Baking Brad Episode 37

This is episode thirty seven - marbled chocolate cheesecake brownies.

Recipe

• From 1001 Cupcakes Cookies And Other Tempting Treats

Good

• Chocolate, cheesecake and brownies together at last
• Easy to make

Bad

• Way too much cheesecake topping, so couldn't get the marbled effect

Ratings

• The Cook - 5/10
• The Taste - 7/10

Bottom layer ingredients.

Top layer ingredients.

"Marbled" chocolate cheesecake brownies.

New Zealand Holiday 2014

March 07, 2014
March 08, 2014
March 09, 2014
March 10, 2014
March 11, 2014
March 12, 2014
March 13, 2014
March 14, 2014
March 15, 2014

February Review

This is the review of February, which is quite late because I was planning for, and then on, a holiday.

The first week of February kicked off (literally) this year with the Superbowl on Monday. This year was hosted by Amir and Jason & Matt also attended. I was happy to see the Seattle Seahawks back in the Superbowl, since the Sonics were the first USA sports team I ever supported I also like to see the other Seattle teams do well. The game started with a turnover for Denver and was followed by one more turnover after another. Although it was good to see Seattle win I would have much preferred it to be a close and dramatic game. A nice side event was seeing Matt attempt to unscrew a laptop, fix it and put it back together again. I would have put money on it never working again, but somehow I was wrong...

I finally got around to completing my 2013 goals and 2014 goals blog posts.

The first race of the Sunset Series was held on Wednesday February 5 at The Zoo of all places. This race was only 3.7 kilometres while the next two are 4 kilometres exactly. I was a bit concerned going into the race as I've been struggling with a hamstring injury for weeks, but a good warmup seemed to help that. The first kilometre saw everyone go out fast with about 3:30 pace, I was in fifth and Jason was just ahead in fourth. The second kilometre was uphill and Jason started to pull out a small gap as we both overtook the runners in third and second place. Inside the zoo I was still a bit behind Jason but managed to catch up around the tight tracks, then he took a slight wrong turn and I was able to overtake. I didn't think it was fair to gain an advantage so I let him back past, but by slowing down I was able to recover energy and so potentially could have run straight back past him again, so I didn't really know what to do next. Since we were so close to the finish I was just going to let him finish in second ahead of me without trying to challenge, but he stopped short of the finish line because he got confused by the several timing mats they had laid down. This meant I actually placed second in a time of 14:28.

We saw what will probably be the last of the super hot days with a 39 and 40 degrees day over the weekend, perfect to get in a few more challenging runs.

The Winter Olympics that Channel Ten have been promoting for months finally came around. Being hosted in Russia the event times weren't great but they weren't terrible either - many of the events took place in the early evening, but it was really difficult to know what Channel Ten would be showing and when. Some of my favourites from the Olympics were:

• 1000m and 1500m Speed Skating group races
• Cross Country skiing (solo and relay)
• Snowboard Cross group races

February 10 to 14 was the final week in our office at Flagstaff. I'd only been there for eleven months but it had it's good points:

• Flagstaff Gardens across the road
• Good access to three running tracks - Docklands, Princes Park and The Tan
• Really close to Flagstaff train station
• Walking distance to Costco and South Wharf DFO (and the wheel!)

I realised that in those eleven months I'd never eaten at any of the takeaway places in and around the office building, except for a few team outings. Coincidentally there was a Saporo cafe in the foyer of this building just like there was at my previous job.

I had another on-call session the weekend of the office move, which was really unlucky on my part, since all of our desktop computers were turned off and packed away it was going to be difficult to deal with any problems that might come up. Funnily enough there was a false alarm that came through at 2:30am on Sunday morning, but someone had turned off the sound on the iPhone so I missed it!

