Brownies and lemon slice

I used the recipes from  “Cookery The Australian Way”, a fantastic cookbook that was a birthday present from John and Ros.  It has recipes for just about everything, including how to make jams and chutneys!  Also gives great advice as how to pick a good piece of meat, fruit or vegetable.

The lemon slice turned out too tangy for me, I would reduce the lemon juice and sugar next time.  Brownies – perfect!  Love walnuts in my brownies.

Slowly wading through all my Uni work from this semester.  Have completed revision of physiology for this half-semester, and lower limb anatomy.  Have a lot more to do, but I feel as though I’ve completed the bulk of my work!  Read some embryology today, starting on epidemiology tonight.

Dinner

What my grandparents cooked for dinner today:

• Steamed rice – typical
• Stewed lettuce leaves
• Sour vegetables in a broth with boiled leftover roast pork (imagine roast pork… crispy crackling… then imagine it being thrown into water.  The crackling becomes soggy and quite disgusting.)

For reasons I hope are painfully clear to you, reader, I decided to make my own meal.

And so the egg and cheese sandwich was born.  Toasted multigrain slices smeared (literally, I wasn’t very gentle with it) with tomato sauce and dijon mustard, then an egg (with runny yolk, just the way I like it!), cheese, and sliced tomato.

Yum.

In other news, where is Mark?

Chi Hau’s 20th birthday cake

I’ve decided to share some of my baking adventures.  I usually don’t care much for cake decoration, but decided to try it out for my friend Chi Hau’s birthday cake.  It actually didn’t take as long as expected, and the piped chocolate solidified fast in the cold weather.

I was happy with the way it turned out, although the ganache could have set more evenly.  I guess pushing in the piped words disrupted the even surface of the ganache!  The cake was hazelnut and apple, courtesy of Ros.  Everyone at Chi Hau’s party was impressed, even myself.  I think this calls for more cake adventures, especially with decorating.

It is getting progressively hotter in Melbourne.  27°C tomorrow, wow, I remember it was just 14°C about a week ago.  Time to bust out the short shorts and dresses.  Maybe the hot weather isn’t conducive to cake baking or eating, since cake tends to make people gluggy and is more a cold-weather food.  I’ll try more summery tarts, custards, maybe eclairs?  Slowly building up my dessert repertoire.  Either way, my oven will have to wait till exams are over for any action.

The year is almost up!

It seemed like this day would never come, but this week is my last week of Med Year 1! I’m highly excited and pleased and I can’t wait for the exams to be over so that I can start doing some stuff that I’ve been wanting to do for ages.

I like lists so I shall list the things I want to do:

1. Sew! I’m planning on learning how to sew dirndls. Progress will probably be slow, especially since I can only sew when my grandmother is not around (or she will hover and be annoying).
2. Practice my guitar skills. While said “skills” may be presently non-existent, I plan to acquire skills then practice them! And stretch my fingers out so that they can reach frets more than 1 space apart.
3. Frolic in the sun and do summery things. This is what I want to do the most – just lounging around and being happy that there is absolutely nothing for me to do. Except lounge and enjoy myself, obviously. And eating ice cream.
4. Maybe road trip? Might organise something with my high school friends, and with Mark.
5. Study some anatomy. An optional task, of course, but I think I will feel much better about Year 2 if I get a headstart on anatomy. My love-hate relationship with anatomy is currently in phase “like”, hopefully it won’t wane to “hate” before the exam!

And things that I have to complete before the ghastly and horrid exam/OSCEs:

1. Weeks 8-13 of this semester, plus Weeks 1-5 of this semester too. I’ve decided to forgo revising Semester 1, since that is a mammoth task in itself and there is not much benefit in study Semester 1 material since the exam will predominantly be testing Semester 2 content.
2. All my Epidemiology content. I’ve been rather slack this half-semester and I have yet to touch the textbook even once. Hopefully Judy’s teachings are sufficient for me to pass the Theme II section of the upcoming exam.
3. Anatomy. Again, it rears its ugly head.
4. Practice clinical skills. This means I have to get my hands on a stethoscope and a sphyg (blood pressure thing). Mark can be the person I practice limb examinations on, although he does get squeamish when I touch his legs.

