culinary misadventures – Peter M. Ball

News & Upcoming Events

Un-Moroccan Chicken and Un Lun Dun

It’s Monday morning here, but due to the vagaries of international timezones I suspect there will not be much of Monday left by the time Say Zucchini, and Mean It arrives in my in-box. Such are the drawbacks of living on the other side of the world, I suspect. Tonight I shall make the most un-Moroccan Moroccan chicken imaginable, given that it will consist primarily of pumpkin soup with chickpeas and bits of chicken in it, spread over a layer of couscous. The couscous, by and large, is probably going to be the best bit. Possibly also the only bit that qualifies as Moroccan. It will, at least, be healthy un-Moroccan chicken, if the Australian Heart Foundation website is to be believed, and that’s probably a good thing after the week of pizza that occurred when I was last chasing a deadline. # There’s a rather nice review of both Horn and Bleed over on the Living in SIN blog,

PeterMBall 16/05/2011

Journal

418

This is my four hundred and eighteenth post to this blog, which I guess means we’re on the downhill slope towards five hundred blog entries (whereupon I probably turn into a pumpkin). The last few days have settled into a comfortable kind of routine – I get home from the dayjob, I don’t turn on the internet, I read a book until five o’clock or so, then I eat dinner and force myself to write 1000 words before I go to sleep. My brain’s resisting the latter – last night I wrote the first five hundred words with ease, then scrambled for the last four hundred or so for hours before admitting defeat and collapsing into bed. Tonight there is teaching, which means I’ll have to forgo the reading, and the 1000 words will be an even bigger challenge. It needs to be done, because at this point 1000 words a day is pretty much the line between me and

PeterMBall 24/03/2011

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Mmm, BBQ

S0 yesterday was pretty good day. There was a delayed birthday dinner with the family, whereupon we set out for The Smoke in New Farm and ate our own bodyweight in American-style BBQ, then we set out to see Wil Anderson at the Brisbane Comedy Festival, and then because I was full of food and happy I stayed up to listen to the latest Galactic Suburbia podcast instead of going to sleep. Somewhere in there the home internet was fixed, so I rejoined the online world, and I wrote some things. About 1 o’clock I went to bed and actually slept for five hours, which is something I rarely do since starting the dayjob and discovered that being employed is actually far more stressful and soul-destroying than being unemployed (who knew?). So yesterday was a pretty good day, against all expectations, and tonight I make chili in the hopes that it’ll redeem today in much the same way. # The

PeterMBall 23/03/2011

Journal

Grr. Arg. Zzzz.

Last night, because I am classy, I ate a dinner of hot-dog franks and baked beans and melted lite cheese slices with BBQ sauce. Then I wrote and wrote and wrote and accidentally fell asleep at the keyboard, which is one of those things that hasn’t happened to me in about fifteen years, and is even less productive than it sounds ’cause you wake up and discover all the odd things you’ve edited into the story by rolling onto the laptop in your sleep. In a less sane and reasonable world, I would have woken up this morning and gone back to writing, fixing the editing mistakes. Unfortunately I live in a world where the landlord is insistent about things like rent, so I got up and went to work at the dayjob instead. I may have done all of this, up until the going to work part, in my underwear. It’s also entirely possible I did not. I’ll leave

PeterMBall 07/03/2011

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

The Lady of Situations and Moby Dick

I’m always a bit ish-ish about recommending books to people. Giving books to people is fine – there are few things I enjoy more than randomly giving friends books they might enjoy – but asking people to trust my taste and spend their hard-earned money on something is…ish-ish. This doesn’t mean I don’t do it. And after slinging stones in their direction last month about some writer’s guidelines I thought I’d take a moment to recommend a few of Ticonderoga Publications publications, especially since they’re running a sale that takes 10% off pre-orders and 20% off direct orders of their existing fiction until the February. The former, for instance, would include Bluegrass Symphony by L.L. Hannett in both Hardcover and Softcover, while the latter would include Angela Slatter’s The Girl With No Hands and Other Stories, and ordering work from either of these fine writers would be a worthwhile use of your hard-earned discretionary cash. I’d also point out that aspiring writers

