Knowing You

We don't know you
We look and there's a mask
And what's beneath?
None of us have the courage to ask
Come out and play, say what you want to say
We want to meet who's underneath
It's all we're interested in

You smile, you play the part
It's part of your magic art
But all we see is a facade
And we feel we're just being played
(No one likes being played)

We think we probably like you
If we just felt that we got through
Maybe than we could know for sure
But we don't know what the hiding's for
(We're scared what it's for)

Do you like us, do you care?
Do you pretend we're not there?
Are we people you just tolerate?
In your world where do we rate?
(when we leave do you celebrate?)

We don't know you
We look and there's a mask
And what's beneath?
None of us have the courage to ask
Come out and play, say what you want to say
We want to meet who's underneath
It's all we're interested in

Creme Brulee

(as per Vogue Australia Entertaining cookbook - morning noon night)

So that my brother is not caught out again when I'm not home to give him the recipe, here it is.

Ingredients:
1.5 vanilla beans, split lengthwise and seeds scraped out (I usually use 1/2 - 1 vanilla beans and this suffices easily)
100mL milk
400mL cream
4 egg yolks
75g castor sugar
antillaise sugar (or raw castor sugar or in an emergency brown sugar)

Preheat the oven to 170C. Put vanilla beans and seeds in a saucepan with the milk and cream and bring to the boil, then set aside. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until thick, then beat into the milk mixture. Cover and set aside for 1 hour (when in a hurry skip this step). Strain the mixture into 4 ramekins and cook in a bain-marie (baking dish with hot water in it) in the oven for 25 -30 minutes. Remove from the oven, allow to cool, then cover and chill (when in a hurry allow to cool for only a 15 minutes then put them on a cutting board and in the fridge so that the heat from them doesn't crack the glass shelves). Just before serving, sprinkle a thin layer of sugar on each creme and use a blow torch thingy (it actually says to use the grill but you only do that if it's an emergency because it heats it more then should be and most other books would advise you to use a flame to do the sugar) until the sugar begins to caramelise. Serve immediately.

THANK YOU PITFINDER

Lemon oil. What can't you do with it? It smells yummy, like good old fashioned lemon sherbet lollies. I really enjoyed the little note that came with it too.

Here is a dodgy photo taken on the camera on my computer for people who have never been lucky enough to hold in their hands lemon oil.

PS- Matt says a big thank you, he is very excited, sometimes I catch him just smelling the bottle.

Breathe in Deep

Well I am currently sitting here listening to my new Laura Marling cd. I enjoyed the song of hers Jade posted so much, I felt inspired to buy the album, and I'm not sorry. I bought a lot of things yesterday, apparently after a very stressful exam that's what I do. Matt and I have now have a basketball, tennis rackets, tennis balls, new shirts (unrelated to sporting activities), new razors, and a new cd.

All the sporting equipment is because the park opposite us has a half basketball court on it, and just further down the road there is a tennis court you can use for free. We decided we're going to play sport.

I've been very random and tangential today and yesterday. On Saturday I had my big GP exam, followed by a bout of depression, followed by a lovely meal that Matt and his family prepared me. Unfortunately in a month I still have to do the clinical component of the exam (and you don't find out if you passed the first section before doing the next section and I don't think I get the results for ages). All I can say is I now hate multiple choice questions with a passion. In particular I hate "extended matching questions". Extended matching questions are the spawn of the devil. I know that may seem like an exaggeration, but let me give you an example of these. I won't make it medical.

EXAMPLE EXTENDED MATCH QUESTION (WARNING: will not appear on actual RACGP exam even though it's probably more relevent to my life than their questions)

