Bonus photos

Since I'm still working on getting the baby shower photos organised I thought I'd quickly post a couple of other pics that don't fit into any particular category. Remember you can click on the pics to make them bigger.

Josie with her built-in stable table

This spring has been just gorgeous! Warm days (35C), warm nights (25C) and lots of evening thunderstorms!

Lightning from our deck

The angle of the new apartment also means we've been able to enjoy more of those glorious sunsets! Our old place faced away from them (another tick for the treehouse).

Texas sunset from our balcony

More substantial news coming soon. In the brief headlines, however, we finally finished birth classes, with the final 'You and your baby' session last night which was overly focused on washing the little tike. My demonstration of dressing demo baby (dubbed Cedric) in his tiny, hospital issue straight jacket did not win me parent of the year, but at least it got a giggle out of poor Jo who was exhausted after a long day at work. Our last babyshower is on Friday, at work (!) so after that we can get on with the final washing, sorting and working out what we're missing. Not much it seems! And I really must finish packing the hospital bag...

Pho bo and daikon pickles

Jac style pho bo with condiments - recipe to follow

I haven't spent a whole lot of time cooking lately and it is driving me mad. I'm just busting for a big, complex project. I spent 5 hours making sushi Saturday morning for the baby shower (blog on that to follow) but that was like riding a bike, even though I hadn't done it for so long, so wasn't enough of a challenge (it all got eaten with gusto though!)

Last night I decided to try my hand at making Pho (I had a craving) and it turned out much better than I was expecting. I modified this Food Network recipe, and since I didn't think it would work so well I didn't take progress shots. Basically what I did was take a large box of really good liquid beef stock (I didn't have time to make my own this round - next time Gadget...), add a couple of slices of fresh ginger, 2 star anise and a cinnamon stick, and boil it for a while. I added a little palm sugar, some salt and a dash of soy but that was to taste depending on the stock. I also added a dash of chili since I like it to have the tiniest edge of heat. I pulled the cinnamon out when it was starting to smell really rich, but didn't take the rest out until I served it. I had to dilute it slightly as it reduced otherwise it was going to become less pho and more beef noodle soup.

While the pot was bubbling I thinly sliced half an onion into half moons, chopped up some bok choy and cut a couple of pieces (bit less than a pound) of sirloin steak into the thinnest slices I could manage. I also cooked some rice stick noodles and had them rinsed and ready to go (doesn't matter if they cool off, the soup is pretty hot when it hits them)

I also prepared the toppings. These are things you add to the pho after it has been served, including coriander leaves, basil leaves, lime wedges, bean sprouts and chilies.

The last stage was easy, but fast and furious. Have the soup bubbling super hot, throw in the onion, beef and bok choy, stir it around once and basically dish it straight up. Ladle the soup etc into a large bowl with a nest of noodle in the bottom. Eat immediately, after adding your own toppings from the condiments plate. Some people also have a dish of hoisin or hot sauce to dip their meat in, or they add it straight to the soup, but I like it just with the lime, herbs and sprouts.

Other things I've made recently that came out pretty darn well include stewed rhubarb, with vanilla beans, orange, ginger and some of the candied cumquats I'd made earlier; sour chili pickled turnips tsukemono style and also tsukemono style pickled daikon. The daikon is probably my favorite (although Josie loves the turnips but she's a sucker for vinegar).

Daikon pickles

Basic rundown of the daikon recipe is as follows. Peel the daikon (mine was about 50cm long so I only used half!), cut it in half lengthways then into half moons. Place it in a bowl with a couple of decent pinches of salt, and mix well until it is all lightly salted. The salting kills bad stuff, draws out some water and seasons the radish ready for pickling.

While the daikon is being salted, bring some soy sauce, palm sugar, mirin, and rice wine to the boil and add a star anise and some Sichuan peppercorns. I can't tell you the exact quantities because I was doing it by feel but about equal parts soy and rice wine, a dash of mirin and maybe a tablespoon of palm sugar. The volume of pickling liquid you need obviously depends on the size of your jar and the volume of daikon. Boil until well infused with the star anise.

After about 20 minutes of salting, rinse the daikon well (several times) and press between paper towel to dry. Fill a clean glass jar with the radish half moons and then pour over the slightly cooled pickling liquid, including the whole spices. Store in the fridge for a day, giving it a good shake up once or twice, and they're ready to snack on the next day! Crunchy, sweet, salty and spiced pickles...mmm

Evella and Jacwabbit Blogoff #2 - Curry

Thai green curry Jac style. Recipe to follow!

