Foiling the Birds, Slack Tea Thursday and Unpretty Oreos.

Several people commented on my previous post giving me solutions to my bird dilemma. Thanks for all the tips. I particularly liked JKP's suggestion that I counsel the birds and try mediation. Unfortunately although I am incredibly talented I do not speak cockatoo. I knew I'd regret that when I turned down the opportunity to study  "Bird-ese 101" in high school.    

P at The Way I Sew It left me this comment earlier today.

Sometimes you can hang shiny things in the tree to deter them (...it used to be aluminum foil pie plates when I was a kid), but that doesn't always work.

And I remembered when I bought umpteen million pie plates to make Bakerella's 43 layer cake and how I was too mingy to throw them away because I practically had to mortgage my house to buy them ....Those things are exxy.

I was planning to hand these down to Little P (and any other subsequent grandchildren I may have at some point in the hopefully distant future ) as ancestral pie plates. But needs must and all that - I want cherries more than  the look of gratitude and love on Little P's face when he gets antique foil pie plates on my death bed, so I took P's suggestion on board and made Mr. P climb the BIG TALL SCARY ladder on a slope and hang the pie plates up in that tree. Let's hope that does the trick because I'm pretty much over running out there every 5 minutes at dusk and dawn and shaking my fist and shouting at the birds like a crazy lady. (I was also apparently talking to the cat this morning and Mr. P thought someone was actually in the house so I must have been having quite the conversation -perhaps I am losing it)

 Check these out. Shared Lunch at work today.

Chocolate Dipped Oreos.

No - not made by a 3 year old with a 4 second attention span.  Made by me. In a hurry last night because I was busy doing my railing at the birds post. They don't look all that pretty (I don't do fiddly well )  but they tasted pretty good. For some really cute ones see Handmade by Heidi.

And tonight's tea is brought to you by the need to use up some stuff in my fridge. And my utter laziness at the thought of going to the shops to get anything more exciting.

Fish paste on toast (anchovette paste to be precise)
Yum!

Does anyone want to teach me how to easily make a photo montage? Email me and maybe we can broker a deal where in exchange for this knowledge I could send you a jar of fish paste. Anyone?

Slack Tea Thursday -Thanksgiving Edition

I thought about STT for tonight and realised that half of my readers are going to be running round with their hand up a  turkey and making pecan/pumpkin pies, which kind of makes a post about Vegemite on toast or chocolate sultanas for my tea ridiculously redundant.  I can't compete with turkey and snow and all sorts of other yummy-ness. I'm not even going to try.  

So instead of grossing you out with my truly slack meal tonight I'm going to take the opportunity to wish each and every one of you a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope your turkeys are delectable , your potatoes are exactly the way you like them, and that whatever else you decide to whip up it all  goes according to plan. Most of all I hope you enjoy time with the special people in your life.  

And you can just think of me sitting here eating a hunk of cheese while you do something special with cranberries and jello. (You're making Jello aren't you Annie?)

P.S. I actually dropped into the local chinese takeaway for dinner. Crispy skin chicken, fried rice and prawn cutlets aren't very Thanksgiving like....

Slack Tea Thursday

I stumbled in the door from work at about 6.15 pm, and it looked like all hell had broken loose.  Then I remembered that the carpet cleaners had been here today and ALL the  furniture from two bedrooms,   the lounge room and my bedroom, was in the hallway and computer room. Crap Crap Crappity Crap. (I stole that saying from Little Miss Potty Mouth who literally uses it as tag on her posts )

So instead of a relaxing night in front of the computer I had to try to find some semblance of order because tomorrow night is Friday Night Sew In, tomorrow I am working and at the moment I don't technically have a sewing room,  or a freaking clue where anything is. Well actually  I know where it all is ...it's here. But it shouldn't be.

And I still don't know where specific things are. Which will make sewing hard.

So the plan was  for us to empty the rooms, have the carpet cleaners come in and do their thing  , and in the putting everything back where it belongs process,  swap the rooms back to the sewing room in what used to be Miss P's room, and guest bedroom in what has been my sewing room for the last FOREVER ....so it wasn't so much a swap back so much as a whole new Maison Pyjamas world order.

