Yes, I Cook.

Yesterday I was lamenting the lack of any decent gluten free roti (Indian flat bread). I know there is a good range of gluten free products available these days, but if anyone knows where to get wraps that are free from gluten, dairy, eggs, yeast, and added sugar, which neither fall apart nor resemble card board in any way, well, I'd really like to hear from you.

Anyway back on track. So hear I was, wishing I had decent wraps to eat my aloo saag with, when I decided I would try to make some, so with no recipe and nothing in mind other then the notion that there couldn't be much to it, after all the base for roti is just flour and water right? So out came the gluten free plain flour, the sifter, and the mixing bowls. I started by combining flour and water until I had something the consistency of a good pancake mix (which turned out to be roughly half and half), then I added a bit of oil and salt and beat it all into submission, before cooking it like a pancake. The end result wasn't too bad, a little bland, but no more so then any of the options commercially available to me. The main thing was it held together well and was suitably pliable for the purpose of picking up curry.

Today I decided to give it another go, this time I replaced the oil with melted [dairy free] margarine, and I threw a handful of cumin seeds in the pan while it was heating up. Once they started popping I added them to the mix and started cooking. This time the end result was a bit thicker and stickier, but better tasting and still well suited to its intended purpose.

I intend to experiment further with this, I'd like to try it with different flours (chickpea for example), and also I'm going to try it with rice milk.

Whether or not I make this when I am also cooking the main meal (which I do from scratch) rather then just having leftovers will probably hinge on whether I have time to do it in advance, since [a] the stove can't accommodate that many pots and pans and [b] most Indian recipes require very close attention in the initial stages or the spices will burn.

Dollars and sense

Ok so in all fairness I have tried to blog a couple of times and had my posts swallowed by the Internets, but mostly I just haven't felt like, or had time to, post. I've been sick, had a death in the family, all that fun stuff. Also had good stuff, like games nights, movies, an afternoon at fed square listening to the jazz festival, and a night out dancing to Frankie Wants Out at their first weekend gig in ages.

The latest news is that I put my car in for a service and repairs yesterday, and found out today that she could cost in the area of $2500, and will take a week. The work is badly needed, and she's otherwise a good car which once fixed up should last me a good long while. The head gasket has been leaking for a while, which I knew I would eventually have to get fixed but had hoped it would last until I was ready to get a new car. There are some other problems, which the mechanic will suss out and fix up as he comes across them when he rips the engine out. I had to get her in for repairs quickly because in addition to getting more sluggish lately I also had a 100km drop per tank in fuel efficiency between one tank full and the next, despite brand new tyres. We are talking about a small tank so that's a very significant amount. At least my mechanic knows I'm not overly wealthy and has said he will absorb costs where he can.

After Chris and I dropped the car off yesterday we caught a bus to Knox to do some much needed clothes shopping, and I also bought a wheelie suitcase which I need for going to sunny Queensland next month. Thankfully we managed to get a quite good one which should last years, on sale for $80 (loose change compared to other prices we'd seen). After we got home I went to wash the jeans we'd bought (2 pairs each @$100 for 2), only to discover that they had given me 2 pairs the same instead of the 2 different pairs I'd tried on. A shop assistant had gotten me a pair from out the back as my size wasn't on the shelf, and as I'd tried on a different colourway of the same cut I didn't try them on. The woman had gotten me the wrong pair. We caught the bus back to Knox, exchanged the offending pair of jeans, and decided to see what was on at the movies. We ended up seeing 'Iron Man', which was quite good, different from your average comic book movie, then caught a late bus home. Obviously we are going to have to watch the expenses for a while, but apart from the movie we didn't buy anything we didn't need. At least our holiday shouldn't cost excessively much as far as such things go.

That's it for now

x

Canasta in the Dark

Doesn't have quite the same ring to it as murder in the dark does it?

8pm to 9pm last night was Earth Hour, a global event in which households and businesses in cities around the world turned off their lights for one hour to conserve energy. This was the 2nd annual Earth Hour, and the first to take it to a global level.

