Movie recommendation

Just watched a lovely romantic comedy on dvd.

It is a little different than your average american romantic comedy though since the story was based around two american chinese characters.

Also this one involves the widowed mother getting pregnant and the daughter happens to be a lesbian.

It sweet and a great movie when you want some light entertainment and without saying too much it does involve a tiny little twist.

Oh yeh the name might help it's called saving face and it's by by female director Alice Wu.

VO has closed for good!

VO stands for vegetarian orgasm and had the best vegan cake ever, possibly the best cake ever (as mentioned by a few dairy and eat egg eating folk).

It was also the place that was going to make our wedding cake. I knew that before I even met Mr T.

VO was the place were I would eat out once or twice a week when I first turned vegan. It was the only place I really longed for when I was in Hong Kong.

Admittedly they did make a few mistakes, including the move to gertrude street from smith st away from the smith st crowd. My guess is the biggest contributing factor to their downfall was the maker of the best ever vegan cakes leaving and only leaving one or two of his recipes, including 'the cake': peanut caramel nougart cake served warm with ice cream (soy or dairy).

As a result I along with probably a lot of other people stopped going so frequently. I did however still attend for 'the cake' and some of their other meal items.

I want to cry(please note I'm not) and as Jerome (recent VO cake addicted friend) claimed its the end of 'the cake era'.

Ex cake chef Mark where are you? Come back from Ireland and make a cookbook or start another restaurant or just at the very least make my wedding cake, hell I'll even arrange my wedding around your timing!

Sign at Penguin Parade in Phillip Island

I had on all of the advised clothing in the picture (scarf, beanie, jacket) and even gloves but it stil didn't stop me from freezing my butt off or getting a nasty cold.

Despite both colds (weather and my health) it was a good weekend. Mr T and I seem to be having a bit of an animal pattern lately. Last weekend it was the aquarium (pics to come later) and this weekend the smallest (and perhaps cutest) penguins in the world and a visit to the koala conservation centre.

I did however leave with the attention that as soon as arrived back home I would make like the koala below and curl up into a nice little ball.



Feeling slightly better now!

The Grates

I just bought their debut album partly because I like the couple of songs that I have heard and partly because of how cute their album back cover is (see above) and plus it was cheap. See how I talk myself into a purchase?

I just went to buy tickets for their show only to discover they are already sold out. Yes local bands sells out. I'm very sad now, I was looking forward to it after two reliable (as in good music taste) friends recommended their shows. If anyone has ticket/s let me know!

Roof at the RMIT Capitol Theatre, I have a thing about roofs

Comedy and women

I went to the Comedy festival on sun evening and saw Best of the Edinburgh Fest thinking at least one out of three should be ok. The first one was fine, the second was ok and the third was horrible unless of course you had a teenage boy sense of humour or you were drunk.

They summed it up quite well when they said before their first song:

women don't like this song, well bad luck

the rest of the routine was basically followed in well to that line. Imagine songs like 'I love it when you wake me up with a blow job'.

It got me thinking about comedy and women.

I've heard a lot of comments about female comedians not being funny and there seems to be lot more male comedians than females. Maybe that is why less female comedians less good ones.

I did watch several good ones though at the women's hospital benefit last year.

I'm determined to got to the comedy festival again and this time watch a female, any suggestions?

The long weekend:

consisted of house work, immigration papers and lots of fun stuff including:

mock dishes at enlightened cusine with friends, drinks with friends, family lunch with a variety of kristy friendly food, picking up a new treasure, cooking, our family easter egg hunt, a visit to the acquarium, and going to the comedy festival (more on that later).

Here are some highlights (via pictures-part 1 since i'm getting tired):

How it all vegan pate, not bad, but not tartex!

Pesto after being frozen in new ice trays from ikea.


New treasure (yes one person junk is anothers treasure) being taken away.


The sign on the new treasure, up close.

And photos from the easter hunts. The family tradition involved the 'kids' hiding the adults eggs and the adults hiding the 'kids' eggs. For the record Mr T and I are still kids (him is his late 20's and me in my mid 20's). Each person has 8 eggs with a little sticker on it with their initials and they can only get their own eggs if they find another person's egg you have to put it back. As you will see below it does get a little bit more difficult than a normal easter egg hunt.


There are two adult eggs up this tree

My youngest cousin trying to get on down from a tree.



There are some easier ones too

Tartex Pate I love You

For some reason last sat I had strong cravings for tartex pate, something I had two years ago and didn't particularly like at the time.

I drove around everwhere on sat with no luck finding it, I was devastated.

On sun I manged to get some from the health food shop on smith st (also have it at other healh food shops).

Now I am fully and trully hooked.

I'm onto my 3rd can now and have the 4th one waiting.

I've tried plain, herb, mushroom and will open the olive soon.

Mushroom is by far my fave and I don't even like mushrooms but they all taste amazing. Great on crackers and in a sandwhich (toasted or plain). My omni mother thinks it tastes a little like tuna. But i don't think its quite that fishy (never been much of a fan of fish).

It is added to my list of foods to serve for my house warming, for an apartment I haven't even started looking for yet.

I'm starting to think though perhaps I should try making some, this long weekend I will try the 'How it all vegan' recipe which I know I had at Ms Honey's years ago but can't quiet remember. Anyone else tried tartex and tried re creating it? At $4.95 per can its becoming a slightly pricy habit.



Disclaimer: I should probably say I've never had real pate, in fact the whole idea of real pate scares me so i can't compare it to the real thing.

My new job

I started my new job last week and that's why I haven't been posting as often.

Without saying too much, it's my first paid job in a helping profession and its very grassroots.

So far I love it, it is however challenging in all sorts of ways.

I try to remind myself how lucky I am in general however with this job, I don't need to.

It's made me even more grateful for the following:

friends and family
having a roof over my head
feeling safe within my own living environment
food and access to most services I need (medical etc)
speaking English
having my own transport
no major emotional/psychological issues
no major health problems
no major financial problems
no major family or other relational problems including physical, sexual, emotional and financial abuse
being employed

and so much more!

Happy CCC Day Mr T!

Today, a few years ago our relationship finally went from friends to partners and all because of a little miscaculation on my part.

Mr T and I had been friends for a while and had grown increasingly close over the last few months leading up that day. By this stage there was daily contact and a lot of flirting. Stupidly both of us though weren't completely assured that the other liked each other in that way. Anyway fast forward to April 5th.

Mr T had texted me and said 'I'm in causeway bay do you want to catch up?'. I of course agreed and I remember that day having someone sort of stomach upset so I sat on the steps below drinking my peppermint tea and waiting for him:



We had dinner together in this lovely Italian restaurant in my building that played old French music and talked and talked about everything. We then went to city super(supermarket) where I bought some soy chocolate choc chip ice cream (Us brand: Double Rainbow) and a few other things. He wanted to try the ice cream so we went to my place where we sat and talked and he tried the ice cream which he of course loved.

Eventually he reluctantly went to leave and to hug me as he usually did and to kiss me on the cheek. At the time however I completely misread the incoming kiss (aimed at my cheek) and kissed him on the lips. Thankfully he felt the same way and I only found out later of my mistake.

So why CCC day? In case you haven't figured it out: it was named after the ice cream.

Pak Choi flowers made by Mr T on a plate I got from Savers.

You win some, you lose some: baking

I've had a strong desire to bake lately.

First the chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts from vegan planet(below) rocked.

There was a lot more that were gobbled up while they were still warm.

Then the chocolate cupcakes from how it all vegan, which were horrible. I've made so many recipes from that cookbook and loved every one but this one sucked big time. All you could taste was the molasses. Big dissapointment!