drinking chocolate - best brand?

Both of these brands of instant drinking chocolate are on special at Coles at the moment, though the ‘La Bella’ brand (~$4) is about $1 or so more expensive than the Cadbury brand (~$3). Earlier this week I bought the La Bella one, but today I saw the Cadbury was on special too so I thought I’d try that as well and compare them.

After trying both brands, the only conclusion I’ve come to is that both are in need of improvement. La Bella is better for its chocolatey-ness, but you have to use a fair bit and it doesn’t have much sweetness, so I ended up adding some sugar (which I find annoying because I don’t want to have to do any work - I just want to put it in the cup and have it taste good - not have to adjust the sweetness myself).

Cadbury’s is Ok - you use less, but it has a sweetness that, if not used wisely, could be sickly. And it’s not very chocolatey compared to La Bella.

My solution so far is to put a spoonful of each brand in a cup. Top with hotwater, stir, and add milk.

My longer term goal is to try the other brands of drinking chocolate and see which is better. I think Vittoria might be better, but at ~$8 a pop it’s pretty pricey. Granted, the container is about twice the size of the brands I’ve bought so far, but I’d hope it was good for that kind of price. Anyone tried it?

notebook: magazine

I’d never heard of this magazine before I stepped in to the news agent a couple of days ago. I was pondering whether to buy a trashy ‘New Weekly’, ‘New Idea’ or ‘Women’s Day’ as something to brainlessly pass the time. But right next to them was ‘Gardening Australia’, which out of habit picked up and flicked through to see if I wanted to buy it. Right next to GA though was a magazine I’d never heard of before - ‘Notebook:’.

It’s pretty damn substantial for the price - $6.95. It’s quite different to other magazines. It’s very DIY, in the crafty sense. It has no tabloids or gossip or horoscopes. And the ads are actually informative - how weird is that?

Everytime I talk about something I really like I think I end up sounding like an American infomercial. But anyhow. I like it and have actually felt kind of inspired this week from reading it. I think I might become a regular.

on del.icio.us, and linuxy linkages

The awesome Amy introduced me to del.icio.us a little while ago and I have to say, it’s one of the most awesomest, most funnest inventions around. Sorry, I’m not feeling particularly articulate right now. But trust me, it really does rock. A lot.

If you don’t know what I’m on about, here’s a blurb that summarises what del.icio.us is and does:

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website — the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved — which is made easy with tags.

All you need is a browser and an internet connection. Sound good? Here’s how to get started.

(from ‘What is del.icio.us?’)

So yeah, it’s essentially a really neat way to bookmark things, that allows you to organise as you go so that you don’t end up with a giant bookmark folder in your browser that you store stuff away in but never really venture into.

The sharing capability seems a bit weird at first, but once you get the hang of it it’s actually pretty awesome. For instance, Amy has a fantastic linux section on her del.icio.us which contains a load of stuff that I’ve never even seen before. It’s a total resource in itself, and saves you a lot of time because you get access to the cream of the crop without having to do any of the hard work yourself! The more I think about it actually, the more it resembles a kind of giant, diverse, web-based bibliography. Which is a pretty smart idea when you think about how often you find something cool on the net, only to lose track of how you found it. In this sense it’s a good way of having some extra control over your web browsing - less things seem to disappear into the nether.

Another cool feature I like is that you can directly recommend certain links to your friends that you think they might enjoy or benefit from. The above cat video is one example.

Here are some more, which are all awesome links for linux-y types:

Linux Shootout: 7 Desktop Distros Compared (ad-free)

UbuntuOpenWeek - Ubuntu Wiki

SANS Institute - Free Computer Security Resources

fed up with ebay; moving to oztion.com.au

I don’t usually advertise as blatantly as this on our blog, but this time I think it’s permissable. It’s to support a little guy, in spite of a big guy (who was incidentally probably once a little guy too, but who has evidently grown too big for his boots!)

