The humble Vegemite sandwich

I could hardly believe my eyes. Among all the food courts in the shopping centres dotted across SE Queensland, I have NEVER ever seen a vendor with a Vegemite sandwich on their board. I guess when people are out shopping and in need of a feed, they generally want something that their mum didn’t throw in their lunch box most days for school. But at The Green Double Decker in one of Capalaba’s shopping centres, you can in fact get this for lunch. You can even get peanut butter if that’s more your thing.

What astounded me the most wasn’t its appearance on a menu board, but the price!  For the amount they are charging for a single vegemite or PB sandwich, I could buy an entire loaf of bread and a small jar of the stuff. Then it hit me….I could make 20 sandwiches, flog them off at a little stall down the way for $1 and still make a profit. Seriously, you could get the egg or cheese sandwich and pay the same price. Are they trying to tell me that eggs and cheese cost the same amount to purchase wholesale as a jar of Vegemite or peanut butter? The mind indeed does boggle. o.O

Vegemite sandwich?!

Posted in Ramblings | 1 Comment

Peak hour traffic – not fun!

And it’s even less fun with a hysterically wailing moggie in the back who does not understand what exactly a car is and more to the point, why she has to even be in it in the first place. Mojo is a seasoned traveller, having been up and down the east coast of Queensland so many times before that he just curls up and goes to sleep. Getting him to go in the carrier in the first place is always a bit of a hassle….more often than not involving a fair bit of chasing until I can get him in a confined spot from which he can’t escape. Hey, at least that’s my exercise done for the day! But at least once he’s in there, it’s no drama.

Rosie on the other hand is easy enough to catch to put in there but once she’s in, the wailing doesn’t stop. And that’s before we even get out of the house! For the duration of the trip and until she’s allowed to get out at the other end, there is this continuous siren of hysterical wailing. Consequently, we don’t just go for drives for the hell of it and keep it to times when she absolutely has to go somewhere….usually the vet. Hmm….maybe the association of carrier + car = vet is the reason for her hysteria but honestly, where else would we go? It’s not like you pop your cat in the car to go to the beach or the park like you would a dog.

But I digress. It seems that both the cats are well with no apparent issues which is always good to know. Mojo is extra unimpressed this visit – being over 10yo, he was up for a senior health check, comprising of his vaccination, blood tests, urine sample and having his blood pressure taken. If you’re wondering how they get the urine – they stick a needle straight into the bladder. So you can see why he would be extra shitty with the vet but fortunately she clipped his claws before she took him in for the rest of it…smart woman. He’s a tad on the scrawny side again but otherwise good as gold. Rosie on the other hand has found his missing weight plus a bit more. So she’s off to a weight management clinic the Wednesday after Easter. It’s a free service The Cat Clinic runs (sponsored by Hills) because there’s been a bit of an influx of overweight kitties….they talk about portion control, best food mixes and trying to get them more active. Sounds a lot like going to a human dietitian….if it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for her too I think! :lol:

89-365

Are we there yet???

Posted in Cats | 1 Comment

Phoney Photo Pile #4

The year is flying by – already up to Day 72 if you would believe it! I probably should get into the habit of uploading my photos every night when I get home. It’s been a hectic month and I feel like I’ve got no time for anything. In one month, I’ve managed to fit in a crazy weekend up at Bribie, mad dashing around new land releases searching for that elusive quarter acre, a night out with some work friends to see Busting Out (not sure I will ever recover) and a few appointments with conveyancers, mortgage brokers and builders. I’m looking forward to this weekend, if only to try and catch up! :lol:

Phoney Photo 4th batch

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It's that time of the year…

I don’t know why they call it spring cleaning because for some reason, I never get around to doing it in spring. I guess because spring is such a transient season of a week or two that I never get round to doing it. For some reason, when the mornings are finally starting to cool off again after five months of heat, I get a bee in my bonnet about cleaning the house. Why? Have no idea.

