Author: Kris

  • Shared today on Facebook

    We had a fantastic lunch from a Michelin-starred Thai chef (who relocated from Bangkok to Mittagong) at @pasteaustralia… and followed it up that evening with meat pies and sausage rolls on the train ride back to Sydney. 😂 #classy

    Mittagong and Bowral


  • Mittagong and Bowral

    We recently learned about Rail Discovery Passes, which allow you unlimited travel on NSW regional trains, as well as extending all the way to Brisbane and Melbourne. This suits our goal of doing more regional travel in 2025, so we recently bought six-month passes. Today we used them for the first time, catching a very early train from Sydney and riding 90 minutes to Mittagong in the Southern Highlands.

    We started the day by grabbing some coffee and heading to Lake Alexandra. We patted dogs, looked for turtles, and learned about the history of the Fitzroy Iron Works.

    Lake Alexandra
    The park has a fun playground too.

    Surfing Snook

    We spent an hour or two shopping in town, and I got a couple skeins of wool from Victoria House. Our real destination though – and the original motivation for the trip – was Paste Australia. This award-winning Thai restaurant is run by a Michelin-starred chef who relocated from Bangkok to Mittagong, and we’d heard great things about it.

    The view from Paste
    We had a booking for noon, and it turns out we were the only people there! Other dates were booked out, so I think the cool, rainy weather kept people away. We had the set lunch and chose to start with the grilled eggplant salad…

    Eggplant salad
    …along with the roasted duck with rice crackers.

    Smoked duck
    For mains, we had Jeen Juan chicken curry…

    Chicken curry
    …and the restaurant’s speciality, Sator Pad Goong, with prawns, pork, and “Thai cluster beans.”

    Sator pad goong
    The set lunch also came with green beans (with garlic and chilli) and rice.

    Green beans
    Everything was delicious, and of course, the service was phenomenal since we were the only ones there! Well worth the special trip.

    Us at Paste

    After lunch, we went for a wander over to Eden Brewery and sampled some of their brews. Cool place.

    Eden Brewery
    The weather had turned seriously windy, cold, and rainy, so we called an Uber and headed to nearby Bowral. We had several hours until our return train, so we joined every pensioner in Bowral for a showing of Conclave at the New Empire Cinema.

    Empire Cinema
    After the film – which is fantastic – we did some window shopping along Bong Bong street. Hey, that’s right, Don Bradman is from here!

    Don Bradman was here
    And then it was time to head home! Our train was a little delayed so we watched the darkening sky from the platform.

    Bowral Station
    From Michelin-starred lunch to a meat pie on the train. Classy  😂

    Meat pie

  • Shared today on Facebook

    Another shift at the Colour Maze! Today I was in the swinging ball room, making sure that kids didn’t brain themselves too hard or strangle themselves in the nearby rope room. #sydneyfestival


  • Colour Maze Redux

    Colour Maze Redux

    Another shift at the Colour Maze! Today I was in the swinging ball room, making sure that kids didn’t brain themselves too hard or strangle themselves in the nearby rope room.

    Rope room

  • Shared today on Facebook

    Another volunteer shift, this time at the Colour Maze. See all those dots of colour? Those are stickers. And I’m the one handing out sticker sheets to hundreds of hot and overstimulated children. 😅


    Snack recommendation! The Coles at Broadway had these Korean seaweed snacks on sale, so I picked up a package. And they are GREAT! Savoury, salty, crunchy. I might try to get more.


  • Roasted seaweed snack

    Roasted seaweed snack

    Snack recommendation! The Coles at Broadway had these Korean seaweed snacks on sale, so I picked up a package. And they are GREAT! Savoury, salty, crunchy. I might try to get more.

  • Colour Maze

    Colour Maze

    Another volunteer shift, this time at the Colour Maze. See all those dots of colour? Those are stickers. And I’m the one handing out sticker sheets to hundreds of hot and overstimulated children. 😂

  • Shared today on Facebook

    Blog post: another recipe from the CWA 1965 “Dessert a Day” cookbook. This one is called Peach Marshmallow, and we did a fun experiment where I cooked it as written, and Rodd Snook did a modern, fancy take on it. (SPOILER: the fancy version was better.) 🍑

    Peach Marshmallow – CWA 1965 Cookbook


  • Peach Marshmallow – CWA 1965 Cookbook

    Continuing with our vintage cooking experiment, for the second week of January we chose what looked to be a very simple recipe: January 13 – Peach Marshmallow.