We trade on eBay a lot. We buy a lot through it. We sell a fair bit through it. We’ve liked it until this point, and encouraged people we know to trust it and use it. But apparently, as of May this year, some major changes will be introduced. It will initially become mandatory for sellers to include Paypal and COD as payment options. By June, they will be THE ONLY payment options accepted.

love’s harvest

Tonight a series of short films, called ‘Loves Harvest‘, started on SBS. Tonight’s one was about a family who grow organic garlic. What a great series!!! Next week’s one is about two teachers who gave up their jobs to raise goats and produce cheese.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the series from the website:

“Love’s Harvest is a series of four beautiful and intimate stories about organic farmers. Each episode portrays the experiences of couples and families toiling hard for their belief in organic goodness and the love and life it provides.

The demand for organic produce is on the rise but the perils and uncertainties of farming remain steady for those on the land. The farms in Love’s Harvest yield rude awakenings, happy surprises, heartbreaking loss and small, overdue fortunes. The beauty and serenity of rural life is jolted regularly by the reality of hard work and uncertainty. Relationships are strained or reaffirmed by the challenges of losing crops or feeding stock, while carefree country kids learn to be savvy business entrepreneurs.”

The next three can be seen on SBS over the next few Wednesdays, at 8.00pm.

food blog of the week #17

Well, this isn’t really a blog I guess… but it’s still a noteworthy food-related website worthy of a review, so welcome to the 17th installment of food blog thingo of the week!

I’m not quite sure how it was that originally I stumbled across Road Food, but it has to be one of the most interesting places on the web - even if you live outside of the U.S.

What is roadfood, you ask? On the website it’s summed up as “Great regional meals along highways, in small towns and in city neighborhoods. It is sleeves-up food made by cooks, bakers, pitmasters, and sandwich-makers who are America’s culinary folk artists. Roadfood is almost always informal and inexpensive; and the best Roadfood restaurants are colorful places enjoyed by locals (and savvy travelers) for their character as well as their menu.”

To be completely honest, some of the dishes featured on the site make you feel grateful you don’t spend much time on the road. Indeed, some make you think your own diet - albeit in need of improvement - isn’t actually too bad in the scheme of things. But the occasional meal actually makes you feel quite envious that in the U.S. you can be fed so well for so little money. - Particularly if you’re Australian and you’re used to an on-the-road diet of pricey yet well-aged chicko rolls, cornjacks, dim sims, chips and toasted sandwiches - i.e. most things that contain bread, breadcrumbs or batter and can be fried in large amounts of stinky old reused oil. Even the more substantial meals are generally pretty boring, not to mention low quality and value for money.

Looking through the different food-logs of the different states it also seems that more road meals in the U.S. seem to be made from scratch compared to over here. Yes, the fried components are still very common, but there are more one-pot type meals like stews and broths, and more sauces. What you get generally reflects how much you spend, too, which I think is quite fair compared to here. It also just looks yummier (well, sometimes, anyway - I’m pretty open minded, but stuff like this, this and this makes me wonder!) Here are some great examples!

Large plate of wedges, US$3

 

12 Chicken wings, US$8

 

Halibut & chips - US$14

Taco salad - US$6

California Breakfast - US$9

 

 Chicken pot pie - US$5

 

Onion rings - US$3

Chicken and dumplings - US$5

Belgian waffle - US$4

Zip Burger & fries - US$5

Lemon cheese pie - US$2

And violin-playing ’schwein’s to boot!

food blog of the week #16

Welcome to the 16th installment of food blog of the week!

This week I want to introduce you to the fabulous blog What’s for lunch? Maybe its the romantic French setting.. or perhaps the wonderfully crisp and evocative photography… or maybe it’s simply the fabulous mouth-watering food? Whatever the reason(s), I find this blog utterly captivating. Everything shown inspires me to save up for a trip to France, if only to dine at one of the bakeries! The care put into such simple, everyday food is astounding compared to the standards you find here in Perth. The quality of the ingredients is also amazing - check out and drool at this picture, for instance! And if that’s not enough, look at this!

If you’re looking for a good dose of food porn definitely check out What’s for lunch? It will have you booking that trip to Europe in no time!

If you’d like to see other foodie websites that we like, visit our links page.

Enjoy!

food blog of the week #15

Welcome to the 15th installment of food blog of the week.

