The pick of the decorated cake entries in the Samford Show, as reported by our roving photojournalist, Quokka.
Yes – not only has that skinny bitch got all the accessories you and I can only dream about, like a camper van with a hot-tub and Earring Ken, she’s flexible, too.
Fun in a box 
But where is the Olympic torch? Oh…. Don’t answer that.
The olympic torch got sozzled by all the rain. Although I was wondering what the chocolate coated log things were meant to represent so perhaps that’s it.
Isn’t this a delight?
The Bloke and I took advantage of the return of passable good health to do a tour of the Samford Show on Saturday. First stop, the Pig Racing Event, followed by searching out the Cake Show.
There were a lot of entries in the children’s section along the theme of ‘Olympics’.
I was disappointed not to see the scattered bloody torsos of a squad of GI-Joes spread across the table. Don’t they teach children about the consequences of a terrorist attack in a poorly defended island that can’t afford English speaking machine gun operators?
I’d like to see someone make a Pig Racing cake. No – even more fabulous – a cake decorated to look like someone decorating a cake!
This is one of my favourite sites for cakes:
http://www.pregnantchicken.com/pregnant-chicken-blog/2011/3/15/cake-wrecks-baby-shower-edition.html/
I am so glad that Olivia’s friends (or Connie’s) did not organise my baby showers.
Hehehe. Meatloaf baby is so, so disturbing.
Check out the Dalek cake here:
http://www.cakewrecks.com
The Dune one is also amazing!
I liked the Alien chest-burster. Sent the link to soon-be-birthday daughter, which may have been a mistake.
If an Alien bursting out of your chest doesn’t say “Happy Birthday”, I don;t know what does.
Well, maybe that and a Myers gift-card.
And big bottles of alcohol. And Darrell Lea walnut logs. And shiny, shiny diamonds.
Darrell Lea in the city was all out of walnut logs. And coconut ice, and bulgarian rock, and choc-coated peanut brittle fingers.
The place was swarming with panicking customers, wanting to know when their beloved red liquorice and chocolate coated ginger would be back in stock.
I just grabbed a basket-case of loose chocolates so at least I’ve got $11 worth of peanut brittle and strawberry creams to tide me over.
The staff were saying that going bust has been the best thing that’s ever happened to the business, they can’t keep the shelves stocked fast enough to keep up with demand.
I have never seen the place so packed, and that includes before Easter & Xmas.
The store I went to was completely out of ginger, but I did get some strawberry creams for the Boss. I nabbed the very last bag of peanut brittle fingers, and a walnut log. There were a LOT of empty shelves. It was fairly quiet, though, so I guess the local shoppers had clued on to the out-of-date stock. I won’t be going back there again. Bastards.
Sounds like receivership may well be Darrell Lea’s salvation.
Hey, Q – I won an Ebay auction for a leather recliner that I have to pick up in Brisvegas this weekend. Want to have brunch on Sunday?
Absofkinglutely.
Gee, Quokka said her house was minimalist, but I didn’t realise visitors had to bring their own chairs…..
Not only chairs, Catty – we have to provide our own oxygen tanks to breathe, as well
Awesome, Q! I’ve just emailed Ildy to see if she and Damien are keen.
Are you in, Greybeard?
Panicking.
The Bloke has gone to Cairns but before he left he hid my $10 package of Darrell Lea assorted chocolates.
Excuse me while I ransack the house.
Hohohohawhawhaw. Oh, tears of laughter. That man is a gem. How to make sure you look forward to his return.
Dammit. We’ve got a Degenerate Diners lunch on Sunday. Lyn is making a chook casserole & I’m doing mulled wine so we’ll be cooking.
Oh, make no mistake, he will live to regret it.
Chicken casserole, you say…so what’s the plan? Get the degenerates sozzled enough so that they won’t notice any incriminating black feathers sticking out of the kitchen compost bin?
Certainly not! In fact Fifi wants to make a video of me and Colin doing his latest trick. He now jumps* up to take a nut out of my fingers.You sure you don’t want a pre-trained one?
*Actually more of an awkward lurch-and-flap but it gets him up there.
Clever. My oldest kidlet has just trained his budgie to fly onto my head. It invariably craps there. Little bastard – and I’m not too impressed with the budgie, either.
Move over The Shire, it’s DIY gelding with Colin the Turkey.
I always knew he had it in him.
Please tell me you’ve got that on video.
It’s an almond dammit! And Fifi has already signed the video rights.
Hsst. Catty. What’s the email address for Australia’s Funniest Home videos again? We’re on a winner with this one.
Regrettable, GB – we’ll miss you. A bit.
Umm, Q – when you say he’s ‘hidden’ them, you don’t mean where Catty hides chocolates, do you? You know, in her tummy?
Hey! I resemble that!
*nomnomnomnomnom….*
I saw a guy riding a motorcycle in a Cookie Monster helmet, Catty. It was blue and furry with googly eyes on top and the dark visor was his wide-open mouth.
I thought of you.
I want one! It would go well with my Cookie Monster hoodie. I don’t actually have to ride a motorbike, though, do I?
That’s funny. I saw a guy in a Captain America helmet the other day – blue with white stars. I’m still wondering where he was off to. Down pub with Thor and the Hawkman, maybe?
And no, the bloke doesn’t have the same sort of sweet tooth as I do. He polished off the two containers of chocolate mousse that we brought back from Bastille Day festivities – I could only bring myself to eat a teaspoon of it every few hours – and there’s hardly any Homer Hudson Hoboken Crunch left in the freezer thanks to his late night nomming during the tour de France – but he won’t go through my Darrell Lea sweets. Not while he’s got a jar of sour acid-drops in apple and lemon flavor to suck on, at any rate.
Mmm… Hoboken Crunch. I used to love that stuff, but nowhere around here sticks it. Probably just as well.
I’ve challenged Damien to prove that his place: (a) is open; (b) doesn’t charge for tap water, so I’m waiting for an answer.
Stocks it.
Please excuse my New Zealand spelling.
I had lunch at Foodstar the other day. I skipped the meals and went straight to the dessert bar. You’d be amazed how much chocolate mousse constitutes ‘all you can eat’. I certainly got my money’s worth, that’s for sure.
Well, it’s thoroughly whipped so it’s mostly air. Apart from the sugars and saturated fats.
Foodstar must be a unique Victorian institution, Catty – is it like Sizzlers?
I thought Foodstar was a trucker’s bar in Alabama.
Melbourne really is a mecca for multiculturalism.
My mistake, it’s a chinese restaurant in Indiana.
It’s a bit like Sizzlers, only without the steaks. I like the soft serve machine – you can fill your plate with honey chicken and then cover it with a mountain of ice cream, if you want. Or you can just go straight to the chocolate mousse – which I did, seeing as Mayhem wasn’t there to make me eat a proper lunch first.
Mmm… honey soft-serve chicken.
You know, with the recent craze for cappuccino machines at home, it’s a wonder people don’t have home soft-serve machines on their kitchen benches. Just pop in some rendered pig fat, sugar and artificial dairy flavour and off you go.
Now THAT would inspire children to eat their veges!
Way ahead of you, Madam:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Cuisinart-Soft-Serve-Ice-Cream-Maker-MIX-INS-/290744164849?pt=AU_Business_Industrial_Restaurant_Catering_Equipment&hash=item43b1b3e1f1
But what I really want is this one:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/BEDFORD-MR-WHIPPY-SOFT-SERVE-FOOD-VAN-TRUCK-/200788760217?pt=AU_Trucks_Commercial_Vehicles&hash=item2ebff15699
“GREEEEEENSLEEEEEVES WAS ALL MY JOY…”
Hey! What’s all this ‘comment awaiting moderation’ crap? Madam, quick, switch of the anti-icecream setting on your troll wall.
Thanks. I was feeling all rejected and unloved for a second there.
Cool!
Let’s buy the Mr Whippy van and tour Australia, selling soft-serve as we go. I’ve always wanted to see all the “Big” things. Where do you want to start – Big Merino, Big Cassowary… ?
The Big Prawn. I wonder if we can make prawn ice cream?
Well, if you can make a prawn cocktail….
If it wasn’t so early, I’d think you two had been at the vodka. Although, you could take Quokka, video it and release it as “The Adventures of Pralina, Queen of the Dessert”?
Hehehe.
Or Black Forrest Gump.
“Noddy’s Softwhip”?! Well, there goes another one of my childhood illusions.
That’s odd. I could have sworn Big Ears was the top.
Whaddaya mean ‘if it wasn’t so early’? There’s a vodka curfew now?
Today’s factoid: my great grandmother was born within throwing distance of the site where Larry the Lobster leers out over the highway.
I would like to get back to see the Coorong now that the GD thing actually has water in it – rather than mud and sulphorous gases – so I’m up for the Mr. Whippy trip.
I’ll bring my stockwhip and my spurs.
Who should we smack up along the way?
No, Catty, of course there’s not. GB had a brain snap and thought he was addressing the Christian Women’s Temperance Union.
Q – anyone who stands in our way.
Damn straight. Especially people who try and put a curfew on our vodka.
I’m a little bewildered about this Larry the Lobster, though. Why would anyone throw Quokka’s newborn great grandmother at it?
Not sure. Perhaps it’s some kind of regional fertility ritual we’re not familiar with?
Just had a coffee, biscuits & venting visit from Hairy Greybeardson. Excerpt:
“So I was driving D—- home (after putting drunken C—- to bed after their 3rd breakup in 24 hr) and there was C—- sitting crossed arms & cross-legged at the top of the driveway in her underwear, crying. D—- got out and C—- yelled at her, took her knickers off like a toddler and threw them at her, then ran off down the street crying. And I thought as I was running after this girl who was wearing only a bra and crying and screaming – I was wearing my hoodie – that this would be a really bad time for the cops to appear.”
There has got to be a “Felafel” style book in this. I’ll help him write it for a cut. “My Adventures among the Wild Lesbians of Brisbane” maybe? Oh, the cops didn’t turn up but later C—- locked herself in the loo with a knife. HG being thoroughly sick of the drama by now, kicked the door off the hinges, took the knife and gave her a detailed assessment of her actions, as seen by an actual adult. She went to bed and apologised in the morning. A lot. Also D—- had a coffee machine fall on her at work, burns to 20%, shoulder & arm look melted. HG is changing her dressings and doling out the Oxycodin because the girlfriend is useless. Unlike both their sets of rich parents, we at least seem to have raised an adult who can cope with things. One set of parents loves HG because they know what C—- is like and think he’s a good influence. In the old days we’ve have arranged a marriage of convenience so he’d get the loot. The other set think the burns are God’s punishment on D—- for her wicked unnatural lusts. Bastards.
Gee Whiz those lesbians have an exciting life, GB. It’s like Gorillas in the Mist for Hairy, only with more lingerie.
I think he should call his up-coming expose Oestrogenmancer.
The thing about people who have repeated meltdowns is that they only ever do it if they know there is someone on-hand to mop up after them. If they don’t have a minder/babysitter/carer following behind with a doggy-do bag, they are fully capable of picking up their own crap. But usually they don’t want to, so they tend to reserve their bullshit for occasions when there is an audience. Hairy probably doesn’t realise that the more he rescues them from themselves, the more they will engage in that kind of behaviour. The words ‘rod’ and ‘back’ spring to mind.