My point is - I didn't have time to even think about STT tonight and literally grabbed something that would keep fueling my body so I could make a start on restoring order so I could  get my sewing groove on  tomorrow night.

And frankly my dinner looks decidedly manky. Possibly because I didn't use a plate. Crockery can make almost anything look classier than it is.

Next stop -Favourite Things Friday. One working day to the weekend! Whooooooo Hooooo!

P.S.  My friend SAJ has given up chocolate. I keep getting emails from her telling me she wants to kill herself. Let that be a lesson for all of us.

Slack Tea Thursday

Slack Tea Thursday is back for another week.

I've had a busy week at work and arrived home this afternoon to meet with someone to get  a final quote on my custom made blind for the kitchen.  She was horrible.  I checked they did bonded fabric roller blinds when I made the booking four weeks ago.  When she got here she was really off handed and told me they hadn't "done those in years".   I'd decided to go with one of the other companies before she even finished her quote.   And I called the other company to order it before the horrible chick was even out of my driveway. Even though they were 25% more expensive. I hope she heard me. And by the way lady if you read my blog you looked like an aging bar bitch.

Slack Tea Thursday.

I bought Mr. P some sushi and sashimi for tea before he wandered off for boys night  then I ate some as appetisers. He didn't need it all anyway.

This was dinner...

Apologies to the vegetarian contingent.

After 4 minutes in a frypan , this is what it looked like . I think 4 minutes still qualifies as slack.

Here is dessert...and I'm planning to eat the whole damn pack. These are anti smoking jubes, so named because when I give up smoking I eat 4 packs of these a week. So instead of dying from lung cancer - diabetes is going to get me.

Please wander by and have a look at Favourite Things Friday tomorrow. I have my 2010 all time favourite thing to share.

Slack Tea Thursday

I'm breaking with tradition here. All this has going for it was it was quick , and I probably burned through more calories chewing it than I actually ate which makes it really healthy food.  I present tonight's Slack Tea Thursday .....

Anyone with a heart condition should take some extra medication now and sit down before viewing the next picture.

 This was dessert...

Clearly I'm not feeling  my usual self ...Hands up if you're in shock...I'm so sorry I did that to you without advance warning.

How many of you believe that fairy tale? C'mon. Really.

 

 That's better. Much more like Slack Tea Thursday. I can feel my arteries hardening already.

Join me for Favourite Things Friday tomorrow. Oh and you can go here to see my first Thrifty Christmas Challenge post unless you are Little P.

Slack Tea Thursday

I'm economising on words tonight.

What's aussie, cheap and photographs like a massacre in a sandwich shop?

A Fritz and Sauce Sandwich.

Nobody really knows what that meat is. We're too scared to ask. Tastes good but.

See you tomorrow for Favourite Things Friday.

P.S. I caved in on the two minute noodle thing. Yes, I'm weak.  Marg posted this recipe to tempt me and make me eat not only my words but two minute noodles. I did. They were delicious. And noodles are cheap. A 5 pack cost me $1.84. No wonder people love them so much. I've already googled 1,386 recipes that can be made using 2 minute noodles.  At this rate I reckon I can get my weekly shopping bill down to about $12.89

Slack Tea Thursday

If you're new around here you might not realise that Thursday is Slack Tea Night, implemented because it's the one night of the week I am usually the only one home. Mr. P wanders off to boys and their toys  night and I grab whatever I feel like, which is usually something I wouldn't touch any other night of the week. Pretty much anything goes. One week I had breakfast cereal and some times I just chow down a bag of chips.  The loose criteria is that it has to take less than about three minutes to prepare.  The drive to get takeaway is not included as prep time. It's amazing what you can throw in a bowl , on a plate or eat straight from the package in that amount of time. So there you have it - the history of STT.

Thursday started badly. I woke up and jumped into the shower to be greeted by NO HOT WATER. Now I'll do a lot of things. I'll roll with the punches come what may but I will not go to work stinky. So in 45 F weather I set about running through the shower soaping my pits and hoo haa as quickly as possible and making sure I didn't freeze to death so I could go to work smelling somewhat human. The things I do for hygiene. For the first time in my life I realised if I had a Brazilian I could have omitted one washing step and cursed my gutlessness. Does it seem like torture to anyone else besides me to have everything down there waxed off. Thanks but no thanks. I'll pass.

