New Zealand - the "OMG LOOK AT THE KIWI" edition

Previously, I flew to Wellington to stay with Kim, and there was much rejoicing.

The day after we went to Te Papa and to see Thor: TDW, it rained. Like, a lot. All. Freaking. Day. And not even the kind of summery rain where it's still warm enough that you don't object to walking to the bus stop and going to do something indoors. Nope, the wintery kind where the rain is horizontal and it's freezing cold and all you want to do is curl up on the sofa under a blanket. Obviously, we stayed home, played Lego Marvel and ate an awful lot of junk food. We may also have watched an episode of Agents of SHIELD and mocked it for being terrible and contrivance-ridden.

My last full day in Wellington, luckily, featured no rain at all. Instead, it featured sunburn. Because when we left the house, it looked like it was about to pour with rain, so I put sunscreen on but didn't bother to take it with me. THEN THE SUN CAME OUT. Sigh...

Anyway, we caught the bus into the city, picked up some sandwiches, and walked the 4-ish kilometres to the zoo. We started out with a visit to the otters and the penguins, neither of whom were anywhere to be seen. So we headed up through the kiwi enclosure - also nowhere to be seen, but this was probably due to an extremely loud small child. Luckily, some of the teeny monkeys were more accommodating:

From there, we went to a display by a red-tailed black cockatoo who was zooming all over the arena and who could do little puzzles with stackable cups and things in order to get treats. Sadly, there was a VERY screamy small child present who desperately wanted to steal the cockatoo's toys and kept running across the floor towards it. This made the cockatoo and the zoo keepers very nervous, but apparently small child's parents had no fucks to give because they basically did nothing...

Our ears needed a break after that, and it was almost time for the chimpanzee talk, so we headed up to the top of the hill to eat our sandwiches and hang out with the chimpanzees and a great view of the city for a while:

We were basically the only ones there until about 30 seconds before the talk started when an entire class of unruly grade 1 kids turned up and swarmed all over the place. YAY... Luckily, the chimps getting their lunch was entertainment enough to shut them up a little. Said lunch consisted of the keeper tossing out pieces of fruit one at a time and the chimpanzees having to catch each piece. And let me tell you, those chimpanzees were EXCELLENT at it. They could easily play cricket with catching skills like that!

Other highlights of the afternoon included my all time favourites, the red pandas:

And the sunbear, who looked incredibly shocked about something:

We also saw a moronic 20-something guy banging on the glass of the baboon enclosure, causing a lot of the juvenile baboons to hurl themselves at the glass with their teeth bared. He thought it was hilarious. I'm still convinced that one day, he's going to wake up at 3am to find a baboon ripping his face off, because they were NOT impressed...

Eventually, we headed back to the kiwi house for the keeper talk. And it was FABULOUS. The kiwi that they had out only has one leg because he got stuck in a trap meant for feral cats (I think...) and it broke his leg so badly that it had to be amputated. They made him a prosthesis, but apparently he prefers to hop, which is basically the cutest thing ever. If you're interested, you can read more about Tahi here. Anyway, he was about a foot away from me and he was so stinking adorable that I probably could have watched him all day. So if you're ever in Wellington, you should go to the zoo and check out the kiwi keeper talk!

Also, you should go to the zoo because they have FABULOUS signage:

After a detour through the gift shop where I bought a kiwi shaped cookie cutter and a stuffed toy kiwi with wonky legs (I bought him for Little Miss A, but ended up keeping him myself because REASONS), we caught the bus back into town, grabbed ourselves a couple of scoops of ice cream, and walked around to Oriental Bay to sit on the beach for a little while. In keeping with my curse, there was naked New Zealander there, although this one was at least a small child rather than a creepy grown man...

We wandered back through the city and took a few obnoxious selfies on the way, because OBVS.

My flight the next day was at around lunchtime. It was insaaaaaaaaaaaanely windy so walking down the hill to the bus with my suitcase was a rather interesting experience - rather like being dragged along by a very enthusiastic dog... Still, we made it to the airport in plenty of time and, after getting rid of my suitcase and checking in, we headed to Donut King, because of reasons.

Stolen from Kim's Tumblr.

