Winter shenanigans

Winter is in full swing, complete with lots of recent gloom and damp in Canberra. A good excuse to try various antidotes, including:

Knit! I started trying to re-teach myself to knit about 2 years ago, and I am delighted to say that this week I taught myself how to cast off, and I finished this scarf. It's a bit rustic-looking, but it's the first knitting project I've ever completed and I'm proud of it - especially the buttons, which I added for design interest and which actually work. Miss B has already requested one of her own.

Sew! I'm continuing to work through my double-sided kitchen cloth project - here's my latest effort. I particularly like these fabrics, both separately and together.

Cook winter food! I had a ridiculous amount of leftover mashed potato in the fridge at the end of the week, and I was too lazy to make gnocchi, which had been my first plan. So instead I made a potato gatto (one of our longstanding Secret Dinners), which is great comfort food on a cold night.

Get out of town! We've had a trip to Sydney booked for this weekend for months, and I was hoping for the usual dramatic difference in temperature and weather between Canberra and...pretty much everywhere else. It was warmer, but not any brighter for the most part. Undaunted, we hit some of our favorite spots and tried out some new stuff as well. A high point (in every sense) was our early-evening walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge, complete with stunning views.

Our objective in crossing the harbour was to visit an American-style burger joint, Batch Burgers & Espresso, at the foot of the bridge's north side in Kirribilli. It came highly recommended from fellow expats, and was totally worth the walk - hands down the best burger I've had in Australia.

The walk back was even better, giving us a birds'-eye view of the final weekend of Vivid Sydney, especially the Opera House:

My iPhone camera does not do it justice - if you click on the link above you'll get a much better idea of the effect.

And last but not least, my favorite winter activity and the reason for our Sydney weekend - ice hockey! We got tickets to see the USA-Canada Ice Hockey Classic, the first time in a looooong time (3+ years I think) that I've been able to see professional-level hockey live. It wasn't the NHL playoffs, and I'm pretty sure I haven't infected Miss B with the hockey love, but as far as I was concerned it was worth the trip.

Long weekend

It's a long weekend in Australia! (Have I mentioned before that I find it endlessly entertaining that the Queen's birthday is a public holiday here, but not in the UK? Because I do. Also I have to make the most of it because this is our last Monday public holiday until, I think, October. Yikes!)

Here's the latest news from around here:

DP's birthday was this past week - can you work out how old he is from the candles? Appropriately given his profession and interests (and name), his birthday falls on a major event in military history, and this year his seminar students found out and celebrated by giving him a running real-time recap of happenings throughout that fateful day 73 years ago. I took the easy route by making his favorite dinner (steak au poivre and mashed potatoes) and baking his favorite cake.

Also this past week - family friends of ours are dealing with some medical stuff and, like us, are far from their family support networks. So, on the day when one parent was in the hospital overnight and the other parent was wrangling everything else (including three kids), I volunteered to bring over dinner. Pasta bake to the rescue!

I didn't really use a recipe for this - just made a batch of Disruptive Bolognese in the slow cooker ahead of time, then boiled up 3 boxes (about 3 lbs/1.5 kg) of rigatoni. I mixed it all up together with lots of grated cheese and some baby spinach (vegetables makes it a nutritionally complete main course!), scooped it into a disposable baking tin, and wrapped it up. (I also made up a smaller pan for us to have for dinner that night, killing two birds with one stone.) With a loaf of bread and a batch of blondies, it made a complete meal and was a pretty low-stress way to lend a helping hand.

And a good reminder to be grateful for little things - like Sunday breakfast with my own family.

And flowers to cheer us - even on the gloomiest winter days.


 

Ten things

The waiting continues...and I've been working hard at practicing meticulous mindfulness. It's been going pretty well, aside from a couple of weeks where the US election combined with solo parenting to send me into an anxiety tailspin. (The election was one of the things I was waiting for, and to say I was not happy with the outcome would be an understatement on the order of describing Australia as a place with one or two possibly harmful critters.)

But. Life marches on, and I must focus on the things I can do even in the midst of feeling helpless and at the mercy of events over which I have no control. So in that spirit, here's an update of recent-ish happenings.

Going back to early September - a tiny birthday cake for a visiting colleague of DP's who has become a family friend. He made the long trek to Australia for the second year running to guest lecture in DP's program, and I found out that his first full day in town was his 66th birthday. So we surprised him when he came over for dinner.

In late September, we went to the US for our planned family visit; for me it was five cities in just under three weeks. One of the highlights of my trip (and my year) was a long-planned sisters' weekend in New York, with all of us together on our own on a trip for the first time in a very long time. It was a memorable and spectacular trip, in part because of visiting places like The Frick Collection.

Our final city in the US was a 36-hour stopover in Dallas to visit our good friends who live there. We really enjoyed visiting the Dallas Arboretum's Pumpkin Village - a clever and creative use of winter squash, and I couldn't stop giggling most of the time for thinking about this. (Warning: NSFW language!)

Then back to Canberra, swapping autumn color for spring in bloom and harvesting lemons and rosemary from the garden.

Two weeks after we got back from the US, I was off again - this time to Seoul for my organization's annual meeting. It was a productive and positive week overall, but it makes me a little sad that this is pretty much the only picture I managed to take outside of the conference (it's a little mall made up entirely of small shops run by local craftswomen and -men).

Back again for the tail end of October; settling in to nearly three months with no overseas trips scheduled, and starting to see some real signs of spring - encouraging enough that I have revived my cold brew coffee habit, making it in my French press and then storing in a repurposed Chianti bottle. (Classy, no?) My standard ratio for coffee (hot or cold) is 7g of coffee per 100ml of water; cold water for cold brew, and let it brew for at least a couple of hours. Chill in the fridge overnight, then serve over ice with a hefty splash of milk and a dollop of maple syrup to sweeten.

The end of October also means Halloween, and a sweet treat to celebrate it. This year I made ghost cakes for Miss B - basically a chocolate cupcake, topped with a gloopy pile of vanilla buttercream frosting and suitably decorated.

Moving into November and real spring weather - a good opportunity to host our first outdoor Sunday lunch of the season and invite a few friends over to share it with us.

And speaking of a few friends: this weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving in Australia, with a buffet turkey dinner for 60+ friends, colleagues, students and their families. An epic undertaking achieved with a lot of lists and a lot of help, and one to make me remember to be grateful for all the things I have.

Which today include the luxury of having to do not much of anything except eat pie, bask in the afterglow of yesterday, and figure out what the heck to do with all these leftovers.

Happy Thanksgiving

Ours is all over - hope yours is as much fun! More details tomorrow....

NaBloPoMo, Day 27.

T-5 prep

NaBloPoMo, Day 22.

So, how are you spending the weekend? Given my post yesterday, I'm betting you can guess how I'm spending a good chunk of mine:

(Note divided prep list - because of course I forgot to look at the whole calendar, and invited people for Sunday lunch tomorrow! A glutton for punishment, that's me.)

Cutting up bread to dry out for stuffing...was absolutely thrilled to find some really good local bread on sale at half-price, which means I don't have to bake my own stuffing bread.

One appetizer taken care of - a big batch of sweet and spicy roasted nuts cooling after coming out of the slow cooker.

Slow cooker doing double duty - now working on a large batch of caramelized onions, which will get used in stuffing, gravy, and possibly another appetizer.

Enough pie crust for at least four pies ready and waiting (and probably more, since there's at least one single-crust pie on the list).

No close-up of the stock, but you can see the pot on the stove; I roasted up a bunch of chicken wings, then threw them in with to simmer with some chopped carrots, celery, and onion. This will be used mainly for gravy and stuffing. (I would've liked to have made turkey stock, but turkey parts are hard to come by around here and us expat beggars can't be choosers.)

All of which contributed to a kitchen that looked like a complete disaster area by 5pm. (We got takeout for dinner, so it's clean again...for now.)

Luckily, this is actually one of my favorite ways to spend an afternoon. Hope you're getting to do the same today.


 

Thanksgiving prep

 Thanksgiving prep is in full swing at casa RL! Bread drying for stuffing...