I hear on the grapevine that cheese causes cellulite. And the squirts if you have a lactose or dairy intolerance. Perhaps these are old wives tales. Or possibly not. You can omit cheese if you're superstitious and decide this was such a great STT you want to make it at home.

If you cut a hunk of Kraft Blue cheese about one inch wide.....

 ...you can make what looks like a mountain o'cheese.

And if you add it to crackers , toss some gherkins on , and grab some smoked salmon to class it up

You have Slack Tea Thursday in under two minutes. I want  brownie points for eating something green.

This frog cake was looking worried because he knew  I was  going to eat him.
I showed no mercy. Sorry frog but you were delicious.

And guess who  came to dinner...this guy sat above me watching me eat.  Very disconcerting for an arachnophobic. He was the size of a dinner plate and that was just his body. Yep - we breed everything big down here.

P.S. Mr. P lost his job yesterday so next week might be two minute noodles.  I hate two minute noodles. But that's what poor people eat. I'm totally joking. Not about the poor part.  I don't care how bad things get - I'm not going to reduce myself to eating two minute noodles. Mr. P will just have to go hunt down a kangaroo or steal a cow or learn to actually catch fish or something. Or I'll have to start sleeping with the butcher. Whatever.

Slack Tea Thursday

As I was leaving work tonight a colleague suggested I have vodka for dinner  and my boss yelled out "But it's Slack Tea Thursday". My boss confessed to having wandered on over for a squizz after I talked about having a blog recently.  I don't talk about work much here because it's private and personal and who else would be crazy enough to work somewhere where a poke in the butt with a darning needle is a possibility. But today I want to share with you the fact that my boss (who shall remain nameless ) is the most awesome boss ever and that I never want to work anywhere else because I adore my job so much.

OK she's probably given up reading at this point so it's time for Slack Tea Thursday. I'm really super responsible at work  so I dont want to blow my cover ...

I've been thinking I'll start doing slack teas by colour. Green, Red, Orange, Yellow. What do you think? Unfortunately only fruits and vegetables come in some of those colours so I'd probably have to choke down something healthy. I'll give it some thought.  I decided tonight's tea should be the colour brown as a sort of trial run on the colour idea.

Appetiser - I even used a bowl because I have class. I un-classed up when I licked the crumbs from the bottom of the bowl.

Then I ate some out of the bag too...oh who am I kidding ? I pretty much ate the whole bag. They were too crunchy to resist.

I had been dreaming of these all day. 20 minutes in the oven. That's pretty slack. (And I do think these are the wings of a devil because they are just soooooooooo good. I was too scared to look at the fat content. Nothing remotely healthy could taste this awesome)

For those of you that are worried about my health ...I was going to dip the wing dings in ranch dip. But I resisted. (Actually it was at about that stage I realised the BBQ chips had made me rather full.  I was worried that if I tried to cram the ranch dip in my poor stomach as well  I'd chuck up) Frankly after 5 wing dings, 2 hash browns slathered in butter and a whole BIG bag of chips I'm still feeling rather bilious...

And here endeth this edition of Slack Tea Thursday ....I don't think I'll be eating breakfast tomorrow.

P.S. I know you want this bad Beck.

Slack Tea Thursday

Forgive me blog buddies for I have been absent this week and not commenting on your blogs nearly often enough. I  have learned that while you may feel fabulous schlepping round home recovering from whooping cough , when you return to work where schlepping is frowned upon you must run run run all day and when you get home you are very very tired. And guess what? You're not allowed to wear your pyjamas to work!  I have also been busy turning another year older.

Mr. P is a wonderful man but on special occasions he always forgets important things  like cake or celebratory cards. Last time I had a cake I didn't have to organise myself was in about 1987.

This week Mr. P bought a cake. And a card.  Without prompting or reminders or hints being dropped. I almost died from shock.

