Vegemite chocolate: the Miss Soft Crab review (PM)

I love a good salt and sugar combo too. And I love trying delicious new things. But I also have a pretty strong gag reflex and a fairly cerebral approach to life, both of which would save me from buying that Vegemite chocolate. Also I'm a total chocolate snob and never buy Cadbury chocolate,  I may have walked by this stuff a hundred times in the supermarket for all I know and just ignored it.

I think perhaps the mistake K is making is thinking that just because a thing was invented and then put on supermarket shelves, it's a good idea. But the strength of flavour of Vegemite has no place with chocolate, I say, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same is true of Guinness.

I'll admit I'm curious about and repulsed by the fact this chocolate has a liquid centre. Is there Vegemite in the middle of each chocolate piece, or just some kind of Vegemite ganache? On top of the mistake of the existence of this product, it seems like a liquid centre is really opting to make it as unpalatable as possible. WTF is happening in Cadbury development? It doesn't matter, I'm not going to eat it. 

Things that make you go eewwww (AM)

Once, at work, I heard that my boss was eating a frozen sandwich. Why would a person do that? I don’t know, but a woman I work with was telling another woman I work with that our boss was eating a delicious-looking sandwich and that it was frozen. The impression I got was that this sandwich had been made, then frozen, then taken to work for lunch and then eaten before thawing had been achieved. Now I'm the kind of girl that starts thinking about my lunch at about 10:30am, so I understand premature lunch consumption and yet I still can not understand why, how a person would eat a frozen sandwich. It remains a mystery to me. Surely a large part of the deliciousness of the sandwich would have been negated by the frozenness of it? 

It reminded me of something that happened to me has a kid. One day in either the name of science or making me want to spew Russeth and Chickpea froze tomato sauce. It was gross. So gross, like an icy, granita of tomato sauce. I remember when they pulled it out of the freezer I felt so sick. And then...then, they ate it. Watching this made me run to the sink, but as I’m not much of a vomiter,  I think that was mostly for drama. But if I was a vomiter I can assure you I would have been spewing. For sure.

Far from being some minor forgettable moment, it has stayed with me as one of the defining gross events of my life. LB and I had an argument recently that was basically a result of that frozen tomato sauce incident. Sometimes with tacos, LB likes to have some store-bought salsa, and if it comes straight from the supermarket he puts it in the freezer to cool it down and give a little extra freshness to the tacos. I told him I thought it was gross and he felt that was a bit of an extreme reaction. Apparently he thought the word 'gross' was offensive, but I guess he's never seen his brother and sister eat frozen tomato sauce.

I love ice-cream, I like frozen grapes and frozen bananas, but frozen savoury really grosses me the fuck out. But that's normal, right?

On the upside, while searching for an image for this post I came across a bunch of pictures of ice-cream sandwiches, it really helped cleanse my mind palette.

Home sweet home (PM)

Oh geez. I was not expecting, nor prepared to see K’s mother’s gallstones this morning. And I gotta say, I didn’t like it. But then I thought, hey, maybe gallstones aren’t as gross as I think they are. So I did a little research. And they are. They are essentially bile crystals. And while crystal is beautiful, bile is gross – you do the math. As anyone in any American TV show ever might say.

But you know what is great about K’s mum she is always making pots of coffee, which I love, so I can totally vouch for her excellent hostessing skills. And it’s not as if she left the gallstones by K’s bed or anything, they were tucked away in the privacy of her bathroom cupboard, a place we all know that even angels may fear to tread. I guess that is where fools rush in though, right?

Anyway, luckily I didn’t have to see any actual gallstones this weekend. But after K left on Saturday night I did have the pretty awful experience of watching the terrible movie Water For Elephants. I don’t know why, the TV had ended up on it and I just watched it for ages. But it was really bad. It was so bad that even though I watched it for ages by the time it was clearly coming to an end and R.Patz was about to do something that would surely result in the downfall of Witherspoon’s tyrannical husband and the union of R.Patz and Withers I just turned that shit off and went to my sweet, sweet bed.  Take that, stupid movie!

