33 Week Challenge Week 3 - Postsecret

Challenge no. 17 - Send in a Postsecret (www.postsecret.com)

(bonus challenge, take a picture of my shiny face once a week)

33 Week Challenge Week 2 - Souffle!

Ah Friday nights: drugs, alcohol, gratuitous sex… soufflé.

Ok, so only two of those things happened on my Friday night and I’ll give you a hint, neither of them was drugs or sex. I drank a small amount of alcohol, and made an awesome amount of soufflé: Challenge Number 5.

Unfortunately, the sickness which I predicted last week that would hit me sometime during winter has already got me, so this will be a quick, probably not very funny post, written from my bed. Huurrrrrgh. Excuse me.

I didn’t really know anything about soufflé before I started, but conversations with a few people and a few internet searches led me to believe that: 1. Soufflé is frighteningly difficult to make, 2. No it’s not, really, everyone just says that and 3. It’s just cake with lots of extra egg white.  I also learnt that there can be sweet or savoury soufflés… um, there was really no question here which I was going to make – so I made this one: easy chocolate souffle recipe - May I suggest to give this a quick skim read. It will help you feel as though you were there! And will also mean that I don’t have to explain each step. (ACHOOOO – excuse me).

I went out and bought all the ingredients, except that my local IGA DIDN’T STOCK LINDT, WTF? But I got Cadbury Old Gold 50% anyway which proved to work just fine and as I bought 4 times more than I needed for no real reason has also served as a delicious snack during my illness.

Upon starting the recipe it suddenly occurred to me that there was no flour in this cake-with-extra-egg-white, or indeed any milk. I thought perhaps the author was a bit crazy. But I went ahead and followed it anyway, because I am not an idiot like those on Masterchef who think they can make stuff better than the professional chefs. Honestly, how can you fail?! There are step-by-step instructions in front of you! “Oh I don’t believe in measuring ingredients…” Dimwit!

ANYWAY, I got my housemate to melt the chocolate for me, as the author of this recipe clearly has 6 hands (or perhaps a better electric beater than me) and was able to melt the chocolate, beat the whites and combine the yolks and sugar simultaneously. I, being possessed of only 2 hands and also little patience, was not capable of this. 

The recipe has some oddly specific phrases, like “drizzle the chocolate slowly into the egg yolk mix”. I wasn’t quite sure where the line between drizzling and pouring was, but I managed to wing it fairly successfully. Once you’ve drizzled, and beaten, and folded in the correct order, you’re left with a not very cake-like mixture at all. It’s very light and sort of moussey. I baked this concoction in the oven and 25 minutes later, had 3 rather delicious-looking soufflés. Unfortunately, they sank almost instantly, but they never looked like the picture on the website anyway, so I wasn’t too upset. They also tasted awesome!

I took a photo of them, and was subsequently dismayed by my ugly kitchen bench:

So I took another photo of them on a tea towel.

I wasn’t going to tell you that bit, originally – but I like to be genuine on this blog. I’ll never lie to you, I promise (mostly). I would count this challenge as not finished, but certainly started. I could improve them a bit and besides, I want to eat them again - so I'm going to keep making them under the guise of completing the challenge. I may serve them at the dinner party I will be hosting, which is number 11 on the list.

Also, herb update ( I definitely just got myself out of bed to and into the rain to take this photo, so be grateful and/or excited):

33 Week Challenge Week 1 – NYWM and Herb Babies!

And so it begins: my foray into starting stuff for no good reason. First let me tell you that I kind of did 2 things this week. So I don’t know if that just stuffs it up – or whether it gives me a nice bit of grace for the week where I’m sick (inevitable at least once during winter) or the week where I suddenly get busy with gigs and work (hopefully this will happen at some stage) or the week where I can’t be fucked (guaranteed). In all likelihood it won’t matter because I’ll get bored at some point and give up anyway.

This week I did number 1 (plant and look after some herbs) and number 12 (register this blog for National Young Writers Month). The list is not yet completed, I will be updating it here – feel free to continue to contribute.

Challenge Number 12 was suggested by Alex Neill, whose blog I have been following for a little while now. She’s pretty excellent. She writes for GNW-TV (which makes her a god in my mind) and also writes another blog about TV that features Dr. Who a lot, which should put her in good stead with a lot of my readers. You should check her out. Alex is a rep for National Young Writers Month, which is a month in which young writers… write. Ok, I’ll admit, I don’t know a lot about it yet, but I’m about to find out. Every Monday in June I’m going to write a blog about my challenge adventures and the good people at NYWM are probably going to berate encourage me along the way. I’m hoping this will get me into a good routine for the rest of the year.

