Old Scool Sesame Street

If there's one thing I can't resist....

It's a free photobooth! I'm going to miss Becks when it closes for the year! It should really be a year long thing!

Clark Gable

Do me.

Chickpea, Haloumi and Avocado Salad with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

I know I said I'd update you all with my Mums layered vegetarian lasagne recipe ASAP (it was delicious by the way), but I've been a little busy lately and last night I made this recipe which blew my mind, so I can't resist but to blog it straight away. I'm blog the lasagne recipe eventually.

This salad is based on a Nadine Abensur recipe I found. I've toyed around with it slightly. It's a really simple and satisfying salad. Enjoy.

Chickpea, Haloumi and Avocado Salad with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

serves 3-5

800g chickpeas, drained (can be canned or soaked overnight, it doesn't really matter)
juice of a lemon
180g Haloumi cheese, cut into 5mm thick slices
1 avocado, diced
about 10 -15 cherry tomatoes, halved
200g rocket
2 tbsp coriander leaves
2 tbsp flat leaf parsley
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 red onion, chopped
extra virgin olive oil
paprika
sea salt and ground black pepper

1. Preheat grill. Place the cherry tomatoes on a tray covered in al foil. Drizzle over some oil, a sprinkle of paprika and pepper. Place tray under the grill and cook until slightly roasted, so they look soft and kind of wrinkled but are not too black on top.
2. Preheat a griddle pan. Add a few dashes of oil and when hot, add the haloumi slices. Cook on one side until golden and crispy, then turn over and do the same with the other side.
3. Mix the chickpeas in a bowl with the lemon juice, garlic, chilli and a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Tear the coriander and parsley and add to the mix. Add the red onion, avocado, roasted tomatoes and rocket and mix well.
4. Divide the chickpea salad between plates and place haloumi on top. Serve with pita bread. Devour.

My Girl

I watched this on the weekend for the first time in years and wept.

You Are The Fire Burning Inside Of Me

Maybe I am the luckiest girl in the world after all...

In past week alone, I have seen these bands (amongst others) perform live:
- Marianne Faithfull
- Antony & The Johnsons with WASO
- Daniel Johnston
- The xx
- Bridezilla
- Echo & The Bunnymen
- Dappled Cities with a guest appearance from Sarah Blasko

In the past two months I have seen these bands (amongst others) perform live:
- Grizzly Bear
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- Andrew Bird
- Cat Powers
- Emiliana Torrini
- Future of the Left

In the next two months I shall be seeing these bands (amongst others) perform live:
- Brian Jonestown Massacre
- The Pixies

Oh I just love festival season!

Weird Shit That Has Happened To Me

This actually happened to me once. When I was about seven or eight, I was walking home with my mum from her friends house at night and a vampire drove past us in a black car. Except that vampire wasn't a sexy busty vixen with a super defined waist and amazing eyebrows like Vampira (pictured above). It was a man who would've been in his late twenties with dark hair and dark clothes and pale skin. My mum didn't notice him but I did and he looked at me and he bared his fangs at me really widely. There was no way those fangs could have been fake. They were full on fucking fangs. Maybe I was hallucinating or whatever, I have no idea. All I know is that it freaked me out and I actually think it was the trigger of my childhood insomnia. I was really into "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" at the time but it was probs pretty unhealthy for me to watch it after how much of an impact this incident had on me, though I guess Buffy was a pretty good role model as her aim was to get rid of all the vampires. I slept with my sheets tucked tightly around my neck for a good year or so.

Let Forever Be

Such an awesome song and video. Not the best quality but it was the first one I found on youtube that didn't have a disabled embed thing. I last watched this maybe two months ago when I was stoned out of my mind with Chantel and Trajan. Amazing. Michel Gondry is a genius.

Beautiful People with Animals Wednesday 1# Cats

So here's a new weekly posting thing I'm starting called "Beautiful People with Animals Wednesday". It's exactly what it sounds like - every Wednesday I'll post five of my favourite images of beautiful people with a different sort of animal. This week I'll start with my 3rd (maybe 4th?) favourite animal, the Cat.

