Riding on a donkey
Jan. 10th, 2010 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
changelingArgh, I so have to upload more icons to my dW account. Not that I have many to play with.
***
Went to Daylesford today, to the yearly lavender festival my morris side dances out at. We worked out today that next year will be our tenth year of dancing there.
It was hot. It's always hot at this gig, but it hasn't been quite this hot for about five years (the last time was the year before my first time). Today it reached at least 39°C (102°F) where we were dancing. Later, when driving to the pub, Julie's car claimed it was 41°C outside (106°F). It was just stupidly hot. We danced very abbreviated sets, only two or three dances at a time, and made sure that there was always people not dancing. I was there mostly as a muso; normally I'd be trying to get some more dances in but today that suited me fine. As it was I got very nauseous with the heat towards the end of the day and felt like I was going to throw up.
***
Delicious food things (mostly from the market at the festival):
It was lovely to have such a warm reception from The Dog when I got home tonight. I felt terribly sorry for her, being locked home by herself today. Worse because she was stuck outside (though The BOM says it didn't get much hotter than 30 in Melbourne, at least), but I didn't want to lock her inside for 12+ hours either.
She highly approves of the couple of crusts of my sourdough bread that she got tonight (no dips for her, though. Far too much garlic for dogkind, I think). She's wandered off to sleep on one of The Family's beds now, but for most of the first hour that I was home she was following me around a bit, to make sure I didn't sneak off again on a silly morris trip.
She was quite difficult to get outside this morning. She recognises morris kit all too well and knows exactly what it means.
***
Went to the supermarket on my way home tonight to get some icecream ingredients (soy milk being chief among them). I managed to get the candy canes I wanted, which is good. $3 for 100 small canes. I was nervous they'd have cleared out their stock already from Christmas. I hadn't had any this past year. This was doubly good since apparently no Melbourne supermarket stocks peppermint essence anymore. Why not?? Other essences are around, but I want PEPPERMINT. I am a peppermint fiend, dammit. Also peppermint essence is good to add to water to make up a little spray bottle for ant dissuasion in the kitchen. It's multipurpose! Can anyone else find any? I've been looking for a few years now, without success. (Maybe I only look when it's out of stock...?)
So, anyway, I will have chocolate icecream with chocolate chips and smashed candy cane, which will be nice (though not quite as nice as peppermint icecream with peppermint chips and chocolate chips). I also have biscuits for cookies and cream icecream, and enough milk for a third round of icecream, maybe my silvanberry. Of course, if I had remembered to put the silly icecream machine in the freezer, I could be making icecream right now, dammit. Oh well. It will be very nice to make it tomorrow morning, when Australia plans to move a foot and a half away from the surface of the sun and it will be FORTY-ONE DEGREES. Man was not meant for such temperatures.
Meanwhile, apparently the US (according to Neil Gaiman) and the UK (according to a uni friend, via Facebook) are reaching temperatures of about –25°C, which just boggles my mind. Surely you'd just snap freeze to the spot when it's that cold?
Sing it with me: CLIIIIMATE CHAAAAANGE.
***
Went to Daylesford today, to the yearly lavender festival my morris side dances out at. We worked out today that next year will be our tenth year of dancing there.
It was hot. It's always hot at this gig, but it hasn't been quite this hot for about five years (the last time was the year before my first time). Today it reached at least 39°C (102°F) where we were dancing. Later, when driving to the pub, Julie's car claimed it was 41°C outside (106°F). It was just stupidly hot. We danced very abbreviated sets, only two or three dances at a time, and made sure that there was always people not dancing. I was there mostly as a muso; normally I'd be trying to get some more dances in but today that suited me fine. As it was I got very nauseous with the heat towards the end of the day and felt like I was going to throw up.
***
Delicious food things (mostly from the market at the festival):
- The provodore was there again this year. So for lunch I had trendy-cafe quality garlicky hummus, tomato and native oregano dip (also chickpea based, actually) and lightly fried bread with rocket (arugula) tossed with a little oil and salt piled on top. It was amazingly delicious and the salt was just what I needed.
