Beer butt chicken aka that time I sodomised a chicken

Using a beer can. Thought we better clarify that straight away.

We held a barbecue on Saturday and I made Cherry Ripe cup cakes AND a Jamie Oliver recipe called Beer Butt Chicken from Jamie Oliver’s latest cook book.

I thought this was all quite new and revolutionary, but turns out my Kiwi roomie has been doing it for ages. Another friend does it and claims the chicken tips over when it’s ready because the beer can is empty and can no longer hold it up. This I didn’t experience.

What I did experience was amazing feelings of shame and guilt and general repulsivness as I followed the recipes instructions.



Jamie instructed me to make a delicious flavoursum rub for the chicken, them use my hands to rub it into every nook and cranny inside and out. Oh Jamie, you saucy minx. You want me to put my hand up the chicken’s butt. Just say it buddy.

As I lift the chicken juice flows freely from its… well. It’s not pleasant. Neither is shoving my hand up it’s cold and… lets just stop this sentence here.




After you’ve let it sit for a moment, there comes the moment of truth. The moment you shove a half drunk can of beer up it’ butt. Jamie doesn’t mention yelling out phrases like “Take it, take it all!” but I felt that helped.






Then you just wack it on the barbie and 1.25 hours later, hey presto, deliciously beer flavoured chicken, steamed from the inside out. Yum-o.

70s goodness

When I first started this blog I did it because I get so inspired by all those amazing vintage fashion blogs. Such beautiful pictures! So many amazing outfits! Such awesome cats ( I’m looking at you Vintage Vixen)!

Sadly, I suck at taking photos and while I have awesome clothes thanks to years of op-shopping, when cameras and I combine, something happens. Batteries die, light flares occur, my eyes become slightly wonky and in an effort to look shorter but not get a double chin I both hunch and raise my head so every shot is a nostril shot. Awesome right? Also, I tend to lack the ease and glamour of those other bloggers. I cannot pose well, I cannot smile nicely, and I like to do the double thumbs up or pretend to be eating far away objects by opening my mouth real big in at least 70% of photos.

But I have decided to push aside my vanities and go for it anyway. I think you will get a real idea of my poise and class in these. They were taken at Splendor in The Grass this year.



Here I am before the festival pretending to play tennis at an old court with no ball. Needless to say, I won.



Scuse the makeup-less-ness, I was still having my first tea of the morning here.


This awesome dress is a great 70s find. I can’t quite remember where I got it, I think it was an op shop find? Correct me if I’m wrong Damsel Vintage and it was one of yours. It’s made of amazing polyester goodness and if I stand too close to an open flame I could spontaneously explode.



I got a huge amount of compliments, mainly from men, on this dress and I later realized in direct sunlight, it’s see through. Good times.

Horribly guilty pleasures

I have a confession to make. I like intensely bad shows. Like, really, really obscenely bad. So bad I have to covertly download them and watch them alone in my room in the wee hours of the morning.
Don’t get me wrong, I like good shows too. I have the complete Firefly, Buffy, Office (American and English), Black Books, Dead Like Me etc…
But I also own the complete OC. And at least three seasons of Smallville. And my current obsession is no less embarrassing. It’s Hellcats (move to the left, move to the right).



Pic courtesy wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aly_Michalka

The show stars Aly Michalka as Marti, who is a total babe but seems to play the same character in everything she’s been in, and Sharpay from High School Musical (another guilty pressure) or as she’s also known, Ashlee Simpson.


Again, thanks wiki! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Tisdale

And then there is a bunch of young hottie and babealicious babes. And the totally underrated Gail O’Grady as Ally’s character’s mum.

To give you an example of how cheesy, awesome, lame, unnecessary this show is, let me describe the events of one early episode.
Young hottie Marti, a law student turned cheerleader (but solely for the scholarship, cause she’s not into wearing skimpy clothes and cheering, despite her constantly exposing her midriff even off duty) goes to some fundraiser at the bar her Mum is running, then gets into an amazing street dancing spontaneous event BUT two guys that she came with are getting in a fight with some a-holes at the bar- a fight which also just happens to take place in time to the street dance music.

Amazingly, the two hot guys with Marti get put in prison for this fight, so Marti gets her hot shot law lecturer to say some fancy law terms and they’re released with nothing on their record! CAUSE THAT IS TOTALLY HOW THE LAW WORKS!

Throw in some of Sharpay being a good-girl Christian with a bit of praying (now with midriff!) a whole lot of cheerleading, an unnecessary musical number featuring the cast and a heated argument between a cheerleader and their Mum and you basically have every episode ever covered.

It is truly excellent.

Twisties are to my body like petrol is to my car

In the continued dieting in preparation for the wedding (ok, in preparation for life because I’m a little overweight) I recently went on a detox. It was called the Skinny Mini detox and while it didn’t promise weight loss officially it really insinuated it. I mean, it’s got skinny in the title.

It didn’t lie, I lost about 2 kilos on it. But I was also completely unsatisfied THE ENTIRE TIME. There was not one day during the five I was on it that I felt full. And this was a detox you still ate on, not the Lemon Detox Diet where you drink a crapload of maple syrup and lemon juice (lasted two day, spewed constantly. From both ends if you must know). On this detox you could have fruit and veg (limited amounts of pumpkin, sweet potato, potato of course) and some fish. Despite allegedly being able to eat, I was never ever full. I don’t care what you vegetarians say, you can eat five tones of lettuce and your stomach still be empty. It was about as satisfying as licking salad the entire time.




So after my detox, here’s how I celebrated. I went to Ribbits at Dutton Park. And it was awesome, despite the judging from waiters because I kept ordering more. Hey, it was all you could eat! And I had a week of salad to make up for.

