I have spent my sunday working and writing the last bit of this chapter feels like going to a room full of knitting people and trying to bundle up all the wool while holding the ends and getting the colour coordination right.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
uuuuurgh
Posted by Helen at 6:02 pm 5 comments
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
My favourite things!
I stole this from Jenty
Favourite Shop – I hate shopping, much more of a fleamarket type! I did find an obscure vintage place near my house that was very cool though!
Favourite chocolate – nutella!
Favourite food – soup, anything involving bacon (my mother has banned it from the house to ‘reduce our dependency on nitrates’ so I am a bacon hoover whenever I’m not home.
Favourite meal that I make – I guess ginger chicken stirfry. I made coconut lemon chicken the other day but it wasn’t well received (my family took exception to the 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper).
Favourite flower – daffodils, they’re dfferent, and I love yellow!
Favourite colour to wear – blue
Favourite shoes – right now I think its my death-butterfly skater shoes with 80-threw-up laces. I like pretty heels but my leg hsn’t recovered enough for me to wear them yet.
Favourite drink – in a G&T phase right now
Favourite lens – My old faithful 18-55
Favourite place to walk the dogs – Along the river near my house, they love it!
Favourite coffee for every day at home – Anything from grounds, I think if you’re organised enough you should never have to drink instant coffee (shudder). I also rarely drink coffee at home as I’m trying to avoid those caffeine-headaches by limiting t to work/lab only.
Favourite coffee shop – Cafe Vida!
Favourite pizza place – Luigi’s, or Col’Cacchios (which is where I learned that avocado is not entirely awful and should be eaten with biltong!)
Favourite place to take photos – anywhere, I love walking around with my camera, although that is much harder in the city than off in the bush somewhere.
Favourite place for holidays – Holiday? that seems like such a distant concept… I love going anywhere though, right now I have pipelined two hiking trip, a diving trips and a family trip to Namibia. Just need to finish a degree first…
Favourite joghurt – anything that doesn’t have disgusting chunks of ‘fruit’ in it. Lately I’ve been eating a lot of vanilla yoghurt with dried cranberries thrown in, but that’s more to do with it being in the fridge than my seeking it out.
Favourite website – the one where I get to see my niece everyday!
Posted by Helen at 3:11 pm 1 comments
Monday, May 23, 2011
because we all love a good internet quiz!
So I did a little quiz
The Five Love Languages
My Primary Love Language is Quality Time
My Detailed Results:
Quality Time:9
Words of Affirmation:8
Acts of Service:6
Physical Touch:5
Receiving Gifts:2
Makes sense (I think)
Posted by Helen at 2:31 pm 3 comments
Labels: meme
Friday, May 20, 2011
Fill-in-the-blanks Friday
As always from here
1. People always tell me I look like someone they know. I spend half of my life trying to figure out who everyone around me is, and how I know them (and IF I know them).
2. Friends don't let friends wear shirts and tights. Please guys, remember to put pants on!
3. A sunny day is perfect for sleeping in the sun. Particularly after going for a run and having a shower (with the added excuse of ‘drying my hair’)
4. My favorite accessory is my collection of hats. Also glow bangles, and dangly earrings.
5. If I could afford it I would travel all over the place.
6. The cure for boredom is to think about how many things you have to do and therefore reclassify boredom as ‘pre-productivity relaxation’
7. I am currently "in like" with mixed berry super-Cs, my big heavy patchwork quilt, sprite zero and anything involving bacon.
Posted by Helen at 4:44 pm 0 comments
nowhere is home
So the lab won a 'you are awesome' award from some university bigwigs. And the journalists descend...
Posted by Helen at 2:38 pm 3 comments
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
It always amazes me
How people complain when you do something, but then complain when you stop.
and how communication can be a big issue of sighs and 'not again's,
but then they wonder why you don't tell them what's wrong.
which is quite funny because most of the issues that people have culd
be solved with the proper communication.
Posted by Helen at 10:22 am 1 comments
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Call me domestic goddess (if you don’t mind)
So the other day I really felt like cooking. And after a few Googles, a vague remembering-what-was-in-the-fridge session (aided by my having made mother’s day lunch), bolstered by my confidence from making awesome cheese sauce on the weekend…
I attempted lamb chops in pepper sauce (insert dramatic music).
And they came out super-well with mashed potato and creamed spinach. and as I kind of made the recipe by combining a bunch of other recipes (so it’s not mine, but not NOT mine either), I figured I should post the recipe to avoid it going the way of the tomato soup recipe (which was lost forever)…
Ingredients:
- 4 shallots, finely chopped (I only had 3 shallots so I used a couple of tiny baby onions too)
- 10 ml olive oil
- a little bit of butter
- salt and pepper
- 1 tablespoon of wine vinegar (all the recipes say this, I misread a label and bought malt vinegar and it worked just as well)
- 1 1/2 tablespoons of cracked black peppercorns (to crack them, put them in a ziplock bag,wrap the bag in a serviette and smack repeatedly with a hammer).
