Those of you who caught yesterday’s Dark Matter rewatch, live tweet, and Insta Live session were treated to a terrific Q&A with actress Zoie Palmer and Co-Executive Producer Ivon Bartok who offered some wonderful insight into their days on the show.
Thursday, we get to do it all over again when we’ll be joined by actor Marc Bendavid (ONE) and director John Stead for a rewatch of Dark Matter Episode 10. You know, the one with the heist, that other merc, and that WTF ending? We convene at 3 pm ET. (check your local times). Clear your schedules!
So, how are you all doing? How are you spending your days? I’m sure I’m spending them in similar fashion – staying indoors, watching old episodes of 30 Rock, and eating enough supplements that they can, in their daily entirety, be considered a full other meal. And, of course, working. Ish. I have notes on implement on a couple of projects. A new project to totally restructure. And a zoom call tonight to discuss that small town mystery pilot. And, yes, before you ask, I WILL be wearing pants.
Akemi has been all sorts of inspired since the lockdown. Today, she made pizza!
Curiously, this is the second time she’s made pizza. And on both days she made pizza, coincidentally, back in Montreal, mom made pizza –
What are the chances?
So, what inspired culinary creations have you served up over the last few weeks?
Do tell.
I’ve been working from home for three weeks. Since I usually worked from home one or two days a week anyway it hasn’t been too much of a shock to the system. I know there’s lots of people that have lost their jobs so I’m thankful I work in an industry where remote work is possible.
Today is the first day of what was supposed to be a 2 week break at my house in Tasmania where I have a wood-fired pizza oven and there would have been many pizzas on the menu! Alas, I’m stuck in Melbourne with no pizza oven (although a great wood-fired pizza place nearby so I’ll definitely be doing my bit to support local businesses!).
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve made Dundee Cake:
https://i.imgur.com/tkQVHXX.jpg
Pork, apple and fennel sausages:
https://i.imgur.com/bKe2dBI.jpg
and, New York style chocolate chip cookies:
https://i.imgur.com/YqbU9UM.jpg
I’m trying to decide if I should bother making Easter eggs this year. I had 5kg of chocolate delivered last week and the moulds are in my kitchen cupboard. Normally I do make eggs and distribute them to my family but that’s not possible this year.
Other than cooking, I have a garden bed to build and a concrete slab to pour for my new barbecue.
Those all look delicious. Especially the cookies!
I have never made sausage but witnessed my neighbors making them when we were kids. Interesting.
And what, pray tell, is Dundee Cake?
OMG!!! pizza, would be what I would want if I was stranded on an island and I found that genie lamp, (I have a list). Love seeing your momma cook! yum to the max.(thanks sis) Akemis pizzas also look wonderful, you had me at pizza!!
Hey Joe,
Good luck on the new project and small town mystery pilot! I’m hoping you’ll hear some good news on those projects soon.
And it looks like you’re have a lot more success on the pizza front than we are. I’ve been trying to find yeast for the pizza dough for the last three weeks, but it seems the local supply chain is empty. I even looked on Amazon but I only found individual single use packets that were going for 10x the normal price and still had a delivery time frame of 2 to 3 weeks away.
It’s not all bad though. I have some venison in the freezer that I can put in the smoker this weekend for my birthday, and we have supplies to make sweet tea. I’ll just have to make pancakes with some bisquik and call that my birthday cake. 😁
On the home front, work from home has been crazy busy. Lots of conference calls, and work projects. I’m kinda envious of all of thess people who are sequestered at home with nothing to do. I could use some free time for the honey-do projects around here…
Time to get a sourdough starter started! Then you won’t need yeast!
Not a bad idea!
I’ve been making different versions of brownies but I go back to my favorite: https://wreg.com/on-air/live-at-9/bluff-city-coffee-brownie-recipe/ This recipe does well with the baker’s edge brownie pan.
How’s your Mom and Sis doing?
I need pictures!
Mom and Sis are doing well. Thanks!
I made these brownies first and they were awesome! https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/mocha-brownies-recipe-2074739 They were very rich and my son accused me of trying to give him diabetes. 😉 As I said, I keep going back to the basic brownies. They are chewy, delicious brownies and I usually make half the recipe for the baker’s pan. I saw the same pan on The Expanse that the used for lasagna. Interesting… Anyway, here’s a link for the picture. They look plain but the taste/texture is worth the pan expense. https://twitter.com/jertam/status/1247940747359371264/photo/1
Interesting Kat! You are an inspiration.
No yeast JeffW?!
Those look delicious.
Pants are overrated. Ask the Asgard. (What !? Somebody had to say.)
