RiZiFiCATiON

Cannelloni Recipe

nobody@vox.com(RiZiFiCATiON) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:09:52 +1200

Ingredients

1 good sized Onion, diced

4 large pieces of Garlic, chopped or crushed

300 - 500 grams beef Mince

4 rashers Bacon

1 bag or around 4 bunches Spinach

1 250g pot of Cottage Cheese

1 t Nutmeg

2 Eggs

Salt and Pepper to season

1 jar Tomato Passata or 2 cans crushed Tomatoes.

1 box Cannelloni tubes (I usually have one box extra spare in case I have too much mixture)

Grated Cheese for the top

Step 1) Cook Onion and garlic in frying pan with oil of choice. Add Bacon, then Mince to cook. Cool.

Step 2) Steam Spinach. Once Steamed, chop into bits (I normally uses scissors and chop 4 - 5 times whilst in the steamer). Cool.

Step 3) Combine Cottage Cheese, Eggs, Nutmeg and seasoning in a large bowl. Mix to gether, then add cooled Spinach and meat. This makes a bowl of slop. Now prepare to get a little messy.....

Step 4) Firstly prepare the dish you are going to cook the Cannelloni in, an oblong oven dish is the best. Tip either one can of Tomatoes or half the Tomato Passata into the dish as a base.

Step 5) Once the mixture is cool enough to handle, start filling the tubes with the mixture. Make sure you have clean hands! You can try using a spoon but it is easiest to hover the tube over the bowl and shove the mixture in at one end as far as possible then flip and fill the other end using your fingers. Once stuffed full, place the tube in the dish on top of the tomatoes. Repeat until either the dish is full or the mixture is gone. Depending on the dish you may need to halve the tubes, which is not so easy but I grab a serrated knife and score a line at half way, then snap the tube with my hands and it breaks roughly in two along the line, you may have casualties.

Step 6) Cover the tubes with either the other can of Tomatoes or the other half of the Passata. Cover with grated Cheese and cook in the oven (180 degrees Celsius) for 40 mins or until browned. You can stab it to check whether the pasta is soft.

Step 7) Either eat, or cool and reheat - tastes good either way!! Can be frozen after the first bake as well.

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Sour Dough Bread

nobody@vox.com(RiZiFiCATiON) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:00:10 +1200

Sour Dough Bread

This bread is delicious and I have made about eight loaves since being given the recipe two weeks ago:

Mix together:

220 ml warm water (not hot, not cold)

1/2 cup yoghurt (I use Bio farm Organic Bush Honey Yoghurt)

2 tsp lemon juice

Place in bread maker pan

Then add:

2 tsp Olive Oil

1 Tbsp Sugar

1 tsp Salt

4 cups Flour (try to use high grade flour as it has a high protein content)

3 tsp Yeast + bread improver (I have a jar of yeast mixture that is combined with bread improver, if you have separate products use 1 tsp bread improver, 2 tsp yeast)

Put the pan in the bread maker and set to dough setting. I normally do this a night and set the dough to be ready an hour after I wake. The idea as that the dough has time to rise a bit extra.

Turn the oven on to 180 degrees centigrade with fan. Empty out the dough onto floured bench and cut into two loaves. Place on floured or lined baking tray. If it is a sunny morning, cover with a tea towel and put in the sun whilst the over is warming to the correct temperature. Bake for 15 minutes.

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Another lovely day at the...

nobody@vox.com(RiZiFiCATiON) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 09:12:56 +1300

Another lovely day at the Doney's :o)

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everything evolves quicker than before

nobody@vox.com(RiZiFiCATiON) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:34:40 +1200

Over blogged, blogged out, no balance in this blogging.

You get to the point where everyone else's words and thoughts

crowd your own. less space for silence in your mind

the incessant knocking of the keys against the board

a vision deeper than the night

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You can be the change you want to see in this world…

nobody@vox.com(RiZiFiCATiON) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 22:02:37 +1200

To reach its target under the Protocol from 2008-2012, will have to reduce its ‘business as usual’ greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 34 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent: a 9% decrease on forecast business-as-usual emissions for 2008.

That’s a reduction of 8.5 tonnes of carbon output per person living in NZ.

If we listen to Al Gore then this is immediately possible by making some small, conscious changes to our lifestyle, today and every day in the future…..

LiveEarth

Live Earth has been pretty hard to miss this wet and rainy weekend and having once already attempted to work out my personal carbon balance thought I would give it a try using the new Earth Lab Live Impact EPC Personal Carbon calculator.

Your initial ECP score is based upon basic categories related to home, energy, work, commute, travel, and lifestyle, which is then converted to a personal carbon output balance. Below, is a breakdown of the different parts of the ECP:

-Your Carbon Output
-Your Lifestyle Habits
-Your Pledges/Intended Actions
-Educational/Supportive Opportunities

My Carbon Output was calculated at 21.1 Tonnes of carbon per year

By Simply

-Pledging to plant a tree (with pleasure!)
-Promising to catch the Bus four times a week (always amusing, especially when you get four buses stuck in a one way bus tunnel on your way to a meeting which you are already late for)
-Carpooling at least once a week
-Using energy efficient lighting in the house – I did this as soon as it was murmured this was going to be made law in NZ
Recycling , Reusing, Renewing…….

