Blueberry Pancakes

One of the most delicious aspects of running a bed and breakfast is breakfast. When we serve pancakes for breakfast, sometimes they look and smell so wonderful it's hard to pass up the opportunity to cook the rest of the batch for ourselves.

On this particular day, we happened to have some blueberries. It is so much fun to pelt the pancake with plump juicy berries before flipping it over.

Of course, if you get too carried away you can burst them and the cooked side of the pancake displays the bombardment bleeding through. It does add a little something when the blueberry sugars slightly caramelise.

The best way to serve pancakes is with a perfect spiral of butter (now slightly melted (and may not have quite fit the mathematical definition to start with (but that's what you are aiming for))), smokey bacon and really real(tm) maple syrup. I can't stress the maple syrup enough. I'm not $#@%ing kidding.

The first time I made blueberry pancakes was for Jodie. We only had one couple in the house, so Jodie was able to have a rare sleep in. After finishing their breakfast, I wanted to take Jodie breakfast in bed. Even though pancakes in bed would be freakin' awesome, I wanted to make it something special. Not just the best pancakes I've ever tasted special... something extra. I consulted with Nigella who gave us the pancake recipe we use, and right there on that very page was the suggestion for peppering the partly cooked pancake with blueberries. I got chills. For real. We had a fresh punnet of blueberries in the fridge. So I got to work, made fresh french pressed coffee and serenaded my wife with not song, but food.

Needless to say that was a great start to a very pleasant day.

Chicken

Lemon grilled chicken with roast tomato salad

I'm back. I've missed blogging about things outside World of Warcraft, where I've been spending most of my creative wordsmithing. I've missed sharing my adventures and photography. I got held up in an endless spiral of perfectionism and procrastination. I'm 33, an adult by even Hobbit standards, enough. So in an effort to get back into the swing of things, I'm starting off with something from today, Chicken.

Since the begining of our peak season, we've been eating better. By which, for me, I mean eating less. I've dropped 6kg since the start of the year, and Jodie and I had a great time corresponding with my cousin Frances and friends in Scotland who are supporting each other through the loss of 10kg or 10lb in 10 weeks.

I've been making my curries, which generally use 2kg of meat, fish or vegetables as the main ingredient. Smaller serving sizes are fantastic, but we are going to start freezing portions for later, because there's only so many days in a row you can eat the same curry. The only reason this is true, is food safety rather than getting sick of them. They are that awesome.

Jodie is an avid cook, who makes my head spin when I'm tasked with choosing a special dish for my Birthday. Firstly, there's too many favourites to choose from. Secondly, Jodie likes a challenge and so many of my favourites fall into the 'lazy' meal category. Perfect simplicity is perfect, and absolutely nothing beats her mushroom risotto. Having said that, there's probably over one hundred dishes that rival it, so it's still a tough choice. If you have suggestions for my birthday meal, please leave them in the comments... but don't be upset if I can't resist an old favourite. I don't know why, but right this moment, I'm leaning toward Steak and Guiness Pie.

Jodie has been collecting recipes that are of the healthy persuasion recently, and we've just discovered a couple of new favourites. Today, Jodie made Lemon grilled chicken with roast tomato salad, which is pictured above. The lemon and oregano is nicely offset by rocket, pepper and a sliced red chilli. My mouth started watering as I took photos of the roast tomoato salad (below).

Roast tomato salad

XKCD: Password Reuse

Yes, I know... long time no post. However, I just HAD to share my new favourite XKCD comic!

Just Say No To Knowledge

I came across this comic while on the wowhead forums (yes, my first post in over a year was inspired by actions WoW related) and it made me laugh. Hard.

It's the cutest web comic I've seen in ages, and the critical mass of humor developed so early in the comic from visuals alone that by the end, laughter seemed to be exploding from every orifice and pore in my body.

If you like this one, check out others at: http://www.sinfest.net/. I haven't even looked at many others, but I doubt any will top this one as my favourite.
I've had a few people ask what's happened to the blog, and the sad truth is that my rabid perfectionist tendencies got the best of me. "But a blog, by it's very nature was supposed to cure you of said tendencies, right?", I hear you ask. No, there is no cure as such... but with this post breaking the ice, hopefully you'll all hear from me again soon. Lots of things to write about, but of course I shouldn't think about the volume or shear awesomeness of topics, otherwise the next post just won't happen.

Edit: This one is pretty funny too ;)

Captain Vegetable

Need I say more.

Peter and Janette

Peter and Janette left us this morning to continue their Tasmanian adventure. They severely chastised me for not keeping the blog up to date, so they'll be delighted to see how quickly I've blogged a photo of them from their visit.

Jodie has known Peter for a long long time, and the three of us worked together on the Oacis Programme in South Australia.

On Tuesday night we had curry night, and did some catching up over some lovely local wine, and some of our favourite from the Barossa. Peter and Janette got to see us at our busiest [14 guests in the house], with the bell ringing every so often with Jodie and I taking turns seeing to the needs of our guests. We had to provide some reassurance that it wasn't like this every night.

Wednesay saw Peter and Janette head over to Freycinet, which was spectacular as always. On the way back they collected some oysters and mussels to spoil us by making us dinner! The mussels were accompanied by Peter's pasta made from scratch, and some more wine, of course.

Breakfasts were very busy for us as usual, but this morning we served an early breakfast at 7am for half the house who were off to a cruise, so we got to sit and have a quick coffee before returning to the chaos in the kitchen and all six rooms to clean.

Double cream

So many things I've missed out on blogging, so I'll quickly put this one down while Jodie continues to bring things in from the breakfast room [she's doing a wonderful job].

Today we had four people pre-order pancakes, and we were asked for cream to go with them which is quite rare [usually people are either intrigued or keen for bacon]. By chance, we had some Meander Valley Pure Double Cream in the fridge - which I dutifully dolloped as a special treat for our guests.

Jodie had some pancakes spare, so I decided to try our pancakes with cream and syrup too. WOW! Meander Valley Pure Double Cream is awesome! Dollop doesn't do this cream justice. It is so thick, we presented the cream on a tiny flat plate in a Quinelle.

I found a food blog that has some nice photos of the cream here.