Rice cooker Organic Beef Dark Ale Casserole

Let me share with you Groover’s delicious recipe for beef casserole that he made up himself taking inspiration from several recipes.

It is perfect for a wet wintry day and very rich.

The idea is to get it started in the morning and then go away and leave it. Come back for an evening meal and in the meantime enjoy the beautiful aromas of comfort food.

Rice cooker organic beef and dark ale casserole.

Ingredients:
1 kg of oyster blade beef (or any cheap cut of organic beef)
100g pancetta cut into cm cubes
250 mL of beef stock
1 bottle (330mL) dark ale or stout (eg Guinness)
1 can of crushed tomatoes
500g small brown onions
one bunch of baby carrots
300g mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
handful fresh rosemary, finely chopped
50g plain flour
2 anchovies (the secret ingredient)
2 tablespoons of Worcester Sauce
1 teaspoon Marmite (the other secret ingredient)
handful of flat leaf Italian parsley, chopped
zest of one lemon
splash of sherry
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
Put olive oil in pan and fry off the pancetta. Remove pancetta and place in bottom of rice (or slow) cooker. Mix the flour salt and pepper and chopped rosemary and cut the beef into three or four centimetre chunks and coat liberally in the seasoned flour.

Brown the beef in the pan to seal and caramelise the beef quickly - you don’t want to cook it through - feel free to do this in batches. Place beef on top of the pancetta in the rice cooker.

Finally, peel the onions and garlic and quickly pan fry in the remaining oil and throw on top of beef.

The onions are meant to be whole and not cooked, just lightly glazed with the oil. Deglaze the pan with the sherry and pour juice over the ingredients in the rice cooker.

Add the stout and stock, chopped mushrooms, anchovies, tomatoes, marmite and Worcester Sauce and close the rice cooker. Put the cooker on cook and then let it simmer on “warm” for the next 6-7 hours (the rest of the day).

The house will fill with delicious comfort foody smells.

About two hours before serving throw in the washed baby carrots.

Just prior to serving add the chopped parsley and zest of a lemon.

Serve with mashed potato and green salad.

Yummy.

The baby name wizard’s name voyager

Name Voyager is a fun web-gadget. You just type in your name and the wizard tells you how popular it’s been over the ages.

So my little family in order of number of times the name was used per million babies born today:

Cellobella!

Ranked in the top 25/1000 in 2006.

Then Hugamuga:

No 371 in 2006.

This is Groover:

Ranked 826 in 2006.

And finally Dippity:

Not in the top 1000 since the 1960s.

Emily is the most popular girls’ name in 2006, and for boys? Jacob. The lists.
Naming trends… did you know that hundreds of babies are named “Unique” in the US every year? Poor darlings.

Warning: This is a BIG timewaster!

The power of the itch

I’ve got an itchy foot. An actual itchy foot, not wanderlust. Or maybe it is wanderlust too? It’s just at the top of my left foot near where the leg starts but on the flat of the top of the foot… if that makes sense.

Have you ever noticed that if you start thinking about an itchy foot or somewhere else and you don’t scratch it immediately that all of a sudden other bits start getting itchy… like your right shoulder, the back of your left thigh where it’s against the chair, your head… And then you scratch your foot but it’s too late …your shoulder, thigh, damn now my chin niggles at you.

What’s going on?! It was just my foot one minute ago!

Does that ever happen to you?

It’s like when you hear someone talking about nits - that’s it! I’m scratching my head. Even if there is no, absolutely no chance of me having them, I’ve been living on my own in the desert for a month, no contact with children and my head is shaved anyway… suddenly it’s itchy.

Sorry. Are you scratching your head now?

That was just mean wasn’t it? But isn’t it true!!

It’s like our bodies are pre-programmed for suggestion… maybe it comes from when we were apes… I mean we’re still apes but when we were in the jungle picking lice off eachother… maybe it’s hard-wired into our DNA to scratch so that others will come over and groom us, pick the odd crawly out of our hair…

After all that saying “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine” had to be based on something…

GROOVER! What are you doing? My back! Oooooooh darling that’s it… a bit to the left… ahhhhh.

