Heinz Big’n'Chunky Beef and Vegetable Soup. I like a can of soup on a cold night when I’m feeling too lazy to cook properly. But this reminded me just a little too much of the aroma of dog food.

Interesting mix… Italian and Indian cuisine.

Anybody fancy some Spaghetti Vindaloo? How about Tandoori macaroni?

When I lived in Hawthorn, up the end of the street was an Indian/Vegetarian/Fish’n'Chip shop.

And in fact, I have made something approxiamating spaghetti Tandoori chicken once when I was scrounging around in the kitchen for leftovers. It was… well, not outstanding to be honest.

Well, I did it. I survived an entire week without chocolate.

Cruelly, my body reacted to this effort by producing a rather large pimple on the side of my nose. Is there no justice?

However, I’m conscious of the fact that diabetes is far from unknown in my family, and while I’m not going to go entirely without chocolate, I am aiming to reduce my intake in the future.

That said, those fundraiser chocolates that just showed up at work are going to look awfully inviting on Monday…

Thankfully it’s only a minority of smokers who are obnoxious about their habit, like the two bogan girls in the Campbell Arcade yesterday morning. I wonder what made them think they were allowed to smoke in there? After all, smoking is banned from most inside and undercover locations now.

Maybe we should have smoking zones? In fact given proposals for special rooms for other types of drug use, perhaps we should go down the path of airports, and have smoking rooms.

Speaking of addictions, the chocolate-free week is going, frankly, surprisingly well. Even Jeremy commencing reading Roald Dahl’s “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory” hasn’t got me tucking into the Freddoes.

But I wonder if, like alcoholism, it’s best to stay away from it completely after the week is over, or whether just an occasional sample of chocolate would drag me back into full-blown chocoholism?

PS. Wednesday evening. Uh oh, fundraiser chocolates showed up at work today.

I had a reasonably bad cold last week, and I’m still periodically coughing yeuchhy stuff up very noisily. At its worst, I worked from home, which was actually pretty good — I reckon I got more done at home than I would have done at work, thanks to the tranquility.

Thanks to a contact in the industry I got a quick look around a railway station booking office last week. Conspicuous above one of the internal doorways (facing away from the customer window) was a Jesus Christ. Obviously they need all the help they can get to keep the trains running on time. (But apparently Our Lord had not been pleased that morning, as my train was cancelled.)

I never got around to having a proper housewarming party last year, but have finally organised a “1st anniversary since buying” party for some good friends and relatives. No, I’m not inviting the blogging world at large, sorry. Yes, I am going to have to work very hard in the next fortnight to make the place presentable.

About an hour before the Cats vs Dogs game started, I changed my tip from Dogs to Cats. And boy am I glad I did… they turned out to win by one point. I ended up with 6 tips out of 8 (the Carlton/Essendon draw counts as a point for everybody). As of the end of round 16 I’m top of the tipping ladder by a point to Marita, followed by Rae, so at this rate the ugly trophy may be making a return visit to one of our houses this September.

To my surprise, no unbearable pangs for chocolate… yet.

Can I do it?

Starting at midnight tonight, I’m going to try.

An entire week without chocolate.

Just to prove I can.

My name is Daniel, and I am a chocoholic.

I may be addicted, but I CAN GIVE IT UP ANY TIME I LIKE.

No Mars Bars, no choc brownies, no Freddo Frogs, no hot chocolates (especially not like the one I had at lunchtime today, which was chocolate to the max — see pic). No chocolate cake, no choc-chip bagels, no choc icing doughnuts. No chocolate icecream, no cocoa, no Ovaltinees, no Kinder Surprise, no chocolate muffins, no M&Ms.

And you can bet no watching Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

Been too damn busy to think of very much intelligent to blog about.

I did post a long meandering review of my new mobile phone over at geekrant though.

Oh, and I can tell you about this fabulous email I got the other week:

Subject: Your Food Pyramid/Trapezoid presented at food and nutrition seminar

Hello Daniel,

I was at the food industry seminar mentioned in this news story, along with many other academics and professionals from food manufacturing and nutritional health industries: Good in the snack (Herald-Sun, 27 June 2006)

The main theme of the seminar was nutritional trends and eating habits of Australian consumers, now and in the future.

You might be interested to hear that in his presentation, Dr Keast (mentioned in the news story) illustrated actual eating habits vs desired nutritional habits, by showing your Food Pyramid/Trapezoid from the toxiccustard site!

Best Regards,
Kirsten

It’s just about dinner time. I’ve been attempting (for the first time) to cook a beef stew, a meal designed and built around the half-a-bottle of red wine I had left over from Friday. It’s been slowly cooking for about six hours or so, and I’m getting very hungry.

Here’s what my (ancient) stove looks like:

Update 9:30pm. Oh man, that was de-smeggin’-licious. The mushrooms in particular… superb. Perhaps not quite enough meat, and too much carrot in it. But a great cold winter’s night meal.

Hope the leftovers are as good when re-heated. Given how easy it was to cook, I can scarcely believe I’ve never done it before.