I went to Mark’s yesterday and we made beef kofta on skewers, tabbouleh, and hummus b’tahini. The hummus was fantastic. We then watched the latest episode of Glee (on my laptop) and X-Men: The Last Stand (on television).

A bit of plastic has come loose off my car and is scraping on the ground everytime I reverse out of my driveway. Rather worrying.

Red beef curry

A cold Saturday night called for something warm and hearty for dinner.  Although Mark and I had already decided on making this curry, the weather was just perfect for it!  After a short hike to the supermarket to gather ingredients, and a miserable walk back to the apartment in the rain, cooking began.

First came the garlic and onions, which were fried in oil to goldeny perfection by Mark.  I usually do all the chopping and preparation, while Mark does the actual cooking!

Next, the spices were added.  Chilli powder, cummin, turmeric, garlic, mustard, paprika and a few teaspoons of vinegar were combined to form a paste, then chucked into the pot.

Next comes the beef!  We put in about 700g of beef blade steak.  Neither of us know which cut of meat makes a good curry, but this one turned out well.

Dinner ready to be eaten – steamed rice, curry and microwaved papadums! We had a bit of drama with them, microwaving them turned out to be the easiest manner in which to prepare a tasty papadum!

Yum! The curry was very good, and made for a good meal to fill us up before going out. I love making curries because they are so easy – just chuck everything into a pot and its ready to go! They also really warm you up during cold wintery nights.

Mork and Mindy go cooking in the bush

Camp food always tastes better. Maybe it is because you are very hungry from the journey there, or from putting up the tent. But maybe it is because with a little bit of effort, really delicious food can be made without fancy technology or a wide variety of cooking tools.

Dinner:
A dutch oven. Some beef cut into chunks. Potatoes too. A tin of diced tomatoes. Salt, pepper, chilli flakes, basil and oil for seasoning. Water added to fill, and the whole thing placed in the fire for a little more than 30 minutes.

dinner bubbling away on our fire

dinner is served, yum!

Desert:
This was dumplings cooked in syrup, with cream on top. Making them was very easy, but I forgot that dumplings expand, we we had a little overflow. They were also very sweet, so we couldn’t eat them all.

Ingredients (dumplings)
• 1 cup self raising flour
• pinch of salt
• 20g butter
• 1 egg
• 50ml milk

Ingredients (syrup)
• 1 1/2 cups of golden syrup
• 1/2 cup of water
• 60g butter

Method
1. mix self raising flour with a pinch of salt into a bowl
2. rub in the butter then add the whisked egg and stir to combine
3. add the milk slowly till the dough resembles a scone mix, set aside
4. combine all sauce ingredients into a large frypan with a fitted lid
5. bring to the boil to amalgamate and turn down to a simmer
6. roll the dough into balls the size of a 20 cent piece
7. slip the balls into the syrup
8. cover with the lid and cook for about 10 minutes
9. remove balls, serve with the sauce and cream

dumplings in syrup with cream

Brunch:
Was meant to be breakfast, but became more like lunch, considering that we ate it around noon. Baked beans and scrambled eggs, with toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches to top it off. They were made by buttering a sandwich toaster, placing bread in, a slice or two of tomato and filling it up with tasty shredded cheese, then throwing the apparatus in the fire until it was ready. In some ways this was the most difficult meal to make, not due to any weakness in culinary skill, but due to the wasps that were swarming around the food.

Mork and Mindy go driving

The most convenient way to go camping is to drive. And drive I did.

Getting to Mount Cole is one of the easiest drives I have made. Across the West Gate Freeway, to the Western Ring Road, to the Western Freeway, which becomes the Western Highway in parts (notice a theme? We are heading out west from Melbourne.) There are no traffic lights, no stop signs, and besides dropping down to 60 km/h in Beaufort or for construction work, your speed is almost always above 80, frequently above 100.