And then we sat there listening to flights being cancelled because the wind was reaching insane levels... Fortunately(??) for me, they were only cancelling the propeller flights, not the jet flights, so my flight wasn't cancelled. Takeoff, however, got a little bit interesting. Especially as I was trapped in a middle seat and the woman on the aisle demanded like 14 sick bags "just in case"... O.o

Eventually, I made it to Auckland, found my luggage, walked the million miles (read: 1km) to the international terminal, checked in, had lunch, abused the free wifi as much as possible, and flew back to Melbourne. THE END. And only four months after my trip ended! ;)

K xx

Dessert Day - oversized lemon edition

On Friday afternoon, Deidre and I met up with my IRL BFF, Char, for a spot of Dessert Day magic. Our first step was to source ingredients and, considering we'd taken over Char's parents' kitchen for the occasion, we headed out into the back garden to check the lemon tree. We came back in with the most ridiculous lemon any of us had ever seen:

It was absolutely ENORMOUS.

Anywho... Following a trip to the supermarket (and then another trip because we forgot to buy caster sugar. FAIL), we pressed on with the actual baking part. Our first challenge was to recreate a version of Deidre's wedding cake from this recipe. Except we decided that it wasn't sufficiently challenging, and that we needed to make a bunch of changes.

Obviously, we weren't about to make a tiered cake, because EFFORT. Instead, we decided to change things up a little and make one lemon cake and one raspberry cake. So we followed the recipe, except that we left out all the lemon-y stuff. We divided the batter into two equal parts, and added the following:

Cake 1
- 1/8 cup lemon juice
- 1 large pinch lemon zest
- 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

Cake 2
- 1/8 cup raspberry coulis (cook 1/2 cup raspberries with a couple of teaspoons of caster sugar for a couple of minutes, then push through a sieve and allow it to cool)
- 1/2 teaspoon raspberry extract

While the cakes were in the oven, we made the lemon curd exactly as it appears in the recipe. Except, you know, the eggy version not the vegan version. Because the vegan version sounds DISGUSTING and I suspect it would result in something that looked a lot like lemon flavoured snot... *gags repeatedly*

I split the cakes, which caused rather a large amount of stress, and then we pressed on with making the frosting. We decided that it might end up too overwhelmingly lemon-y if we used the frosting from the recipe, so we used the basic butter, sugar, milk and salt quantities it lists, and then just added a teaspoon or so of vanilla extract. It was pretty amazing, I have to say.

The assembly process was MUCH more straightforward than the chequerboard cake - we alternated layers of cake and put about 1/3 of the lemon curd between each layer. Then we smothered the whole lot in frosting. There was a reasonable amount of frosting left over, and the cake looked a little plain. So we added the leftover raspberry coulis to it, and I grabbed the piping bag and went to town!

It was pretty fabulous cake. It doesn't taste or look like it's gluten free, and the frosting didn't make it soggy, which is sometimes a problem when it comes to gluten free stuff. Plus, it got the seal of approval from two of Char's younger brothers, so it must have been rather spectacular! I think in future though, I might stick with straight lemon and some kind of cream cheese frosting. Or straight raspberry with coulis or jam in between the layers and the vanilla frosting we used here. It was amazing, but there were so many flavours going on that it was all a little overwhelming.

Our second recipe for the day was these apple fritters. We followed the recipe exactly, except that it turns out that one and a half apples was enough to give the required quantity. Which was a bit of a bummer because we'd already peeled three apples. Womp womp.

These were completely fabulous, but I strongly recommend using a candy thermometer to check the temperature of the oil - the first lot we did ended up too brown on the outside and not quite cooked in the middle. But once the oil had cooled down a bit, they came out perfectly!

Conclusions?
Cake: Would definitely make again but with some alterations to give a more uniform flavour.
Fritters: Would definitely make again, but would double the recipe so that there are more delicious tiny doughnuts in my life.
Giant lemon: Completely delicious, unlike most oversized fruits.
Things I would change next time: Being insanely awkward when one of Char's brothers came home while she was out buying sugar, because OBVIOUSLY it would have been the only one of her brothers who wouldn't recognise me...
Deep frying: Not nearly as terrifying as last time.
Splitting cakes: Forever terrifying.

So. Would you take the lemon option, the raspberry option, or the All the Flavours option?? I need opinions so I know what to make next time!

K xx

Sadly lacking in Timbits

On Friday night, I went to a rather unusual event. Well, unusual for Melbourne at any rate. Australia's not really big with the winter sports, on account of a freezing cold day = 12 degrees C, which isn't exactly conducive to ice and snow. You know? So when I saw that there was going to be an exhibition ice hockey match between Canada and the USA, I jumped at the chance to go.

