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.

Grats Lash!

Many other things to blog, but I've found if I do them when they happen... they get... done!

Lashana hit 70 tonight... so celebrations all round. She did it on her very own account, now that Barrath has moved onto his own one!

Jondy and I [Borgthor] flew out to Netherstorm to capture the moment.

... and moments later... she had a flying mount.

... and the tree is down!

We have had a big start to the year... so the christmas tree only came down a few days ago. It was becoming an ongoing joke with our guests towards the end [although some were a little serious about the bad luck it could bring [although they couldn't decide which date was most important, and I think Sweden gave us the biggest leeway]].

We are closed for tonight and tomorrow for a couple of highly anticipated projects [I'll blog about those later], and I thought I'd just get this blog on the sphere for 2008.

I've just finished the stats [late] for last quarter in 2007, and can happily say that December was much busier than last year, and January's occupancy is already up 12.5%. That mostly explains the lack of blogging and our slackness in a whole stack of other areas!

Happy New Year!

... and boiled eggs! We had 5 boiled eggs this morning! It's funny... our various options for breakfast don't even occur to most people until they see and example. We had a run on boiled eggs this morning, which makes life easy. Jodie even invented a chive nest to put the extra egg on... incorporating our garnish into a practical structural breakfast component, rather than just my usual three dimensional art.

As you may be able to tell... it's been a very full year for us. Rather than most people, relaxing and reflecting at this time of year... we are in the swing of peak season, and completely exhausted. So much so... it's bedtime(tm) after this.

We are looking forward to starting the new year as husband and wife, and open to all the possibilities that 2008 has to offer. We hope you all are having as great a new years eve as we are, and we wish you all the best for the year ahead.

P.S. Our huge breakfast streak came to an end today, and apple vs. orange ended on a tie.

P.P.S. Our new years resolution is to send out our wedding thankyous.... before our anniversary. We got our selection of photos back, so it should be all go... soonish.

Huge Breakfast Streak...

... is still going for a total of 4 days so far. We don't have a three share for the next few, so this record might last for a while.

I don't have anywhere else to store the stats at the moment, so the blog is doing the heavy lifting. I'm thinking about keeping apple vs. orange [juice] going too... at the moment it stands at 1:1. Jodie is firmly in team orange, while I am championing team apple.

People have been eating a lot more this season! I can't remember baking three loaves of bread in a day last year, and this year we've had to do it a few times already just to keep up... We put out two full loaves of bread for toasting, and each cooked breakfast comes with toast.

Pancakes continues to be very popular, especially with our really real maple syrup. Yes, Matt, that's really real, imported from Canada maple syrup. We go through over 4L of it in a year.

Eggs [scrambled or poached] with smoked salmon is always a hit, especially since we've been getting naturally wood smoked salmon from Mures. Their smoked cod is also excellent... so when things get a little bit quieter we might introduce that in our gourmet breakfasts too.

Fresh fruit salad has been disappearing too, even with our super square bowl. Jodie has been adding fresh strawberries and mixed berries into the mix so our continental breakfast table looks spectacular.

As we had planned, every part of our breakfast is now either local, home made or boutique. We can now experiment with some special gourmet breakfast options.

The new record

We turned over all 6 suites today, so it was a very busy one, and we are exhausted.

However, while cooking breakfasts, I came up with an appropriate huge breakfast streak record. The most consecutive days with a total average of 12 cooked breakfasts. Since we have 6 suites and most of them are used as doubles [two people, one queen bed] when we are full, we usually have 12 or 13 people in total. We have plenty of people that couldn't imagine adding a cooked breakfast to our continental, so it's a feat to keep an average of 12 cooked breakfasts for any length of time.

So... the current huge breakfast streak record is 3 days! Maybe we'll make it 4 tomorrow.

New Breakfast Record

Yesterday, we set a new record for the number of cooked breakfasts in a morning. 13. Thirteen full cooked breakfasts, including one of pancakes with a side of over-easy fried eggs. I now hold this illustrious record, taking over from Jodie's 11.

