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Reine's Xmas 2018 cooking

So I just looked back at my 2017 post, and it was so detailed! My 2018 post will have considerably less content, but I think that's because a lot of it is really the same food, just slightly different.I spent heavily on non-food activities in 2018 and I've got some very extravagant travel plans for 2019, so I tried to stick to a small, sensible budget of $200 on top of my normal weekly food spend. Me being me though, I ended up spending about $400... whooops!So where did all that money go?I only bought one marron this time, and named her Henrietta. I'd learned from my previous year that the pan grilled version tasted better than the soup version, so this time I went for the grilled method again! However, instead of the pan, I tried using the oven in an attempt to make the entire shell red, but it still didn't work - I had a half red, half black shell by the time the meat was cooked. I guess I really do need just a firepit in my dream kitchen!I actually got the idea of the witlof salad when I randomly stumbled across a site (maybe BBC Food? I can't remember) that had crab, roe and witlof canapes, so I decided to try my own!The garnish here was micro ice plant that I'd found at the shops. Pretty cute! I liked the presentation of this better than my previous year's attempt. The marron kind of reminded me a bit of Attica's marron presentation.Throughout 2018, I've had a fascination with insanely sharp knives that can slide across a tomato effortlessly. I really wanted to get my flatmate's Wusthof knife sharpened, but she's really not that great at taking care of kitchen stuff whereas I worship every tool, so instead, I decided to get my already sharp Global, sharpened a bit more. I think even the knife sharpener was a bit puzzled as to why I wanted it sharpened, but he did so regardless.This was an experiment from the night before my actual dish, to see how thin I could get the slices. These were squishy, overripe tomatoes, so I guess it was a good effort?YAY plates of sliced tomatoes! While it was easier to work with not overripe tomatoes, it was still a challenge because the waterier the tomato, the harder it was to keep the "insides" intact. But I love the colours and how they all overlap! It's like jewels!And the finished result, my perennial caprese salad! This time though, there wasn't any moneybag burrata at the shops, so I settled for fiore di burrata instead. I kinda miss the big ones because these little ones didn't ooze as much cream. I loved the presentation though, I feel that this one was a fun exercise considering the last two years have all been "normal" looking!There was no quail this year. Instead, there were some duck ballotines for sale, but when I asked how much they were, a 2kg duck-chicken-cranberry stuffing portion cost $110! That was a bit much for me, so I opted for just duck pieces instead. This was a fennel and garlic grilled duck breast with charred witlof and roast carrots. Yeah!! The duck was delicious, I actually surprised myself! I really loved my duck dishes this year!This was a fun one to make! I'd seen pictures of this being served at The Dolphin Hotel in Sydney, and I always wondered how much it would cost, because it looks simple. Avocados are now a running hipster joke about not being able to afford a house, so this dish was also humorous in that regard - pairing an "expensive" avocado with expensive Yarra Valley Caviar salmon roe! What you can't see here is that there's creme fraiche underneath the roe. I'd never read the restaurant's official description of their version, but I'd happened to see some Meander Valley creme fraiche at the shops, and bought it on impulse, and decided it'd go well in this dish.I wasn't wrong! This tasted way better than I thought it would! After adding some salt, olive oil, and a dash of lemon juice (I forgot to add pepper, whoops!), this dish became more than the parts. I think the creme fraiche has to be there, because it made it more than just roe and avocado. The tanginess that came from the cream was perfect for the roe!! It works WAY better than sour cream. It just... made the roe pop while the avocado flavour and texture were there and surprisingly, didn't add any heaviness to the dish! It was as if it made the avocado itself taste better too!What was just a "for fun" dish actually ended up being really impressive!I actually made a few more roe and avocado dishes, since I'd bought 100g of salmon roe and 100g of golden trout roe. I didn't realise how tedious it was to try and stay awake till midnight for New Year's, since I hadn't done that the last few years (or if I did, it didn't feel like that much of a struggle). Because I was feeling peckish, I sliced up some potato and made chips. I'd run out of creme fraiche, so I bought some cheap Woolworths sour cream (don't do this - it doesnt even come close to creme fraiche!), and added some golden trout roe, then overkilled it with gold foil! Always gotta send off the old year with excess :)Yay for knife skills!Isn't it so pretty?I also made some more sea salt and fennel crackers. These ones actually didn't turn out half as good as the last attempt at all! For some reason the fennel flavour wasn't as prominent. I'd also changed the recipe and the texture just wasn't right and it was too buttery. But that's learning for you; it makes me want to experiment more to find out how to consistently make these tasty!Garlic, honey and mustard duck maryland with porcini rice. The rice here is a couple of days old which is why it didn't stick together, but hey, it's not all just for photos - this is the reality of cooking for one. I plan out photogenic dishes when I can, but what people usually don't see is the "normal" stuff where leftovers are used. A good tip for this is saving the duck fat, because it makes the rice so tasty when it's all mixed in!!And final picture is how I usually prepare meals. Work meals are generally one pot wonders now (being time poor made me super efficient in 2018 and I bet it saved me money! I just can't see those savings cause I used them elsewhere!) and look like one big heap of stuff.I wonder what I'll do this year since I don't expect to have a lot of money left at the end...YAY EXCITING 2019 AHEAD

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Swan Valley, Rottnest adventures!

