The Love Boat

I didn't have the chance to finish my last post about the wedding day. The ceremony was a beautiful one held in a lovely church in Cliffton Hill followed by a reception dinner on a boat cruising the yarra river and out to the bay. The night was beautiful and peaceful. Here are a few photos of the lovely night.

A photos of the wedding car and a picture of the flowergirl dress and the ring pillow that I made. A couple of nights of hard work but I was so happy with myself. Doesn't she look cute.





















Chocolate mud cake topped with sugar flowers and feathers.




















The dinner table decorated with candles and flowers. Guest where given hand made soap from our onono range. The soaps where wrapped the night before the wedding.

Two Chinese lions visited the boat and entertained the guest with a lion dance before the boat sailed. Good Luck for both the bride and groom.

Finally a wedding

Two of our closest friends recently got married after 14 years of being together. They meet back in high school and have been together ever since. The last couple out of my close group of girlfriends to finally get married so ofcourse we had to go out with a bang....two hens functions, two wedding functions and a BBQ thrown in.

Function 1 - Hens:
Us girls spent a day down at the Mornington Peninsula. Starting with a quick breakfast at our place before heading to the Red Hill craft/farmers market where we brought loads of yummy olives. We then headed to the Peninsula Hot Springs where we sent the rest of our day. A hens package was organised for us, first relaxing in their hot mineral pools follow by a healthy lunch (too healthy for me) and then finishing off with a massage in their Arabian Marquee. A beautiful day out with the girls.





























Function 2 - Hens dinner:
Ten girls headed to the The Italian in the city. A beautiful restaurant that has moved from their previous location off Malthouse lane to their current location 101 Collins Street. We decided that a quiet, intimate dinner with some hens games is what we wanted rather than heading to a loud bar with a stripper (we've had quite a few of those hens in the past). A three course dinner, some hens games, a funky t-shirt for the bride and finishing off with a few glasses of wine at the Supper Club. A late night for all the girls especially since most of us have kids under two.



















Function 3 - Vietnamese Tea Ceremony
I was asked to wear the Vietnamese traditional dress for the Vietnamese tea ceremony which was held two weeks before the church and reception. A tea ceremony which is the Vietnamese wedding is the tradition of sealing the deal. Once the transaction has taken place (including handing the dowry over), the bride is owned by the husband's family. She is taken back to the groom's house to cook and clean etc. Modern Vietnamese women conveniently like to forget this part of tradition. Oh by the way in case you didn't realise, this is Eggs - Bananas asked me to finish her tea ceremony blog. As usual, you can only tell a man either what to do or how to do it, but not both. I'm not making this stuff up though. Asian people, ask your grandparents.

Busy Busy Busy

Yes, it has been quite a while since eggs and I have updated this blog. We've been extremely busy. I'm back at work and have been for over a month now. After eight months being at home I was getting use to it and find it hard pulling myself out of bed in the morning to put on my suit especially since I'm doing full time hours over four days which means I'm up at 5.30am getting ready to head into the office. I rather be home with Baby TJ and I miss him heaps. Can't wait to get home everyday and feel like I'm missing so much.

Did I mention that we have been very busy? We'll, we had a family trip to Adelaide to visit my sister, we've had a wedding actually two wedding functions for one wonderful couple (who finally got married) as well as two hens functions (any excuse to get out and about with the girls), two 1st birthdays and a 4th, I'm also doing cake decorating classes on the Thursday night and I even had my 31st birthday in between and much more. I'll post up some photos but will start with our trip to Adelaide.

Baby TJ had his first flight on an airplane. I was a bit nervous about flying with a baby. Eggs and I have been on many overseas trips where we've heard screaming babies. Back then when we didn't have any kids ourselves and didn't understand, we hated being on a plane with a baby. The screaming drove us crazy. Even before I got onto the plane and sat down I can imagine what people where thinking..Baby TJ surprised us both and didn't even cry once (so proud of the little man). He was too busy checking things out and loved the plane.