Hi Joseph,
I’ve been working from home, I do have a home office, my window over looks a large park that takes a brisk 20 minutes to walk around, which I try to do. Walking 4 times around it, 6 am each morning before it gets crowded.
In some ways the shut-in has been a blessing. I am able to take time to document the content for a program I’ve been running for 3 plus years, in order that what I do can scale up. I want to take my program to the next level.
I take marginalized young people, kids who are geeks for tech but don’t do well in schools, either high anxiety, autistic, bi-polar, homeless that kind of thing, but love, love tech. I train them in a technology start-up community called FishBurners here in Sydney and then place them into jobs doing coding and testing. I can proudly say all of them have been placed earning 60-72K a year. I place them in 4 months.
I’ve managed to build a community out of top tech companies that assist with mentoring, coaching, providing jobs or assessment. Everything is hands on and pretty full-on.
But a large part of the program is not really the coding, testing or learning the soft skills to work in a fast software product development company. It’s about breaking through limitations that others have of them. And more importantly about breaking barriers that they have about themselves. So I’ve had for example a young boy who was certified as intellectually challenged and spent his whole life in special education schools, now work as a test automation specialist for 97K a year at the age of 23 years old. Another young man who had a portion of his brain cut out during a tumor operation, got a job with Fairfax Media (top newspaper chain down under), bi-polar boy who was raped, kids living under tarpaulin… I use the program to sort that kind of stuff out.
Which is why I LOVED Dark Matter so much I see my program in that show. Don’t think poorly of me, but to be honest I see human beings as just the end product of a long iterative evolutionary process. Just a mess of algorithms, once you figure out what they are, one can kinda reset their programs through a series of activities and breakthroughs. And ultimately give them conscious choice and possibility where they may have felt they were hardwired a certain way. I love what I do. Though at times, its scary.
So while I’m shut in, I’m documenting content, putting together the business plan to scale into a program I’m calling “Bring I.T. Home” I want to target rural kids, the bush fires have hit really hard here, but there is still infrastructure hubs in the rural areas, I can train the kids and talk the corporate tech world to give them jobs they normally outsource to India, Malaysia etc. See what I’m doing there? “Bring it home”
I’m hopeful, over time I’ve engaged Atlassian, staff from Google, SafetyCulture and other hot tech companies here in Oz. And lately I’ve got the largest telecom interested in engaging with me – so fingers crossed.
I’m also dividing time at looking at how I’m going to fund it. I’ve self-funded the program for 3 plus years. Though I train the kids free, since they outperform University graduates, companies pay me to hire them as it saves a year or so of breaking in a Uni’ grad’ into the workforce. Let me brag a bit; my graduates have outperformed University Graduates even though they learnt their skills in less than 15% of the time it took the University Graduates to learn theirs. It’s how Atlassian, Google etc got interested in what I do, I’m proud to say. Although I’m simply following the teachings of Kiwi greats like Syliva Ashton Warner, my tribe and research into effective learning methodologies.
On the cooking side of things, I don’t like baking much in ovens. I like cooking meals which have interesting salad experiments, you would find boring. Although I did get a bread maker that I’m going to try out this Saturday. I have been sampling different biscuits though, there’s an Italian/Greek kind of general store in my area that get’s unusual foods from that part of the world. In the last week or so I’ve tried Papa’s Ice Cream Biscuit’s Sea Salt and Caramel Cookies, Anna’s Ginger Thins and American chocolate fudge brownies. They were all dangerously good.
Please stay safe and take care of yourself and your family.
This is amazing, Kat! You do great work for the community!
Thank you. One of the reasons why I was so sad and angry about Dark Matter not completing, was because it got me wondering about stuff. What would an upgrade chip look like for a human being? What would you actually upgrade? One with a piece of brain missing, one that’s said not to have the ‘normal’ intellectual skills, one who’s emotional trauma over rides the calm reasoning part of the frontal part of your brain. Is it the chip we need or is the assumption that we’re lacking or fall short – is wrong? In my tribe back home the idea that we should be perfect, is met with horror, since it is the need we have of each other that knits communities together. Flaws, faults and weaknesses are as necessary as strengths. sigh
I loved the twitter fest but re-visiting Dark Matter re-watches it still angers me that it didn’t finish.
That’s a very interesting take on “the upgrade”.
I got a couple darling little silicone egg poaching baskets, and a tiny aqua colored waffle maker. Breakfast is now adorable.
I have been ordering in once a week from a local cafe. They make free sack lunches for kids, so I donated to support that. Otherwise, my meals have been boring. Because I use grocery delivery and fresh food goes bad fast, cooking for one involves a whole lot of freezer and pantry items. Lots of toast and tea, chicken and rice, and sipping soups.
I love a good sipping soup!