When life throws change, you catch it and run with it! I was originally supposed to go to Melbourne this December, but things decided to take a different turn, so instead of meeting my parents there, they flew over to Perth for a weekend. The biggest challenge was that I was instructed specifically not to involve food and coffee. Well... considering I know nothing else, what was I going to show my parents as "fun things to do in WA"?A lot of what they wanted to do was undoable without a car - such as a Margaret River tour. However, I was lucky enough to discover a tour bus in the Swan Valley which could cover Caversham Wildlife Park as well as a wine and beer tour! That sounded like fun! My parents also wanted to "catch the famous Perth ferry" which I assumed was Rottnest since that's what you take the ferry for as a tourist.It turned out to be a great time, even with some last minute itinerary changes and my limited knowledge of how to do an actual "Perth tour" of Perth.First up, making food ahead of time! This was my attempt at non-perishable onigiri, which was stuffed with "vegan jerky strips" from an Asian grocer. These were really tasty (I tried a bit after making them), except that they don't do well in the fridge. Due to a last minute swap between the days of Rottnest and Swan Valley, I didn't time these as planned so I have no idea if they would have tasted good after 3 hours of being carried around; instead these were eaten as microwaved snacks in between adventures (which wasn't as tasty as I thought they'd be).I also made some sea salt and fennel biscuits but I'm too lazy to go fetch those pictures because I forgot to transfer them. Basically, I discovered a brand of sea salt and fennel graham crackers called "Knutsford" and they were soooo good, especially when paired with King Island's Roaring Forties blue. I noted the ingredients in an attempt to replicate the flavour, and I think I did quite well, given I didn't have a recipe and I randomly measured stuff based on my "randomly" made oat cookies. My one was a combination of plain flour, wholemeal spelt flour, psyllium husk, butter, egg, sugar, cinnamon, a tiny bit of crushed fennel, fennel seeds, and wakame sea salt.With all this planned, I still didn't manage to get the food right because originally, Rottnest was planned for Saturday, and Swan Valley for Sunday. The food was for Saturday. But since Rottnest got swapped to Sunday, I thought that we'd be able to buy food at Swan Valley so I didn't prepare ahead. Thus, we were foodless on Saturday, which turned out to be rather inconvenient because I didn't get to sneakily swing around to Willing Coffee. Instead it was just 2 minute noodles from the kiosk at Caversham, and a few tastings of wine! I was pretty dehydrated as well, it turns out caffeine withdrawal combined with dehydration is not the kind of headache you want while out and about!I'd visited Caversham Wildlife Park before, so here are a new set of pics!Is that the same rooster from before?!?!?!It turns out I can't read alternating bus timetables, so I did lose an hour waiting for the correct time and colour of bus to pick us back up.... Funnily enough, I ran into one of my dance instructors and fellow student on the bus twice! That was pretty cool!My dad became pretty keen to visit some wineries, and since we were on a tour bus, why not! Given how crazy my parents went for black swans and black cockatoos, I decided that the Black Swan was a suitably named winery to stop by. Unfortunately, it was super busy as it seemed there was a function or party there with lots of people, so the person allocated for serving wine tastings was run off his poor feet.We were allowed two free tastings here, so we went for the rose as it was described as "dry with a sweet twist". It was actually pretty drinkable, and I liked the sweetness, even though I found it odd to have in a rose since the last one I really liked was done by Ducks in a Row in Adelaide, which was crisp, dry but also had some body to it.My dad wanted to try the shiraz, whereas I chose a "bordeaux style" blend. Basically, I don't like shiraz. Every time I've tried one, the tannins have ripped my face off, the pepperiness burns my tongue and the body punches my gut. Or something :D. This one wasn't any different. The bordeaux style wasn't any better, but it was smoothed out by some fruitiness to it.We also took a look at the vineyards, but the grapes were still at a super small stage.I chose this particular stop because there was also a couple of other things to do nearby - a teahouse/dessert place and some other things? I don't remember. But then I spotted another cellar door by the name of Little River, and decided that was worth visiting.What a quaint little quiet place! There were literally no other tourists here, so I lead my dad into the tasting room and decided to try a couple here too. This was way less "commercial" than the main winery. This was tiny and felt more cosy and I felt like we were paid attention to.We tried a "Florial" rose here, and wow, completely different! This was dry and crisp, oh so crisp! I've not had a rose like this one before. I explained to the shop person that we'd tried Black Swan earlier but this was better. He explained that sweet roses are not a thing; that was something cool in the 70s but not a traditional rose. Traditional roses are meant to be crisp. Nice!They had two shiraz wines on offer, their usual, and also an aged one (2009). I asked him which we should taste if I don't like shiraz, and he suggested the aged one because it mellowed out the tannins. Woah, this was a shiraz??? It tasted like a proper full bodied wine (no idea why I think that this was "proper" lol)?! It had body, it had flavour, and it didn't rip my face off! I was really impressed. Apparently, the shop person agreed that this is how shiraz should be drunk.Well, this actually started to make a lot of sense for me. Shiraz wines tend to be the most expensive, and their value increases with age - and it's no wonder; I guess they're supposed to be aged so that the tannins have less of an impact. This is in contrast to how I like my nebbiolos/barolos/barbarescos, but I do have a 2007 barolo sitting around that I really need to try and see if I like aged nebbs.Hooray for wine enlightenment!We didn't take anymore stops since it was getting late; I still wanted to get to King's Park to show my parents the glass bridge that is at tree height. My mum mentioned wanting to see it, and I needed time in the park to find it, since I've only managed to stumble across it once because Pokemon Go took me there, of all things!Alas, what I didn't remember was that the bridge had opening hours, and we were too late! That meant I needed to revisit the next day. Since King's Park always takes me into the city, I decided it would be good to show Elizabeth Quay at night. I think they liked it!I had no idea that the water park lit up at night, how cool!The next day we were prepared early for our trip to Rottnest Island, home of the ever-smiling quokkas. We were also going to attempt exploration via bicycle, even though my parents haven't ridden bikes for decades, and the only practise I've had was in a carpark, just off training wheels. Well, this was going to be interesting!It's best to get the tickets prepaid, since it's very popular in summer. I only booked the night before our trip, and the bike rentals by that ferry company had already sold out, so we had to try our luck on the island, which turned out to be a good thing because we were able to get the afternoon special (just under 50% off)! Hooray!The boat ride to and from is horrendous though. The water was so choppy, it was way worse than any plane turbulence I've experienced in the last 10 years! We were basically constantly thrown from side to side. Not fun! Luckily I slipped in some anti sickness tablets for myself :DMy spiffy set of wheels! I definitely wobbled about a lot and stopped for some cars that passed by, but I also managed to safely pass a moving bus too! The biggest challenge was actually the wind and slopes - because I have no leg muscles, I had to walk my bike on shallow inclines :(. I managed to at least ride through a very windy section, but my parents had to walk their bike through that.Nevertheless, the bike was so much fun! I never got to realise my dream of a hipster pushbike in Adelaide because I was too terrified of sharing the road with cars (plus the cost of a bike itself,maintenance and finding parking), but being here in a very bike-friendly zone made it super enjoyable!The water here is absolutely amazing. Also, look, Perth city in the horizon!And finally some quokkas! Yay!This was the flat, windy bit where I struggled, but successfully made my way through on wheels!These were salt lakes with nesting terns!This quokka managed to get hold of human food.This was a cheeky hungry crow who wanted said human food!Quokka got angry when the crow sneaked up and took a bite of its tail!Did a leap to get away from hungry crow!What a tense standoff!Quokka successfully defended food!After the boat ride back to Perth, we ended up making it to the glass bridge and my parents got to walk amongst the treetops!That concludes a weekend full of non-food and coffee fun, I guess I made the trip work after all!

