deep frying, drought and a visit to the doctor

last night i hosted my round dinner party, in the company of JC and Young Jess. really it was just a coincidence that the food i had decided to make was round!

to start with we had arranchini. little balls of risotto, with a piece of mozzarella on the inside, rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried. mine were a little big, so the cheese in the centre didn't melt properly, but when done right these are extra delicious.

then we had cannelloni. equal parts of spinach and ricotta, a couple of cloves of garlic fried with spring onion piped into pasta tubes, covered in tomato sauce and cheese and baked in the oven.

i was going to do loukamades for dessert, but it was too hot to deep fry again.

Young Jess brought around the fixings for cannoli, but the shells had gone a bit stale. so like the classy women we are we just ate the ricotta filling out of the bowls with a spoon.
of course amongst all of this i totally forgot to take photos of the actual food.

as i was cooking the leftover risotto balls tonight, i remembered that when i was little i used to get a funny reaction from eating that really fatty, delicious, red chinese sausage. really, the tandoori colour i'd added to the risotto was sort of the same thing.....

..... maybe that's why i spent almost four fun filled hours in the emergency department of the royal adelaide hospital in the middle of last night with a face like some deranged monkey. it just puffed up, and the skin gets all tight and red. it truly is very unattractive.

i was so tired when i got home i just collapsed into bed and slept until about 5pm, and could go straight back to sleep right now that you very much!

but good news is at hand! very, very good news. as many of you probably know australia has been in the middle of a horrible, horrible drought for as long as many of us care to remember. for northern queensland recently this has been replaced by hurricanes and flood. for us here in the south, it has been weeks and weeks on end of blistering heat, that has made almost any type of outdoor activity totally unbearable.

but looking at the online weather report tomorrow will be in the high 20s, going down to 24 later in the week. there has also been rain predicted. oh, blessed rain!!!!! not that i'm getting my hopes up. we've been told this before and it normally amounts to about 30 minutes of light drizzle, but right now i think we're all prepared to take what we can get. BRING IT ON!!!!!