Rod… that reminds me. The Boss’s ex-workmate was named Rod. He lived in a caravan park next to a couple of tattooed lesbian goths. Now I think about it, I haven’t heard anything about those lesbians since the Youtube scandal shortly after Rod bought our old Ford station wagon to use as an unofficial hearse. I wonder if they moved to Brisbane? D– and C– aren’t tattooed goths are they, Greybeard?
I miss the stories of the tattooed lesbian goths, Catty.
What was the Youtube scandal? Please elaborate in depth and post links if possible.
The lesbians were filmed doing lesbian things to each other by the poor deluded soul who lived with them (he was convinced he could turn them enough for a threesome). Then Mr Deluded posted the video on Youtube. When the caravan park manager was watching random Youtube clips (i.e pr0n) on his computer, he came across the video ‘entirely by accident’. He was horrified to see the caravan park’s sign being used for purposes entirely unrelated to its intended advertising function, and kicked all three of them out of the park.
No links, sorry. The Boss wanted to bookmark it, but I wouldn’t let him. The kidlets use bookmarks, and I’d hate for them to stumble across it ‘entirely by accident’. Who can afford child therapy these days?
Hehehe.
What the smurf were they doing with the caravan park sign? No, don’t tell me, I’m already not feeling the best.
If the only thing my children’s psyches had to worry about was internet prOn, I’d be happy, though. Am I the only one who sometimes stops and imagines something they’ve just done/said being related to a mental health professional in later years?
Yes. Yes you are. The rest of us are more concerned about therapists hearing about what WE have done/said.
Hehehe.
Yes – that’s exactly what I meant! One or other of the kids, strung out on bath salts, leaning forward in a chair at a shrink’s office and saying, “Well, I think it started when Mum….”
The horror!
And then he strips off his clothes and eats the shrink’s face.
Indeed.
So it’s not just me, then. I suppose at least I’m not alone.
So long as you don’t decide to wait until you’ve run out of beer and need to get more when your irritating child has broken a limb & needs a trip to X-ray, I think you can count yourselves safe.
I HATE it when that happens to me.
It’s funny you should say that, Q. It’s the fear of having too many to drive in case of emergency that stops me from drinking when I’m home alone with the kids. All those long, sober nights.
I have just been down to the baking store in South Brisbane. I went in there for red colouring (something more toxic than cochineal, called ‘Xmas Red’ paste) and came out with an assortment of sugared flowers, mini-sugar bananas and a beautiful book of Xmas recipes that should do as a BD present for a friend who’s favorite time of the year is Xmas (yes, we’re the odd couple) – as her BD is close to then, hopefully it will give her at least 6 weeks of baking delight in which to impress her holiday guests…heh heh. The gift that keeps giving…anyway, the long and the short of it is that I plan to attempt Red Velvet Cupcakes and I figured if I screw up I can always drown them with icing and decorations so that at least they’ll look good.
I’ve found Nigella’s recipe online so I’ll see how I go.
Catty you tried a packet mix, didn’t you?
Can’t remember.
There is a cafe called Eros down in west end which sells greek sweets, and it also sells red velvet cupcakes. I’m developing a nasty habit so I think it’s in the interests of our bank account to finally learn to make the bloody things.
Wish me luck!
(And by that I mean with the trip to Coles to get the ingredients. You know how I feel about grocery shopping. Blah!)
Good luck, Q!
I hope you remembered to get some cupcake panties to put them in. All this effort deserves some dressing up.
I found lady-bug pattie-cake cases at the local markets a few weeks ago. How can you do better for red velvet cake?
Yes, I tried the red velvet packet mix for my birthday. I was spectacularly underwhelmed. Next year I’m going back to the triple layer chocolate fudge cake.
I tend to get my panty papers at IGA. They have a huge variety of sizes, colours and patterns. Even those sweet little tiny ones for chocolate truffles. So cute!
Mmmm…. I could go a few chocolate truffles. Or even some cake. But all I have right now is a bottle of vanilla malted milk, and a plate full of donut balls with chocolate filling. Poor me.
My heart bleeds, Catty. All I have is beef, broccoli and snowpea stirfry. Stupid nutrition.
I have last night’s leftover mushroom and asparagus risotto and some spicy roast vegetables – and I’ve got naked red velvet cupcakes cooling on the baking trays. I’ve emailed you all the recipe – and Mayhem (if I say ‘Cake’ – hey presto, watch, she will appear) so you can try it. God Bless Nigella. They have a delicious light sponge-like consistency and I can see the wisdom in bake tonight, ice tomorrow.
The bloke took photos of them cooling in the pan and emailed them to me from his iphone, but clearly Gmail has eaten them. If and when it spits them up I’ll send you the pix. I will have to show off my cake decorations, they are ever so cute.
A word of warning – the Xmas Red Cake Paste went all smurfing over me and I am walking the earth with my left hand the same shade as a sunburnt lobster.
Oh, and today’s lesson: Don’t wear a white t-shirt when you are fiddling with the seal on a bottle of Xmas Red colour paste.
Every time I read the words Red Velvet I think about that David Lynch movie, Blue Velvet.
Anyone else remember that gas mask?
Thankfully no.
I have just woken up and sniffed the cupcakes and I am pleased to say that chocolate and fatty sugary goodness is still oozing out of them. One more cup of tea in bed and I think I’ll get up and ice them.
Mmm… cream cheese icing.
I have emailed you some pix, and Khan Greybeard posted some on twitter in order to gloat at the cupcake-deprived. Catty, he said something about posting them on your Sulking Wall so there’s something for you to look forward to.
As he turned up with sugary You Won’t Believe It’s Not Darrell Lea offerings from the local markets I was forced to resist the urge to poison him.
I will answer to Nowherebob for this, but there’s always next time.
Nah, won’t work. I hear tell he has his winged monkeys taste-test everything before he eats it.
Those cakes look amazing. I’d try them myself right now, but the MIL just rocked around with a fresh bananana cake, still warm from the oven. Bake cakes or eat cakes? No contest!
Nomnomnom! Nice score, Catty.
I want to make banana muffins so I can decorate them with my little mini confectionary bananas but after a trip to Spotlight and an enormous roast lunch, I think I’m only good for minimal activity on the sofa.
i.e. flicking the remote or if I’m feeling lively, the pages of my book.
What? You had red velvet cupcakes, and you ate ROAST!?!! I’m shocked!
Yes. The bloke is still sitting there, trying to make room for more red velvet cake. I have taken twisted pleasure in arranging all my new cake decorating kit in the spice rack in the pantry door and I stood there gloating at it imagining all the ADHD I can set loose on the world with such a wondrous myriad of numbers and colours and preservatives. Wheeeee!
The spice rack looks so much more inviting now it’s not bogged down with all that healthy crap like oregano and turmeric.
You should make a cupcake called ‘Spectrum of ADHD’, Q.
It contains 10 different food colours, topped with every sprinkle you can find. And a glace cherry.
Mmmmm…. Hypercakes…. They will be very popular with ex husbands taking kids on weekend access visits. Then you could make Ritalin cupcakes as an antidote, and sell them at double the price to the mums who have custody. You could do package deals: Buy the valium/vodka shake-Ritalin cupcake combo, and get one Prozac cookie for free!
And after today I know just where to set up my market stall.
Prepare the tissues and the vodka in your sulking corner – we nicked off to the markets at Eagle Farm Racecourse en-masse today and had a fabulous time. Janet (twitterfriend and market stall holder) directed us to the choicest foods in the grounds – the dumpling stall – and off we went to make pigs of ourselves.
I came home with a box of dumplings, raisin and hazelnut bread, a ginormous boston bun just like they used to sell at school tuckshop, ricotta cannoli, and a problem doing up the buttons on my jeans.
Damien vanished but we decided we weren’t too bothered about losing him & sure enough when he resurfaced he seemed to have done their weekly grocery shop and he’d found the Hall of Sausages. His bags were overflowing with different types of chorizo so I heard some dark mutterings about how he needed to go back for some Duck Cassoulet.
Catty, you would have been in heaven.
It was particularly good to be there as we have been watching the Tour de France and there is a crazy french chef called Gabriel Gateaux (near enough) who goes ahead to the towns they are about to go through and he gets filmed going through the local produce markets choosing the finest local produce and then sticks them all into some sort of delicious french dish.
So I had fun pretending I was doing that – except I just got stuff that other people had already made.
I think Morgana got a photo of the Hungarian Donuts that I obsess over so we should be able to serve you up some cyber-noms.
Morgana, how’s your new leather recliner?
And how long did it take before the cats made themselves comfortable on it?
Lovely to see you today as usual.
I’m so glad we made the decision to tour the markets, I had a fabulous time. Forgive me for all the vacant staring into space and the ‘ooh! Shiny!’ and ‘look! A squirrel!’ moments. There was just so much to delight at, I could barely stay focused on the fact that there were sentient humans beside me.
Places that sell Hungarian Donuts and Hagrid sized Lamingtons tend to have that effect on me.
xox
Mmm… Prozac cookies.
I was still thinking about those dumplings as I drove home. I scored 3 x 500g punnets of strawberries on the way out for $10, the kids loved their pop rocks and the brooch I bought my Mum was admired by the woman at the service station so a good time was had by all.
Was recounting the story of the can of cassoulet for $24, when Mum trumped me – she’d been at the Zonta fair and saw lemon curd for $10 a small jar. Who the smurf would pay that?
The chair is fabulous and I had no problems bringing it home, despite an open tailgate – but you’ll never guess what Elf Boy found somewhere inside it. A wallet containing more than $400 in cash. Despite the severe temptation to pocket the lot – thus making the cost of the chair negative $310 – I set a good example to the boys and phoned the former owner to arrange its restoration. She was overjoyed – apparently her father had lost it a while ago, thinking he’d left it in a cab.
Indeed. I brought home a six pack of those dumplings and we ate one every hour, on the hour, after I’d returned home.
The Bloke was terribly disappointed that he hadn’t had the good sense to come along and join Damian in the Smallgoods Hall but hey, it was worth it when I got home to see that he’d been busy in the bathrooms with the calcium remover. GD hard toxic city water. The filth!
Everything sparkled so he’d earned his boston bun & his dumplings and his ricotta cannoli, one inch of soap scum at a time.
Yes, when I got waylaid by the jam lady I was a bit taken aback at the prices – her raspberry jam was $8 for the larger jar, and there’s a guy at the powerhouse markets who gives you a much bigger jar for that same amount – so next time I’ll ask before I hand over the cash.
Ascot prices.
Now What the Smurf is the Zonta fair?
Gosh, the chair lady did good out of that deal – wow.
Let’s just hope she’s made of the same stern moral fibre as you and she restores the wallet and it’s contents to dear old dad. 🙂
I thought that Jam Lady looked exxy. There was something about the shape of those vinegar bottles which suggested it.
Gosh, Q, I’d never thought of that – surely Chair Woman wouldn’t rip off her own father? Oh well, should she choose to it’ll be on her karma. And I’ve set a good example for the boys.
One day when we are having a quiet tete a tete remind me to tell you about some of the horrible things my father did to his mother. You’ll never look at your children the same way.
Oh dear. I’ll try to cherish them while they’re still cute and telling me I’m the best Mumma in the world.
