Six Word Memoir

Some time ago, my blog friend Tammy of Wee Treats by Tammy tagged me for a meme. The original concept was:

1. Write your own six-word memoir.
   
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like (uhhh no thanks - although I'm happy to share a photo of Scooter - doesn't she look pretty with her daisy chain necklace? I must have been really bored that day).
   
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post (see above).
   
4. Tag five more blogs with links (see below).
   
5. Remember to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play (done).

OK, here goes....

1. Generous
   
2. Creative
   
3. Gregarious
   
4. Indecisive
   
5. Impetuous
   
6. Deadline-challenged (that is so one word!)

I'm not one for tagging but they are THE RULES so here I go in no particular order:

1. Deb of Red Shoe Ramblings
   
2. Lisa of La Mia Cucina
   
3. Bron of the eponymous (I've always wanted to use that word) Bron Marshall
   
4. Barbie of Barbie2Be
   
5. Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness

Last Things

Yep - another meme. I don't know what it is I like about these things but they are a little bit addictive.

What is the last thing you ate? Roasted pumpkin and kumara with Montreal steak seasoning, roasted red peppers, feta and coriander - at my desk. Want the recipe? Find it here



What is the last blog or site you came from? Red Shoe Ramblings where I found this meme.

When is the last time you had a decadent dessert? Last night I made an apple bread and butter pudding out of a Healthy Food magazine. It had sultanas and lemon zest in it and was quite tasty for something that was supposedly healthy. However, the last time I had a truly decadent dessert was a week or so ago at Bella’s restaurant when my husband and I split a piece of their ooey gooy chocolate raspberry layer cake. Ordinarily he doesn’t have a sweet tooth but this seems to be a favourite and who am I to complain when he wants to split a piece of cake? It’s so rich I wouldn’t want a whole piece anyway although I’d give it a good shot!

When is the last time you missed the sound of someone’s voice? Haven’t really missed anyone for a while. Although I wish I could just pick up the phone and talk to my US friends any old time I wanted. Time zones are a bugger.

When is the last time you truly laughed out loud? Sunday night, watching Failure to Launch, at the bit where the gorgeous but unfortunately shirted, Matthew McConaughey got bitten by a chipmunk and had it hanging off his hand.

Your turn...

7 Random Things

Some time ago Lis from La Mia Cucina tagged me for a meme. Ordinarily I love these things but I’ve struggled to write this one.

1. Lime green and turquoise are my favourite colours. How do you like my new blog look? A bit much? I thought the white was a little bit boring and I'm not au fait enough with computing to come up with anything fancier. Hey - check out my new kitchen toys.



2. I am very finicky about meat on bones and won’t eat chops, chicken wings or legs. I make an exception for ribs and lamb shanks because they’re usually so tender the meat falls off the bones anyway. At restaurants I go so far as to cut all the meat the bones and put them on my side plate before I can eat my meal. Having said that, BBQ ribs would rate as one of my favourite foods.

3. When I was about 11 or 12 I got hit by a car while crossing the road on a pedestrian crossing. As a result I fractured my pelvis and have a scar in the inside of my left thigh. Unfortunately it’s too high up to show anyone. Much to my disgust I missed out on school camp. Kind of served me right though because I had snuck out of the house on my bicycle to go and buy candy for the camp and shouldn’t have been out. My mother and brother drove past the accident scene as I was lying on the ground but they didn’t know it was me. Later my brother commented that he thought he recognised my trousers. For the record, they were rust coloured corduroy bell bottoms. Styley!

4. I have moments when I hate my name. Because it is unusual people just can’t get it right. The most common name I get is Morgan although I often get Maureen, Robyn or Norma. I particularly hate it when people call me Marvin or Mervyn – they’re boy’s names fer Pete’s sake. Recently I asked my mother what the other options might have been and she said Hannah or Gabrielle. I’m not sure if I really want to share this random fact but one of the options was Dorcas. Imagine the teasing I would have got. If I’m somewhere like a coffee shop and have to give my name I struggle to quickly come up with a name other than my own. I never even think about using my middle name which is Jean. The funny thing is that if I decided to change my name I really don’t know what I prefer.

5. As a teenager I was a contestant in the Miss Wellington competition. I didn’t place. My husband takes delight in bragging about marrying a beauty queen.

6. My late Grandfather was a real magician. His stage name was Mister Fy . He passed on all his tricks and tools of the trade to my brother. When I was a kid Grandad used to entertain me with a ventriloquist act using my dolls and one day after he’d left I cut up one of them to see where the voices were coming from.

7. My husband doesn’t know I blog and would probably flip if he found out – on two levels. One is the whole internet/privacy thing and the other is my obsession with food. Oh well, I’ll deal with it when it happens. Most of my Daring Bakers creations are done when he’s out of town.

The usual self tagging rules apply.

Well I never - a Meme

Early in December Barbara at Winos and Foodies tagged me for a meme.

Not only was December was a bit busy but I struggled with the theme of the meme which is why it’s taken me so long to answer. Barbara’s meme was warm and feel good while mine is just goofy, although mostly true.

