Common sense from a US court, I’m sure that’s one of the signs of the apocalypse.

Night before – cover roast in garlic and leave resting in the fridge – this will give ample time for more than just the immediate outside to get some flavour into it.

Day of cooking – add mint, rosemary or what ever other herbs you are liking to season it with.

Just before popping into the oven – salt the outside of the roast, try and stick to the fatty areas and avoid the meaty bits – as salt will dry out the meat you don’t want to put it on the non fatty bits or leave it too long.

Method (per kg)
Preheat oven to 220-250C
Place roast in said oven for 20-30 minutes (depending on size and shape) this is to seal the outside of the roast and keep the juices inside it.
After this time reduce the temperature to 160-180C (I like 170) and cook for 30 minutes per kg.

I like to leave my roasts in the fat for the flavour during cooking, I’m still perfecting adding the vegetable timings, but have had some success w/ 2kg roasts and lots of vegies @ the 1hour before mark. (Adding at temp reduction point).

Once cooked – remove vegies from pan and put back into the oven, cover roast with aluminium foil and leave to rest (10-15 minutes per KG) while you make the gravy etc.

How about working on pollution, over fertilisation, over use of pesticides and stuff that actually matter. End of the day the this little blue ball is going to get cooked quite badly when our sun enters its red giant phase.

Certainly something I’d love for some of my photo’s would be nice to see more people (especially on sites like flickr) make a comment with more thought involved to it than, great, crap, i love it etc. The article is pretty good – gives examples (hopefully that people won’t use word for word) how to make a comment on a photo you loved, how to ask questions about a photo (more than just how did you do that.?!?!) and how to provide feedback in a non-negative way.

2005 Wynns Coonawarra Estate Shiraz – Australia, South Australia, Limestone Coast, Coonawarra (2/22/2008)
This is a pop and pour – decanted for 4 hours and all the nice nose blew away , at the end left with strong menthol – which completely overshadowed hints of blueberry, plum and liquorice. Hints of cream and vanilla on the nose not too bad.

Palate – nice mid palate but it’s far too short, flavours are muted, this wine is “weak” flavour wise, finishes with a vegemitey taste in your mouth.

Hoping that this is a defective bottle, have one more, but will wait a few years and pop and pour the puppy. (83 pts.)

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If you’ve experienced the pain of a screwed up page (formatting) after embedding a youtube video – try the page here, very, very helpful! The above saved my site – it took forever to work out why the formatting went all fubar. The code supplied by youtube out of the box does not work well with Wordpress and Firefox, most of this is related to changes introduced by the wordpress graphical editor. However, a few simple changes, removing of the “embed” tags and life is once again happy and videos, embeddable and viewable by the important browsers.

Having read  a blog post that suggests that geeks love to get the core of problems, to discover the key to “problems” or otherwise get to the heart of anything that they enjoy doing (games, puzzles etal). I’d have to say that when it comes to my wine, of late I have been getting into it to “work it all out” and understand whats going on. When I first got into wine, I just looked for ones I liked – starting w/ Shiraz’s and Cabernet Sauvignon’s.

Recently  however I’ve begun to explore the concept that perhaps there is more to wines than just the surface scratching I was doing initially – you could pretty much guarantee that I would ignore any white if there was a red about, now, I’m not so sure – I enjoy wines not only for the pleasure experienced drinking them (specifically w/ good people and good conversatoin) but for the deeper aspects related to them – the smells and tastes, I’ve begun picking apart wines and associating varietal based on the components that make up the smells and flavours, grouping varietals together in a “class” ie: Petit Verdot  lives up with the Cab Sauv’s and Shiraz’s in a different “class” to Pinot Noir, based on all these flavour and smell profiles. This has led to me *trying* pretty much any wine I come across – to build up a bigger experience library of such smells and flavours regardless of varietal or even colour. This is something that makes me pretty happy – and also brings to mind a realisation when it comes to wine – it’s beyond unlikely that you could get bored/work it all out! Give it a go though.

So – the point of todays post – of the Geeks out there who are oenophile’s I suspect this will be one hobby/experience that you won’t be able to tire of, because every vintage is different, there are many many places you can get wines from and all the things that go into making a wine – good luck working it all out and getting bored!

For non-geeks out there – you may not take pleasure in trying to work everything out – but try every wine you can get your hands on, read things about wines, but above all – don’t be swayed by other peoples opinions – only you can know what you like!

A wonderful article that has more to do about quality of life than the things we have or do. A brief anecdotal look at the paradox of the way French eat more “fattening” food than USAian’s (and by extension Australians who seem to follow US trends) may be related to how they eat it – in a relaxed atmosphere talking with friends, whereas anglo-western cultures tend to wolf it down as appropriate. I’d have to say that when I am relaxed and happy – i definitely lose weight quicker than when I am stressed at work (where I tend to put it on) even with the same foods.

Those who know me – will know that I have a goal of settling in France for a few years – seems there might be something to it for my health