Don’t you love it when they say that? It makes it all worthwhile – especially when the words are accompanied by a hug. Last Friday at school pickup, I watched as a friend calmly told his 11 year old son to pick his schoolbag up off the ground, and the boy screamed “I hate you! I hate you!’ It reminded me of the Teen. I so hope the kidlets never get like that.
Kudos on the good example, Madam. Every time I mention finding and returning a phone (three in the last 12 months), the Boss’s family all shriek that I am an idiot for giving away a free phone. Not such a good example for the kidlets, so I don’t mention it any more when I find stuff.
My MIL tells a few hair-raising stories about the Boss and his brothers. When they were teenagers, they would empty the pantry within hours of her weekly grocery shops. So she put a lock on the pantry door. In response, the boys would wait until she opened the lock and went in to get something. Then they’d push her in and lock the door. Suffice to say, the lock didn’t last very long, and my MIL is a tad claustrophobic.
Now. Where are my dumplings? You DID bring me back some dumplings, didn’t you? No? Damn. That’s it. I’m going back to the sulking corner. And I’m taking the whole block of Cadbury Snack with me.
Good God, Catty! Really?! What the smurf was their father doing?
I did buy a dumpling for you, but then I thought if it didn’t stay warm it would go all tough and leathery. And then I thought I could put it in my handbag, but I didn’t want soy sauce all over my things. Then I got very hungry, from all that thinking, and I ate it.
Indeed thanks for the recipe Q! The RVP is on my list (Please note that Aussies have Patty cakes – NOT cupcakes – hence the alteration of the initials) 🙂
I have just put my first ever loaf of hamemade bread in the oven, and am having a soothing coffee as I await the results! If it looks as good coming out of the oven as it did going in, I will be a happy camper. If it TASTES as good I will be one FAT happy camper.
I’ll let you know….
Good luck, Mayhem. I still have my first ever batch of breadrolls. They’re artfully arranged as a border around my front garden.
According to the family stories, the Boss’s dad went out fishing a lot. Quite a lot. He was convinced that the MIL had had an affair, because one year he suddenly realised there were three teenage boys in the house, and he only remembered two of them. Funny, he didn’t go out fishing so much after that.
And don’t fret about the dumpling. Sure, it would have been nice, but at least it went to a good home.
“Hamemade”, Mayhem? Och aye, it moost be a Scottish recipe!
I’m determined to make those cinnamon rolls I’ve been talking about for ages this week. Goad me until I do, if you’d all be so kind.
If you want goading I’ll summon Lobes.
Stand back while I toss this bucket of Chum in the sewer.
It works like a charm.
Ewwww! Thanks, Quokka. You’ve just put me off cinnamon rolls for life.
That bucket empty, Q? Pass it over here, if you’d be so kind.
Oh dear. Don’t tell me the V&D faerie is back visiting your house?
I will resist the urge to discuss food until you declare yourself safe from her Evil.
No, but thanks for the concern, Q. It was just the mention of Lobes. Although Elf Boy has a headache, sore throat and “feels like he’s going up and down”. It’s either more tonsillitis or the Return of The Purple Spots (aka malingering).
Urk. That’s pretty much how I felt during the transfer process of the communist snot virus.
Bloody hell, didn’t he have tonsillitis a week ago?
I told you I had to do an assignment on tonsillitis and the research said that some kids will get it 6-8 times per year.
Sounds like your kids are doing their bit to keep those figures up.
Poor you.
Uh oh. Did you have the “feeling like you’re going up and down” thing, too? Because I’m buggered if I know what the smurf that’s all about.
Ear infection likely. I used to get that feeling of being wobbly before my mother arranged to have my tonsils ripped out.
I think it’s to do with pressure levels in the tube thingies that go to the ears & fill up with muck during infections.
(so much for my scientific training but I’m arsed if I can remember their names)
Eustachian tubes. Sound like things you enter to board the Hogwart’s Express.
For a second I thought “Fallopian”. But (a) it’s wrong (b) probably wouldn’t affect your balance (c) not something you’d hope to find in Elf Boy.
Heheh. Don’t talk to me about Fallopian tubes – mine are giving me gyp.
You missed some fabulous dumplings on Sunday. GB. I hope you had fun with your Degenerate Diners.
Oh we did. Fifi spent the afternoon in her corner under the blanky, moaning “But I only had a little bit of each”. Trouble was, each = about eight dishes. Something with smoked cheese and rice, another with vegetarian snags & lentils, her chicken, harissa, mushroom & thyme, a steamed pud with fruit soaked in mulled port, plum pudding, brandy sauce, custard, my mulled wine . . . Yeah. Luckily I didn’t like the fish, can’t digest plum pud and was very sparing with the rest. So I got to point at her and gloat until she sent me away to make cups of tea.
This of course doesn’t stop me feeling envious & covetous re the dumplings etc. We are definitely going to go to that market and hit the smallgoods store.
Bread was fabulous ladies. Made it with no name plain flour. Will do it next time with bread flour. Very nommy either way.
Madam, if you’d like to share your cinnamon roll recipe, I’ll make it for you if you can’t be arsed….
Poor Elf Boy. It’s a nasty virus, this one. They reckon it will hit epidemic proportions before the end of winter, which is impressive, given that only one in 4 doctors are bothering to order any blood tests to see if it’s the H3N2 virus. So the actual cases are estimated to be more than double the reported cases.
My lot are all sick with it, and I’ve relapsed too. Nasty. But at least it’s not as bad for me the second time around. Yet. So far, my biggest complaint is having to take the kidlets to the chemist this morning. Sometimes I’m convinced that children have their eyes in their bloody fingers. They touched every fracking thing in the store in the few minutes it took for our prescriptions to be filled. Next time I’m going to gaffer tape their hands to their knees. That ought to slow them down. Or at least limit them to licking the items on the low shelves.
Hehehe. I always tell mine, “Look with you eyes, not with your hands”. Not that it makes a blind bit of difference.
Sorry to hear you’re not well, Catty. Hope you’re feeling better shortly.
Mayhem, it’s not an old family secret. I found it at http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/cinnamon-rolls-L5299.html
Oh, I’ll feel better as soon as this bloody tax return is finished and lodged. I’ve managed to put it off in favour of numerous naps, but now the Boss is starting to hint at attacking the family savings instead of waiting for a tax refund. I blame you, Madam. After your recliner score on eBay, the Boss now wants a new corner sofa with built in recliners. sure, it’s a nice sofa and all… really nice… I could take lots of naps on that… comfy… zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
He does know you’re not GUARANTEED to find a wallet with $400 in it, doesn’t he?
Maybe he’s just trying to do his bit to conceal the dust on the skirting boards.
Ooh, yes. And hide a nasty, dirt-trapping corner as well.
We sat on so many sofas today. I never knew couch surfing could be so tiring.
I put in some serious sofa time too. Aunt Irma is due to visit and I ate my body weight in Darrel Lea & Greybeard’s Carny Bought Peanut Brittle this afternoon. If I had the energy & I didn’t feel like bursting into tears I’d go out and commit axe murder.
Smurfing hell I’m sick of these GD hormones.
Roll on menopause.
On the virtuous side of things I finally got it together to make my spicy chicken meatloaf. It’s wrapped in bacon and if the Bloke’s stupid iphone ever sends me the pix of the things I will forward them on to you.
At least the house is full of the comforting smell of decaying roasted pig, that’ll help to keep me sane. For a while, anyways.
Pass the vodka, and the prozac biscuits, and the chocolate crackles please.
Oh, of course. I just checked the calendar – NOW I know why I devoured an entire block of Cadbury’s Marvelous Creations while muttering inane insults at Simpsons reruns. Bloody Aunt Irma. Quokka, d’you reckon we can set up an Irma Seeking Missile on your tower?
So you finally tried it, Catty. Which flavour?
Soon we’ll all be visited by Irma’s cousin, Martha Menopause. Do you think we’ll hate her just as much, or make her a cake?
Peanut Toffee Cookie. Mmmmmm…..
You know, I reckon we’re going to like Martha Menopause. I’ve heard she has a lot of fans. Big fans, strategically placed to cool her down when she gets hot flushes.
It’s fabulous. I haven’t tried the other ones because I can’t go past Peanut Toffee Cookie.
Actually, I wouldn’t mind hot flushes this winter. It’s frrrrreeeeezing here again today. Either that, or it’s the opening stages of the PRC Snot Plague and I’ve got chills.
Oh, I hope not, Madam. Poor love. The middle kidlet is still choking and snotting on the couch – which is a good reason not to buy a new one just yet. (Frustrating, that. I had big plans for my couch and a trashy paperback I found at the op shop). Still, I must confess to being impressed. This Snot Plague is possibly the first thing to come out of PRC that lasts more than two days.
“The middle kidlet is still choking and snotting on the couch – which is a good reason not to buy a new one just yet.” Oh good. You meant a new couch. For one horrible moment . . .
Hehehe.. There’s NEVER a good reason for another child.
Hehehe. More than two days.
So you didn’t find anything when you were couch surfing?
And now I have a picture in my mind of Catty on the sofa in her board shorts and zinc cream, Gidget style, wielding a metal detector.
I hope you’re not coming down with the Plague, MM, it truly is vile.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just been sent an invitation to my 30 year high school reunion and I’m off to change my name by deed poll so that they can never find me and send me requests for money and mentions in my will ever again.
How many GD times do we have to do this before we finally get away from them?
I visited their facebook page and they’ve published a long list of The Missing (most of whom were thoroughly miserable at school, and at least two who I know were asked to leave) with instructions to the masses to Seek And Destroy…er…at least, that’s how it read to me.
Thanks to the evil that is facebook, they’re all busy sharing details of Those That Chose To Escape.
Sigh.
GD internet.
Sarah Connor was right.
Nowhere is safe.
Oh, Moondoggie – isn’t that suedette chaise lounge dreamy?
I could barely stand to go to school, let alone contemplate a reunion. Good luck in your battles against Skynet and the Old Girl’s Association, Q.
I’d like to go to my high school reunion. But for some unknown reason, I’m not on their list of students. I can only assume that the reunion organiser is that blonde football player I defeated in the 1985 Jelly Eating Championship final. He REALLY wanted that medal, but, hey, jelly was involved. He had no chance.
Don’t let the haters get to you, Catty. Go anyway, with a vat of jelly – and challenge him to a rematch.
I doubt he’d go for a rematch. Jocks don’t like being humiliated twice by the same girl.
What a sook. Still, then you’d have twice as much jelly.
Tell you what, Catty, how about you go to my high school reunion and pretend to be me?
Just tell them you grew a few inches and had your face restyled a la Catty the Super Model. I don’t recognise anyone in their before and after photos so as long as you have the name of a reputable plastic surgeon that you can drop into the conversation during discussion of Altered Noses, I can’t see why they’d doubt you.
Garn. There’s cocktails. It’ll be fun.
If we can guarantee jelly shots, would that sweeten the deal? Girls who went to our school are notoriously heavy drinkers.
Which does go some way to explain their proclivity for rhinoplasty.
My nose is too crooked to pull it off. And my habit of drinking West Coast Coolers with a straw would probably give the game away too. But the promise of jelly shots IS tempting…
Nonsense. All those that didn’t become lesbians married rugby players which is why none of their noses and cheek bones are where they used to be 30 years ago. I’m telling you, they’ll buy it.