 ...rosemary being chopped for various things...

 ...nuts being roasted for pre-dinner snacking...

...and assembly line production of hand turkey place cards well underway! Stay tuned for action shots from the big day tomorrow!

Dessert re-branding

It never ceases to intrigue me what aspects of American culture – food and otherwise - surface in other countries. Reruns of Cheers on Australian TV? Yes. Reruns of WKRP? No sign. Visibility of the Hunger Games franchise: check. Visibility of Percy Jackson: not so much. Barefoot Contessa cookbooks? Easily findable. Pioneer Woman? Might require a little more digging.

The trend continues when it comes to food. Mention the word “brownie” – a quintessential American dessert – to an Australian, and chances are you’ll see someone’s eyes light up. Mention “blondies,” on the other hand, and your response is likely to be blank incomprehension.

Rather than trying to change this, I have decided to go with the Australian flow and have renamed the following recipe, for purposes of local comprehension and consumption, “fudgey choc chip slice.” Blank incomprehension is not the response I’m looking for when baking.

Fudgey choc chip slice (aka blondies)

adapted from a recipe found on the delightful but dormant Figs, lavender and cheese blog

I had never made blondies as such when I found this recipe, although you could make a case for putting Congo bars into that category. These are similarly addictive; I think I made four batches of these in the space of the week when I first tried out the recipe.

1 cup/120 g all-purpose/plain flour

.5 cup/60 g whole wheat flour

1 tsp/5 g baking powder

.5 tsp/2 g kosher salt

12 Tbsp/1.5 sticks/180 g unsalted butter, browned and cooled

1.5 cups/300 g packed brown sugar

2 Tbsp/30 ml maple syrup

2 large eggs

4 tsp/20 ml vanilla extract

1 cup/180 g semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Line an 8-inch (20 cm) square baking pan with foil, pushing it into corners and up sides of pan (I use two pieces crisscrossed). Spray foil-lined pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Whisk flours, baking powder, and salt together in medium bowl; set aside.

Whisk butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup together in medium bowl. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Using rubber spatula, fold dry ingredients into wet until just combined; do not overmix. Fold in chocolate and spread batter in prepared pan, smoothing top with rubber spatula.

Bake until top is shiny, cracked, and light golden brown, 20-25 minutes. Cool completely on wire rack to room temperature. Remove bars from pan by lifting foil overhang and transfer to cutting board. Cut into 25 2-inch squares.

Christmas recap

One of the perks of living in the British Commonwealth is that the day after Christmas - Boxing Day - is a holiday in its own right, and the majority of people have it off from work. We went for a walk this afternoon, to get some fresh air and run a couple of errands to a couple of shops we knew would be open. We strolled along deserted streets and 90% of the businesses we passed were closed - some of them just for today, some until after New Year's, and one for the whole of summer vacation (it is scheduled to re-open February 5!). It was pretty much the only serious exertion in a day that included staying in pajamas until almost lunchtime, skyping with various North American relatives, and reminiscing about yesterday's Christmas lunch (while plotting what to do with a fairly enormous stash of leftovers).

There were six of us for lunch, and we ate outside! That's a Christmas first for me. Here's what we had:

Small victories

*

As I mentioned a while back, one of the challenges of living in a new country is that you often have to find out what things are called, and where they are sold, before you can acquire them. This sometimes complicates even the simplest tasks. For example: our front door has been creaking the last few months. A lot. Really loudly. To the point where my sister was making Vincent Price jokes. Every day of her visit.

“You really need to get some WD-40 for that,” she advised just before she left.

“I will, I will,” I said, “as soon as I find out what they call it down here.”

Then the other day, I opened the door so that a visiting Australian friend could depart, and it creaked so loudly that she jumped involuntarily.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’ve got to do something about that, as soon as I figure out what the Australian equivalent of WD-40 is, and get myself out to Bunnings (a big box store, equivalent to Home Depot/B&Q, not accessible without a car) to get some.”

She looked at me with bemusement. “It’s WD-40 down here too,” she replied. “And I bet you they sell it at Big W.”

(Equivalent to Target. A five-minute walk from my house. Would not require a special rental-car trip!)