I was able to reduce my Carbon Output to 11.2 Tonnes of carbon per year

My Personal Earthlab Carbon Output

These few simple tasks brought about a 50% reduction in my personal carbon output, and as a citizen of sufficiently contributing to our required reduction in carbon output to honor the agreement..

Whether this is an actually achievable reduction and true calculation of what is possible or not – the point still applies. We need to something, and something is better than nothing. Small things are probably all we’ve got. We are pretty much tied to the rat race, and most of us love all things that draw power – BlackBerry’s, browsing the Internet, hot showers, good sounds and that is never going to change. How we power these needs to change...NZ needs more renewable, carbon neutral energy. We need to support companies that are able to produce energy more efficiently. The Energywatch organization has some interesting information which will fill you in more!

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Dolls clothes fun for a rainy weekend....

nobody@vox.com(RiZiFiCATiON) — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 21:12:43 +1200

Two delivery's of dolls clothes for a Miss Mackenzie Balk arrived on the door step this week......
Firstly cousin Sarah dropped of a bag of clothes from her Daisy Doll days - so cute seeing all the outfits we had for our dolls - I am sure I had the same outfits for mine so a blast from the past! The second was a fabulous range of knitted goodies from Mum - so funky!! :o) Mackenzie has used the items on her dolls this wet and wintry weekend to come up with the following fabulous ensembles.....

Picture 033

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Glow Worms at the Botanic Gardens

nobody@vox.com(RiZiFiCATiON) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 20:43:43 +1200

Wellington Botanical Gardens

A recent night adventure with Mackenzie consisted of a trip to the Botanical Gardens in the dark, on the hunt for Glow Worms. A colleague told me they were worth a look and he was right - quite lovely.

Take torches, warm clothes and steady footwear. To get the full effect it's best to walk in the dark! The winter nights are a good opportunity to see them early - we went at about 7pm.

Enter the Gardens off Glenmore Street and head to the duck pond (Feeding the ducks in the dark is quite amusing too), from the duck pond, head up the path as though you were heading to the children's playground. Instead of taking the path to the play ground, take the right one along the side of the stream, the glow worms are visible around here and down in the stream banks below. Enjoy!

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Cartoon from www.xkcd.com

nobody@vox.com(RiZiFiCATiON) — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:57:15 +1200

Cartoon

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All rather unexciting really....

nobody@vox.com(RiZiFiCATiON) — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:35:35 +1200

Winter has arrived to Wellington with a blast - cold winds, rains and darkness. The electric blankets are plugged in, the heaters rolled out of the cupboards - all very depressing really!! Mike is looking for a new job at the moment and I am working heaps as the project I am working on finishes in two weeks - oh to have some time off!! We had Mackenzie for Easter so kept her amused with lots of walks, it was Mike's birthday too which was rather uneventful. Mackenzie is now playing cards so we played a lot of Fish and Snap....am going to teach her Texas Hold em' next. This weekend we have been out to Makara for a walk, lots of work, and last night ended up taking Naomi for her first driving less on - in the dark - in the Khandallah New World car park - very amusing - and recorded on Video heere http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3391149636811495214. The garden has had a weed and the drains cleaned - so good to have some time to get odd jobs done! And now for some work.....joy!!

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A reluctant farewell.......

nobody@vox.com(RiZiFiCATiON) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:00:18 +1200

This week has been pretty tragic with the death of an old friend and dear friend Yuko. I have known Yuko since I was about seven years old when she moved to NZ from Japan with her husband Sang. Over the years they had three children whom I looked after in my spare time and eventually every day after school while I was at college. Three years ago she was diagnosed with cancer of the colon, which spread to her liver and then to her lungs. For three years she has has multiple operations, treatments and therapy's. All of them collectively have enabled her to see her oldest children finish school and go onto university. Yumi, her youngest, is still at Wellington Girls and has been so wonderful over the past few weeks. Yuko chose to die at home so for the last week the living room was turned into a hospital room, including a fabulous lazy boy chair that Yumi bought for Yuko in her last few days so she could have some comfort.

The last couple of days, comfort has only been obtained by drugs. It is an awful process to watch someone you love die. The wierd thing is, in the end, it's all you want for them as you know it will end thier pain and suffering, and ease the hardship of those affected. I stayed with Yuko on Sunday night, which was probably the last time she was really lucid, she was still drinking and eating morsels. I hope that euthaniasia becomes a choice soon. Watching someone die of starvation and thirst while thier organs fail makes you realise how important that choice is.

Yuko has been a pretty important figure in my world. Always full of advice and care for me and my choices in life, I will always hear her authoritive voice in my head. In fact she would be the reason Rizification was concieved - she would always ring my flat and ask for Riz, and thus I became. She bought culture and colour into my world as a child, and opened my eyes to a new language, new foods and new people. She bought friendship and conversation in to my world as an adult.. There are so many things to remember, and so many things never to forget. I was very very lucky to have her in my life and I will miss her and love her always.

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