10 things I’ll never do...

1. Bungy jump – not even for a frillion dollars*
   
2. Have laser eye surgery
   
3. Eat a bug on purpose
   
4. Wear a thong bikini in public (not that I actually own one but I'm just sayin')
   
5. Be a brain surgeon
   
6. Dot my i's
   
7. Get my brain around sudoku
   
8. Finish anything I start
   

*A bonus point or perhaps even a mystery prize to the first person who correctly guesses the origin of the monetary reference.

And just so y'all have something visual attached to this post - look at what the cat was playing with the other night!

In researching the weta I found out that its name is derived from the Maori word wetapunga which translates roughly to "God of Ugly Things" - well they got that right don't you think. The body of the weta at my back door was about 4" long and about as fat as my thumb and I'm glad I discovered it on my wall and not in my bed or in the toe of my shoe.

What American Accent Do You Have?

My friend Deb lurves her quizzes and she recently issued this challenge: "I'd be curious what the results would be for someone outside the US taking that quiz, since that person obviously wouldn't actually have any American accent. I wonder what kind the quiz maker would think they had based on their responses. Hhhhmmm... Any of my non-US friends game to try it and tell me your result?".

Well here are my results and I am not really surprised at how they've come out. When we lived in the US and my husband was on a business trip to Rochester, New York with some colleagues from Kentucky, the New Yorkers had trouble with the Southern accents but could understand him just fine. Three years away wasn't enought time for me to develop even a hint of a Southern accent which was a great disappointment to me. I guess I didn't try too hard to change because everyone around me thought my Kiwi accent was charming.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The South
The Midland
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Now it's your all's turn!

Happy Birthday to Me (and a Meme too)

It was my birthday on Tuesday. Thanks to those of you who've visited my site via Red Shoe Ramblings. And a special thank you to Deb for your birthday homage to me.

Bella’s is probably my favourite “special” restaurant. Alistair, the host, is always charming and makes you feel welcome and of course they have a great menu.

Spring is whitebait season in New Zealand and for fans of whitebait the season is all too short. For the uninitiated, whitebait is the name used in New Zealand for the young stage of the inanga or “minnow”, Galaxias attenuatus. The adults of this fish are 4–6 in. long, greenish-yellow in colour, and occur in practically all New Zealand's lowland rivers and streams, belonging to the “native trout” family (Galaxiidae). In autumn they move down stream to estuaries where, during high spring tides, the eggs are laid amongst aquatic vegetation. The eggs hatch when reached by the following spring tide (two weeks later) and the larvae pass out into the sea. It is uncertain whether the young fish return in the spring of the same or the following year; these juveniles are transparent when they enter fresh water, but quickly become pigmented. The same fish occurs in Australia and in South America.

As soon as I found out that whitebait was on the menu I immediately regretted not bringing my camera to dinner. Isn't your mouth watering at the sight of these?....... No?....... Really?
The typical way of serving whitebait is to make a fritter or pattie with a little egg and seasonings and not much else. Bella’s whitebait was cooked in a light tempura style batter so that the teeny weeny fish remained separate. They were served piled high in a mound alongside buttered white bread soldiers, a big wedge of char grilled lemon and a little bowl of tartare sauce. A little like this....
For my main I chose Fettucine Pollo which was as you might imagine, chicken with pasta! It is one the items on the classics menu and as often as we dine at Bella’s I’d never tried this dish before. It was delicious but the tomato cream sauce was very rich.

Although it was MY birthday I didn't feel the need for dessert because a friend from work had baked a delightful lemon curd cake for afternoon tea. I'll get the recipe soon.

To go with dinner we had a lovely bottle of Paddy Borthwick chardonnay from the Wairarapa region. The tasting notes say: “Lifted fruit aromas of nectarines and pineapple have integrated harmoniously with the oak to produce a wine of great texture with creamy, nutty characters on the palate. This wine shows depth of fruit and great palate weight that is enjoyable now and also in the ensuing years and will cellar for the next 8 years.” I’m not much of a connoisseur and about the only thing I could tell you I tasted was the oak.


All in all a lovely end to a lovely day.

As I promised Lis here's my reply to her recent meme.

I'M THINKING ABOUT:
What's for dinner tonight - the answer is chicken piccata, roasted yams and a humungous mixed salad and new season asparagus. I only realised just recently that I've been making chicken piccata for years but didn't know it had a name
I SAID:
You learn something new everyday
I WANT TO:
Own a boarding cattery one day - it's my semi retirement plan
I WISH:
I had a job I love as opposed to just something that pays the bills
I REGRET:
Not taking more advantage of my 3 years living in Kentucky. What a great jumping off point to visit the rest of the country
I HEAR:
Remnants of stupid songs in my head that I can't get rid of - Deb calls these "earworms"
I DANCE:
As often as I can - usallly around the house and always clothed but generally with no rhythm
I REGRET:
Stopping to hang out the washing and clean up the kitchen and thereby missing the birth of a friend's baby by a mere five minutes
I SING:
So badly that I imagine the neighbourhood dogs all joining in
I CRY:
At sad movies, weddings and of course funerals
I AM NOT:
My Mother or my Nana - even though my husband tells me I'm like them. I should take that as a compliment
I AM:
Queen of the exclamation mark OK!!!!!!
I WRITE:
To communicate with friends and share a bit of my life with them
I CONFUSE:
Myself - especially if it involves anything mathematical
I NEED:
More time to blog
I TAG:
Anyone who wants to play - do you?