No (PM)

Are you fucking kidding me?! FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE DOLLARS! Well, whatever, if your the fucking idiot that wants to buy those bathers you may as well drop 600 bucks on 'em. See if I care.

K actually sent me a link to those bathers yesterday, she said "Look at this swimsuit" and what I read was, "Look at this swimsuit I'm thinking of buying." Though let me make it quite clear those last 4 words were nowhere near the epage. I guess that is just what I infer from every emailed link to a product. And so you can imagine what I felt when I arrived at the webpage, confusion mainly, followed by more confusion. Followed by realisation. Followed by more confusion, you know that these bathers existed.

Also, Mate, I see the issue with the gold hardware is important, but you didn't even acknowledge the fringe. A fucking on a swimsuit.

But I guess fringes are really hot right now. Check out this fringed jumper I saw no less than 1 week ago on the Gorman website. Read carefully friends, I said 1week, not 1 decade ago.

You see fringes are so hot right now. Oh, hang about that is fucking repulsive too.

No (AM)

I thought I'd seen it all when the other day, Country Road sent me an email telling me that these jeggings are a 'must have'.

Honestly, Country Road. Get real.

They are jeggings. And they are shiny. 

The only thing that 'must be had' in this scenario is a good hard look at yourselves, Country Road. 

 

I hadn't seen anything yet, however. 

 

When browsing the interwebs for swimsuits I might like to buy for when I GO TO ICELAND NEXT MONTH in order to BATHE IN THE BLUE LAGOON with THESE ADORABLE GOONS I found this.

A pair of bathers adorned with that most practical of swimsuit materials: METAL. 

Its manufacturers ask you to: 

"Indulge yourself with the distinguished glamour of this showgirl inspired piece. The dramatic embellishments and gold hardware give this one-piece swimsuit the ultimate high impact shine."

"Gold hardware". 

"High impact shine". 

Said like these are actual things. 

How do such things get made? So many people would have had to have given this the OK, for it to find its way to the marketplace. But nothing about these bathers are OK! It looks like Brynne Edelston's version of a burkini. 

And you'll never guess how much it costs. Seriously, you couldn't possibly guess this, so don't even try. 

$599. 

I just...I can't even. 

Adults only (AM)

I decided to clean out my pantry on Sunday. I think I might have told you guys about the little problem I have been having with those tiny moths that live in open packets of flour and muesli and stuff. I'd been ignoring their increasing numbers for months, but when I walked in on two of them doing it on my bathroom mirror the other day (I'm not kidding) I knew it was time to destroy their habitat.

Cleaning out the pantry is not fun. But it's something adults do and goddamn it, I have been one of those for years now so why can't I do it to?
Mainly because i'm lazy and it's a bit gross.
I found quite a few places where little moths could live happy lives. All the obvious ones, plus a container of pistachios. Everyone loves pistachios.

This is what all the stuff in my pantry looks like when it's laid out on my kitchen table.

Gross.

This is what it looks like when you drop one of the containers of flour, and almost spit the dummy, and consider calling your mother and asking her to come over and help.

The holes in the flour are were my feet were.

But this is what it looks like when you come out on the other side.

I could look in that pantry all day.

And check it out: I decided to make a whole cupboard just for my baking stuff.

I feel like a really successful person because of this. I hope you guys can learn from my example.

What's going on? (AM)

Have you guys seen the new ad for L'Oreal's Mega Volume Collagen Mascara starring Claudia Schiffer? No? Yes? Were you as horrified as I was? Here, watch it for yourself if you like.

If you don't like I will give you the gist. Claudia Schiffer is trying to sell you a 'mega black', 'mega sexy' 24-hour-lasting mascara. Claudia's eyelashes look like mascara brushes in that ad.

See:

That picture on the left is from the ad. The one on the right is just her with regular human eyelashes with a bit of mascara. She looks really pretty with those human eyelashes, right?