The NBA all-star weekend took place as usual during February. I only watched a little bit so it doesn't deserve much discussion:

• Celebrity Game - Terrible, Kevin Hart just isn't funny
• Rising Stars - I turned it off after five minutes, nobody even attempts to play defense
• Saturday Night
• Shooting Stars - Pretty pointless, it's just people trying to make a half court shot
• Skills Challenge - They made it teams of two, it's alright but forgettable
• Three Point Challenge - Quite interesting having a whole rack of money balls, best event
• Dunk Comp - The new format was terrible, and the event sort of just ended suddenly
• All-Star Game
• I didn't even bother to watch it, as per the Rising Stars game

Another running event I participated in was the Victoria Road Runners 6km at Yarra Bend. One year ago this was the first running event I entered (other than the big ones: City 2 Sea and Run For The Kids). There was a bit of rain during the race and I was down in third place for the first three kilometres. I managed to push through into second but just couldn't quite match it with the leader. Lucky for me it turned out he was doing the 12km event instead of the 6km, I caught him at the end as I was able to sprint for the finish line and he still had another 6km to go. I ran the 6km in 22:22 which was a pretty good time, last year I did it in 24:56.

The new office we moved into on Elizabeth Street near Queen Victoria Market is a nice change, but has quite a few issues too:

• Good
• An actual area to have lunch with tables and chairs
• Boost Juice, Nando's and Subway across the road
• Closer to Princes Park and Queen Victoria Market
• Quiet corner location away from other teams
• Bad
• Ceiling only half done
• Concrete floors
• No coffee machine yet (it's in the kitchen but still hasn't been connected)
• No filtered water tap (have to go downstairs or upstairs)
• No stairs alternative to the elevators (I really hate buildings that do this)
• Slow elevators, only four for the whole building
• Timber Panel walls

The second race in the Sunset Series also took place, this one was on Wednesday February 19 at The Tan. There was a bit of rain hanging around all day, and it poured down literally seconds before the race started, but only lasted for about five minutes. I had rolled my ankle on Monday so was again a bit unsure how I would do, but got away to a good start and was in third for the first two kilometres, just ahead of Jason. We managed to chase down second place and were basically racing each other for second and third once again, without much competition. I just managed to hold on for second in a time of 14:33 for the four kilometre course.

The Champions League finally got going again in February, I usually just download and skip through the highlights, but the two games I actually watched through without much fast forwarding were Barcelona vs. Manchester City and Arsenal vs. Bayern Munich. I thought Manchester City in particular played really well against their favoured opponent and dominated possession, they were unlucky with the final result which was not helped by a red card.

I spent a weekend up in Wangaratta for another race, I have written separate articles for those days:

• February 22
• Feburary 23

I finally finished playing GTA V this month. Actually, I was just starting to enjoy playing a bit more of the online mode, but then my three month Xbox Live gold subscription ran out. I went back to finish off playing GTA IV: The Ballad Of Gay Tony, which was really poor by comparison.

New Zealand Holiday 2014, March 15 (All These Things That I've Done)

Sadly all ferries were cancelled on Saturday due to the uncertainty of weather from the cyclone, which meant the trip out to Rangitoto Island was off for the day. Stepping out of the hotel in the morning there was an incredible amount of wind and rain around, so we had to wait for a while for it to die down. When a window opened up we made it down to the train station and headed off to Onehunga at the end of the line.

Heavy rain.

They look electric to me.

I walked down Onehunga Mall (the main street) before reaching the Dress Smart outlet shopping. I was certain this one was going to be better than the one in Wellington because it has a lot more stores, included a Nike Factory Outlet! The Nike and Quiksilver stores were not bad, and I bought a few things but not too much. A minor problem is that the RRP in New Zealand is quite crap to begin with, a hooded jumper at Quiksilver for example was $79.99 AUD and $99.99 NZD. Just like we get screwed compared to the USA all the time, it seems like NZ might suffer from the same problem too.

The town even has it's own logo.

The train to and from Onehunga only runs once per hour, so it was lucky that I had taken the time to research the departure times. About half a dozen people just made it to the station as the train was boarding, but still had to buy a ticket so missed out on getting on, meaning they were stuck to wait another fifty nine minutes out in the cold until the next train showed up!

What a great name for a station, not related to Te Papa museum.

