEMI). This was an excellent two days meeting new colleagues and networking.
On Sunday 28 October I flew back to Melbourne for another three nights stay. For the last few months I’ve been involved in the preparation for a week of meetings with international colleagues covering a week of meetings in Melbourne and Canberra. On Thursday I hosted a full day meeting with international visitors. I am so grateful to a small cadre of work mates who behind the scenes got all the logistics sorted out in quick time.
So my week has been full on and my eating has been atrocious. The only day when it approached okay was Thursday when I had some control over the food at the breaks and lunch. We served fruit platters and sandwiches with “healthful” fillings. On the other days when other agencies were in charge we enjoyed cream filled biscuits, cream filled pastries, doughnuts, cakes and slices. The lunches were also very filling.
To top off a very full and mentally stressful week I had arranged to visit my kids in Brisbane this weekend. That has meant a lot of fun and really very little time for rest and sleep. The other benefit has been a rebalance of my twitter statistics. Last week saw very little social media activity so I’ve made up for it over the weekend, especially on Twitter and Instagram.
Anyway, so here I am in Brisbane this weekend. What I had not realised was that my two younger brothers would also be in town. They were sorting some things out for my parents. To give you some context. I’m the eldest of three sons. Brother 2 is two years younger than me and Brother 3 is six years younger than me. Brother 2 is a medical practitioner based in Cairns and Brother 3 is in Brisbane’s building and construction industry.
At lunch Brother 2 sent me an iMessage asking if I wanted wonton for dinner. Earlier in the day we had discussed having dinner at Eatons Hill Hotel where Miss17 was doing work experience. They didn’t have a table so we elected to go to our tried and true Kedron-Wavell RSL. My guess is that Brother 2 and Brother 3 had a chat between themselves and cooked up a scheme, a scheme that would suit me just fine.
Brother 3 has become a master of wonton making. He has friends who ask him to make wonton for them. Brother 3 essentially follows Mum’s recipe. Brother 2 however, prefers a variation on Mum’s recipe. Brother 2 like me enjoys adding texture to our food. We’re also fans of coriander (cilantro) while Mum isn’t. Brother 2 tends to add raw finely sliced ginger and bamboo shoots to augment the crunch of the water chestnuts.
In the end we stayed with Mum’s recipe given we were eating with Mum and Dad.
While we were out Miss 17 needed to my a birthday card. I saw one that caught my eye.
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We also enjoyed a high carbohydrate lunch from a local Japanese Bakery.
Japanese bacon wrap
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Custard platypus
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After lunch we were in need of Ice Cream so we went to Cold Rock Ice Creamery at Chermside.
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I asked Miss15 to capture an image of me buying ice cream.
When we arrived back at my parent’s place you could smell the food preparation from the corridor.
As we entered we were confronted with a tower of wonton wrapper.
I wondered if they had bought enough. Eight packets of fifty wrappers.
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Brother 2 had bought some pork mince but it was too lean so he got some pork belly and hand minced it in the traditional family way. With two meat cleavers. This is the BEST way to mince meat. It also builds muscles and annoys neighbours and tests the sturdiness of kitchen tables.
Meat cleavers used to mince the pork belly.
The final filling. Go to my Mum’s recipe for the details.
As the team were getting into making the wonton Miss11 and Miss15 wanted to have a go.
Then the experts showed them how.
We had tray upon tray and made about 400 wonton
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The masters at work
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Before I drove Miss17 to work experienced she and I were given a tasting bowl at about 1500 AEST.
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When I got back dinner was ready and this is my first serving. So much better than restaurant portions.
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I also needed a second serve at about 1900 AEST.
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Did I mention the pork bones? They were fall off the bone tasty.
There were some wonton left over and my brothers and daughters have a liking for cold freshly made and cooked wonton from the refrigerator. Whenever I do it I get visions of Nigella Lawson going back to her refrigerator late at night.
Needless to say we slept well and still feel full. Mum and Dad though thought I needed a big breakfast.
Mum had been planning this for a little while. She grinned as she brought food from the refrigerator and was pretty happy when she saw my smile. She’d been to the butcher and got some lamb’s fry. As many readers know I like my offal and nice lamb’s fry is hard to come by. Mum has seasoned some flour with salt and pepper and coated the liver and then kept it in the refrigerator overnight. This morning she gently pan fried it and served it with bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs and a grilled tomato. It was delicious.
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Needless to say my daughters are not great fans of offal. I pondered whether Dr Offal should post this on his blog, but figured it was better suited to this post.
A note about this post. I’ve used a new WordPress.com feature. WordPress.com users can now embed Instagram images into their blog posts. This seems to work well. If you want to comment on an image in Instagram click on the image and if it’s been inserted through instagram you’ll soon see 
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