golden plains

this isn't really food related (although there are usually some good vegan foods there) but we have 2 golden plains tickets we need to get rid of. they're $560 for both (that's $1.55 less than what we paid for the tickets including postage and booking fee). send me an email at ozcanadian(at)optusnet(dot)com(dot)au if you're interested or know someone who is.

2 years

we celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary on tuesday. we decided to go to enlightened cuisine cuz we'd never been (we've had a bit of their food at a couple of different vegan day festivities but we've never gone to the restaurant). zac made a booking for 6pm (kind of early but he's always starving after work and i guess he figured by the time we ate it would be later). he got the work car so we wouldn't have to take public transport. that ended up being a really dumb idea. we knew the live music rally was happening in the city (zac really wanted to go but i didn't want to ride in to the city and then ride somewhere for dinner that nite). we also knew from rrr that there were a LOT of people at the rally. we left home at 5:50. we got to enlightened cuisine at 7pm. it's 8km from our house. we managed to listen to an entire cd before getting even half way thru the cbd. fortunately they weren't super busy (we figured we probably didn't need the reservation but just did it to be safe).
we decided to go with one of the banquets instead of trying to choose from their large menu. the banquet we ordered was "seafood" themed with shark fin soup, fish and 2 kinds of prawns as well as a satay chicken dish and stir fried vegies. it was a good choice (except we forgot to ask for no egg in the rice so we each had a small amount and the rest we brought home for wombat). it was a huge amount of food but we managed to finish everything except a few vegies and the rice). even zac was struggling to finish the shanghai pan cake dessert-- it's a rare day to see him not able to finish something. overall it was kind of a fatty, deep fried sort of meal but so tasty. i'm glad i finally got to try satay chicken (soooo good!)-- every time we go out with someone who orders satay chicken i always think it sounds so good if i could veganize it. i will be having it again.

fancy food for a spoiled beast

we're not the only ones who spoil wombat. the doorbell rang this morning and i was worried it might be somebody from either a phone or electricity/gas company or something like that because our nice neighbours (who are also our landlord's parents) had come by yesterday to bring wombat a large bowl leftover noodles and chunks of meat. i open the door and poppy (our neighbour) was standing there with a large bowl of rice with some meat and peas in it. she explained that her grandchildren were over yesterday and had asked her to make the rice and then changed their minds and asked for something else after she cooked it (and being the overly kind yaya that she is, she obliged and made them a second dish). later, when she asked if they were going to eat the rice they told her to bring it to wombat. she's a spoiled one (we make her plain rice to go with her food sometimes or occasionally give her a bit of our food mixed with hers if it doesn't have onions or other dog poisons in it). she's now several containers of special food to go with her meals in the fridge and freezer.

doin it for the massage

i finally went and got a long overdue hair cut (trim-- i'm trying to grow it out more). i've only been going to a "proper" hair salon (instead of the walk in ones i've been going to for years) for about a year. it definitely does make a difference-- especially the shampooing with scalp massage. when i went in (i go to rising angel because they use products not tested on animals) i had a bit of a headache which i assumed was caffeine withdrawal. when i was asked what i wanted to drink (they offer a complementary tea, coffee, wine or water) i just got water (i started to think maybe it was a dehydration headache, plus i don't really like to put them out making coffee cuz it's not really their job, it's just something nice that they offer extra). when the stylist was washing my hair my headache went away. i think it's the great head massage along with the peppermint scented shampoo. after i left my headache started coming back again so i was pretty sure it was partly caffeine withdrawal. i ended up stopping at a little cafe on edward st (cafe 3A maybe?) that caught my eye with the little fair trade coffee sticker in the window. now my headache is almost completely gone and i'm contemplating giving the dog a bath so i can give her a nice massage like i got (i'm pretty sure that's why she likes her baths so much cuz she's not really fond of water otherwise).
does anyone know of any website or other listing of cafes that use fair trade coffee? it would be a good sort of list to have. i did find this one just now which is no where near complete but it does list cafe 3A (so that is definitely it's name) and a couple other places around brunswick (and they place we had our wedding reception in barwon heads) but i'm sure there's a lot more around melbourne than what's listed on that site.

the rain

i just came across this photo in the age's photo gallery.

