faux-holiday

earlier this week i decided to extend my then-two week trip home (to bundaberg, queensland) to see my family. i arrived at 4pm today, surprised my mum (who thought i was coming home on monday) and am currently drinking a XXXX (so queensland of me).
see you on december 29th, melbourne!

mars bar slice

I found this little baby in the biscuit and slice bible (on page 83, for those playing at home) that greta gave me for my housewarming. I was craving some baking time (and the end result, obvs) and this one fit all my criteria- it has only a few ingredients (which are cheap and easy to carry home from coles) and doesn’t require a set of beaters or any other fancy cooking equipment.

You will need:

base
4 x 65g mars bars (says the recipe. I prefer to just get a bag of 12 snack size coles-brand “caramel mighty” bars)
125g butter
4 cups rice bubbles
Topping
200g chopped milk chocolate
30g butter
grease and line a square baking dish.
Melt together the chopped mars/caramel mighty bars and butter in a saucepan over low heat. I found the nougat bits don’t melt as well, but don’t worry if they’re floating around a bit. Mix in the rice bubbles and press the mixture into the pan. Leave it to set in the fridge for 2-3 hours.
To make the topping, melt the butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl or saucepan over a saucepan of boiling water. When it’s all smooth and runny, spread it over the base and leave it to set. Cut it into squares and take a nicer picture of it than this one:

ratatouille

This is one of my favourite things to make for picnics, dinner parties or weekends eating alone in front of the tv.
i decided to make it after trying some at a picnic last year. look at louis and milan digging it!



It’s super easy to make, as you pretty much just need to chop up heaps of veges and cook them all together.

You’re going to need:
4 tomatoes
3 tbs olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 red capsicum, diced
1 yellow capsicum, diced
1 eggplant, diced*
1 tbs tomato puree
1/2 tbs chopped fresh thyme
2 tbs torn fresh basil leaves
2 garlic cloves, crushed

when I say chopped/diced/crushed/torn, I mean it. You’ve gotta prep all that stuff before you get started, like I did in these lovely pictures




1. Score a cross in the base of each tomato and plunge into a saucepan of boiling water for 20 seconds.

2. Then for my favourite part- peel the skin from the tomatoes and discard. Dice up the tomato flesh.

3. Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat and add the onion. Cook for 2-3 minutes then add the capsicum and cook for a further 5 minutes.

4. Transfer the onion and capsicum to a bowl and set aside.

5. Add the eggplant to the pan and cook over medium heat for 5-6 minutes. Return the onion and capsicum to the pan and stir in tomato puree.

6. Add thyme and tomatoes. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

7. Stir in the basil and garlic.

I like to serve it warm with fresh, crusty bread.
Recipe adapted/stolen from here.

cous cous!

I tried cous cous for the first time at greta’s cup day barbeque. It was deeelicious and I made sure to write the ingredients for it on my shopping list last week.
I made it for the first time yesterday and I was super proud with the results.



To make some like mine, you’re going to need
2 & ½ cups cous cous
2 & ½ cups water
1 tbsp oil
a pinch salt
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp butter
1 vegetable stock cube
1 small red onion
¼ Lebanese cucumber
½ red capsicum
10 cherry tomatoes

1- boil the water in a big pot with the stock cube, oil, salt, cumin, turmeric and cinnamon
2- when it’s boiled, remove the pot from the heat and add the cous cous, stirring constantly. cover the pot and leave to sit for 3 minutes.
3- Meanwhile begin finely chopping the onion, cucumber and capsicum. Quarter the tomatoes.
4- Add the butter to the pot and stir with a fork to fluff up and separate the grains. Mix in the vegetables. Serve and receive the praise and adoration from the people you give it to.

bored?

Since I’m on holidays and don’t have much to write about (apart from posting a bunch of recipes), here’s a list of some of the stuff I’ve been doing, not-very-effectively disguised as a list of ideas for things for you, my dear readers/friends, to do.

1- colour-code your wardrobe


2- play a game of rude scrabble in the park (you will probably need other players for this. I chose to use jim, lucy and alice, but you can use whoever you like. Jim is very good at it.)


3- try to do this with a water bottle.


4- Find a building with your family name on it. (this is pretty easy if your last name’s Hilton or Coles…or Starbucks.)