- 1 glass red wine (I used the arabella cabernet sauvignon which worked really nicely).
- 1 cup of brown gravy sauce stuff (there is a fancy name that I had never heard until yesterday)
- 100ml cream
- 1/2 cup finely chopped parsley (I used the Italian parsley with the bigger leaves, with the regular parsley I’d only use 1/4 cup. Finely chopping by smacking with a meat cleaver is also the most fun ever).
- Lamb chops.
And the instructions:
- Season chops with salt ad pepper. Heat olive oil in a pan (to hot hot) and cook chops for 30 seconds on each side (enough to sear but not cook). Set aside.
- Melt butter in a pan and sautee shallots until they go transparent. Throw in peppercorns and vinegar.
- Add wine, and cook until the volume halves (once again there are fancy terms, and once again I don’t know them). Sip on leftover wine while doing this.
- Add in the brown sauce stuff and once again wait for the volume to halve. Add in parsley at some stage. There is a a proper time to do this but I find ‘Oh crap I forgot the parsley!’ works as a good indicator of the right time (throwing in a bit of salt occasionally as well as sprinkling in some sage and rosemary also makes you look like you know what you’re doing).
- reduce heat to simmering and add cream. Sigh in relief as it starts resembling something you might actually eat.
- once the cream is all mixed in and it’s simmering nicely put the meat into the sauce and leave it there to cook. It can’t dry out because it’s in sauce, so besides serving something still bleeding (my personal horror), you’re pretty much home free.
- Serve over mashed potatoes
- and of course don’t forget the veggies, I had screamed spinach ad eta and it was delicious.
It came out really nicely and I was totally proud of myself. Although to be fair I’m not much of a meat-eater, particularly when there are bones in it, so I ended up really enjoying the sauce on the accompanying mashed potato and giving most of my chop to P1 (who didn’t complain at all).
Verdict? it was insanely quick and nothing seemed to go wrong, plus you get to hit stuff with hammers, which makes it a winning experience all around!
Posted by Helen at 1:50 pm 2 comments
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Sshhhh… let me hide please
I sat in the freezing cold, wrapped in a giant jacket (I love having a boyfriend who is 6 ft 3) discussing death with a plumber.
And as the discussion covered things like losing pets and then moved on to Alzheimer's, dementia and how many awful car accidents we’ve seen on the roads, the general consensus was a ‘live now we’ll die anyway’
Meanwhile I just wanted to hide under my bed in case anything horrible happens. After all, those terrible terrible things can’t happen to you if you stay at home (and really really reinforce it).
Right?
And just to clarify, I’m not being flippant about this. A year ago I’d never gone to the funeral of someone I’d known. Right now I’ve been to three. And I know now that death really really scares me. I’ve never really had to deal with it before.
And I don’t want to deal with it.
Posted by Helen at 1:27 pm 1 comments
Monday, May 09, 2011
Girl-crisis
I’m going for my first manicure/pedicure on Thursday and I’m a bit nervous.
a) will she judge me for the state that my hands and feet are in?
b) will I be able to deal with someone touching my feet without having a ticklish ‘episode’ and kicking her in the face.
That said I’ve been working really hard, so bring on the pampering!
Posted by Helen at 1:17 pm 2 comments
Labels: I am female, I believe they call it method acting, I'm not crazy I'm SPECIAL
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Score one for girl-power
I played Risk against a bunch of boys last night. One of them said before the time that (and I quote) “Girls just can’t strategise” – I did enjoy taking over three quarters of his territories in one turn.
This was after the guy-in-question’s girlfriend asked why I was placing last (unlucky dice-roll) when, as the only girl playing I “should have gone first automatically!”
I love them both but I hope they grow some sense before they have any daughters.
Posted by Helen at 4:08 pm 4 comments
Labels: friends, fun, silly people
Thursday, May 05, 2011
All I want for christmas is
The guts to sit in this:
in an inflatable bubble-tent:
with a cosy pair of Freudian slippers:
that is all.
Posted by Helen at 10:47 am 2 comments
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Books
I’ve spent the last gazillion public holidays housesitting (my brother has a bull terrier that needs a lot of attention and a fair amount of discipline, but she is very cute) and rediscovering my love of reading.'
Everything from epic fantasy westerns:
To straight fantasy (because we were watching the series the other day):
to non-fiction:
to just plain ridiculous:
Ness and I were talking about our need for some mindless chick-lit and she lent me this:
And after about two days I was able to stop crying.
What have you been reading?
Posted by Helen at 10:08 am 6 comments