Coffeehouse.co.nz

It’s been really quite windy here for a few days now. Like annoyingly windy for an annoyingly long time. I’m not sure how many days it’s been, but it’s a few, and it looks like carrying on for a few more too.

Where we are it’s been an annoying gusty, irritating wind that even the sound of starts slowly winding us up the longer we have any doors or windows open.  And we need to have some open now and then as this new apartment gets too hot (especially if we’re cooking) if we don’t.  So we’re up and down opening the door, then slowly finding we’re grinding our teeth and tensing our shoulders more and more as everything rattles and blows everywhere until we eventually have to shut it again, and then the heat builds up again and the cycle continues. ARRGGHH! It’s not helped by the fact that we’ve only got one outward facing wall, so if the wind or rain is coming from that quarter/third of the compass we’re a bit stuffed. And it seems to have been for the last week.

The poor plants on the balcony aren’t liking it either, but at least they seems to be staying upright. Some of their poor leaves are taking a battering smashing themselves into the edges of the pots though. Poor babies!

It has reminded me of living in Windy Wellington, where I lived for many years. I’ve not really thought about that for years and years, but the latest weather has definitely brought back some memories. From that site link: “Wellingtonians learn to live with the wind, some claiming they like it.” Like it?! Bollocks! I never met anyone there that ever admitted to liking it. I would have to admit to getting used to it, though. But I suspect you can get used to anything if you have to deal with it long enough.

I guess it could be worse. It could be a real gale, like we used to get regularly in Wellington, especially when I lived on the top of a ridge in (I think – it’s been a long time now) Khandallah. There, when there was a real wind, the window, the tiles, the bins outside, all used to rattle all night, and if there was any rain it sounded more like hail on the windows. I say “all night” because I suspect I’m not willing to try to remember what it was like going outside during the daytime…

But I kind of wich there’d just be a big blow here and it could perhaps be all over?  It’s just getting too damn annoying now.

Sob! I think the coriander plant we planted first might have bolted. Not yet having grown much I can’t be too sure, but there appears to be a distinct lack of new leaves appearing, while there are a couple of big, thick, darker stalks with some feathery leaves on the top. To me that makes me suspect it has.

I also suspect from reading a few sites that it’s probably my fault.  I think it might have been due to either replanting it (unlikely, I think) or I’ve perhaps let it get too dry now and then (quite likely!).  It is sharing the pot with the now massive parsley and as there have been some really hot days a while ago I think I might have just left watering it a bit long.  It’s always hard to know how damp the pots are. Must start sticking my finger in more often.

It’s a good job that I planted another few seeds a few weeks later.  I’ll just have to keep an eye on those plants and see if I can avoid the same happening to them.

The only good news in all of this is that if it has bolted, and we get lots of flowers that don’t get blown off in the very windy weather we seem to have at the moment, and if we do get a a bunch of seeds, and if we do manage to catch all the seeds somehow, then we can use those in our cooking anyway! Stay tuned for that…

Actually, rather than just the month, maybe this is my favourite book of the year so far!

Curry: Fragrant Dishes from India, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia

Anyone who knows me reasonably well knows I like chillis and hot food. Bec sometimes asks that we have something without chillis or spice in now and then, and my lip curls up (though we do have that plain type stuff now and then…) So this book was bound to appeal!

We’ve got some other curry books, but something about this book just really appeals. Somehow it’s a bit less fussy than some others. The ingredients are easily available here either in the supermarket, if not already in the spice drawer or fridge. It also really seems to get across the slight difference in regional ingredients, and therefore tastes, in the world of curry, and all the recipes we’ve tried have been fantastic so far. You might have seen the bread entry a couple of weeks ago.  Even the bread is fantastic fun!

One thing I’ve really noticed, going though the book, and with the recipes we’ve already tried, it’s amazing how many are soooo close to each other, but but adding or removing just one ingredient, or changing just slightly the balance of spices etc, you get a completely different taste and/or texture.

I’d love to be able to just know the ingredients and methods well enough to get the exact taste I want without a recipe.  I guess it’s just going to take a lot more practice.  Damn! Oh well, the sacrifices we have to make for our art… Or dinner! However, it’s going to be harder to bring ourselves to try too many of some style of curries now we’ve found out how bad for you coconut cream/milk is!… I really, really wish we’d not found that out!

I’m really looking forward to trying all the recipes we’ve not got to yet!

Recommend it to anyone so far.

Yay!  Looks like I’m the proud owner of a Kiwi classic: a Thermette!

Mum grabbed me one at auction this week. Waddaya mean you’ve never heard of them?! Bah!  Check out the Wikipedia entry, or a current distributor’s site (no connection to me).

I can’t wait to get back to NZ so I can go camping or fishing or driving and stopping  at a picnic area for an excuse to fire it up!

Who needs gas stoves! Bah! Where’s the fun it those?!

