White elephants & tofu

We were invited to Weihnachtsfest 2009 at Christiane & Bill's place, where we learned about the White Elephant Gift Exchange. Being deliberately obtuse, I made a white elephant for our contribution (it went down rather well with Elena).

One of the best moments, however, was when someone loudly referred to the pavlova Mort made as, "that famous Kiwi pie".... In front of an Australian. The room became perceptably warmer, I can tell you.

We spent the week leading up to Xmas cat-sitting/nursing Minnie, Johanna's cat in acute renal failure. She's the sweetest thing, and extremely forgiving of all the poking & prodding. It was really nice to have a cat around.

Because we're living with a vegan, I've been keen to try making tofu. This was our first try - first we made soy milk, then coagulated it with gypsum:

The finished product - 500g of soy beans (about $US 0.80) made 700g of soft tofu. A bit firmer next time, I think - I want to be able to fry it.

Yay for new glasses

I finally got around to going to the optometrist and now have new glasses and fewer headaches - all good! They're pretty similar to my previous glasses, but a little pointier.

The weather is finally warming up after a cold, dry week. The downside of this is the pipes thawing and bursting a hole throughout the garage wall. Another downside is an interesting phenomenon called "freezing rain", where the rain falls as liquid but freezes as soon as it hits anything. The ground just looks wet, but it's actually covered with an extremely slippery layer of ice. Here's what it looks like on rhododendrons: