An Unexpected Day Off

I had a day off today, and an unexpected bonus befell me when my wife's scheduled shift was cancelled. This meant that my 1 day off of the week was shared with my soul mate. The only problem is that this can lead to plans and schemes. To start with we had a late start and went for a late breakfast together in one of our favourite cafe's in Albert Park Village. The Dundas Place Cafe is friendly, spacious and comfortable with a great menu and great coffee. My favourite breakfast is porridge with butterscotch bananas, which is what I had this morning.

Caroline on our recent roadtrip

While we were at the cafe we were discussing things ranging from novels we have read and want to read, to what we should have for dinner later, and how amazing our holiday was and where we would like to go to in the future. We have plans to go back to New Zealand next year to wonderful Queenstown in the south island. Then we were thinking of another roadtrip but this time to Europe. A trip to France and Italy to experience the historical and culinary sounds fantastic. In fact, it sounded so good that our dinner tonight was inspired by this. We drove round the short distance to South Melbourne Market to buy the vital ingredients for a French Onion Soup which I then came back home to make. I used a recipe from the Not Quite Nigella site that I follow, though winged it a bit as well. Besides the ingredients in the recipe, we had:

1. French Stick
2. Triple cream Brie (not for cooking, we bought some Gruyere for that)
3. Bottle of Arrogant Frog Cabernet Merlot (partially for cooking with)

Tonight's French meal, Onion Soup with Gruyere, Brie and French bread

This rounded things off pretty well, but we talked of another plan. My bucket list the other day included a trip to India, and Caroline entered the spirit of things at the Cafe saying how much she'd like to go to India. But it's a big place so where should we go? I would love to see Everest and it was Caroline who suggested he go to Nepal and Kathmandu. This started us thinking and looking at the East of India. Kolkata seems like a main hub, and probably a good place to fly to, and then there are places such as Puri on the Bay of Bengal and Varanasi in central north India. We'll see where we go with the planning of this trip but the Ganges and Everest are starting points.

I guess that reading 'The Accidental Apprentice' by Vikas Swarup put thoughts of India foremost in my mind. This was a beautiful novel from the author of 'Q and A' which most of know from the film, Slumdog Millionaire. It is written as a modern day fable, and follows the exploits of a young woman who is given the chance of a lifetime to become the CEO of a multi billion dollar empire. She has to pass through some tests and these bring our attention to some real issues in Indian culture, such as the treatment of women in rural India, religion, corruption and bureaucratic procedure. The plot twists wonderfully and the ending is powerful. However, if every time I read a book about a different country it makes me want to go there and start planning there will definitely be some places that miss out. The latest novel I read is possibly my favourite of the year so far. 'The Messenger' by Australian author Markus Zuzak is another fable and wonderfully written. The main character is so believable, especially for us who live in Australia. That the things that happen to him are so unbelievable doesn't matter, because the characters who he meets and interacts with are just as beautifully created. The interactions bring laughter and tears to the reader and this is one of the few books I've given 5 stars to this year on the Goodreads site.

So to sum up today, my wife had the day off and I spent it with her when I didn't think I would, I went out for breakfast when I didn't think I would, I planned a future adventure when I didn't think I would, I cooked a meal that I didn't think I would. It's always good to be prepared to expect the unexpected in life.

Countdown

There used to be a TV show in the UK called Countdown with cult personalities, Richard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman. This program spawned a series in Australia which is called Letters and Numbers. Yet the English version itself was based on a French program called Des Chiffres et des Lettres. This was the interesting fact of the week that I learned from my friend Frank, who is a letters and numbers fan, solving Sudoku in his spare time. I've just created my own countdown which should be visible at the top right of this blog. It will have random events that are being counted down to in my life, the first of which is, of course, my holiday to America with Caroline. After that I'm not sure, but I guess the next major thing for me will be World Chess Championship in November (I'm at the age where I'm trying to forget my birthdays, and I purposely chose to get married the week after my birthday so I wouldn't forget it!).

A holiday is an action packed event, or at least it is the way Caroline and I do it. However, I still will be taking some holiday reading with me. I was browsing through a bookshop today and saw a book called 'The Rook' which I couldn't resist and I also bought Stefan Zweig's 'Chess'. However, this holiday will be a 'chess free zone' so I'm taking Nicola Barker's 'The Yips' which made the 2012 Booker long list. Probably my favourite novel which I've read over the past 12 months was 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' which also made the 2012 long list, but wasn't shortlisted. Anyway, like Harold Fry, Barker's novel looks quirky in a typical English sense and I look forward to reading it.

My holiday reading (image from Goodreads)

I have another apology to make in advance. It may be that I go on a bit about cheese this week. I know that's a bit random, but there is good reason. America is not noted for it's excellence in cheese production (to be honest, American cheese is pretty disgusting) so Caroline and I are cooking and eating as much cheese as we can stomach this week. Don't take my word for America's bad cheese which I had trouble eating last time I was there, try looking through the 9 pages of comments on Stephen Fry's forum following his travels around the USA where he said their cheese was possibly the worst in the world! Some of the posts are quite amusing.

• "Gromit, that's it! Cheese! We'll go somewhere where there's cheese!" (wallace and gromit)

What I didn't realise was that Stephen Fry also thought American bread was bad. I was only talking about bread earlier today and how wonderful it is...actually, I can't believe I just wrote that, my street cred as a hardened chess player will quickly deteriorate. Bread is considered one of the world's oldest foods and has a history at least 30,000 years old. As a food staple it the choice which Caroline and I often pick for accompanying our meals. We also like soup, so a bread and soup combo is a regular meal in this household. Another staple that we a lot of is porridge which also has a rich history. Oat based porridge is at least 5,000 year's old and, while commonly associated with Scotland, is a worldwide food using various ingredients as a base and for flavour. For instance, the Mexican, chocolate based champurrado sounds pretty good. I often have porridege, and at one of my favourite cafes, Dundas Place Cafe, they serve an amazing oat based porridge with butterscotch banana to flavour. The coffee there is also good, so it's a regular haunt for Caroline and myself. And finally, I must be old fashioned as my favoured method of sweetening porridge is with honey, which is itself an ancient foodstuff, with a history of at least 8,000 years in human consumption. Another interesting fact that I learned this week, is that honey is the only foodstuff that doesn't go off (thanks to Caroline for this gem). Apparently 2,000 year old jars of honey have been found and are still edible and taste good.

Porridge and honey (foodepedia)

And finally on this Sunday evening some quotes:

- Samuel Johnson described porridge as 'eaten by people in Scotland, fit only for horses in England'.

- George W Bush jr is always quotable, and as it is just after the Jewish New Year....'I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah.'

- And while I've been talking a lot about food in this post, how about Prince Philip's quote to Susan Edwards and her guide dog 'They have eating dogs for the anorexic now.'