(photo by Zengming Huang)

i wish i'd gone down to the creek yesterday afternoon (i didn't even think of it until this morning).

in with a bang

after about 5 days of heat and humidity and warm nites the cool change and the rain arrived this afternoon. just as i was finishing work (and we were outside with all the children) i thought i heard thunder. it sounded like thunder but it just kept rolling over and over (like a plane but more of a thunder noise). both me and one of my co-workers stood staring at the sky for lightning. when we were sure it was thunder i decided it would be good if i got out quick and got home before the storm was right over us. i walked into the office to say goodbye to the office people and the director asked me if i was ready-- i completely forgot about my after work meeting with her today (she's a new director and she had arranged personal meetings with each staff member to discuss our goals and needs for the year). i figured if my meeting did actually go for the extra hour i was getting paid for i would miss the storm but i knew my meetings never go very long (and there were only a couple little things i needed to talk to her about). 25 minutes later i was out the door (and my poor co-workers that were still working with children were then dealing with settling 20 or so wet children back inside the room with a flood happening just outside the door). i had soooo much fun riding home thru the heavy rain. the kerbs were all flooded and there were some huge puddles around. i got to holden st and the entire street was under water (the water level went over the footpath). i got home soaked and grabbed the dog right away and made her go for a walk with me in the rain (she wasn't too impressed but she went). we've now had almost 14mm of rain (my garden will be very happy) this afternoon. i'm glad it's going to be slightly cooler the next few days (in the low/mid 20s) and hopefully a lot less humid. i'm over being sticky and sweaty all day (melbourne is supposed to be one of the few places in australia that isn't super humid in summer).

the queen

makin' herself at home taking over the sofa (i think she liked the sheet i threw over the foam cushions while i'm washing the cushion covers).

working hard

we've had 6 days with the new children at work (and 3 of those days were just small groups of 10-14 children, the last 3 were groups of 22-25). it's gonna be a hard year. we have several children with difficult behaviours, a few that have very little english, a few that have never been in any kind of child care and some special needs. fortunately our new team in our room is quite good (3 of the 5 in our room have either switched to the other room because they needed to work less hours or moved onto another job, they have been replaced by 2 new full time people who fit in perfectly). since wednesday when we started doing the full groups i've spent most of my day (including rest time which usually just involves moving around the room sitting with children, patting them while they--and i--get to rest) running from one issue to another. it takes me several minutes to write a 2 sentence note in our diary for my co-workers because every half word i have to jump across the room to stop a child from biting someone, throwing things, grabbing things...... (and there are 1 or 2 other staff in the room also supervising and dealing with those issues at the same time). once the ones who are doing these things (and its not all of them, we've got some really sweet kids in the group too) learn it's not ok and they aren't going to get away with it at kinder it'll be better. it'll also be better when they know the routine and can do most things on their own (like putting their belongings in the right places and making their own beds at rest time). february is just going to have very long days (and lots of glasses of wine after work).

perfect hot weather lunch

we finally made it to tart'n'round last saturday (we had run in once before but didn't even have time for a coffee-- just grabbed a cherry bliss ball and a peanut caramel ball, both soooo good). we rode up in the heat (turns out it's less than 4 km from our house- why has it taken this long to get there?) to have coffee and lunch before heading to darebin bowls club for a 30th. i finally got to have a proper ice coffee with ice cream (and i think even some whipped cream). i wasn't actually that hungry and it was HOT so i just got the lentil salad which was something i could easily make at home but it was exactly what i wanted (the lime dressing was really nice). zac got the satay tofu burger which was huge (the tofu slab alone was huge and nicely marinated) but zac thought it was great. now that we know how close it is, we have to go up more often. it's close enough to easily walk there and back-- we normally walk between 6 and 10 kms a day on the weekends. i have to try more of the desserts-- they all look soooo good.