PeterMBall 17/02/2011

Works in Progress

Chaos, Chili-Carrot Cake, & The Twelve Day Deathmarch

On Friday I sat in the middle of messy apartment, contemplating the messy state of affairs, thinking a series of messy thoughts. And after a while I thought, well, enough of that then, it’s kind of a drag, and instituted a plan to cut through the chaos and get stuff done. I spent Saturday and today cleaning rooms, ordering bookshelves, and taking care of long-neglected tasks. Not enough that I’ve instituted order across the flat, but enough to give me a foothold. That was phase one. Phase two requires me to finish the rewrites on Cold Cases*. I have twelve days. That’s a chapter’s worth of rewrites per day, about two-and-half to three thousand words. If I succeed, I will allow myself to have a guilt-free weekend of not-writing in May**. I’ve prepared for this task by making a weeks worth of meals in advance, stocking up on coffee, and dancing around the house to Goldfrapp***. To aid me in

PeterMBall 18/04/2010

Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

One of the reasons I like the future

Being a single bloke who lives alone, I have a certain blindspot when it comes to shopping. Actually, I have several, but the one I speak of here primarily kicks in when browsing through the area marked “fruit and vegetables.” I have my staples – there’s usually a spanish onion or two in the house, plus some potato and sweet potato if I’m splashing out- but I generally stick with a few vegetables and rarely touch the fruit at all. If ever there were a guy who steps forth to challenge the statement that “man cannot live on curry and pizza alone,” it’d probably be me. I’ve mostly arrived at this situation through habit, laziness, and the tendency towards belt-tightening when one lives alone and doesn’t get to share around the general costs of living. I’m also aware that it’s not a good state of affairs, especially since I’m taking the easy route of take-away food far more often than

PeterMBall 12/02/2010

News & Upcoming Events

Things I need to do in Adelaide

1) Eat a pie floater. Maybe two, if I survive the first one. 2) Eat a frog cake. Oddly, the pie floater does not fill me with fear, but this little sugared treat does. Insidious looking things, I tell’s ya. Insidious. 3) Launch Horn on Sunday (5pm) 4) Pick up a bunch of Horn pre-orders for family & friends who aren’t attending the con. 5) Remember the names for the beer sizes in SA (you have pints, right guys? right?). Find a pub that has Cooper’s Stout on tap. 6) Slap Jason with a big steel gauntlet of iron resolve until he starts working on his novel. 7) Take part in the Urban Fantasy, High Fantasy, and Magic Realism panel on Saturday morning. If you’re trying to track me down at any point during the con, that’s your rough guide for finding me. All offers to help me go find pies and black beer will be gratefully accepted 🙂

PeterMBall 03/06/2009

Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Challenge!

Try and describe the taste of coke (regular or diet). Then go and drink a mouthful, to see how accurate your recollection of the taste is. Bonus points if you can do it without falling back on either the fizz or the use of cola as a flavour descriptor. I’ve been trying to do this – and failing – for most of the day.

PeterMBall 07/05/2009

Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Alas, poor schnitzels, I knew them

It’s Saturday morning and I’m sitting here listening to Chibo Matto and Regina Spektor, trying not to regret last night’s culinary adventure. This is what I ate: Actually before I start, it’s probably worth pointing out that I have this obsession with bad fast-food from places that do their best to try and replicate the fast-food experience of a McDonalds but just don’t quite get it. Show me someone’s random idea to try and revolutionize the franchise fast-food industry or a local take-away doing something odd and I’m there with a couple of bucks in my pocket and a desire to see their worst. It’s a sickness, I know, but it’s mine and I’ve come to grips with it. It’s like those people you know who are obsessed with bad movies and love them for their flaws – I’m obsessed with bad fast-food and love it despite the stomach pains and added kilograms that result. Call it a desire to

PeterMBall 28/03/2009

Tag: culinary misadventures

Un-Moroccan Chicken and Un Lun Dun

418

Mmm, BBQ

Grr. Arg. Zzzz.

The Lady of Situations and Moby Dick

Chaos, Chili-Carrot Cake, & The Twelve Day Deathmarch

One of the reasons I like the future

Things I need to do in Adelaide

Challenge!

Alas, poor schnitzels, I knew them

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