What? You’ve got an itch where?

Isn’t it time for me to be putting on the dinner…

photo credit: belgianchocolate

Watching the cricket

May I just say that that’s what I call watching cricket.

And before you get the wrong idea let me give you the background.

We got up this Sunday morning. I made the bed (I was the last one out of bed - so that’s fair), went down to the shops to get some fruit and the papers and Groover got on the computer (although he did bleach the toilet if I remember rightly). I cleaned the kitchen properly - even the oven doors - and put on the first of four loads of washing. Hung out washing - folded washing.

Cleaned the back half of the house including floors.

We went out to Fremantle where I bought a dress and Groover didn’t get a massage.

Came home and I made dinner while Groover watched the cricket.

Until he felt guilty.

You see we do split the housework and it’s usually predicated on the other person conspicuously doing housework as well.

It’s not a completely even split but he nags the kids and buys more wine than I do so I suppose that makes up for a bit…

I think the bottom line is we are both as lazy as eachother when it comes to housework and would happily not do it. And it’s only that his threshold is slightly lower than mine that he does any at all. I’m sure if I hated mess more than he does he would do nothing and we would not be happy campers.

Frozen food fiasco

What has this photo got to do with the tale I’m about to tell. Nothing. But I just love this image taken of a woman in Key West. Look closely and you’ll see she has one “dead eye” open. Neat.

So here’s the thing…

If you noticed that the back fridge door had been left open and everything in it had completely defrosted and had probably been so for more than 24 hours, would you empty it out and chuck all the food away - given that the temperatures were over 35C during the day, or would you, as Groover did, just turn the fridge back on and then casually mention it to me three days later?

I thought so.

Sometimes I wish I was living with you.

Why surfing is like sex

“Surfing is a strange sport. It’s like sex. All week we talk about it. We spend hours on the telephone finding out whether or not conditions look good to do it. We argue about where to go to do it. And when it finally comes to doing it, we spend seven hours in rubber suits for what may amount to a 15 second ride after which we get dumped and hurt and then spend the rest of the time avoiding the wet patch.”

[excerpt of a letter from Groover to the Dark Horse early in 1990]

Yes ,The Dark Horse has arrived and we spent an enjoyable evening catching up and getting to know his lady. TDH brought with him some ephemeral reminders of days gone past including some letters Groover wrote TDH as a young man - before he met me.

I was surprised to see he was quite the correspondent. And to people with whom he had no designs on! I mean, come on, you expect to get long letters when sex is part of the equation - but to mates - at such length? And you’re a bloke? Impressive.Take this one from 1984 - Groover would have been 20. Here he describes going down to Brighton to visit a mutual friend.

“We ended up at 1 o’clock on Monday morning in our grundies with three policemen making “We’re going to arrest you” noises, in the sea, in October, outside a bombed out hotel, with two girls throwing our clothes and my bank cards, to the wind. So my first night was pretty uneventful.”

But the classic line for me was his sign off:

“Lend us a fiver! P.S. I’m pregnant.”

My husband is a woman!

We were discussing traditional roles today and we decided that in fact Groover is a woman and I - or at least - apart from the grunting, screaming childbirth thang - I am a man.

Let us review the evidence together:

Groover loves cooking, can keep a fantastic house, makes the bed like a nurse, disciplines the kids, manages the money and irons beautifully.

Whereas I, well I don’t really excel at any of that but I do play Set - a brilliant game based on spatial relationships which everyone knows is a blokey attribute.

Ipso facto: I am the bloke.

Only one piece of evidence stands out as proof of my femininity! I’m the one who ALWAYS organises the babysitter!

Back in your box Groover! Oh and while you’re there… would you mind ironing this?

Singstars… not.

We’re supposed to be cleaning out the back room for The Dark Horse and his girlfriend who are coming to stay with us next week. Instead we are recovering from our hangovers from last night (more on that later) by playing Singstar.

The only songs I can get close to are Something Stupid (the Robbie Williams part), Smooth Operator and the song by The Fratellis which has lots of Do Do Do Dos in it.

Hopefully we’ll be able to download some more singable songs soon - or at least some that I know.