The high speeds ensure that distance is covered in a short amount of time (by definition isn’t it :P.) But breaks are still necessary to prevent discomfort and cramping.

On the journey up, we stopped off at Ballarat to go shopping for food. Of particular note was a souped up Falcon pumping out Right Round to our amusement. The next stop was the town of Beaufort. We were fortunate to arrive during the Saturday market, but there wasn’t much there that interested us.

On the journey back, since Beaufort and Ballarat weren’t far enough away, we had visited them (and we wanted to try out another B town), I decided to stop off in Bacchus Marsh instead. Got $4 worth of chips from George’s Fish and Chip Shop (which has been open for more than 50 years), which was a very generous serve, almost enough for two meals for both of us.

Mork and Mindy go camping

our campsite: peaceful, tranquil, beautiful

We went camping at Mount Cole State Forest. It was not where we intended on going. We planned to go to Mount Buangor State Park instead, but sadly upon arrival there were no vacant camp-sites for us.

It eventuated that this was actually fortuitous for us. We drove back along the corrugated roads, I turned where I thought I should, and we found ourselves on the Mt. Cole Road. This lead us around to the Mugwamp camping area, which too was occupied. But at the top of the hill nearby, there was a clear area with fire places (just a bunch of rocks surrounding burnt remains of vegetative matter.) This is where we chose to setup our temporary abode.

Within a short while, we had collected up wood in assorted sizes for the purpose of building a fire, which I successfully did (though there were a few times when it almost died.) Then it was simply a matter of putting up the tent (most easy, since it is very well designed.) Difficulties arose in pegging the tent down, due to the fact that the ground was rock with a thick (but not thick enough) layer of moss on it. With occupants, the tent had no trouble standing, but when the wind picked up the next day, the tent almost became a kite! Thankfully the wind was not wild, or a disaster could have been on hand.

Stay tuned for the next instalment of Mork and Mindy go…

9

Love you, baby!

Slime mould

some slime mould found at home

Content taken from: Biological Science: the web of life; third edition; Australian Academy of Science, Canberra A.C.T.

Slime moulds are also had to classify into a particular ‘kingdom’. As you may have discovered in the laboratory, a slime mould is a strange and truly remarkable organism. Its structure and behaviour have raised many questions, some of which are still unanswered.

For much of its life a typical slime mould is a creeping mass of living substance with the consistency of raw egg white. It may be orange, yellow, white or colourless. Some are microscopic; others are quite large. The movement of this living thing brings to mind a giant amoeba, for it sends out ‘arms’ which engulf and digest bacteria from rotting logs or leaves. This stage of the slime mould is called a plasmodium.

Most slime moulds live in moist places – in decaying logs, leaves, or other organic matter. A plasmodium can move over grass, creep up the sides of trees or go almost anywhere there is food or moisture.

If you look at a plasmodium through a microscope you will see that it contains many nuclei in a mass of living substance, the cytoplasm. It is not divided up into separate cells. If you watch an active plasmodium you will see the most spectacular exhibition of streaming you can find anywhere. As you watch, the cytoplasm flows rapidly in one direction. After about fifty seconds the flow slows down, stops, then reveres its direction. What causes this rhythmic back-and-forth flow of cytoplasm remains a mystery, despite considerable research.

When a plasmodium is fully grown and well fed, it crawls to a drier and more exposed position (on a dead log in the sunlight, for example) and slowly changes into one of several fruiting bodies, containing spores…

…Looking back at the description of a slime mould, you can see that they are most unusual organisms. Certainly they are not on the border of the living and non-living, like viruses. But they do not have a cellular structure. Nor is there a cell wall around the cytoplasm of a plasmodium, as there is in a bacterium. When it is feeding it looks rather like an animal, but it reproduces by spores like a fungus.