questions, concerns and uncharacteristic sundays

1. Question.
Why is everything so bloody hard. Not here, not in my real life, but at work. Why is everything so bloody hard? Why are people so difficult, or stupid, or difficult and stupid and why are systems and procedures so horribly out of date and un-workable? And why do I give a shit? Why should I be worried that the junior staff and done absolutely none of the key, fucking essential things they should have done over the mid-semester break? Why is it now my job to fix it? And why have I spent my weekend doing work that we could train a monkey to do? A monkey would fit in better than the junior staff and be far, far less skanky in the process.

2. Concerns
As you may have guessed I've had a shocking work at week. Underlings being useless have added a burden to my already stressful week. And I've had two co-workers (not the idiots of the pack, the good ones) in my office in tears. Because we're all working so fucking hard because we can't rely on anyone else. It's a concern. One of them is packing her bags and moving to Queensland. The other, I suspect, like me had wine for dinner two nights this week. It's a concern. I'm trying to cut down on sugary foods in the evening. I think wine is about as sugary as you can get. It's a concern.

3. Uncharacteristic Sunday
Actually in many ways this Sunday has been totally in character in that I've procrastinated my way out of doing any research yet again. It was raining and I didn't have any clean stockings and ooohh.. let's have a cup of tea and think about it.

However, the attempts I would go to to get out of my research were uncharacteristic.

I gardened.

Now, I'd love to have a good looking garden. Lots of lovely flowers and fruits and a veggie patch down the back. But over the years I've realised this is work. And work I don't much care for to boot.

So a while back I rang the good fellows at my local gardening people place and got them to come and cut my 'lawn' (read: large patch of weeds and both front and back of house) and clean my gutters. That just left the 'garden beds' (read: large patches of weeds spread systematically around the place). When the good fellows at my local gardening people place left after their last visit they left a note saying 'will come back and poison weeds in garden beds'.

I don't like the idea of poison around the places where at some point in time and in an alternative universe I might plant vegetables, or mores the point somewhere where my cats might get a mouthful of them.

I have been vaguely successful in that I've managed to keep two rosemary bushes alive. I've killed geraniums and mint on a regular basis, which I've been told is impressive, so these rosemary bushes are my pride and joy. In the same bed are some soon to flower daffodils - left over from my grandmother. Nothing to do with me. As you can tell, in so much as they're still alive.

So this afternoon I weeded this patch, along the side of the garage, to within an inch of its life.

I then took all of the leaf litter that I had been using as mulch, but which the good fellows at my local gardening people place for some reason swept up and put in the green waste bin so that they could come back and lay mulch that they are going to make me pay for, and took it out of the green waste bin and used it to mulch around the plants.

Yes, weeded and mulched. All in one day.

If you can hear a 'thud' it's my mother falling off her chair as she reads this.

It's a bit late in the day, so it's a little dark, but here's how it looks now.

birthday cake

Happy Birthday to JC from Dumpling Girl, who ticks over another year today.

To celebrate we had dinner last night at the well known China Town eatery Ying Chow. Snake beans with chili, BBC, aniseed duck and salt and pepper squid. JC said she thought the squid tasted of ammonia. Luckily I couldn't taste it so I tucked into that big time. and the beans. I love beans, they're one of my favourite vegetables.

Then we came back to my place to huddle around the heater and have desert. I nicked a recipe for individual gooey chocolate cakes from Joy The Baker's fabbo site.

Gooey Chocolate Cake
1/3 c plain flour
3 tblsn cocoa powder
pinch salt
120g roughly chopped chocolate
25g finely chopped chocolate
125g butter, cut into cubes
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
6 tblsn sugar

method
1. Heat oven to 220 degrees Celsius
2. Butter and flour 6 muffin tins
3. Sift cocoa, flour and salt
4. Place roughly chopped chocolate and butter over a double boiler until just melted
5. While chocolate is melting, whisk together the eggs and the yolks. Add sugar and whisk for approximately 2 minutes, to combine well
6. Add the dry ingredients to the eggs and stir together, but using a whisk, until just combined.
7. Little by little stir through the chocolate
8. Spoon this mixture into the greased muffin tins. Sprinkle with the finely chopped chocolate
9. Bake for 13 minutes. As they are soft in the middle there is no way to test them. Just trust your timer and take them out


10. Let cool for 3 minutes before carefully turning out and then lifting very, very gently onto serving plate.

We ate ours with praline icecream. They're very runny inside (as you can see from the leak in the photo. When I say carefully turn out and transfer them, I mean carefully!!!). Considering the amount of butter and egg for six cakes you can imagine how heavy they are. I just ate one of the left overs cold and that was pretty good too, but not as good as straight from the oven.

I feel I've earned a cake, as I've been weeding all morning. Lordy knows my garden needs it. I'd love to be a good gardener and grown my own vegetables, but so far the only thing I've had any success with at all is weeds. I guess you can't be a cook and a gardener too? Or maybe my thumb is just black. At the moment it's blue from digging around in a freezing wet garden. I can see a cup of tea and hot shower in my near future!