This is a quick little message to anyone who is reading. Did anyone get pictures of the girl in the pink kimono who was throwing balloons out to the crowd at the finale of last night’s concert (Alice Cooper Theatre of Death Sydney, 2009)?
I gave my camera to my friend and he didn’t manage to get ANY pictures of me at all on accounts of being on the wrong side of the stage. Please contact me in the comments page or via E-mail if you did!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! EEEEEE! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
(The management apologises for lack of coherence, but apparently, that’s what’s left of Cooler Becky’s vocabulary after having just met Alice Cooper.)
Like to eat gourmet food but too lazy to cook? In a panic because the in-laws are coming and you haven’t prepared anything to eat? With the magic of a well-equipped kitchen and some persistence, you can turn your next meal into something worthy of gracing the tables of a top-class restaurant! Today’s post is brought to you courtesy of my dearest sister, who brought this website to my attention, hoping to inspire me to higher heights of gourmet cooking.
Fancy Fast Food is a website that adds glitz and glamour to fast food, allowing mere plebeians to enjoy the look of gourmet food on their plates at the price of what you can get at the local burger joint! Best of all, most of the cooking is already done since the ingredients are already pre-cooked and no new ingredients are needed.
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Most of the recipes are fairly easy to follow including a list of ingredients, step-by-step instructions and pictures of the food in each step. To minimise your expenditure and maximise savings, the ingredients lists also include possible “value meals” or “combos” that the food can purchased in.
The only drawback to using Fancy Fast Food is that a number of the ingredients such as White Castle Burgers or Baconators from Wendy’s can only be purchased in America. However, substitutions from more universal fast food franchises KFC or McDonalds seem to work just as well. I’ve managed to prepare the Wendy’s Baconator Combo (pictured above) just as well with a McDonald’s Double Bacon Cheeseburger meal, though the cheeseburger meal was a little smaller.
For the creative chef in you, the website also accepts submissions in the form of recipes – provided before and after pictures are taken, along with step-by-step pictures.
Fancy Fast Food is available at http://www.fancyfastfood.com/. While the food in Fancy Fast Food has the texture, look and feel of gourmet cooking, making it look better doesn’t change the taste or the nutritional content! The food will still contains the same fat, salt and calorie content as regular fast food and will still taste the same!
Well, since I’m already writing about cookies, let’s move on to the next thing on the sweet treats list – hot chocolate. There’s something magical about a mug of hot chocolate, it’s a comfort food that’s guaranteed to chase away winter blues. It’s also healthy! Recent studies have found that the beverage reduces the risk of heart disease as it contains more antioxidants than wine or tea. Flavinols in hot chocolate also help to shield the walls of blood vessels from damage and also prevents platelet buildup. The drink and has also enjoyed a history of being used as a medicinal aid for the treatment of stomach ailments1.
Hot chocolate was invented by the Mayan people over two thousand years ago (before they got taken over by the Aztecs). It was considered a drink for the upper echelons of society and was (ironically) served cold. The original drink was bitter, frothy, spicy and actually kinda gross tasting as it was flavoured with cornmeal and chilli peppers.
The drink as it is known today is actually a European adaptation of the Aztec adaptation of the original Mayan concoction. Sugar was added to counteract the natural bitterness of cocoa and chilli was thrown right out in favour of the more palatable flavours like vanilla and cinnamon.
I happened to come across the Gourmet Beverage Bar at the Aroma Festival last year, having been lured there by the heady scent of brewing chocolate. The queue for the stall was miles long, but it really was worth the wait. Each drop of the thick, Italian style hot chocolate was divine… so good, in fact, that I purchased a number of small packets of chocolate powder for home consumption. Sadly, the packets of chocolate didn’t last more than a week in my house due to their tastiness and I was left without my fix.
In a bid not to run out of the stuff, I’ve purchased a 1 kg tin of the cioccolato tradizionale2 at the aroma festival this year. The price of the instant powder burned quite a substantial hole in my pocket – one tin costs about $48. Still, if you don’t have that much cash to spare, you can always visit the Gourmet Beverage Bar at the Rocks Market every weekend for your fix as the drinks are also available in the aforementioned small packets. The packets cost about $3.50 each and come in a range of different flavours from the very basic traditional cocoa to complex blends such as cherry, hazelnut and the old classic, chilli pepper.
Fans of the ancient Mayan drink (in its modern form) will be pleased to know that the subject of today’s post is technically available worldwide. The Gourmet Beverage Bar ships worldwide, but doesn’t really have a webpage. Instead, order forms are available by request via E-mail at gracio(at)ozemail(dot)com(dot)au.
Tea after service at St Barnabas Anglican Church is accompanied by a sweet snack, usually a cake baked by a church member as well as an alternative of biscuits.
The biscuits are extremely delicious, sometimes more so than the cake. Though, I do have to admit that I often eat both cake AND biscuits because of my terribly sweet tooth.
Using Sherlock Holmes’s time-honoured investigative method of staring at the label on the cookie package, I determined that the biscuits were supplied by a bakery called Mitchell and Hopkins, which had a cafe not too far from where I live. With the ulterior motive of securing a steady supply of these tasty sweet treats, I decided to pay the cafe a visit.