Hey Pesto

Yesterday I blogged about my muse Marianne Faithfull. Today I shall talk about another muse of mine. This one is inanimate and edible. It is pesto. Let's be honest, a life without pesto wouldn't really be worth living. It is a perfect addition to a pasta dish and also makes a killer dip. Not only this soul food versatile, it is so effing easy to make. It's also FUN to make and is pretty cheap too, despite the inflating price of pine nuts (we sell them for $67.50 a kilo at Antonios! Thankfully you only need a small amount of pine nuts!

So what's not to love about pesto? In the last fortnight I have made two kinds of pesto - a traditional pesto, consisting of basil, flat leaf parsley, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil and melted butter, and another kind where i replaced the parsley and pine nuts with rocket and macadamias. It's so simple you don't even need a proper recipe. You just mince everything in a blender/food processor and gradually add the olive oil and melted butter. Pesto ingredients usually have some sort of parmesan cheese in them but I find cheese difficult to puree well so I just add a generous amount of shaved Grana Padano to my pasta dish when I am ready to serve.
One of my favourite ways to have pesto is with grilled salmon and fettucine or spaghetti with roasted cherry tomatoes.

Tonight my lovely mother is showing me how to make a delicious layered vegetable lasagne with homemade pesto! I will blog the recipe on here sometime in the next few days.

As Tears Go By

This evening I saw one of my idols perform in the flesh. It was, as you may have guessed, the one and only Marianne Faithfull. This was indeed what one may call a "pinnacle" (or "peeny-klay") in my life. I have adored this woman since age 11 when I immediately fell in love her ethereal beauty after seeing a photograph of her in some music encyclopedia, which I read a lot of at that stage in my life. I proceeded to steal my older sisters copy of "Blazing Away" and listened to songs like "Sister Morphine" and "Why D'Ya Do It" with no idea what they were actually about. I just dug the sound, man. And I thought I was mighty cool and sophisticated listening to MF when all the kids in my year group were still into Nelly and Avril Lavigne. Something about her low, husky, ex-junkie, smokers voice enchanted me so much that she has remained one of my favourite musicians and muses to this day.

I got to the venue pretty early and managed to score a seat on the right hand side of the front row which was I pretty stoked about. No one in my social circle is really as avid a Marianne fan as myself, so I attended the show all alone. I guess I must be a bit weird for my age as I'm fairly certain I was the only 20 year old there in the crowd of what would've been roughly 400 people. The entire place was full of middle aged arty types in berets and crazy earrings and whatnot. Think Margaret Pomeranz from "At The Movies" and you get the picture. Honestly, I really felt like I was at a concert with all my high school art, drama and english teachers x100. Not that I really cared all that much.

The show was so so so brilliant but unfortunately it was cut short. My poor idol had badly hurt her leg whilst walking up the stairs of her hotel, and you could certainly tell. She stood in the wings for a long time before the show began looking really nervous and unwell and she looked so bad for a moment I thought they were going to cancel. She had to get her assistants to practically carry her on stage, and every now and then they had to help prop her up on her stool. It was absolutely devastating seeing her like that, but she held herself together so well and made jokes about it. A true performer.

She was really charming and seemed so honest and friendly. She explained about her leg and muttered "Shit happens". And she caught my eye a couple of times and I got all schoolgirlish and sort of giggled and looked away haha. And despite being a 65 year old reformed heroin addict who had just done her leg in, she still looked absolutely beautiful (though obviously not quite the saucy minx she is in the above picture). She wore a very demure black leather suit, which I thought was very cool, a sort of playful but very sophisticated ode to her "Girl On A Motorcycle" days. Yes, the woman oozed coolness even with a bung leg.

The highlights were her not her own songs (though "Broken English" was fantastic!), but a Morrissey cover ("Dear God Please Help Me"), which melted my heart and then froze it and broke it.

It was a shame that she did not play my three favourites, those being "Sister Morphine", "Guilt" and "Why D'Ya Do It" but it was clear she did not have the energy. i cannot complain, as I can not begin to explain how amazing it was for me to be in the presence of this woman.

Bless your soul Marianne, I hope you are quickly recovering and are safely tucked into bed in your hotel room, having a nice cup of tea and reading a good novel. You better go get your X-Ray tomorrow like you said you would!

You still fucking rock you old legend!

My very first post

Welcome