take four ingredients

 

This is my wee contribution to all those posts I'm seeing featuring tasty things: last night's dinner.  It's one of the easiest and tastiest meals I know and it's pretty healthy too!

Ingredients:

• sweet potatoes
• feta
• chilli
• lime

Instructions:

1. Put the sweet potatoes in the oven at 200 Celsius/centigrade
2. Chop chillies
3. Crumble feta into a bowl
4. Add chillies
5. Squeeze in lime juice (I only used half)
6. Stir and leave so the flavours can make friends
7. Serve when sweet potatoes are ready (this is the only downside to the recipe, sweet potatoes take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to bake)

i thought it was funny
how i've been quite anal
and sliced my sweet potato into quarters
whilst CNN's is just a mess

It might look spicy, but it's not.  The creaminess of the cheese really melds with the chilli to take the heat off, not to mention the sweet potato underneath.

This recipe was given to me by Helen.  We taught English together in London.  Helen is a knitter, a former ballet dancer, a mother and grandmother and all-round incredible woman.  We didn't keep in touch after I left teaching but I do miss her.

I love the stories that food can tell.

my very best 'editorial' face
for those of you who have never watched
America's Next Top Model
it just means grumpy

I am very sad that I never bought any Matryoshka dolls when I was in Russia.  We saw some in a souvenir shop in Moscow but I was holding out to buy a set from a local craftsperson.  Needless to say, said meeting did not occur.

biggest burgers ever
and the coolest names too
mine was cat stevens
CNN's was aussie crawl

It was a perfect storm - a pub with acoustics so bad you had to screech to be heard, a very early phonecall on Saturday morning that we couldn't get back to sleep after, and lingering germs from CNN's cold all combined on the weekend to ensure I developed a cold on Sunday, making it nice and ripe for my interview on Monday.  Yes, that's right.  My one and only Australian interview thus far and I had to be incubating germs.  Lovely.

Never fear, I didn't let those pesky viruses and bacteria get the better of me!  I am the preferred candidate pending references!  All I need is for my old bosses to say nice things about me... I'm pretty sure they will; wouldn't you?

Happy Birthday, Stacy!

Stacy and I have been friends since we were two years old.  Between us, we have lived in six countries over the past twenty-plus years!  I was so lucky to be able to spend a lot of time with Stace when I was last in  Hong Kong - one of my ten year goals for our friendship is definitely for us to live in the same city again, at least for a few years! (hmm, I think I might have used too many exclamation marks in this paragraph)

Stacy is an amazing woman.  She is kind, loyal, strong and intuitive.  Please visit her blog to say hello and wish her the most fabulous year to come - she really deserves it.

♥ day

Happy Valentine's Day, my cupcakes.  I hope today brought you what you wished for from it

Our celebration was pretty low-key.  I wore my pretty red new dress to work but by the time CNN came home I was in pajama pants.  In my defense, I was deep-frying tofu and hot oil and pretty dresses are definitely not friends.  As I have to force CNN to commemorate this day in any form, I made the Vietnamese tofu and tomato stir-fry he raved about the last time we had it and baked a chocolate cake.  We drank beer, somebody ate two slices of cake....

*****

As today is the day of love, here are five things I love about Sydney:

• Happy feet - I don't think I've worn closed-toe shoes other than to work, on our beach walk (which I must blog about) and when I had to take my sandals to get the sole stuck back on
• Gum trees - the most beautiful lemon-mint-lemongrass smell
• Commemorative coins - sounds silly but Australian commemorative coins are awesome.  CNN and I are saving our one dollar coins for a fabulous meal out and I always take time to examine them before I put them in our piggy bank
• Food - fresh produce and readily available Asian ingredients = yum
• Nature - going for swims at the beach, cockatoos and rainbow lorikeets flying past our windows - this city feels more alive than London or Hong Kong

When I asked CNN to name his five favourite things about Sydney, he said "the beach, the beach, the beach, the beach, the beach."  Now that's just taking the easy way out!

a second beginning

A rainy Sydney Saturday - English teacher detritus, steaming Chinese tea and gerberas from my husband

You've Got Mail was on TV this evening.  Now, either CNN loves me very much or he is developing a taste for romcoms because he prioritised watching it over watching the Indigenous All Stars vs. NRL All Stars rugby league game.  I'm hoping for both although there were some disparaging comments when we reached the grand finale of the film.

I'm sorry I haven't been the best of bloggers.  The job interview I was meant to go to last Tuesday was cancelled.  Not only was it cancelled, it was cancelled the day before the interview via email.  Isn't that rude?  I'm over it now, but I have to admit I did spend most of last week in my bednest, reading.  I highly, highly recommend The Thousand of Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.  No mindfucks but a writer at the peak of his powers (I'm sorry I just used such a clichéd term, but it's true).  We also ate an abundance of Chinese food because it was Chinese New Year (Happy Year of the Rabbit, everyone!), but also because I thought New Year's fell on the Wednesday when it was actually on Thursday.  So we celebrated twice - no harm in that, right?  (Please can those of you who are super au fait with Chinese traditions hold your tongues if it is really unlucky to celebrate twice?)

On the weekend, our house was filled with boys.  CNN is part of a sports tipping competition called the ASS which stands for the Armchair Sportsman's Shield (there is an actual shield).  They held the 2010 presentation last weekend and I really enjoyed spending time with the opposite gender.  I haven't had many friends who are boys thus far in my life but I am open to this changing.  In fact, I am generally open to making friends in Sydney so if you see me, wave and smile and I promise to do the same back.  The other good thing that happened last weekend is that I decided on a church.  There were two that I really liked but I came to a decision after talking it over with CNN (which seems like an odd thing to do because he's agnostic but is one of the reasons why I love my husband).

This week I have been a busy bee, applying for jobs, looking after my buddy as the combination of new school and big weekend has lumbered him with a cold, and cleaning up the house after the ASS weekend.  As CNN is now the primary breadwinner, we are currently operating a 1950s marriage (although CNN is still responsible for cleaning the bathrooms and windows in a chore trade-off made whilst we were still in London).

In weather news, which I feel I must mention (is this a hangover from having lived in England for so long?) this week has been cool and grey - a big contrast from the superhot weather we had last week.

And finally, something exciting from two weekends ago...

We have furniture!  Unpacking our books made our little flat feel even more like home.  CNN and I spent a very enjoyable and very geeky afternoon figuring out how we were going to catergorise and store our books - our English and teaching degrees had a field day!

I'm sorry I've been a bad blogger.  Pinky promise I'll be better if you promise to continue reading?