And so NaBloPoMo is over for another year. Hurrah!

This year's NaBloPoMo wasn't as difficult as the first two years. Probably because I had so many themes to blog about. It's much easier to write when you know what you have to write about. Most of the hardwork has already been done for you. Maybe next year I'll blog along 7 themes, one for each day of the week.

Thanks for sticking it out guys and thanks for all the lovely comments. It's nice to know that people are actually reading fushmush.

To tell you the truth, I'm glad that today is the last day of November posting, as I'm finding today a bit of a struggle. I've come down with a bug and have spent most of the day in bed (with my laptop and a box of tissues).

While I take a break for the next few days you can browse NaBloPoMo posts of years past: 2006, 2007 and if you like, 2008.

Catch you in a couple of days.

Last night was the Movember Gala. A party held to celebrate the men who participate in Movember and raised money for a good cause. The men of Movember were invited to dress up in the style of their Mo. Mosistas were also invited to dress up, either to match their Mobro or in whatever took their fancy.

Andrew has a cowboy style moustache so he dressed up as a cowboy. I dressed up as cowgirl to complement Andrew. (I'm a big fan of Andrew's cowboy hat. It makes his moustache bearable. ) We went to the party with DC (cowboy), Claudia (Indian) and Steve (118 guy). We also ran into Martin (Moverick) and Bronwyn while we were there.


It was a fun night. I had a great time just checking out all the costumes. Some guys had gone to quite an effort. I've put together a little gallery of some of the more impressive costumes.



More photos on Facebook.

I've never had meatloaf before. It's a dish that you know about because it's often mentioned on American sitcoms. But I've never actually tasted it (or even seen it!) before. It was the perfect dish for a cold winter's evening.

This is the last recipe I'll be sharing from Jamie's Ministry of Food. The book has been a winner so far. I'm really looking forward to cooking more recipes from this cookbook. I think it's a great addition to any cookbook collection.

Pot-roast Meatloaf
Serves 4-6 (this was 2 meals for Andrew and me)

2 medium onions olive oil sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 level teaspoon ground cumin 1 heaped teaspoon ground coriander 12 Jacob's cream crackers (like Sao's) 2 teaspoons dried oregano 2 heaped teaspoons Dijon mustard 500g good-quality minced beef 1 large egg, preferably free-range or organic 2 cloves of garlic ½ - 1 fresh red chilli, to your taste 1 teaspoon smoked paprika 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 1 x 400g tin chickpeas, drained 2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary 12 slices of smoked bacon or pancetta, preferably free-range or organic 1 lemon

To make your meatloaf:
Preheat the oven to full whack. Peel and finely chop one of the onions - don't worry about technique, just chop away until fine. Place in a large frying pan on a medium high heat with 2 lugs of olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper. Add the ground cumin and coriander. Fry and stir every 30 seconds for 7 minutes or until softened and lightly golden, then put into a large bowl to cool. Wrap the crackers in a tea towel and smash up until fine, breaking up any big bits with your hands. Add to the bowl of cooled onions with the oregano, mustard and minced beef. Crack in the egg and add another good pinch of salt and pepper. With clean hands, scrunch and mix up well. Move the meat mixture to a board, then pat and mould it into a large, rugby ball shape. Rub it with a little oil. You can either cook it straight away or put it on a plate, cover and place in the fridge until needed. Place the meatloaf in a casserole-type pan or baking dish, put it into the preheated oven and turn down the temperature immediately to 200°C/400°F/gas 6. Bake for half an hour.

To make your meatloaf sauce:
Peel the other onion and chop into 1cm pieces. Peel and slice the garlic. Finely slice the red chilli. Place the onion, garlic and chilli in a large pan on a medium high heat with 2 lugs of olive oil, the paprika and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook for around 7 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds until softened and lightly golden. Add the Worcestershire sauce, chickpeas, tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and let it slowly simmer for 10 minutes. Taste the sauce and season with salt and pepper if needed.

To finish off and serve your meatloaf:
Pick the rosemary leaves off the woody stalks and put them into a little bowl. Remove the meatloaf from the oven and pour all the fat from the pan over the rosemary leaves and mix up well. Spoon your sauce around the meatloaf. Lay the slices of bacon or pancetta over the top of the meatloaf and sauce. Scatter over the rosemary leaves. Put the pan back into the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until the bacon turns golden and the sauce is bubbling and delicious. Serve with a mixed leaf salad and some wedges of lemon for squeezing over - this will add a nice sharp tang.

Back to London mornings and Sydney evenings.

From London:
"This is the view from my window at work. If I lean to the right a little bit I can also see the London Eye. If lean to the right a lot I can see the Houses of Parliament. In the mornings while I'm waiting for my computer to boot, I like to watch the people walking across Golden Jubilee Bridge on their way to work. Throughout the day, when I need a break I'll look out the window and watch the boats floating by. There is a red barge that is transporting big yellow containers up and down the Thames. The level of the river changes with the tide. I use the pillars of the bridge to see just how high or low it is. There is always a different view when I glance over. The colour of the light alone makes it different. I understand why Monet was compelled to paint the same London scene, a view of Parliament House, over and over again."




Check out Sue's morning at noodlebowl.net and her photos on Flickr.

If you know me well, you might know that sometimes I can be a little OCD. Especially when it comes to food. For example, at each of our favourite restaurants, I have a favourite dish that I pretty much order each time we visit. If I said I was feeling like Singapore Laksa or Prawn Pad Thai or Udon Noodle Soup for dinner, Andrew would know where we were eating. (NyoNya, Thai takeaway or Feng Sushi.)

I also get stuck on chocolate bars. Sometimes in the afternoons, I like to award myself a little treat. It helps me get through three o'clock syndrome (why is 3pm such a struggle?). When I started my new contract, I was going through a smarties phase. I like the chocolate in smarties better than M&Ms and they seem to last longer than a chocolate bar. In the UK, the orange smarties are jaffa flavoured and are a bit of a treat. I would always save them to eat last. After eating a few packets of smarties, I noticed that there always seemed to be less orange smarties than the other colours. I wondered if this was actually the case. Were there always less orange smarties? I decided I should find out.

So, for 30 days, I counted the colours in my smarties packets. I recorded the information in a spreadsheet. Never one to do things by halves, I also created a graph.




oooooer, pretty colours...

The results? Well the results are inconclusive. In the beginning I was averaging around 2 orange smarties per packet. Then I swapped to a different batch and suddenly I was averaging 5 orange smarties per packet. At the end, and another batch, I was back down to 2 orange smarties. Maybe it depends on how the orange smartie machine is feeling on the day of distribution. (I'd do another 30 days of data collection but I'm beginning to feel a bit meh about smarties.) In the beginning, my theory was orange smarties cost more to make because of the flavouring. I wonder if that's true.

Each day I've been declaring my orange smartie count on Twitter and the Twitter community have also become interested in the project. (They probably just think I'm a bit of a nerd.) One friend, who is a primary school teacher, even got his kids to do the same experiment. I'm waiting to hear his results.

Some smarties trivia:

• Purple is the colour that appeared most frequently with an average of 5 per pack.
  
  
• The most of any one colour in a pack was 11 purple smarties. I also got 10 yellow smarties in one pack on two occassions.
  
  
• After orange (average of 3 a pack), blue is the colour that appears least frequently.
  
  
• I had two packs that had no (zero!) orange smarties. Pink was the only other colour that failed to appear in a pack.
  
  
• The averages were: orange 2.9, blue 3.6, pink 4.1, purple 5.0, yellow 4.4, green 4.7, brown 3.9, red 4.0.