Apparently my name is Wife.

So slack tea tonight is the birthday cake we should have eaten Tuesday but which we ignored because we  were all too stuffed from eating out at the local steak house to be bothered with. I suspect that will be the first and last time Mr. P buys me birthday cake since even I couldnt be bothered eating this on my actual birthday. Only because I had about 1/2 a kilo of steak and 2 pounds of curly fries at Hog's Breath. Birthday girls dont have to eat vegetables or salad. It's the golden rule of birthdays.

And apparently you can eat what you like during your birthday week and not put on one ounce of weight. That's good news isn't it because I'm halfway through this cake. 

And in case you're interested, I turned 36 this birthday having decided when I turned 40 I would start counting backwards. I cant wait to be 30 at 50!

Mmmmmm mandarin and passionfruit cake. Early dinner. I have sewing to do.

Earlier in the week, I showed you what I got up to last weekend, and asked for guesses as to what I was  planning to do with the picture frame. The correct answer is of course, a Bulletin Board (which we call a pin up board here in Australia). 4 of you guessed the correct answer.  I assigned each of you a number and video called Miss P  who was in the loungeroom (yep we're pretty lazy ) and asked her to choose a number between 1 and 4.  She chose number 3 which is Deb from Quiltgal.

So Deb, if you email me your snail mail addy I'll pop your parcel in the post! Congratulations.

Oooohhh and I got a webcam and skype for my birthday,among many other things. Email me your skype address and we can chat. I'm so technological now!

Slack Tea Thursday

I think I may be running out of slack ideas to have for Thursday Tea. (Gasp) Kidding. I don't think I'll ever run out.

Secondly I think I may be pregnant. There can be no other explanation for  tonight's  Slack Tea Thursday. And if I am pregnant, I'm going to be famous and I need to find a manger to give birth in. And then explain the miracle of immaculate conception to my husband.

I've noticed that if you give food things fancy names nobody notices how crap they really are. The French do it all the time. Case in point - Escargot. So I present to you "Toasted Chocolate Rice with Frothy Milk Jus" and "Marshmallow Tour avec Chocolat Fudge Sauce". Sounds classy doesn't it? Like I spent hours in the kitchen working my little fingers to the bone. Just like Pioneer Woman.

In reality it's a bowl of Coco Pops with home brand milk and marshmallows  on a plate with chocolate ice cream topping.  Yes, really.  I ate a pickled onion during prep, so I could say I had an appetiser. That's a three course meal.   Did I ever tell you that the first gift Mr. P ever gave me was a box of Coco Pops? He's a true romantic at heart.

This is a normal person's food pyramid. I'm pretty sure mine is inverted.  Because healthy eating  is clearly not a priority for  me. As evidenced by all my Slack TeaThursday posts.

On the up side the amount of chemical preservatives in coco pops will ensure that my insides stay young for a lot longer than my outsides  ...and with the amount of sugar I just ate  I probably wont need to sleep again until about say ...Tuesday.  

But the marshallows were fat free. And fruit flavoured. As far as I'm concerned that's practically a fruit salad. And I think they missed the 6th food group off that pyramid. Chocolate should have a part of the pyramid solely dedicated to it.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go and eat some pickles and yoghurt.

Oh and all those people that keep suggesting I eat ice cream for Slack Tea Thursday ...I don't eat ice cream. Yep I'm a complete weirdo and I feel kind of bad that your ice cream fantasies will never be fulfilled via my  blog. So here ya go...knock yourself out.

P.S. You're all still reading  because you were waiting for the P.S. I'm not really pregnant bit aren't you?

Oh and Miss P thought the Marshmallow Tower rocked. I had to wrestle her to the ground in a rugby tackle to get my fork back.

Slack Tea Thursday

I'm trying something new this week because I had so many great ideas for Slack Tea Thursday  I still can't decide.

Obviously this means

a) My house is full of junk food

b) I may not eat until midnight and I know you're all waiting for this post

c) I cannot think of a nutritional meal to save myself on a Thursday and even if I could that would defeat the purpose of STT.

