#thehimalayanhombre

[thehimalayanhombre]

I present to you...

My balcony garden!!! 👨‍🌾🌱🌺

I've had a little reorganisation, repotted a few things, sown some fresh lettuce seeds, and kicked out a couple of little caterpillars.

One of my cucumber plants now has a couple of beautiful yellow flowers:

And the chilli plants are promising some spice in the near future 😁😊🌶🌶 First up, Firecrackers:

And secondly, lots of new spiky little chillies, intriguingly named Cha Cha Chillies:

Self-sufficiency, here I come!!!😅😎😋

#thehimalayanhombre #Melbourne #balcony garden #gardening #veg #chillies #cucumber #greenfingers #gardener #growing #selfsustainable #self-sufficient #sustainability

[thehimalayanhombre]

Wonton Soup... without Wontons!

Andrea made us Wonton Soup tonight, but our wanton wrapper/pastry was gone off and the shops were too far away so we improvised by adding noodles to the soup and eating the wonton filling she'd spent hours chopping and preparing with cabbage leaves as a fancy side 🤗 ingenious!

However, first we also tried boiling lasagne sheets and making fake wontons but they were too thick and fell apart so that didn't work. And my suggestion of tortillas was met with harsh mockery 🤨😣 good job I'd made ANZAC biscuits already 😁

#thehimalayanhombre #soup #food #culture club #thai #wonton #wontonless wonton soup #melbourne #home cooking #apartment life

[thehimalayanhombre]

Penguins!!!!

😍😍🐧🐧

We went for a quiet beach picnic on Friday night, only to discover a lot of other people and flies had the same idea. Abandoning it halfway through to avoid eating any more buzzing insects, we wandered along the pier to be greeted with a sign informing us of the possibility of penguins. We looked at each other and thought "we'd be so lucky!", but within 5m, we'd already spotted one!

Yes, maybe it's not a great photo but there's definitely a penguin hiding in there! They are really small, maybe a foot and a half, but distinctively black and white. We then wandered around the back of the 'pier house' to find a couple of hundred people waiting impatiently along the harbour wall for dusk and the penguins. We didn't have to wait long, and saw them swimming in from the bay, tiny in the water and looking more like ducks in the distance.

But penguins 🐧😍🐧

#thehimalayanhombre #penguins #i love penguins #melbourne #tiny penguins #pier penguins #beach picnic #friday night stroll

[thehimalayanhombre]

Very proud - 500 consecutive days of Spanish, spanning two hemispheres, three continents, at least 7 countries, and a few big life events, both good and sad. And Duo has been there all the way 😊

Here's to reaching 501 days, and learning how to communicate in such a beautiful language 🥰

#thehimalayanhombre #duolingo #spanish #500-day streak #perseverance #language learning #lingua #duo #green owl #tidgy's friend

[thehimalayanhombre]

She might be concentrating too much to see, but that is Andrea getting all excited on Day 1 of Thai Month! We decided that a Thai Green Curry was a great start to the month, nice and warming but definitively Thai and exotic.

We were very organised, lining up all of our ingredients...

There’s kaffir lime leaves, Thai basil, coconut milk, bamboo shoots, and we even trusted the recipe when it told us to put in our less-than-ideal-smelling fish sauce. We then left it simmering away :)

And...

VOILA!

Probably not as soupy/stewy as I was expecting, but more so than Andrea was, meaning it was a happy medium for us both, and Regina joined in as well, along with a Chang beer each - a very good combination and a good end to the Easter weekend :)

But, not content with only one hit of Thai food in an evening, we then watched an episode of Chef´s Table, following a Thai chef in Bangkok by the name of Bo. She was a feisty woman who wanted to show Thai people what they were missing out on in the modern world, foodwise. She was a big critic of processed ingredients (even down to using a tin of coconut milk as we had just done), and lamented the loss of traditional food as it was tempered down for the western palate. She openly stated that if people wanted Thai food they should be prepared for the intense flavours, the spice, and the unique combinations - can’t say that I disagree!

The programme followed her and her English chef-husband Dylan between their restaurant in Bangkok, their home, and the farmers and artisan food craftsmen who produced all their raw ingredients. The episode probably focused slightly more on her story to the exclusion of showcasing the food that she wanted to reintroduce people to, but it was definitely an interesting watch nonetheless, and Andrea is delighted that we have gone foodfirst into Thai month! Lots more to come :)

#thehimalayanhombre #thai month #Inkerman Culture Club #thai green curry #thai food #thailand #chef's table #Bo.lan #bo #food #cooking

[thehimalayanhombre]

🥰😊😁 All of these were empty this morning! 👨‍🍳👩🏻‍🍳👩🏻‍🍳

We've had a lot of fun, done a couple of experiments, and even a good sulk, but we now have marmalade, pickled cucumbers, fermented cucumbers & habaneros, habanero & plum salsa, Persian fermented veggies, and jalapeño & potatoes! Good old stock up for the apocalypse! 😆🥒🍋🍊🥕🧂🍯🥫

#thehimalayanhombre #pickles #marmalade #pickle day #fermentation #cucumbers #habaneros #produce #melbourne #apocalypse #prepared #preserves

[thehimalayanhombre]

AUBERGINE

Our first homegrown aubergine of the year!