The city Rebel store also had a sale on, 25% off everything in store. As I have complained previously about the prices in the city, the 25% off made their prices just barely competitive, so I was able to buy another few items.

We stopped in back at the hotel to get dry clothes and prepare for a late afternoon rugby league match at Eden Park - NZ Warriors vs. St George Illawarra Dragons. I've never been to a rugby league match so I wasn't sure how good or bad it would be, but the tickets only cost $20 each and of course it was also a stadium I'd never attended a game at before. When we arrived the juniors match was already in progress, which takes me back to a good time when the AFL (VFL) had reserves matches before the main game, but these guys looked more like under 21 than juniors.

There was a short break before the main game started, which included a Red Bull sports car coming out and driving around the field - apparently the groundsmen don't have a problem with that. The seniors game was entertaining enough, the basic rules of rugby aren't hard to follow except for:

• Not knowing what the tackle count was (they don't seem to show it on the scoreboard either)
• Not knowing what all the weird penalty rules were

There was about 14,000 people in attendance, which is very low compared to AFL matches, but the crowd was fairly vocal for the first half. In the second half the Dragons started to take control of field position and the match, so the crowd lost interest a bit. We also got lucky that the rain only came a few times for a few minutes each, otherwise it might have been quite miserable since we weren't undercover. My favourite thing about the game was that the clock keeps running almost all of the time, it only stopped a couple of times for a score review. This is great because it means you always know an eighty minute match will actually finish in less than ninety minutes.

Pre game.

There's a car on the field.

He. could. go. all. the. way.

For dinner we went to Sal's Authentic New York Pizza where they sell massive whole pizzas. We decided to only take half each, but other people seemed to have no problem going the whole lot. One guy eating in the store was just beginning to eat a whole pizza with a plastic knife and fork - he would have been there for hours! The pizzas were pretty good, the bases were very thin like you get in New York and the toppings were tasty, 8 out of 10.

So that was the end of the trip, but for the insane early flight that left at 7:30am the next morning.

Auckland Part II: 7/10

Good

• Burger Fuel burgers
• Trains running again

Bad

• Cyclones
• Highway traffic

Missed Out

• Rangitoto Island
• Waitakere Ranges (and Piha Beach)

New Zealand: 7/10

• Days: 9
• Cities: 2
• Flights: 4
• Taxis: 0!!!
• Expenses: $660 each approx (plus flights and hotels)
• Bucket list items if I had a bucket list:
• Attended a rugby league match
• Completed an international running event (since the one in Singapore got cancelled)
• Drove a car in another country without getting into an accident (half points for being on the same side of the road)
• Photos: 400 approx
• Report: 8000 words approx

New Zealand Holiday 2014, March 14 (Doctor Worm)

I booked a couple of tours down in Waitomo for the day, the only problem is that Waitomo is nearly two hundred kilometres away. The options were one of those discount buses or renting a car. The bus would be slightly cheaper, but they only have a couple of buses in each direction each day, so it would have been a really long day.

So with that decided I had a Toyota Carolla booked for the day! The options were quite limited, in the end I chose a Carolla instead of a Camry. The car looked shiny and new, and even still had a bit of new car small left in it. I also ordered a GPS unit because I'd be helpless without it, and we were on the road by about 7:30am. Driving out of Auckland meant the traffic wasn't too bad and the first one hundred kilometres was done in a little over an hour.

Beats getting a bus.

The second half of the trip was much, much slower as the highway passes through ten or more small towns, meaning large periods driving at 70km/h or even 50km/h. There was also several roadworks along the way where they "suggest" going down to 30km/h. The GPS unit stupidly chose the "shorter" back route for the final stage of the drive, which contained non-stop bends in the road and blind turns, so it took about two and a half hours to reach Waitomo in the end.

At Waitomo we got the tickets sorted out but had to wait about half an hour for the next guided tour of Ruakuri Caves to begin. The host who turned up was pretty good, he is a cave explorer in his spare time so was quite enthusiastic and interested in telling the group about the history of the place and caving in general. The tour lasted for nearly two hours, we got to walk through the underground caves, see rock formations and even a few glowworms.

