Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

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Christmas in the Mountains


30 Dec

Posted in Camping, Christmas, Food | No Comments »

We had a lovely, relaxing Christmas. The day was warm and we did very little. The kids opened their presents after lunch and the little microscope Andrew got them was a real hit. They found a few things to look at including muddy water, pebbles and grass seeds. The microscope has a dissecting/confocal option as well as light microscopy. It also came with some prepared slides to look at, like salt crystals, mouth smear and pollen. In the afternoon we also used up 3 over ripe bananas and made a banana cake from scratch and had roast beef for dinner with roasted vegetables. Both kids enjoyed the Bon Bon crackers and wearing the paper crowns and toys that came out of them.

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Camping on the Murray


01 Oct

Posted in Camping, Food, Nathan the preschooler, Toby's third year, Travel, Vic | 3 Comments »

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Our camping trip at the River Murray was great! We ended up finding a spot near Ulupna Island which is in the Barmah State Forest near Cobram. This was after carting the trailer along a track that ended up quite rough but we couldn’t turn around, so we just had to keep going and hope we could get out again. The official camping area was on a sandy beach where the river is wide and is relatively slow moving, but we were camped on the river bank about 1 km downriver where the river ran faster. It was nice and peaceful with no one else around, until our last night when some people camped some 50 metres from us and we were subjected to listening to the Rugby commentating as well as the koala grunting.

Our first full day there was relaxing. We stayed around the campsite, and went for some walks and a short drive around the immediate area. Our other full day was a driving day where we drive in a loop through Cobram and Tocumwal. The river had been rising since we had arrived, and the road into our campsite was nearly under water when we returned. We discussed what we should do and Andrew, with much more confidence than I had, said we would be able to get out in the morning. Thankfully we did get out.

The weather, which wasn’t great the first couple of days with lots of cold wind, improved during the last two days and we had some lovely days, but a little too cool to go for a swim. We enjoyed having a campfire every night and even cooked our breakfast on the fire the last two mornings. The kids rode their bikes like crazy, and we all enjoyed koala spotting. We were camped up on the bank of the river, with a fairly steep drop to the water. The boys liked going down to the water on foot, but yesterday afternoon Toby decided to ride down but didn’t make it and ended up scraping the side of his face. He tearfully told us he would have been ok if he had pedals, so hiding our smiles we solemnly promised him he could try the little pedal bike when we were home. We had fun despite our few scrapes and spills. 🙂

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the Tent Mahal

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the kids making a train out of our kindling

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Toby cooking breakfast

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eating pancakes with strawberries for breakfast

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Toby was a bit obsessed with setting the ends of sticks alight

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playing on the ‘beach’

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fishing

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dinner, roast chicken and veggies

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getting out of our campsite

Gastronomic Sydney


09 May

Posted in Food, Nathan the preschooler, NSW, Sydney, Toby's third year | 2 Comments »

Looking through the photos I have taken in the last two days, anyone would think we were in Sydney just for the food! We are certainly taking the opportunity to feast on our favourite Sydney dishes, but we have done lots of activities as well.

Monday morning we went to Sydney Park. My old playgroup meet there, and it was wonderful to catch up with friends there, and the kids had a ball in the park! Afterwards we had lunch at a very nice sushi train In Newtown, and while there we went to a wonderful buttons shop and visited a really cool toy shop. Toby needed a sleep, so while asleep on my back we visited the Remnant Warehouse to say hello to Joe, the owner, and get some fabrics. They always have a good selection of reasonably priced denim and I was in need of some. I also picked up a pretty, embroided remnant of brown poplin to make something for me next summer, and some fabric for hats. When Toby woke up we went back to Sydney Park, but this time to a traffic school area and the kids spent an hour riding around and mostly obeying the traffic lights and road rules. Back at our accommodation for the evening, we walked to a yummy and cheap Thai place and had take-away for dinner.

Yesterday I had an appointment with my old supervisor at UNSW. We took the bus there which Toby was excited about. He keeps telling me that Sydney has a lot of buses! Afterwards we went to Coogee, firstly to a playground and then we walked to the beach. Nathan wanted to paddle but we didn’t take bathers, so I promised that we can go ack again today to swim. We had Pide for lunch before going to visit Danii and her two kids. We had a lovely afternoon and grabbed some Chinese from a place on Anzac Parade for dinner.

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My little climber at Sydney Park

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Sushi train in Newtown

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Waiting for the traffic lights at Sydney Park traffic school

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Eating Thai for dinner

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Coogee Park

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Coogee Park

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Nathan ringing the bell he always aspired to reach but never could, at Coogee Park

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Pide in Coogee

Gingerbread Men


22 Jan

Posted in Food, Nathan the preschooler, Toby's third year | 1 Comment »

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Nathan had been asking to make gingerbread men for several days, and then we got a belated Christmas gift from friends…..and it was a mixing bowl with a packet mix for gingerbread men (including cutter) and decorations, and two wooden mixing spoons. The very next day we HAD to try out the mix.

It was certainly easy and, unlike the gingerbread men we normally make, they rose nicely and were a lot like the gingerbread men you buy in shops. Flavour-wise, they weren’t as gingery as we are used to, but they still tasted nice.