Meanwhile I went to StalkBook to view my name on the list of the Missing that they are trying to account for so that we can donate hefty sums for the construction of a new rowing shed/pool/spa/solarium/wing at the psyche ward for the likes of me and Madame and all the others they dispatched into the world twitching and shaking.
Of the 22 boarders, 17 are Missing.
I told the Bloke and he said ‘Sounds like the work of a serial killer. Just as well you changed your name by deed poll.’
If I could take him along to horrify the masses, it’d almost be as much fun as the black guy 12 years my senior who I took along to my senior school formal.
Lesbians and WAGs? Bullwinkle will fit right in.
But your best bet is to track down your formal date and see if he’s available – then send him alone to the reunion with your name tag on.
And a sparkly, off-the-shoulder frock.
Gorgeous! But make him wear his own stilettos – you don’t want him stretching yours out of shape.
Indeed. And if he augments his cleavage with chicken fillets, make sure he secures his neckline with Hollywood tape.
We don’t want your former classmates to think you’re a slut.
Heh heh. I think it would work far better if I sent him along in the same dashing white suit & red carnation they’d be swooning at his heels. And his wife – who is a dear soul who I’d hate to offend – wouldn’t thank me for it.
Well, the worst of the Irma aches seem to be over for now – so I’m feeling a little less negative about the high school reunion. Still not interested in going, though. If it was happening away from the school in a restaurant or a cafe I’d be far more likely to attend. I reviewed the agenda and it sounds exactly like one of those ghastly tedious school assemblies we used to snore through, and they’d give us evil looks when we got the words to the hymns wrong.
Morgana, when you were there did you suffer the experience of them handing out the wrong hymn sheets before assembly? I’m sure it was a conspiracy by the phys-ed teachers to piss off that witch who played the piano and menaced people with her baton.
I don’t think we used to sing hymns at assembly at all, Q. Although there is much of my secondary education I have blocked out, as a psychic defence mechanism.
Yes, that was my coping mechanism for surviving all the evil little trolls at my primary school. High school was a safe haven by comparison, but I never viewed it as anything other than a temporary loading pen until I could turn 18 and escape into the wilds.
Speaking of the wilds, I believe “Where The Wild Things Are” was originally set at one of our school camps, until the lawyers forced the author to change it.
Yep. Margate, circa 1981. We had our year 11 leadership camp there. It was like that scene from the lost boys, with great gangs of Margate Hoons circling the compound in stolen vehicles. I doubt they ever used that site again – the giveaway that we were in for an eventful time of it was on arrival, discovering that the glass louvres were all caged in with an elaborate combination of chicken wire (to stop the rocks) and barbed wire (to stop the amorous).
I was never permitted to go on a school camp. My mother also pulled me out of high school before the formal. I had always regretted missing out on those things, but now I’m not so sure it wasn’t a blessing in disguise. I guess her Catholic boarding school education taught her a bit more than shorthand and Latin.
All of those things were an absolute ordeal for me, Catty.
Its been quite bizarre for me watching them chatter about the carefree normal existence they recall playing over at each other’s houses on weekends. Kind of reassuring in that it’s more validation that I was raised among The Borg but I have NFI what I’d find to talk with them about if I went along.
I’d much rather be here chatting to you.
Yes, Catty. I’m sure you’re already scarred for life by enough of your childhood without adding any of those precious memories.
Somewhere in the Quokka files there is a shocker of a photo of me lying red-faced and exhausted by a ditch, my head and feet cradled on the legs of a few equally dishevelled classmates – after some misbegotten adventure out in the wilds of Samford.
Bushwalking.
Smurf that for a FKN joke.
After that experience I threatened the life of anyone who came near me with a camera at school camp.
I’ve worked hard to erase those memories.
God help anyone with a kodak file of it who tries to bring it back.
Remember when they used to make us do the hospital run?
Thinking back, they were bloody lucky no-one got bundled into the back of a panel van on the way around.
I were a state school boy. We were surrounded by actual girls who would talk & flirt & sit on your lap & er, discuss philosophy and politics. It was good. In parts. Mostly the parts involving girls. I’m sure their presence kept us from being quite as moronic and thuggish as we might otherwise have become. And they smelled good too. Sort of . . . interesting. Camps weren’t bad either, being where I discovered that I could fit a whole hamburger . . . OK, forget the camps. Did I mention that we put on Hamlet at the Eisteddfod? Cultural. Very, very cultural. Especially the Ophelia jokes. Oh never mind, I’ll let meself out.
Philosophy?
Yeah, right.
I’ve got an old photo somewhere from when I was in year 12. We used to play volleyball with the year 8s. I think I was just about to throw one over the net.
That’s good, Greybeard. You should always throw back the undersized ones.
Good point. Is it too late to throw him back now?
Yes, Fifi and Colin would miss him.
So would Mayhem’s Mum. She seems rather fond of him.
Rats!
Which reminds me, they’d miss him too.
When you think about it, he’s a virtual Saint Francis of Assisi – minus the Saint, but with extra ass.
Woke up with burning ears. Came straight here. Yep! It’s just like home only without the actual pummeling. I’ll just go and sulk in the garden . . .
An Ass-Tech?
An Ancient Ass-Tech.
Ooo, does that mean I get to do the thing with the beating hearts? Cos you lot would be quite safe! #heartlesswomeneverywhere
Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken? #dodgysonglyrics
I’ve checked the store cupboard and we are out of a few essential potion-making ingredients. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to send him out in the world to slice up a few scaly things. Anyone fancy disembowelling a troll?
Happy to help. You’ve got Lobes’ address?
3 The Flat Rock,
Underbridge,
Feral Gardens?
Good plan, Q. GB, you do the slice & dice, we’ll do the cauldron work.
I’ll do the pickling.
Pass the vodka.
*Hic*
Damn! I was going to do the pickling. Oh, well, I guess I’ll just sit here and keep an eye on everyone’s handbags. *sigh*
What do you call the bit where you pull his goolies off with a pair of pliers?
I’ll do that bit, if we’ve got those industrial strength gauntlets around somewhere.
Brave woman.
It’s called doing a service to humanity.
I think there’s an award from the Queen, she gets the goolies bronzed and you can hang them from your tow bar as a warning to others.
Well, there’s a surprise. I didn’t think Lobes had balls.
Well, not for long, anyway.
http://www.mamamia.com.au/relationships/walk-of-shame-remember-the-morning-after-the-night-before/
Memories eh?
Only very vague, sepia-toned memories, GB.
Oh, Greybeard. You too? I’m assuming that was before you had a beard, though.
Lobes has more balls than he can keep track of.
For every set he’s torn off one of JB’s fans, there’s a large notch in the scalping knife that he keeps in the drawer by his lap-top.
Which is why it’s easy to make the mistake of thinking that he’s been chewing on it at full moon.
Hehehe.
So, who’s been watching the Limpics? I did like the torch thingo. It looked like something you might find in a 70s lounge room. Probably not on fire, though.
The Bloke got up early to watch it and I told him to wake me if he saw Daleks.
As he let me sleep through it & there was nothing in the papers about intergalactic invasions I see no reason to attend to any of it.
Last night he downloaded an app that tells him when particular events are scheduled on TV, so I asked him when the showjumping was on.
Apparently they aren’t showing that on free-to-air-TV so Smurf that for a joke as the pretty little horsies are about the only thing I’d be interested in.
The NHS dance, the Harry Potter puppets, Mr Bean… that opening ceremony didn’t make any sense. Except, possibly, the bit where Daniel Craig and Her Maj parachuted into the stadium. That was pretty cool. Her Maj looked a bit sour when they introduced her to the crowd after her jump – I think that was because she realised too late that parachuting in a dress gave everyone a prime view of her reggies.
I saw a pair of Queen Victoria’s bloomers auctioned on Bargain Hunt one night. They were extraordinarily voluminous, and fetched about 300 pounds.
Three hundred pounds of what?
crabs?
Oh, I hope not. The butter sauce would make a terrible mess of the linen.
Damn. Now I’ve got a terrible craving for garlic prawns.
Well, feel free to join me in the anaphylaxis ward when I go in for allergy testing.
I told you guys that story, didn’t I?
Here was I thinking the allergist had something tucked up his test-tube kit to work out if I’m allergic to crustaceans or if I was just reacting to all the sulphites in prawns when I were a lass – and he suggested that I book myself into the day ward and bring along a few prawns.
I gather they’d be standing by with a few shots of adrenalin at the ready and the paddles hot and ready to fly.
Thanks doc, but No Thanks.
Sounds like a fun day out, to me.
Sounds like he was coming the raw prawn to me. And Fifi just toasted a tray of macadamias for a sticky date pudding. But her Dad has developed a problem swallowing anything with solid bits in it so she’s left them out. Being a helpful sort of chap, I’ve volunteered to get rid of them for her. Can’t wait till she sees how helpful I’ve been.
Mmmm… macadamias.
I’ve just discovered how good they are if you roast them yourself on a tray of sea-salt. You have to keep the temp low, though – about 60 degrees Celsius.
That’s very good of you, Greybeard. I’m sure Fifi will be delighted.
You know, we live in a pretty rough neighbourhood. Today I saw two macadamias walking down our street. One was a salted. And yesterday, two elderly nuns were walking down our street when a flasher leaped out of the bushes. One of the nuns had a stroke. But the other one couldn’t reach.
No comment on the prawns. Not surprising, considering I spent my early childhood years believing that my name was Prawn Head.
Oh, and Quokka, you may want to go and kick the Bloke in the shins. We’ve just been watching the equestrian cross country on channel 9 – and the Boss said the dressage on Saturday was very good.
Hehehe… couldn’t reach.
Oh, I very much hope nobody will visit me today. How much do you hate people who drop in? Particularly when the house is so filthy their feet stick to the floor. It’s like a cockroach motel in here, only the bugs have moved out in disgust.
Yes, when I discovered I missed the dressage I gave him a good hard kick. I did get to see a good chunk of the cross country before I snored off last night – around 1am. Looks like the course must have been awfully slippery after the rain, I think 5 had fallen off and been eliminated by the time I gave up and went to bed.
The bloke has downloaded an App that tells him what is on and when. The trouble is that when he downloaded it he couldn’t get it to work. I think after a few days of playing with it, he’s finally getting the idea.
I’m hoping they might at least repeat the highlights of it. Annoying that you never know WTF is on and they keep jumping from one thing to another.
I watched a bit of the basketball – I can get excited about that because I was a netballer at school and it’s not too much of a stretch to understand the game.
Still, all I really want to see is the pretty little horsies being clever, and occasionally chucking their riders over their heads into a nice soggy ditch.
Pity nobody thought to do that to the stupid Twitty Twat-Twat who was commentating. Surely they could find someone less irritating to do that particular job?
I’m pretty sure irritating is a pre-req for commentators, Q.
That must be why Eddie McGuire got the job.
And it finally explains the raison d’etre of the Footy Show.
My BIL was in the front row of the Footy Show audience a few weeks back. My MIL videotaped it, and watched every second. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch the video. Ugh!
Speaking of videos, don’t you owe us one about one of your rellies in law dropping their false teeth in a septic tank, Catty?
Oh, I wish I could get my hands on that video. The MIL won’t give it up. She says it’s insurance if FIL ever tries to divorce her.
Regrettable. You really should start taking your own video camera to family functions, Catty.
I would, but there’s always the strong possibility that I will be the star of any embarrassing videos. I get a bit … uninhibited … when the bubbles are flowing.
Forget the momentary embarrassment, and think of the massive cash prizes on Funniest Home Videos!
You’re right, of course. Nobody watches the show (nobody admits to it, anyway), so my dignity would remain intact. Maybe I will take the camera to the next family ‘do.
You really should. You can write your own score, too!
Too right. Catty: 25. Vodka bottle: 0.
Catty, what you need is hidden cameras with CCTV concealed in strategic positions all over the in-laws’ house. I’m sure one of our tech-wizard friends could help you with that. That’ll capture all those moments that you aren’t there to witness. And which they conveniently forget to tell you.
Do excuse my absence, ladies – the Bloke is on hols this week so we are swanning about in the lovely Brisbane sun (about smurfing time it showed up) enjoying each other’s company.
Normal operations will resume next week.
Until then I’ll probably be a bit scarce.
Save me some cake and try not to eat all the prozac biscuits without me.
xox
Too late. But with all that relaxing, you won’t need prozac biscuits. Have fun!
The prozac biscuits are long gone, but we made a very soothing smoothie with Mexican valium and out-of-date antipsychotics.
Want some?
You need to ask?
Regrettably, I’ll have to ask you to pour your own. I seem to have become a little too relaxed.
‘S o.k. Got me a Crazy Straw. Leave the bottle on the floor.
I keep forgetting to ask, Catty – how’s the couch hunt going?
The Boss bought a sofa. A massive modular unit with recliners on each end and a fold-out bed. It was horrendously expensive, but I managed to get him a decent tax return, so that should pay for most of it when it arrives at the end of the month. It’s raisin coloured – which means I will be licking it a lot.
Once he got off the phone to the furniture shop, I found him faffing about in the lounge room with a tape measure. When I asked him why he was measuring if he’s already bought the sofa, he answered that he really likes our old couch, and was wondering if there was enough space for it at the end of the lounge room. *sigh*. Men.
Mmm… fold-out bed. Sounds fabulous, Catty. And since it’s already raisin-coloured, the kids can snack on there. As long as they eat raisins.
My kidlets? Raisins?!?!!! Only if the raisins are coated in chocolate. And even then, they’d just suck the chocolate off and spit out the raisins.
Hmm. No, that wouldn’t work so well. It would soon look like you were keeping a rabbit on the new couch.
I have it on good authority that a rabbit would chew through all the electrical wires and then burrow through the couch all the way home to England.
Nephew and niece have a rabbit, and for the reasons listed above, it’s confined to the garden.
Yes, we had a rabbit. Or, I should say, a long-eared, cottontailed miniature goat. Not only was it a savage-killer-attack rabbit that warded off all attempts at affection with claws and teeth, the little bastard also ate everything. Brooms, doormats, fences, the pool pump…. I was strongly tempted to exact karmic revenge by eating the rabbit, but the family refused. They said the rabbit reminded them of me. I refuse to take that as anything other than a compliment.
The pool pump?
When I was a kid, we had a rabbit called Snowball. Snowball needed exercise, so Dad tied him to the clothesline with a rope. Snowball chewed through the rope. So then he tried wire – Snowball chewed through that, too. Next, he tried a heavy gauge chain, of which Snowball made short work. When Snowball chewed through the TV cord – while the TV was on! – Dad gave Snowball to the TV repairman, who also collected rabbits. Snowball eventually died of myxomatosis.
And so he should. I still think karma wants us to eat our rabbits, though. Or maybe it’s MasterChef who wants us to eat our rabbits. Ever since they cooked rabbit on that show, I’ve noticed that the butcher now has whole rabbit carcasses on display in their cold case. I even saw some dangling over the hot coals (next to the ducks) in the window of our local Chinese takeaway. Five years ago, that was unheard-of.
I bet their ears would have a lovely crunch, if you fried them up. Tell me, anyone who knows, does their flesh taste of carrots?
Dunno, you’d have to ask a bunny boiler. And you’re in luck, because I think I know where to find one.
Well, my spy texted me after the reunion last night & told me that the two people I’d least wanted to see had indeed turned up and had sent messages of love and good will to me.
I just rolled my eyes and felt grateful that I’d opted to avoid the damned thing. Next time there’s a reunion on, I will be better organized and be sure that I have pressing business to attend to far, far away, probably in Perth.
Well dodged, Q.
A group of my ex-inmates kept trying to get me to join them for dinner. After recieveing a series of decreasingly credible excuses, I think they’ve finally given up. I don’t understand what’s wrong with these people – did they stop being able to make friends at age 15?
Given the way that my high school BFF treated me – and other of her loved ones, I would be surprised if she’s able to make friends at all.
What a glorious Sunday! And with not a single rasher of bacon in sight, I’m happy as a weasel. I hope everyone else is well situated.
Yep. Porch, cup of tea, Nigella’s latest book ‘Kitchen’ which I found in the local library.
I’m currently perusing her chocolate chip cookie recipe and am wondering how she manages to get away with putting more chocolate than flour in the dough.
A worthy experiment, if I make it out of my sunbeam.
I think that would work. The chocolate pretty much holds it’s shape. Now, if you had more butter than flour I think it would just run all over your baking trays.
Yep. What Morgana said. Share, Quokka! We want that recipe. No hurry. Now will do.
Well, they are still warm/hot out of the oven so as far as I’m concerned the jury is out. I quite like the women’s weekly recipe (I like my biscuits crispy) but the bloke likes them to be chewy in the middle and crunchy on the outside.
Looks like they are shaping up that way.
I used demerrara sugar instead of the heavy brown sugar that’s in my pantry at the mo so I’m yet to decide if that’s a good idea. I wanted the caramel flavour and I’m willing to experiment by foisting them on the neighbours.
In stead of using choc chips I chopped up 300g of cadbury milk chocolate block into little itty bits & I added a pack of macadamias too.
I’ve eaten three before they cooled properly so now I’m feeling somewhat disinclined to eat more.
You really don’t want to know what else I ate before that, suffice to say that there was a trip to the sweet store in the myer centre yesterday.
There’s been another bertie beetle catastrophe, the girl in the first sweet shop I tried (which used to be the only place I ever found them) said that they are only available in Ekka showbags, now.
Bastards.
Let me see if I can find this recipe online.
Mine don’t look as impressive as nigella’s because she used choc chips and mine have the cadbury bits concealed inside. The bloke thinks they look exactly the same but without those little points of choc chips looking out…well.
Looks count, when it comes to a biscuit.
http://www.theextraordinaryartofcake.com/2010/10/nigellas-kitchen-chocolate-chip-cookie.html
Whoever wrote that blog would have exactly the same tips as me.
Except I don’t like eating cookies the size of a dinner plate so I used my 15ml tablespoon measure and just rolled them into balls that I dropped on the baking paper.
Blog girl is right, it’s best to refrigerate the cookies on the tray for a while before baking them, even if it’s just 10 minutes. They seem to come out a bit ‘cakey’ if you don’t do that.
Now that I think of it I may have inadvertently added an extra teaspoon of vanilla extract. Which was probably a good thing as demerrara is much dryer than ordinary brown sugar.
The cookies are very sweet and you can taste the light caramel flavour of the demerrara. Next time I will use brown sugar and proper chocolate chips and see what the difference is.
It’s a noble experiment worthy of your immediate attention.
And its helping me to recover my sense of identity after dodging that bloody school reunion. God that messed with my head.
Must work harder to burrow into my comfortable little life and disappear off the radar from that horrible bloody WASP nest.
Happy cooking!
That’s one of the advantages of being the school weirdo. Nobody remembers me, or if they do, they don’t say anything in case the school bleeding heart insists on inviting me. So I’m free to make cookies! Yay! Thanks for the recipe, Quokka. They’ll go well with the apple muffins I just pulled out of the oven. I can’t use demememererera sugar, though. I just sprinkled the last of it on the muffins to make the tops crunchy. Mmmmmm…..
I’m with you, Q. A bikkie should be crunchy. Otherwise, it’s just a flat patty cake.
Well done, industrious women. The only thing I made on the weekend was a mess. And, you know, three meals a day and assorted snacks for the weasels.
I think you did well.
If I had to do what you did on the weekend, I would’ve made a scene.
Ah yes, the biscuit report.
After resting the night in their tupperware box they are still crisp on the outside and chewy-ish on the inside. They are still very sweet, which I attribute to the two blocks of cadburys that went into the mix (and my stomach, as I was chopping it up) and the demerrara + 3 teasp vanilla extract.
The Bloke is delighted as this is what he thinks a biscuit should be, so he’s on the plane to Katterland with a dozen of them to tide him over till he returns home.
I like to taste butter in my biscuits and I like that delicious SNAP when you bite into them.
Unfortunately one day I brought home a peanut butter choc chip cookie from the German bakery at Graceville which was his idea of cookie perfection. I think it’s probably easier to just pop in there from time to time and get him his cookie fix and just keep making the WW choc chip recipe, and my grandmother’s biscuit recipes – so that I get my biscuits crunchy, which is the way that I like a biscuit to be.
Nigella’s hummingbird cake recipe, though, and her Red Velvet cake recipe, are definitely everything you could hope them to be. One of my GFs made the RV muffins last week, after I sent on the pix and the recipe, and while she’s not an excessive sweet tooth she said she ate about 6 the moment they were done. And as she was tempted to go back for more, she dispatched the rest of them to work with her husband where they went down a treat.
My neighbour tells me that there is to be a new category for awards at the Ekka this year and it’s for the best Red Velvet Cake.
That I want to see.
I wonder if they’ll make it in the shape of an armadillo like they do in the US for Groom’s Cake, a la Steele Magnolias?
I once made a marzipan dragon. But it was for a room full of 7 year olds, and none of them were particularly well groomed.
I would have loved to have seen that, Catty. Not that my grooming is anything to write home about this morning.
Speaking of home-made biscuits, I really miss my Grandma’s Monte Carlos. And yo-yos. You’d love them, Q – very crunchy.
Not a big fan of yo-yos, but I did make the WW monte-carlos and they were fabulous. My grandmother made delicious melting moments – again, they’re not something I am a huge fan of so I don’t tend to make them very often.
I make a kind of biscuit that’s a variation on her crunchy biscuits and I call them ‘hedgehogs’ – no idea WTF they really are but it’s a crunchy buttery biscuit with rice bubbles, slivered almonds and chocolate chips. My favorites are probably the humble anzac (again, I like to make mine crunchy & the bloke whinges that he likes them chewy) choc chips, and gingernuts.
I must say, I saw an absolutely delicious looking bundt recipe in Nigella’s kitchen, it had a layer of maple-pecan filling in the bottom, or I guess that would be the top once you bake it and flip it over. Yum!
Mmm… maple and pecan. It’s a great shame that native Australian flora features neither of those trees. Macadamia and honey just isn’t the same.
I quite like those roasted sugar coated macadamias that they sell at the markets, and in delis.
I think I have a biscuit hangover today.
Is that even possible?
Catch up reading of the above had resulted in my gaining at least 2kg. And being hungry.
Poor Greybeard. You’re not going to enjoy hearing about what I’ve been eating, then. My FIL just got back from Europe today. He brought me (amongst other delicious things) a huge box of handmade chocolates from a Belgian market. I have been slothing on the couch all evening, watching TV and cramming the most delightful truffle-filled treats into my gob. Luxury!