I have to confess I’m feeling a little, erm, “tired” as I write this. Yesterday we went to a Decanter New World wine tasting with Rach and Rup. Apparently there were 300 wines there on 59 stalls. We didn’t quite try all of them, but we gave it a fairly decent try! My “tasting notes” indicate I sampled 52 wines from 24 stalls during the afternoon.

I say “tasting notes”, but really they really aren’t more than a few words to show that we’d actually tasted a wine, mainly so we didn’t keep going back to the same ones. In fact often I’d just put a random squiggle thing under the wine listing. And no, that’s not because that’s all I was capable of, honest! Some notes are actually slightly more informative.  “Yum” and “good” appear a few times, along with “blech” and “nah”.  No mention was made of any sweaty saddles.

We also seemed to manage to get the balance of spitting and swallowing right too.Why do I say that?  Biggest giveaway was that we were still standing at the end of it all! And even still able to take note of what we’d tried. But we’d had just enough to bring ourselves to ask a couple of the stall holders if we could take away their opened bottles…  Including quite an expensive one.  Certainly more than we’ve ever considered paying for a bottle, anyway.

I guess it also helped that we were sensible and  went and got a big greasy lunch from a pub nearby after a couple of hours!
A really fun day out, but I’m glad we had nothing planned for today.

As we had a bit of dirt left, and a few pots, we decided to see what else we can grow on the balcony.  We chucked a few spring onion, lettuce (2 lots of cut and come again stuff), rocket, radish and dill seeds in pots today.

Now to see if they grow!

There is still room to sit on the balcony in chairs and enjoy the sun, honest!

In chilli news, nothing much is going on really.  The plants seem to all be having a bit of a rest after their re-potting, hopefully before a big growing spurt. Either that or it’s been a bit cold for them still outside. Fingers crossed for them anyway…

I was cleaning off some photos from the memory card today and came across this one that we originally took to chuck up on the blog.

We made some leavened Roti  bread to go with our curry the other week, and while the recipe did say ” bake for 3-5 minutes until lightly browned and a bit puffy” we weren’t quite expecting quite this amount of puffiness!  In fact they were quite hard to poke down so we could get more than one sitting on a plate.

It was actually quite fun making them too.  We’ll just  have to remember to be quite organised if we want to make them again.  As it’s leavened bread, it does need a bit of time and attention… Yum though.

It happens every chilli growing season.  The day that the little sprouts are transferred out into the big, wide pots.

I think we (I) might have overestimated the compost requirements somewhat this year, as after putting all 11 chilli plants in big pots and  potting up some of the coriander seeds that I’d planted a few weeks ago we’ve still got a fair bit left.  Oh well.  I guess we’ll get another few pots and try some lettuce or something… And it’s definitely better than having to take yet another trip to a garden centre to get dirt.  Of course we’ll have to go to a garden centre to get lettuce seeds or something, but that’s different!

Although making another trip to a garden centre might just be the end of us. Yesterday’s trip home from one was a bit of a disaster. I was not flavour of the month after deciding we should take a bus that was due to terminate close to our place.  How was I to know that it was going to wander all over town (and “town” in London is quite a big area!) first before getting there!

Ok, so I should have remembered that we’d caught it before and been caught out before too, but that was over a year ago now… And why Bec ever chose to listen to me and get on a bus is still a mystery. I don’t really do buses.  I’m more of a tube kind of guy.

Anyway, I still have no idea where everything is going to go once it starts getting a bit bigger, but we’ll find somewhere…

And I think I’m glad it only happens once  a year.  My back is feeling the effects of bending over for so long sorting them all out!

Sometimes things just come together right.

A day working at home, a few interesting things in the fridge, a recipe I’d found the night before, a bit of motivation… And voila! A chorizo, tomato and bean salad for lunch with a red onion and honey dressing.  Somewhat more interesting that the baguette or sandwich I’d probably have at work, but you’re probably thinking “OK, still not really that interesting.  If I wanted to know what people had for lunch I’d go follow the idiots on Twitter instead”….

And I agree.  The interesting thing about this lunch for me is that it almost looked exactly like the picture in the magazine!

I think I can probably count on one hand the times that’s happened in the last  year or two! And OK, it’s only a salad, but it still impressed me.

Now I just have to remember to clean up before Bec gets home…

Back to the office and a boring sandwich again tomorrow, I suspect!

We seem to be having a decent period of (relatively) hot, sunny weather at the moment.  Perfect for the balcony garden.

So most days all the plants get chucked out on the balcony, and then if we’re home they get pushed around to make sure they’re in the sun for the maximum time each day. We’ve even managed to get motivated enough to re-pot Bec’s capsicums and the largest chilli.  The rest will have to be done over the next couple of weeks. Might have to go get a bit more dirt first though. We’ve had to make a few trips to the garden centres for bags of mix so far this season. It’s a bit too hard to get all that we need in one trip and get it all on the tube.  But at least it’s given us something to do i the weekends when we got bored enough.

I’m also relieved to report that so far I’ve not found any other infestations of aphids.  Still keeping fingers crossed on that!