Sonic Pistol Shrimp

I’m still not sure I believe this, but it comes from the BBC so I guess it must be true. This species of shrimp has a unique way of catching its prey – it stuns them with a massive sound wave. I’m not even going to try to explain, see for yourself:

I wonder what they taste like?

Spirit House wedding photos

It’s easy to capture pretty photos of the ‘happy couple’ in our gardens. But the photographer Todd Hunter Mcgraw took some photos at a recent wedding at the Spirit House that are quirky, original and unique.

Todd truly has a great eye for that unusual shot and manages to take the ordinary and turn it into something special. An example is this photo from our smoker’s courtyard – an area that most wedding photographers never use:

This is definitely not your traditional wedding photo but it really makes a statement – you can see more great photos and read more about this wedding on his blog:

Dusk is a must ! .. Cara & Craig » toddhuntermcgaw.com.au.

Scales Vs Other measuring tools

Having just finished our latest cookbook I was struck by the words of wisdom from Gizmodo arguing that we should be using scales for ALL our measurements in our recipes. The argument goes something like this:

Recipes work better when you weigh ingredients. A cup of flour can weigh between 4 and 6 ounces. That means if you’ve got a bread or cake recipe that calls for 4 cups of flour, you might measure out 16 ounces or 24 ounces—a 50% difference in the main ingredient! . . . Measuring is easier and cleaner and results in fewer dirty measuring cups when you use a scale. You can measure everything right into your mixing bowl.

Makes sense to me – you can read more here:

The Kitchen Scale, Unsung Hero of Great Cooking – Kitchen scales – Gizmodo.

Honey bird talks to humans

Amazing video about the relationship honey birds have with african tribesmen that has evolved over thousands of years. The wild honey birds lead the hunters to wild bees’ nests so the hunters can get the honey – in return the hunters leave some of the honey out to reward the birds. Fascinating!

Food Styling for Spirit House book

Ever wondered why your food doesn’t look as nice as the recipe books? That’s because you don’t have paint brushes, tweezers and essentially a make-up kit for your food. Jaime Reye was our wonderful food stylist for the new Spirit House cook book. It was a great experience watching Jaime at work:

See what I mean, Jaime is painting glistening highlights on to the chicken in the salad.

With so many of Annette’s recipes to shoot and just a few days to make all this happen, we are lucky that we have such great chefs like Katrina and Kelly to lend a hand:

And the person responsible for making the food look great in print is photographer Graeme Gillies, who had help from Spirit House owner, Helen Brierty. Here Helen can be seen working as a photogaphic intern – which basically involves standing around all day holding the fill card.

All in all, this promises to be our best recipe book ever. The photographs look amazing and eating the left-overs from the shoot had us all raving over the flavours. The new book should be available by Mother’s day 2010.

Masterchef judge Matt Preston at Spirit House

Masterchef judge and super-nice-guy Matt Preston dropped in at the Spirit House on his way to the Noosa Food Festival. Officially he was here to gather some information for Delicious Magazine but unofficially we chatted about the show and the future of food and cooking talent in Australia.

Totally different to his television persona, Matt was charming, witty and more than happy to joke around with the staff:

He surprised the cooking school by walking in unannounced and telling everyone he was here to judge their food. You’d think he’d be bothered with everyone recognising him and bothering him for autographs but he was more than happy to spend time posing with my niece and her two friends (now his greatest fans):

What came out of our chat was shows like Masterchef are helping change people’s view of cooking. Being a chef is no longer a ‘trade’ or a career choice for when high school leavers’ grades are not so good. The show – and our experience – have shown there are people out there who love food and have a talent to blend flavours in to an expression of themselves.

A great knife for that teen chef

We love good design at the Spirit House and the you know design is good if some love it and others hate it – so when it comes to knives we think this is pretty neat:

Give one of these to a teenager and you’re going to get some help in the kitchen. The blood stain is permanently set on to the blade and the evidence tag is a nice touch. And at $20Aus or so, it’s quite a bargain. You can buy it online at Neatorama’s shop.

Nail Houses

What happens when a developer moves in to a neighbourhood and buys up the houses for a new shopping centre or apartment complex and one person doesn’t want to sell? You get a nail house.

I used to think that we had one in West End near the Three Monkeys coffee shop but someone told me the developer owns it – still, it’s an old Queenslander surrounded by an appartment complex so I guess it’s a nail house. With all that in mind, deputydog.com has some great stories of nail houses from around the world.

Spirit House Soups – now available

Hitting the shelves in time for winter are our new range of delicious frozen soups – Chicken and Galangal (Tom Kha Gai) and Spicy Thai Pumpkin. Each soup packet serves two people and serving is as easy as thawing and heating the contents in a saucepan or microwave.

To turn our soups into a hearty meal, simply add some cooked prawns or chicken – Easy! Available now at a stockist near you.

Inland sea disappears

Thanks to NASA you can see the effect that man has on the environment. Below is a photo of the Aral sea – the word’s 4th largest inland sea.

Rivers were diverted, dams were added to irrigate cotton farms etc. As a result, towns that lined the shores of the sea and derived their economy from fishing are now abandoned. Sometimes it takes a view from space to see just how fragile our planet is and what impact we are having on this planet.