Remember this awesome thing? (PM edition)

Green porn is so awesome. I had actually never seen it before, so for me, this morning's post was really about discovering an awesome thing, rather than remembering it. That's fine too guys. Like J said, Miss Soft Crab is really just about having a wonderful time.

Speaking of wonderful times, remember this awesome thing?
I sure do.

I bet you're wondering whether this is what it's like when J and I go for a drive. Readers, it's like looking in to a mirror.

Bye!

Remember this awesome thing

You know, here at Miss Soft Crab we just want everyone to have a good time. Sure, that may happen with us talking about what we had for dinner last night, but you know what, other people are super entertaining too. And that is why to today is "Remember this awesome thing" day.

Yep it's a new segment where we can just remember super things that other great people have done. Maybe you've seen it all before, but I guarantee it is all worth seeing again.*

Today let's remember Green Porno.

I love Isabella Rossellini, for a whole bunch of reasons, here are some of them:







*This guarantee doesn't actually mean anything

Spanagnocchita Fin

Mate, as I read your post this morning I thought spanagnocchita was going to end up somewhere really special. I had been thinking that another issue with mine may have been the quality of commercial gnocchi I bought.

Homemade gnocchs + pan fry+ sauteed silverbeet + crouton = me feeling jealous that I hadn't deviated more from the recipe myself.

I was a little shocked yours didn't work out well. Can't polish a turd, I guess.

Spanagnocchita, redux

I made a version of spanagnocchita last night.
(Just quickly, if you're new here, you should go and read this before you keep reading this.)
To recap: the photo of J's spanagnocchita was really pretty and made me feel like something delicious was trapped inside that weird concept. I wanted to try it for myself, but with some improvements based on J's feedback.
You will recall that the basic method involves layers of bechamel, gnocchi, and spinach with  pine nuts, currants and cheese. 
I basically followed this method, but here's what I did to crank up the yummy.

Fresh gnochs.

Little friends

I made fresh gnocchi because the stupid supermarket I went to had sold out of the regular stuff and even though I am quite lazy, making spanagnocchita without gnocchi seemed pretty dumb. Also, I figured it would probably be delicious. After I boiled it, I pan fried it in butter with some spring onions. I basically did this because I love a pan fried gnoch. 

Little friends pan fried in butter. My favourite kind!

 Silverbeet
I sauteed the silverbeet in butter and garlic because butter and garlic makes everything delicious. I forgot to take a photo of it though, so here is a picture of the pan fried gnochs.

Feta
The original spanagnocchita did not use fetta. WTF, right? Why would you make anything spanakopita related and not include feta? I wasn't going to be part of that, so I pretty much replaced most of the cheese in the recipe with feta, with the exception of the grated parmesan that goes in the bechamel, which I kept.







Croutons.

As Cloud Control noted in his comment on J's original post, surely the charm of spanagnocchita lies in its ability to marry two carb-intensive dishes. The original recipe does not take advantage of this opportunity. I decided to make some croutons and sprinkle them on top to right this wrong. I love a crouton. They are daggy, but delicious, like Golden Rough chocolate bars and scotch finger biscuits.

That's pretty much all I did! Sadly, I forget to buy currants and pine nuts, so they were in no way involved. But everything else was pretty much as per the recipe. I assembled it all, put it in the oven for 20 minutes and then when it was all golden and bubbly, served myself a plate




Look guys, it was kind of OK. It was pretty good I guess. The feta, croutons and buttery garlicky silverbeet definitely helped. But you know what's better? Baked gnocchi. And spankopita.  Separately.

I should have just trusted you mate.  From now on, my tummy is going to believe everything you say, and stop getting caught up in the false promises of a pretty picture.

I guess I kind of like work too

Geez. You make work sound like Cleveland*!
But you're right, it can be pretty awesome. And you make some excellent points about the increased opportunities for awesomeness when you only go in to the office twice a week. I mean, it's great that full time work is financially rewarding, but it can be a total bummer sometimes. Figuring out what to wear and what to eat for lunch would be my top items under a list called Full Time Work: Total Bummer. These aren't so big of a deal when you work 2 days.

But, here are some things I would put on a list called Full Time Work: Yes Please! 