Last night also happened to be our turn to host games night, and so by 8pm Chris, Nat, Brett, Cass, Dave and I were gathered around the dining table playing canasta by candlelight. How romantic! We also played crazy eights once the lights went back on, which is essentially uno but with regular playing cards. A fun night all round with lots of laughs.

I had a little trouble in tinting class...

This year I decided to celebrate Easter by dressing up as an egg...

Well no, not really. Its actually for the Leukaemia Foundations World's Greatest Shave. Yes, I know I could have just sprayed it purple for the day, but what would be the fun in that? I used fudge 'raspberry beret' on top, and wakk 'purple' underneath. The colour in the photo isn't quite accurate, the top colour is slightly more purplish, but you get the idea :) Both colours are designed to last 20-30 washes, although I know from seeing it on other people that it will tone down a lot in the next couple of weeks. To get the colour this bright I first had to bleach it, which took alot out of my hair so I gave it a couple of weeks to recover, with the result that my roots had a chance to grow out, but I'm happy with the result.

I did the dying on my own, as Fi wasn't able to make it. This meant parting my hair horizontally across the back of my head, which takes some doing, - I ended up hanging a small mirror over the door opposite the bathroom mirror so that I could see the back of my head, and even then there was much trial and error, - whacking the top section in a pony tail and covering it with glad wrap while I dyed the bottom, and then once the bottom half was done and washed out, repeating the process with the top section. Fairly time consuming, but well worth it I think.

If you would like to sponsor me it's not too late, visit my shave page, or bpay biller code 939488, ref 20198156. Please let me know in comments or email if you donate via bpay so that I can include it in my totals, and let me know if you want me to send you a receipt.

Have a safe and happy Easter everyone!



Extra - just because the [American] spell checker is having conniptions - colour colour colour colour colour. Just as well I used glad wrap and not aluminium! hehe.
I'm sorry, I'm in a cheeky mood. Fiery even.

Update

As my hair and scalp are still recovering from bleaching, my stylist [i.e. Fi] and I have decided to push back the colouring date a week, so at this stage its looking like being next Saturday.

Yesterday was spent doing all those little things that pile up; the day started off with getting the car checked at 9.30am, then cleaning, mopping, washing, picking up a ring that I had resized, shopping, lunch, canceling gym membership, and bringing in the washing off the line, and then a cold shower to recover from doing all this on a 40C day. Then I picked up the boy from uni and we went to see Fi. We drove the less then a k down to the shops (see above comment on the weather), checked out the bead shop and a few other places, stopped at a cafe for cold drink and I had a yum gluten, egg and dairy-free yo yo biscuit (not sure on the sugar content but no adverse effects). Then hit some more shops, dropped Fi back and headed home to have dinner and fall in a heap.

Today I worked 7am- 3pm, just got home and am picking the boy up from work in just over an hour, then tonight we have games night at Nat's place.

Thats it for now,

Nadie

NOT HAPPY JAN!

I discovered today that some [insert obscenity here] has done a hit and run on me when the car has been left parked. The passenger side of my bumper dented, thoroughly scuffed and scratched, and is hanging loose. My car is built like a tank so it would have taken a fair amount of force to do that kind of damage, there is no possible way that the person responsible couldn't have noticed or that their car got off undamaged. So now I'm stuck with a demerit point. Mum has kindly offered to pick up the $500 excess, for which I am very grateful, but I'm feeling very dejected and unimpressed with the human animal at the moment. Originally I thought it must have happened in a shopping centre carpark, but the thought occurred that it may have happened when the boy borrowed it for uni, which at least gives me specific time and place to hunt up security footage. I'm taking her for a quote tomorrow morning.

BTW for any overseas visitors who don't get the reference in the title of this post, the phrase originated in a phone directory ad and quickly became a popular Aussie colloquialism. Not sure if its used anywhere else. Probably not.

Last call for sponsorship!

You'll have to excuse me for not posting, I seem to have suffered from an attack of blondness.


It's almost time for the world's greatest shave; come Friday I will be colouring my hair bright purple to raise money for leukaemia. To sponsor me, or to find out more about the event please follow the link in the side bar. Apparently some people have had trouble with the site accepting donations, so please let me know in the comments if you want to sponsor me and can't. Thanks!