Friday, February 27, 2009

Come on February - enough now!

I am ready for this month to be over. Lots of strange and stupid things have happened!

1. My heart rate monitor has been playing up. (either that or I am dead). So I have had to send it away to be serviced. Theres a very strange feeling as you drop your watch into a post box. (I did of course bubble wrap it and put it in an express post thingy).
2. My sneakers have broken. I love my sneakers. I hope I can find ones that I like as much. Or there will be trouble.
3. Optus told me they would be increasing our home phone to $57 per month. (this was to include all local calls). We currently never spend over $40 a month on that phone. After much debate with the Indians during which I got no-where. (they suggested that I could disconnect my Optus intrnet from them in order to get a cheaper phone????), they were also going to charge me $99 to check if I could still be their internet customer if I changed phone providers)I have jumped off the Optus ship and joined up elsewhere. For $0 connection fee and $20.95 home phone. We will pay more for the internet, but get HEAPS more downloads.
4. I might be called up for Jury duty again in April. I have sent the form back, so we will wait and see.
5. We are going to see the musical Chicago next month. We had front row seats. I got an email saying they had added an extra front row. If we want to be in it, I just had to reply. A guy rang me and told me to send back the original tickets and they will send me the new ones. Now I am hoping there isn't a scam to steal Chicago tickets from people. Wait and see on that one!

I think that is all, but its not over yet, so you never know what else just might happen!

Monday, February 23, 2009

Out to Dinner - February - Seoul BBQ

Restaurant #2 on the quest for one new restaurant per month. This one might not be considered quite so successful.....

We went to a Korean BBQ Restaurant at Sunnybank. It was filled with Koreans which was a good sign. It was also staffed by waitresses without a great grasp of english. So we had some problems. Since we have absolutely no grasp of Korean.

Each table has a hotplate in the middle of it, ad we could see that everyone was cooking their own food. Large plates of raw meat kept going past us.

Browsing the menu I was a tad worried, as there was not a great deal of explanation, and everything looked like meat. Even the tofu dishes had meat.

I asked the waitress for help and she pointed me to a beef dish that could be served without the beef. YAY. I was taken care of. Next problem - Miss Janet. I asked the waitress to reccommend something for her. SHe said that the BBQ dishes were for 2 or more people, so that ruled them out. Finally, Janet decided to have the same as me, only with the beef & the egg.

About 8 little white dishes were placed on our table, each containing different kinds of vegetables in sauces. There was also a small dish of chilli sauce for each of us. Then our meals were brought to us. They were served in large stone bowls that were sizzling! My bowl contained rice and assorted vegetables (like carrot, bean shoots, strange mushrooms) Janets had the same as well as some beef & a freshly cracked egg on top, and a bowl of beef stock on the side. As you stired everything together, it sizzled away. I added the chilli sauce and some of the vegies delivered earlier. It was really quite tasty. It was a short grain rice, and the chilli sauce was not toooo hot. The sizzling bowls were really cool though (in a non-chilly way).

It was a very busy place, with food being constantly brought out to the many tables. It looks like the BBQ is the most popular thing here, so maybe another trip with more meat-eaters would be the way to go, in order to have the true Kprean BBQ experience. (It might pay to take a Korean along as well)

Thursday, February 05, 2009

January Dinner = Cafe @ Bayliss

This year we are trying to go to a different restaurant for dinner each month. Just the two of us (which is why the earleir dinner with my parent's did not count :-) )

Since it was the last day of January, we had to get ourselves into gear and find somewhere to go. The answer was Cafe @ Bayliss. THis is very close to our house. In fact I think if I took the bike path, I could run there faster than we could drive. We did drive, but this was because we have had very rainy weather lately. Nothing to do with being lazy.

So Cafe @ Bayliss... it descibes its self as a Cafe & Asian style restaurant. It has a small air conditioned indoor area as well as tables outside. We sat inside and had the worlds most forgetful waitress. Janet ordered a coke, I asked for water. In the 2 minutes it took her to go to the fridge and get the can of coke and the water bottle & glasses, she had forgotten who wanted the coke. SHe did give us lovely glasses full of ice for our water though, so this earns her some points.

We decided to start with the vegetarian spring rolls and these came out piping hot and deliciously crunchy. In fact I do believe I burnt my tongue because I was so eager to try them. They were goooood. I can see more of these in my near future :-)

For mains I had a selection of items to choose from the vegetarian section of the menu. These were all "vegetable-only" versions of other items on the main menu. So I went for the Terryaki Stir Fry with steamed rice. THis was good. The sauce was delicious. I just wish they would actually add some protein to the meal instead of just removing the meat. How hard is it to have some tofu on stand by?

Janet had Sweet & Sour pork (surprise surprise!!) and said it was good.

We would like to go back here someday to try the all day breakfast.

"new" table!

The other excitement of our Saturday was that Sid brought around a table and chairs for us. The table extends, so it can seat 6! We then had to go out on a quest to find a non-ugly covering for it. We ended up getting a length of plasticy stuff from Spotlight. We still have to find a proper table cloth, but we couldn't find one we liked.







Jaspa had to check out the chairs.


Let there be light!

I do believe that on Friday I declared I was not cooking another meal in our kitchen until we had our new lights up. Just before 8 on Saturday morning the electrician arrived. And now we have light! Bright light. Brilliant!!