I think perhaps because I am a bit unusual in that I am not driven into activity by the heat. It tends to make me more slothlike than anything. While others are out hitting the beach, I would rather curl up with a book, preferably with a winter time setting so at least my mind believes it is cooler than it really is. During the initial flush of autumn, that’s when I start to come alive and want to do stuff outside. So maybe mentally I am preparing for wanting to spend more time outside by focusing on getting the inside clean enough that I won’t have to worry about those PITA cleaning jobs for hopefully another year.

Domestic goddess I am not. We don’t tend to put stuff away and having given that a thought, it’s because it really has nowhere to be put other than the transient place that it occupies between usage. It’s not that our house is small, it’s more than the morons who designed it didn’t give an iota of thought towards storage space. There is no broom cupboard so the vacuum doesn’t have a permanent home and neither does the broom. The mop and bucket got lucky, thanks to a DIY installed shelf in the laundry and a hook on the wall courtesy of Howard’s Storage World. The kitchen cupboards are not storage friendly. We don’t have other cupboards around the house to store stuff in while it’s not being used.

My other half has a logic that if you don’t have places to store stuff, then you don’t accumulate stuff. This is false logic because we get given stuff and buy stuff all the time, without chucking out other stuff because that stuff is still needed. So therefore, we live in a constant chaotic mess which although it is clean, is never tidy.

So the domestic goddess has been reawakened and she is itching to try to do the impossible. I wonder how long it will take till she gets the shits like I do and thinks it would be so much easier if we just started the house all over again from scratch. :lol:

Posted in Home & Lifestyle | 2 Comments

Phoney Photo Pile #3

Wow…I’ve made it to a 3rd batch of daily photos! By my reckoning, I’m up to Day 53 of 365. I headed up to Caloundra for a couple of days this week so I was able to snap a photo of something other than the mundane. It was a nice couple of days, even with the rain….just as well because our next break away won’t be for some time. :)

3rd batch

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Stuff Valentine's Day, bring on Claudius Day

I’m a new convert to Claudius Day….don’t know who Claudius is? He’s the guy who sentenced Valentine to death….it’s just more a pity that he didn’t do it sooner. I don’t like Valentine’s Day. I hate that there is a special day set aside out of the calendar to do something nice for the person you love. WTF is up with that? That should be every day of the year! Just like you don’t need Mother’s Day or Father’s Day to remind you to be kind to your parents. It should be something that comes naturally if you are even remotely a decent human being (and that your parents are as well).

But all the same, Valentine’s Day rocks around every year on February 14th like it or not. This year I decided to rebel and not go have dinner somewhere nice and eat in at home. I thought all the same I would try and do something a little spesh so I decided to have a go at some rice paper rolls. I guess I was excessively comforted by the words on the packet – versatile, quick and easy to prepare. I would like to let anyone know that Trident is lying about most of that unless you have some kind of Chinese cooking guru gene or perhaps some savvy Nigella know how. Unfortunately I got left out of the cooking gene pool so in my experience, they are time consuming and fiddly. Regardless, they are incredibly yummy if you can get past the fact that they look like a stir fry wrapped in plastic. :lol:

Vietnamese roll fail

Vietnamese Roll Fail!

Posted in Fail Cooking, Special occasions | 2 Comments

Introducing Warrego Martin

Warrego Martin

Shortly after we returned from Tasmania last year, my other half told me about an adoption program running through the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital. Unlike a lot of other zoos running similar programs, the koalas up for adoption at Port Macquarie are all wild koalas in need of veterinary care after car accidents, dog attacks or bouts of chlamydia.

They are a charitable organisation and rely on the support of the public in the form of donations or adoptions to keep their hospital running. We have already adopted one koala, Warrego Martin, in January this year. I am planning on adopting a couple more this month, particularly with the ongoing bushfires in Victoria.

For more information on adopting a wild koala ($40 within Australia or $50 from Overseas) or making a once off donation through Pay Pal, please see the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital webpage for more information.