• I get to look at all those free range people on public transport twice a day for five days. I will never ever get sick of this.
• I get to have a coffee from the nice place every morning, where they say "Hi K!" when I walk in and I never have to tell them the coffee I want, they just know.
• I get to giggle whenever the guy who sits a few pods along sneezes, because when he sneezes, it sounds like he is saying the name "Burt". I wish I could record that for you readers, it is hilarious.
• You sometimes get to think things with your brain and it feels quite satisfying, like your brain has gone for a little jog.
• You get to eat Kingstons.
• You get to periodically eat Monte Carlos, and therefore reaffirm your position about disliking Monte Carlos. 

Heaps of other things, but it's time to start thinking about what to have for lunch, so I'd better go.

*Guys, if you don't get this, please watch more 30 Rock.

Work is ok by me

Ummmm... working 2 days is the BEST!

It's true that I don't own a house and can't buy nice things much, but other than working 2 days rules! And it's not just because it means you have more spare time and don't have to wake up early every day and boring doesn't get boring so quickly. Though all these things are great.

Firstly, if you only have to go to work twice a week it is really easy to always have a good kit and have enough energy to make yourself look nice. When I used to go to work 5 days a week I was pretty much a mess most days. And when I did pull it together everyone at work knew I was just pretending to have my grooming under control. At my new work they will never find that out!

If you only have to catch peak hour public transport twice a it is actually kind of nice. I have to change trains and when the first train pulls up to the station where I change heaps of other people get off to change too. Then we all run between platforms so we don't miss the next train. Man, it really brings commuters together. I seriously love it. Makes me smile every time.

What I really love about part time work though is you can kind of pretend to be someone you are not. You know, I am quite shy and reserved with strangers usually. But for some reason because I am hardly at this job I am heaps more genki than usual. Just chatting away, calling people by there names and shit. I love this bit. Usually.

It backfired a little bit the other day. This woman introduced herself to me and I was like, "Hi, it's nice to meet you. I hear everybody talking about you." What I meant, of course, was "I realise you are important to my job because I hear your name a lot." But I think it sounded like, "Oh, you are that bitch everyone is talking about!" That is not what I meant at all. She seemed really nice. I may have to work a bit more on the new genki me.

Keep going!

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Mate you are so right about those rivers ads! They are disgusting. And if I had seen one during this freaking 10 year anniversary of depresso week I probably would have slit my wrists.

I do know the Rivers t-shirt ad you are talking about. It is truly awful. But mate, your interpretation was awesome. You are in the wrong business. You should be in advertising. God, if I laughed as hard at ads on TV as I just did at your Rivers ads I'd be buying even more shit than I already do. Actually I guess you better stay where you are. I can't afford any more stuff.

Please stop

There is so much stuff on TV these days that I don't really get.
The X factor. Two and a half Men. All the renovating shows. Obviously Junior Masterchef. Even so, I can't tell you how baffled I am by the Rivers ads.
They have been terrible for a long time, but the one I saw the other night takes the cake.
I tried to find it on the internet but couldn't.Then I filmed my very own interpretation of it, but blogger wouldn't let me upload it because even blogger doesn't want to be a part of the misery of the Rivers ads. Happily, Miss Soft Crab's facebook page has no such prejudice, so you can see what I am talking about here. Perhaps you should also like our facebook page if you haven't done so already! Just a suggestion.
Anyway, even amid all these 9/11 tributes they've been showing this week, it is hands down the most depressing thing I have seen on Television in ages, maybe forever.

Please stop Rivers. I don't know how much more I can take.

Oh geez

Oh geez mate. I can not effing stop looking at that effing picture of that effing spanagnochitta because it looks so effing delicious! Why did you have to use that photo, you know I'm a sucker for a pretty face! Your words can say whatever they like about it, but my eyeballs tell me to put it in my mouth right now.
I am going to have to make this thing now! 
But at least I can draw on your learnings, as they say in the workplace (I guess, I never  pay attention) . I am going to attempt a kind of spanna-gnoccha-mac-n-cheese. Add some fried onions and anchovies, maybe sprinkled breadcrumbs fried in butter and garlic on top before I bake it.
Don't worry guys, I'll tell you all about it later this week, and I'll use a bad photo if it doesn't work out.

Spanagnocchita

You know how some things seem like a really good idea when they are first presented to you and then when you look into the details you realise it isn’t as good an idea as you thought, but because the initial idea was so striking you can’t fight it and go ahead with it anyway?