Inside Ruakuri caves.

Also inside Ruakuri caves.

After that was done it was back into the car to drive down the road to the second tour. This one was a shorter one at the Glowworm Caves. There was a bit of repeated information from the previous tour, but the host did a good job and the best part was the boat trip at the end where you get to see the main collection of the glowworms. Several other more "extreme" activities were possible at this place that we did not do, I was interested in trying the one where you ride down the cave rivers in inner tubes, but it ran for three hours and Jason didn't want to do it.

Outside Glowworm Caves.

It was already mid afternoon so I started the long drive back to Auckland, hoping to possibly get to downtown before the peak hour traffic hit. The first hour was again full of twists and turns so you rarely get close to the possible 100km/h, but overall I was making pretty good time until twelve kilometres out of Auckland, and then everything stopped... There was no sign of any accident, just traffic backed up for miles, averaging less than 20km/h. After a painful half hour the traffic finally got going and I just had to stop off to refuel the car before dropping it off. I thought our fuel prices were bad, but New Zealand is another level entirely, for the week I was there it was between $2.10 and $2.15 per litre.

For dinner we had to make another visit to the amazing Burger Fuel, before heading back to the hotel to avoid the bad weather closing in from Cyclone Lusi that was bearing down from the north.

New Zealand Holiday 2014, March 13 (Eden Of The East)

Another early trip to the airport and back to Auckland for the final leg of the journey. The flight times and costs actually meant it was better to get return trips Melbourne-Auckland and Auckland-Wellington. The timing worked out perfectly and we were back at the same hotel in downtown by about 12:00pm. Generally I found that the hotels were quite expensive and came with limited options in both cities, and the overall number of hotels were quite limited too.

We were quite lucky that they had a room ready to go, so we quickly dropped off everything and then ran downtown in order to have time for lunch before the train departed. This time I tried Burger Mechanics which was quite good, but not in the same league as Burger Fuel, 8 out of 10. No time for an energy drink today...

The destination station was Kingsland which is right across from Eden Park, where they play various forms of rugby, and even some cricket too. They only have a 2:00pm tour each day, which we just made it in time for. The guide seemed like he doesn't do the job regularly, I think I overhead him say they rotate the person who gets assigned the tour duty. He still did a pretty good job however, he just didn't have the flow and presentation that a regular guide might have. When we got down to the field level he didn't really care what people did, so a bunch of people walked right out onto the grass past the boundary line, leading to an angry security guard and groundsmen rushing over and telling them off - and the tour guide still didn't care what was going on. These people are always so precious about their grass. The rest of the tour included the change rooms, corporate level, media room and the top deck.

Eden Park.

Me at Eden Park.

Also Eden Park.

Back to Auckland again and I decided to see what was up at Karangahape Road, often just called K Road because it's a whole lot easier. It was a surprisingly long road full of restaurants and some other stuff, perhaps similar to something like Bridge Road. The shops were also concentrated into themes, so at first there was nothing but Chinese restaurants, then a group of kebab restaurants, then the adult entertainment district...

Back at the east end of K Road I kept walking through to Grafton Village until reaching Auckland Domain. This place was just massive, huge areas of open space, parks and sports fields - really impressive. Since it was starting to get late I kept the exploring to a minimum, going past the Watergardens fernery that I think was about to close for the day and then the big museum situated at the top of the hill.

Big empty space at Auckland Domain.

I'm pretty sure this is Auckland Museum.

New Zealand Holiday 2014, March 12 (Goodnight, Travel Well)

Today started with a trip up to Zealandia "The Karori Sanctuary Experience" - whatever that means. They have a free shuttle bus, but it only comes once an hour and fits eleven people...so you'd better be on time. Actually only about eight people got on board, maybe not a good sign...

