Samwon Gardens

Samwon Gardens

I have not done a food blog in a few months, its not that i haven't gone to new places its just been hard to find time to upload them. The other night we went to a Korean restaurant and it was hidden in a strip of Greek restaurants . It had a mixture of Japanese and Korean dishes but we decided to eat there anyway.

We ordered the Korean dishes because on many occasions when you order dishes from other cultures it can be disappointing. When ordering we always have favourites to try and these are them.

Tteokbokki  is sweet chili dish using vegetables and soft rice cake. Is never is super hot but always juicy and tasty.

Jap Chae is made of sweet potato noodles with vegetalable and either beef or chicken but we always go beef. Its a fun dish to eat with all the noodles as they stick together and it makes it harder to pick up.

Bibbimbap  is a mixed rice dish and normally you get it a ceramic type bowl and the rice gets very crispy. You get a chili sauce to mix in. It  has sliced vegies and a cooked egg on top. You wait a while for the rice to crisp up then add the chili sauce and mix it altogether.

Spicy fried chicken we decided to order the sweet chili chicken and it was deep fried chicken with an amazing sweet chili sauce. The chicken was very tender and juicy. It was not overcooked but just amazing and we will come back for this dish.

For a random Korean restaurant we really enjoyed it and will be back.
Kind E-gards
Dale Stewart

3 Months Already

3 Months Already

I can't believe 3 months have gone past already and how much their personality's change. They know what they want and they know how to get it.  They scream from the top of their lungs and as soon as they see you they laugh. We are so lucky how Iris is sleeping from 8 hours to nearly 11 hours over night, so she gets  so much more sleep than we do. She is nearly 6kgs which we are ecstatic about and I can't wait for her to start eating solid food but we have another 2 / 3 months before that happens.

 
I have finally realised how short life is and how quickly time flies, before we had her we had so much time and i never understood what other parents mean when they say time is short enjoy them and take as many pics as you can. I have been working on this post for nearly 2 weeks because nights are a right off and as i quickly finish this at work before it gets too busy.

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Dale Stewart

Lifestyle changes

Lifestyle changes

Since little Iris was born nearly 2 months ago and everything changes completely, until you have one you never really comprehend how much it does. You automatically add an extra hour to go out somewhere and no matter what you do they suddenly either have a poonami or have to eat just before you walk out the door so you are late anyway. We have been taking her out to cafe's and restuarants and when you decide which one you need to find out if A) it has change tables and B) it has change tables in a unisex bathroom or in the male bathroom. If not you end up changing her nappy in the boot of the car or on a bench.It is funny how people stare at you when you do it but when you have an unhappy baby you will do what you have to make them happy. All shopping centres have parents rooms so it makes it easier and some of them are beautiful with microwaves and kettles . We can tell she is getting heavier but also sleeping better, for the first 7 weeks she was waking up at 3am for a feed but now se goes to bed at 11:30pm but wakes up at either 6:30 am or 7:30 am.  It is crazy how every day they change slightly or make new sounds. We have had a lot of friends have babies and we have watched them grow up and we see what we like and dislike.  I can't believe how fast time goes now and how lucky we are to have this little gem in our life. My wife has nearly finished writing what happened so that should be up soon.

Just a quick update.
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Dale

Iris Nolidin Stewart

Iris Nolidin Stewart 

I know it has been over a month since my last blog and that I have also mentioned in my last few blog's on and off that I would have news. Kim and I are now parents and I wanted to mention it earlier on but I was worried that if anything happened I would have hated myself. She is beautiful but I know all parents say that, but being Eurasian gives her that different look. The last few weeks have absolutely crazy and I have never had such an emotional ride in my life. I don't know if it is lack of sleep or work just being so busy I don't know where my days have gone. Its amazing you get told sleep when they sleep and I have never had so many Nanna Naps in my life. As i try to find time to edit more photos and you realise how quickly they grow. She is now 4.5kg and loves her food.