So, while I'm deciding ....Yay ! Its a pop quiz for Slack Tea Thursday.  I'm going to give you the choices I am considering for slack tea and you're going to guess what I'll end up having. I'd actually really like to have this as a vote and eat the highest voted choice but frankly I dont want to wait until tomorrow to have tonight's tea since some of you are in a different time zone which would mean it would actually be Frivolous Breakfast Friday . I'm working tomorrow and don't want to go to work with curly fry breath.   I'll reveal my final choice sometime tomorrow.

These are the choices

a) chicken noodle soup using chicken from the chicken shop and home brand chicken noodle soup (which wouldnt look anywhere near as awesome as this picture that I stole from the internet ) 

b) A ham and cheese toasty (ham and cheese and butter and bread how could I go wrong ?)

c) Crumbed chicken breast straight out of a box (why do they feel the need to reinforce on the box this is 100% chicken - what else could it possibly be )

d) Curly fries with garlic sauce

e) A box of Cadbury Favourites chocolates ( got these at work this week because I am an ultra nice person and did someone a favour - yep I'm a government official accepting payola for favours )

f) A caramel slice

h) The biggest chocolate chip muffin I've ever seen . It'd be a personal challenge to finish it.

My beverage choices :  

Cherry Coke ( which I love and is hard to come by here )

or 7 up Cherry which I've never tried in my life...and is also rare as rocking horse poop in Australia

i) Or I could wander round the house eating random things like a mouthful of feta, some of the chocolates,  two slabs of fritz ,  a handful of french fries salt and vinegar chips ....ok the rest of the packet ... the cherry coke, smoke three cigarettes, drink  the 7 up, and then eat one or both the cakey things for dessert. Then I could go to bed with a severe stomach ache and have very scary dreams all night.

You will notice there is nothing remotely healthy amongst these pictures and I have noticed that there is nothing green in there either. I really need to eat a salad. I did consider it because you can buy those in a bag from the supermarket. But it seemed like a lot of chewing for very little pleasure. Happy Guessing .

P.S. Kirsten, I know these posts really worry you , since you are a cook extraordinaire . I really do eat healthy food most of the time. Ok, some of the time. Alright ...occasionally.

See you tomorrow for Favourite Things Friday .

Edited to reveal : I actually went with random guys, the mouthful of feta, some  most of the chocolates, two slabs of fritz , about 12 bits of ham,  all of the chips,  the cherry coke, smoked three cigarettes, and drank the 7 up. Then I did sit here moaning and bilious while contemplating the smart-ness of still wanting to eat the cake. Insane. I was going to go with the curly fries if that makes any difference to anyone, however by the time I made this decision, I'd eaten all the rest and it seemed rather piggy to continue....

Slack Tea Thursday

Here's this weeks STT story .  I know you all like a good story  to go along with whatever monstrosity I manage to churn out  for Slack Tea Thursday and if I just posted pictures without a tale there would be complaints. Or I'd be un-followed. Or get hate mail. OK, I'm taking poetic licence because you're all too classy to send hate mail. Except for someone named "anonymous" who keeps harassing me with comments about shoes, and chinese electronics and other odd things I can't mention on a blog that doesn't come with an adult content warning.

After work tonight  I had to go and get some batting for several quilty projects that are at the "I need batting stage", a canvas (more about that project over the weekend unless it goes horribly pear shaped and then you'll get a ranting type post  -the last time I used canvas and project in the same sentence, it cost me about 150 bucks and  it was an utter disaster ) and I went and got some scrap booking paper and spray glue  for another future project because since I was at Lincraft I figured I might as well. Before you ask-  No I am not decamping from the Quilting World  to try my hand at scrap booking. That's way too intricate for me, unlike my friend Nerida who reads my blog and makes very pretty cards from scrap booking stuff. (Waving at Nerida)  Far easier to hide your mistakes in a large quilt project thankyouverymuch. But let me just say I came home with twice as much scrap booking paper as I actually needed because it was so darn cute. See?

