On the move

That's right folks, I'm blogging again. Decided to go with a new look, so you can find me over at Sleeping in Sydney. Do drop by if you feel so inclined.

Carnival of the Recipes #100

The 100th Carnival of the Recipes is up over at the house of Trub. This week people had to submit their favourite recipe from past carnivals. And guess what? The lovely Jeff, who is also the host, put down one of my recipes! What a nice man :)

Time for posting to resume

Yes, there has not been a post for a while. Reason being, my job has recently been getting all my attention as I have moved to another much bigger account.

Let me backtrack. I don't think I've ever explained what I do. I won't mention names but I work for a large international company. In my day to day job I get escalations on hardware calls (ie, broken equipment, like PCs, scanners, servers etc). I'm pretty much a liaison between the customer (a company), vendors (people who go out and fix the broken equipment) and my superiors (those above me who schmooze with the customer and beat up the vendors). Needless to say it can be a stressful job. Up to now, I've been on multiple small accounts. Now I've moved to just the one account (one company), but it is huge! There are other people on the account, but one is on leave, and the other has had to be offsite.

So this is my first week and I'm getting absolutely hammered with calls and emails. It's going well, in that I can put my hand on my heart and say I am doing the best I can, and doing as much as I can physically do. Can't do more than that.

Next week things should settle down, and I will be able to relax a little bit.

Carnival of the Recipes

Carnival of the Recipes is up at Caterwauling, lots of yummy recipes to try out!

On the move

Well folks, it looks like this little 'ol blog may be packing up and moving to new digs. The excellent Harvey has kindly nominated me to be a Munuvian and the ever wonderful Caltechgirl has given me a YAY!

For those of you going huh? It means that I will be moving to a new site, to a better and fancier place, and will have a new address. I'll let you know when I know what it is.

Oh, and just for kicks (and because I am so sick of the current title), I will be changing the name of my blog from "Aussie Wife" to "Sleeping in Sydney".

Like warm apple pie

So this week's Carnival of the Recipes is for Independance Day. Not being American I pondered what to submit. Then I thought "What's that expression? As American as apple pie?"
So here is my apple pie recipe which I have made twice now, both times very successful. I got the recipe from a friend who got it from a Donna Hay book, not sure which one.

Apple Pie

Ingredients

1 quantity sweet shortcut pastry (see recipe below)
1 egg, lightly beaten
sugar for sprinkling (optional)
8 green apples (1.2kg/2lb 7oz), peeled and chopped
1 tbsp water
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp almond meal

Method

Preheat the oven to 190 deg C (375 deg F). To make the filling, place the apples and water in a deep frying pan over medium heat. Cover and simmer, shaking the pan occasionally, for 5 minutes or until just tender. Drain and cool completely. Stir in the sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon.
Divide the pastry into two-thirds and one-third. Roll out the two-thirds portion on a lightly floured surface until 3mm (1/8 in) thick and place in a shallow 24cm (9 1/2 in) pie tin. Sprinkle over the almond meal and pack the apples tightly into the pastry shell.
Roll out the remaining pastry to fit over the top of the pie. Brush the rim with water, press the edges together and trim. Cut several slits in the top of the pastry, brush with the egg and sprinkle with sugar (I tend not to do the sugar, depends how sweet a tooth you have). Bake for 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden and crisp.

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry

Ingredients

2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
3 tbsp caster (superfine) sugar
150g (5 oz) cold butter, chopped
2-3 tbsp iced water

Method

Process the flour, sugar and butter in a food processor until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. While the motor is running, add enough iced water to form a smooth dough and process until just combined. Knead the dough lightly, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Can I help you?

We were talking at work about how politeness seems to be fading away in society, you don't hear as many please and thank yous as you used to. And the thank you wave when you let someone in when driving is less common too.

Reminded me of an incident that happened to me when I was about 15 or 16. My first job was at McDonalds. Crappy job, but it certainly taught me to work hard. The first manager I had there was a real wanker, by the name of Bruce. He was middle aged, gay, and mean. Many was the time he made some of the girls who worked there cry.

Anyway, one day I was working away at the register, and the place was absolutely packed. I greeted the next customer , "Hi, can I help you?". Bruce the bastard took issue with this. He looked at me and scathingly said "Hi, can I help you please!" He then turned to the customer and said in condescending tones, "Well, you can tell the difference between someone who has been brought up and someone who has been dragged up!" I was totally mortified, I could not believe he said that. There was quite the stunned silence from the crowd in front of me. One of the customers, after the bastard had wandered off, told me not to worry about him. Good advice, but hard to take when you are young and in your first job. Funny thing is, the way he wanted me to say it isn't even grammatically correct.

No more Eddie

Moose, the dog that played Eddie in the TV show Frasier, has died, aged 16. I quite like the show, and thought that Eddie was a classic, always made me laugh.

Had the day off work sick today. Started feeling unwell yesterday, basically a head cold, sore throat, blocked up, sneezing, light headed, the works. Fun!

Spent the day in a state of lethargy, not super sick, but just not well. Read for a bit, attempted to do some work remotely, gave that up as a lost cause. Played a bit of World of Warcraft, but even for that found it hard to summon up enthusiasm.

Went downstairs and watched 9/11, the documentary by the French brothers Gédéon and Jules Naudet. We've had the DVD for a while, but this is only the 2nd time I've watched it. I remember the first time I saw it, I was just shocked and horrified, especially by the sounds of the bodies hitting the ground. And I was shocked and horrified again this time around, but not to the same extent. I think that was because I knew that the fireman that we'd been following with the brothers, the ones from the firehouse, I knew would be ok.

Hard to comprehend that such evil exists in the world, I can not in any way see how someone could ever think that was a good thing to do, to fly a plane into a building.

And I wonder, is it just a matter of time before something like that happens here in Sydney? We prepare as best we can, but I guess that you can't guard against everything, that sometimes evil gets through.

But there is also love and light in the world. As I type, my husband is driving home from work. We will have dinner, drink some wine, and be together. Our own little team. Team Cole, win!

Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

Australia 2 - Croatia 2

Australia are through to the next round in the World Cup for soccer! Hooray!

I don't normally watch soccer, but Brian and I got up at 5am this morning to watch Australia take on Croatia. Australia just needed to draw to go through to the next round.

And, man, what an exciting match. We were on tenterhooks done to the last second. And I have to say, Harry Kewell, what a legend. He scored the equalising goal in fine style.

As we don't watch it much, didn't know quite what to expect. What we found interesting is how much a role penalties have in the match, people diving to the ground feigning injuries everywhere.

Great game though, I don't regret getting up to watch it.

For sustenance during the game, my wonderful husband cooked us up a big breakfast, bacon, eggs, toast, sausage, tomato. Plus freshly brewed coffee. Quite a treat on a workday morning. Usually we cook our breakfast out on the BBQ, but as it was still dark Brian cooked in the kitchen. What we didn't allow for was how smoky it can get cooking sausages and bacon. Our smoke alarm went off at least three times, which meant I was on tea towel duty. Tea towel duty = Amanda standing on third stair madly waving tea towel at smoke alarm to get the smoke away from it. Hoping the penetratingly loud sound didn't wake the neighbours! :)

Anyways, off to the physio now (back still recovering from going too hard at my first yoga class), then off to work.