"You were making chocolate souffle, when you got it out of the oven it sunk, what went wrong, choose only one option, choose the MOST likely answer"

a. you put it down on the table too hard
b. you did not beat the egg whites long enough
c. You beat the eggs for too long
d. you did not use good enough quality chocolate
e. you put in too much chocolate
f. you didn't beat the egg yolks and the sugar together well enough
g. you had the oven too hot
h. you had the oven on fan forced
i. you didn't have the oven on fan forced
j. you had the oven too low
k. you left them in the oven too long
l. you didn't leave them in the oven long enough
m. you didn't beat the eggwhites by hand in a copper bowl like Elizabeth David says you're supposed to
n. you mixed the eggwhites through the rest of the mixture instead of folding them through
o. you used metal ramikens
p. you used ceramic ramikens
q. you didn't make it when the moon was full
r. you opened the oven while it was baking instead of leaving it shut
s. you made a double batch
t. you didn't pray to Santa Marta (Patron saint of cooking and some other stuff)
u. you forgot to put the creme de menthe (or contreau) in it
v. you put too much creme de menthe
w. you shut the oven door too hard when you put them in
x. you accidently breathed on them when you got them out
y. you burnt the chocolate when you were melting it
z. it was just bloody bad luck and there is no rhyme or reason to souffles

****************************
DID ANY OF YOU KNOW THAT THOSE STUPID COLOUR THE CORRECT CIRCLE SHEETS EVEN CAME DONE WITH A-Z OPTIONS??????

Dear RACGP
I don't practice medicine on a one sentence history, I take a real history. Why should the exam be different?
The end

Breathe in, hold, let the weekend go, exhale.
Repeat as necessary.

Today I'm dedicating this song to the people who wrote the exam, they should consider adopting it as their theme (although they can skip the "I do it all for free" line as it was nowhere near free!!!!). For those who've never heard it, enjoy the violins, they're awesome.
Voltaire - When You're Evil

Stars

Would I know how to give in
If this deep ache didn't show me how
Would my hands be capable
Of the hold on and the let go
Do I know what it means
Will I always worry
I don't want to always see
The potential for disaster
I want to see the potential
For joy and hope and life

I dreamt I begged for you
To sing me a song
To show me tomorrow
To give me hope
And you sang for me
And you showed me
And you gave to me
But my eyes were closed so tight
And when I opened them
It was still dark

I am always facing the other way
When the shooting stars fall
I remember once
I stood on a rock
And you held my hand
And you kissed my mouth
And for once I was facing
The right direction
To see the stars fall

Right-clawed bird

I know this is a trivial thing. But usually parrots are left-clawed. Oscar and Pepper my original two birds are left-clawed, but the new one Azure is right-clawed. I wonder if that's why the other two birds don't like him.

Mechanisms

Garage Door

Isn't it so annoying when your garage door stops working and the manual override won't work and your car is stuck in the garage and it's sunday afternoon so the manufacturers aren't open.

Prior to killing God's creatures, do your research

Matt and I have a no dig garden which is coming along nicely at the moment (well actually we have four of them) but I had noticed particularly on the ground cherries and the eggplant some small black insects. I also thought that the leaves looked a little speckled and eaten. I suggested killing them to Matt, but always the voice of reason, he wasn't too keen. Firstly as a rule we're trying to avoid chemicals, they kill the good insects as well and then the bad ones can really take off when they come back. So occasionally Matt would squash a few of these little black critters to control their numbers, but nothing apart from that.

Today we wandered outside thinking we may plant out our seedlings, however we both realised we were too sick and exhausted and we didn't do it. However when I was looking at my eggplant really closely to see the damage these insects were doing I noticed some red mites (I suspect they are spider mites of some description). This didn't bode well, so I went on the internet to see what to kill them with and what type they were. Which is when I discovered a photo of my little black insect. Which is apparently a spider mite destroyer lady beetle.

I felt very guilty. That was right before I felt annoyed because they weren't eating enough spider mites, our plants were still being destroyed. One of the things Matt thought might work would be to crush our diatomite therefore creating absorbacide which we hoped would only be bad for the mites (although now on further research and all to late I realise it is probably not so good for any of the insects)

Diatomite is a form of kitty litter, but can also be used to grow plants in. It absorbs a lot of water and is one way of creating a water wise garden. So we use it in our no dig garden a lot and we have heaps of it. So I got a scoop of it and used my bamix to cut it up and make a powder. I have sprinkled a reasonable amount of it all around the plants and over the leaves. My own little experiment. At the time I did it I thought the good little beetles would survive it without any worries, but now that I've read about it in wikipedia, I can only hope the good beetles ran away (they seem to jump really quickly and a fair distance). We'll see what happens.