To top it all off I completely forgot about Father's Day which is this weekend which wouldn't be a problem if my Dad lived 5 minutes up the road but he doesn't and I rely on Australia Post to  get my tokens of love  to him on time - and I can hear all the Australian's laughing their arses off at this point because AP is so unreliable that I can get something sent from the US faster than I can receive something from the next suburb sometimes.  (I hope my dad doesn't read this - I know my Mum will but she can be trusted to keep her mouth shut and will admonish me privately and quietly, both for saying arse in a blog post and for forgetting I had a father who needed a gift until today,so I could show him how much I really do love him with a Visa Gift Card. Yes I am offically the world's worst daughter ) Anyway - said gift sorted and a 9 hour work day under my belt, and batting and canvas and scrap booking paper and glue  shopping sorted I turned what little attention I had left  to Slack Tea Thursday.

Crickets- I had nothing. I didn't even know what my own name was. And then light dawned.  I had something so perfect and quick and slack at home.

Good old Aussie chocolate and a mocha shot.

Who doesn't love a chocolate bar , or two , alright three for dinner?   And right now you're all wishing you were me and could have had chocolate for dinner but you had to be responsible adults and eat vegetables. Pftttttttttt.  Except for those of you that are reading this over breakfast and I hope you had Vegemite toast because Granola is blerk, even if it is healthy for you.

For those of you who asked for a reminder...don't forget Favourite Things Friday tomorrow, which might be the day after tomorrow for some of you, and is almost today for me , so that gives you plenty of time to come up with a favourite thing. It's so cool that my time zone is in the future.

P.S. I'm well aware I sound crazy ...it's Spring Fever you know. And if you think I'm crazy  now wait until the chocolate and mocha shot really kick in. I'll be prank emailing you all around 3 am my time because there's no way I'll be able to sleep...

Slack Tea Thursday

Being an Aussie girl , I eat meat pies. Well only this kind of meat pie. The other kinds are made out of sheep's lungs and other disgusting stuff. This is 100% lean Aussie beef. 100% yum. Add cheese and bacon and you're in heaven.

I know you're thinking it just has to come off a cow somewhere to be termed 100% beef, and that I'm probably eating cows lips or bumhole or something but Mrs. Mac wouldn't lie.   This is pure goodness and since it's lean beef it's very healthy for you too. How could pastry and gravy and cheese and bacon and beef possibly be bad ? Plus it only takes 2 minutes to heat it up in the microwave. That's faster than 2 minute noodles because you have to boil the water for them first.

I ate it out of a  paper bag. Pies don't taste the same on a plate. And despite the fact I now have Dudley the Dishwasher I don't like loading him any better than I used to like doing dishes. Eventually I'm going to get so slack that we'll be eating out every night and I'll never have to do any grocery shopping which will free up 15 more hours a week for me to quilt.

And for dessert- a 9 x 4 inch chocolate cake with fudge frosting and chocolate chips. 36 square inches of gloriousness.  By bedtime it's going to be gone. And the only way it's getting cut into smaller bits is when I take bites straight from the cake.

And if I get sick of the cake, I'm just going to lick all the icing off the top. That's the way I roll....

P.S. Mr. P is at Boys Night playing Dungeons and Dragons or another game that starts with a D.  Do you want to bet if I licked all the icing off and  put the cake into my cake display plate on the counter,  he'd come home and eat the cake? 

Slack Tea Thursday - It's back

I had planned  to cook something wonderful tonight and resume Slack Tea Thursday next week, but the universe conspired against me. The electrician called this morning to say his van was off the road and he couldn't get here until tomorrow which meant the plumber couldn't do his thing either. This means I still don't have a cooktop, rangehood, dishwasher, microwave oven, regular  oven , running water in my kitchen , or lights. I feel like the pioneers of our country felt  except at least they had something that resembled fire with which to cook.

Time for Slack Tea Thursday to make a comeback.

Confession: Every tea has been slack for the last 21 nights . I defy anyone to be able to beat that record.   I  re-heated curry one night and cooked a roast in the bathroom at one point, and fried up some hash browns - that was  taste sensation with roast beef I can tell you - and Mr. P did steak on the barbie one night with hash browns but truth be told we have been surviving on sandwiches, toasted sandwiches, fried eggs on hash browns, hash browns,   hot chips and gravy, takeaway chicken and chips, Maccas, eating out and KFC.  I never thought I would be looking forward to something that resembled a vegetable.  I miss creamy smashed potato. I would like to eat a carrot. Give me peas for crying out loud. I have actually started dreaming of being taunted by vegetables.

