What is your favourite place to get dessert in North Shore City, Auckland?

If there is one thing I feel appropriate for eating at any time of the day, it would be ice cream.

And if there is one thing better than ice cream, it would be gelato.

Takapuna Beach Café and Store do the absolute-without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt best gelato around.

Perfect for breakfast-dessert, lunch-dessert, dinner-dessert, or morning/afternoon tea/dessert.

They learnt the art of gelato in Italy.

They give generous servings.

They allow two flavours in a ‘one scoop’.

And they’re right on the beach front, in the perfect location to go for a stunning walk in either direction. 

Question #2 was courtesy of Tina Broadbent

Who is Clara ‘Oswin’ Oswald?

Clara is a female person, with peculiar parents who gave her a middle name ridiculously similar to her last name.

On further research, I also note she is a fictional character in a TV series called Dr Who, which every other person seems to be talking about these days.

Dr Who obviously loves Clara.

But due to her strange middle name he struggles to cope.

Which is why he is called Doctor Who.

Just because.

Question #1 was courtesy of Rebekah Jasper.

Ask Jo

Welcome to my first (and possibly only) interactive blog post.

I don't have to do anything at this moment.

Everything falls on you.

This is your opportunity to ask me anything.

For example: 

What is it like being a girl?

How do you make calamari round?

Who has influenced your taste in trashy pop music?

What is your political/religious/social opinion on this [very intellectual topic]?

Etc

I promise to answer every question.

If I don't know the answer, I'll make it up.

But above all, I'll avoid saying anything which could later be used as evidence. 

Annddd...GO

Three Good Things

#1. An unexpected sleep in when I fell asleep whilst in the process of setting my alarm the night before. 

#2. Needing a packet of Digestive biscuits. 

Finding them on special. 

And nabbing he last one. 

#3. And most importantly...my beautiful friend heads to Botswana today to work with kids for almost 6 months. 

Search 'Niki's Botswana Mission Trip' on Facebook if you want to find out a bit more (sorry I can't post link when doing this on my phone).

We (collectively, as a reader of this blog) love and appreciate you Niki! 

Stay safe. 

Stay strong. 

And stay cool.

See?

Three good things.

App of the Day

I just need to give a shout out to the Coles iPhone app.

Not only does it put your shopping list in order of what aisle the product is down (depending on what store you're going to), but it also scans barcodes so that when your low on something you just scan it to add to your list. 

I'm pretty convinced my nana would have loved this. 

Love is...

No matter who you are.

No matter where you come from. 

No matter what you've done... 

Or what you're planning to do. 

No matter what you believe...

Or don't believe.

I think we can all agree on one thing.

This is true.

This is awesome. 

And this is what everyone deserves. 

I've waited months for this

A long time ago I ripped out a recipe from a magazine.

I put it in my folder of 'ripped out recipes from magazines'.

I then moved countries. 

But on a trip back to my home land, I plucked out a select few of these recipes to bring back and hopefully attempt at one point or another. 

When I was at the Prahran Market a while ago I got me one beautiful piece of eye fillet.  

It scared me so much I put it in the freezer.

But the other night, I took the plunge, and allowed it to defrost.

After psyching myself up to make this coconut red beef curry after all this time, I got home last night and realised I'd left the recipe [crumpled up on the floor] at work. 

Cool story Jo. 

Thanks. 

Anyway...the whole point of this is that everyrecipe.co.nz commented on a post of mine asking me to sign this blog up to their website. So I did that (hence the rather large everyrecipe icon to the right there) and now I feel I really need to chuck a new recipe up....

Coconut Red Beef Curry

Brush some red curry paste over your beef fillets.

Heat oil in pan on high. 

Cook fillets on all sides until browned. 

Place in oven at 180degrees and cook for 8-15 minutes, depending on size of each piece and how you like your beef cooked. 

Remove from oven, cover and allow to rest for at least 5 minutes. 

Meanwhile, fry 1-2 Tbsp (depending on your taste in spice) red curry paste for a couple of minutes, and then stir in 1 1/2 cups coconut cream, and 3/4 cup chicken stock. 

Allow to simmer for a few minutes and [hopefully] thicken. 

Slice the [perfectly medium-rare] beef.
Place on a plate with green vegetables, and spoon over the desired amount of curry sauce for each.

Voila.