The mix came with a small packet of 100’s and 1000’s, so we had to make some icing so that we could use them. We aren’t exactly expert decorators, but we had fun. 🙂

Thanks Kate and co, for a fun morning of baking.

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Rain…..


19 Dec

Posted in Food, NSW, Travel | 2 Comments »

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…and rain, and more rain.

The rain was pretty heavy last night and continued as showers throughout the day. We went for a drive to Lake Eucumbene. There wasn’t much there, but it was a nice drive anyway. Back to the tent site via Jindabyne and the shops for a few supplies, and we tried it the aluminum foil theory by cooking a cake in the Weber…all this effort to work out baking in the Weber is because I want to make Toby a cake for his birthday. Toby is into the whole birthday thing….he keeps pointing to things and saying “I want that for my birthday”. The cake worked perfectly, even though it was in the BBQ for over an hour. Seems like the foil made a huge difference. We gave half the cake to a family camping near us (Nathan visits them a lot), and they were very appreciative.

Since I don’t have any other photos for the day, here are the ones of our baking efforts in the Weber.

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No foil in the BBQ and all the biscuit bases burned, making them all but inedible.

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Perfect!

Vietnamese Pho


28 Feb

Posted in Food, Nathan the preschooler | 1 Comment »

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We went to Springvale for lunch on Saturday. We were looking for a place to get Pho, and there were a number to choose from. We decided on one place that looked pretty busy, and it was delicious, though I nearly ordered soup with chicken livers and giblets etc. in it (that was the ‘special’ part in ‘special chicken’. I was questioned as to whether I really wanted the chicken offal, and I opted out. Nathan had his very own bowl of the soup for the first time, and he really enjoyed it. Toby missed out though, he was asleep.

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Fresh Pasta


20 Jan

Posted in Food, Nathan's third year | 1 Comment »

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We have made fresh pasta twice lately, and Nathan loves making and eating it. We get the bread maker to do the mixing and kneeding, and then we roll it and cut it. Jamie Oliver (in one of his cook books) makes it sound easy to make without any automated equipment, but I’m happy for the bread maker to do the hard work for us.

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Potato Salad


06 Feb

Posted in Food, Nathan's second year | 1 Comment »

A few days ago Nathan helped me cut the potatoes for potato salad.  The potatoes were cooked and peeled, and Nathan was a picture of concentration while cutting them into slices.

The lives of others


28 Aug

Posted in Food, Friends, Movies | No Comments »

Last week Iris organised dinner and a movie at Govindas. Andrew and I had been talking about going back there, because we had such a wonderful time last time we were there. Unfortunately, however, whenever we were free there weren’t any movies that interested us showing there.

Iris decided to take her friend there, and invited Andrew and I as well. The food, as last time, was delicious. I just love the dahl soup they have, it is so very tasty. Then at around 9:15 pm we paid and went up to the cinema which has very comfy lounge-like seats. The movie was called ‘The Lives of Others’, and was in German with English subtitles. It was very interesting, and I really enjoyed it. It was set in the years before the fall of the wall in Germany, with the last bit finishing a few years after the fall. I loved the ending, too, it really was a perfect way to finish the movie.

Birthday yum cha


10 Jul

Posted in Food, Friends, Sydney city | No Comments »

Yum cha

Andrew and I spent Saturday in the city. It was Andrew’s birthday on Friday and mine on Sunday, so we sort of split the difference and decided to celebrate by having yum cha on Saturday with Gabe, Julie, the kids and Iris.

We picked Iris up from Redfern station around 9 am and then drove to a car park in the city. We walked down to the Pyrmont Growers Market and spent an hour or so wandering around. Andrew and Iris both had Wagyu beef steak sandwiches for breakfast while I had a Thai chicken curry pie. I bought some goats cheese that I simply love, tasted some blood oranges that were delicious so I bought some of those too, then Andrew went off for a coffee and Iris and I both bought some orange juice. We went past a stall that sold ‘icecream sandwiches’ and was told that if I chose a flavour and came back in about 10 minutes I could taste it (it had to warm up a bit to make it easy to cut). I chose caramel pecan, which was caramel icecream between two pecan biscuits. Very delicious, I must say! We bought a loaf of bread and the newspaper, and took everything back to the car.

We planned to have yum cha for lunch, but we were waiting for Gabe and Julie to meet us with the kids. Julie rang to say that Angela was still sleeping and they’d be later than planned. Iris said it would be nice to just sit in the sun for an hour with a Starbucks coffee, so we arranged a place to meet and said we’d call her in about an hour to let her know what was happening. Then Andrew and I headed to the city to wander around and do a little window shopping.

Just over an hour later Julie rang to say they were on their way, so we called Iris and organised to meet her near the Chinese restaurant. The timing was pretty good, by the time we got a table Gabe and Julie were only about 5 minutes or so from the restaurant. It ended up being a pretty late lunch, so there wasn’t as much choice of food as normal, but we also were able to sit around the table for ages after we finished eating because lunch was over and they weren’t seating people for dinner yet.

When we finally left the restaurant, Andrew and I walked to Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair to see the USS Kittyhawk that was in Sydney for 5 days. From there we walked through the botanical gardens and back to the carpark.

It was a lovely day.

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