Max is crazy about Thomas the Tank Engine, and so he absolutely loved his birthday cake. You may see a tiny bit missing from the picture in the middle. That’s because little hands got to it before I could take the photo :).
I didn’t have a whole slice of cake to myself; I just had a couple of bites of Jac’s. It was very nice, with jam and custard in the middle. The kids went nuts over the Smarties. I’ve never liked Smarties myself because I find them too flat, and their outer shell to be too thick and too hard. I much prefer M&Ms.
Family and friends can see the people photos (mainly of the kiddies) at my Flickr site.
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My meeting with the Dean on Thursday afternoon went very well. It lasted for around twenty minutes. He spoke about the examination process in great detail. His assistant and I both took notes. I asked him a few questions. He asked if I had thought about getting my thesis published as a book and I told him that has always been my plan. I will be able to apply for a 6-month writing fellowship once I’ve got my PhD and have secured a publishing contract. I told him I’m still on track to finish as scheduled (as long as nothing catastrophic occurs) and I don’t plan to apply for an extension to my scholarship (this I’m sure, pleased him greatly). I really don’t know why some people freak out about these meetings. I’ve heard of people who are in tears over these meetings, or need someone else to go along for support. It really was not scary at all.
After the meeting I caught a couple of buses to go to Jac’s brother’s house for a pizza dinner to celebrate Max’s 3rd birthday (Max is Savannah’s little brother). The pizzas were from Kenwick Dial A Pizza. Kenwick’s pizzas have a unique flavour because they all have a layer of shredded ham underneath the other toppings. This was the bacon, mushroom and prawn one. I had to take these photos really fast because grabby hands were coming at the pizzas from all directions!
The supreme. You can probably see the shredded ham layer on the righthand corner beneath the olives.
The hawaiian (ham and pineapple) pizza was ordered mainly for the kids. They only had a slice each, and so we adults demolished the rest. With the bottom layer of ham, this was super hammy!
Here’s a slice of the hawaiian pizza. Like the Thomas the Tank Engine paper plate? :) A couple more pizza slice photos may be found at my Flickr site, if you’re interested.
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I actually cooked dinner tonight, which is very unusual for a Friday! I used the rest of the tin of SPAM to make fried rice. I chopped the SPAM up into cubes and fried them in a small frypan until they were nicely browned and crisp on the edges (but still moist and bouncy). Once they were done, I heated up some oil in the wok and fried up chopped onions, garlic and green beans with a splash of soy sauce. When the beans were almost done, I added cooked rice, oyster sauce and cracked black pepper to taste. I broke an egg into the wok right at the end and mixed it through the rice. When the egg was cooked, dinner was ready. Easy peasy.
Jac came home at lunch time today to pick me up to go shopping. She brought food so we could have a quick lunch before we left.
She bought us these meat-stuffed flatbreads from a lebanese bakery near her work. My flatbread was still warm when I bit into it. It’s really good. I don’t know what their proper name is. I asked Jac what she asked for, and she said, “Two meat ones please”. She doesn’t know what they are called either. Heh.
The innard shot. As you can see, there’s capsicum and onion in the meat mixture. It tasted like lamb but had a texture that reminded me of tinned corned beef (I like both, so there’s no problem there!).
After our lunch, we went to the Good Guys to order our new oven/stove. We picked it out from a catalogue back in January, but it’s taken a number of pay fortnights to get the money together. It will probably be delivered next Friday, as the shop had none in stock and will have to get one in from their supplier. We also bought a kettle and a 4-slice toaster. They each have fancy poxy names, like cars. The toaster is a Sunbeam Toastum 4 and the kettle is a Breville Nova. I’ve already had my first cup of tea using the kettle. Next will be the christening of the toaster. I reckon freshly toasted crumpets with butter and honey will be a fantastic way to break in those wide slots. We paid cash and got everything for less than RRP, which of course pleased me greatly.
Once the oven/stove arrives, we’ll get our handyman, who is a qualified gas fitter, to install it. We will also get him to help us cut a hole in the bathroom ceiling for the exhaust fan we bought at Bunnings last weekend. Once that has been done, we’ll get the electrician to come over and install the exhaust fan and fix the spa room light and bedroom light (both of which haven’t worked for a very long time). Geez, is that the time? I’d better hurry up and finish the next and last post of this batch.
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Fried SPAM and egg with rice is one of my favourite dinners. I often like to have some baked beans on the side. This time, Jac boiled me some green beans and corn on the cob as well. She really tries hard to get me to eat vegetables! The corn was lovely, sweet and juicy, and the green beans were good, as they always are.
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Lunch at uni, 29/03/2006. I’ve had eaten combination rice many times before, but this is the first time the char siu came topped with char siu sauce. It was nice, but I think I prefer the char siu to come without sauce. Usually I just pour soy sauce over the top of the chicken and it soaks through to the rice; the char siu has plenty of flavour and doesn’t need sauce. Oh well. *shrug* It was still pretty good.
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On Tuesday night we had dinner at my younger sister Juji’s new place, which she’s sharing with her boyfriend and two other friends. As regular readers will know, Juji is a great cook (between Jac, Juji and my mum, I’m kept very well fed!), so I was really looking forward to it. As expected, Juji put on a delicious feed.
The table was set out in the backyard, a lovely candlelit dinner for four.
Juji made a big pan of butter chicken, one of my favourite Indian dishes. I was grabbing more chicken from the pan long after the others had finished eating. It was bloody good.
This was a vegetable curry, with potatoes, carrots, green beans and tomatoes. Not sure if the curry had an actual name. It went really well with the rice.
We also had dhal, which like everything else, was mighty tasty.
My plate, complete with pappadum (perfect for dipping into the butter chicken sauce).
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Flickr family and friends will be able to see two bonus photos featuring Juj, Jay and Jac.
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