Yrae Chronicles

Happy new everyone! 🥳

I keep meaning to do more of a retrospective every year but it just never seems to happen. Sitting down to actually go through everything is a lot, y'know? Maybe if I actually keep up with making entries this year it'll happen for 2025, hah. Not for 2024 cos I~ can't be arsed. Instead, have some 2025 plans.

Holidays were lovely 💚 I made a big effort in getting the garden back up to snuff, which has been suffering from lack of water, so I did a proper rehydration of all the dirt, cut back all the dead bits and bought a bunch of new leafy things to fill in the gaps where stuff died. Also bought new little dichondra for the lawn, which did really well last season until I sucked at watering it, and even then it still lives around the edges. So this year I'm going to make a real effort with the garden, get the dichondra looking gorgeous and lush, hopefully cover the area by next summer. It was really fast growing last time so I'm hopeful.

Also, chillies! I want to get into Mexican cooking, but every time I look at a recipe book they always have like three different chillies in them. In Australia, we have big ones, little ones and green ones. If you have an awesome supermarket like my local, you can maybe get jalapeños. Our exoctic foods are very much geared towards Asian, so if you want galangal or Vietnamese mint or Thai basil, you're good. Different chillies? Not a chance. SO. I asked the Discord of Tasting History for some recommendations of chillies to plant in a Mexican-targeted garden. They gave five different ones, so I bought seeds to grow those last year annnnnd haven't yet planted them. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow >> But yeah, wanna get into Mexican X9

Last garden thing, I want a desert lime. I've tried growing finger lime but keep killing them because I don't water them. I have a regular old Tahitian lime but the sodding thing's biggest season has been to produce six limes. I dream of producing enough limes that I can make a mojito out of the thing, but after 11 years in the ground it's done next to nothing. So. I'm trying to source a desert lime. Surely I can't kill something that lives in the desert.

I know I say it every year, but fitness every day. Ideally lose 25kg but that'd just be the icing on the cake. I want to at least be able to fit into the clothes I bought last time I lost weight, cos I've got some really nice stuff and I can't get it on anymore, which sucks. So yes. Fitness every day. After work is easy, just drive to the beach instead of to work, but doing something on weekends is hard. Motivating to leave the house and take like two hours out of my day for it is effort. That'll be the challenge.

I want to save enough money to finally do up the kitchen next year. I think this is doable? Signs are that interest rates will drop next RBA meeting, which would help. It's not like I spend a lot anyway so I'm not sure what I can do about that, but that's the plan. Kitchen next year.

Also, on the house, I want to sort out the studio. Since Amanda moved in, she has a lot of hobbies that take up a lot of space: beading, sewing (three sewing machines and so much fabric), knitting/crocheting (HEAPS of yarn), a lot of painting and art supplies. All of this is awesome except that everything's literally just dumped in the studio right now. Piles and boxes and boxes and it's just a nightmare opening the door now. Used to be my favourite room in the house, now it's all but unusable with my tiny little corner for my computer. So this year that's getting sorted out. If it means installing a wardrobe type effect for storage, then so be it. I just can't handle it the way it is.

Writing I already went into so won't touch on that here.

I want to try posting on Insta daily, and here weekly. Not a bad start, but if I drop a day here and there, try not to let that get to me and just keep up with it.

That'll do :D

I briefly mentioned this earlier but I want to wax lyrical about my local supermarket. They have a quiet night, which is for two and a half hours on Monday night from 6:30, for people who get overstimulated by too much... stimulation. Yeah. So there's no music, the beeping of the cash registers is significantly quieter and they dim the lights.

There's live music on a piano at the back of the supermarket. There's a salumi bar, a cheese bar, a full-on patisserie, a seafood bar and a restaurant. You can take a seat and a plate at all of these spots. In a supermarket.

But of course, the reason for a supermarket is the stuff you actually buy in it. BAM Asian produce. They have durian and rambutan! Fresh galangal and kaffir lime--not just the leaves, but the fruit. Feijoa, kohlrabi, lychees and okra, and those are the things I've heard of. It's at this point when I'm telling people about Pasadena Foodland that they usually go "oh yeah, you can get them at the Central Markets," but the Central Markets are something special. This isn't an Asian supermarket or the Central Markets, this is a frigging supermarket.

