cooking. taxes.

Every so often, I actually cook dinner.  Hard to believe, I know, but it’s true.  Today when I was doing the food shopping, I decided that I’d do roast beef for tonight’s dinner.  Amazingly, it was a success.

I’d bought a 1.2kg blade cut, with a nice slab of fat over the top.  I cooked it for an hour in the pan, with alfoil loosely covering it, at 210 Celsius.  I then dropped the temp to 190 C, whacked it on a draining rack, added all the vegies (leaving the alfoil off) and cooked it for another hour and a half.  It was sooo good.  SO loved the crispy outside bits, and the inside was so tender that you would have thought it was lamb, if the flavour didn’t give it away.  The vegies were perfectly done as well.  And as a bonus, there was enough meat left for sandwiches for a couple of days.  This is definitely one I’ll have to do again.

I’ve been pretty busy doing the final work on our taxes.  I’m hoping by the end of the weekend that I can send it all off to our magician, er, sorry, tax accountant.  It’s been an absolute education, I have to say.  Ask me anything about depreciation, and I’ll be able to tell you.  Effective life of a motor vehicle? Eight years.  I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

It’s also brought two separate but connected realisations: 1) that we have spent a huge amount of actual cash on these investments over the financial year, and 2) we will be getting some of it back, but the next few years are going to be tough.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; I personally am happier if I know exactly how tough things will be, because then I am mentally prepared for it.  However, SO isn’t coping so well.  He’s the kind of person who isn’t happy unless he has no credit card debt, and at least $500 in his savings account.  I have no idea why, as his family have always done it tough, but hey.  Maybe it’s a security thing.  However, he’ll just have to readjust his ideas of what constitutes financial security.

In a similar vein, the state of the world economy and various share markets across the world has been – well, I don’t really know how to describe it.  I don’t know how people are coping.  It’s scary to think of how very badly so many people have been affected.  It hasn’t touched SO and I, yet at least.  But every time I hear the news I say a little prayer to the gods that we didn’t go down the shares route.  People always need a place to live, but stocks are optional.