Meet spanagnocchita. It is actually called baked gnocchi spanakopita with currants and pine nuts (or something). But you get the idea. You better believe when I saw this recipe I got pretty excited. I really love gnocchi. Those chewy little bastards! I wish there were some in my mouth right now! Also I love spanakopita. What a beautiful marriage this would be!

And then I read the recipe. Cook the gnocchs. Cook some silverbeet. Make a shit load of white sauce. Layer the gnocchi, silverbeet, pine nuts and currants in the white sauce. Bake. You may think that inspired by K’s cooking from the old Australia Woman's Weekly Best Ever Recipes that I pulled this recipe from the 80s. You would think that, what with all the white sauce and dried fruit, but I didn’t. It is from a fairly recent issue of delicious! Look, I don’t really like béchamel that much. I mean, I like it in a lasagna, surrounded by other things like tomatoey sauce. And I did eat it in a crepe with mushrooms and spinach just yesterday. But I guess the key is moderation. It could never be the hero of the dish for me. And yet the idea of gnocchi spana kept calling to me with its siren song. I kept telling myself it wouldn't work out. That with all that béchamel the spanakopita name didn't delong anywhere near this thing. But I just kept getting pulled back to the idea of it.

Guys, I wish this story had a happy ending. I mean, I didn't even put the currants in, but that fucking meal was... it was... It wasn't awful. Gnocchi and cheesy sauce and pine nuts and silverbeet... of course it wasn't terrible. The best thing I can say about it is now it is done and I can move on with my life.

Forget you Cherry Ripe Dark Cherry

Mate! I am so happy you took the bullet for us all on this one.

I like a cherry ripe too and I have to confess when I saw this in the supermarket I was more than a little intrigued. Mainly because I didn't really read the wrapper and just saw 'dark' written on that dark wrapper. Of course this made me think of dark chocolate, my favorite kind of chocolate. But if I'd thought a little more I'd have realised this couldn't be right because Cherry Ripe already has dark chocolate! That's why I like it so much.

I guess Mr Cherry Ripe was just seeing that the other chocolate bars were evolving and wanted a piece of the action. I guess he thought adding nuts wasn't right and didn't know where else to go. I guess that's why he invented this 'dark cherry'. He should have thought about adding a different fruit! Orange! Or berries!

What a waste!

Cherry Ripe Dark Cherry: The Miss Soft Crab Review

I quite like a Cherry Ripe.

Not enough to go out and buy one, mind you, but if someone put one in my mouth, I would totally eat it. Now, the world has given us the Cherry Ripe Dark Cherry.

Do we need Cherry Ripe Dark Cherry? I wouldn't have thought so. Is there even any opportunity for innovation in the Cherry Ripe space? Again. I wouldn't have thought so, but I guess the folks at head office thought differently. But really, who am I to argue with what is undoubtedly the result of years and years of market research and laboratory testing? Mine is not to question why. The fact is, Cherry Ripe Dark Cherry does exist, and what's left for me is to discover whether it is worth a damn and communicate my views to the Miss Soft Crab community. Lets do that, shall we?

This is what Cherry Ripe Dark Cherry looks like. So far so BORING, right?

I bit in to it and immediately realised that I was totally right about it not needing to exist. But just to be sure, I took a few more bites until it looked like this:

Suspicions confirmed, people. It tastes even more fake than your typical Cherry Ripe. Instead of tasting like sugar, coconut and fake cherry flavour, the Cherry Ripe Dark Cherry tastes like sugar, coconut and the fake cherry flavour you get in some over-the-counter cough medicines. I know, because I ate the whole thing and I started to crave some flat lemonade to make the taste go away.

Now we all know. Don't bother, readers.

Hells yeah its Haiku Thursday!

Reflections on The Gruen Transfer

I

Hi Wil Anderson

You used to really shit me

Now, not so much. Win!

II

Look, for sure the show's

Interesting. But also,

Kind of annoying. 

III

I guess the thing is

You guys just aren't Don Draper.

Right there, is your prob.

IV

That's right. Don Draper.

Your face won't quit, will it Don?

Here it comes guys. Phwoar.

HEY! It's Haiku Thursday!

Sydney
I'll see you next week,
Sydney. Be sunny and warm.
That would be great, thanks.

Porridge
We had a break, friend.
I love you more than ever.
Now, I will eat you.

Bad TV
The Pickers for one,
Embarrassing Bodies, two.
There are many more.

Wet dog
There's a wet dog smell
To nuttelex and Aesop
conditioner. Weird.