Who wants a collagen injection from their mascara? Who wants their mascara to last 24-hours. Are you kidding me?! Get all over your pillow cases?! Have even more trouble than usual getting make-up off?! Fuggetaboutit. 

Did you notice the bit in the ad where she says 'Outrageous!' YES! Claudia Schiffer, that is exactly what it is. Fucking outrageous. Mind you I have definitely seen a lot of falsies around lately. I guess the mascara-brush-eyelash/falsey look is really hot right now or something and why wear falsies when you can just use collagen mascara. Yeah, I was wrong, excellent thinking L'Oreal.

In fact to understand what was going on in the world I looked at some reviews of of this product. After watching one girl talk for 3 minutes on YouTube about how the packaging was great because you could tell when the lid was closed properly I moved on to written reviews. One girl tried it because 'I'm trying a few different volumizing mascaras in hopes of getting big, full, almost fake-looking ones that I admire on some girls...This one was so-so...definitely bigger than my natural lashes but not huge.' Ewwww. Another said 'I really really dislike this product, two words -- spider lashes.' That is pretty much one of the grossest thoughts I ever had put in my head so I basically had to stop reading right then for fear of offending my sensitive soul further.

I'll probably have to stop watching TV too so I don't have to see ads like this any more. Sheesh.

The elegant and the abject

Here is the wrap up from last night's dinner with Lil, AB and Chambo at Izakaya Den.

Lil is pregnant
This, we already knew, but it was our first dinner as a foursome since she broke the news so we had a little celebration. Apparently she had been to the obstetrician today and the matter of whether she would like a cesarean or a vaginal birth was discussed. Lil advised that she is considering both, but wants complete assurance that if she had a vaginal birth they could give her an epidural that would last the whole time, and that it would be totally pain free. This from a woman who has a pathological fear of injections. We explained how epidurals are administered. I told her that my Mum reckons that the needle they put in her spine was the size of a pencil. When I was little and would hear this story, I always imagined that the pencil would be massive, like this.

Lil went quiet. AB noted that she never really thinks about the pain when she thinks about giving birth. Lil said "I do. I think about it all the time. I don't want a bar of it. Haven't you ever done a really big poo? It kills!"

AB said "I know, but then you feel so relieved."

We ate this delicious eggplant and mushroom thing

I don't know exactly what was in that orange topping but it was nice and spicy. The dish was served cold, in that good way.

Chambo advised she wants total privacy to watch the royal wedding
Chambo is going to her Mother's house to watch it so there will be no distractions and she can totally focus. Those Chambos love the royals. I think Mrs Chambo even met the Queen once. Anyway, she asked us all what we were doing.
I casually advised that because Pickle and Minderbinder are having a going away party tonight, I wouldn't be watching the royal wedding. I hadn't said that out loud to anyone and as soon as I did, I realised how badly I wanted to watch the royal wedding, and how disappointed I am to be missing it. I kind of love the royals a little bit. Its my dirty shame. As is the fact that I like to watch movies like Eat Pray Love at the cinema, and get really disappointed when I miss them and have to watch them on DVD. Anyway, no royal wedding for me. Such is life, as the tattoo on Ben Cousins' stomach always says. I'm sure I can just watch the replay on Saturday.

AB did a gross thing
We ordered the ox tongue, which was served in thin, matchbox shaped slices topped with finely shredded spring onion. Lil looked a little queasy when the waitress said it was ox tongue. This is very unlike Lil, but I guess she is pregnant. AB, Chambo and I dove in and sure enough it was super yum. Have some! We chanted to Lil while shoveling more of it in to our mouths. Lil timidly picked up a slice and placed it on her tongue, then closed her mouth as if to chew. I guess she had a change of heart, because straight away she leaned forward and spat it out on to her plate. We sat there in silence for a second or two because that's not something you see every day. Then AB stretched out her chopsticks, picked up the discarded ox tongue and popped it straight in her mouth. Girl hates to see good food go to waste.