    Peach Marshmallow recipe

    That looks pretty simple, right? Here’s the recipe:

    Fill up a dozen peach halves (drained from a tin) with crushed pineapple. Top with marshmallow and grill under a slow heat until marshmallows melt a little. Serve with ice cream.

    The first hurdle I ran into was actually getting canned peach halves. Most of the ones on offer in our supermarket were slices. Eventually I found one brand though…

    Peach Marshmallow ingredients

    Rather than making a dozen, I just made 4 for us after dinner. I crushed some of the pineapple and filled each of the peach halves with it, then topped it with a marshmallow.

    This is where I registered a concern: I went with Pascall Marshmallows because I figured they were an Aussie brand and would therefore be closest to what the recipe was asking for. Unlike American marshmallows, these are sold in the candy aisle and are intended to be eaten like sweets. They were coated in cornstarch and had almost a crunchy exterior. I had no idea how they would melt.

    Peach Marshmallow

    I put them into the oven with the top element turned on, but rather low on the temperature (like 170C). As you can see they did start to toast and melt a bit. I think they were in there well under 10 minutes, and I pulled them for fear they’d burn.

    Melted marshmallow

    Here they are, served with ice cream.

    Peach Marshmallow

    It was… okay. I mean, it’s just a peach, some pineapple, and a marshmallow. The canned peaches did get warm, but they were still pretty firm. The marshmallow was sticky and the outside was still rather crunchy, though the middle was gooey. This didn’t feel like that impressive of a dessert.

    Enter the Snook.

    He decided to have a go at modernising it and fancying it up. We started by doing some research on marshmallows, and after talking to some of my older friends, it looks like packaged marshmallows were not readily available here in 1965. Instead people would have been making their own using a recipe like this. “That just looks like a Swiss meringue!” he said, and got to work. He assembled his ingredients. (The plastic container has the rest of the pineapple in it.)

    Peach marshmallow ingredients

    He started by separating the eggs. After some internal debate he decided to do two eggs, which he weighed and then adjusted the recipe accordingly. (He did have a bit left over though, so one egg might have been sufficient.) He didn’t bother with any cream of tartar, and he had vanilla essence rather than a bean.

    Separating eggs

    The egg whites were mixed with sugar and gently cooked over a double-boiler until they reached the required temperature.

    Cooking eggs and sugar mixture

    Meanwhile, he halved and pitted the fresh, ripe peaches, and he brushed them with macadamia oil. (He left the skin on.)

    Prepping peaches

    Then he grilled the peaches on a ridged grill pan.

    Grilling peaches

    Once the egg/sugar mixture was at the right temperature, he took it off the heat, added the vanilla, and began to whisk.

    Whisking

    Eventually it became thick and glossy. (He thinks he might have over whipped it a bit as he was hoping for stiff peaks, but it still looked great to me!)

    Whipped egg mixture

    Time to assemble. He filled each grilled peach with crushed canned pineapple as before, and then added a big dollop of the Swiss meringue.

    Assembling Peach Marshmallow

    And then out came the blowtorch! 🔥 He gently toasted each one to a golden brown.

    Torching the Peach Marshmallows

    And here’s the completed (Fancy) Peach Marshmallow, again served with ice cream.

    (Fancy) Peach Marshmallow

    This version was SO MUCH BETTER. The ripe peach was soft with the perfect amount of bitterness from the char marks. The Swiss meringue was delicious and fluffy with that slight burnt sugar taste from toasted marshmallows. This is something you could serve to guests and rightly feel pretty proud of yourself!

    Future enhancement: Rodd thinks there’s also scope to improve on the pineapple element, perhaps by adding a bit of rum or bourbon? Maybe caramelised and cooked down with some brown sugar and cinnamon? YES, PLEASE.

  • Shared today on Facebook

    Just over 6 months ago I handed in my Amazon badge and embarked on a new adventure with the Snook: early retirement. I really wasn’t sure how it was going to go. Would I get bored without a 9-5 job? Would Rodd and I get sick of spending all our time together? Was our planned budget unrealistic, and we’d have to become penny-pinching misers?

    I’m happy to report that the answer to all those questions was a resounding NO. I’ve written a blog post reviewing how we’ve gone on our finances, and how I’m feeling about personal projects and motivation. So far so good! 🩷

    Retirement – 6 months on…