We visited many wineries in the Barosa Valley. One of the famous wine regions in South Australia. Home of some of the best wineries e.g. Penfolds, Wolf Blass. We went to visit Hahndorf which is a small town about 30 minutes outside of Adelaide. The town has German influences with German architecture, original surviving buildings and many restaurants serving Geman cuisine. A weekend wasn't long enough but hopefully we'll be back for Christmas.

The not so relaxing morning

They say that once you have kids you'll never stop worrying again. After this morning I don't think we will. What do you do when your baby boy stops breathing?

Having a day off work on a fine Melbourne day such as this is a gift. Our plans included a lazy breakfast at Apte in Fairfield (great place by the way - and lot of room so it's baby-friendly), a short nap at home for the little man and then off to the beach (since it's started to warm up and he's never seen the sea).

TJ got agitated just as my ricotta hotcakes arrived. No problem - this is part of the deal with eating out these days. I took him outside for a bit to get some fresh air and came back in. He settled down a bit. Actually, he settled down a lot. That was easy I was thinking. Then he starts convulsing.

Shit.

"What the hell is going on?' A few seconds later, he'd gone completely limp, turned blue and stopped breathing. "Call an ambulance!". We had him on the ground. People around us were trying to help. He wasn't choking, he'd just stopped. Stopped everything. And he was frikkin' blue. This has been the single scariest event in our lives to date. Period.

A nurse and a paramedic (off-duty) just happened to be enjoying their breakfast nearby and jumped into action. He regained consciousness but was really groggy for the next hour or so. The ambulance arrives yada yada yada. Long story short, this is apparently relatively common, although we're still trying to find out which of the several possibilities these symptoms belong to. These range from the malfunctioning of the reflex that stops babies from breathing when dunked in water, to learning how to regulate temperature, to epilepsy. I actually think doctor's need to learn to say "I dunno. Sometimes shit happens". Anyway, the little man went through a traumatic EEG scan (where they stick electrodes on to his head and scan brain activity) which likely won't be able to tell us anything. If this sort of thing is as common as the paramedics, nurses, doctors etc we have spoken to say it is though, I reckon it might be worthwhile mentioning in pre-natal classes so that if and when the brown-underwear moment comes, new parents aren't as freaked out as we were.

So if you're a new parent or parent-to-be, listen up. You will get told that every baby is different and there are no rules, yet everyone will still be offering their 2 cents on what and how you should be looking after your kid. But it is unlikely anyone will tell you "Oh by the way, your baby might start convulsing and turn blue", so we're telling you now.

All good things must come to an end

We had postponed it already by a month, but the time had come for bananas to doff the flannel pyjamas and don the uniform of the office worker. Both of our enlisted babysitters were off on holidays so I got my chance to play house hubby for a week until Banana's mum returned from Vietnam.

I learned two things that week. Firstly, that there is no such thing as routines or consistency when it comes to babies - every day is as different as Melbourne's weather. Incidentally it was the weather that made or broke our day since being stuck at home in the cold brought about the worst in TJs disposition, but he never stopped smiling while strolling out and about in the glorious sunshine on another day.

And secondly, that you get serious kudos from soccer mums for playing house hubby with the little man. Which is cool, because I actually quite enjoyed doing the stay at home dad thing. I just need to get Bananas to earn more dosh so I can do this full time :)

The little man it seems, would rather hang out with his grandparents though. His first week with the in-laws he slept better than he ever has during the day and seemed to be having a ball when I went to pick him up. Where's the loyalty??? Then again, we did ditch him last weekend to go see "Wicked" - which was awesome by the way. Anthony Callea was born to play a munchkin, "Millsy" held his own, and the two female leads were simply outstanding.

But I digress. Lucky we are that our boy has a happy home away from home. And lucky we are that we don't have to rely on child (no)care in order for Bananas to return to the workforce. Bananas still misses the boy suring the day and I miss doing the "honey I'm home" after a day's work but at least we know he's a happy lad, even when we're not around.

Fairies, fairies and more fairies

Last weekend we attended by cousins 5th birthday party. There were 20 kids age between 2 to 10 running around the house. Something that I have to look forward to?!?




























