Oh…That’s the Chest Cavity

The fiance is a fantastic cook, but when it comes to cooking things unfamiliar to him he’s woefully inept.  Once when I was sick I asked him to make some hard boiled eggs.  As somebody who hates eggs he was confounded. 

“How do I make hard boiled eggs?” he queried. 

“Um…put an egg in boiling water for a while.”

After the eggs had boiled away for a while he drained the water.  “Now what?” he asked. 

“Now you just remove the shell,” I replied.  Duh. 

“But won’t they run all over the place?”

“No you idiot.  You just hard boiled them.”

“Oh, is that what I’ve just done?”  Ha!  I still give him a hard time about that.

Tonight he ventured into the realm of poultry again, making his first roast chicken.  I observed him in the kitchen looking puzzled.  He grumbled, “there’s no way all this stuffing is going to fit in there.”

:pause:

“Oh…that’s the chest cavity.  I was trying to stuff the chicken’s butt!”  Turns out he was trying to stuff the neck.  Which makes me wonder if he was planning on tying the wings together to cover the neck hole.  How does one confuse a neck hole with a butt hole?  Thankfully his knowledge of the female body is far better than his knowlege of chicken anatomy!

Why I Should Not Be Left to My Own Devices

The fiance is the cook in the house (and the reason I’ve put on a good 10 pounds since he moved in).  I can bake up a storm, but when it comes to cooking dinner and the like I’m a bit of an idiot.  I can go months without having to go near a cooking appliance, so his fears that I am going to starve to death in his absence are somewhat founded. 

 All the shops are closed for Good Friday so I’ve been forced to prepare my own meals today.  For lunch I decided to warm up some pita bread to eat with Hummus.  How can anybody fuck that up?  Here’s how: put the pita bread in the broiler to heat it up and make it a bit crispy, sit down in the living room to surf the interwebs, then totally forget about the pita bread…until the smoke alarm starts blaring.  Perhaps I should stick to using the microwave.

I’ve been alone for less than 24 hours and have already managed to nearly burn the house down.   God knows what I’ll manage to do in the next 10 days.

Cab driver or master chef?

Despite its reputation as a homogenous white country, Australia is incredibly diverse.  It has certainly become more diverse since the white Australia policy is thankfully no longer in force.  Apparently white people like diversity and I suppose we’re no exception.

The immigration rate is greater than the natural population growth, meaning that the number of people relocating from overseas is more than the number of births minus the number of deaths.  Rarely will you find Australians whose family has been here for more than 150 years.  The exception, of course, being the Australian Aborigines who have been here for hundreds of generations.  My great-great grandfather arrived from Glasgow, Scotland in the 1800’s aboard the Loch Marie.  That makes my sister and me 5th generation Australian.

My workplace is amazingly diverse.  I work with people who moved here from India, England, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, South Africa, Iraq, Croatia, Scotland, Hungary, Thailand, Lebanon, Burma, Ecuador and more.  And that’s just a sample from one floor! 

Fortunately, the Howard government’s insistence on assimilation hasn’t led people to abandon their culture.  Opportunities to learn about other cultures are plentiful.  You can go to a festival, try new food at a restaurant, watch a show on SBS,  or chat with a friend.

Or, just grab a taxi.  The fiance took a cab home from the airport earlier this week and his cab driver was Indian. [Side note: Another unique thing about Australia is that passengers usually sit in the front of the cab with the driver.  The fiance tried getting in the front of a cab while we were visiting Boston and the cab driver nearly had a panic attack.]  They got to chatting about cooking and throughout the course of the ride, the driver shared some of his Indian cooking secrets.  The fiance jotted down a recipe and vowed to give it a try.

Last night he followed the cab driver’s instructions precisely.  He made the most delicious authentic Indian curry ever!  Thanks for your cooking wisdom random cab driver!  I think we found our new favourite meal.