- Henry of Harcourt, they of the award-winning perry, were there again this year, and this year they brought apple juice. Since I'm not a big hard cider fan, this made me very happy. And it was amazingly good apple juice. Not quite as good as Kalangadoo (that apple juice tasted like caramel, I'm not kidding), but fantastic nonetheless. Also it was very cold, and you could have it over ice if you wanted.
- The berry place was back again this year! Last year they'd just given a few berry boxes to friends who were going to be at the market. This year they had a full presence. No marionberries, alas (I discovered marionberries two years ago at the same festival. They are my favourite), but I bought a box of silvanberries, a box of boysenberries, and a box of blueberries. They'll probably go into my green smoothies that I have thankfully started having for breakfast again, now that I own a blender. Unless I turn the silvanberries into icecream, which is something I'm still tossing up about. After all, I've never had silvanberry icecream. OMG YUM.
- I bought a loaf of sourdough olive bread from Himalayas bakery in Daylesford. So that's what I had for dinner: toasted sourdough olive bread with leftover dips from lunch. It was exactly what I needed on such a hot day; not too fussy. Thank goodness for Julie's esky...
- I made friends with the sourdough bakers at the festival. We discussed bread and I admitted that I killed my last sourdough starter. I told the bloke, who was the baker, about my favourite and only bread book, and the delicious crumpets I made from it. He didn't have a recipe for good crumpets, so was interested. I discovered that they also run sourdough workshops, which you get to take home the starter you make. They're one-day workshops, run on a Sunday, so I'll probably go up the Saturday night (or day) and make a bit of an event of it. I'm hoping to go with Sean, because I know he'll get as much of a kick out of it as I will. So we'll see what we can organise.
It was lovely to have such a warm reception from The Dog when I got home tonight. I felt terribly sorry for her, being locked home by herself today. Worse because she was stuck outside (though The BOM says it didn't get much hotter than 30 in Melbourne, at least), but I didn't want to lock her inside for 12+ hours either.
She highly approves of the couple of crusts of my sourdough bread that she got tonight (no dips for her, though. Far too much garlic for dogkind, I think). She's wandered off to sleep on one of The Family's beds now, but for most of the first hour that I was home she was following me around a bit, to make sure I didn't sneak off again on a silly morris trip.
She was quite difficult to get outside this morning. She recognises morris kit all too well and knows exactly what it means.
***
Went to the supermarket on my way home tonight to get some icecream ingredients (soy milk being chief among them). I managed to get the candy canes I wanted, which is good. $3 for 100 small canes. I was nervous they'd have cleared out their stock already from Christmas. I hadn't had any this past year. This was doubly good since apparently no Melbourne supermarket stocks peppermint essence anymore. Why not?? Other essences are around, but I want PEPPERMINT. I am a peppermint fiend, dammit. Also peppermint essence is good to add to water to make up a little spray bottle for ant dissuasion in the kitchen. It's multipurpose! Can anyone else find any? I've been looking for a few years now, without success. (Maybe I only look when it's out of stock...?)
So, anyway, I will have chocolate icecream with chocolate chips and smashed candy cane, which will be nice (though not quite as nice as peppermint icecream with peppermint chips and chocolate chips). I also have biscuits for cookies and cream icecream, and enough milk for a third round of icecream, maybe my silvanberry. Of course, if I had remembered to put the silly icecream machine in the freezer, I could be making icecream right now, dammit. Oh well. It will be very nice to make it tomorrow morning, when Australia plans to move a foot and a half away from the surface of the sun and it will be FORTY-ONE DEGREES. Man was not meant for such temperatures.
Meanwhile, apparently the US (according to Neil Gaiman) and the UK (according to a uni friend, via Facebook) are reaching temperatures of about –25°C, which just boggles my mind. Surely you'd just snap freeze to the spot when it's that cold?
Sing it with me: CLIIIIMATE CHAAAAANGE.