I was commissioned by my aunty to make some sweets for the kids. What did I love to eat when I was that age? Ofcourse....chocolate crackles and honey joys. Being of asian background and growing up in Australia I was always jealous of kids that had mums that made these types of sweets for them. Instead I got the asian type cakes e.g red bean and sesame balls which I hated. It's not her fault she didn't know the english language and therefore couldn't follow an english recipe.

So I was determine that my cousin would get chocolate crackles and honey joys for her birthday which she did. A bunch of them as well as some cupcakes with butter cream icing.

BTW these days I love asian dessert and have learned to even make them myself.

Ciao, Bananas

first brekkie ever

Bananas and I love food. You could probably classify us as "foodies". So I have been itching to see our boy eat his first real meal for quite a while now. Bananas on the other hand has been trying to stay true to doctors' and nurses' advice not to start feeding him solids until 6 months, but I figured he was two weeks overcooked when he was extracted anyway so he's two weeks ahead of schedule anyway - let's feed him at 5 1/2 months.

I suspect part of her reluctance to introduce real food is because she doesn't want him to grow up. Once he starts eating food then he's becoming a real boy but if she can keep him on just breast milk then he's still her little baby... In any case by being such a strong advocate of violating the 6 month advice I have now made myself responsible for any future digestive problems our boy may encounter. On my head be it.

The day was yesterday - 08/08/08. Real food, man that's debatable. This Farex stuff apparently has been the first meal for generations of babies (so says the blurb on the box) but it doesn't look very appetising, and as TJ took his first "bite" (more of a slurp really) I'm fairly convinced that my impressions are probably correct.













Well, it's probably more or less tasteless given its just rice cereal but they reckon you can't give them sweet stuff straight away or they won't eat anything else - you have to start bland so they'll get used to eating anything. It makes me wonder what Bananas was fed when she was a baby - she won't eat anything that hasn't been doused in fish oil and salt. OK that's an exageration but she does require lots of flavours in her food and is a very fussy eater in general. Actually we're complete opposites in that regard. While we both like to eat well, if I am hungry I will eat just about anything (even bittergaud - although why the hell anyone eats that stuff out of choice I have no idea - it's always what I imagined snozzcumbers from Roald Dahl's "The BFG" would taste like). Bananas on the other hand would rather starve to death than eat something she didn't like.

Anyway, so he managed to roll the Farex (mixed with breast milk as per instructions) in his mouth and didn't spit much of it out. Mission succesful. Welcome to the world of food little man. We hope we'll always have the means to feed you well and in time, provide you with the skills to feed yourself.

DIY YouTube

I have been wanting to learn how to crochet for years but everytime I pick up a pattern book I just couldn't understand it. I have always wondered to myself how anyone could understand the hand drawn pictures.

I finally decided that it's about time I learn, so I decide to google 'How to crochet' and the search displayed a link to YouTube. Which was a surprise to me. When thinking about YouTube, I think about young kids having fights and video taping it (that is what the TV portrays), not anything to do with crocheting. But I found a whole new world and I love it. In about a couple of minutes I knew every crochet stitch and now on my way to making a blanket for baby TJ. Check it out.



Wow, where do people get the time to video tape themselves crocheting and why would you want to. Whatever tickles your fancy. All I have to say is 'Thank you'. I'll post up a picture of the blanket once I finish but here is a preview.














Ciao,
bananas

same, same, but different

A few weeks ago I attended a close friends baby shower. We're expecting an sms anytime now telling us that a beautiful baby girl has finally arrived and another playmate for baby TJ. I am at the stage where baby showers are the norm. Just a couple of years ago eggs and I were attending weddings, weddings and weddings. Now it's baby showers.

The funniest thing about baby showers is even though I feel older having kids of my own, I always leave a baby shower feeling like I have just attended a friends 10th birthday party. The only difference is that we talk about labour pains rather than 'Young Talent Time' (back in my days) or 'bratz'. Our husbands drop us off and pick us up instead of our parents. Also, we now eat rice paper rolls and sushi instead of fairy bread and honey joys but there is still the cupcakes, games, presents and the goodie bag that I get to take home (no longer mix lollies but have been replaced by tea bags).