Today, after an extended hunt through every possible department (Hardware? House cleaning? Manchester?), I found WD-40 in the “Motoring” department.

And my front door doesn’t squeak anymore.

Life is good.


* NB I didn’t think a shot of a can of WD-40 would be too enthralling, so here, have a picture of a vintage Holden (another thing you could use WD-40 on!) instead.

Worlds collide

Every so often, something happens to make me remember that the world isn’t quite as big a place as it sometimes seems when I contemplate the three-day odyssey involved in getting from, say, Canberra to Boston. Or vice versa.

I’m not talking about the juggernaut of corporate globalization, where you can find the same fast food and sports and children’s entertainment icons wherever you go, to the point where you start to wonder why you bothered to travel in the first place. I’m talking about little, quirky, personal things—like seeing the same 1984 Toyota Camry hatchback that was my first car 16 years ago: it and its Boston counterparts long since devoured by harsh winters and road-salt rust, but still going strong in Canberra’s relatively mild climate—that make me feel, for a full second or three, as if I’ve been thrust through a hole in the space/time continuum and I’m not exactly sure where I am. You know that feeling you get when you wake up in a strange place? Like that, only when fully awake. College sweatshirts; secondhand books; the WGBH logo at the end of a program on Australian TV; sometimes even a particular quality of light or air is enough to bring about this mental vertigo, part happy recognition, part homesickness. It used to happen in England, too, but the greater sense of disorientation in Australia (the distance, the reverse-seasons thing) has exacerbated it.

It happened today when DP walked in after work and dropped a Hershey bar with almonds on my desk. There are quite a few types of American candy readily available in Australia, manufactured specifically for the Australian market (usually in China), but Hershey’s isn’t among them. There’s a small grocery store in town that has a selection of stuff imported from the US; DP passes it on his walk to work, and stops in when he or Miss B is craving Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. He spotted this, remembered it was my one of my favorites, and bought me one.

Where am I again? And what month is it, anyway?

(photos: album cover, Getting Friendly with Music, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra: exhibition of obscure album covers, Canberra Museum, June 2009; The Office (US) inspired graffiti, electrical box, Canberra neighborhood; the iconic Converse All-Star logo, Canberra shoe store; Hershey bar with almonds at the end of its long journey from Hershey, PA, USA)

Wild things

Sometimes it’s easy to forget the fairly amazing fact that I’m living in Australia. You know, I’m going about my daily business—kid stuff, working on the computer, running errands housework cooking blah blah blah—and after a while the different accents and shop names don’t seem so exotic anymore.

And, after all, they’re not what really makes Australia special for the non-Australian, are they? It’s seeing the local wildlife firsthand that really brings it home. These sightings seem to be coming more frequently lately, as autumn starts to make some inroads and the days get shorter. I mentioned the Festival of Cockatoos, and there have also been increased numbers of king parrots around our complex. And for the last few weeks, we’ve been getting regular visits from a mother and baby brushtail possum after dark; at first, mum was climbing up to our balcony with baby peeking out of her pouch, and now baby clings to mum’s back as they nose around for runoff water from the plants (or in the bowl we've been leaving out for them). They haven’t agreed to pose for any pictures, but they don’t seem particularly shy of humans, particularly since they generally announce their arrival by knocking something over. Best of all, when DP was closing the curtains last night, he saw a kangaroo standing on the grassy median which runs down the boulevard behind our apartment, patiently waiting until a truck passed before bouncing across the westbound lanes and disappearing down a side road.

(Have I mentioned that where we live is about a 10-minute walk, or a one-minute drive, from the busiest part of Canberra’s downtown? Perhaps this is why people say that, in spite of being the nation’s capital, Canberra is really just a big country town.)

Every time it happens, I feel as excited as if I were still Miss B’s age. And it goes without saying that all of these sightings are vastly preferable to close encounters of the eight-legged kind.

Al fresco

Just so you know, it’s not only my own food I’m interested in. I’m chronically nosy about what everybody is eating. Sometimes even non-humans.

