Sunday night BBQ

SUNDAY WAS A LAZY DAY. Sundays are almost always lazy days! AS I AM WRITING THIS POST IT'S MONDAY MORNING AND I AM LOOKING OUT FROM MY DINING ROOM TO THE VEGE PATCH AND I am thinking; what a lovely day .....

On Sunday we decided to laze around and to do some "communicating and sharing". We only went out in the afternoon to buy a bit of stuff at a local mall and for SM to get some yarn.

I volunteered to cook barbie food so I got us some lamb cutlets. We already have the corns, strawberries, prawns, peperoni salami and salad in the fridge anyway. Just an easy way to cook dinner and with a cool night we had and a glass of Riesling .... awesome.    

 Food prepared

 Food cooked 20 minutes later

The lamb cutlets were super fresh and tasted good just with sea salt, crushed pepper, rosemary and a bit of extra virgin olive oil cooked on the barbie

On my request SM made a salad with vinaigrette dressing....

Frenchie

Saturday night we went out as a group for dinner at French Food Art Lygon Street Carlton. The company was good but the food was average.  It was a pleasant night weather wise, not too cold. Lygon St was packed with diners and throngs of people came out for meals and drinks. Lovely spot.

I had Tiger prawns, Château de Quinçay, garlic, flat leaf parsley, Rump steak au poivre, potato stacks, pink peppercorn sauce and Crème brulée à la rhubarbe. SM had oysters mornay, Riviera bouquet linguini, Château de Quinçay, garlic and wasabi cream and Berry et mousse au chocolat blanc for desert. The food did not live up to the beautifully sounding names, though.

 

 Nice diner room for 7 couples: Aus, Mark, Boon, Colin, Wei, Peter, Jesse, Serena, Celina, ??, ??, SM, Stella, Jeff

Photo I took of my entree, King prawns in a sauce I can't remember what it's called.

SM's entree - oyster mornay.

Home Maintenance II

The rear decking timber has lost its luster, and some places have gone a little mouldy. The French doors leading from our dining room to the decking have lost their shine and looking a bit tired. They need freshening up and spring time is the best time to do this. I go to Bunnings and buy a container of Cabot's deck cleaner and a 4 liter tin of Cabot's natural decking oil (merbau color). At the same time I get some British Paint external gloss paint (4 liters costs me $59.90, same with the decking oil) made up to the formula I want for the doors.

 Freshly painted French doors - the color is off-white and a bit driftwoody

 Freshly painted decking - merbau is a fairly dark pigment

 Freshly painted steps

I paint the side gate with the decking oil too......bit of a contrast now with the framework

 Freshly painted teak garden table

That's our rear decking and dining area looking from the side of the house

Sanding down the doors and painting them takes me 1 full day. And that's just one coat of paint which I think it's good enough. I like it. They now look good and should last a few years.....

I next start on the rear decking - cleaning it using the deck cleaner takes me a bit over 3 hours with a hand brush. I some places I have to sand down the tough stains. The decking area is approximately 16 m2. That is hard yakka. I rest for a day to wait for better weather so I can start the painting and also to rest my tired back.

Today I start painting the decking with the decking oil firstly around the sides and the area below the French doors. Then I coat the rest of the decking. And that's the first coat of natural oil. I need to let it dry for about 3 hours before applying my second coat..... All done in a total of 2 days. All in all a great result and I am happy, so is SM.

Today's weather is so good, sunny, warm and 21C. Except early in the morning it is a bit fresh. I can't resist taking some pictures around the house and see, the sky is so B.L.U.E. Beautiful day. And tonight we are going to Lygon St to have dinner with friends. It's their 21st anniversary. French restaurant it will be ..... should be good.

BBQ at home

Lat Sunday was a sunny day and we had my sister and her family over to our home for BBQ. We tried out our new electric BBQ hotplate which to us was good enough for a small group of 4-6 people. We had on the barbie my favorite porterhouse steaks, some nicely trimmed lamb cutlets, some mackeral fish, corn cobs and a freshly baked Vienna bread ...................

To cook the porterhouse it's real simple, just put them on the grill with some rosemary and sprinkle some sea salt on both sides of the meat. Same with the cutlets. For the fish I just added sea salt and lemon juice. Served with ground black pepper and mustard to taste. With the corn hobs it's best to put a nob of butter on them so they taste yummy. The Vienna? Just get them fresh from Coles.

It was a lot of fun cooking for the guys because we figured that the electric barbie is the way to go as we do not need to start a fire on charcoal and we do not need a big storage space if it were a gas burner unit I would need to leave it out on the deck and it's messy. Now I just stick the unit in our garage and it is so easy to store. The easier it is to use the BBQ and to store it and clean it the better the incentive for me to use it.

The cleaning is also easy as I just have to wash the hotplate which has a non-stick surface.....    

Getting down to brass tacks on home repairs & maintenance

Our living room timber windows have been in a state of disrepair for some time. Most older dwellings have timber window and are subjected to the elements; ours are no different. Moisture has seeped in to the timber frames over the long years and caused them to have rotten in places over time. Long before our extended overseas trip in March I have got a quote to get the windows repaired with new frames and sashes and finally I am able to get the job done done now that the weather is more agreeable.

The repair job is done over 2 days in late August by this trusty tradie, Mark Walters. He proves to be reliable and skillful. It turns out that the repair work is really fiddly and requires someone with a great deal of patience and attention to details. The frames and sashes have to be measured and cut to sizes on site and fitted. Mark does the job amicably.

  

When I request that I take his picture for my post he says, "In my thirty years of business no one has ever asked me for my picture taken". Here you go, there's always a first!

Over many cups of coffee during breaks, and one with two shots of brandy in the coffee because it is cold outside, we get to talking about his family and his love for footy and beer. He is almost like a regular Aussie tradie except that he has a bit of grey matter between his ears and an inquisitiveness for learning.

After the job is done the night mare begins! I have to paint the new timber windows! Yuck! I hate painting jobs but someone has to do it. So I spend 2 days solid, taking advantage of the good Spring sun early this week, sanding down the timber, vacuuming, painting the timber, and finally it's over. It's looking good. 

Mark says, in answer to my question, "This should last 100 years. Let's put it this way Al, the windows will still be there in good nick long before you and I have gone". That's assurance from a tradie and I hope he means it.

 The new window frames and sashes ........ costing $1400 to repair. Ouch.

This is one painting tool I find most useful - line it up on the timber edge against the glass and paint the frame so that the paint does not get on to the glass, it's brilliant

Whilst I am on a roll I also paint two zinc-alum downpipes which I added sometime ago to a front verandah gutter and a side roof gutter to facilitate better rain water flow. On my painting work list I still have the rear decking to oil and stain, a couple of deck furniture to sand down and re-varnish, one part of the dining room ceiling that needs to be re-painted due to some water leak, and to repaint my front verandah ceiling. Wow, this is incredibly overwhelming and when am I going to finish them all??? (I hope by end of September!)