We stumbled upon Dish A Day today while perusing recent entries on Food Porn Watch. Set in Thailand, the blog is “about but not limited to: Thai snacks, meals, and cantankerous commentary.”

I’ve only ever been to Malaysia and Singapore before, but those trips were enough for me to fall in love with both countries and, more specifically, south-east Asian food. Although we did admittedly stay in very comfortable hotels on our trips, my family was more than content spending each day exploring as far as our legs would take us, and tasting the delicious food on offer at the small street-side stalls and foodhalls. Indeed, one of the best things I have ever eaten was a seafood claypot at an underground train station food hall in Singapore. I can still taste it now - delicious prawns, scallops, fried tofu, fish balls, greens, and bean shoots, amongst other things, all floating in the best broth on Earth. We had it once and then went back about 5 times during our trip to re-live the deliciousness. Along with Malaysian satay skewers and Hainanese chicken rice, it has become a benchmark in my idea of transcendental food. It nearly outdoes my most favourite gastronomic memory - sitting on a balcony in Malaysia with the family of a friend we made in our travels, eating the most extraordinary Laksa.. It consisted of a gigantic wok filled with the spicy Laksa broth, surrounded by a vast array of potential additional ingredients - hard boiled eggs, chicken, beef, pork, a variety of seafood, fish balls, fried tofu, soft tofu, bean shoots, vegetables, greens, nuts.. the best kind of buffet you could possibly imagine.

We have never understood those who travel to another region only to eat the types of food they are ‘used to’ and that’s readily available at home! It’s like going to the local Chinese restaurant and ordering fish and chips or a steak (something I still can’t comprehend people ordering off such a deliciously diverse menu)!!

Dish A Day is a great introduction to the types of food you could expect to encounter on a trip to Thailand, and moreover, on a trip to most parts of south-east Asia - particularly if you are the kind of person who values taste over price. The food and photography featured is at most times delicious, though other times quite curious (examples of the latter being jumping shrimp and deepfried silkworms).

This is definitely a must-look food blog for those who love south-east Asian cuisine, and those wanting to get an (albeit largely visual) taste of what you might be able to tuck your tastebuds into if you get the chance to travel there.

Check it out and favourite it!

If you’d like to see other foodie websites that we like, visit our links page.

Enjoy!

 

food blog of the week #14

Well, I’m going to cheat a little this week because instead of presenting a food blog, I’ll be writing about a more general food website.

ABC TV’s The Cook and the Chef is one of our favourite programs. On top of being partly hosted by the wonderful Maggie Beer, the show is set in her dreamy, cosy kitchen in the Barossa Valley, South Australia. This has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world and definitely on our future travel ‘to do’ list.

As the name suggests, the show not only covers more formal cuisine (via Executive Chef Simon Bryant) but also the best of modern, wholesome home cookery (via Maggie Beer). Although this coupling makes for quite an odd team at times, overall what results is a show that’s not only quite interesting but also engaging and inspirational.

Like most websites run by the ABC nowadays, the Cook and the Chef site is both comprehensive and very user friendly. It not only provides free text-based recipes that have featured on the show, but also hosts a range of free video downloads. The most recent show is available for users to watch, as well as a range of shorter film snippets revealing tips and trade secrets.

Although we personally find the website handy for those times when we miss an episode when aired on TV, we can see it would also be useful for those outside of Australia who can view and get an (albeit largely visual) taste of some of Australia’s best produce and cuisine.
Definitely another one to check out and favourite!

If you’d like to see other foodie websites that we like, visit our links page.

Enjoy!

food blog of the week #13

Welcome to the 13th installment of food blog of the week.

This week we recommend one of our new favourite food blogs, shucking oysters, shelling peas. Aside from having a very cool name and a delicious-looking assortment of meats adorning its header (as pictured above), this blog features a wonderful collection of mouthwatering home-cooked meals that use healthy, wholesome ingredients.

The recipes featured reflect something of the authors’ “life-long straddling of North American and Northern and Central Italian traditions”, including such features as “Quail baked in Champagne”, “Lamb Stew”, “Ricotta Custard” and “Ossi buchi”.

Another great food blog to add to your favourites!

If you’d like to see other foodie websites that we like, visit our links page.

Enjoy!