Yo. Here’s a pic of a recent mac cheese I did. Yum!!

One day last month, Ali made a lasagne. It was pretty nice and since I hadn’t had lasagne in ages, it inspired me to make the lasagne to end all lasagnes from scratch. I decided to make a huge one that I could get about eight portions out of to freeze for future dinners. And so I began cooking enthusiastically with 2 packs of mince and 2 whole blocks of cheese. The making of the meaty sauce went pretty smoothly however the cheese sauce did not fare so well. In making it, I managed to burn the bottom of the saucepan. Convinced that this was only a minor setback, I ploughed on with my project. Sure enough, once the cheese sauce was finished, it had this nasty burnt taste to it. I naively still believed that once the whole lot was baked in the oven, the burnt taste would go away. How wrong I was!

The lasagne came out of the oven fresh and bubbling and looking amazing however when I tasted it, it still had that relentless burnt taste to it. I tried and tried to like it but I just couldn’t eat it. It was ruined. It didn’t stop Ali and Wig eating it mind you. They were delighted to have a whole massive lasagne to themselves! I don’t know – call me a perfectionist or whatever but in my opinion it was inedible.

Most people would have been discouraged by such a disaster but not me. The very next day I went out and bought two more packs of mince and two more blocks of cheese. I diligently started again from scratch. I had a hankering for lasagne and I was damn well going to have one! Long story short, the mighty lasagne mark II was a success. There was no burning of the cheese sauce and the end product was to die for. I ate a portion for dinner that night while Ali and Wig ate leftover burnt lasagne (haha!) and managed to freeze another five portions.

About a week later, I was home late from work and didn’t really have time to cook dinner. This was the ideal time for me to defrost one of my beautiful lasagne portions. I defrosted it in the microwave a tiny bit before chucking it in the oven to heat it properly. 20 minutes later, the oven was beeping at me like crazy to check it. I extracted the portion and quickly determined that all it required was five more minutes until it was ready to eat. Oh no! In the process of returning the lasagne portion to the oven, I dropped the oven tray and it landed face down, squashing my beautiful lasagne between it and the cold, dirty kitchen floor.

I couldn’t believe it, I wanted to scream. All I wanted in the world was a slice of lasagne. Was that too much to ask?!? In the end I went ahead and defrosted yet another slice of lasagne which I managed to prepare ok. However I am now very wary of lasagne. I don’t think I’m ever meant to really eat it. Whenever I try, there just seems to be trouble. Think I’ll stick to cheese on toast in future…

Introducing the newest member of the gaffbhala household - Milky Joe. Anybody who has spent any time with us recently will know that we are fans of the hit BBC3 comedy series The Mighty Boosh. Milky Joe is a character from the second series where Vince and Howard get stranded on a desert island. Feeling the pressures of isolation, they make characters out of the coconuts on the island (although I don’t know where they get the tea towels from!!) and the episode ends with the pair caught up in a high speed coconut police chase. We decided to make our own Milky Joe and after some hard work by Dan with the help of his parents’ drill set, he came up with a pretty near-perfect replica. The first pic below is of the actual Milky Joe from the tv show. The final two are of our own home made Milky Joe. Feel free to pop by any time and say hi to him. He loves parties!

There is a severe lack of pics from the Good Friday party however I distinctly remember posing for loads of photos. Who has them?!? Anybody with any pics from the party, please step forward. In the meantime, here are a couple of my mate from work asleep on the stairs using a cardboard box for a pillow. They were taken on Wigs’ phone. The funny thing is, this guy is a self confessed hardcore boozehound who claims that he can never drink too much. Looks like history has been made at gaffbhala once again!!! Click on the names below to view.

Wow! Thanks to everyone for coming to our good friday party It was the biggest yet and it was so much fun! There was a really good vibe and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves! My favourite moments were; the giant creme egg, the chocolate fountain misshap, shaking hands with Niall Carol for about 10 minutes and last but by no means least the wave of people bouncing up and down to Micheal Jackson in the sitting room!

Ohh and a guy fell asleep on the stairs with a cardboard box on his lap with his head resting on it! Most origional sleeping position EVER! All in all we all hope you enjoyed the night! It felt a bit like an Andrews reunion too which was great as I havent seem some of the people who came for ages!

The gaff was in a right state the next day! The floor was manky, there was shitloads of cans and bottles everywhere and Wig’s rug turned an ever deeper darker shade of brown!

Major thanks to everyone who helped clean! Especially Paddy and Damo! Damo got some shots of what the place looked like the next day and during Operation Cleanup! Check them out!

Here’s a video of my just out of bed walking downstairs and generally accepting the state of the place…

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Need to write a post in order to be recognised as a gaff resident. Here it is. A more useful one coming soon!

This evening Grum, Wig and I went to Dunnes to get some supplies for our Good Friday Party I took some pics when we got back to get ye all excited for the fun times ahead!

Whoop! Can’t wait!

Grum, Ali and myself recorded us jamming the other nite. We hooked up the kit, the keyboard and guitar staight into the mixer and recorded away for a few hours. Grum also was playing some random samples on his laptop; namely ricky gervais and terry tibbs. Forgive the names :p thats all we could come up with! Let us know what you think!

Here’s a couple of mp3’s of what we did:

Bender Swapsies

Terry Tibbs

G Dance

Portisheadbhala

Drunk Mosquito

Danny has lost the power supply to charge his video camera. Uh oh.

I got a freebord in January! This is the first proper attempt at using it, was pretty happy with the overall outcome! Here are some low res clips of some short runs!

What the hell is freebording?

Upwards and onwards to bigger hills!

Watch this space!