I am that kind of person sometimes. I don't apologise for it, however awful it may make me. That isn't to say I don't ever feel empathy or sympathy or whatever which one. It just means sometimes I'm a tool, and I am ok with that. I'd much rather be a tool than always the nice guy.
I used to try to be the nice guy. Or the SNAG, the sensitive, new age guy. Someone who is understanding, tolerant, caring and all that mambo. I realised I'm very much not that person. I am slowly morphing into more of an ass, bit by bit. I used to never interupt people, but then I realised I could never say anything if I didn't. So now I butt in whenever I feel like it! Well, not to that extent, but I do assert myself more.
One more thing, something that is close to my heart. One thing that shits me up the wall is people using their Facebook status' to send people messages. Oh my goodness, it annoys me to no end. If you have something to say to someone, say it to them! Don't tell the world and rely on the world to tell them. That's not to say I hate the people doing it, I just hate the act itself. Kind of like if I knew a thief or a murderer, I wouldn't hate them for their actions, instead just hate the actual actions.
End of bitch! Time to go pack!
Labels: facebook, random, rant
Written by banh at 1:02 PM | Comments (1)
1 Comments:
the word is sadist.
By 
, at 7:40 PM
As promised, the blow by blow recount of yesterday. And trust me, it's going to be long.
For weeks I had been planning this lunch with Jackie. I may have been doing the majority of the work but that's only because I work badly in a partnership. With that being said though, most of the dishes were her ideas. So the planning involved thinking of what kind of food, finding suitable recipes and determining whether they were possible or not. Initially I was planning on doing three courses, with an entree, a main and then dessert. However I decided on just mains and desserts to save on time, money and effort. I had settled on six dishes, three mains and three sides. The mains were lemon and herbed lamb cutlets, lemon chicken wings and chilli chicken skewers. The sides would be foccacia, potato salad, pesto pasta salad and scalloped potatoes.
There was a minor concern that half the dishes contained considerable amounts of potato, but I didn't let it faze me as it was at least potatoes cooked three different ways.
The night before I did the scalloped potatoes because they'd take heaps of time. It was a fun experience. Very sleepy too because I did it pretty late at night, but at least it wasn't an obvious fail.
Come the big day, and aren't we excited. I slept pretty well the night before because we played futsal on Thursday and as there were only two teams, Twang and I had to play the entire duration. So I planned to wake up at 7 or 8 to start getting the house ready and get really well prepared. I only woke up at 9 when Jackie called me, so I kind of had no choice but to wake up.
She eventually came to my house at 11ish, an hour later than she should have. That immediately made us behind and we never really recovered. Shopping was a bit of a mess. We started off in Coles, went to the butcher, to the florist, back to the butcher and then back to Coles. In the end, we did buy most of the things we needed, forgot drinks but that was ok.
When we got back, it was time to get cracking. First thing was getting the scalloped potatoes back into the oven to finish it off and do the lemon chicken quickly to get that in there too.
With that in the oven, I wanted to get onto the marinated items. While I was doing the lemon chicken, Jackie was working on the lamb. In fact, she did it all. Then I did the chicken skewers too, that was fairly simple and very pretty.
Making the foccacia was next. That was, to put it simply, epic fail. The dough was too wet, it stuck too my hands too much, then we added too much flour and it ended up being too dry. After baking it was much too hard, either from too much flour or from over-baking, but it was done. I look forward to next time I make it, I know it'll be better.
And this was when people started arriving. Anthony was first, then Sam came. Chen and Lily arrived some time around then, followed by Tim, Judy, Anna and Huang. Tallon was the last to arrive, after we actually finished eating.
That was about half the work done. Time to move onto the salads. Pretty simple really. Big pot of potatoes, wait till they were done then mixed them with sour cream, mayo and assorted herbage. After that, some beans and the sugar snaps into the water, followed by the pasta. Allow to cool then mix in with the pesto. Done, easy as anything.
It was finally down to the fun, smelly bit. The cooking of the food. First up was the lamb. The thing I was looking forward to was after cooking it, deglazing the pan. It was just like I thought it'd be. Lots of smoke and plenty of fun.
Also while all this was happening, Jackie was making the dessert, berry parfaits. I may have given her some suspect instructions so it ended up being much too sweet and too orangey. And the berries were also very sour, such was our luck.
When all the food was finally completed, we sat down and ate. If I wasn't overly pleased with how all the food turned out. The lemon chicken was underdone, the pasta salad was boring, the scalloped potatoes were also a little boring and the lamb was borderline cooked. The potato salad turned out fine as did the chicken skewers. The dessert was very sweet and sour at the same time. I don't think using the vanilla yoghurt is such a good idea, or maybe I'll just never do that recipe again.
After that we sat around and talked. By then I was falling asleep because I had been going flat out all day and was not used to it. I started moving to just clean some things up, which was really just an excuse to watch the cricket, but everyone got involved. Damn them.
We got into the Scrabble after Chen raided my stash of old board games. I love word games. They're just so fantastic. When it got late enough, everyone left in one big group, except for Huang so I did some one-on-one Scrabble with him. So much more intense, kind of like heads-up poker.
Right after he left, I turned on the cricket and made to start cleaning up. But I was so tired I almost fell asleep, but I didn't really have a choice. I did nothing for an hour, but then I realised my dad would be home soon so I started working really hard to get as much done as I could before he did. I did a pretty good job, I re-arranged the living room, plugged back in the computer and did most of the washing.
It was a fantastic day, and also a very good first run. I know the next one, in winter, will be much better. The food will be of greater quality and I'll be much more organised too. It'll also be a very different format too, so look out for it.
Labels: annabelle, chen, chris judd, cooking, food, hong, huang, jacqueline, lily, party, sam ho, timothy
Written by banh at 9:57 PM | Comments (0)
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I am, in each and every sense of the word, buggered. I've been going from morning till night and am looking forward to just... melting into bed. I'll give a full, blow-by-blow account of today tomorrow. Until then, adios.
Written by banh at 12:53 AM | Comments (0)
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