Eggs finds it extremely funny that we play games such as 'guess the celeb' or 'baby trivia'. I even won a prize for answering the most correct questions about how well I know the mother. I love prizes. I love games and being competitive I love to win.

Ofcourse I love attending baby showers. Any chance to hang out with my girlfriends without the men is great, but next time I'm at a baby shower, I am going to know all the names of celebrities siblings and the most popular selling baby items.

Here are some photos of the quilt that I made for the new baby girl that will be arriving soon. The binding was a pain.












The quilt was made with material that was brought while in Japan.

















Ciao,
bananas

If you're old and you know it, clap your hands

When I was young I never understood why my Dad would write letters to The Age newspaper to express his opinions. Why bother? What difference does it make? While I am still too lazy to write an actual letter, I have in recent times found myself writing complaint emails when I get bad service. And just recently even Bananas has also joined the crusade which got me to thinking how much we've changed since the little man arrived.

The incident mentioned above relates to trying to order e-tags for Eastlink from their website. This was probably one of the most painful experiences I have endured online. Trying to go back to change details (when you realise that having two accounts using the same email address as a login is fraught with danger but exists as an option on the website) kills the whole process. The alternative choice of login is an allocated account number (which appears as a mandatory field even though it isn't allocated until after you've registered). Use not the "validate address" function for it makes things go pear shaped pretty quickly. In all cases you must being again I could go on (and anyone who knows me will realise the truth of that statement) but at the end of the day it was pretty clear that they had either hired the world's most unbelievably incompetent Business Analyst to design the website or they simply didn't care. I chose to believe the latter as I think that laziness is a more forgivable sin than stupidity. Subsequently I decided that if they didn't care, it wasn't worth me wasting my time on an email (that, and given the quantity of expletives I was likely to employ I'm quite sure my complaint email would go straight into the trash anyway). This is when Bananas took up the challenge - "I'm a BA - I would want to know if it were me". Thus brought about Bananas' first complaint "letter".

So what is it about being old (it's a relative term but we both still have fond memories of being 21 and thinking thirty-somethings were ancient) and Australian that compels us to write letters/emails? I have seen the term "kidult" bandied about a bit recently and I've always thought it applied fairly accurately to us. I still play computer games and avoid wearing anything that needs ironing while Bananas has the self control of an eight year old. On the other hand we are starting to care a whole lot more about where the world is heading because we have genetic material that needs to exist here. So we are going to make the world a better place a little at a time, starting with badly cobbled together websites. So if you're a monopoly company with a moron-designed website we are forced to use - watch out, because if it isn't up to scratch we're going to write a letter!!!

My toy sale is bigger than yours

What defines the biggest toy sale? I noticed in Eastland today that both Big W and K-mart are having the biggest ever toy sale. Obviously they can't both be the biggest. What's up with that?

It's interesting that there's a lot of cross-branding going on with toys since I've been "back in the market". Star wars lego is all over the place. I like the way that lego has even made it's way into console games with lego Indiana Jones starring in one recent console title. One of the most out-there ones was star wars transformers. Combine Hans Solo robot and Chewbacca robot into the Millenium Falcon!!! Who comes up with these ideas?!?!? No seriously, who does? And do they want to give me a job?

I reckon we can settle the whole geek debate on Ninjas vs Pirates once and for all. Why should we have to choose ninjas or pirates when you can have.... ninja pirates!!! They can stealthily sail up to cargo ships at night, board the ship, silently kill the captain with shurikens and steal all the booty without being seen or heard by the rest of the crew. And they can have ninja wenches that clean their ninja suits for them, oil their ninja swords and and fetch them rum.

One for the yuppies amongst us - a toy Krupps espresso machine. How cool is that? Besides, it also has practical applications. It'd be good to make a barista out of the boy so that someone else can drive the coffee machine.



















This is why Dads want boys. I get to play with toys all over again and it's all legit. Well mostly... I haven't quite got the case for a PS3 past bananas yet. "Really dear, it's not for me. TJ will grow into it".