What the shit is an abiu? Or a hairy melon? Sapodilla? So after four years of shopping there and going in with my shopping list based off a recipe I've got in my books at home, but walking past all this weird shit and wondering how to use it and what it tastes like, this year I decided to approach things a little differently. Go to the supermarket, pick a weird thing, look up a recipe using it on my phone and make the shopping list while I'm there.

So my experiments so far this year! I've made this hairy melon recipe, which was... the actual stuffing was odd? Somehow it was lacking, and the vermicelli was an odd addition. The hairy melon itself was kinda like a giant zucchini, right down to the hairyness of it. You know that sort of prickly feel zucs have? Yeah, like that. It was much firmer than a zuc, tho, so it held together really well and was still reasonably chunky after being in the oven for 45 minutes.

I made okra! From a recipe in one of my recipe books, which was part of what started me on this weird shit kick. So this was Turkish-inspired and had lamb mince sausages I made as well (mixture didn't hold together but it was super tasty, honestly I'd just use all the stuff that wasn't mince as a marinade on chops), an amaaaazing salsa, a salad with pomegranates because WOO summer, and the okra! 'How do you cook [weird thing]?' 'Looootta garlic.' Idk if it fell into that typical style but there were four garlic cloves involved in just the okra, also fried onion and that kind of general yumminess. I enjoyed it! Weird texture, slimy in the middle with some little seeds that go pop in your mouth, honestly not sure on the taste because of all the garlic. The whole meal was pretty awesome. Every now and then I just like doing a meal with a whole lot of stuff to it, just for me. I like cooking.

Made this, which used both kumquats and tamarind paste, and it was amazing and I recommend it highly if you can get your hands on kumquats and tamarind paste. I didn't put any sugar in it cos it's not a goddamn dessert and it's already got kumquats in it, it's sweet enough. Went so well with pork, omg perfect.

The latest one has been venison, which I actually got as part of the meat shop, because every meat shop I get one special meat, like duck or prawns or something else pricey. Cos it's only me here, and for just the odd one-off it's not a hell of a lot more expensive than the standard stuff. So yeah. Every venison recipe is full-on gourmet. I was just saddened that the celeriac in the supermarket was super piddly that day. Like in the past few weeks they've been HUGE beautiful monsters, easily the size of a melon, but these were barely the size of a decent onion. Anyway. The recipe was beauuuuutiful, amazing sauce with all the cherries. The meat itself is so much like kangaroo, very yummy, so I'll probably do this recipe again with roo. Love adding to my roo recipes list. I've got one bit of venison left so that'll be dinner tomorrow, then next~

Banana flowers! Specifically this recipe, only I'm low on meat--all I have left is half a pork belly, a tray of lamb chops and two bits of salmon--so I'll probably do this one with the salmon. Salmon always goes well with Thai flavours so I feel that'll be a good slide-in.

Also, Thai basil! I just planted some over the weekend. I don't have a cup and a half of it, but I also don't have a kilo of chicken (which will be played by salmon, as mentioned) so idk, half-recipe. Why doesn't Pasadena Foodland have Thai basil? They have finger limes, Buddha's hands and breadfruit but no Thai basil? I know this cos I've looked twice for other recipes, hence trying to grow the stuff. Last time I planted it, it got completely overwhelmed by the Vietnamese mint, so hopefully it'll be happier this time around. There it is, third photo is my herb garden. The big grassy one is lemongrass, to the left of that, the bushy one is the Vietnamese mint, and the little one in front and between the two of them is the Thai basil. Clearly that is not a cup and a half's worth. D'yknow what I'm going to hold off on that recipe until it grows big enough to get a cup and a half of Thai basil off of it.

Okay so. Hot weather~ weird foods~ that one. Yam beans and baby Asian salad leaves. I can do that one with the pork belly. DONE.

Also it's hot again but it's also February so that'll happen. Since Saturday it's been 35, 37, 37, 37 today, 36 tomorrow, 40, 39, then a cool change down to 32, 30 and 28.