Posted in Adoption Programs, Wildlife | 8 Comments

Gotta love Borders

I think if for some reason that I had to be sequestered away for an unknown period of time on jury duty, I’d want to do it in a Borders book store. Preferably the three storey one in the city but if I can’t go there, the one in Mt Gravatt will do nicely. Sheriffs of local counties please take note for future requests for jury duty. Thank you.

What I love about Borders isn’t so much that they have a Gloria Jeans coffee shop in there (personally I’m partial to Zarraffas but any port in a storm) but that no matter what the subject title, they invariably have a book for it. And not just one book either, generally several – unless it’s a really obscure title like Gourmet Cooking for Dummies. I’m assuming the reason why there is only one copy of that title at Mt Gravatt is because people who wish to be gourmet cooks generally have other ways of going about it – like a cooking class or they have “the way” about them. They don’t really need a book to tell them how to cut an orange in a fancy pattern, they just know. It’s genetic….or at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. :P

Speaking about cooking, I don’t know why it was that I ended up in Borders looking in the cook book section. I had a voucher for a full price book 30% off so you would think I would get something somewhat entertaining like a Peter Moore travel lit book or maybe something funny by Jeremy Clarkson. For some reason I glossed past the travel lit section and even the funny section and ended up with cooking. The Mt Gravatt store is only small (in comparison to the city), so there’s only about 12 shelves packed full of books all related to recipes, preparing food or the cooks themselves like Gordon Ramsay. I suspected it would start with “now if you can’t F’ing bother F’ing doing it right, then put the book down and F right off”. So I took the advice I imagined would come from it and didn’t even pick it up.

I did pick up Rachael Guy’s book in the picture below to look at it, only because I thought the title was amusing. Guy Food. It’s a pretty small book and the content fairly light on – is that because she assumes that most guys would not want to be able to cook a terrine of duck or some other poncy recipe involving stuffing a squid head. Which brings me to another point – cook books are exactly like mix CDs. Most of the stuff is on it is ok but there will always be at least 3 songs on the CD which you absolutely can’t stand. Cook books are the same, only most of them have entire sections I would turn my nose up at. Anyway, I could cook anything in there without even needing a recipe for it so I put it back on the shelf and ended up with a book called Easy Comfort Food. One day I may even open it again to cook something from it. :P

The men's cookbook

Does that mean they have to cook it too?

Posted in Fail Cooking, Home & Lifestyle | 1 Comment

Phoney Photo Pile #2

Here’s the second lot, I honestly didn’t think I would get to the end of a month doing this but what do you know? It seems easier than I gave it credit for being. I know – famous last words! :lol:

2nd batch of Phoney 365

Left to right in rows: 1. My new piggy bank for my camera fund; 2. Yogen fruz!!! Completely guilt free dessert, NOM!!; 3. Santa's on a diet; 4. I <3 Snoopy!!; 5. The road home; 6. New lens!; 7. Ashgrove Farm Cheese from Tassie (still not eaten BTW); 8. Nights in green satin; 9. Nosey Rosie;10. Non-fried rice (yes they are prawns in there; 11. Unexpected water feature under the deck of a friend's house; 12. Rosie's paw; 13. Assembling the purdy blue bike; 14. The new bike rack (yes it still stands, even with two bikes on it); 15. Mt Stapylton and the "golf ball"; and, 16. Best relaxative equipment ever!

Posted in Phoney Photos | 2 Comments

Macro madness

I was a bit bored while waiting in the hairdresser’s this morning for my new colour to set and so I had a quick flick through Flickr on my mobile. And what should I see but Leigh giving me a dig about how she hadn’t seen any evidence of me using my new macro lens. Well I could hardly disappoint her could I? :P

So of course, I went for my usual victim and I’ve started a new Macro Shots set on my Flickr stream. I took a fair few, love the rapid fire that I can do with the 40D. So if you’re bored, that’s where you’ll find the new macro stuff – the old stuff, well it’s just in the photostream somewhere to be sorted at a time to be arranged in the future. For the uninitiated, that means never. :lol:

More Rosie

Do you think she's flipping me the bird?

Posted in Cats, Photography | 1 Comment