Over the hills with a mountain buggy

My week spent trying out the mountain buggy was a busy one. I wanted to get as much use out of it as possible so I took it everywhere…the local shops, to the doctors and the local shopping centre and to the country. I even tried jogging with it.

We took the mountain buggy to a market in St Andrews. If you haven’t been to St Andrews market it’s held every Saturday in St Andrews about 45 minutes from Melbourne. Vendors sell everything from homemade soaps and creams to organic veggies with some gardening tools thrown in. I especially wanted to take the mountain buggy to see what it can do over rocks, hills and uneven terrain.

Well...all I have to say is that it did its job. It glides over everything with ease. It's so easy to manouver, even with one hand. With its swiveling front wheel I can turn the pram with one finger. Only takes one action to fold away. It can even stand upright while folded. I have no idea why I want it to stand up but it can.

[Eggs: actually I like the fact that it stands up. Our other one doesn't and it takes up too much room lying down. At the end of the day, all prams are a much of a muchness to me so it would be the little things like this that make me rate one over another. The major factor in it's favour IMHO is the big wheels and inflatable tyres. It *does* make for a smoother ride and it goes over stuff more easily. On the downside it's big, heavy and doesn't compress much when folded. I have yet to try one with suspension, but I suspect that benefits would be minimal and it would only open itself to being lowered and pimped. But tell me TJ wouldn't be the coolest kid in mother's group when he rocks up in a slammed and bagged pram with remote control hydraulics. He's gonna need some gold chains...]

There were a couple of things that I didn't like about it but I can overlook these..
1. It takes up nearly the entire boot of the car (which is fine with me...I put my shopping in the back seat anyway).
2. The basket at the bottom is a tad bit small for me.
3. It's back heavy.
4. Weighs 10.5kg (but still lighter than some).

At a retail price of $659 on sale this pram is a great buy. Even checked on ebay...people are selling their second hand prams from at least $450 (even better).

I love this pram...just wish that baby TJ did too...he was comfortable in it even though it was only for 10 minutes before be screamed to be picked up. I think he would rather be in his baby bjorn.

Ciao,
bananas

Scones at the Nongs

Had enough of work. I decided to take Tuesday off this week to hang out with bananas and the cherub. He's started to show a much wider interest in the world and seems to get irritated when stuck at home so we thought we'd head out somewhere. Where do you take a four month old in Melbourne during winter when shopping centres are getting a little stale? (Actually they've just opened some new sections at Doncaster Shoppingtown including the food court and it's looking good).

To the 'nongs!!! Bananas and I have long loved heading down to the Dandenong mountains for scones at Miss Marples. If you've never been there they have a very simple menu but it's all done well - the beef cottage pie, quiche and smoked salmon fingers are our faves. Don't worry it's not the salmon that has fingers (although I believe you can get that in Tassie?!?), but it's like an open sandwich cut into strips (like fingers) or maybe you're supposed or eat them with your fingers...



















But the highlight is the scones. I would insist that it's pronounced "scown" by the way (like in "own"). A "scon" is a school boy's way of showing manly affection by rubbing his knuckles on your head, and anyway, only peasants pronounce it scon :) But I digress...

Now even if you can pronounce it right I'd argue that the scones at Miss Marples are more like a tea bread. They aren't the right shape and their kinda fluffy, but they *are* pretty good and the "rather superb" jam they present with it is about as close to perfection as stewed fruit can get. Obviously lashings of thick cream are mandatory. Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' bout


















It nearly becomes a day trip these days with the shortness of daylight in winter and the time it takes to get out of the house with Eggs junior once you take a wonder around down there. You can always find new stuff in the puppet shop down the road from Miss Marples and once junior gets a bit older there's a whole bunch of stuff from there I can see my self stepping on in my lounge room. Despite the normal complications of taking a baby anywhere it was a great family "day" out. While it doesn't have the excitement of a track day at Winton or a morning blat on the bike through Reefton spur, "family" type fun is a different kind of fun. It gives you the kind of satisfaction that will most likely turn me into the pot-bellied older family men at work but meh - by the time you hit 30 a guy *knows* he no longer has a chance at a professional sporting career so what does it matter (no golf doesn't count, although hotdog eating might come close).