It's also festival season, so the Fringe is on (woo!) and the formerly-Clipsal-now-just-Adelaide-500 V8s are on (boo). Well, road closures are on, racing doesn't start til tomorrow. Monday I left home 15 minutes early in anticipation of traffic and arrived at work 20 minutes late, because I underestimate the Monday every goddamn year. So okay, fine, Tuesday I left home 25 minutes early... and got to work 25 minutes early. What the shit even. So that made up for Monday??? At least??? Today I almost got it, only got in 5 minutes late, so I've had a net ratio of on-time this week. Yay.

FINALLY. No wait. I should put this bit in a private post cos it really relies on real names.

K SO FUNNY STORY. Every time I've been on the computer since the last update, it's been to write. The previous chapter I finished before this current awesome run was in April last year. I'm now halfway through the fifth in less than a month, and holy shit balls I love it. You'll remember my last update, a month ago, was about how I'd finally forced myself to work out was happening in this mess of a book, and wishing to do the cliché writer thing and go to coffee shops to do the writings. I've so totally been doing that. That very week, the weather was GORGEOUS, so every day after work I took my laptop down to the beach, picked a café with a power point and, ideally, a view of the beach, and wrote. I've spent entire weekend days down at Brighton and Glenelg, just writing, and it's been magnificent. That's honestly been most of what's been happening.

Easter happened, though! With the traditional Oakbank races, where we open with a champagne breakfast and continue the day from there. I've found my calling with the veggies and they were so good. I got lots of comments :D I had fennel, carrots, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, pumpkin, red onion and half a clove of garlic each, all roasted on the barbecue. I had an awesome oil I made up for them, too, made up of about a quarter oil from a sundried tomatoes jar, a quarter of my own chilli oil I've previously made, tablespoon each of paprika, rosemary, oregano and thyme, couple of cloves of grated garlic and a few chopped up sundried tomatoes, then topped the jar up with olive oil. It was soooooo good, especially the roasted garlic in the middle, and the steak Dad did (also on the barbie) had such an amazing gutsy sauce with it, aww yeah. There's just something about having barbecued gourmet food outside, even though this was just the most perfect weather day we've ever had for Oakbank, there's still that rustic outdoorsiness of it all that makes food taste even better and gutsier.

Also some horses ran past every now and then.

The previous weekend, when the weather was more autumny and Mum and I were having coffee and talking about options for my very dead garden, Mum just suddenly sat up and went, 'Ooh! Gran has wooden crates in the shed!' So we quickly checked with Dad's brother to make sure they didn't want them, then that very day we headed down to Gran's and obtained said crates. They're just perfect. Also grabbed a whole lot of bricks to stand them on and carted them up to my place to dump in the back garden in anticipation.

The rest of the Easter weekend, so Sunday and Monday, Mum came over and we implemented the crates. Hacked up the weed mat of the pallets to get the dirt out, which was so horribly dry and dusty because they just weren't working. I lined the new wooden crates with more weed mat while mum filled them up with a mix of dirt, soil wetter and dynamic lifter. We got most of them done on Sunday, but had an impromptu call from Colin on Saturday to go to theirs for dinner that Sunday. In truth we's both had enough of them by that point anyway, so woo! Easy out.

Dinner was awesome crispy skinned barbecue pork with Laura's roasted veggies and incredible three-layered cake 8D I ate well Easter weekend.

Monday we finished off the boxes and went PLANT SHOPPING WHEEEEEEE. God it's fun. The fruits of our labour. Some of the plants down the far end will grow to around 1.5m tall so they'll make a gorgeous little jungle down that end.

Last couple of weekends have been the writing thing, then this weekend, well 8D I've decided to take a week of leave. It's Anzac Day on Wednesday, which is a really messy day for a public holiday, so I'm taking four days of annual leave for a nine-day holiday, hell yeah. I've never taken leave purely to take a break and still hang around Adelaide not doing anything, so this is just delightful. Theoretically, boss will text me on Tuesday to tell me if it's gotten busy and I'll be needed on Thursday and Friday, but given that a pretty serious chunk of our clients will probably be doing the same thing, I don't think that's likely to happen.

So through the week while I was at work, Mum came up and deposited ten slabs of slate at my back door, also from Gran's, so today I laid those down the services end of the garden, under the washing line and in front of the tank and hot water service. I also planted a few more of the alpine pratia, which is the little green blobs in the ground to be my ground cover. They're just loving the warm weather right now, just about doubled in size since those photos were taken. Now I've got dirt laid down in the ground in place of that horrible sand I was recommended before, I reckon I'll give the baby's tears another shot down where the slate is, cos it likes growing between rocks. This time, the garden will live, just you watch!

