A self-indulgent Easter

My Easter did have a touch of holiness but mostly it did not.  I will say something about that anon.

Anne came over on the Thursday afternoon and for dinner we cooked up some skinless sausages I got from Woolworths.  They have little wooden handles on them but that is just a gimmick.  I made a Waldorf salad to go with them and I really enjoyed them.

On Friday morning Anne made me a bowl of porridge, which I always like, and she had some red pawpaw she had brought over.  After that we had hot cross buns.  After breakfast I took us first for a sit by the river at Orleigh Park and then drove us up to Mt Gravatt to take in the view there.  The council have built a nice kiosk there but it was not open.  It rarely is.  It is run by a charity, The Hope Foundation and appears to have unmotivated beneficiaries staffing it.

Coming down Shire Rd from the mountain, there is a Red Rooster shop on the corner of Logan Rd so we stopped there for an early lunch.  I had a quarter chicken and chips, which was very succulent, and Anne had fish n chips, which was quite passable.  Anne is not a Catholic but she was married to one for many years so she has acquired the habit of not eating meat on Friday.  So that night I produced some Moroccan vegieburgers for her. With leftover salad they went down well enough.

That night was our holy observance, though it was not really a church service.  We went to St John's cathedral for a concert performance of Bach's Matthew Passion. There was a big choir and the orchestra included four celli.  Add that to the brilliance of sound given by the soaring stone arches of St John's and we got repeatedly excellent choral music.  The many chorales of the Matthew Passion are its great strength.  There was one disappointment, however.  The young baritone messed up my favourite aria from the work: Mache dich mein Herze rein.  His diction and phrasing were terrible.  He clearly had no idea of the rules of German pronunciation, which is slack if you are into classical music.

Anne's sister June drove us there so we had coffee and Anzac biscuits on my veranda after the show.  The concert took about 3 hours so there was a rush to the toilets when we got home. Elderly bladders.

On Saturday morning Anne and I took ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches up to the rotunda on Highgate Hill.  I made them fairly thick so one sandwich each was enough for us.  From there we visited the Buranda shopping centre to see what was open and found the Phams closed.  So we went over the road to the Cafe Essence for coffee and cakes.  I had a small lemon tart and Anne had a caramel slice.  That night we just had leftovers, with salad, which were pretty good.

On Sunday morning we had Vegemite toast, which I greatly enjoyed.  Vegemite is gourmet food to me. Followed by Easter eggs.  Anne then went off on family visiting.  For dinner I cooked myself up a big lot of bacon n eggs.

I intended to have toast with it but found I was out of butter.  But I had cooked the bacon in a mix of olive oil and peanut oil and the bacon gave off grease too.  So I tipped the juices out of the pan onto my toast.  And that made a very good alternative to butter.  I had read that in the Mediterranean countries they tip oil on their bread so I learned from that.

Then on Monday night I had bought some big pork mid-loin chops.  So Jenny cooked them up for us.  Jenny recommended red cabbage pickles to go with them which did work well.

So that was a very pleasant Easter.