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Books pirates forced me to read this week at gunpoint

Isn’t it weird that read (as in go read that- future tense) and read (as in I already read that – past tense) are spelt the same? It’s like when you look at a word for too long and you’re like fork can’t just be four letters. It’s deceiving me!

Anyhow, I’ve decided to start up a weekly section called what I read this week (actually I’ve changed it. That was too boring). I read at least one book a week, and even if it’s as boring as crap for you, at least it can advise you not to read the stuff I’m reading. And trust me; I have no shame when it comes to reading crappy books. I own the complete Princess Diaries and I’m proud of it. I may even name my daughter Mia.

This week I started out with The Distant Hours by Kate Moreton. Kate is actually a family friend so it’s interesting to read her books and pick up little personal references. This is her third book and I think the best. I read it in one afternoon and was hooked from the beginning. It skillfully weaves the narratives of three sisters and a history hunting daughter and is full of mystery and family secrets. Kick-ass book Kate! She should totally put this review on her back cover.

My next book was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the amazing author of A Little Princess (which is not to be confused with The Princess Diaries, although clearly I have a thing for princesses). I’ve read this before but only just found a copy to keep and was inspired by a Vixen Vintage post on the movie. It’s also kick-ass- full of ugly sour girls and bitchy cripples and a total babe called Dickon (imagine him having that name now. Poor bastard. I actually interviewed a teenager whose last name was Dickfrost recently. Sucks to be him). Is it wrong to be crushing on a 12-year-old? Well yes, but he had a lot of animals and I’m a sucker for animals.

Third book was So Much To Tell You by John Marsden, best known for the Tomorrow When The War Began series. This was his first published book and it’s amazing. The book is the journal of a girl who no longer speaks after a horrific accident involving her father. John doesn’t spell out the accident, the results or the situation but lets the reader uncover it.

Next on the agenda – Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra. I read it several years ago but can’t remember much of it. It is an autobiography of sorts, about when Lorenzo and three mates accidently kill someone in a prank, go to boys reformatory and then become hardened criminals themselves after being abused by the guards. Eventually the boys grow into men and shoot their tormentor in a crowded bar decades later, than stand trial for the murder.

Anybody got any more recommendations for me?

I’m pretty sure my body runs best on cheese and cheese flavored snacks

So, as the day of doom approaches (or if we’re being traditional, the wedding), I had to start a diet. Since meeting That Dude I’m Going to Marry I have steadily put on weight as try and match his impressive eating habits.
Turns out, when he was younger he had part of his gall bladder removed and now food essentially goes in one end and out the other. Whereas with me, it goes in one end and then attaches itself to my thighs. F you food.

Below is a photo of my boyfriend. Amazingly I have captured his speech with my camera!




Ok, you got me. It’s Gumby.

Anyway, since I have put on 15 kilos in the 4 years we’ve been together, I really need to do something about this before the wedding. And not just because I’m festively plump, but because I am really unhealthy. I tried to help carry a pretty light TV up the one lot of stairs to our house the other day and stopped breathing on the fifth step. So to fix this I did two things – took up Bikram yoga and went on a diet.

First up, Bikram yoga is effing extreme. It is sweating in a room of 40 degrees (105 if you’re in America) or higher, with 40 per cent humidity, holding poses that basically hurt for 90 mins. People are known to vomit, pass out, cry or literally CRAP THEIR PANTS. I did none of these things because I am a tank.



This video makes it seem like there was a lot of babes sweating sexily to porno music. There is a lot of babes but it turns out, no one sweats sexily.

Now the second part of my master plan – eat well. And I did. I ate mainly vegetables, some turkey and tuna, small amounts of dairy. This may not sound like much, but my typical diet is:
Breakfast – left over pizza from dominos, glass of coke
Lunch (which stretches over the entire work day for me) – packet of Twisties (big), several glasses of coke. Usually sushi or something for the main meal, but not the healthy kinds, the tempura fried, wrapped in egg kind. Or as I like to call it, the good kind. Oh, and at least one Mars Bar

Dinner: more coke, usually steak, some form of potato, a few token veges and a rich creamy sauce.

Sounds like heaven right? Well, after going to Bikram yoga five days a week for five weeks and sticking to my diet of veges, water and lean meat. I lost approximately -2 kilos. That’s right, I gained weight. And don’t give that muscle weighs more than fat crap because I measured myself and I was bigger.

OH AND I GOT A RASH. A big, allergy rash all over my neck and chest that I had to take pills for.
I am allergic to being healthy. My body wants coke, cheese, bread and bacon.

I’m off to combine those ingredients into a sandwich.

This blog she is a-changing (best sung to the tune of These Boots Are Made For Walking)

So – you may have noticed for a while there that I stopped blogging. There are several reasons for this:
a) My computer died. Too much midget porn, according to my buddy who fixed it (I paid him in Cherry Ripe cup cakes and donkey porn)
b) I developed a life. Well, not really, but I did get a whole heap of new books and reading is my favorite thing to do, and we had some family issues and I’ve got this mother-flipping wedding to plan and I took up Bikram yoga ( a post on that soon) and then gave it up again cause it was so pricey.
c) My camera is a P.O.S and I can’t take any decent photos with it and finally
d) I just wasn’t feeling the theme anymore. Really – I love zombies, I love vintage, but confining myself to a particular genre (coming soon to a library near you!) was too limiting. Most of my conversations come back to zombies anyway but when I feel like I have to they just don’t. And my previous posts have been less than amusing, for sure.
So now this blog will be about whatever I feel like. Oh, the crap I’m going to write….
No seriously. It’ll be crap. My apologies in advance.