The not so silent sounds of me getting dirty with a bagel

I am eating bagel of such deliciousness that I fear a unicorn might have died in the making of it.

Except I made it so I know that didn't happen.

We go on a wine hunt

We found a lot. My gallant companions (Charles and Mary) and I, driven by our not necessarily faithful and definitely quite abusive companion, Tim, went out fully prepared with wallets containing credit cards and mouths ready to sip and spit and make faces behind the backs of dedicated wine makers who do, sadly, spout a great deal of nonsense. So do I, but mine is at least all sorts of nonsense and not just specifically in regards to squashed grapes.

We drank some, we tipped some out, we nodded some, Mary got points for knowing fancy words and I behaved like a spoiled Sydney wanker.

Look - if someone serves you a soy chai latte (my wanky non-boozy drink of choice) and it tastes like coffee and when you complain you are informed that chai latte syrup contains coffee (LIES) I really do think you have the right to be a wanker. I was informed by my wait person that all the shops in Sydney serve chai lattes made from such syrup. It was at this point I uttered, 'I'm FROM Sydney and that's not how chai latte is made there'. Wanker? Yes. But really - it's a chai latte. Not a java chai latte (which Mary kindly looked up on her nerd phone and it's a real thing).

I think we ran away at this point.

Despite that small blip, it was an ace weekend, although Tim failed to get his girly cocktails for the spa and had to make do with dessert wine but I don't really care about Tim so, yeah, it was ace. Nerd conversations abounded, an obscene amount of cheese was hoovered up (there's no polite way to describe how we ate that cheese) and we stayed at a brewery - although that did let us down in the case of the ginger beer. Which was explained to us as being a beer flavoured with ginger - actual ginger mind you, not that other stuff. They also had chilli chocolate porter. Novelty beers sold in champagne magnums? I'll take two please! Which is when Charles and I discovered the folly of waiting until the last moment to purchase crazy beer flavours. They'd sold out of most of them. We gnashed our teeth and pulled out our hair and decided we'd just have to come back again (fabulous marketing ploy).

Things that don't go with wine - toothpaste. The difficulties of wine tasting straight after breakfast.

Warnings I would like to see

Do not touch the white Tim Tams for they are the source of much unhappiness.

Last few updates have all been a trifle food obsessed. Ha - trifle! Oh dear LORD I need to stop finding myself hilarious because I am beginning to suspect I'm not.

Very little of interest aside from food-related happenings has gone down lately - but this weekend Tim and I are escorting Charles and Mary to the Hunter Valley where I have no doubt much wine will be consumed and a fair amount of trash will be talked. WhatI find amusing about the Hunter Valley is that somehow by going to visit wineries, an air of sophistication is given to what is basically the guzzling of free booze, disguised as 'tastings'. We are also staying at some place with a brewery. For Charles, you understand.

And in the best news since my discovery that you can get vegetarian oyster sauce, Nic and Kajal are back and they got me a royal wedding commemorative thimble. I am so touched. Because although I am a spinster, I was lacking a thimble. My tea towel collection is coming along nicely though.

Cooking with failure

Where I manage to fail at the simple task of cooking fish. Inedible and in my bin.

When terribly simple becomes simply terrible

I am a fan of the potato bake. It's simple and delicious and involves cheese. Yesterday, however, after a rather blah day, I decided to zhoosh it up a little. Mainly because we had other veges in the fridge that need devouring. So it became a potato, pumpkin and eggplant bake. Which probably would have still worked but then I decided to add a layer of sliced tomatoes. And then Kajal asked for a layer of peas and at this point it would have been churlish to say no and green is such a pretty colour anyway, no? So in it all went, over went the cheese sauce and into the oven and we wandered away to watch something trashy on the telly because even really sophisticated women such as ourselves occasionally feel the need to stare aimlessly at a box in the corner of the living room.

Some time later I wandered back to check on my precious and discovered after opening the oven that our three smoke alarms all work very well. The bake was overflowing, the oven was smoking, but even more alarming - the delicious cheese sauce had curdled. It was still edible but only really if you managed to forget how a proper potato bake dances on your palate in a saucy and bewitching manner.

Oh god it was so SAD. I can only blame the tomato. Or the peas? Eggplant? I refuse to blame the potato or pumpkin. They are blameless victims. This is even worse than the time I discovered that hot porridge, milk and a kiwifruit are not a delicious combination because chewy milk is never nice.

Food for thought

I gave myself mild food poisoning - mushrooms, why must you turn on me like that, cruel - yet oddly attractive because I know smurfs live in some of you - little bits of fungus?

Since the departure of Nic'n'Kajal, we have tried to use their room as a brothel but no one would come - I think our surf nerd theme, complete with authentic sand and sci-fi/fantasy novels of the non-erotic kind may have not been sexy enough actually. So we allowed a Canadian to come and stay. His name was Ian, which actually makes up part of Canadian, so we just called him that: Canadian. Possibly not very friendly of us, but we made up for that by drinking all his beer. In return he cooked us dinner. My personal favourite was rasagne. Lasagne that needed another layer. What better than leftover risotto? And it was really good, so, hey, I probably shouldn't have mocked it so much. However, he also introduced us to clamato juice, which isn't necessarily a beverage I will be rushing out to buy if I ever make it to Canada, so maybe the rasagne mocking was for the greater good.

Canadian left, and our livers started to recover. Until we let the Chilean move in. Likes a drink does the Chilean. He also cooks well. He made a sort of shepherd's pie, although with hard boiled egg under the mash, which I thought was both odd and disgusting because I see no purpose for hard boiled egg in a perfect world. However, the rest of the pie was delicious. But when I took a piece, the Chilean did tell me that I could add either salt or ... sugar.

Sugar and hard boiled eggs make poisonous mushrooms appear quite attractive.

Less OMG, more OMP

In yet another thrilling example of how I am that much better at just living the dream* than most folks, but especially you, dear reading audience of seven, I have managed to burn myself - which I realise at first may not seem spectacular BUT - I now have a somewhat wonky and 10% incomplete letter P burnt into my left hand. I have no idea how I managed to do this but I am in no doubt as to it being proof that even when I fuck up - I come up trumps.

Also, new informative thing - don't fill up a water bottle in the dark. Because you will burn yourself and then have to go to bed with a both a hot water bottle and a tea towel full of ice, which sort of cancel each other out.

* I am actually not sure I want to live the dream after last night's one where Fi's brother Gary accidentally killed someone by throwing a spade at their head and then we all had to help hide the evidence.