My First Meme

This came from my friend Deb
who doesn't officially tag folk for memes - a practice which I think I might follow -especially since I don't yet have regular readers. If you like lists and want to play jump right in and consider yourself tagged. Let me know in the comments so I can check out your list and get to know you a bit better. Lis , your meme is up next - watch this space....

1. FIRST NAME?
Morven
2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
Not particularly. My mother just liked the name of someone she met
3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY?
Probably during some soppy movie
4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
No but I like my printing. Everyone tells me I have very neat printing
5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCHMEAT?
Ham off the bone with grainy mustard please
6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
I'd like to think so
7. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL?
Not since I was a young (and stupid) teen - yanno the old write naughty things in your journal and then your mother finds it and then you get in trouble scenario
8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Yes
9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
Defintely NOT. Not even for a million dollars - I seriously mean that
10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
Homemade muesli (granola) with fresh fruit
11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
Mostly. I am however, guilty of just pulling off my gym shoes after exercise
12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG?
Neither physically nor emotionally. I'm a big softy
13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR?
A threeway tie - mocha chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip or raspberry white chocolate
14. SHOE SIZE?
7 for regular shoes 7.5 for my Nikes
15. FAVORITE COLOR?
Turquoise closely followed by lime green and cobalt blue
16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
Indecision, or was that procrastination?
17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
Far away friends
18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU?
Only if they want to
19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
Blue jeans and turquoise crocs
20. LAST THING YOU ATE?
Avocado and tomato on grainy toast with a grinding of black pepper and a sprinkling of Maldon sea salt
21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
The washing machine on its spin cycle
22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
Turquoise of course
23. FAVORITE SMELLS?
Freesias (I just picked some from the garden), freshly laundered sheets, cinnamon, hot asphalt just after it rains (yeah I'm weird I know), fresh coffee and cooked bacon in the morning

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
My husband - we were making arrangements to go out for dinner
25. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU'RE ATTRACTED TO?
Their smile and their eyes
26. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
What kind of a question is that - who is going to say no?
27. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE DRINK?
A really good champagne like Moet or a big oaky, buttery chardonnay or a nice fruity sauvignon blanc
28. FAVORITE SPORT?
I don't play sport. I like step aerobics though - it's the closest thing I can find to dancing
29. EYE COLOR?
Blue but I wish they were green
30. HAT SIZE?
I have a pin sized head (as opposed to "a heed like a pumpkin" - bonus points for guessing what movie that quote came from) - I hardly ever wear hats
31. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
Yes
32. FAVORITE FOOD?
I don't have a favourite - I just like FOOD
33. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDING?
Happy endings for sure. Scary movies give me nightmares
34. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
Lime green tee with KENTUCKY emblazoned on it in blue. Any true blue cats fan would be rolling their eyes
35. SUMMER OR WINTER?
Summer although I am very fond of a white Christmas
36. HUGS OR KISSES?
Hugs because you can give them to and receive them from anyone you want to. Kisses from people other than your husband or family are a bit eepycray
37. FAVORITE DESSERT?
Something creamy - icecream, cheesecake, creme brulee
38. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING?
The Bronze Horseman by Paulina Simons which I'm struggling with but persevering on the recommendation of several colleagues. Next up a Faye Kellerman one
39. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? That would have to be my mouse!
40. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV?
Rove Live (Australian comedian/talk show). Don't normally watch much tv on a Friday since it's dinner out night
41. FAVORITE SOUNDS?
A cat purring, the ping of a "you've got mail" message, the sea, the sound of the garage dooer opening when my husband arrives home
42. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
Stones
43. THE FURTHEST YOU'VE BEEN FROM HOME?
Canada
44. WHAT'S YOUR SPECIAL TALENT?
I'm a trivia queen
45. WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Auckland, New Zealand
46. WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
Deb in a roundabout kind of way
47. NEWEST THING YOU'VE TRIED?
It's fairly safe to assume with me that it's a food item. Nestle's "Heaven" range of chocolate. IMHO not Heaven
48. WHAT ONE THING WOULD YOU CHANGE ABOUT YOURSELF?
I'd like better behaving hair - I always look at photos of myself and see a major bad hair day
49. WHO DID YOU LAST SEND A LETTER OR CARD TO?
A belated birthday card to my nephew Michael.
50. WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT IN THE WORLD IF MONEY WAS NO OBJECT?
Much as I can't go past travelling to the USA I'd really like to visit Tuscany