Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

I have an odd comfort food dish, and it’s fairly guilt-free. Just decided to drum it up for myself and the partner for a very late lunch.

You’ll need:
soy sauce (I recommend Kikkoman’s salt-reduced one, as it’s also not thick and overpowering in flavour)
rice wine vinegar
sesame oil
soba noodles (Hakubaku brand is one I recommend)

optional:
instant miso soup (my fave instant brand is Hikari)
extra dried wakame
gen mai cha (find this at tea shops and Asian grocers, this is what it looks like
black sesame seeds

All of these are available at most supermarkets, except for the dried wakame and gen mai cha.

Boil water in saucepan. When bubbling vigorously, add soba and cook strictly for four (4) minutes. Yep, just four. You don’t want them to overcook. Immediately put into a colander and run them under cold water – the colder, the better. You may even want to gently rinse them in chilled water (not too much). Put well drained noodles into large bowl.

Get a small mixing bowl or tumbler and add your desired proportions of rice wine vinegar and soy sauce. This is totally trial and error. Some days, I like more vinegar, some more soy. For a rough guide, you want 20-30mLs of each. Then add just under a teaspoon of sesame oil and mix well. Pour this over the noodles in the bowl, and gently mix.

Done!

Here’s the fancy stuff:

With finished bowl of noodles, sprinkle black sesame seeds for contrast.

Serve with gen mai cha (roasted rice Japanese green tea). You might also like to have miso soup too. I like to snap dried wakame and add it to the miso.

I love cheese.

I love pastis.

So when I saw a recipe in a French cookbook that not even I could fuck up involving the marriage of the two, the angels sang, rah rah rah.

Take a circle of camembert (I actually used brie and it tasted just fine). Unwrap, put on larger piece of foil. Prick the bastard to death with a fork (though I might try slitting it with a small, sharp knife next time). You’re doing this so you can pour 2 tbsp of pastis (Pernod, Ricard, or absinthe – all are in the pastis fam). After you have liberally poured your liquid in its wounds, wrap up in the foil snugly.

Don’t worry if you don’t have pastis – just use white wine.

Shove into a preheated oven for 10 minutes. Your oven’s temperature should be at 200 C.

Pull out, unwrap and get stuck into it. The recipe said to spread on hard, crusty bread, but I with no guilt whatsoever hoed into my cheese-pastis goo with a spoon.

This is what tonight’s looked like:

I’ve recently started reading a blog written by a Scot-born lawyer lass who really loves her shoes. She recently posted about wearing thongs to the office. Not a sartorial crime she would ever commit, let it be noted.

Thongs at present are very, very trendy. So my guess is that my dislike of them is not. Oh, and yes, some people call them flip-flops? They seem universally, or at least nationally loved, so I don’t really think it’s very patriotic of me to dislike them. Or perhaps it is? I seem to have UK men wearing sandals and shoes burnt into my brain. No thongs. Hmm, not sure which is scarier now…

A few years ago when I worked at a very draconian market research firm, we were firmly told that we were not allowed to wear thongs. Why? Because they were considered an impediment (haha) if evacuation of the building became necessary. This was a bit ridiculous. Firstly, rubberised thongs were out, but other ‘fancier’ ones were okay.

I had one such pair of fancier ones – a lovely Indian leather pair. They were unusual in that they were very comfortable to wear (usually my feet have trouble keeping thongs ‘on’). They were also quite fetching with a nice lean cut jean (not necessarily denim blue) and my lined black peasant skirt.

I did love them so.

Alas, the day came when the leather making the thong on one foot snapped, and with a heavy heart I had to throw them away. Even worse when one of them was still perfectly functional. I still remember them very fondly, and they have not been replaced. Initially, they were given to me as a friend’s housemate had got them from India but they didn’t fit her.

So yeah, none of this Havaianas business for me.

About a year ago, I did get a pair of Gisele Bunchen sandal-thong hybrid whatsits. Supremely comfy and quite easy on the eyes. Also, I don’t have to walk all funny to keep them on my feet because they fasten like a strappy sandal should.

I could wax lyrical about my hatred of the thong, but to be honest, it’s a bit boring, and probably time for me to don a pair of Cons in what will be thirty-something degrees heat.