Last night we went out to Groover’s work Christmas party. I was supposed to go to my work’s one but Groover’s was Pirate themed - a murder mystery set in the Salty Dog Inn (aka their workshop room). It was really good fun. I wore a corset and my long red wig and spoke in a throaty Irish accent (or something not that close) all night. I must have been reasonably close as someone thought I was Irish! :)

My character was Mad Rose, Groover was Dirty Wiggins, the hangman and chief police officer. He had a starring role and his one liners were hot all night. He must have a sore throat like me because his Arrrrh’s were loud and frequent!

The pirate punch was lethal and at one point -despite my heel breaking - I was all for heading on down to the Burswood in full pirate kit to join my work party.

Now about the choir photos. I’ve downloaded the camera and I’m afraid the news is not good. Either the photo is out of focus or you can’t find me or I’m obscured by a microphone. So here is one taken at the train station on our way.

And that’s about it. Only four days left of work before I’m on holidays and I’m SO looking forward to it. Lately my life has felt like an out of control train heading for a brick wall so I’m quite keen to put the brakes on.

No Christmas shopping done yet, but that’s per normal.

We’re heading to Connecticut to my sister’s for Christmas so I’ll probably do most of my shopping over there to save on luggage space. We’ll be over in the US for a few weeks so if you’ve got any tips as to places to visit - I’d love to hear them… or places to shop. :)

(This is why we need to get that room sorted for our housesitters! Speaking of which, I’d better get off my lardy arse and get on with it. Groover? Wake up!)

Sandshoes and Cinnamon

Groover has bought some new sandshoes. Or to be more accurate, I have bought him some new sandshoes. It had to be done.

His last pair - note those stylish ones behind the gleaming new white ones - were bought in 1992. And he has worn them every year since. Sure he only puts them on once or twice a year and the rubber crystalised from age but they did last well.

In fact apart from the back-to-the-future-flashdance-esque-black-speckledy-trim - they are not that much different.

Except that now, I will be seen dead with him wearing sandshoes - his new ones.

Carol has asked me to relate the Cinnamon Roll story Armistead Maupin told when he spoke at the Octogon Theatre lately… it’s a little R-rated so children… turn away now!

Apparently Armistead had a friend - gay friend - who wanted to check he was not hetero. So he “went down” on a female friend who nervously had sprayed herself with a cinnamon scent. Afterward he was so traumatised by the whole affair that he could never bear the smell of cinnamon rolls and felt physically ill when he smelt them in malls and airports… something like that anyway. Sorry Carol - he tells it better. :) So much so that now whenever I hear the term or see a cinnamon roll… I’m not thinking pastries.

Gift

You would think that the easiest person in the world to buy for would be your partner right? You live with them, you know them, you love them. Should be a piece of cake.

So why is it so hard?

C: What do you want for your birthday?
G: A surround sound system for the telly?
C: Anything else??
G: No. I only want a surround sound system for the telly.

Was he joking? A surround system is a bit out of my league. If I’m honest. I don’t think I’ve bought a birthday present on hire purchase before.

But buying anything else now seems mean. And cheap.

Still Groover has always maintained that he hates thinking about presents for himself. And he’s right. I hate it too when people ask me for a list at Christmas time - especially when I provide the list and they don’t believe I actually want what is on the list. It’s pressure you don’t need.

And I admit I was very specific about what I wanted for Christmas… The GHD Styling Irons are lovely! But now I wonder if it was a fair thing to do. I’m thinking maybe not.

So I’m not going to seek further counsel. If the risk is that I buy a dud present - then that is the risk. Love is risk. Life is risk. Safety is boring. And though I’m sure a surround sound system would be exactly the thing Groover wants, I think it’s something we should buy together, as a family, when we can afford it.

So Groover, if you’re reading this. I’m sorry about the trip to Hardly Normal, we’re not going there for your birthday. Instead you will find a gift on Monday morning from the person who loves you and has done her best to find something (else) you’ll enjoy. You will be able to unwrap this gift. It will feel like a birthday present.

It won’t be a frozen chicken. Ah, but that is a tale for another time.

Next Page »