This is real love

Disorganised Boyfriend bursts into the bedroom with a scowl on his face.

"Have you seen my keys?" he demands.
I wince and try to bury my head under the pillow. This is the second time he has woken me up.
He starts to move things around the room in his attempt to find said keys, loudly exclaiming "I gave them to you last night when we came home".

"Mm ou mimmt" is my mumbled response.

"Yes, remember? I went to take my washing off the line and gave them to you then!" he points out, leaving the room to continue his search elsewhere.
Resigned to my fate, I get out of bed. Trudge down the back steps still in my nighty - hair standing out like I've been electrocuted - promptly find the keys sitting - where he has left them - atop the washing machine, trudge back upstairs, silently hand them to my dumbfounded male counterpart, and slip back into bed. 

I think I may have heard a muttered apology. It might have been a dream though.

A man and his lake (and Marlon Brando's jacket)

Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone Lake. USA

How to impress your mother in law

I think I have finally become, what one could consider, a reasonable cook. Sure, there are many things I don't know, and before you roll your eyes at me and say, "Suse, you've been watching cooking shows again haven't you?" the answer is NO.

In fact, I actually have been using Recipes. Recipes from BOOKS and the INTERNET. I know, hardcore.

Yep, I'm a hardcore recipe researcher. I also like to tweak. That's right. I take a perfectly good recipe and go: "I can totally make this already perfected recipe even more perfected. It will be AWESOME!". This is usually after the second or third glass of wine. It gets a little fuzzy when I try to remember exactly how much I've had. Edit: Or even where I am for that matter.

Anyway, where were we? Oh, impressing your MIL. So I recently tried my hand at cooking haloumi. I totally nailed it. What's even better is that my boyfriend's mother liked it too! So here's a winning haloumi salad that I found on the interwebs (www.taste.com.au) and tweaked a little. It's great as an entrée or a quick and light lunch (or dinner!).

Hopefully I won't get sued by someone for posting this.




Haloumi Caper Spinach Salad (4 people)


Ingredients

1 teaspoons olive oil
Packet of baby spinach
400g haloumi cheese, cut into 1cm-thick slices
2 teaspoons of sesame seeds

Lime caper dressing

3/4 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped
1/2 cup mint leaves, chopped
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon capers
1 lime, juiced

1. Make your dressing first. Using a mortar & pestle (or some kind of bowl and a spoon) mix the ingredients and mash them together. You don't want to turn the capers into a paste, just break them up a bit to release the flavours. Leave this to the side.

2. Rinse your spinach leaves and either pop them in a bowl or on a nice platter if serving as an entrée.

3. Cook your Haloumi. Heat the oil in a pan over medium-high heat until hot. Then place the haloumi in and allow to cook for 1 to 2 minutes each side or until golden brown (not burnt!).

4. Turn down heat to warm-medium, cover with sesame seeds, flip over and cover the other side. Remove from heat.

5. Place Haloumi over salad, and drizzle dressing over the top. Serve!

Go here before you die. Because I say so.

Yellowstone National Park. Beartooth Highway. USA

Hello interwebs!

After much faffing about, I've finally got this thing up and running. Having said that, I doubt anyone will read it, and anyone that does is obviously bored and should probably go outside and enjoy their life before it's all over. Before you know it you'll be looking back at it going "Did I seriously spend the last 12 years reading the inane musings of an emotionally-stunted and socially-handicapped crazy person? WHERE DID ALL THE LIVING GO?"

I ate it. Me. Susie. Or Soozi. Or Big Suse as my quote-snatching boyfriend likes to call me. Not because I'm horribly obese and have extra junk in my trunk. No, he stole it from a British comedy because he is unoriginal and boring, and thinks it's cute to make me squirm.

Of course, I'm being generous. I give this whole thing a month before I forget about it's existence.

Adieu!