From here
1. Resign from a commitment you’re not passionate about.
2. Stop trying to be perfect. I am going to stop trying to be perfect by admitting that this is something I could never commit to!
3. Implement a basic cleaning schedule.
4. Sign up for automatic billpay. I don’t believe in this one.
5. Automate a portion of your investing. I put away a portion of pay into super-savings.
6. Clean out your media collection and keep only the items you love. Just did this!
7. Plant perennials that will automatically bloom next spring. I don’t have a good garden, so don’t really do the plant thing.
8. Clean out your purse or wallet. Do this periodically.
9. Put a paper shredder next to your mail spot.
10. Winnow your wardrobe down to pieces that work together.
11. Delete any social networking accounts you don’t actually use. This is pretty hard, as the option to delete doesn’t always exist.
12. Add your number to the do-not-call list. Was done ages ago!
13. Create a car maintenance schedule and post it somewhere you’ll see it.
14. Design a filing system that you can stick to.
15. Start your day with a healthy meal. Unless running late, I do stick to this.
16. Turn your phone off when you need quiet time. Kind of a necessity for the socially retarded.
17. Invest in a programmable thermostat.
18. Set one good goal, and go achieve it.
19. Record your good “shower” ideas and then implement them. (Don’t we all get our best inspirations in the shower?)
20. Write to a friend with (gasp!) pen and paper. I already have two friends I do this with.
21. Set limits on your bad habits, and reward yourself when you stick with them.
22. Stop trying to be a saint and indulge yourself every once in a while.
23. Pay off your credit card debt. Don’t have one!
24. Avoid watching commercials and reading advertisements. I rarely watch TV and no longer read glossy magazines.
25. Rediscover the pleasure of reading purely for enjoyment. I’ve always been pretty good at this. I only read what I will enjoy!
26. Plan two weeks of delicious meals ahead of time and skip the nightly grocery run.
27. Go to your doctor for a preventative checkup.
28. Remember the joys of doing nothing. When you’re prone to physical breakdowns, this becomes a necessity also.
29. Singletask as much as possible.
30. Learn to ask for help.

The poetry of Charles Bukowski.
The poetry of Mary Oliver.
The poetry of Alison Calder.

The music of Bloc Party (though their most recent album Intimacy is freaking awesome).

The fragrances of Possets (sorry Possets, I still love you!)

Neighbourhood puss Bruno.

Mind-altering substances.

Let’s clear out the draft folder, shall we? It’s not feasible for me to keep comparing BPAL fragrances but thought I’d publish this post anyway.

Golden Priapus – on me, too pine-ish! It gets beautiful, golden, radiant and sweet but more so on my male friend. The pine is not so prominent on him and it’s even sweeter on his skin. Girlie but still masculine! It’s lovely.

Carceri D’Invenzioni – smells pretty much the same on me as it does on fellow. Initially, there is more throw on me and seems to be slightly nicer on me though the notes suggest that it is really more masculine.

C. Auguste Dupin – nice and the leather is a fresh one, but I can’t really smell the lime anymore – could more when the decant was fresh. More pronounced on fellow but still no hint of the lime. It’s not actually as nice as I thought it would be on him.

Galvanic Goggles – fellow says it’s too soapy on him, I say it’s a little too stereotypically ‘male’ on me but I really like it (didn’t think I would, to be honest). I think it’s the balsam that makes it soapy, personally.

Stimulating Sassafras Strengthener – more vanillary on fellow than it is on me – I get sassafras immediately and it sticks around. This is made to resemble one of those old-world cure-all tonics and it does a good job!

Severin – wow, I thought this would be awesome (what with tea and leather) but it’s far too subtle. On both of us, it’s lemon and a tiny bit of black tea. Pout.

I was brought up as a Catholic, and when we moved to Australia in 1987, I attended a Catholic primary school. After that, I went to a largely Catholic private high school, though they were very open-minded and liberal in their views and most certainly did not believe in shoving continued belief down our throats.

I was pretty happy about this, because by about Year 9 due to some personal traumas, I’d totally given up on believing in God. Naively, before this, I used to pray and talk to God as if he were in my life, not as if he were some stuffy meanie to be scared of, but some grown-up that lived in the clouds who could hear me.

In Year 8, my mother briefly lent me a miniature rosary. It was gorgeous. Instead of the usual string of beads, it was a metal ring, with a cross.

I thought it was metal, but inside was stone. I accidentally snapped it in half and was devastated. Also shit-scared my mother would kill me and she did indeed tell me off proper, but I was more disappointed in myself for breaking something so beautiful, and precious.

I also felt cheated – it wasn’t solid metal. Why wasn’t it solid metal? my young mind demanded.

Why am I writing about this now? It’s because I found some beautiful examples of miniature rosaries at my parents’ place. I’m a bit miffed that my mother doesn’t have them in better places – they’re just lying on a table, and because of the tablecloth, rather difficult to see.

And the ring-sized one – just a little too big for my middle finger.