It's that time again, another blogoff with my friend Gabe from the food blog Evella. This time we went with the broader, more open to personal interpretation topic of CURRY! I toyed with a few Indian recipes, especially after new work colleges from Mysore gave me crash course the other weekend, but in the end I decided to go with my one true curry love, Thai green curry. I love Thai food. I love the sweet, salty, hot, sour combination (especially the hot), I love the fresh, citrusy flavors and I especially love that it gives me an excuse to eat more bamboo. Yes I am part panda.

Since this was a blogoff and not just an after work craving stopper, I went the whole hog in terms of the recipe. I spent hours trolling the tubes for green curry paste recipes until I'd constructed something that I could work with. The only missing ingredient was galangal, since the stuff I bought (sadly frozen) was plain nasty! I had no trouble getting any of the other ingredients, some of them were even home grown!

(Now I'm just showing off our gorgeous kaffir lime tree that we've been growing on the deck - beastly claws but delicious leaves! And vital to a recipe like this)

First the paste. Here's roughly what I used:
The curry paste:
Dry spices-
* 1 tsp cumin seeds
* 1 tbsp coriander seeds
* 1 tsp fresh cracked black pepper

Wet spices-
* 1 thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled
* 2 French shallots, peeled
* ~6 coriander (cilantro) root and stem
* 6 small Thai green chilies and 2 larger Serrano chilies, seeds included for heat
* 3 garlic cloves, peeled
* 1 butt end of a lemongrass stalk, inner layers only
* 4 kaffir (makrud) lime leaves, central vein removed
* zest of 1 lime
* dash of tamari soy (instead of fish sauce)
*1 tsp walnut oil

I toasted the dry spices in a pan over medium heat with no oil until they were fragrant, then ground them in a spice grinder.

Since I don't have my heavy mortal and pestle in the US, I used my mini food processor to make the paste.

First I roughly chopped all the wet spices. I decided to keep the chili seeds in since I wanted the paste to be fairly hot.

Then I processed everything, wet, dry and liquid, in the food processor until I had a relatively smooth paste without too many chunks. The lemongrass had to have a few layers stripped and the woody base removed to make sure it blended well (plus those dry bits don't taste as good!)

In retrospect I'd probably drop the serranos and the shallots, as they added too much liquid to the paste. I'd use more Thai hot chilies and probably a little more of the dry spice mix (I added a little less than my recipe because it looked like it was going to be overpowering)

The next step was preparing the vegies. Green curry is good with so many thing but I decided to be led by whatever was fresh at the Asian grocer. Here's what I ended up with-

The vegetables:
* Both fresh and dried shiitake mushrooms (both bring different flavours), cut into thick slices
* 4-6 baby eggplants, quartered (I couldn't get the small Thai bitter ones to add as well)
* Fresh water chestnuts, peeled
* 2-3 whole bamboo shoots, sliced
* Baby corn spears, halved lengthways
* Green vegies such as baby bok choy, sugar snap peas, wom bok...

First off the water chestnuts need to be peeled. Chop the tops off then just use a regular peeler. Discard any that look yellow or squishy. The fresh ones are so different to the canned ones, sweet and crunchy and just irresistible. Since they were in season I couldn't pass them up, and they are actually the main reason I decided to go with the green curry.

The eggplants were small and sweet. I simply quartered them lengthways and cooked them by simmering them in the curry. I would have loved to have been able to add the small, bitter Thai eggplants as a counter flavour in the dish but they weren't available.

The bamboo we buy isn't freshly picked, but it is much better than the canned stuff. If you find this kind, check to see what they're pickled in as it will seriously affect the flavour.

Ok, now for actually constructing this beast! With any coconut based curry, the quality of the milk or cream is one of the most important factors in the taste. In Australia we use the Ayam brand coconut cream and it is fabulous - sweet and nutty with the perfect separation of heavy from milk. Here it is more tricky because of the gums and preservatives added to the product, but the best I've found so far is an organic variety made by Thai kitchen. It is too emulsified for my liking but the flavor is good.

The last step before actually cooking anything is preparing the final flavour boosters - things that go into the curry as it is cooking or at the end.

Final flavor boosters:
These all go in at different times but they included-
* The upper part of the lemongrass stalk, peeled and bruised
* 1-2 serrano chilies, halved and deseeded
* 4 kaffir (makrud) lime leaves, whole
* 1-2 tbsp palm sugar, grated
* Juice of 1 lime
* Soy sauce to taste
* 1 handful sweet basil leaves
* 1 handful coriander leaves, to serve
* Limes, quartered, to serve

Cooking the curry:
The first step was to stir fry the curry paste in a couple of tablespoons of the coconut cream (so don't shake the tin and try to scoop out the thickest parts). I had the wok on medium high heat and fried about 4 tablespoons of paste until it began to caramelise (but not burn!) and the oil began to separate out.

I then added the hard vegies (everything but the greens) and stir fried them in the past for a few minutes until they were well coated. From there I added the rest of the coconut milk/creme and to give it some more juice (since I like my green curries kind of soupy) I used ~1 cup chicken stock (not in the version I cooked for my vegetarian friend though) and ~1/2 cup liquor from rehydrating the shiitakes. I also added the additional lemongrass, lime leaves, seeded chilies and palm sugar and allowed everything to simmer until the eggplants were tender.

At this point I began tasting the gravy and adjusting it to give the right sweet/salty/sour/heat balance by adding more palm sugar, soy, lime juice or raw paste as required for each component. When the balance was right I added the green vegies (making sure the curry was on a high simmer so all the heat didn't drop out of it) and quickly tossed them through with some shredded basil until they were just cooked but still crunchy. Then it was time to serve with jasmine rice on the side or over thick udon noodles. I also served coriander leaves and lime wedges on the side to be added according to personal preference (I love the fresh coriander hit in with the heat of the gravy)

Tada! In this case I also added some enoki at the end, just because I could. I actually made this curry twice, with a few tweaks each time, but both were pretty good. I have to be careful not to overfill my wok because I'm trying to fit too many fave vegies in. Overfilled wok means poor heat control and potentially soggy greens.

Make sure you check out Gabe's curry on Evella as well since this time we came up with something quite different from each other! This was a really fun blogoff and I love the idea of running with a theme that has lots of room for interpretation.

Politics suck sometimes...

...but some things are worth fighting for. I'm not going to say much about the disappointing Prop 8 announcement from California the other day, you can read about it. What I do want to do is show my support for groups like Courage Campaign who are trying to change the tide towards equality. I can't get my head around the fact that some parts of our community are threatened by the fact that I would like to marry my beloved!



Please sign the petition. I'm not sure if non-US zip codes work but ours is 78230. I know this is only California but these issues are worth fighting wherever they appear. I promise to post something less political (and probably edible) soon!

The beloved's birthday

I know this happened a while ago but I thought I'd pop up a quick post about Josie's birthday since it is a good excuse to post some more Pregatron photos :D

See, from the front you can't really tell she's pregnant!

But I promise she really is! Hard to believe we nearly at week 33 though.

The week of Josie's birthday was pretty hectic as we had collaborators visiting from Portland then a visitor from Tassie on the weekend, but we did go out for a special dinner with the work crowd on the Friday night at a fabulous place called Tre Trattoria. Great linguine with clams, excellent antipasto and I think half the table ordered the fresh pasta with wild mushrooms and thyme, including the birthday girl!

Somebody was asking what she got for her birthday, so I thought I'd post a couple of pics on here. Jose would be the first to profess that she was spoiled rotten, but it was brilliant to see her light up every time a card or package appeared. Eclectic presents not shown here include a footspa, antique plate-fragment jewelery and Charles Rennie Mackintosh glass decals direct from Scotland!

For those of you who don't know, our hamsters died while I was in Australia. They were well over their expected lifespan and had lived very happy hammie lives. We feel bad about the names we gave them now because Busy appeared to just run out of steam and Lumpy died of a tumor... Anyhow, the point is that I found her this actual-size needle-felted hamster for her birthday as a memento of our girls.

Robo the tiny hamster and her birth certificate. Also shown is a card that totally cracked me up!

I also found her these lovely earrings that were handmade by a jeweler called Joanna Rutter from Devon, and I highly recommend her work! I found both the earrings and the hamster on Etsy (support handmade goods!)

The tiny bird earrings

And one last present that I just had to show you. Our friend Katy went to Paris to bring us back some baby Dior socks! I kid you not. Ok it probably wasn't the only reason she went to Paris but still, how cute are they??

That's baby Dior darling

The first babyshower!

We had our first baby shower on Saturday and it was an absolute blast! I say first because there are three (!) lined up in all. Seems showers are something that Americans love. They love to shop and they are so generous so it is the perfect combination. Jo and I were feeling seriously uncomfortable about it but our friends were pretty persuasive and won us over in the end. Then it turned out that I had to set up registries for these things. And not just one! I set one up at target but there was too much 'online only' stuff apparently so I was sent off to set up another at Babies'R'Us (ack how I hate names with R in them). That was another experience entirely and actually a lot of fun, where we ran round the store with a scanner blipping things.

