Can’t decide where to eat?

Urbanspoon is one of the largest restaurant review sites in the USA. It’s a site that allows customers to review restaurants and you can see menus etc. They have a great app for the iPhone that finds your location and let’s you spin a ’slot machine’ restaurant picker to find restaurants close to you. You can demo it below – I’ve locked in the Brisbane area for the app and you can click the LOCK icons to lock in a suburb or food style or price – or any combination of the three.

Here’s what others say about us:

and restaurant reviews:

Monky and Froggy visit Spirit House

My google alert came through this morning with a great review of our new menu. It seems that Monky and Froggy from bellygood.net had paid us a visit. I’m glad that the Spirit House lived up to their expectations. Bellygood.net is run by two avid food lovers, monky and piggy, who have some great reviews of other restaurants – worth checking out.

And if only they had some contact details we’d love to send them a little something for their kind words.

Luminescent Mushrooms

Wandering around the restaurant last night I noticed some glowing dots coming from a log in the garden. Upon closer examination they were coming from tiny mushrooms. The light is bright enough to catch your eye but still took nearly 20 seconds of exposure to bring you this photo:

The largest mushroom cap is about the size of your finger nail.

They seem to spring up after heavy pro-longed rain and apparently as they grow, a chemical reaction involving luciferin (a light-emitting pigment contained within the mushrooms) occurs, causes them to glow a ghostly green.

Gordon Ramsay’s best scrambled egg recipe

I know what I’m cooking this Saturday morning:

Sticky Rice in a rice cooker

I’m not sure about this one – but according to About.com in the Thai food section, someone has posted a technique for cooking sticky rice in your rice cooker. And no, apparently you don’t have to soak it over night. I haven’t tried this technique yet but if you want to be the first let us know how it turns out.

Ingredients:

• SERVES 4
• 2 cups  “sticky” or “glutinous” rice
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Preparation:

1. Place 2 cups sweet rice in your rice cooker. Add 2+ 1/2 cups water and stir.
2. Let the sweet rice stand for 30 minutes (or longer if you want – up to 4 hours).
3. Add the salt and stir once more. Turn on your rice cooker.
4. When your rice cooker switches off (after 15-20 minutes), let the rice sit at least five minutes extra.
5. Enjoy your sticky rice!

Sticky Rice Tip: Sticky rice will become sticker the longer it sits.

Jupiter slipping behind the sun

There’s a reason you should never look at the sun – that’s because NASA does it for you and when they do they see cool stuff like Jupiter and its moons travelling behind the sun – if you were to do it you’d see your retinas fried:

That mild green glow on the left side of the sun is billions of tons of plasma blasting off the surface into outerspace.

How to open a champagne bottle with a sword

The sort of thing they should teach at waiter school:

The death of farmers’ markets

Despite the fact that since the dawn of civilization we’ve been buying and eating at village markets, the USA has introduced the ‘Food Safety Modernisation Act’. Essentially regulating and forcing registration on any producer who produces food of any kind and then transports it – the fines for non compliance are horrific.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “those whacky Americans” … but seriously, our politicians lack any sort of imagination and I think it’s only a matter of time before we see similar laws in Australia. Which could mean the death of farmers’ markets and a big win to Woolworths and Coles.

Farmers’ markets are a great solution for these troubled economic times – keeping the money in the local community where it gets spent locally. Let’s hope that our politicians leave our markets alone.

On another note, if you want to fight the economic meltdown, why not plant a vegetable garden and get some chooks? Not only do you save money but you now have some chores to give the kids that gets them away from their play stations.

First pics of the spirit house renovations

The builders have left and we’re left with a brand new restaurant. Basically the Spirit House spent two weeks at the plastic surgeon and has come out looking years younger and enhanced in all the right places. New bar, kitchen and a spiffy new paint job plus the last of our courtyards have been concreted and landscaped.

Here’s a picture I took the other day of the veranda area of the restaurant (actually it’s 7 photos made into an HDR image – which is why it has this perculiar look). Click on it to see the larger size:

World’s best street food

Concierge.com have a great listing of the world’s best street food. Food plays such a big part in a country’s culture and street food should be top of your list of things to see and do in any country.

I know a traveler’s main concern is getting sick, but sometimes it’s worth running the risk.While in India I saw people flocking around a Lassi vendor – I lined up (which doesn’t help in India) then shoved my way to the front and was handed a terracotta cup with chilled foamy liquid. My friends looked in shock as I took my first tentative sip – which tasted like heaven. Drinking the rest of the lassi I gave my ‘covermore insurance card’ to my companions (who wouldn’t even try it) and said if anything happens to me tomorrow they could call the number on the card and get me to a hospital.

What was more surprising to my cowardly traveling companions was the next day I was absolutely fine – sure, we all saw the Taj, explored the ruins of Fate Puhr Sikri but my lassi was the highlight of the trip.