So this is tonight's effort. Stale premium and clix crackers with amazing amounts of margarine, salt and a can of tuna thrown on top.I didn't even drain it. I whipped this up in 30 seconds, and that included dropping the can in the bin on my way past .  I've got so good at  throwing tea together I don't even have to think about it anymore.  And yeah that's a paper plate - wanna  make something of it? I'm fed up with washing dishes  in my laundry sink. Last week I was handwashing my mohair jumper and when I fished it out of the trough it had half a manky hash brown attached to it.

Actually we've been eating off of paper plates for the last 3 weeks. Someone call Guinness because I'm pretty sure  that's a world record.  I feel like my life is just one big picnic without the ants and flies.

P.S.  I ate dinner at around 5 pm. I think I'm turning into one of those old age pensioners that hits the $1.99 all you can eat buffet at 4.30 pm for the early bird special , and is in bed by 8.30 pm. Now I know why supper was invented. When you eat that early you're starving by 7.30pm and it's practically a whole day still until breakfast time.  

Slack Tea Thursday

OK, first off today I was exposed to the ridiculous-ness that is Christmas in July...I think this is some weird arse Aussie invention specifically so we can experience  what it's like to eat traditional Christmas fare when it's cold outside like all you Northern hemisphere people do when it's actually the real Christmas. As if once a year isn't stressful enough.   It's also a time to do secret freaking Santa, (I don't even do that at real Christmas ) and eat a lot of food that is usually reserved for one day of the year.  I do wonder what Christians think of this extra Christmas- are they offended by us making this special event into an eat fest? If you are offended I would like to point out I didn't eat much in silent protest and thought about having an asthma attack before dessert so I retired to my office and did some actual work once the threat of imminent death had passed.

Anyway  we all had to bring a plate - and I baked a ham. That's my usual Christmas thing. I sustained injuries carving it with the shitty blunt work  knives , but nobody is dead from eating the baked ham (yet ) so it was a rip roaring success.  Here is a picture of my injured hand . I know that wrinkles and spots aren't injuries, I was talking about the bandaid-ed fingers...but totally off topic when did my hands get to look like little sausages ? Don't email to tell me that my hands look like kid hands- everyone tells me that (and in fact I do fit into kid gloves...not the goat kind - the little person kind )

Anyway . after getting home sometime well after my usual time, I couldn't make a decision about dinner, or whether I was even really hungry. It's getting to be slim pickin's here as we try to get rid of our pantry contents before I am cupboardless next week. OT again,  I'm actually finding it really hard to think at the moment. It's like my brain only has just so much space and it's already full of other crap .. really important details, some of which are threatening to leak out and be lost.  So when I opened the fridge I decided to have the first thing I saw. Thank Goodness we didn't have pickled herring or goats eyeballs in there.

*****BORING ALERT*****

Crumpets with Vegemite and chocolate milk.

I was hoping the food fairies might have snuck in and left me Vodka and lobster but no such luck...sigh.

A teeny tiny brag ...Little Pyjamas  turned one year old yesterday and got lots of presents. Little P - my birthday wish for you was that you have a happy life and end up a well rounded human being. And develop a sense of humour kid,  because being part of this family you' re going to need it. Bella and Grandpa love you so much! 

Little P's Party is on Sunday. I'll post pics then, because MOP and DOP  (Mum  and Dad  of Pyjamas )   will be there as well as SOP, and BILOP. (and all the other OP's) Wow I hope I can remember how to make sausage rolls before then because apparently I need to make about 100 of them...

Slack Tea Thursday

I'm not going to make a big song and dance about Slack Tea Thursday this week. There's always a back story to Slack Tea Thursday but tonight I'm going to use as few words as possible. Stop laughing immediately.

Arrived home from work at 5.30pm. This was entree....left over cold lamb chops from last night's dinner.

