Things I found at my grandmother's house, Part IV

I've previously posted pictures and descriptions of unusual items I've discovered while living at my grandmother's house. The latest object is something with which I am quite enthralled...vintage outerwear! I saw this hanging in a closet, and at first glance, I thought it was a coat. However, upon further inspection, I realized that a coat it is not. I don't know exactly what it is. I started calling it a poncho-cape (in my head, at least) but when I described it to a coworker, he thought that it perhaps it was a cloak. Time for a game of Name This Outergarment! It doesn't have sleeves per se, but it will cover your arms. It opens and closes with a row of buttons along the left shoulder blade. It has two slits in the front and a long flap with pockets. It is made of wool, comes from Ireland, and looks to be at least 30 years old. Here's a picture of the poncho-cape/cloak and one of me modeling it.
I actually really like it, so don't be surprised if you spot me roaming the streets of Boston in a cloak this winter. I'm still holding out hope that it bestows special powers on all those who wear it.

Recipe: Roasted fish, potato, and asparagus with dill butter (or margarine, in my case)

While I was at the airport to waiting to fly home, I amassed my leftover Australian money (which is really cool looking, by the way. and they don't use pennies!) and decided to spend it rather than turning it back in for like $14. I ended up buying a couple more souvenirs for family and a Donna Hay cooking magazine for myself. I had never heard of her, but I liked the look and feel of the magazine, and it came with a free tea towel (woohoo!). I was pleasantly surprised when started reading it on the plane and found it chock full of relatively easy and tasty looking recipes. This week, I tried out this one (I couldn't find a link but it's short enough so I'll just type it out. And I did have to convert the original from the metric system, so now you won't have to):

Roasted fish, potato, and asparagus with dill butter

1 lb baby yellow potatoes, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 white fish fillets (about 1 lb total)- I used haddock.
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and halved lengthwise
1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and drained
3 tablespoons butter (or margarine), melted
1 tablespoon dill leaves

Preheat oven to 390F. Place the potato and 1 tablespoon of the oil on a baking tray and toss to coat. Roast for 25 minutes. Add the fish, asparagus, and capers to the tray and drizzle with the remaining oil. Roast for 15-20 minutes until the fish is cooked through and the potatoes are golden. Combine the butter and dill and spoon over the fish to serve. Serves 2 or 3.

Super easy and so yummy! I did sprinkle some salt and pepper on the potatoes and fish before I roasted them. I can't wait to paste this recipe in my nerd cooking scrapbook.

Back to Reality

I spent my last night in Australia drinking award-winning beer and gorging myself on all-you-can-eat sushi with my college friend Alison, who has been living in Sydney for a few years. And after a Very Long Flight, I'm finally home. Flying back to Australia is akin to time travel...you leave Sydney at 4pm and fly for upteen (12? 14?) hours and then arrive in San Fransisco at 10am...that same day. Crazy, huh?

Anyways, as you may have guessed from reading the recent posts, I had a great time in Australia. It's a trip that I had been wanting to take for years, and my old college roommater Kris and her husband Rodd were excellent hosts.


On a whole, the country on a whole was more subdued than I expected. The cities still have a strong British empire feel to them, although the birds and plants are a far more tropical to anything you'd spot in London- check out the bright purple Jacaranda tree. The Australian people enjoy meat pies and don't sound like Steve Irwin (a notable exception being Kristy's fitness trainer Spudd...I went to one of his workout sessions and could barely understand a word he said.) Australians are really into wearing sunscreen and conserving water- the toilets all have two buttons for flushing, one if you need a lot of water (i.e. for #2) and another if you only need a little bit. Lactose intolerance must be fairly common, because soy milk is available at every cafe. Food and drinks and gasoline are more expensive than in the U.S., but right now the Australian dollar is very strong and in the past American tourists have gotten a lot more bang for their buck. Although many things about Australia seemed surprisingly familiar, there were some striking differences. The natural beauty of the country is stunningly beautiful and like nothing I've ever seen before. Their sports are weird (cricket and netball and footy and rugby) and their animals are even weirder. And they eat their national animals, the emu and the kangaroo.

Australia is a wonderfully easy country in which to travel, especially for backpackers. In-country flights are dirt cheap (I paid around $80 for my round trip flight from Sydney to Melbourne) and hostels are abundant, inexpensive, clean, and safe. And there is so much to see and do! Even with the places I saw, I feel like I barely scratched the surface. Almost all of the other tourists I met were from Europe, and most of them were in the midst of two or three month vacations, a habit I think we as Americans need to adopt. Talking to them about their travels made me wish I could have stayed another month and gone to New Zealand as well. I also found it amusing what aspects of the American culture have made it to Europe- my tour companions were all familiar with Ben Harper's music but didn't know what a burrito was.

In closing, if you ever have the opportunity to take a trip to Australia, definitely go. Do I want to move there? No. It's a lovely country, but so very far away from everything. Do I wish I could have stayed longer? Absolutely.

Weekend Report

Friday I headed out to the Blue Mountains, a national park a couple of hours outside of Sydney. It reminded me a bit of the mountains in northern New England, only these forests smell like eucalyptus and are full of lizards and tropical birds. I took the train to Katoomba and hiked around (here they call it "bushwalking" instead of hiking) for a few hours, stopping to see the famous Three Sisters rock formation. Apparently there is a long track record of people wandering off the trails and getting lost in the Blue Mountains (recent example here) and I can see why- despite the abundance of tourists once you follow a trail into the woods for fifteen minutes or so, there's nobody around. So I made sure to stick to the trails and was back in Sydney in time for schnitzel and bier at a German restaurant.

Saturday was Halloween: I was very glad that the timing of my trip allowed me to attend Kris and Rodd's legendary Halloween party in Sydney. They really pull out all the stops when it comes to food and decor- check out the witch finger cookies and the meatloaf zombie Barbie that Kris created. I dressed as David Bowie from Labyrinth, which was a lot of fun, although my costume may have been more authentic had I been bold enough to shove a zucchini down my stretch pants. Kris and Rodd came as Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers and they looked great, and a lot of other guests had fabulous costumes as well. Halloween is starting to become more popular in Australia, but it is still largely viewed as an American holiday. Some pics:



Sunday we cleaned and recovered from the party, watched a bunch of episodes of The Big Bang Theory (love it!) and met up with a couple of Sydney Metafilter members at a very townie pub. Overall, it was a great way to spend my last weekend in Australia.

Five Things Not Related to Australia

Inspired by Sarah and Jenny

1. Peanut Butter Bacon Cookies. Just made these for Kris' Halloween Party. I feel sort of dirty now. Dirty and delicious.

2. Trona High School football...my father grew up in Trona, California, a small mining town on the edge of Death Valley. The football field he played on (made of sand and known as The Pit) was recently featured in from the LA Times- click on the link above.

The last three are all books- I've been catching up on my reading while on vacation.

3. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. This Pultizer Prize winning novel tells the story of a geeky, overweight Dominican-American boy named Oscar and his family, who have long been plagued by a curse known as the fuku that followed them from the Caribbean to their current home of New Jersey. Although Oscar is the title character, the story is more about his family and their history than it is about him... his mother surviving the brutal reign of Trujillo in the DR, his sister Lola and her captivating mixture of rebellion and vulnerability, and his friend Yunior, who also acts as the narrator and Lola's on again, off again boyfriend. The writing itself is hilarious and heartbreaking, and the characters are vibrant. It's a very latino book, with Spanish terminology sprinkled throughout. All of the women are sexy and gorgeous, and all of the men cheat on them. I really enjoyed it, but I think having lived in Nicaragua for a couple of years definitely enhanced my appreciation of the book. I was also glad that I read In The Time of The Butterflies because I already knew a bit about Trujillo's dictatorship. Here's the NYT review.