So ultimately, number 12 was pretty easy. I just had to fill in a form. NO WAIT. I still managed to fuck that up. Name: easy, contact: easy, state of residence: easy, writing goal: fail. I wasn’t quite sure what to put down and spent too long typing something and then deleting it (should I have a word count goal? Should I choose now what challenges I’ll do? Urgh, look a typo – the writers will judge me!) and then suddenly, just as I hit on the right thing to say… I must’ve accidentally clicked submit. So now my writing goals say something like, “to write a blog every MOndf….”. YEAH! I’m going to write a blog every MOndf and there’s nothing you can do to stop me! So challenge 12 is done, if poorly. Challenge 13, actually seeing Young Writers Month through, is another story entirely. I’m sure there are some amongst my readers (Hilde?) who might enjoy this too if they were so inclined.

Challenge Number 1 I came up with all by myself. But you know what’s kind of boring/ not a good blog post? Planting herbs. Nice work, genius. So I will record this challenge primarily in pictures.

First, I went to the shop and bought a pot, some seeds, and a whole lot of dirt. I did not think to buy a trowel (I hope you’re paying attention class, as this will come up later). Stoked with how easy it was to get these items, and with myself for actually doing this just one day after making the decision to do this challenge, I set off home with a spring in my step. I did not take a picture of this moment, as within 12 seconds of leaving I realised just how freaking heavy my newly acquired dirt was. The next 5 minutes were fairly heinous. I was trying to write this blog in my mind and you should be grateful I’ve had almost a week to think about it; otherwise it would have been something much like this:

Ow

Fuck

Heavy

Fuck dirt

Ow heavy dirt

Heavy ow fuck dirt

This is the dirt/pot combo in question:

They look so innocent don’t they?

These are my herb babies:

Adorable no? Wait, flip them over…

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY FREAKING INSTRUCTIONS??!!

I didn’t take any of this into account at the shop, so I’ve managed to get herbs that like different environments to each other… and also want a lot more room than my pot can offer. Still angry/hot from my dirt walk I made the decision to ignore the majority of these, arguing that I said I was going to start planting herbs, I never said they had to be happy or healthy herbs.

I took this picture to demonstrate that I was wearing leggings as pants while doing this. Please refer to my first ever blog post on the subject… and understand that I was hot and angry, and no one else was home, and this was a perfectly acceptable time in my life to not wear pants.

Even the bastard dirt has instructions! RAAAAAGE. Haven’t plants been growing in dirt for millennia? Can it really be this hard?

I poured the dirt in to my pot. This is when I realised that I didn’t have a trowel. I used my hands and got absolutely filthy in the process.

This photo also captures the moment when I went “huh, these coriander seeds look heaps like…. Coriander seeds. Oh.” That is to say, that I have cooked many times with coriander seeds but it’s never occurred to me that they would look the same if you bought them in a packet to plant. Derp.

I planted all my little baby herbs at intervals that suited me, not them (they have to learn to respect me), patted them down, and then came up with a cute way of marking where they are:

And that is the story of how I planted some plants. I’ve remembered to water them every day this week, so provided that keeps happening you’ll get some photos of their progress as time goes on. RIVETING.

Stay tuned next week – I still don’t know what challenge I’m going to do. So it’s a surprise for me too!

L

Challenge!

First, let me say that there IS a point to this blog: there’s a challenge at the end. You can skip to the end to challenge me, or better yet, given the topic of this blog, you can stick with it all the way.

I am very good at sticking with things. Some things. Ok, not many things at all. That was a lie. Here is a list of things I am good at sticking with:

Theatre/the Arts Industry

Boyfriends

Harry Potter

Here is a list of things I have started but failed to stick with:

A journalism degree

At least 5 jobs

Sign language classes

A desire to do a speech pathology degree (that’s right, the desire – I didn’t even make it to enrolling)

A Psychology Major

One linguistics course (I dropped out after waking up one morning and realising I had an exam that day that I didn’t want to do/hadn’t studied for)

Being in a choir

Cycling

Jogging

A webseries about my housemates and me

A kid’s book

A novel

Far more shortstories and plays than I would care to count

This list

I have a real desire to do a lot of things. I have a tendency to turn to my mum, for example, (as I did recently) and say: “You know, I really want to work with animals, like maybe being an animal trainer at a zoo. That would make me really happy”. I mean, it would make me happy but that’s not the point; the point is that even if I did suddenly change my entire career path, get an entry level job at a zoo and try to make that dream a reality, I would find something else to become passionate (read: frighteningly enthusiastic for 3 weeks) about, get distracted and quit before I’d even gotten to touch an animal.