After a good first afternoon the weather in Wellington has been a bit average compared to Auckland. Walking around this bird sanctuary in shorts and a t-shirt was manageable but not ideal. The "experience" was a forest reserve set up to preserve the wildlife and keep out pests like possums and rats and such, and which mostly contained birds - can't they just fly away? The fun part I guess was trying to spot the different birds they had marked on the map and get a picture if they ever stopped - gotta catch 'em all. Only at the very end of the circuit did we see some flightless birds, the Takahe, and not even one Kiwi. There was also some kind of "gold mine" but you couldn't go into it beyond the entrance tunnel.

The sanctuary entrance.

Also the sanctuary.

Green bird!

Black bird!

Walking bird! (now where's the surfin' bird)

For lunch I got another energy drink, this time Nos energy drink which was fairly similar to the Demon drinks so I give it an 8 out of 10. Then it was off to the Reserve Bank Of New Zealand Museum which was free but they don't give out samples. The museum was just one large room but it had a few interesting artifacts around like:

• Currency samples, now very similar to Australian money and even printed in Melbourne
• Finding out they don't use five cents anymore (fun fact for the day)
• Zimbabwe One Hundred Trillion Dollar note

They were setting up for the monthly interest rate announcement the next morning apparently.

Looks complicated, not sure exactly what it was meant to prove.

That's one thing to thank Mugabe for.

Some more stable currency.

Now I just need to know what an OCR announcement is.

Just across the road it was time for one of the Parliament Building tours, but sadly you cannot take your camera along. The presenter wasn't too bad and he took us through a few rooms that I cannot remember the names of. We also got to go into the upstairs balcony while a question time session was on, but the questions weren't very interesting so we didn't stay for much of that.

Walking down Lambton Quay yesterday I saw an advertisment for an in-store appearance of some Wellington Phoenix soccer players at the Adidas store, so I went back today to quickly check that out. On the internet it said that Carlos Hernandez, formerly of the Melbourne Victory, would be one of the players but that it was "subject to change". So yeah, he didn't bother to show up of course, there was some guy called Leo who turns out to be a midfielder Leo Bertos, and maybe there was another guy but I didn't catch his name. It could have been great if Ernie Merrick had shown up too...

These guys.

After that let down I planned to hike up to the top of Tinakori Hill which is on the opposite side of the city to Mount Victoria. Jason wasn't interested in more walking so he went off elsewhere while I tried to figure my way up the hill with a couple of vague Google Maps photos on my camera to use as a guide. I ran into some weirdo as I was passing through the Botanic Gardens who just kept walking with me and talking about his bad luck story - his "Skull Candy" headphones had broken and he was trying to find an electronics or remote control car store to get them fixed up. Bizarre, and he just wouldn't go away either, I had to pretend I was walking back the other way just to lose him.

I was a little unsure if I was taking the correct path uphill, as it was a suburban area and there was some steps that I thought might be leading into someone's house instead of the next street up the hill, but eventually I found the lookout point. I suppose it was worth the effort but the view down into Wellington was a little obstructed by all of the tall trees. I took an alternative path through the Botanic Gardens on the way down, past some more strange sculptures.

Starting the long and confusing road uphill.

Tinakori Hill lookout.

Dinner was just a vegetable curry and rice at a Malaysian restaurant, but after a week of fast food restaurants it was a huge relief to get something different at last. They also had this fantastic sweet roti bread.

Wellington: 6/10

Good

• Better than our capital city (probably)
• Easy to get around on foot
• Train ticket inspectors sell tickets

Bad

• Less to do than Auckland
• Nearly everything shuts down at 5pm
• No stores selling frozen yoghurt
• Not many stores selling magnets

Missed Out

• Brooklyn Wind Turbine at Polhill Reserve
• Otari-Wilton's bush reserve
• Red Rocks coastal walk (the seals don't arrive until May apparently)
• The Cricket Museum

New Zealand Holiday 2014, March 11 (Papa Crazy)

The first stop of the day was the Te Papa Museum, which is supposed to be the biggest and best in New Zealand. It was free too, so there was no risk of another aquarium disaster. The exhibits we visited were:

• Awesome Forces - It didn't quite qualify as awesome, but it had some decent displays about earthquakes and land formations
• Mountains To Sea - Not very good, just stuff about birds and sea life
• Colossal Squid - It wasn't as big as I thought it would be, and it was a bit banged up. There was also a really terrible 3D squid movie
• Bush City - More like crap city, it was just some outdoor area with some plants
• Blood Earth Fire - Just about how the forest landscape of New Zealand has changed over time
• My Place - Some really good short documentaries about people who live in different parts of New Zealand, best part of the museum
• Mana Whenua - Some boats and stuff
• Te Marae - Some sort of Maori rooms and huts, they were pretty well built and interesting to look at
• Slice Of Heaven - Lots of 20th century memorabilia and stuff, also very good
• Pharlap Skeleton - Strangely just tucked away in a corner where noone was visiting

The museum took nearly three hours to look through in total, although Jason is usually lagging behind a bit so I may have done it closer to two on my own.

Te Papa, I think it means "The Museum".

Bush City, I think it means "waste of time".

A plane and big sticks.

We're going to need a bigger boat.

A big empty room, at least it looked nice.

So that's where that came from!

Pharlap skeleton, the rest is in the mail.

Retro games and toys, this museum has everything.

Out on the roof at Te Papa still.

Had lunch at a place called Kapai which claims to be "the authentic kiwi kebab", as opposed to the fifty other Turkish kebab stores I've already seen perhaps. It was quite good and not too expensive as well, 8 out of 10. I also got another energy drink, this time a limited edition Kaboom V energy drink. It's not nearly as good as the Graphite V and had a slight citrus taste, 6 out of 10.

10 out of 10 for effort.

The next stop was going to be The Cricket Museum, a short walk away down at the Basin Reserve, but when I got there I found out it was only open Saturday to Monday. I'm not sure I missed out on a lot because I couldn't find out any information about it on the internet, but I was keen to read about the greats of NZ cricket like Daniel Vettori!

So that's where that came from!

A bit small for international cricket.

So at least that meant we were back on schedule for the day, and the next destination was a hike up Mount Victoria that overlooks Wellington from the east (yes, another Mount Victoria). On the way to the base of the hill I managed to find and inspect the weird bus tunnel, but sadly pedestrians and cyclists are not allowed to use it. I turned on the Garmin GPS for the hike up Mount Victoria, but was a little disappointed when it was all over in about one kilometre and less than fifteen minutes - it looks a lot bigger from downtown. After checking out the sights from the top (Wellington doesn't have as much scenery as Auckland I would say) it was back down the other side of the mountain, which was a little bit longer and steeper, to Oriental Bay.

The old bus tunnel.

Me and the other big city.

Oriental Bay.

After getting back to the downtown area I went first all the way down Taranaki Street, which does not have many good shops or anything to see, and then back up Cuba Street which runs parallel to it. In Cuba Street I came across a cool comic book store called "Graphic", the highlight being a graphic novel series being produced by Marvel for Stephen King's "The Stand". However they only had volume five and it cost like $50.

Cuba Street.

Cuba Street leads back into Lambton Quay where I passed the Plimmer Steps landmark, which was nothing more than some steps in between a couple of buildings. I continued my search for magnets but so far have come up empty, before ending up back at the Parliament district again, where they have the weird looking Beehive and the famous "largest wooden building in the southern hemisphere" - it's a whole four floors tall!

Plimmer Steps, is Plimmer the man or the dog?

A building made out of wood, who'd have thought of that.

The beehive and another, more practical Parliament building.

No idea what these are meant to be.

After another big day of walking it was dinner time at Arizona Bar. I finally got to order some nachos, although they weren't your normal kind of nachos, you had to construct them yourself! It was quite disappointing that there was hardly any cheese in the small pot, it was mostly just some kind of large beans. I'd only give it a 6 out of 10.

Nachos kit.

After dinner Jason convinced me that it would be a good idea to go for a jog along Lambton Harbour down to Oriental Bay. I was feeling reasonable at the start and the scenery was quite nice, but I was starting to regret the decision at the end of the eight kilometre round trip as my knees were both quite a bit worse off.