Off to the Plaza to buy Little P's birthday presents, and dropped into Macca's on the way back home. I had a voucher..so it was slack, fast  AND free.

I added Slack Tea Thursday to my work team meeting agenda today.  Nobody batted an eyelash and immediately launched into suggestions. Technically we were  finished and we didn't have to minute that part of the meeting. Probably just as well.... 

Slack Tea Thursday

I have an excellent tale for you this evening. It has all the ingredients essential for Slack Tea Thursday. There is drama. There is a twist and there is slackness. I have decided to give you a two-fer and tell it from two different perspectives and you can decide which is the more amusing re-telling of this evening's tea events.  

Mrs. P's Slack Tea Thursday story

Mr. P awoke this morning swearing he was suffering from bubonic plague. Being an ex nurse I am always decidedly unsympathetic when people make such declarations, because I have nursed people through worse things than bubonic plague. As far as I am concerned if you have enough breath to speak and your head is still attached, you're alright Jack.    I told Mr. P  it was much more likely to be a 24 hour virus because his tongue and face were not yet black, swollen  and gross and I lithely skipped off to work after throwing a box of tissues in his general direction and issuing stern instructions  not to chuck in my side of the bed.  I must confess  I  did have  a shower this morning in  Dettol hand wash and  hoped Mr. P would be considerate enough to die in bed if he was of a mind to pop off this mortal coil since there is no way I could move him if he keeled over on the floor in my absence. But such thoughts and actions I did keep to myself not being completely lacking in social niceties.

At some point Mr. P  dragged himself from his sick bed and called me at work to croak "It's your slack tea thingy tonight isn't it- is it breaking the rules  if I make you something for dinner?". "Go for it " I said figuring that if I'm not cooking it - that's still pretty slack while worrying also a little about his germy bits touching my food. But, who am I to turn down a free meal with the added bonus of potential scarlet fever or Ebola chucked in ? I figured I could always feed whatever he made  surreptitiously to the dogs under the table  or use a nice disinfectant gravy to kill any germified bits of the meal.

So home I trot after a long day at the salt mines. (If you're new here I don't actually work in a salt mine that was a figure of speech, but I do trot because I'm one of those annoying high energy people)   Mr. P had this going in the crock pot (which incidentally would have yielded the  added bonus of a long cooking time to kill any germs that fell in during preparation)

Mr. P doesn't do a lot of cooking unless it involves blackening dead carcasses on the barbecue ( he calls it creole - I call it murder) - so he didn't realise that this would need about 6 hours to cook. It is called a slow cooker for a reason.  So when I skipped home tonight after an awesomely fabulous day of counting salt grains  expecting Lobster Thermidore and a Croquembouche and saw this casserole I said sweetly to Mr. P "Darling. Love. light of my life what time did you put this on today?" and he said 2.30pm, I said "That won't be ready until about 9.00pm tonight, sweetie, angel, pudding pie". And he scoffed at me !

Now you can do a lot of things to a Pyjama Girl but scoffing at my wisdom and knowledge isn't advisable if you want to live to breathe another day.  But being wise and knowing it is sometimes better to keep one's own counsel ,  and because I also did not wish to look like an ungrateful cow, I said nothing and just kept reading my emails, planning a vegemite and toast raid later.

30 minutes later I received my just reward when Mr. P came to me and sheepishly said "I'll just go down to the shop and buy you something for dinner" after surreptitiously poking the potatoes and finding they had the consistency of marbles.  

So, ultimately I had a 1/4 chicken and chip pack with gravy  for tea, which did not fuss me in the slightest.

And  I figure that's still slack because I didn't have to move my ever diminishing arse from the computer chair (have I mentioned I have lost 15 pounds since January? )

And Mr. P being the kind , thoughtful and generous husband that he is , purchased dessert for me as well... Mint Lindt. It's no less than I deserve. And if I start to get fat again, I don't have to accept personal responsibility,  I can just blame Mr. P.

Mr. P's Slack Tea Thursday Tale
Woke up feeling crap.  Cooked Mrs. P  dinner.  Screwed it up. Bought takeaway as penance and chocolate to suck up. The end.