While it may have been a good 20+ years since I lived in Canada, this doesn't mean that I won't cheer for them when given the opportunity. Apparently the rest of Melbourne felt the same way. Because when the US team skated out, there was a smattering of polite applause and then some awkward silence. When the Canadians appeared? The roof practically lifted off the stadium.

Then they had some "promising local talent" come out to sing the two national anthems. She was not only flat, but forgot the words to both of them and kind of made things up that were vaguely right but not really to fill in the gaps until she worked it out. So that was cringe worthy fun... Thankfully, they shooed her off the ice and got down to business pretty quickly.

There were fireworks and staged fights and mostly I ended up being insanely impressed at how quickly the umpires were able to get out of the way of the puck and/or large men in tons of protective gear that were hurtling towards them.

At the end of the first period, Canada were ahead by a good four goals and things were looking good. Then they brought out the most ridiculous piece of equipment in creation. No, it wasn't a Zamboni. Apparently they didn't think it warranted finding one for a whole two nights of professional level ice hockey. Instead, a bunch of guys came out with ice scrapers, and skated around sweeping the ice for about ten minutes. Then they brought out some kind of golf cart looking contraption with a water tank on the back of it. Said water tank was connected by hoses to a bunch of (what appeared to be) towels, and they drove around the rink using the wet towels to smooth the surface of the ice.

It was probably the least effective method they could have found. And, considering it was like 23 degrees in the stadium (at least up where we were sitting!), play had to be delayed until the slightly ridiculous quantities of water they put down had frozen.

The US made a comeback during the second period, and the commentators interviewed an AFL player and asked well thought out questions like "What do you see as a the major differences between AFL and ice hockey?". The entire stadium did a confused dog head tilt at that, because:
1. One takes place on grass, the other on ice.
2. One involves kicking an oval shaped ball, the other hitting a puck with sticks.
3. One requires tiny shorts and a sleeveless jumper, the other 10 kilos of protective padding and a pair of metal blades strapped to your feet.

One might, in fact, say that the only similarities between the two sports is that they're played in winter and are fast moving...

During the second break, they claimed to have a special prize to award and called out a couple of seat numbers. Except it turned out to be less special prize and more "unexpected proposal", which ended up being insanely awkward because she a) nearly fell over on the ice in her heels, and b) didn't respond for a good three minutes. Nothing says romance like proposing in front of 10,000 complete strangers!! O.o

Then a bunch of very tiny children in very long hockey jerseys came out and skated around at top speed. And then they got to meet all the players, which was pretty adorable.

The third period ended up being the most exciting, because it ended up being a really close match, and it was only the last ten minutes or so where they were actually playing at their full capability. I'm not sure whether it was the ice or whether they'd been told to take things slow for the dumb Australians who aren't used to ice hockey, but I rather wish the rest of the game had been played with the same speed and skill.

As it was, Canada emerged victorious through some great work on the part of the goalie, and through a wonky power play by the US which saw them replace their goalie with an attacker, leaving Canada one player down but with an open goal to shoot at.

And then they made it snow in the arena. Because obviously...

On the whole, it was an excellent evening. I got to sing O Canada at the top of my lungs, boo a Collingwood player, and watch some pretty excellent sport. Now if only they'd had Timbits for sale, it would have been perfect... *sigh*

Have you been to see any unfamiliar sports? Did you have even the faintest idea what was going on? Because I sure didn't...

K xx

Dessert Day: World Nutella Day edition

Yes, it's that time of year again - the time when it's okay to consume half a jar of Nutella in one sitting!!

Source

First of all, I'm going to address the Americans among us. Y'all need to work on your pronunciation of Nutella. It's made of hazelnuts. HazelNUTS, see? Therefore, it's Nut-ella. Not Noo-tella. Nut-ella. Got it?

MOVING RIGHT ALONG.

My partner-in-crime for all things Dessert Day, Deidre, emailed me a list of about ten recipes while I was still in the US. Yesterday morning, we were standing in the aisles at my local supermarket trying to work out a) which recipes to make, and b) what ingredients said recipes would require. It probably didn't help that I was running a 38.7 (102) degree temperature, and was therefore even more vague and useless than usual!

Anyway, we settled on making Nutella brownies, and Nutella filled doughnuts. We had absolutely no idea how either of them were going to turn out gluten free, but what is Dessert Day if not an opportunity to potentially fail in a spectacular fashion?!

