mountain masala

mexican pizza and asian prawn omelette

a dreary day yesterday - hanging out for spring! i reckon that one of last night's pizzas was a brilliant innovation, if i do say so myself. it needs some fine-tuning, but ....

i used our regular home-made pizza base (bread machine - 200 ml warm water, 2.5 cups bread flour, 1 3/4 tsp yeast - makes 2 thin pizza bases.) tomato base plus tsp pesto, some grated mozarella. using a pizza stone makes all the difference, and they don't cost much.

the topping consisted of sliced, baked french shallots, slices of atlantic salmon, mexican tomatillos (you buy them canned...), baked1/2 cherry tomatoes with basil, slices of grilled capsicum, and a bit of grated gruyere cheese. on the cooked pizza I put avocado slices and sour cream on each slice of fish and splashed mexican chilli sauce over the top. i could have added some lime juice and fresh coriander... next time...

i sometimes buy local prawns cheap on a friday, put some on saturday pizza and then cook up the rest on sunday. tonight i tried the excellent prawn and tomato omelette from kylie kwong's "recipes and stories". i didnt quite get it right (overcooking omelette while trying to cook prawns).

the omelette has a fantastic sauce - saute 1 tbspn julienned ginger, 1 tsp sea salt, 1 large tomato cut into wedges (cook 2 mins), add 2 tbspn shao hsin rice wine (or sherry) and 1 tbspn white sugar (cook 1 min), then 1/2 cup chicken stock, 1 tbspn light soy sauce (cook 2 mins), then add 1 tsp black vinegar (or brown...) and 1/2 tsp sesame oil.

the omelette consists of 5-6 eggs. i didnt have the suggested ingredients so i added julienned zucchini, chopped french shallots, chopped baby spinach. in another pan I cooked the prawns and a bit of atlantic salmon. the recipe also said chinese cheong sausage - instead i used the leftover pizza toppings - chopped chicken, chorizo sausage and some kanmantoo bacon).

omlette and prawns/fish/sausage/chicken/bacon with tomato sauce on top. stunning.

GOT GET KYLIE'S COOKBOOKS! what she does with flavours is remarkable.

this afternoon i had the privilege of attending the ordinations of kynan brookes, marty rosenberg and ernest sorensen, all of whom i've known for various lengths of time. a great service and i was deeply moved by their gift of service to the church.

free music site

bands giving away free sample songs from their albums - from the looks of it largely unknown bands...

www.rockridgefree.com

looks like a music management company or record label. some nice stuff there - got to it from paste music.

living with dirt

i'm recovering from leading chapel today on mark 7 - called it, you guessed it - "living with dirt". here are some of the bits and pieces...

i put a bunch of signs outside and inside - WIPE YOUR FEET, WASH YOUR HANDS (we had bowls), SIT UP STRAIGHT, NO TALKING, etc etc. The communion table had yellow CAUTION tape (from Bunnings) around it (idea from cheryl). 

when people entered i had a movie loop of a ink drop into clear water (from istockphoto.com I think....., as was the hands photo) music was "you will find" from "fractured, broken and beautiful" by dubh - brilliant album available from proost.

unurth - new local video series

here's the start of a new video series produced in adelaide seeking to put gospel stories in plain language. this one feature tim hein, pastor of citysoul, an inner city church plant with young adults.

smoky eggplant & chicken soup

about time for a recipe!
adapted from "big flavours of the hot sun" by chris schlesinger and john willoughby

cook 2 medium eggplants over a flame until the outside skin is blackened
slice an onion thickly. fry it on moderate heat until cooked and brown-black on top and bottom. meanwhile fry some garlic cloves and thick slices of 2-3 tomatoes.
puree the above, eggplant skin and all, with a couple of tbspns olive oil.

put in a pot with 1 litre chicken stock. add up to another litre chicken stock to get the consistency you want. simmer with rosemary, black pepper and a bit of salt.

brown and chop some chicken breasts and throw them in to simmer on low heat for a while.

that's it. easy and fabulous.

