Jazz?? in the Domain?

So its the Sydney Festival again. Last year I only made it to the Symphony in the Domain, so this year I wanted to plan early and head to both the Jazz and the Symphony in the Domain. With the threat of thunderstorms on Friday and rain all weekend, we decided to make the call Saturday morning to see if its still on. Come Saturday morning, I open one of my eyes and peered out the window. The sky was grey as. After a few phone calls and sms, we decided to postpone the decision making until 4pm. We didn't have to wait til 4pm. By 3pm, the sun was semi out, and the grey sky was a light grey sky. So the plan was to meet at my place, grab some food from the shops and cross our fingers.

I quickly threw together a fruit salad with a bit of vanilla syrup and some raspberry friands / financiers. The financiers were quick and easy to make. 5 mins to mix the batter, 15mins to bake. I've made these a few times before the past 2 weeks so I knew the recipe by heart. I dug through my pantry and found my new bag of almond meal that I purchased in bulk from the local markets, as opposed to using the small manufacture packaged bags you get from the supermarkets. Cheaper, is not always better. Compare the results:

Financiers made with commercial Almond Meal:

Nice smooth texture......and it only needed a little decoration!


Financiers made with bulk bought Almond Meal is rough and lumpy:


I couldn't hide how ugly this batch was. The batter was very rough and thick making it hard to incorporate the raspberry in. It looks like raspberry explosion gone wrong. Oh wells, you can only learn from your mistakes.


Since it was a very last minute decision to go Jazz in the Domain, we ran up to my local Woolies and grabbed a BBQ chicken, some pasta salad, mixed salad leaves and breadrolls. I grabbed a bottle of salad dressing from home and dressed the salad when we got there. Just pour into the bag and shake! Not too shabby of an effort aye?


We had a great time last night. Good food, good company. The only complaint would be that the music wasn't.....Jazz. I know they said there will be a Brazilian influence...but it sounded like pure Brazilian music! There was no Jazz. I think they didn't want to call it Brazilian in the Domain, since that can conjure up all sorts of wrong images (Back, sack and crack) so they kept it as Jazz in the Domain, but played Brazilian music all night long.

We're going to put a bit more planning into Symphony in the Domain since the forecast is for good weather. The plan is to grab some slice salami, pate, dips, cheese, crackers etc to make an antipasto plate. I'll probably make some marinated chargrilled veggies and dessert of some sort. I've got requests for my green tea cheese cake, chocolate dipped strawberries and apples and curry puffs. I'll have to see how much time I have and whether I can be bothered or not! hehehe I was originally going to bake some drum sticks instead of roasting a chicken, but we'll have to see who is joining us and whether my oven can handle that much baking!

Oh, and one thing for sure, we're sitting away from the trees this time! Me and Christine walked off to the toilet and came back a good 20mins later to find bat poo all over our mat! Right where I would've been sitting! And the whole night the damn bats were flying over the top of our heads yelling in their sonic voice "BOMBSSSSSSS AWAYYYYYYY!!!" *SPLAT*.


Not only was there the wet orangey bat poo, there was bat pee and a constipated solid bat pellets! Ok, all together now.... "EWWWWWWWWW". I went from lying down and relaxing, to sitting with my hood on. I figured lying down is making yourself a bigger target for the poo bombs. I might bring an umbrella for the next one......or a poncho.....you know...just in case.