Tomorrow, trip to the art gallery with the whole family, first for lunch, then to see the Musée D'Orsay exhibition, which I'm super excited for. It's an exhibition of impressionists, like Monet, Cézanne, Renoir, Manet... Impressionism is probably my favourite historical art movement so this will be awesome.

For the rest of the week, the weather is still ridiculous (29 on Monday at the end of April? What is this madness?) so I'll be going to the beach, sitting in the garden, might book a massage, have breakfast at disgustingly hipster cafés, going to see movies... it's gonna be awesome.

Also the Crows beat Sydney last night in Sydney with literally half the team, including pretty much the whole midfield, out with injury. I'd written them off so hard I didn't even tip them, but they WON. I'm so proud! A truly glorious start to my week off.

I love barramundi. It's the most forgiving fish to cook. Perfect crispy skin every time, takes a little longer to cook so there's no chance of overcooking it, brilliant with a squeeze of lemon and a sprig of thyme. I don't get it often because dollars, but damn it's worth it.


Who knew this would be timely again? Why won't she just go awaaaaaay? ._.

We still don't have a PM. But I mean, it took like a month in 2010, so who knows? Mum and Dad's previously almost-safest Liberal* seat in the country is now not-Liberal, which is a genuine shock. I mean, I knew Xenophon** was a threat in several seats, but for Mayo to be the one to fall? That's huge. And a lot of other seats have been close, too, which was totally expected. Grey may yet go to Xenophon, but I doubt it. Interstaters are saying things like 'come out of nowhere' which just further proves why he's done so well here. South Australia is ALWAYS the butt of jokes. In AFL, even though the Crows have been consistently threatening the top four, we hardly get talked about so by the end of the year Victorians will say we 'came out of nowhere'. Interstate players get looked at by the Crows or the Power, to which the interstaters say, 'yeah, but he'd have to live in Adelaide.' Y'know what fuck you.

Politics is no different. SA is constantly shunned by Eastern states run Government, especially, and this is important, with regard to the Murray River. Nobody in Government could give a rats about the Murray. Even when Gillard--a South Australian, from just down the hill from me in frigging Unley--became PM, she completely sold out and didn't do shit for SA. They still allow cotton farming and rice farming to go on in the Murray-Darling Basin. They don't enforce any water saving measures on upstream farmers. They don't use SA farmers as an example of this is how you farm without using so much frigging water. By the time the Murray, the biggest river in the country, finally reaches the sea? A lot of the time it isn't even flowing. BIGGEST RIVER IN THE CONTINENT. NOT FLOWING. Because of the dickheads upstream who don't care what happens to it after it crosses the SA border. It flows through Grey and Mayo before not-reaching the ocean.

When I say politicians don't care about what I care about? That's what I mean. My entire STATE gets shunned, regardless of who's in power. Neither Liberal nor Labor gives a shit about SA.

So along comes Xenophon, who's been a vocal (in SA) senator for decades. See he hasn't come out of nowhere, NSW =P He's so South Australian you can't believe it. He actually, genuinely cares what goes on here. And, now that the Libs have lost one of their safest seats to him, and both Liberal and Labor have seen other previously-safe seats become marginal, maybe, just maybe, they'll start paying attention to us. At least they might recognise why someone like Nick Xenophon is gathering so many votes, anyway.

(If you're wondering why it's taking so long, it's postal votes. We have compulsory voting, so anyone not within a reasonable distance of a polling booth on polling day lodges a postal vote, which will still be trickling in over the next week or so. And there are a lot of marginal seats where this'll make a difference. A party needs 76 seats to form Government, and the Libs right now have 73, I think? So everyone's staring at the remaining 10-ish marginal seats wondering what's going to happen. And by marginal I mean in Hindmarsh there's, like, 100 votes in it, with thousands of postal votes still to come in. So that's why it's taking so long.)





* Basically the conservative party

** Formerly independent senator, this year formed a party and started going for the House of Reps. His major thing is 'fighting for SA' and also anti-predatory gambling, so why he had candidates in other states I have no idea. Anyway, he was getting around 20% over here and barely 1% interstate. They are the Nick Xenophon Team. Frankly I think they missed an opportunity and secretly they all wish they'd called themselves the Xmen.

