Coffeehouse.co.nz

I’ve been meaning to start this post for about a month now. I was going to see if there were 12 things that I could think of during this year that I would implement if I were king that would make my world just a bit nicer. For me at least. For everyone else, tough!

January’s choice –   Chewing gum would be illegal. I pretty much violently hate it. I can see no reason why it is still around. Rubber with a bit of mint in it? What a great product! Sticks to everything, including hair, shoes, seats and trousers etc. It leaves pavements absolutely disgusting too. And it’s just really, really charming watching (and often listening) to someone chew it. If you’re worried about cleaning your teeth, carry a toothbrush. It works for the rest of us.

For February  – All food cans would the the stacking kind. They just make life so much simpler, easier, and I think safer too (at least when the cans are stored at above head height like in our kitchen). Nowadays they can’t be that much harder to produce, or much more expensive by the thousand, so I can’t see any reason why they can’t be the new mandated standard. “Health and Safety” seem to get blamed for all sorts of weird things here, so why don’t they do something useful and sort this out for me?

March – Leggings Permit. I think anyone wishing to wear leggings as their sole bottom half covering should have to be in possession of a permit signed by five of their closest and most honest friends at all times. The permit would state that the friend has seen said wearee in the leggings, and they are not making a fool of themselves, or likely to cause others to feel the need to either vomit or gouge their eyes out. Said friend would also have to state that they would be more than happy to spend a whole day out in public with the wearee (who would be wearing said leggings). Failure to carry this permit would result in compulsory re-clothing into a prisoner type baggy orange jumpsuit. And mandatory attendance at a lesson on how to find more honest friends.

(Note: Just be very, very very happy there is no photograph to accompany the above item to show what made it March’s choice!…)
Now, I wonder what the target for April will be….

Lately whilst I have been away from work Mike has been cooking himself some fancy food and then writing a post about it. Why won’t he cook food like that when I am home?

So today I decided to see if I could make some food worthy of writing a post.  And guess what it turned out not too bad at all!  So we had a layer of roasted red peppers and spinach, with a couscous red onion and feta cake, topped with some home made green olive tapenade.

OK so I used a recipe but I am happy to say my food even looked like the one in the cookbook. And it was that nice I would make it again, but I would add some water to the vege so it makes a bit of a sauce.

Yesterday Mike managed to get us two tickets to a football game, Arsenal vs. Burnley.  It is only the 2nd football (soccer) game I have been to while living here for 10 years, and this one wasn’t a pre season friendly game, but a deadly serious Premiership match.  We had great seats. Although in the top tier we were in the very first row, so we had a fantastic view of the game. Things were a lot more comfortable after I got over the feeling I should be getting vertigo!

A football match is quite different to a rugby match and it was a bit strange to see the away crowd completely segregated by seating, entrance, rest rooms, food etc.  I understand this is quite normal in football matches due to the tribal nature of the games supporters.  But I still find it very odd.  However, when Mike asked me to go to the bathroom just before half time I was like no way I am watching the away crowd rile the home crowd and then the home crowd retaliate. The away crowd seemed way more vocal than the home crowd and there must’ve only been about 1,500 of them, and the total crowd attendance was 60,043 (to put it in perspective that’s more than the entire population of Nelson or Napier).

It was an exciting match with lots of action, there were so many shots at goal. Arsenal won, but they did make very hard work of it… I am not kidding. They missed so many opportunities! I think they must’ve missed at least 10 easy shots and at least 6 of those were ones that should’ve gone in. Apparently they are currently missing a view strikers due to injury… Or something!

Would I go again?  Yes and next time I would take some more socks and a blankey as it was very cold.

Bec was away tonight, so I got to cook a bit of a treat for dinner. RED MEAT!

But rather than taking the easy option and just frying up a steak I went for a restaurant style recipe for a Indian style rack of lamb on spiced spinach with a moilee sauce from one of the recent recipe books we’ve bought. Good call! Really good call!

BURP!

Although there were a reasonable number stages to complete before I was able to chow down, being able to spread them all over about 4 hours made it all seem quite easy. All except the trimming of the ribs. THAT was a long, potentially lethal task. And I only had one set to do!

Would I make it again? You bet! If I had another set of ribs I’d make another plate now!

Bec, you don’t know what you’re missing! (But don’t go away too often….)