The thirteen cooked breakfasts was a nice reminder of what the peak season is all about. We are booked out for the next while, with a shot at breaking our previous 'booked out streak' record. After some refinement of our processes, Jodie delivered a stress free twelve breakfasts this morning, but alas... the new record had already been set.

I should probably think about recording the record for the greatest average number of breakfasts over a week or something similar... but that can wait for now.

Bed time(tm)

Merry Christmas ...

... from Borgthor and Jondayla!

Jodie's Pancakes

We had a some wonderful feedback about our pancakes yesterday morning. A family that stayed with us for three days told me that they knew what our next venture would be - a pancake house. While we've had many positive comments about our pancakes, this one has outdone them all.

However... as you may have guessed from the title, it was Jodie's turn in the kitchen that morning. After giving me almost endless grief about me taking over the pancakes, Jodie's first time out for guests resulted in our finest feedback yet.

So, now I can publicly inform you all, that our pancakes are awesome.

I guess I still have my shortbread.

Bwa ha ha ha ha.

70

DING!

So many opportunies for World of Warcraft posts have come and gone. Especially posts about my nephews, Andrew and Cameron joining our guild, Andrew [Zand] getting guild member of the week, and us both getting promoted to officers.

Jodie and I cracked the champagne tonight! Borgthor is level 70!!!! For the uninitiated, that's the highest level obtainable until the new expansion comes out.

Thanks to Jondayla [main of my wife], I was also able to get my flying mount, pictured above... which reminds me, I should give her some change out of the 700 gold she loaned me.

Jondy and Barrath [our best man] are both level 65, and quickly climbing the ranks. Jondy has been pre-occupied with getting a very special epic mount from the wintersaber trainer, which has slowed her progress a little [as well as engaging in the 'social' aspects of the game [she has quite the fan club]].

Now that we each have accounts, we have been playing together a bit, and Jondy has welcomed [somewhat reluctantly, but has humored me] my various money making schemes, and we are having a ball! Transmuting has never been so much fun, profitable, and alchemy skill increasing.

For family and friends that want to join in the fun, we are on the Dath'Remar server. LFM, Tank and Healer for hire!

Now for the rest of my pre-Kara gear...

Haighs

Jodie and I have just finished our wood fired pizza from the Bark Mill Tavern. Mushroom and Volcano as usual. Delicious.

We have just started in on our Haighs truffles from Anthony and Anita! Jodie said as we bit into the first one, "now, you don't pig out on Haighs truffles, they are the real deal!"

Thanks guys, it's a fantastic dessert!

Elections and stats

Another advantage of living in a small town, is there isn't a wait to vote in the Federal election. I'm getting more and more cynical about Australian politics. The outcome was as just as predicted.

Tasmania is a funny state. We turned over a few seats to labour, and Lyons seems like a safe labour seat. I sent our representative an email before the election about the water issues here, and wasn't really impressed with the result.

The senate seats in Tasmania are the funniest thing. The Democrates don't even bother to run in the senate here, since the greens end up with 17% of the vote [second only to the ACT with 21%, but they are [only] a territory, so it didn't win them a seat]. I'm really not sure why any independent / crackpot party bothers to run in Tassie... but they do.

The best part [why I'm writing this post] of the election for me was looking at the ABC website coverage. It's got a google map and plenty of stats. You should definitely check it out here.

Sushi

Jodie and I made sushi tonight for the first time. It was awesome. We had some delicious fresh salmon. Wasabi is green, hot and tasty.

More friends come to stay

On Sunday night we had Anthony and Anita from SA [we used to work with Anthony at the Department of Health] and Sally and Craig from VIC [Jodie used to work with Sally] come to stay.

I made Jodie's three favourite curries: Cauliflower and Potato, Parsee Red Chicken and Lamb Cardamom. I had so much going on the stove, I had to break out the 11L stock pot. The boys both tried Moo Brew for the first time and we had wines from the Barossa and from just up the road [Springvale] which is just how we like it. We also had our first wedding photo slideshow victims! I'm sure there'll be plenty more.

They all left on a perfectly sunny Monday morning. Anthony and Anita were happy to pose in front of the house and imagine it was theirs. You can see the smiles on their faces as they imagine the mortgage... We couldn't get Sally and Craig to stand that still.