It’s August already. Where has this year gone? I woke up on Wednesday to send the usual message to my daughters, you know, “A pinch and a punch for the first of the month…” and then I thought about it. Wow, it’s August. I mean, July is the start of a new financial year (at least here in Australia) but it jumbles up and merges with June. August though, is the last month of Winter, and the end of Winter is a very good thing. Needless to say, regular readers know how I crave Summer and eschew Winter.

Wow, it’s August already!

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Happy birthday race horses

I also believe race horses have their birthday on 01 August, so, happy birthday race horses. I’m not a fan of horse racing, but then I’m not a fan of any animal racing. I like watching those slow motion gait movies of animals walking, running, trotting, galloping, sprinting and jumping. I could watch them all day long, along with movies of mushroom clouds from nuclear weapon explosions. I just have no interest in watching horses, camels or greyhounds running around a track. Wild horses running, sure, a pack of dogs hunting, yes, but just not horses with jockeys on board galloping around a track. Yes, I’m that person who doesn’t get that excited on the first Tuesday of November. For people who aren’t from Australia, that’s the day when a horse race allegedly stops a nation. I’m not saying I’ve never joined others and watched the Melbourne Cup on a TV, but if I have something else to do, like work, I’ll do that.

The Ekka

The best thing about August is The Ekka. Being Brisbane born and raised, The Royal National Association (now known as the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland) holds “the show” or “The Ekka”, every August for ten days in the RNA Showgrounds in Brisbane which is opposite the Royal Children’s Hospital (which no longer exists), the Royal Women’s Hospital (which is now no longer an isolated entity), and the Royal Brisbane Hospital (now the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital). I love attending The Ekka. It wasn’t always that way though. In my twenties when I was living in Brisbane, it wasn’t something I wanted to attend every year. Now that I exist in Canberra, I want to attend every year, mostly because I love being with my daughters and enjoying an afternoon and evening out with them. I look forward to attending this year and enjoying the cake decorating, wood chop, the fireworks and evening entertainment, a strawberry sundae, and possibly a Dagwood dog.

Chat, coffee, and cake

I caught up with a Canberra Tweep yesterday for a chat, coffee and cake. It was good to meet a friend in person for the first time.

has *known* @garydlum for years on here. We even work in the same place.
Today we met for the first time
He gives good hugs and has good taste in cake

— StitchesInMyHeart (@BoxedUpHeart) August 4, 2018

Annual fire and emergency competency

Do I feel more competent? So long as I remember RACE. Remove the patients from danger without putting yourself in danger. Alert or raise the alarm. Contain the fire by closing a door if it’s safe to do so. Evacuate to a safe area.

Master Chef finale

This year marked ten years or ten seasons of Master Chef in Australia. The show has spawned spin off versions all around the world. Out of the two main reality cooking TV shows on free to air TV, it’s my preferred viewing choice. The other one, doesn’t rate a mention. I just can’t get over the amount of hate this year on Twitter. So many tweeps have been complaining of bias and cheating by the judges. Tweeps allege some judges favour some contestants, others claim the judges have been interfering too much during a cook and putting some contestants off their game. I tend to think of it as a condensed version of what has really gone on over many hours of cooking and recording. Every second that is broadcast has to be broadcast worthy and so we don’t see everything that happens behind the scenes, we don’t see all the takes required to get a shot. I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt to the judges and the contestants and I feel it was a good season this year. My favourite cooks didn’t make it to the end, but I’m happy that Sashi took out the title. The best thing about Master Chef being finished for 2018 is that I can now get back to my normal sleeping habit of going to bed at 8.30 pm. I feel like I’ve been sleep deprived for a couple of months.

Foldio360

A few weeks ago I was watching Leigh, aka, SnapChick on YouTube and she was demonstrating the Foldio360 turntable. Google recently announced that recipe cards in food blogs would include fields not only for keywords but also for video either natively hosted or embedded with code from services like YouTube. I’ve done some videos on Yummy Lummy before, but I’ve lost the motivation to set up two cameras, synchronise the audio and then edit it all for a short video in an environment of atrocious ADSL upload speeds. It got to a point where I would use 4G via a tethered smartphone to upload the videos. I’m excited though that the NBN may be in my area soon and my upload speeds will be significantly better.

So I thought, if recipe cards can now contain video, how could I do that simply. The turntable seemed like a reasonable way to assist me to capture a moving image. It would also help show off the meal from all angles. The Foldio360 turntable is from the Republic of Korea and sold through Hypop in Australia. It requires a smartphone app for its operation and you can use a smartphone or any other camera in conjunction with it. The app also enables a 360° function which is pretty neat and results in about 24 (or more if you choose) jpg, a nice gif and a *.mov movie. The quality of the in-app images and movie are not as good as video from my Nikon DSLR which is what I prefer to use.

Spirit animals

A few friends at work have done a Buzzfeed survey to identify their spirit animal and we’ve been having some fun with each other as we play on each others’ animal personality or behaviour. I identified as an Orca. A majestic and powerful creature, at home in water and playful with Orca friends. One of my work friends is a Crab 🦀 so naturally, I felt the need to cook a meal with crab in it during the week 😂

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Thursday dinner. Curry crab meat and quinoa. I pan-fried leftover quinoa with spring onions, red chillies, sesame oil, and cherry tomatoes. I added a tin of crab 🦀 meat with freshly cracked black pepper, coconut 🥥 cream, chopped coriander, lime juice, lime zest, chopped parsley, and poppy seeds. Served with sliced avocado 🥑 💚💯 #weightloss #lowcarb #yummylummy #foodphotography #lime #leftovers #quinoa #crab

A post shared by Gaz The Human Macrophage (@yummylummyblog) on Aug 2, 2018 at 3:22am PDT

What have I eaten this week?

This is a gallery of photographs. Click on an image and then scroll through the photographs.

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Final thoughts

How do you feel about horse racing?

Do you like attending ‘shows’ (or state/county fares for friends from the USA)?

Can you believe it’s August already?

These are “My thoughts and stuff”, so if you disagree, feel free to let me know. Constructive and positive criticism is always welcome.

Winter getaway