The Mitchell and Hopkins cafe is tucked away between a few buildings in a factory district in Camperdown. 
The cafe is easy to find, as the smell of freshly baked biscuits radiates around it. It’s extremely hard to miss – it’s the only building on the street that’s painted black and it’s also fronted by a large pair of glass doors and a huge sign. The cafe is fairly spacious, with a bar area for coffee and a great selection of hot cafe foods. The coffee is of an average price and is apparently fantastic1. Staff are extremely friendly and quite willing to serve even the fussiest customers. The cafe is located across from a nice park as well – an ideal place for families to purchase hot foods for picnics in the sun.
The unique part of the Mitchell and Hopkins cafe can be found behind the coffee counter. There, a large observation window allows customers to see biscuits being made by pastry chef Lawrence 
Hopkins and his team. The sweet and savoury selections are then wheeled out straight from the bakery floor to the shop, where they can be purchased.
My personal favourites, the Pinwheel Biscuits, are not only yummy and cute to look at but are award winners as well! Mitchell and Hopkins biscuits have won swags of medals at the 2006 Great Taste Awards in London and the 2007 Sydney Royal Fine Foods Show. The biscuits are made with all-natural ingredients and contain no preservatives. They’re cheap too, with packets ranging from $5.50 to $6, so they’re really worth buying!
Mitchell and Hopkins is located at 29 Australia Street in Camperdown. The cafe is also available for hire for functions and provides a comprehensive list of event management and catering services. For more information about Mitchell and Hopkins, you can get to their website at http://www.mitchellhopkins.com.au/.
Masterchef Australia has just had its grand finale – the final showdown between home-cooking mother of two Julie Goodwin and Chinese Malaysian painter Poh Ling Yeow.
With her keen attention to detail and quality meals, Julie has been announced the winner the title of Australia’s first Masterchef, netting a prize of $100,000 in cash, chef training from leading professional chefs and a chance to have her own cookbook published.
As runner up, Poh hasn’t left the competition empty handed either, having been invited on a paid flight to Los Angeles to work for guest judge Curtis Stone, one of Australia’s most famous chefs.
Now that the battle of the amateur chefs is over, what will Australia do without the daily dose of quality cuisine from Masterchef contestants gracing the screen? While cooking schools all over Australia have reported an increase in enrollments due to the success of the series, there’s certainly still a lull without the nightly eye candy of delectable dishes.
Therefore, to continue the celebration of Australian food, I have decided to dedicate the next two weeks of blogging to food where you can find it – in Sydney, online and at home! Well, more or less… I do still reserve the right to write about wicked-cool things if they do occur.
In any case, I hope you enjoy the upcoming Food(ish) Weeks, brought to you by My Life, Only That Much Cooler!
I promised Dad that I’d take him out for a good movie while he was out in Australia. Unfortunately, the first movie I treated him to was Year Zero and if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know what a disaster that was. Still, I had to make good on my promise and you can’t go wrong with Harry Potter, can you?
For those of you who haven’t read the books, be forewarned – this review will contain plenty of spoilers. That being said, you really should be reading the books prior to watching the movies.
In the sixth installment of the extremely popular Harry Potter series, Harry Potter has somehow managed to survive the events of the previous film, including the Dark Lord’s attack on the Ministry of Magic and the killing of his godfather Sirius Black by psychotic witch Bellatrix Lestrange, to enter his sixth year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. With the ressurection of the Dark Lord Voldemort, the school is now under a deep lockdown, setting the tone for a much darker story than that of the previous films.
Harry is tasked with a mission from headmaster Dumbledore to gather precious information in the form of memories from Voldemort’s former teacher Professor Slughorn. Meanwhile, Draco Malfoy, Harry’s “nemesis”, has been given a sinister order from the Dark Lord himself. Despite the darker tone of the story, Harry and his group of friends are now at the age where dating is appropriate and romance is certainly in the air. One of Hogwart’s magical storerooms sets the scene for Harry’s first kiss with longtime crush Ginny Weasley, while Harry’s best friend Ron Weasley leaves 
book smart Hermione Granger heartbroken as he blunders through a disastrous relationship with Lavender Brown.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth of what is going to be a series of eight films based on J.K. Rowling’s famous books. The film is fairly straightforward and, for the most part, stays true to the original text, a few changes made for timing notwithstanding.
The special effects are incredibly impressive. The movie opens with a very well-shot sequence of the kidnapping of the talented wandmaker Ollivander, proprietor of Olivander’s wands, and subsequent destruction of his house and attached shop. The shot is smooth, showing the mayhem caused by the Dark Lord Voldemort’s group of followers, the Death Eaters on wizards and muggles alike. I was particularly impressed with the special effects used to show the shaking and curving of a suspension bridge as its supports are cut off.