TJ’s First set of wheels

When we were on our pre-natal quest for baby stuff, one of the things that we knew that we needed was a pram/stroller…. never having a kid before we decided that we weren’t going to be one of those new parents that get carried away, especially on a pram/stroller. We thought that he is only going to use it two years, or at the most three, and will probably hardly use it anyway. All the reviews, blogs and friends swear by certain brands. We were told that the Bugaboo was like the ‘Louis Vuitton’ of the baby world and the Quinny was like maybe ‘Prada’. Despite loving fashion brands I just couldn’t bring myself to spend $1500 for a pram/stroller and not to mention these prams/strollers are quite heavy.

We were getting very confused and the baby stores weren’t much help so we decided to go with our initial inclination and bought a cheap and very light, but quite decent stroller that we found in ‘Toys R Us’. Being light was our main requirement…All we needed was something to push baby TJ around.

But of course after four months we are now in search for another stroller. Eggs doesn’t understand why. Let’s just say he hardly ever uses it anyway. Baby TJ hates his stroller - the wheels get sticky, it feel flimsy and pushing it up hill will put me out for a whole week. Now I am in search for the prefect stroller.

A beautiful friend let me borrow her ‘Mountain Buggy’ for the week. She loves it so let’s see whether I do too.

BTW quilt is finished.

Ciao,
bananas

Go the mighty Dons

To be a true Australian (at least in the Southern states) you need to barrack for a footy team. Until recently this facet of my life in Oz has been lacking. I grew up being asked "who do you go for?" to which I have always relied "I don't follow footy". This has usually been followed with the "is there sumfink wrong wid you or sumfink" look that all non-footy subscribers will be very familiar with.

It has therefore been my mission for the past few weeks to find a team. Bananas and various friends and workmates have been on my back about this for a while. But choosing a team is final. Period. You can never ever change your team no matter how much they start to suck or what kind of illegal activities their stakeholders are embroiled in. So choosing a team is not to be taken lightly. My problem is that I have no affinity or association with any AFL team. I have never lived in any of the suburbs and I refuse to choose a team by colours.

Bananas is a Collingwood supporter - so that's out. Not only do I have too many teeth to qualify, it would make things too boring at home. We have some good friends (let's call them "Cheng and Princess") who are the most avid asian Carlton supporters I have ever known. For non Ozzies, Carlton are the arch-enemies of Collingwood so on paper this would be an excellent choice. However, in recent months Cheng and Princess have managed to convert many others in limbo like myself to their crusade. I'm not one to follow the crowd so my quest could not end in that camp.

Hawthorn are a bunch of pretty boys and any non-Victorian team is obviously not on the cards. So who was left? Kevin Sheedy is ending an epic career as coach of Essendon, so they will be starting a new era. I figured this would be a good time to jump on board and embark on this new and exciting journey with them. Bananas' sister came down to visit a couple of weekends ago and she "goes for" Essendon. This pretty much sealed the deal as I now will have someone to gloat with every time the Dons pummel the Magpies, and Bananas will have only the toothless caravan-dwellers to console her. Excellent....

And after all of that, I have to admit I still don't care that much. But at least now when anyone asks me "who do you barrack for", I can answer with "the mighty Dons!!!" and no longer will I endure the blank looks and ridicule of not having a team to call my own.

Oh and if you're reading this Cheng - WE PWNED JOO BIATCHES!!!

Highway to Hell

Eastlink is finished. To celebrate the public was allowed to cycle or walk on segments of it before it opened up to real traffic. We were supposed to do the 30km bike ride but that didn't eventuate so we went down to walk in the Melba tunnel instead with the little fella and grab some snags at the "thothage thithle".