This morning, Miss B and I were hurrying off to preschool. As we got to the end of our block, we heard a noise that sounded like someone either a) popping popcorn overhead or b) sitting in a tree madly popping bubble wrap. We didn’t have time to take a good look, so peered up into the trees as we passed, trying to find the source of the noise while dodging the shower of tree bits coming from overhead. Miss B's observations: "Mummy, what's that noise?" and "Look, somebody made a mess!" And she was right; the ground underfoot was covered with leaves, small branches, and some kind of small berries or nuts that had been cracked open.

I had a bit more time to investigate on the way back, and coming from that angle, was able to identify the source of noise, that you can see here if you look closely: about a half-dozen sulphur-crested cockatoos, feasting on this one tree. I haven’t been able to figure out why this tree was suddenly The Cockatoo Place To Be, or even what kind of tree it is (other than that its trunk has rough bark, not the typical smooth bark of Australian gum trees). I’m still working on my Australian plant-identification skills. Goofy newcomer that I am, I’m too busy being flabbergasted by seeing gangs of birds roaming around Canberra that I previously would have expected to see only in pet shops or zoos.

DIY pita

This seems to be turning into Bread Week. Apologies to my gluten-free reader(s).

I’ve already talked about how, as an expat, one of the things you learn is that, if you want the food you crave, often you have to figure out how to make it yourself. This isn’t always very convenient, but as compensation it is generally cheaper than grabbing something off the shelf. Oh, and you can feel smug, too, when you make something by hand that most people never even considered could be made by hand.

“You made this?!” they say incredulously, as if whatever it is can only be produced in a factory, shrink-wrapped, and then transported in a truck to a giant supermarket.

“Shucks, it was nothing,” you reply modestly. And even if it really was nothing, you still get the props.

Now I have to say upfront that I’ve never had any problem getting pita bread, anywhere I’ve lived, so that wasn’t my main motivation. No, my main quarrel with pita is that I’m not always thrilled with the quality: I’ve eaten a lot of inexplicably sweet, crumbly pita that doesn’t seem much like bread at all. It makes my teeth hurt, and then sticks to them. I hate that.

So when I saw a post on Under the High Chair about making your own pita, I was intrigued. Maybe if I made my own, I’d get some idea of what the quality and consistency should be like.

I followed the UtHC recipe and method pretty much to the letter (except I did it without a mixer), so I won’t repost it here. I did leave them in a little too long (they seemed to take a long time to puff), so they came out a little too brown. I think I’ll have to preheat the oven sooner next time to facilitate early puffing. But, even on the crispy side, they were delicious. Not sweet, not crumbly. I don’t know how authentically Middle Eastern they are, but they’re better than anything I’ve found in the supermarket lately.

Especially with a heaping helping of smug on the side.

Habit forming

I posted here a while back about how junk food is peculiar to where you are. I’ve also noticed that this is true of ethnic food, to my woe: first I spent nine years lamenting the complete absence of scallion pancakes in British Chinese restaurants. Then I went back to the US and found that poppadoms and pickle are not in fact the universal default starter in Indian restaurants (much to Miss B’s and my chagrin).

So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that pizza, perhaps the most ubiquitous ethnic food of them all, doesn’t seem to have much of a presence here in Canberra. Oh, don’t get me wrong: you can get pizza, but it’s not a given item on every Italian restaurant menu, and the big food court at the main shopping center doesn’t have a pizza stall. A kebab stall, a sushi stall--and no pizza slices?!

During our recent extended stay in Boston, we quickly fell into the habit of Friday night as takeout night. DP and Miss B always, always opted for our local pizza takeout. I got bored with this after a while--when you have a toddler you seem to end up eating a lot of pizza--and switched to Thai takeout from across the street. I left Boston thinking I didn’t care if I never saw another pizza. I rapidly changed my tune when it started to look as though that might actually be the case. Unable to find any pizza (eat-in or takeout) worth going out of my way for within a one-mile radius, I turned to the last resort of the hungry expat: figure out how to make my own, so the Friday family pizza habit could continue.