I’m really not sure how those around me take me seriously. Perhaps they don’t. I thank them then, and congratulate them on their impressive acting skills. Because every time I start something new my family, friends and boyfriend all agree it sounds like a great idea that I should go for.

Karate is my current thing. I’m really into it, and bore the pants off anyone who gets within 2 meters of me during my post-punching-someone-in-the-gut high (which can last days). But given my record, I honestly can’t know that I won’t bore myself out of it next week.

A little while ago (like… last year sometime) my thing was arts and crafts. I bought a bunch of canvases and spent happy afternoons on my bedroom floor painting badly and gluing things to things. But I stopped… and there is still a milk crate full of craft crap and one lonely canvas sitting in my room.

More recently, I started an awesome Harry Potter inspired artwork that was basically big bits of card with pictures and one of my favourite chapters written out in tiny handwriting. I bet you can’t guess where it is? Buried… half finished in the mess of other things I’ve never finished on my desk. Yeah. I can’t believe I was surprised either, but I was. It’s a damn shame. The snake I drew was particularly good.

ANYWAY. This blog is called “challenge” because I want, finally, to put what is clearly a secret talent to work. There are 33 weeks left in this year. I would like to start something new every week. But I think it’s been established that I’M not about to think of 33 things. That is way too many things, I will probably get distracted and start writing a list of my favourite lists, or my favourite blogs I like to read while procrastinating (what? It hasn’t taken me HOURS to write this… honestly). So, I would like to challenge you – to give me 33 things I can start, 1 a week, but not necessarily finish. I challenge myself to actually do this. And also to write a blog about each one. I don’t have to do them in order, but I am going to start next week.

So… I have started this for you. (actually, my housemate Samara did most of these… I really am that shit). LAST UPDATED 28th August - you can click on the purple words. They are links, and will take you to the relevant blog. It only took me about 8 weeks to do that. 

1.     Plant and look after some herbs. Started!

2.     Film a Youtube video

3.      Take a partner dance class (Samara)

4.      Harry Potter Movie Marathon (Samara)

5.      Learn how to make a soufflé (Samara) Started!

6.      Make my own paper (Samara) done! (if poorly)

7.      Go rockclimbing  (anon) done!

8. Get a tarot card reading (anon) done!

9. write a song (jadams)

10. make some form of clothing (mim/Emily)

11. Host a dinner party (alex)

12. Register this challenge/blog for National Young Writer’s Month (alex) Done!

13. Write a blog every Monday for the NYWM done!

14. volunteer at a soup kitchen (cdm – chris is that you?)

15. watch a sunrise from mt coot-tha (cdm) done!

16. Update my blog background (cdm)/ learn how to do this!

17. send in a postsecret (kyle) Done!

18. go to Melbourne (another anon)

19. raise money for charity (another anon) started!

20. Become a fan of Dr Who (or rather, watch this season - I'm sure fannage will ensue) Achieved!

21. write a page of news relevant/topical jokes um... fail!

22. make a kite that flies (Dave)

23. get dreadlocks (another, lovely anonymous) not happening. I cut off all my hair!

24.  conquer my phobia of roller coasters

25. go sky-diving

26. exercise every day for a week! Done!

27. do the bridge to brisbane (10km)

28. knit something and finish it (hilde) done!

29. have a dress made for me by the lovely Rachel Burke over at imakeyouwearit done!

30. submit some writing to some sort of writing competition

31. go a week without social networking sites done!

32. be an extra in a film/tv show/ad

33. Go for  hike over a mountain (Jono)

BONUS: take a photo of myself every week 

Please add suggestions here in the comments, or on my twitter, or my facebook, or to my face or something.

I want you to know the irony of this is whole thing is not lost on me, and that there is a very real possibility I’ll do 2 of these things and then join a circus instead.

L