These cupcakes are the goods! Don't let the blue scare you, they're lemonade flavoured.

So, first shower Saturday and the weather decided to get into the spirit as well, a little over-enthusiastically. It didn't shower it poured! The kind of drenching rain where even getting into the car has water in places where only the bath should go. Didn't matter a bit in the end. This shower was organised by some of the chicks from Church, and they did an incredible job.

This was part of the incredible spread. The plate with the tongs on top is full of 'nano' tamales, beef, pork or bean, and they were incredible. If you look hard you can also see the storm pelting against the window!

I didn't feel uncomfortable for a second (well, only during the present part) and there were about as many men there as women...no secret womens' voodoo just friends and food and one totally off the wall game! Have a look at the following pics and see if you can work out what's going on!




Yep, that's right. We're playing the "poopy diaper game". Eight mystery candy bars were melted into the bottom of 8 diapers (nappies - but I think I've already explained why I need to call them diapers here) and our job was to use sight and smell (no tasting!) to determine what the different sweets were.

Josie's score card. She doesn't eat enough candy from the looks of it...

This is our friend Liz, who is a chocolate connoisseur, working out 'what is that smell, I know it...'

The gummi bears weren't too tricky to identify. The Reece's peanut butter cups were just gross...

And yes, you're looking at the champion of the day. Well, actually Liz beat me with 7/8 but she was an organiser (as well as a chocolate fiend) so she stepped down to lucky number 2, which was me with 6/8. The two I missed were the two I'm holding and that's only because I've never tried either of them before in my life! Look at me, I'm all blurry with excitement!

The final phase of the party was opening the masses of generosity in the form of gorgeous present bags, dripping with ribbons and tissue paper. One thing Americans seem to know how to do well, aside from shopping, is wrapping!

We are incredibly blessed to have such lovely and generous friends here and let me tell you, Tuesday is a very lucky boy. I'll take a few snaps of some of the presents later but a couple of my favorites off the bat are the steam breathing red dragon humidifier, the lamaze magnetic stackable pond critters, and the (happy) monster squishable nightlight.

Spring went sproing

And all of a sudden the world is full of baby bunnies! This little guy lives just outside my office window and is so tame that you could pick him up. We haven't because a) we don't want him to become spooked by people and b) he probably has fleas. Cute (and potentially tasty) though...

You can't tell from the pic but he's only about 15cm long!

Happy Star Wars Day

May the 4th be with you...

And tomorrow it is not only Cinco de Mayo, but it is also the beloved's birthday! Not sure what the plan is yet but it will surely involve food. As to whether it is food at home or eating out, that all depends on our energy levels since this is shaping up to be one whopper of a week. Rest assured I will keep you posted on whichever celebratory path we choose.

And just for fun, here's a fun Star Wars related clip for thems who haven't seen it yet (Star Wars or the clip although it's funnier if you have actually seen the films...)

Tuesday's first concert - Patty Griffin!

Last night we had such an awesome night in Gruene, a little town just north of San Antonio. We had tickets to see one of our favorite singers, Patty Griffin, play at the oldest dancehall in Texas! It was so good. She has such an incredible voice especially considering that she's a slip of a girl.

We had dinner before the show at the Gristmill, and enjoyed sitting outside and feeling the warm spring breeze. I had fall off the bone perfect baby back ribs with sticky BBQ sauce and Josie tucked into a burger with handcut fries. We could say we had dinner with Patty since she was sitting just behind us, but I'd talked myself out of believing it was her! hehe

We were lucky enough to make friends with some wonderful people, and they immediately scooted down on one of the picnic like table benches to allow the preggersaurus and me a seat. We were near the back behind the sound-desk, but could see well and the sound was fabulous. You could hear every word she sung. The new band were pretty awesome too, and I think it was only the second gig they'd all played together. Tuesday seemed to enjoy it, probably the loudest continuous noise he's heard except maybe for the breaking surf.

If you want to get a sense of the gig, someone has already been kind enough to upload a lot of it to youtube. "Top of the world" was one of my favorites, although she did belt out a couple of others that had me in tears! Nothing from "Living with ghosts" but that was my only disappointment. You can watch "top of the world" from last night's gig below, and even though the sound quality isn't great you should get the idea of just how amazing she was! (actually I switched vids because there was a bug with top of the world...this one had us all in tears!)

