Comment police!

Sorry people! I've just discovered that a whole lot of comments have been trapped in moderation!

Discovered them now.

Dang new fangled interweb.

I reckon my dream brain has discovered the datura plant....

...cause I've been having some crazy-arse dreams lately.

Not last night but the night before I dreamt that my sister and I were on separate business trips to a small town near to where we were brought up. I am not sure what work she was doing but I was being given a tour of the brand new state-of-the-art prison that had been recently built. (This town doesn't have a cop, let alone a prison).

We were both going to stay with our parents afterwards and on the bus back we realised we had left our luggage at the hotel (this place doesn't have a hotel and the only bus service that would have got us to our parents would have been the school bus).

On the journey back we realised that we were going to not our parents' house they live in today, but the one we grew up in. On the journey down a little country road we passed an enormous swimming complex. (The village near where we grew up in barely has a school pool).

But this swimming complex wasn't made out of concrete and the normal stuff swimming complexes are made out of. No, no, no old datura brain invented a complex that was just channels of water dug straight into the paddock, like a massive racing track but with more bendy bits. Oh and, it was full of many many swimmers with red and yellow swimming caps.

When we eventually got to our parent's house we discovered they had a lodger, television presenter Newsboy.

He's walks into my parent's living room and proceeds to work out in a lime green g-string, in front of us.

(My parent's are more likely to be raising baby monkeys in their living room than have a home gym in the living room. Can't speak for Newsboy).

And then my uber-fit, very slim brother walks in and he's laughing cause he's suddenly developed a belly. NO other body fat, just a belly.

Last night I dreamt I was about to go to a dinner party that David Bain, who is currently being retried on five counts of murder, was attending. And I suddenly became a little anxious as I didn't know whether it was cool to ask him what twelve years in jail was like, or not.

And then my father's off to Borneo for a conference.

Sigh.

I am weird.

Okay, so the bit about Borneo is actually true.

Change the country and the climate and some food just becomes wrong.

After my last two posts regarding dubious food, I received an email from a friend in England who said they reminded him about a book he got for Christmas. “The Essential Alan Coren – Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks” and a piece entitled “Eight Legs Worse”.

I quote:

'The late AC writes about a dinner party where the hostess serves Stuffed Squid, served in its own ink. “Oh Wow, the guests cried. . . . . . Though not a household name where marine biologists foregather, I know why the squid has ink in it. It is so that it can squirt it out to put off predators attempting to eat it. It works.”

He points out that “It is not a question of sqeamishness over this exotic dish or that, it is only one of suspicion and unease when faced with the ambitions of the amateur. For while it is one thing to order tiger stew from an Ulan Bator restaurateur with three rosettes in the Mongolian Michelin, it is quite another to have it ladled out before you in Stoke Newington by an English ophthalmologist whose hobby is deciphering oriental cookbooks.” '

And doesn't he have a point ?

It reminded me of not such a scary eating experience. We were on a job in Malaysia. We had a driver who took us to the local joints to eat. (Our first breakfast at the hotel cost $45 each, our breakfast at his local the following day, $1.60 for four of us). We were always served a really sweet coffee along with dahl and roti at breakfast time. The coffee (that we later discovered was just condensed milk and instant coffee) was poured, very theatrically, at great heights from the pot to the cups. While we didn't think that we would take home the dahl-and-roti-for-breakfast habit, we were all reasonably confident we would love to make that coffee when we got back home.

Heh. What dreamers.

While instant coffee made with condensed milk is perfectly acceptable in the sticky hotness of Malaysia, I cannot begin to think how wrong it would be in New Zealand.

About as appropriate as tiger stew in Stoke Newington, I suspect.

While I really like risotto....

... squid ink risotto just seems a bridge a little too far.

Thoughts?

The most disturbing blog I think I have written.

My shark swimming friend emailed me a list of the six most terrifying foods in the world. They include such tasty delights as as baby mice wine.


If you fancy a glass of it, you'll find it in Korea.

Also on the list was cazu marzu .

It doesn't look too scary from the picture however, I quote:

'This, dear reader, is a medium-sized lump of Sweet Christ. Casu Marzu is a sheep'
milk cheese that has been deliberately infested by a Piophila casei, the "cheese fly."
The result is a maggot-ridden, weeping stink bomb in an advanced state of
decomposition.'

But wait! There's more! It also comes with translucent larvae that can jump six inches in the air when you eat it. Little wonder it also goes by the name of 'maggot cheese' and has been outlawed in Sardinia.

The scariest morsel on the list for me was the number one.

I am sorry I am doing this to you, but I would like to introduce you to balut.

It's from the Philippines and I quote:

'Balut are duck eggs that have been incubated until the fetus is all feathery and beaky, and then boiled alive. The bones give the eggs a uniquely crunchy texture. They are enjoyed in Cambodia, Philippines and the fifth and seventh levels of hell. They are typically sold by street vendors at night, out of buckets of warm sand. You can spot the vendors because of their glowing red eyes, and the faint, otherworldly sound of children screaming.'

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I will go and vomit in the rubbish bin.

Sardines?

Email I received today.

'Hi Kate, thanks for your offer of your vehicle, can you please be here at 9.15 a.m so we can pack your car.?

A coupla things.

1. I, um, didn't offer my car, but that's neither here nor there.

2. Into my car they were going to have to pack: big camera, tripod, lights,other assorted paraphernalia, three strapping blokes (one of whom is 2.6 metres tall) and myself.

3. My car has two doors.

Could it be construed as double dipping ?

Today's expected high, 9 degrees.

Sigh.

Guess that means winter's moved in before autumn's moved out.

Bigger sigh.

Is there any way winter can be evicted early due to arriving before it was booked in?