Food in Canberra
The weekend was pretty good - I drove down to Canberra on saturday afternoon and spent the night at Mandy's house (on her super comfortable airbed!) The theme of the weekend was a girly culinary fest. We had a girly night in and painted our toenails and watched DVDs - CSI and Pirates of the Caribbean.
As expected from Amanda, the food featured prominently, and it was
good. For dinner, we had leftovers of an awesome lasagne she'd made the night before. She'd also "whipped up" a garlic, parsley and olive oil topping to put on these really fresh and tasty pizza bases (She's managed to ferret out all the good food shops and markets in a few months). We barbequed the pizzas on Kate's electric BBQ and they came out so crispy and garlicky... mmmm... we also made some grilled vegies for dinner. We were so full we didn't even get to dessert (banana and pecan crepes in butterscotch sauce). She also bought some really nice italian bread and some chocolate and hazelnut biscotti from a fresh food deli - naturally I asked her to "take me there!" and brought some back to sydney with me. :)
Sunday was nice - we woke up and had brunch at the place DJ suggested, which was MyCafe in Manuka. The muesli was
awesome, it has some really tasty poached fruit on top of bircher muesli with natural yoghurt. Divine. We did our "usual" which is ordering one healthy dish and one not-so-healthy dish - this time it was savoury french toast with grilled tomato and bacon.
After that we headed back to the old bus depot markets in Kingston. They sell lots of jewellery and crafts upstairs, and fresh food downstairs. We went a bit crazy - I bought another two pairs of earrings and then we headed down to the fresh food portion, and went on a food tasting spree. They sell all sorts of things down there, like organic breads, cheese, savoury dips, organic fruits and veges, gourmet chocolates ... we bought some chocolates (expensive ones), I bought some thai chicken marinade, and we sampled lots of breads and dips.
The weather was gorgeous that weekend - summery days with the sky a clear autumn blue. There's something so relaxing about canberra, there's so much room to breathe and views to see... but at the same time i think it would drive me mad to be living down there. Lucky I have a friend to visit down there on a regular basis now :) It's funny that I'm seeing her more often than if she were up in sydney.
Reminiscing has made me feel better - I was having a bit of a blue day. I guess I'm lucky that I can come home to my comfortable unit and friendly surroundings and feel secure and safe. I don't want for anything (except the crazily unattainable things in life, which don't count). I have money in the bank and a good life. It's all good. Work isn't everything; some days will be bad but it's nice to know I can unwind and have friends and family around for support.
kitchen full of food
We observed today that our fridge is massively full. I actually really like that feeling - it's a sense of achievement. And promise. It means that the next time I'm curious and want to investigate the fridge, there will be a large (and varied) number of food options available. Not that I'm feeling any shortage of food intake, actually I'm doing the complete opposite, but hey....
Goody!
It looks like the EDI frisbee team will get off the ground. We have 9 players at the moment. The commissioner of Div 4 suggested that we name ourselves Efficient Disc Interchange which I thought was kinda cute. Anyway, I'm locked in for winter sport this season for the first time in years. That's exciting :) Hopefully this will get my cardiovascular system up and ready for snowboarding, if that snow trip happens!
Alison and I had pecan pie and brie cheese for dessert tonight. Tasty.
south coast
So i lied about keeping up to date with my blogging. :)
It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks. The holiday with Mandy was really refreshing. Driving around the south coast is beautiful, it really made me feel free and gave me a break from reality. Moruya is a good 4 hours drive south of Sydney, and we ran into a bit of traffic on the way down, but it was ok. The B&B was very "country" - lots of lavender and lace and flowery upholstery. The view, however, was very redeeming.
The breakfasts were
amazing - these giant two course feasts which started with fruit, muesli and yoghurt; and while we ate that, Sandra cooked up a fresh hot breakfast of eggs, bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes. Every morning there were two fresh loaves of country bread sitting on the breadboards; one multigrain, and one white. It made us feel so decadent. They keep cows on the property so we fed them one afternoon; we also went to see the chickens in the chicken pen and collected the eggs (which we ate for breakfast the next day :).
We stayed with another couple who never seemed to leave the B&B so we had a limited number of options in regards to the common room. If they were there, we left them in peace; if they weren't (a rare occurrence), we pounced and camped.
We made a day trip down to Tathra to visit Lucy and Steve at Steve's place - it's a really beautiful town. It's just past Bega, so it's pretty far down the coast, its about 6 hours from Sydney. There was lots of lush green rolling hills on the way, and on that particular day it was a gorgeous sunny blue sky, so it was really nice driving down.
Mandy and I ate lots of rich food, not all of it healthy, but we had a lot of fun in the process :)
I had a 3 day week when I got back and it seemed short!
birthday celebrations
My birthday picnic was on saturday, it was a really great day. Everyone seemed to get along fine, and of course the boys enjoyed their sporting outings (nothing seems to bring boys together as much as sport does). They played a soccer match and the girls mostly sat around and talked and drank champagne. mmmm :)
Small dramas of the day included Brett's son Zach getting hit by a frisbee that Cameron threw at him, but we placated him with lemonade and the rest of the easter egg hunt (he ended up winning the big bunny as a prize).
Xerx turned up with this mafia-type silver case which looked like it would hold a high-powered rifle, but really held BBQ implements. hee :) I lost the ability to throw a frisbee for a while which stressed me out, but otherwise it was ok.
I got BALLROOM DANCING SHOES from work people! HOW AWESOME IS THAT?! Considering i was planning to buy them myself, it was a great present. I also got a voucher for a facial at erskineville hair and beauty which I'm sure I'll avail myself of at some point in the near future.
After the picnic we all headed to pancakes on the rocks for Bunny's birthday celebration. It was a really fun night of catch-up, because I got to talk with Chito and Hoa and Ling about an upcoming ski trip (yay) which I'll be very keen on in late july. There were also a ton of people from uni that I haven't seen in an age - mostly from Bunny's year.
After that, Chito, Phil, Gabby and I headed to Mendel's to his house cooling party since he was being forcibly moved out by his landlord. turns out he's moving in with .... MARK. More strands in the Web of UTS IT.
Sunday was a fun day too - Alison and I headed to the shire to eat lunch with our respective parents. I went shopping at Miranda in the afternoon, played a bit of frisbee with Adrian, then we piled back in the car and went to Ken's place for a Lost marathon. The show is getting pretty bizarre and highly suspenseful (so much so that I start mumbling "oh god" repeatedly until someone asks "how the hell did you manage to watch the x-files when you were younger?" - I have no rational answer to that one). We ordered pizza and caught up on some much-needed lounging.
I've been going to bed extremely late all this week and all last week as well... and clocking up a lot of long hours at work, since I usually leave around 7ish. Hopefully that will improve soon.