Not to dis the sugar coated macadamias, though. They’re pretty scrummy too. As is my new favourite honey:
http://www.beechworthhoney.com.au/shop2/search.php?search_query=apple+box&x=33&y=6
I stewed the apples in this before making the muffins yesterday. They were very, very good.
It certainly is, Q. You’re probably having a sugar crash. What you need is some pancreas in your diet… they’re called sweetbreads, aren’t they Catty?
As for the Belgian noms, congratulations – but I hope you haven’t spilt any on the new couch. Unless it’s raisins.
GB, no sympathy. You shouldn’t stay away so long!
‘S o.k, Madam. The new sofa doesn’t arrive until the end of the month, because we’re having it treated with protective stuff that will prevent stains for five years. Allegedly. I’ll let you know how effective it is once the kidlets have poured an entire litre of chocolate milk on it.
True.
However as I ate all that sugar in response to the stress of Skynet’s attempt to recapture me, I think I’ll blame that.
I’m off to put my name on the Do Not Contact list – again.
I’m sure I’ve done it at least twice before.
Let’s hope this time it sticks.
Catty your noms sound fabulous.
Pass the vodka!
Hehehe. Type G diabetes.
Whoever gave offal the name ‘sweetbread’ should be strangled with their own intestines.
Guess what we’re having for dinner to night, children? Sweetbread!
Yay!
You’re right, Catty. It’s a cruel joke.
Guess what I’m having for dinner tonight? That’s right. Belgian chocolate. Mmmm….
Pass.
I think I need some antacids.
*Burp*
Wheeling Fifi home after her Pad See Ew (delivered to the pub) and three pots of something called Feral Hop Hog. Two pints of Guinness and I’m anybody’s*.
(*Theoretically. This offer has never been put to the test.)
Feral Hop Hog? I thought they were a post-punk bluegrass band.
I propose we test it, and use Treeman as the Anybody.
EEEEUUURRRGH! I resign, I take it back, it wasn’t a core promise, I wasn’t fully briefed!
Of course, you wouldn’t be fully briefed. Or boxered, either.
Sure!
As long as I don’t have to watch.
Heh heh heh.
I love it when Khan GB says something that he lives to regret.
Particularly when it’s within about 3 seconds of saying it!
Did anyone see QI last night?
Stephen Fry (reading from a list of banned games): “What was ‘Laugh and Lie Down’?”
Contestant: “A box of Rohypnol.”
Comedy gold.
I missed it last night. A shame, as I do love that show.
I didn’t get to see it either. Prising the remote from the Boss’s iron grip isn’t possible for my weak little fingers. Instead, I got to see Morgan Freeman telling me how dark matter passes constantly through my body like shit through a goose*. Or something like that. I’m not sure, I kept dozing off.
(*may not have been his actual words.)
Speaking of faecal matter, all those who want to chime in behind me at CBG and shout ‘Hear, hear!’ – I just stuck the knives into JB for tolerating the misogynists at his own personal blog.
The line at BT about how his personal blog, CBG, is a warm, safe, caring place – was just a bit too much for me.
Way ahead of you, Quokka. I’ve already been there and done that. I did, however, stop short of offering JB my pointy-toed boots for the ass-kickin’. We all know how Havock drools around boots, and I didn’t want him steaming up JB’s windows.
Go, team!
I have succumbed to the myriad nasty germs circulating the children’s upper respiratory tracts, so I don’t feel strong enough to join the battle. But, whenever I’m not blowing my nose and choking down more aspirin, you have my full support.
I don’t often agree with Havock but boots now . . . Knee high or higher, shiny or matt, buckled or laced. Moulded to the curve of the calf . . . mmmm. I do like boots. By an odd coincidence, Fifi has lots of boots.
The better to kick your arse with, my dear.
That’s OK Morgana, just bottle up a vial or two of germ warfare and if I don’t get a commitment from JB to keep his attack dogs muzzled, I’ll add it the next batch of muffins I make for him. Meanwhile we can threaten to send your kids around to straighten things out over there.
I’m thinking if Elf Boy dips his darts into your toxic sludge and takes aim at the lizard folk, he may well discover he’s found his Calling in life.
Go Catty. I’d be right in there backing you but I’m off to the show to collect Bertie Beetle Bags (there being no other place on this earth you can get them) and I’m going to hunt out the Red Velvet Cake competition.
Wish me luck, I have no sense of direction so I’m hoping it’ll work to just follow my nose.
If I end up the pig pen I’ll know it’s time to give up and go home.
Mmm… Bertie Beetles.
Good luck, Q. I reckon we don’t need to go to the show this year, since we’ve got the flu already.
Poor Morganarama. What you need is some medicinal Belgian chocolate. I’ve been gutsing the stuff for days, and I feel great.
I will report in on my Ekka experience when I’ve recovered.
I just checked in at CBG and rolled my eyes. JB has absolutely no chance of raising the standards over there because the FKwit quotient now completely outweighs sentient compassionate human beings.
Should we feel pity for him, or a smug sense of satisfaction that he brought it on himself & now he’s stuck with the troll pit?
Are those CBG commenters for real, or is this some quantum level of existential humour that I am too base to appreciate? I was amused when JB gave the scaly sock puppet a warning. I was also vastly amused when Havock’s attempt at restraint descended into a cloud of muppet fking capitals. But the rest of it just confused me. I had to have a bex and a good lie down.
So, Quokka, did you find your Bertie Beetles?
Smug satisfaction, every time.
Last I heard from Quokka, she was in the cake decorating pavilion surrounded by smurfs. Not euphemistic smurfs, actual smurfs. Well, probably not ACTUAL – you know, made of fondant.
I haven’t read Havock’s posts for a while since they started sounding Not Like Havock and I suspected that Orin is up to his usual tactics of donning mask and balaclava in order to sneak up on the unsuspecting & stick a knife in their backs. Posters at CBG get 2 lines to convince me that they are legit and aren’t operated by strings on a stick or a hand up their arse and if I’m not convinced, I stop reading and move to the next post.
I too was shocked and amused when JB threatened the Scaly One and it was entertaining to watch him carry on like a 3 year old who’s been told that it’s bath-time and is yelling ‘No! You’re not the boss of me!’ and continues to run around flinging mud in gay undisciplined abandon.
It just shows you the emotional age of the idiots you’re dealing with. They aren’t adults. I’m still shaking my head that the scribe has taken this long to notice it.
Oh well. Not my problem. The internet is a big, big place and as is obvious from the silence of the Departed, there are better places to be. Like here. 🙂
Anyhoo. Moving on.
Yes, I found my Bertie Beetles, they are now a Wonka product so at least now I know who to lobby intensively to have sacks of the critters restored to shopping centres.
I just went in on impulse after lunching with the bloke. It was too cold to swim & too nice to vacuum, so I caught the train in & came out at the Cattleman’s bar. This year there were actual CATTLE tied up outside & across from it. And the bulk of the people there seemed to be down from Thargomindah & the far reaches of Stumpy Duck so it was like stepping back into 1972.
I did my usual clomp around the animal pavilion – lingering in the Horsey Stalls as usual, & got suckered into conversation with a few Bob Katter lookalikes who were selling raffle tickets and who warmed to me because they said I was the only woman they’d seen under 30 (heh heh, bless you, kind sirs) who wasn’t covered in tattoos and piercings. Now that they’ve got my phone number I expect to be contacted saying that I’ve won a timber rocking horse & an offer of matrimony. I think they sent their mothers to follow me round the cake exhibit to find out if I could cook. 🙂
That could explain the duo that pinned me behind the cabinets near the rocky road and quizzed me about the secrets of making the perfect fudge, french jellies, and patty-cakes. They were aghast when I pointed out the Red Velvet Cupcakes (‘they’re called Patty Cakes in this Country dear. Why are we including American stuff in OUR show?’)
They did seem a little more inclined to accept the interlopers when I explained just how much coal tar it takes to make them go that brilliant shade of red.
🙂
FWIW I was cursing that I didn’t enter my RV cupcakes in the competition because I think mine looked far better than the winning entries & I told the Old Ducks as much. In exchange for this bit of smugness they shared a few of their CWA cooking secrets with me (you should never use baking paper, it leaves a mark. What you do is mix up a good quantity of melted copha and flour and paint it on the sides of the tin. No cake will stick to that, no matter how moist or sweet it is.)
Which helps to explain why my spouse is building an extra wing in the coronary care unit here and in FNQ.
I had a fabulous time and the only thing that could have improved it was to have you guys with me. I was wishing you were there when I passed a 2m wide cake exhibit called ‘The Smurf Village’ and I found myself in stitches of laughter cursing that I didn’t have a camera. I may have to go back, just to capture the moment for you. Candy Smurfette was there with her lopsided gin-soaked smile, outnumbered by male candy smurfs at least 30:1.
It was smurfing BRILLIANT!
I came home loaded up with Bertie Beetle showbags and a couple of treats for the Bloke which cheered him up considerably. I’d grabbed a Dagwood Dog for him just before I got on the train – so the house still has that wonderful smell of Carny.
Only at the Ekka can you get a Dagwood Dog that smells like fairy floss. Mmm!
I had a fabulous day. I just wish you’d both been there.
Then again, we probably would’ve needed sedating by the smurf cage.
It was just too, too funny.
It sounds FABULOUS! I so wish I’d been there. Did Smurfette have her candy pants on? Or was she lying back like a daytime hooker?
It seems a bit dangerous having actual cattle outside a QLD pub. By 4pm, there will be drunken yobbos climbing on the poor things and screaming YEEHAH!… oh, I see. The organisers were giving the barmaids a rest, weren’t they?
I wish we’d been there too. Instead, I’m stuck in the house because of 14ºC weather and incessant hailstorms, and poor Madam is glued to her house by copious quantities of snot and germs. (Poor love. Get well soon. You are taking your medicinal brandy, right?). A few photos of the cakes would have been nice, Quokka. Maybe someone has posted pics on the internet? I might have to do a Google search. After the grocery shopping. In the 14ºC hail. *sigh*
Sniffle, hack. Thanks, Catty, I knew I’d forgotten something. I can have it in the form of a Brandy Alexander, right?
Sounds like a great day out, Q. Maybe we should start a Facebook page – Bring Back Bertie Beetle! I’m disappointed that you didn’t go to the Animal Nursery and pat a piglet, though.
CBG is increasingly like a classroom. This is NOT a good thing. JB – teacher – lacks either the time or inclination to take charge, or maybe he just enjoys a different “dynamic”. Like any bunch of kids, there’s always a problem group. They can be squashed or allowed to set the tone, as now. Havock is the rowdy kid with one joke but generally I can take him OK. JG is the one with social difficulties, but she’s really trying to make amends/fit in. Damian is the scary smart kid with a kind heart and strong sense of justice and so on through us all. Orin OTOH is the smart kid with lots of contempt for all the non-Orins in the world who enjoys sticking pins in girls. Oddly I find his Blarkon persona sometimes amusing. And then there’s Lobes. Is he another Orin-puppet? I don’t know but there’s a lotta hate/ego going on there. JB seems to enjoy him so I guess he can have him – it’s his blog. I’d miss PNB if he didn’t have his own blog. And then there’s here. I always thought girls smelled better.