I'm not exactly sure whether we were celebrating another public asset being privatised or all the extra traffic that will get dumped on the Eastern freeway (heading into the city) and Heidelberg (heading towards/from the Northern Ring road) but they had a pretty good turnout in any case. Obviously this is all about me and how it affects my quality of life. I don't often need to head down to Frankston after all. I don't even own a pair of moccasins. For the non-Melbourne dwellers, Frankston is Bogan country (not that there's anything wrong with that). It might be useful for the odd occasion that we would like to head down to Sorrento or there abouts. But I'm expecting that the extra daily traffic I will need to deal with will make this seem fairly trivial. Time will tell...

/rant

Here's some piccies from the walk:



























We don't have many tunnels in Melbourne, but I do have fond memories of driving through tunnels in London as a boy. I never got to go through the channel tunnel to France though as it wasn't completed before we migrated to Oz. I hope I never break down in the Melba tunnel - there is a large dodgem van that comes to push you through in that instance, and I don't know how much my car would enjoy that. I noticed lots of revenue cameras as well - no speeding in the tunnell kiddies!!! Ok so maybe I lied about the rant being over.

Anyway, I'm sure Eastlink will solve alot of people's problems, just not mine. Maybe I'm not looking at this right. Maybe I need a holiday house in Sorrento to change my perspective...

Coffee Roasting attempt #2

After the fairly average ghetto attempt at roasting coffee in the wok, this time I used the popper. Apparently it's important to get one with the vents on the side instead of the bottom of the popping cylinder. This ensures maximum agitation of the beans and prevents the chaff (how cool is that word) from falling through the holes in the bottom, and oh how much chaff there was!

Now most keen home roasters perform a whole heap of mods to their poppers so they can better control the temperatures etc. Anyone who knows me knows that I suffer from a delibitating electronics curse. I must have done something pretty evil to an eight track player in a previous life to deserve such bad karma, because any electric/electronic goods I touch blows up. Because of this severe condition, I'm reluctant to hot up my popper with anything fancy like thermocouples and cut out switches. Besides, it's pink. And sparkly. And it's "Bratz". So it's cool enough already, or so my 6 year old niece tells me.

My awesome popper at work:













So anyways, 13 minutes in my unmodified popper gave me a fairly even roast in a nice middle brown colour. Comparing it to commercially roasted beans I had lying around it was perhaps a bit lighter but some of that could be attributed to the original pale colour of the "India Mysore Nuggets A" beans. What kind of name is that for a bean though really? That ain't very appetising - it sounds like the first thing that passed out of the wrong end of an Indian dude with Hemarroids.

Anyway, so this time I waited a couple of days to try the results and I have to say I was quite happy with myself. Even more than usual =P. I would actually choose to drink this stuff. I can see myself relying less on pre-roasted coffee and doing alot more popper roasting in future,. The downside though is that I can only do small batches so I'll have to roast frequently. Overall though I give this the big tick. If you want to make sure you're getting the freshest coffee at home while saving some dosh, invest in a $25 Bratz popcorn maker!!!

Finally a quilt

I think I am a wanna be house wife. I have been reading all these blogs where mothers have been doing super human things. They sew, work, bake, take care of 7 kids, volunteer and not to mention find a cure for cancer. I on the other hand get out of bed at 10.30am in time for breakfast at 11.00am. Though, I do get up for half and hour with baby TJ at 7.00am before we both head back to bed. You can still find me in my PJ's at 5pm.

Before my six month maternity leave started I had heaps of things that I wanted to do....honestly I haven't done anything except for finally starting TJ's quilt...I have been meaning to make a quilt for baby TJ since I found out I was pregnant. Now he is nearly four months old and I have just started. I did have good intentions....I bought the material 8 months ago. It took me 2 months to decide what colours... my husband can tell you that I am not very good at choosing colours. If you ask him, he will tell you about the time I insisted on a red/white mat for our living room by the time we got it back home it didn't match anything. Costing us a fortune the mat is still in our living room.

I still insist that I am very good with colours even though hubby will insist otherwise. I ended up deciding on a blue and green quilt. Can't go wrong with those colours for a baby boy especially with cars on the fabric.




















Getting back to the point, I do admire all the mothers that seem to do so much. One day I will get there. At the moment I will be happy enough to just finish my quilt.