4. Out Stealing Horses, by Per Pettersen, is a Norwegian novel about an old man who moves up to an isolated cabin in the north of the country. Although the goal of his relocation was to forget his past, he ends up immersed in it, especially when he realizes that his current neighbor was a childhood acquaintance. Much of the book is a flashback of a summer he spent with his father in rural Norway, and set against a backdrop of the quiet beauty of northern Norway, the book about the relationship between a boy and his father. Out Stealing Horses progresses at a slow and deliberate pace, and it's not until over halfway through that a deeper plot is revealed. I enjoyed it, but it's more suited for reading on a cold evening by the fire than on a sunny beach.

5. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Yep, the title says it all- it's the classic romance story of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy, only in this version, guts, gore, ninjas, vomit, and zombies (a.k.a "unmentionables") play a prominent role. If you've read the original and don't tend to take English literature too seriously, you'll definitely enjoy it.

More on Melbourne

As promised, here are some more photos and details about my trip to Melbourne and the South Coast. There exists somewhat of a rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne, and residents of one city will frequently ask you which of the two you prefer. Naturally, I say that I like them both. I stayed in two different neighborhoods in Melbourne- the first was the Fitzroy/Carlton, which I loved- a funky area with loads of cafes, restaurants, shops, bars and a couple of beautiful parks nearby. The second was St. Kilda, a beachfront area a little south of downtown accesible by tram (it's really easy to get around Melbourne via tram, and they are free in the city center). I was not a fan St. Kilda. My hostel was terrible- it was full of European fratboy teenagers (the bar had a daily jaegerbomb special...'nuff said.) and even if I had been ten years younger, I don't think I was ever much into the spring break party scene, which is permanently on display in St. Kilda. So I saw the best and the worst of the city and definitely could have done without two nights in St. Kilda. I tried to move back to the Nunnery (dirty hippies > trashy teenagers) but I had already paid upfront for my accommodations in St. Kilda so I sucked it up.

My jaunt to Melbourne was also the first time I've traveled by myself. Australia is a very travel-friendly country, with and abundance of cheap and clean hostels and backpacker tours widely available. I really enjoyed the two tours I did and would definitely recommend that method if you're traveling on your own- you meet a lot of people and see interesting places without having to worry about making nitpicky arrangements. But the time I spent in the city itself would have been a lot more enjoyable if I had friends with me.

One of the highlights of the trip has been seeing all of Australia's bizarre animals in the wild. One night on the tour we camped in a koala forest and saw TONS of them- most of them were pretty high up in the trees so my pictures weren't all that great. The seem cute and cuddly until night falls- their absurdly loud mating calls and noises kept us up all night. Fun fact of the day: the majority of koalas are infected with chlamydia.

Here are a few more pictures of a sleeping koala, me feeding a wallaby, the gorgeous Great Ocean Road coastline, a waterfall in the Grampians mountain range, and a bright yellow canola field.

Greetings from Melbourne!

So, here's what I've done over the past few days:

I went to see the little penguins at Phillip Island. It was really cold. They swim ashore a couple of hours after sunset, and it was very cold and damp and windy sitting on the shore waiting for them to arrive, but they were very cute so it was worth it. Besides, who knows if I'll ever get the chance to see wild penguins again.

After that, I headed off on a three day tour of the Great Ocean Road and Grampians National Park. It definitely had a different vibe from my outback tour- I was the oldest of the group (good thing I'm so immature), everyone was single, and everyone except for me was a European clubster. So yeah, we listened to trance and techno the entire time. The scenery was beautiful, although the tour was a lot more stop-and-go so we didn't get to do any hiking, which had been my favorite part of the outback tour. But I did go quad biking! A quad bike is a four wheeled ATV, and I got mine up to 50kph- it was such a blast. After the tour ended, we met up in St. Kilda for a night of clubbing, which was actually a lot of fun. And then today I dragged myself out of bed...to go on a wine tour of the Yarra Valley. Hooray for vacation!

Picture time:






I'll post some more when I'm not being charged by the minute.