5- Have a dinner party with your housemate. I made risotto and my housemate steve (WHO GETS MENTIONED ON MY BLOG ENOUGH, SO STOP COMPLAINING) bought a bottle of Riesling and some chocolate ice blocks. It was so effing fancy.


6- Go searching for hard rubbish.

my finds include:
(don’t mind the dust. I wasn’t going to clean everything just to take a picture)


a cassette tape deck


a heater (that I’ve been known to use as a hairdryer)


an old singer sewing machine



some speakers
 & a set of blue corner shelves


this depressing painting

which leads me into the next suggestion…

7- Make an art gallery in your hallway

8- Do a facemask and laugh at your funny green face (but don’t crack it!)


9- Make some snacks for cheaper than you’d pay for the pre-made ones at the supermarket

four of these (jelly and pears) cost a total of $1.78

10- Start a herb garden

after two failed attempts to grow my favourite herb in the garden (not naughty herbs- basil), one of which consisted of me just putting some basil roots in a jar of water to see what would happen, I was determined to make my third try the successful one. While making some pasta sauce (from scratch, thank you very much) the other day, I dropped my tongs and got my hands dirty. With dirt. I found an old pot in the garden, filled it with the shitty dirt in our backyard that weeds apparently thrive in, and reconnected with my childhood of “helping” my mum to garden. I woke up this morning (two days after planting it) and the basil was droopy and sad looking. I marched out with a 600mL bottle of water and drenched the little baby and this is what it looked like two hours later. I really regret not filming the whole process, speeding it up and laying the turtles’ happy together over it, time-lapse-credits-sequence-of-adaptation-style.

"he's full of craaaaap!" "awww, come onnnnnn!"

this is my favourite video on all of the internets.

it makes you want him to impregnate you, right? SAME!

see also:

making the where the wild things are soundtrack (IWANTTOBEKARENO)

where the dirty hipsters are

one of spike's first (and, unless i'm mistaken, last) tv interviews on the craig kilborn show

and spike hanging out with m.i.a. ("what's ketamin?")

plus, before you see the movie you might want to have a quick refresher of what happens in the book (all 300-and-something words)- here's my man barack reading it.

what's your favourite scary movie?

image from here.

melbourne's been bitchin' hot this week. like, almost as hot as black saturday.
on monday my housemate and i went to the movies and i bought a big bag of bagels and a sia CD
on tuesday i left the house only to stumble to swan st, buy ice blocks and look for a pedestal fan (of which, apparently, there are none)
and yesterday it started cooling down a little. sweet relief.

i've eaten nachos three times this week. and heaps of bruschetta. and made banana bread.

i've also watched these twice each.

despite the heat, it's been a pretty good week.

ps- i'm not happy with the idea of scream 4. how much more can sidney go through!?
i would happily watch a movie all about deputy dewey, though.

six degrees of someone famous

My recent obsessions with spike jonze and sofia coppola have spurred a few changed in my life/thinking processes. Last night, as I lay in bed looking at the pictures of spike above my bed, I began thinking about the work the two had done and how I could possibly meet them*. It suddenly occurred to me, as eureka moments do, that I’m not as far removed from them as I may have thought. Turns out a couple of chance meetings with a certain australian actor has significantly lowered the divide between little old me and the divorced couple I adore so very much.

Allow me to under-exaggerate the space between us (and various others) with this charming little flowchart:



I (kind of) know tom, who was in the proposition with Emily Watson.
Emily was in synecdoche, new york, which was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman.
Charlie also wrote adaptation and being john malkovich, which spike jonze directed.
Spike was married to sofia coppola for four years.

Maggie gyllenhaal was in adaptation.

Emily Watson was in punch-drunk love, which was directed by p.t. Anderson.

Degrees of separation between spike jonze and I = four.
Degrees of separation between sofia coppola and I = five.
DEGREES OF SEPARATION BETWEEN MAGGIE EFFING GYLLANHAAL AND I = four.
Degrees of separation between paul Thomas Anderson and I = three.

I pretty much am Kevin bacon.