Hope your ghastly flu packs up soon Madam. Surely there must be more deserving sufferers? couLOBESgh
I did go through the animal nursery but it was full of *shudder* prams and snotting children. The woman who sat next to me on the train in there (in the carriage marked ‘quiet, no noisy devices or talking on mobile phones) had a loud conversation to her mother, via mobile phone, about how her daughter had come down with Scarlet Fever so she’d had to pull her out of child care. (Oh, the inconvenience!)
So I deemed it best to stay out of Handling Range of the children and anything they’d lathered in droplets of Scarlet Fever or Spanish Flu.
Khan GB, I concur, but I would add that it’s a classroom at Inala with a first year student teacher at the helm, getting pelted by chalk and spitballs.
I just wrote a treatise on the subject over at the Corner.
I spend very little time at CBG these days so it really doesn’t bother me if JB gets a handle on the Krazy over there or not.
There is plenty of fun and good companionship to be had elsewhere so FWIW I feel like I saw it at it’s best, extracted what was worth having, and I’m happy to wander off into the sunset with the good folk I’ve found there & leave the fools to rot.
Now, who wants Bertie Beetles for breakfast?
There’s plenty for everyone, so no shoving.
Any better today, MM?
And poor Catty. I think it’s almost worth keeping the kids home in weather like you’re having.
Almost, but not quite.
I am better, thanks for asking, in that the kids are now well enough to go back to school so I don’t have to spend the day dancing attendance on them. For such a skinny little wretch, Elf Boy can drink an amazing number of milkshakes per day.
GB, I ordered some books from The Book Depository. I love the way the invoice reads, “thank you ever so much”.
I think courtesy is like cakeage – they’ve probably charged you $2.50 extra for that.
Hehehe. Still, I’d like to see Amazon thanking me ever so much. They could have a category ‘lowest price with courtesy’.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thetannykid/6085609496/in/set-72157627405181191
Do you want fries with that?
Very bizarre. It looks like it’s made out of velvet!
Fifi spotted a cake the other day in the shape & colour of a Hermes handbag, among a few other weird efforts.
Unless it had a gucci purse and a zipper-lock bag of cocaine inside, I remain unimpressed.
I’ll take a Dalek over an expensive old bag any day.
“Expensive old bag”?! That’s no way to talk about Fifi!
Yeah, Quokka. That was harsh. Fifi’s not old.
We’ll pretend you didn’t say that, GB.
How did cakes become the stars, that’s what I want to know. How come no-one makes rissoles in the shape of Lara Bingle, or whatever?
There could well be gigantic sausages in the shape of Lara Bingle and her ill-assorted friends up there in the food pavilion somewhere. I didn’t make it that far. I have a serious cake obsession and once I heard that this year they’d introduced a Red Velvet Cupcake competition I couldn’t rest until I’d seen them and established if I should be hunting for the recipe or cursing that I didn’t enter, and win.
What do you suppose the prize is?
The Smurf of your choice?
I’m still very tempted to go back. It was like stepping back into 1972. If I can find a few more of those Old Dears I might be able to track down the winning recipe for the caramel fudge.
I’ve just ordered all the CWA cookbooks that the elib catalogue has on offer, for that one foolish reason.
Ah, Sugar!
How’s your biohazard levels today MM?
Have you reached sociable levels or do you have a good excuse to get out of the Baconing?
I’m sniffling, but Bacon is a harsh mistress and I must obey her. That, and I need the money.
Catty has a winning recipe for caramel fudge. Her Russian caramels are absolutely exquisite.
So long as there is some reward for being a slave to bacon, I suppose it’s worth it.
yes, I have sampled Catty’s Russian Caramels and they are a fine example of Slavic indulgence.
When it comes to fudge I’m not a fan of the type that is based on condensed milk or heavy cream. I’ve got a great chocolate fudge recipe but I just don’t know how to tweak it so that I get the same result that the CWA folk do.
Hopefully their cookbook will reveal their secrets.
I wish you could’ve seen the tri-colour french jellies at the Ekka.
I’ve never made them in layers, apparently it’s a well-guarded secret as to how you get the layers to stick together so that they don’t separate when you cut it into slices.
Mmmmm…sugary goodness, with coal tar derivatives…mmm!
That’s three mentions of my caramels within three days. I’d better make some more. But not today. Today I have to take the kidlets to see the Three Stooges at the cinema. As I was up until 2:00am reading a trashy novel, (stupid me), I’ll probably end up snoring my way through most of the movie.
Were there many cake pops at the show, Quokka? I love cake pops, but haven’t yet attempted to make any. So many trashy novels, so little time….
And so little bacon. Save some for us, Madam, unless you’ve sneezed on it – in which case, save it for Lobes.
Snap!
I’m going to the movies too – but Magic Man and I are going to see Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. We can compare notes after.
Spare a thought for JB, who from the looks of his twitter account has been up all night drinking scotch. He’s on check-out duty at the local bookstore for National Bookstore day. I was pleased to see that the store is chockers with manic little children and he was being serenaded by a ukelele band and a troop of hippies with a tribal drummer.
I popped in to give him some RV cupcakes, as a reward for kicking the Scaly One up the arse the other day when he had a go at us, Catty.
About smurfing time.
Hehehe. Tribal drummer.
Was he pleased, Q – or did he just look vacantly at you, eyes like overcooked fried eggs swimming in tomato sauce, and grunt what might have been thanks?
P.S Everyone please note my dedication. I’m about to launch myself out the door and at the bacon and here I am, faffing away.
He was completely entangled in packaging tape when I arrived and looked like he was wishing himself elsewhere, anywhere, so long as there was scotch and no confusing packaging tape dispensers in sight. He also looked like he’d been up all night drinking scotch and playing on the internet in order to build up the necessary levels of enthusiasm for dealing with what West End on a saturday am has to throw at you.
His eyes lit up when he saw the cupcakes – although that may have just been blood vessels popping at the sound of the ukelele band & the tribal drummers – but as they’ve received a glowing mention in his blog it seems that the scribe was Pleased.
Good luck with the baconing, we are off to the markets.
Oink.
Not just a glowing mention, but a photo, no less. Take that, trolls! Mwahahahahahaaaaa! Good job, Quokka. Incidentally, the cakes look amazing. I was inspired to make some scrummy butter patty cakes, which were all eaten before I could find the camera and put batteries in it. I could have taken a photo of the devourers’ icing-smeared mouths and the carnage of crumbs/torn patty papers, but it seemed a bit pointless. Suffice to say, they weren’t half as wonderful as your RVC’s, but wonderful enough to make the kidlets drool. (And a few visiting adults….)
Bacon also makes me drool. Have a great time at the baconing, dear Morgana. Try not to sneeze on anything. Unless it’s those annoying customers with the $100 notes and the penchant for gourmet sauce – in which case, sneeze all you like.
I did sneeze on a few people – but sadly I couldn’t summon one up for the South Africans who stood there and ordered me in exactly how to sauce their burgers while everyone else waited to be served. Normal people, unaccustomed to having slaves, sauce their own smurfing burgers.
Kudos on the baking, ladies. After my morning at the markets, I can’t even fire up the Dutch oven.
Heh heh. Nice one, ladies. Morgana, next time a customer asks for sauce I suggest you give it to them. They’ve earned it.
Catty I really can’t take too much credit for Nigella’s recipe. She’s a wonderful woman. If there’s an easier way to do something, she’ll find it.
The Bloke is accusing me of having evil agendas and yes, I suspected that if JB ate his way through a dozen of Nigella’s cream and glitter encrusted RVCs he’d be feeling suitably filled with lovin’ to write them an ode, which would of course be odious to the ‘orrid. I sense some upset that he dared to discuss sugar frosting and sprinkles at a site solely reserved for cage fighting but from what he’s just said at his blog about biscuits, it looks like he’s warmed to my plan and he’s taking it to the next level to infuriate the hecklers.
FWIW I included all of our good wishes on the box & wrote ‘Thanks for taking out the trash.’ 🙂
Unfortunately I wrote it on what turned out to be the bottom of the cake box so unless he actually cleans up at home the way he cleaned up at his blog he’s unlikely to see it, much less grasp the double entendre.
I have high hopes, though, that he’ll associate smacking down of the scaly one with the taste of Nigella’s RVCs & will be inspired to do it more often. That level of subtlety & pavlovian training may be beyond him, though. He is, after all, a Bloke.
In the deep south of the US they make these cakes in the shape of a rodent and they are called ‘bleeding armadillo cakes’ because of all that delicious red flesh when you slice into one..it’s sorely tempting to make an RVC in similar format and call it ‘Bleeding Intergalactic Lizard Cake’.
Sounds like the kind of thing that would be good for giggles if I took it along to the Xmas party. 🙂
Dunno. think of the bun fight there’d be to be the first to stick the knife into it.
Hehehe. Bleeding Intergalactic Lizard cake. Served with a coulis of it’s own vitriol, I assume?
I think I’m going to be sick.
The jpg of the RVCC’s is linked to from CBG, having been uploaded to my Dropbox. (Gosh I love to talk nerdy.)
Can’t see it Khan GB but I assume that JB’s 24hour Spam Clearance Rule applies – so thank you.
Morgana, if only I was technical I could get it to dribble battery acid and spit chips every time a woman opens her mouth to voice an opinion.
It’s on the “Cookies and More” page. Doesn’t say it’s waiting for moderation or anything. Soooo RED.
Ah yes. As Bunyip said ‘hellboy red’.
Heh heh.
Nice work.
Come the next Bakeopalypse, you will be rewarded.
I wouldn’t upload anything to GB’s Dropbox – you don’t know where he’s been.
Isn’t it nice to have a nerd around ? Every time I use my printer and it doesn’t make noises like a bowl of atomic rice bubbles, I think kind thoughts of you, GB.
Only yesterday the Boss and I were wishing we had a nerd to fix our Mac. Hitting it and swearing only partially fixed the problem. Then it occurred to us that the oldest kidlet has been muttering about a career in IT. We had been ignoring his muttering, as he has also been muttering about becoming an electrician. If we encourage this, we will have free nerdage for life. So, which do we push him into? The electrical trade that will make him rich (and better able to afford quality nursing homes for his dear old parents), or an IT career that will leave him unemployed (and on-call to provide free assistance whenever the Mac won’t behave)? Hmmm.. this is a hard one.
I’d opt for the one that can provide an electro shock doorbell that runs a few volts through the God Squad when they come calling at 9am on a Sunday morning. You can’t pay an electrician to install one of those & if he takes up a career in IT he’ll just move to the other side of the country and insist he can’t fix it by remote because it’s obviously a problem with the Hardware.
My nephew moved to Tennessee to get away from our moaning about not knowing which port to plug the cords into – much less whatever drama comes after that.
Either way you’re stuck dealing with with the worms in the Apple Centre so I’d opt for quality old age nursing care.
I’ll take dealing with Apple over being eaten alive by Mice any day.
True. If the kidlets stick us in a Dalby nursing home, we’ll know we’ve failed as parents. Perhaps I should lay off flushing their heads in the toilet.
Hairy Greybeardson has an actual job in IT, with HP. Seems secure (?) and fairly well paid and they like him (after all, he is my son). But he works horrible hours, as I did in the same field. People always want their crappy bank servers fixed NOW. Is it really that important if none of your 7000 ATMs work? Really?