It was very exciting, maybe the heaviest and sturdiest aubergine I've ever come across, with nearly pure white flesh in the middle.

I decided to roast it with just a little salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme, and some roast veggies alongside it 🤗😁 (I forgot to photo it until halfway through the meal 😅)

There is another one on the plant that is a good size, and a few more flowers have appeared since picking this one so hopefully it'll keep going throughout the summer!

#thehimalayanhombre #aubergine #balcony garden #roast veggies #sustainable #homegrown #eggplant #melbourne #green fingers #purple fingers

[thehimalayanhombre]

🤗 Christmas Eve party 🤗

#thehimalayanhombre #melbourne #Christmas #Christmas eve #Mexicans #international

[thehimalayanhombre]

Playful Pears 🍐 Misshapen Mandarins 🍊 Adorable Apples 🍎 Likeable Limes 💚🍋 Crazy Carrots 🥕

Welcome to The Odd Bunch! Back home, there has been a recent push towards selling 'wonky' or not quite as 'pretty' produce but a shop over here called Woolworth's have taken it a step further by adding cartoons that have really appealed to me ☺️

We've also had their peppers🌶 tomatoes 🍅 and courgettes 🥒 and have been eyeing up the avocados too 🥑 Lots of fun and very tasty 🤤

#thehimalayanhombre #produce #fruit #veggies #the odd bunch #Woolworths #sustainable #food #ingredients #wonky

[thehimalayanhombre]

We went to the zoo, and they had a giant loo roll 🤷‍♂️😅

#thehimalayanhombre #melbourne zoo #melbourne #loo roll #statue #toilet roll #zoo

[thehimalayanhombre]

How to make Pan de Muerto

Step 1: Close your eyes and mix egg into the flour crater

Step 2: Make a mess! For half an hour!

Step 3: After leaving to rise, karate chop into blobs

Step 4: Decorate the big blobs with the little blobs

Step 5: Leave to rise again and then put in the oven

Step 6: Take out the oven to cool

Step 7: Add melted butter and sugar

Enjoy 🤤🤤🤤

#thehimalayanhombre #bread #pan de muerto #baking #melbourne #kitchen

[thehimalayanhombre]

Plants 😊 and soil everywhere! It's the start of Spring over here, so I've got ahead of myself and bought a few little ones to grow on the balcony - it's west-facing so the sun doesn't appear until about 2 in the afternoon but I'm hoping it will still be enough for plants that demand "full sun" ☀️ let's see!

Left to right in the black pots: aubergine, habaneros, capsicum, firecracker chillies, and jalapeños! Lots of spice 🌶️ but I've also got tomatoes, thyme, basil and coriander (Andrea insisted), and will be getting some lettuce seeds this weekend! Lots of exciting gardening ahead 👨‍🌾

#thehimalayanhombre #gardening #plants #balcony garden #melbourne #chillies #sustainable #greenfingers

[thehimalayanhombre]

Not that you can tell, but this is Andrea and I at The Stomping Ground bar/brewery to watch the Aussie Rules Football Grand Final. We went with Regina and met a friend of hers and some friends of her friend, who knew an awful lot more about AFL than we did!

Essentially two teams of 18 players have to kick the ball between the posts at the other end of the pitch (so football). However, the posts look like rugby posts but without the bar across the middle, and there are side posts too (more on those in a minute!) Players are allowed to carry the ball and tackle each other like in rugby, but they aren't allowed to throw the ball - to pass they have to instead punch it 👊 out of their own hand or kick it, or alternatively they can run with it making sure to bounce it at least once every 15 metres, which is not exactly easy considering that the ball is rugby shaped 🏉

And when they do kick it through the main posts they get 6️⃣ points. If however it goes through the side posts, they only get 1️⃣ (which is widely lamented as being a waste of time and a missed opportunity), and they also only get 1️⃣ point if the ball touched someone else on the way over, or they used their hands instead of their feet 🦶

I could go on, but really you need to watch it to understand what anything I just wrote actually looks like, but hopefully I've given you a quick taste of it! 👨🏼‍🍳

The game was pretty poor by all accounts because it was so one-sided, the exact scores somewhere around 115 - 20 in Richmond's favour. And they even had a guy make his debut! Rather him than me, with 100,014 people in attendance 😐 But we really enjoyed it, and feel a little bit more like genuine Melbournese 😊

#thehimalayanhombre #melbourne #Grand final #AFL #aussie rules #the stomping ground

[thehimalayanhombre]

Today is 400 Days of Spanish !!! Slowly, slowly starting to get somewhere with it 😊🇲🇽

#thehimalayanhombre #spanish #duolingo #learning #language learning #mexican

[thehimalayanhombre]

I forgot to show a picture of the finished bread! Looks good, tastes good 😊😊

#thehimalayanhombre #pan de muerto #bread #mexican hot cross bun #baking

[thehimalayanhombre]

Apparently, there's a contraption called a 'toaster' that I might have to try in the future... 😅

#thehimalayanhombre #food #toast #burnt #pantoast