Showing off my new camera

Look out my ornithologist friends! Here's some pics off my new digital SLR which arrived the day AFTER I left for Australia! Tragic I know but I'm only just starting to play with it now. The camera is a Nikon D60 and oh she is a lovely beast. So good to have that level of control in my hands again.

These photos were taken in Port Aransas at one of the bird sanctuaries that we've been to before. No sign of the gator though! I'll let my twitcher friends see if they can name these beauties, although I'm pretty sure I have most of them pegged :D

Remember to click on the pics to make them bigger!

Back in San Antonio

Yeah I know I've been back for over a week now, but trust me, it has been so busy that today is really the first time I feel fully home, feet on the ground and ready to go.

Seeing Jo waiting for me at the airport was so wonderful that for a brief second I didn't realise how much bigger her tum is, but bigger it sure is! She still hasn't put on much weight, no extra anywhere else, just the tummy (5kg all up!). She looks fabulous - 29 weeks yesterday. She passed the gestational diabetes test (although I'm not sure how given the amount of Easter 'candy' consumed!) and everything is kicking along very smoothly right now. Tuesday is a wriggler but doesn't seem to move all the time like some wrigglers, not enough to be excessively uncomfortable at this point. Lucky us, yet again!


Here's a pic just to prove that Josie is doing well. Our lovely friends hosted a preggersaurus BBQ the day after I got home. It was gorgeous weather and great to be sitting out in the sun reminding myself what time it was and which side of the globe I was on now. Good food never hurts either!

These are the three preggersauri from the BBQ. While not in order of due date, can you believe that Josie is last in that lineup?

So while I'm here mindlessly blogging, let me just cover the topic of swine flu since everybody seems to be freaking out about it. Jo and I are not sick, nor are we at any great risk of getting sick. The cases they keep talking about here are near San Antonio, not in San Antonio, and it is a very big city anyway! No one has died outside of Mexico. Let's not go Henny Penny just yet folks. (Wow, and in another weird twist I just discovered that Henny Penny is also a brand of chicken fryers...wrong much?) Can I just repeat, at this point no swine flu-related deaths have been reported outside of Mexico.

Ok, pandemic hype aside, we took advantage of the luscious spring weather and went back to the Texas coast this weekend with our Norwegian friends and their two little ones. It was a lovely break from the hectic work week that was last week. The temperature was perfect and even though it is only just spring the sea was at least 20 degrees and perfect for swimming. There was even a bit of surf! The first time I've seen any kind of waves there. I managed to discover and maim a whole new set of sandcastle building muscles and burn my shoulders, but I needed some sun after spending the past 6 months or so as a mushroom.

The Texas Gulf Coast on what looks like a wild day, but was actually perfect and much more pleasant than the belting heat of summer. Remember to click on these pics to make them bigger.

Tassie pics

Ahh home sweet Tassie home... It seemed even more beautiful to me after having been away.

It was a gorgeous day at Cornelian Bay - even better for the dude in the boat I reckon!

Ahh Mount Wellington, how I miss you as my compass

The flowering gum at Jo's parents' house (those apostrophes hurt my brain!)

And just to remind me that Tassie gets cold, SNOW! Snow to 600m even, in early April!

The Headlines

Clearly I'm still in Australia hence no blog posts! Thought I'd just quickly post some of the news. Expect a more comprehensive post soon

# Tassie was wonderful and it was so good to see everyone. Talk about making me homesick though! I think I ate myself through half the state satisfying my cravings for prawn laksa, fresh Tassie oysters and washed rind cheeses.

#I have my visa in my hot little hand so that venture was successful, woot! Having an 'appointment' at the consulate seems to simply mean they will let you in the door and has nothing to do with an actual time system. As such I milked it, arriving at sparrowfart and getting ticket number 3 through the door which means I was out of there by just after 9am! Record time. The only questions I got asked this time seemed to be about the economics of my program...soo glad I took all those bank statements and 'non-immigrant intent' proofs (sarcasm).

#My bad luck with flights and planes continues...this time my flight out of Hobart was late, leaving me very little time to make the Adelaide connection. That stress became redundant when we attempted to land - the plane bounce once and then aborting the landing, suddenly thrusting again and taking back off to circle the city for a while! Scared the crap out of us all to say the least but landing #2 was fine, albeit well after my connection left. No idea what happened but I'd prefer not to do that again. Made it to Adelaide a few hours late but in one piece so that's where I am now.

That's enough excitement for now. I'll have better internet for a few days so I'll try to pop up an update again soon, and maybe some pics. Thanks to everyone who has fed me or given me a place to crash or transport so far, and sorry to everyone I didn't get to see this time round <3