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Blackjack!!

Dear diary,I went to my work's Christmas party, for the first time in a few years. It actually turned out to be a fun one, because the meat and cheese platter was very good! The other food was pretty average though, so I didn't eat any of that except for what I thought was an omelette, which actually turned out to be cold, almost soggy polenta :(The meat and cheese was very good because it featured King Island Dairy - specifically their Stormy Washed Rind, which is absolutely lovely, as well as one of their blue cheeses. I'm fairly sure it wasn't Roaring Forties because that stuff is deliciously strong, whereas this one was more creamy? Plus not only did they have prosciutto, but also serrano! I love serrano more than prosciutto.The most fun part was that I learned how to gamble! We were handed play money as soon as we entered, and I got shown the roulette table, which got boring pretty quickly. The other table, was blackjack. The croupier taught me how to play but alas, I couldn't count!!! Years of not needing to do any mental arithmetic meant that I couldn't even add up card numbers, so they had to tell me what my cards were adding to every time. It even got to the point where the croupier tested me and asked me to say what value I had!!!It was way fun though. I think because it has some probability theory involved, plus everyone at the table was super fun and friendly, so I kept losing all my chips :D Not sure how others were winning though! Plus there were way more rules than I could understand at the time, like what the dealer has to do if they hit certain values etc.YAY I LEARNED SOMETHING that is not safe to do in real life cause I'd turn into an addict lol 

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