We started out by making the doughnuts, which required rising time. I say WE, but I really mean "I measured stuff out, and Deidre did all the heavy lifting to keep my germs as far away from the hands on parts as possible". We were both a little apprehensive about the whole doughnut thing, because a) gluten free yeast containing dough, and b) DEEP FRYING OH GOD. So we were pleasantly surprised when the dough came together beautifully:

Once the dough was done, we made it go and sit by itself outside on the basis that it was warm outside and surely it would rise nicely there. Instead, I think it mostly just made friends with a wasp... (To clarify - the bowl was Glad Wrapped. The wasp was on top of the Glad Wrap)

While the dough was busy making new friends, we got started on the Nutella brownies. Has anyone ever come across a recipe that calls for 1 1/4 cups of cocoa? NEITHER HAD WE. We left out the espresso powder, and used about 50g less chocolate chips than the recipe called for, because we were a little afraid of how chocolate-y they already were.

We also overcooked them a little. But when we first took them out of the oven, they wobbled very much like this:

I was going to say "But with less velociraptors...", but Clever Girl was helping out yesterday! (If you have no idea who Clever Girl is, you should probably go and watch yesterday's vlog. Hell, just go watch yesterday's vlog full stop because it's awesome)

Anyway, so the brownies were super wobbly, and we put them back in the oven for another ten minutes. Which was probably sliiiiiiiiiightly too long. Sigh. It probably didn't help that we were watching Pride and Prejudice while they were in the oven, and got a little distracted by Colin Firth...

Anyway, they're pretty delicious. But the amount of cocoa in them meant that you could barely taste either the chocolate chips OR the Nutella. Which seemed, to me at least, rather against the point of putting them in there. I'd have preferred more Nutella and less cocoa, I think...

From there, we made the dough say goodbye to its friend the wasp (which was rather more difficult than anticipated - the wasp did NOT want to go), and took it back inside to start the deep frying process. Which led to many questions:
- "How big a saucepan do you need to deep fry stuff?"
- "How many do you think we can cook at a time?"
- "How do you know when the oil's at the right temperature?"
- "Where the hell have I put that stupid thermometer??"
- "How many does this make, anyway?"

The answers, in order, are: Not very, 4 or 5, if you dip a wooden skewer in the oil and it makes lots of bubbles it's good to go, I still don't know, and about 45.

While I took care of the deep frying, Deidre was in charge of filling them with Nutella. In hindsight, I think we should have tried to get the Nutella to a pourable consistency before we tried to pipe it into the doughnuts. But pfff, whatevs, they were still AMAZING.

Plus, if you felt the need to do so, you could easily fill them with raspberry jam instead of Nutella and just roll them in sugar! (Incidentally, you'll want to use caster sugar rather than white sugar to roll them. You get a far more even coating, and they look much prettier...)

Who knew gluten free doughnuts would be such a massive success!!

Did you participate in World Nutella Day?

K xx

Colorado - the "apparently Bigfoot lives in the Springs" edition

The day after Lyndsy and I went to the baseball, I headed down to Colorado Springs to stay with Megan and David, and do all manner of touristy stuff for a few days. We started out with a wee jaunt to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. It was a pretty miserable day, but that just meant that there was hardly anyone else there! I started off with feeding a giraffe. And it didn't occur to me until the last piece of lettuce that it would be sensible to take a photo of me feeding a giraffe. Oh well. I have this photo that Megan took of me teasing a giraffe with a piece of lettuce. Close enough! 

The bears were hilarious - one was having a health check, and the other was attempting to coerce bits of food out of the keeper by slapping his paws on the surface of the water. Occasionally, the bits of food would go a little too far, and the bear would have to swim a little to find them. That totally freaked out the salmon that were in the water. Understandably... (Apparently the bears aren't particularly good at the fishing thing, and have caught a record FIVE salmon this year!) I think my favourite was when we got to the wallabies. 

Me: Awwww! Aren't you guys cute? And you made delicious food for the early colonists in Tasmania too!

Wallaby: [looks at me] O.O

Don't believe me? Check out this face:

Yeah. He was seriously traumatised by that idea. The weather decreased as the afternoon wore on, and by the time we headed up to the Will Rogers Memorial thingamibob, it was drizzling quite substantially. Which meant that this was our view of the mountains towards Pikes Peak:

Thrilling, no? But it was okay because on our way home, we came across these grazing in someone's front garden, and that totally made up for it:

The next day, we figured we'd take our chances with the weather and head up Pikes Peak. Part of the way up, we came across this sculpture:

I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty sure that's Jesus trying to win the Hairiest Body Builder award... #goingtoHell But according to a nearby sign, it was Bigfoot. By the time we got to the top of the Peak (which is a 19 mile drive), it was completely foggy. But I didn't really care that we couldn't see a thing because SNOW!!!! 