Oh, also, my housemate is good friends with a Disney employee who met Zac Efron when he was in the country. Zac had a cameo in an episode of Entourage.
Degrees of separation between Jeremy piven and I = four***

*apart from a chance meeting if/when my movie makes it to festivals in Cannes/Berlin/New York/Toronto/anywhere**

**/if it gets made at all. Ever.

***it could be three, because I now know said Disney employee, but my housemate steve has been haranguing me for more mentions on my blog, so I’ll leave him in this one.

oh, sofia

last week i stretched my (already threadbare) budget to accomodate the purchase of the sofia coppola philoso-face director's cut badge after i had my main lady lisa keep an eye out for its arrival at lenko. when i took it home i did a little photo shoot with her.

note: sofia on my heart and her ex-hubby spike observing us from my wall. he likes to watch.

i snapped her onto my chest this morning on my way out and received a couple of compliments about it. after taking "sunlight through trees" photos in fitzroy gardens (which imdb claims is her director's trademark. i would've focussed more on the female-centric storylines, but whatevz) and eating a danish that wouldn't have been out of place as a prop on marie antoinette, i decided it was my day of sofia. so here i present my favourite sofia-related internet moments.

1- sufjan stevens' sofia's song

it's a great song, but what i really love about this fan video is that, among the beautiful photos of sofia is one picture of two girls, neither of whom is her.

2- an amazing article written by mr stevens, mentioning sofia at the end.

3- her lost in translation oscar acceptance speech

can we just take a moment to appreciate

a) that amazing dress

b) how cute and proud roman, francis and eleanor are

c) how she makes scarlett j sit up in her seat

d) how proud bill murray is to be her muse

e) how crap the coverage was that it cuts to crowd shots during her (presumably) cutest moments.

4- her ad for dior

this is marie antoinette set in modern times, running at 46 seconds and without all that royalty and stuff

5- lick the star

her first short film in parts one and two.

suffice to say, iheartsofia is my new favourite youtube user.

my melbourne summer holiday -part I

today was the first day of my official uni holidays; i finished classes two weeks ago, but i still had editing, presenting, writing and group meetings to get through before i really finished.

jobless and not wanting to hound my friends to spend time with me every day, i made the decision to spend more time with myself. not just hanging around my room watching dvds, as i do almost every day, but doing things.

with that in mind, i wandered into uni at about midday to download new podcasts (collecting my sister shannon's super cute 21st birthday invitation from my mailbox on the way), before jumping on a tram to nova to catch the 1:50pm showing of julie and julia.

the movie was fantastic- meryl was amazing and brought about my first (of four) little cry-fests, jane lynch was her usual hilarious self as meryl's sister (with far too little screen time), amy adams was sweet as ever- perhaps even more so with her short hair and fantastic queens apartment (although, AS IF YOU WOULD COMPLAIN ABOUT LIVING OVER A NEW YORK PIZZA SHOP! really, amy.) and chris messina, one of my dream bachelors, was not too far removed from his role as ted in six feet under (which is a compliment. oh, ted).

i played a fun little game with myself during the movie, too- each time blogs, blogging or bloggers were mentioned i tried to figure out what the mostly-elderly audience were thinking. i heard one on the way out asking his friend what "blugs" meant.

after the movie, i spent a long while browsing through borders and picked out potential christmas presents for my mum and my sister karli, browsed through beautiful cookbooks and carried around a pile of DVDs i wanted to buy, before deciding i was nowhere near being able to afford them.

i was about to jump on a tram home, before looking at the time (4:30pm) and deciding i had much more i could do with my day. i wandered down elgin/johnston st with the intention of getting a bagel from beans'n'bagels for a late lunch (and maybe a chocolate and/or blueberry one to bring home). it was sunny and there was a lovely breeze. it's days like these that really make me love melbourne, especially summer/daylight savings time when the sun doesn't set until 8pm-ish.

i wandered into a bookshop on johnston st and picked up a copy of a free magazine with tegan and sara on the cover. the further i got into the shop, the more apparent it became that i had walked into a gay and lesbian bookshop. to not appear like a prude/homophobe, i stayed and browsed and found some great books, as well as many helpful publications with such titles as "the how to guide to lesbian sex". i picked up a postcard of two rockabilly babes pashing on in a gingham-infused kitchen. it was a kitchen/cooking themed day, after all.