Since I had already gotten back on the breadmaking bandwagon by this point, I was already partway there. I use the same dough for both, and just cut off a sizeable chunk of whatever’s in the fridge to make a crust with. I then stretch it out (laboriously and clumsily—how do the guys in Bertucci’s make it look so easy?) to fit on a round baking sheet which I have greased and floured (some people use semolina here, and I would too, if I ever remembered to buy any), coat it with pizza sauce (see below), dot with pepperoni slices (or other topping of your choice), and sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. Bake in a very hot oven for 10-15 minutes, and maybe run under the grill/broiler for a minute if you want to get the cheese just so. Don’t let it burn.

This is another one of those things that you will totally impress yourself with, just by making it. I pulled my first one out of the oven and said, out loud, “Wow! That actually looks like a pizza!”

As opposed to....?


Zesty Pizza Sauce
2 T olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
¼ t red pepper flakes (more if no one in your house is liable to say, "Too spicy!")
1 can tomato paste, or a few good squeezes/scoops from a tube/jar of same
1 28oz can (or 2 400g cans) tomatoes

Heat olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and sauté garlic and pepper briefly. Add tomato paste and let cook for a minute or two, then dump in tomatoes. If you are using whole ones, try to squish them a bit. Keep the pan at a fairly high heat, as you want to evaporate all the liquid and make a very thick tomato sauce. This means that you will end up with tomato sauce splattered all over your stove. You can partially cover the pan to limit this, but it will take longer to cook the sauce. Cook until you can drag a wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan and see a trail. You can jazz this up with other flavors too. This makes enough for at least two pizzas; I freeze the rest in the hope that one Friday I’ll have dough in the refrigerator and sauce to defrost, and dinner will be really quick and easy. Maybe by then it will also take me less than 40 minutes of dough-wrassling to produce a believable crust.

My week so far, let me tell you about it

The last time I posted, I was sitting in an internet cafe. Since then, I have successfully gotten myself back online from home. And by "home" I mean a new apartment, still chock full of unpacked boxes, on one of which my computer is currently sitting. I, meanwhile, am sitting on a milk crate. (Actually, a milk crate with a boppy on top, because unpadded milk crate is rough on the old tuckus after a while.) Since Sunday, here is a selection of some of the other things I have done:

1. Unpacked at least 75% of the boxes that have arrived from various points of the compass, including the whole kitchen, whole bathroom and all my clothes.

2. Participated in a three-hour conference call for work that kept me up until 11pm, when jet lag has had me asleep before 9 every night.

3. Found Thai basil for sale and used it to make fried rice that I loved but that DP and Miss B both found "too spicy!".

4. Eaten lunch at the Canberra Centre food court every day, because we currently have almost no furniture and I thought we should treat ourselves by eating one meal a day that doesn't involve sitting on the floor.

5. Bought a kitchen table and chairs.

6. Found out the international dialing code for calling out of Australia and remembered to call my sister-in-law for her birthday at a time that would not wake her out of a sound sleep.

7. Bought a phone that dials all the numbers on the first try.

8. Opened a bank account and put some money in it.

When in doubt, talk about the weather

I'm pretty sure that sometime around today is the first day of spring in the southern hemisphere. I had heard from afar that Canberra had 'proper' winter, and when my husband DP came here for a visit in the middle of August (ie mid-winter), it snowed on his first day. To get my head around the whole reversed seasons concept, I've been mentally adjusting everything by six months (thus, mid-August in Canberra = mid-February in Boston--okay, maybe not that bad, but just as a rough guide...).

Are you confused yet?

Having gone through these mental machinations, I was expecting it to be at least somewhat cool when we arrived. Instead, the temperature has been hovering around 70 since we got here two days ago, with blue skies and brilliant sunshine. Okay, there is a stiff breeze from time to time, and I've been carrying around (and occasionally wearing) a light sweatshirt. But mid-March in Boston? Not even close.

The adventure begins

The Question
Can an unreconstructed Bostonian (several years of living elsewhere notwithstanding) find Season Five of The Office, drama-free ice hockey, a toddler playgroup that doesn't resemble Lord of the Flies, and a secure supply line of avocadoes in Canberra, Australia?

The Answer
Watch this space.