We have already taken her cafe's and restaurants and also Ikea and she loves the car thank goodness.  We look forward to a whole lot of adventures and random shinanigans.
Thanks For having a read.
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Dale Stewart

Fab Food and Great Friends

Fab Food and great friend's

Before the new chapter begins in our life we have been trying to save as much as we can but also catch up with all our friends as the next few months will be hectic. Its not long before our little Burrito enters the world and we need to care for her, but that's part of Kim's story.
 Last month our friends took us out for dinner for Kim's Birthday and we went to a beautiful restaurant called Rosetta. Its an Italian restaurant in the city and it was amazing, I have never had chips and crab that tastes so fab.

 

 

We have not done Fine Dining since Narisawa last august and it was great to do it again. The deserts are fantastic We had the chocolate, peanut and coconut semi-freddo. I would go back for potato and the desserts.
   
That following Sunday we did YumCha with a group of close friends. We have been to about 10 different YumCha places and this one is my favourite as it does the chicken feet so well. Its called Crown palace. The chicken feet have so much flavor. It has a variety of dishes and they are always hot. We also ordered the crispy crab claw balls and they are superb, tender and juicy. If you like Tofu fa you should go to the early session as it had sold out by the second session.

 

 

 

Have you had chicken feet?
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Dale

Random Meal

Random Meal

We are starting to cook at home more often and try to cook random meals, we bought random veggies and decided to make a Korean type soup. We bought a tub of sesame and garlic bean paste.

We put about 2 liters of water in.

Once the water started to boil add your paste and mix it in. It does not matter what veggies you use just cut them up small so it cooks faster.  We took 500 grams of premium mince  and spooned them into meatballs.

After putting in our meatballs we let it cook for a few minutes then added the veggies. We added this chili sauce to add some spice

It was a great meal to warm you up and is cheap to make.
Have you tried using random to sauces to make a meal?
Kind E-gards
Dale

Not a Chippy

Not a Chippy

Another day has gone and again we achieved our goal of building some shelves in the next cupboard, for those who are not Australian and don't know what I mean by a chippy. A chippy is a carpenter and by no means are we carpenters but as usual we gave it our best... First thing was removing the old shelves.

Every shelf / cupboard is build differently in this house like in the kitchen they had glued and nailed the shelves in. In the bedroom they just used a lot of massive nails and in this room they used massive nails and toggle bolts. They used about 2 to 3 toggle bolts per shelf with nails and normally 1 toggle bolt can hold 10kgs. Unless they had planned to put 30kgs minimum it was completely over kill. It took nearly 2 hours to take them off the walls. You have to be carful when removing toggle bolts as they can put massive holes in the walls. 

 

Constructing them is the easy part as we went to the local hardware store with the measurements and got all the timber cut to size. Then all you have to do is put it in place and screw together. The project took a about 4 hours.

We installed rails to hang clothes off but the total cost for today was  just under $60 to do.

Have you ever tried to install shelves? Now we have to patch and paint.

Thanks for reading.

Kind E-gards

Dale

Life In The Fast Lane

Life In The Fast Lane

I have been at my job now for just over two months and it has been crazy, at my last job I had a couple of hours a day to do what I want. I would be able to do Youtube, Ebay and blog but now I have not much time even though I spend less time traveling I have struggled to find time to do this blog. Over the last few weekends we have been renovating again and replacing furniture to make the house look less cluttered. We have been looking for a T.V Unit for nearly 2 years and we finally found the right one. We got the unit from Holy Funk Furniture in Moorabbin. I also added an I.r Extender so I can turn the amp on and off with out opening the sliding doors.

 I hated the wall mount that the other T.V was so I replaced it with a $20 bracket that sits a few centimeters off the wall.

Last weekend we installed adjustable shelves into a  cupboard and readjusted the rail because whoever built it was a Muppet and it gives us more flexibility with storage.

I hated my modem sitting out in the open so I got a Cube frame and ran all my cables up the wall and into the cube. We need to print a picture off  to cover the front but it will look good when completed but we have not had time to print off the pic so hopefully we will do that in the next few days.

Those who know me know that I love doing Latte art but I have upgraded my coffee machine and sad to say no more art but I got my new machine at an amazing price and could not refuse it. The coffee is pretty close to a fully manual machine but makes coffee from start to finish in 60 seconds.

I hope the terrible weather passes so we can go take photos, until then we have two more cupboards to fix and a lot of painting.
What do you think?
Kind E-gards
Dale