And we’ve given up on nursing homes. The best we can hope for is a comfortable ice floe with no polar bears.
Oh lord, give me patience.
I’ve finally had an answer from the head of the Old Girls’ Committee at Skynet High. She’s said that she will oblige and will put my name back on the Do Not Contact List and that there’ll be another reunion in five years, but it won’t be at the actual school so she’ll let me know the venue when the time comes around as I might like to join them.
Smurf all smurfing mighty!
Beats. Head. On Wall.
Hehehe.
Obviously failed English comprehension – she thinks the Do Not Contact list is actually the Hey, I’m Just Being Coy, Contact Me If You Feel Like It list.
Catty, let him be a Geek. Because, unlike electricity, computers are not usually invisible or lethal. You can always share GB’s ice floe.
True. Maybe I should have asked to be put on the Why don’t you all FOAD list.
Anyway, as it’s been like this all the way trying to deal with her I’m finally feeling less like a total hysteric for wanting to grab her by her botoxed little throat and squeeze hard till she begs for mercy and says ‘No problem, Quok. We’ll miss you, have a nice life.’
I suspect that the inability to hear No is the mark of a successful businesswoman, which is why they churn out so many lawyers and real estate agents.
Am very glad I didn’t go. Dealing with one of them was enough to make me want to commit murder. Multiply that by 50 and there’d be a body in the morgue by now with an incriminating mould of my hand prints being taken from it’s throat.
Oh and Catty – The bloke assures me that being a sparky is actually a very safe and lucrative career and in his 30 years experience of building sites, the only one he’s ever heard who got zapped was a Darwin Award waiting to happen. He insists that it’s really quite hard to kill yourself with electricity so long as you’ve turned up for the first day of Sparky School and you are not a complete idiot.
He has a friend who is a sparky who now owns his own house in our suburb – on a piece of land twice the size of ours, and with better views & neighbours, and two or maybe three rental properties on prime development sites at the north coast.
My nephew the tech wizard, at age 32, is so far as I know still happily holding his hand out to Mother.
Well, he wants to be an IT professional so he can design computer games. He wants to be a sparky because he loves money rather passionately. I suggested that he do both, and then he can design computer game consoles and make squillions of dollars, and will have plenty of spare time to visit his mum (and install her power points and fix her Mac and set up her stupid bloody set top box to tape shows that she keeps forgetting to watch).
I’d point out that if he works three days a week as a Sparky he’ll be able to sit in his beach house for the other 4 snorting cociane & playing computer games, whereas if he’s a tech nerd he’s free to spend 7 days a week playing computer games, while he still shares a bunk bed with his brother and Centrelink quarantines his income so that you (his mother and landlord) get to spend 90% of it covering costs of his groceries and the hot water costs.
Of course I may just have Extra Snark & cynicism oday after the email exchange with Skynet High.
Meh.
I like to take career advice from a movie about a singing plant from Outer Space who eats people –
“Son, be a dentist – you’ll be a success!”
Little Shop of Horrors
Where the hell were you when I was casting about for choice on the QTAC forms 30 years ago?
Hanging around my Uncle’s vet surgery, helping to look after your cats.
Ah yes, back in the days when I practiced moderation, and had more sanity, so there was only one cat.
“The two words I would associate with Quokka are Moderation and Sanity”
– Nobody
I’m kinda liking the Boss’s job at the moment. He worked at an ice cream factory today, and brought home a bag full of fancy ice creams. So much for my dinner plans…. but I’m not complaining. I’m stuffing my face with Hava Heart.
Yes, if there’s to be a word play association game then ‘excess’ and ‘calories’ would probably be at the top of the list.
Which is a good thing as otherwise whatever would we blog about?
Catty it sounds like you are in for quite a Gay Time this evening.
Enjoy!
Do they still make Hava Hearts?
I remember the bad old days, when the only fancy icecreams you could get were Have Hearts and Weiss bars. And we lived in a paper bag in the middle of the road.
Looxury!
Aye, that it were.
He brought home Frosty Fruits as well. They’re his second-favourite after Gaytimes (the ice cream, not the recreational activity), so the family has been forbidden to touch them. The kidlets don’t care – yet. They’ve already eaten all the Dixie Cups and the Drumsticks (except for the one I hid behind the frozen peas), and they are now eyeing off the rest of the Hava Hearts. Hmmmm…. I’d better hide a Heart or two behind the sausages….
No. No. No. I am not going to be lured into a “Four Yorkshiremen” exchange.
Mind you, when ah were a lad, “ice cream” were scoom from bottom of milk pail, scraped oop wi’ stick and held against oor bedroom windows to freeze. It were a hard life.
Hehehe.
Personally, I think a Gaytime always beats a Frosty time, but then I did attend an all girls secondary school.
GB, I don’t believe you. We all know you were raised by wolves, and they can’t hold sticks. No opposable thumbs.
You had windows? Looxury! When ah were a lad, we dreamed of having windows. If we wanted windows, we had to chew hole in t’ side of cardboard box we slept in.
Cardboard box? Looxury! We ‘ad to share paper bag wi’h three kilos of enoki mushrooms.
Mushrooms? T’ only fungus we saw was on t’ side of road we was licking clean with our toongues.
Road? Looxury! Twere noothing but mud-filled ruts, where we ‘ad our paper bag – and we called it chocolate pudding.
Pudding? Looxury! When I were a lad, all we ‘ad to eat were my mother’s cooking.
Speaking of mother’s cooking, I found one of her old recipes on the weekend. I’ve pinned it to the noticeboard, and have told the kidlets that if they don’t eat their dinner, I will make grandma’s lamb chop stew and forcefeed it to them. It’s working.
Stop it.
You’re bringing back memories of the time I went through my grandmother’s pantry and came up with Blancmange tablets that she’d had since they arrived with the family’s ration book in WW2.
I made them up as per the directions and concluded that the dry ingredients constituted 90% mange. The rest was powdered cocky shit & out-of-date golden staph spores.
Sounds just like mother’s mashed potato.
Mmm… golden staph.
Can I have a copy with which to threaten my kids, Catty? I bet she made it in a pressure cooker.
Yup. there’s nothing like a small explosion prior to dinnertime to whet the children’s appetites.
No, a pressure cooker is not required. It’s a simple recipe. Place 8 small lamb chops into a saucepan. Cover with water, and add a heaped teaspoon of salt. Cover and simmer for half an hour. Remove lid and add two heaped tablespoons of plain flour. Roughly stir in the flour, boil for a further five minutes. Serve with mashed mange, brown beans (green beans that have been boiled for half an hour) and air sickness bags.
Speaking of recipes, check this out:
Hehehe. “Turkey never really tastes good.” This is the sort of candour so sadly missing from Master Chef.
The computer crashed and a giant PG symbol popped up on my screen when she thrust from fist to biceps into the turkey.
You’ll have to tell me how it ended, I could bear no more.
I LIKE her. That’s my kind of cooking. Measurement is for wimps and scientists. Have some more Pinot noir while you watch.
My oven is getting a workout. I am trying out Quokka’s meatloaf recipe. I had a bit too much bacon, but it won’t matter if there are three layers wrapped around the mince, will it? The kidlets asked me what was in the oven, and I told them I was bacon a cake. I’m still giggling, despite their blank stares and the Boss’s comments about Aunt Irma being due… which drew more blank stares from the kidlets.
Oh fudge and shishkebabs, I forgot all about that recipe. I’ll write myself a note to do it tomorrow. Sorry about that ladies, hope you found it on the internet somewhere, Catty.
And no, you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much bacon.
One way or the other they will all cancel each other out.
Hmm. Well, at least we’ve got bacon, right Catty? One out of three aint bad.
I don’t have bacon. What I have is cupcake ingredients that need using before they die on the weekend, a freezer that wants defrosting, and the arborist due at 7am to sculpt the poinciana into a shape that won’t skewer the builders when they start construction on Fort Quokka up the back, and to piss off all the rats and turkeys that are roosting in the nut tree over the cubby.
I’m sure Khan Greybeard will welcome them back with beer and burritos, now that he’s lost his nuts.
Mmm… turkey burrito.
No, hang on a minute, I was forgetting – turkey never really tastes good. Thanks, Tante Marie!
Yes, it really needs the rat salsa.
Everything’s better with a bit of rat.
Greybeard lost his nuts? Oooh, Fifi really is stepping it up a notch.
Oh, you can’t blame Fifi.
The turkey snapped them up.
I’ve been waiting for that MF bird to turn on him.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got the tree loppers here and I’m herding birds and rats off away towards the western suburbs where the mongrel things belong.
Just so you both know, the scribe has let a GIRL visit to post a blog about 007, and there is much lip smacking at the mention of Daniel Craig.
As this is wasted on the likes of me, you may want to trot over there and salivate.
You’re all very cruel (snf). Been to CBG and as I said, I never wanted to be Bond but Q. Not our Q obviously – nobody in their righ . . . ahem. Anyway, Fifi has now seen Colin soar gracefully upwards to snap an almond from between my fingers. Which will be fine when the bandages come off. Fifi wants to make a video of it. She thinks you’ll find it amusing – heaven only knows why. She’s an odd woman.
Ooh ooh ooh! http://www.essentialkids.com.au/family-life/kids-parties/party-preparation/mother-bakes-snake-cake-for-daughters-birthday-cake-goes-viral-20120814-2474b.html#utm_source=FD&utm_medium=rainbow&utm_campaign=snakecake This is great!
Yes. Yes I would find it amusing. I also found this amusing:
How did Darth Vader advise his son to indicate displeasure when encountering bad driving?
“Use the forks, Luke.”
you get much better results when you use the knives.
Best of all – missile launchers.
That reminds me of an incident with a McDonalds thickshake and a tailgater. My flatmate was really, really drunk. She said her thickshake tasted funny. I wasn’t paying attention, as a car full of drunken AJ’s were tailgating me and I was concentrating on losing them. So I didn’t notice when she wound down her window and threw the whole thickshake out the window. I did, however, notice in my rear vision mirror when the offending drink (sic) collided with the tailgater’s windscreen. It was totally hilarious, but all I could do was panic because the driver was drunk as a skunk and suddenly couldn’t see out of his windscreen. As I wasn’t drunk (… officer …), I shot through as fast as I bloody well could down the nearest side street. I also refused to take my flatmate through the McDonalds drive through ever again.
Does this make my ex-flatmate a missile launcher? If so, then I fully agree with Morgana.
McDonald’s thickshakes always taste funny – sometimes they fail to properly render the pig fat. That, or seasonal variations in trotter composition.
I’d say they were pleasantly surprised to discover that it wasn’t vomit.
After all, that’s the most common projectile that exits cars in Townsville.
Well, it was in my day.
Townsville – the place so nice, they named it twice.
In my day, the most common thing to be thrown out of car windows were empty xxxx cans. Bare bottoms, however, were merely waved out of the windows. It gave the eerie impression that Townsville was populated by loud young men who drove erratically and crapped beer cans, but you get that.
I feel quite left out by these exciting tales of adventure in Townsville. Not left out enough to actually go there myself, though.
We’ll send you a few bottles of passion pop and a paper bag.
If you play that whilst listening to Khe San on a loop, while sweating in a sauna, it should capture much of the atmosphere.