The quality of acting from in this movie is also excellent. With a mix of childish glee and seductive whispering, Helena Bonham Carter gives an exceptional portrayal of an obsessive, mentally unstable person in her role as the mad witch Bellatrix Lestrange. As Lavender Brown, Jessie Cave does a wonderful job of simulating the sickly-sweet silliness of a teenage girl with a crush. There’s also some pretty good moments from main characters as well. Tom Felton’s performance of Draco Malfoy’s slow 
mental breakdown as he struggles with the weight of a task too heavy to handle is particularly powerful, as is the heart-breaking scene in which Harry Potter is given the task of forcing a cruel potion down Dumbledore’s throat despite the latter’s protestations.
Unfortunately, being the third-to-last installment of an 8 movie series, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince doesn’t come with a satisfactory ending. The movie ends very abruptly on the death of a major character and leaves a lot of unanswered questions in its wake, the result being that it feels somewhat unfinished and leaves audiences with a sinking feeling because of the downer ending.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is an extremely impressive movie and is worth seeing on the big screen at least once. The half-year delay in the movie’s release has really given the directors a chance to polish up the movie. It certainly outshines some of the previous movies in the series.
So, apparently not every band likes to smash their guitars. The following video was recently released by the folk-singing Canadian duo, Sons of Maxwell, about their trip to Nebraska with United Airlines in 2008.
According to a statement written by the band’s singer-songwriter, Dave Carroll, poor treatment of luggage by United Airlines baggage handlers resulted in severe damage to his expensive Taylor guitar. His attempts to alert ground staff to the situation were met with indifference and subsequent attempts to get compensation from United Airlines for the damages were ultimately unsuccessful until he posted the video on Youtube.
Currently, United Airlines is in discussion with Dave Carroll about his guitar and have announced their intention to use the song as a training video for ground staff and baggage handlers. To cash in on the free PR, Taylor Guitars has also given an official statement, announcing the opening of their new Factory Service centre and offering customers a discount on their guitar refresh service packages in a “travel relief” special.
It takes lot of banging about to damage an instrument that’s been stored in a hard case. Most guitar cases are pretty sturdy and can protect the guitar within from a lot of abuse. The aviation standards of most countries allow for instruments to be brought on aircraft, provided that they are packed in secure cases.
Travelling has become quite disastrous of late, even Alice Cooper managed to lose a suitcase at London’s Heathrow airport last month. On a larger scale, there have been three major plane crashes in the last two months, not to mention the terrifying spread of swine flu.
I’m actually planning to visit California (Los Angeles, Antelope Valley and Anaheim) in April next year. I had originally intended to travel on a cheaper airline to shave some money off my budget, but now, I’m not so sure that I’m confident about travelling any longer. If you have any suggestions for things I should be doing in California or ideas as to how I can shave precious dollars off my budget, let me know by commenting on this post, or via E-mail at cooler(dot)becky(at)gmail(dot)com.
Otherwise, for more information about Dave Carroll, you can get to his website at http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/. He’s got plenty of music there that doesn’t have anything to do with airline blues and has recently released a new album, Perfect Blue. Alternatively, you can check out the Sons of Maxwell website at http://www.sonsofmaxwell.com/.
If you want to find out about Dave Carroll’s guitar and travelling with guitars in general, visit Taylor Guitars at http://www.taylorguitars.com/.
If you’re not into video games over the weekend, but love your caffeine, why not head down to The Rocks for the Aroma Festival?
The Aroma Festival is Australia’s biggest coffee festival and celebrates caffeine in all its forms, but especially in the form of coffee. The festival this year will feature six stages of live entertainment, cooking demonstrations, a coffee machine expo and, of course, coffee making demonstrations. Dozens of stalls will line the streets and the smell of melting chocolate, sweet teas and thick coffees will fill the air.
The festival will be divided into four sections (The Oasis, The Latin Quarter, The Orient and The Continent) each representing a different area of the world (Turkey, South America, Asia and Europe respectively) and showcasing bewitching blends, sweets and spices unique to each continent as well as folk music and dancing.
For the kids, there will also be camel rides starting from The Oasis and visiting all the different sections!
So, if your eyelids are drooping and you just need to a cuppa to get started, head down to The Rocks this Sunday (19th March). Festivities start at 10 AM and close at 5 PM. For more information on the Aroma Festival, you can visit the official webpage at http://www.therocks.com/sydney-Things_To_Do-Aroma_Festival.htm.
If you’re a fan of Alice Cooper, then you’ve probably noticed that the official website, AliceCooper.com, has undergone a major facelift and has even been renamed!
The website is now called “The Official Community of Alice Cooper” and boasts a much more streamlined design. It has also expanded to include new community elements with features including a blog for news from the inside, improved discography with official lyrics and links to iTunes as well as a fresh mailing list that allows International membership.
Fans will also be able to access a membership area, which allows them to comment on news posts and get special deals on tickets, VIP passes, “best seats” presales and a whole bunch of other merchandise. Site maintainers say that they have many more special things planned for the community in the future, so there’ll be plenty to look forward to.
So, if you like Mr Cooper’s music and want to be part of a bigger community, get yourself a membership at http://www.alicecooper.com/ and join the rest of Alice’s minions, maidens and other sick things.
Also, if you’re a regular reader of My Life, Only That Much Cooler, you may have noticed that a new and shiny “About Cooler Becky” section has been put up. You can find out about Cooler Becky there, if you haven’t already read her resume.
