Christmas Dinner

It's our first Christmas in a new house, having moved out in January this year. As such I decided maybe since my brother was busy working on Christmas eve and day we should have dinner at our house on Christmas night with my parents. I also invited 2 friends from high school who are married and have just had their first baby a few months ago.

As if having 7 animals to look after wasn't enough now I've decided to cook for everyone. Then I woke up to myself: I live in Australia, why would I even bother doing a full roast with heaps of cooking and stress, it's going to be 38C on Christmas day! So it's turned into just bringing out the ham my dad scored in his work Christmas hamper, buying a hot chicken and making a few salads. Plus now we're probably going to be doing it all at my parents house since it's going to be so bloody hot - they have a pool.

What I'm trying to share in an awkward roundabout way is the dessert I will be purchasing semi making: the pavlova.

Named after and in honour of Anna Pavlova the Russian ballerina who apparently toured Australia and New Zealand in the 1920's. It has been a source of much debate between our 2 countries which nationality actually invented it. New Zealand apparently are the more probable originator, but either way it is delicious.

One hell of a ballerina, I'm guessing

It's a meringue based dessert dish which I always choose as my birthday cake but also very popular at Christmas. It has a crispy crust and soft inner and piled on top is traditionally cream and seasonal fruits plus passion fruit.

The Cheesecake Shop here do an excellent version and unlike that place Penny works at on the Big Bang Theory actually just sells cheesecakes (and pavlovas obviously and a few cakes). It's not the prettiest dessert, although the topping does help so I'm not sure if any amount of food porn images would help but I''ll try anyway.

Lunch

Lunch is the highlight of each and every working day. I get to stroll down to the outlet shopping near my work and browse the options (who the hell am I kidding I always buy either 1 or 2 different things). Sometimes I also stroll some of the shops, check my one lotto ticket of the week and then I get to return to my office, shut the door and read for half a hour.

Today I chose the delightful (as always) vegetarian wrap with the awesome sun dried tomato pesto, yes indeed I'm fancy. As usual I think about my choices and try and validate why a chocolate braid (wrote brain first, yum) would be a good option to eat after my salad wrap. Thought process is usually something like:
'I deserve it, I've had a crap day'
'It will be my only one of the week' (no it won't you big fat liar)

For those who don't know Croissant Express is a retail store in Perth who make baguettes, wraps, and these gorgeous pastry creations such as a chocolate braid which is pretty much delectable pastry and lashings of darkish chocolate all fashioned into a criss cross pattern - makes sense no? Anyway of late I have become rather fond of them and the urge to stop myself from getting them about 3 times a week is getting harder and harder.

Anyway today my little Irish server (who I keep waiting for her to just recognise me and what I order but she never does, should I feel rejected?) tells me it's $7 for my wrap and then I hold up my coke and she goes and puts that into the til and it's $10.50 including the coke (sweet Jesus that's expensive), she returns again and suddenly I haven't got the heart to make her scurry back there again once I've added on the braid.
So long story short she saved me money and some extra calories just because I was being too polite. I somehow don't think this is a ploy that will last too long, knowing me.

While I was there a woman came up with 2 baby bottles of milk and asked if they had a microwave to warm it up. Now a few years ago I worked in a cafe and this was a big no-no, management told us to tell customers we couldn't do it due to health regulations (basically possibility of being sued). This nearly always resulted in customers getting pretty agitated and this made me think of Customer Suck, a livejournal I like to lurk at and whether this would be considered customer or management suckery.
I don't remember the specific details of when it happened to me but it always annoyed me the sense of entitlement some customers feel, and makes me glad I now have a job where I don't have that much customer interaction.