when i finally arrived at beans'n'bagels i was sad to see it closed at 4pm. very, very sad. i jumped on a tram, again, with the intention of going home. this time i made it inside, where i found i had no change for a ticket (after buying the postcard). for fear of a fine from trenchcoat-wearing fascists, i jumped off the tram at st vincent's plaza with no real plan of where to go.

i started walking up victoria st (or is it parade?), with the yeah yeah yeahs in my headphones. i spotted the trees of fitzroy gardens down a side street and headed towards there, walking through the park taking the odd sofia-inspired tree photo and having a little play on the swings.

i started to get a little tired as i left the park, but felt good seeing the bridge/punt rd intersection, as it meant i was near home. i wandered down punt rd, turning into rowena parade and settling down with a vanilla malt milkshake and raspberry danish at the milk bar. it was 5:30pm by this time, so the danish (which was a little slice of heaven on a plate) well and truly spoiled my dinner.

as i sat in the sun drinking my milkshake, i started writing on one of the complimentary postcards for my dad and his girlfriend, who are currently travelling around the UK, to get when they come home. it was then that i made the decision to spend a day like this at least once a week- going to different places around melbourne and enjoying my own company and thoughts. i'll leave my laptop at home from now on (once i got home and told my housemates how far i had walked, they decided it was at least 2.5km. whoo! that's a long way to lug a laptop in a shoulder bag), and bring my journal instead so i can document things i see and places i go. and i'll come home to write about them here.

melbourne is such a fantastic city. if i can't spend the next four months travelling around the country or the world like some people can, i'm going to make the most of where i can go. the train/tram lines are my limits. as is my budget; i'll aim to spend one day a week in a different place with a limit of $20 (today, all expenses included, was $20.10).

if you have any suggestions of places or events, i'd love to hear from you. if you, perhaps, want to accompany me somewhere, i can go on a date with you instead of myself (i spend too much time with her, anyway. she's always around!).

this has been the first of (hopefully) 14 recounts of my holiday in my city.

Ingredients for an unbeatable hip hop night out

1- floral tights and cheap boots with no traction (with which the possibility of slipping over and consequently being humiliated is significantly heightened)
2- patsy
3- a home-made, personalized “audiobook” to give patsy as a gift
4- beer and rude barmaids at the espy
5- greta
6- presents from greta (I picked perfume: the story of a murderer)
7- eating carbo-loaded, stomach-lining food at a table across the room from urthboy and horrorshow (cue swooning and bosom-fanning)
8- recounting bad date stories
9- talking about paul Kelly to keep me from singing from st Kilda to king’s cross
10- prince
11- sitting on the balcony rating boys in checkered shirt+hoodie combinations and discussing the possibility of that mental girl being a “lady of the evening”
12- cardboard sneakers
13- polo club
14- hip hop fans with glasses and sweater vests (aka CUTE)
15- waiting so long for horrorshow. Just soooooooo long.
16- FINALLY SEEING HORRORSHOW. Aria award-nominated horrorshow, Who I’ve missed every other time they’ve been in Melbourne/at groovin’ the moo in the past year-and-a-bit. FINALLY!.
17- Horrorshow being ah-mah-zing.

18- Solo being the perfect man (find me another 21 year old Australian hip hop MC who writes “hip hop to hold hands to”. Go on.)
19- Patsy having a toilet photoshoot with her lady of the night
20- Lupe fiasco passout stamps
21- URTHBOY! The best ginger granddaddy of Australian hip hopand quite possibly the best entertainer I’ve seen in a long time. Imagine a ginger, hip hop Michael Jackson circa the way you make me feel
22- we get around aka “THE ONE FROM THE VICTORIAN GOVERNMENT ADS!” –patsy, 2009 (that makes it sound like she’s a douche who doesn’t know urthboy at all. She does. I don’t).
23- getting much-needed water and fresh air
24- getting in a taxi to find the driver listening to book reviews on ABC radio.
25- Coming home to shower and write this, while listening to the grey space.

If we had got spur of the moment, drunken tattoos to remember this night, patsy’s would’ve said $ending out the $ignal and mine would’ve said AUZ HIP HOP 2 DA BONE (probably written in olden times font across my shoulder blades. original).