(the books adds rosemary & garlic butter as dollops in each bowl - i just put the stuff in the pot!)

save water

15 winning photos on an environmental theme from a local competition here in Adelaide.

craig

new moby music

i'm posting this as my 'soundtrack' category for worship music has been rather quiet.

i like the new moby album "wait for me" even though some of it seems derivative of himself....

recently i used the track "grit" in college chapel with a looped video of dripping water in the forest (one of the free monthly videos from istock) to go with Psalm 63.

i also used the track "wait for me" with Psalm 51 - a video series of people in confessional poses.

both seemed to work well.

a few other tracks on the album that immediately stand out. its lush, looping, moody, but at times seems a tad contrived.

things i've been doing

well actually i've been crook for the last few days. thought i finally got swine flu, but since i started getting better after a really bad couple of days i havent been to the doc.

i dragged myself out of bed for week 2 of "the welcoming church" last thursday, and then regretted it for the next 2 days!  we have 50+ people from the corner uc, salisbury, semaphore, gartrell, glenelg, grangem modbury, summertown, vermont and others.

it's been a great couple of weeks. in a sense it's easy stuff to teach because people are keen, there's a lot to learn, and you can have fun doing it.

i've decided to blog about this stuff over at www.growing-disciples.org, as it suits our brief there. you might see that i've added an RSS feed from there over to the right... currently going through Edward T Hall's four notions of communal spaces.

i led a session on youth spirituality at our national in-service for children, youth & family workers. I'm blogging about that over at www.youthspirituality.com. a feed for that site added here too...

our youngest daughter turned 14 on sunday! cannot believe it. we celebrated with a home-cooked meal including pot pies with prawns and balmain bugs with leeks and potatoes in a gruyere-jarlsberg cheese sauce, followed by home-made vanilla bean ice cream with blueberries. an adelaide hills d'arenberg sauvignon blanc and some sensational local woodside cheeses.

my sunday morning your group is making a silent movie of the mark 7 reading for sunday 30th. a lot of fun and i might post the result.

new music.....

finally the bandwidth is back!

new music this month.... a bit more than usual - i found out i had bonus credits on emusic....

Annie Lynch & the Beekeepers - free with my pastemusic.com VIP subscription - dreamy folk. gorgeous
Madness - "Complete Madness" - now to introduce the kids to British ska!!!
The Felice Brothers - "The Felice Brothers" - Dylanesque folk-rock, harmonica and all...
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - "Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit" - he's an ex-Drive By Trucker member - what more can I say? its southern and it rocks
Blackbud - "Blackbud" - pop-rock crooning, upbeat and mellow.
Belle & Sebastian - "The Life Pursuit" - them Scot songsters...
1990s - "Kicks" - ha! - brash rock that sounds a decade old. brilliant!
Bob Dylan - "Together Through Life" - on sale at iTunes
XTC - "Oranges and Lemons" - i had this classic on tape and have long lost the tape. great psychedelic Beatlesque melodic music
Doves - "Kingdon of Rust" - great album, a bit Coldplay in parts (the kids like it!)
Elvis Costello - "Secret, Profane and Sugarcane" - back with T-Bone... no more need be said...
Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoods - "Under the Covers 2" - excellent bunch of covers - Fleetwood Mac, Mott the Hoople, Bread, and Yes "I've Seen All Good People"
Ohbijou - "Swift Feet for Troubling Times" - another gorgeous, melancholic female voice with acoustic backing. folky, sometimes country. love it.

plex media player

just trying out plex, a highly praised multimedia player for the Mac. this started because I bought a cheap (...)  1 Gb work drive from citysoftware - it works on an ethernet network so its plugged into our airport extreme  base station. (still trying to get it to work with time capsule).

Plex has a slick interface (all keyboard, no mouse action) that will let you identify multiple sources for movies, photos, and music, and play them back wired or wirelessly. it's really designed as an all-in-one media playback device for people who use their computer to watch and listen to their media.

i've got a few DVDs backed up as mp4 files (using Handbrake), and I've just put them on the network drive and configured Plex to know where they are. plasying back wirelessly works ok on some and slow on others, so I'm about to try the Apple TV settings on Handbrake to work out what data rate will work best.

Plex has an 'app store' which provides fee plug-ins to multimedia content around the world - many free, some subscription.  clearly you'll have to watch your data downloads in relation to your internet plan...

it got a 4.5/5 mouse rating from them mac guys. it looks classy, and presumably runs with apple remote etc.

off to put a bunch of music clips on the network drive.