Ciao,
Bananas

Making coffee

The idea of having fresher coffee really appealed to me, so I decided to have a go at ordering some green beans and roasting them myself at home. I bought a popcorn maker for this purpose having done some research and found this to be one of the preffered methods. Not just any popcorn maker mind you but the Breville Bratz popcorn maker. It's pink and has glitter. If adds a certain bling factor that was otherwise missing from our kitchen. It was actually the only one I could find when I went looking and for $25 in Target I figured I can't go wrong.

However, I decided to try using a wok first as this seemed instinctively an easier process to me and I am by and large a lazy person. That and I reckon it should give good results since you can keep stirring them and moving them around to roast them evenly.

Green beans to the finished product:

My results were so-so, but OK I guess for a first attempt. Having said that you're supposed to let them de-gas for a few days before tasting them but obviously that wasn't going to happen =P. They definitely didn't roast as evenly as I'd hoped as you might be able to see from my not-so-awesome camera phone pics. Some of the beans are noticeably darker than others. I intend to see if the Bratz can do a better job.

Mountains from molehills

As my husband has previously stated 'we are new parents'. Our son is three months and two weeks old. It is one of the best things that we have ever done but also one of the hardest. Man, breast feeding is so hard. Waking up in the morning to breasts that look like mountains. This should sound great (like a natural boob job) especially when you started off with nothing at all but trust me it's not sexy. What is sexy about leaking milk? Not only that, it hurts. Isn't it bad enough that woman have to go through child birth which for me felt like I was dying (that is what I imagine dying to feel like).

I've talk to many new mothers and some love breast feeding. Are they kidding themselves? What is there to love about leaking and aching breast and cracked nipples. Egg, please understand when I start yelling at you to stop hugging me.... it's not pleasant. Yeah I know it suppose to be fantastic for my son. Suppose to give him a higher IQ and great for his health but when do I stop? When he becomes Einstein? I don't know but for now all I know while sitting here with leeking, aching breast that look like mountains is that my son is going to be the next Albert Einstein that can play tennis like Federer.

Ciao, Bananas

Why eggs and bananas?

My wife (lets call her bananas) and I (let's call me egg) decided that we needed a blog. Why? I'm not sure exactly but as bananas has been on maternity leave for the past three or so months with the birth of our (obviously) adorable first child she has become quite interested in the writings of others. So why can't we have our own? The answer to that might be that our lives just aren't all that interesting or we are "teh sux" at writing but let's have a go anyway.

What's with the eggs and bananas? Eggs are white on the outside and yellow on the inside and growing up and being a half asian that could pass as an Italian I was always considered by my buddies to be like an egg - white on the outside but yellow (asian) on the inside as I'd been brougt up heavily influenced by my mum's values.

My lovely wife on the other hand is from a Vietnamese background but grew up in Preston, so she's much more "okka" than me. Ripe bananas are in general yellow on the outside. Disputably it is recognised that they are also white on the inside (I'd say they are just paler yellow but who am I to argue when it makes for a semi-interesting name for our blog).

So while I egg grew up being the neighbourhood "ching-chong", not wearing shoes in the house, not being really all that interested in footy and spending my Xmas holidays in Malaysia eating satay and curry mee, my wife the banana was setting herself up for a life with missing teeth as a Collingwod supporter, watching boxing day cricket and having Xmas BBQs.

Who the bloody hell are we? We lurve good food and travelling and go through hobby "phases" - currently we are learning how to do a Canon 40D justice and I'm going to have a go at roasting my own coffee with a popcorn maker. Bananas likes to be comfortable in tracky dacks or PJs around the house, often to the local Coles or friends places, and on occasion to "Chaddy" shopping Centre. She does also scrub up quite nicely when she feels like it, but those occasions are diminishing into her motherhood days. We're both usually "morning" people and hate to "waste" the day sleeping in but often spend "quality time" watching Oprah or surfing the net on blogs (Bananas) or surfing forums and playing games online (eggs). Being a pom by birth, I also like to whinge alot. I'm expecting to be doing much of that here :)