THERE. Redirecting it to /blog was WAY more effort than it should have been. Anyway, it's all sorted out now, and I've even put up my first entry, woo! The plan is to have an entry every week, though the long-ish ones like the one that's there now will be a once a month thing, I imagine. Others will be stuff like a bunch of photos, probably from Instagram, Things I Learnt, something else short and easy but keeping it active.

Next will be a shiny new page for illustration and photography. Pictures yaaaaaay. Make some super impressive gallery thing.

IN OTHER NEWS because I've been on nothing but the damn blog for too long now: I bloody love barra. Homg. I've only ever had barramundi in restaurants before, where it's always been amaaaazing and not something I've thought I'd be able to replicate at home. Barramundi is a big Australian white-fleshed fish, pretty much tuna sized, I guess. In restaurants it's always got this awesome little crispy bit around the edge, similar in texture to the perfectly cooked crunchy outside of a chip. It's a delicate flesh, but you generally have to go to the market to get it. Last week my supermarket had it on special--$15 for 3 fillets, aww yeah--so I snapped them up and have been cooking them up over the last three nights.

Never cooked barra before, got it perfect every time. I've steamed it in a bag with lemon, thyme and a bit of olive oil and it was just perfectly delicate and flakey all the way through. Tonight I fried it and got the BEST crispy skin I've ever done, and even got the crunchy chip-like edging and it was just amazing. Pricey fish normally, if you can even get it without going out of your way, but damn. If it's ever on special again I'm buying them out of it. Sogood.

Think I'll go write now. It's so goddamn perfect outside. I wish I had more out there than a few wonky concrete pavers. SOON. ISH.

Right, that's it. I cannot LIVE like this anymore. This weekend I'm getting herbs sorted. I NEED FRESH BASIL. ROSEMARY. ALL THESE THINGS. I'll grow them in glass jars and they will be pretty and quaint until I can give them something better over spring/summer.

But if I have to use dried goddamn rosemary on my lamb, or dried bloody basil on my chicken-capsicum-tomato-cheese-awesomeness one more time I'm going to scream.

Homg I love the Crows <3 I missed most of the game cos Alex and I went to see Focus (wouldn't recommend it) but got home for the last quarter and, more importantly this time around, the team song.

When footy teams win, the Thing they Do when they go down to the rooms is have the cameras follow them, then they all get in a ring and sing the team song. Typically it goes like this:

BUT TODAY they made their ring down on the ground, at the edge of the field, so that there were two or three fans as part of the ring AND the whole of the crowd behind them singing it too. OMG I AM SO SQUEE. I hope this is a thing they do every win ♥ It was frigging adorable. I love these boys. They are SO much for the supporters, I swear. We are so totally the 19th man and they're so, so good at not only remembering that, but emphasising it at every opportunity.

I LOVE THE CROWS.

Now have yesterday's Oakbank picnic races in ( pictures )

Tadaaaaa

Blanching tho.

AMIRITE?

You can start with the saddest piece of broccolini you've ever seen in your fridge, blanch it, and it's bright and crisp and glorious.

I have a new project! Part one thereof is, I think, done. It is here. Oh yeah~ last night's dinner. And also tonight's, but I didn't take photos of that one.

Part two--the web design--currently looks like this buuut I screenied that before actually having taken any food photos and the only 16:9 food photos I had on my computer were of Oakbank which is. Well. It's decidedly not halfarsed. Oakbank is the opposite of halfarsed. I may do it in style, but I don't halfarse it with smoked salmon and caviar, I'm afraid.

Keen viewers will notice the tumblr icon there--part two B, I guess--and part 3, the YouTube button. I could be setting myself up for failure here. BUT I've filmed the lemony lamb, watched it back, and apart from the bit where I forgot the chilli until after I'd started marinading the thing, not too bad! Tomorrow, maybe, editing will happen. idk. See if html feels like being compliant. If it's not then it could be a while til part two is complete.

Work: DAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. And that's all I have to say about that. Except that Liz from [big law firm customer] gave me a box of Lindt for having organised, like, five super urgent jobs for her in the last month. So that was nice. The rest of it is DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.