Here's me in the snow:

I think Megan found my level of excitement rather amusing... 

I also ate a cinnamon doughnut that had fudge icing on it. It was amazeballs to the point where I neglected to take a photo of it. And I don't even want to contemplate how many calories were in it, but if I had to guess I'd have to go with A MILLIONTY. And they were totally worth it. 

The view at the top of Pikes Peak prompted the writing of 'America the Beautiful'. Thanks to the fog, this is what we saw from the top. SERIOUSLY. 

When I reviewed my photos, I thought something had gone horribly wrong.
Then I remembered what I'd been taking photos of...

It totally inspires me to write songs! Not. #bringingthatback #channellingChandlerBing

The drive back down featured some awesome views, including this one from the Bottomless Pit:

The next day, we headed up to Seven Falls. As the name might suggest, it's a series of seven waterfalls of all different kinds. The downside? This:

Two hundred and twenty four stairs. I was more than a little glad I'd gone to the pharmacy to get an emergency Ventolin inhaler before I left home! Still, the falls were pretty, and I got to play around with shutter speed. Wheeeeeeeee!!! 

Ahem. We also went to Cave of the Winds. I successfully managed to not brain myself or get stuck in any narrow passageways - yay me! I was rather relieved to not be visiting back in the day when it took six hours to tour the caves, along with commando crawling through a 50cm high passageway... Afterwards, we overheard one of the guides saying in the shop that they'd had a guy on their tour try and take a photo of total cave darkness. With the flash on... #EPICFAIL 

That night, we went out to a steakhouse for dinner. This happened:

Hostess: Have you guys been here before?

David: We have. But she hasn't. She's from out of town. 

Hostess: [disinterested] Oh really? Where are you from?

Me: Australia.

Hostess: OH MY GOSH! I've never met anyone from Australia before!! If you fill in this card, we'll get you a little something on the house!

Me: Um. Okay?

David: Huh. Maybe we should tell her it's your birthday and see if we can get MORE free food!

Bless her, she was so excited about meeting someone from Australia. (And no, it wasn't an Outback Steakhouse.) I was kind of hoping for dessert or mozzerella sticks (they may be terrifyingly bad for you, but my GOD they're delicious). Instead, I got free ribs. Eh #freefoodisfreefood 

Oh, and I nearly forgot! I came across these in Colorado Springs:

Source

Worst. Ugg boots. EVER... I apologise on behalf of my country for introducing these monstrosities to the world...

Next up: the least reassuring flight attendant announcement ever, and museums and monuments aplenty in Washington DC!

K xx

Mmmmm, deep fried goodness...

This weekend marks one of the few highlights of living in Canberra - the annual Multicultural Festival. It usually falls on either the hottest day of the year, or the stormiest day of the year. This year, thankfully, it was slightly humid and pretty overcast, but not too hot and not actually raining. Miracle!

The photos are a bit crap because I didn't want to carry my SLR around while pushing through crowds, so I took my point and shoot. I now remember why I bought my SLR...

Anyway, there's usually a whole group of people from work heading in, but this year for whatever reason, there wasn't. I headed in quite early to try and avoid the worst of the crowds. My first priority was this:

Inca Kola, soft drink of the gods. Or, as Jamie referred to it this morning, nuclear cola. It's rather appropriate, given its fluorescence, don't you think?

Anyway, the past two years, I've been able to find Ecuadorian/Salvadorian/some other kind of South American food stall selling Inca Kola. This year? NOTHING. I got momentarily excited when I came across a Peruvian stall. But they sold nothing but orange juice. ORANGE JUICE!!! *sigh* I was more than a little upset by the lack of Inca Kola. Although the blow was lessened by the existence of a Peruvian chicken shop 10 minutes up the road in Belconnen that sells Inca Kola, it's been the highlight of the Multicultural Festival the past two years. I settled for bottled water instead. Not nearly as much fun...

Oh, and I saw these tiny kids (they were probably between 6 and 8, I think) doing something that looked like the Haka, only Polynesian. They clearly took their performance very seriously, and whenever one of them would do something wrong, he'd freak out and make extra fierce faces to cover up his mistake.

And apparently my camera thought I wanted photos of the people in front of me's heads... Awesome. Shortly after this, I came across a bagpiper in full Scottish regalia playing Scotland the Brave outside the ATO. It struck me as remarkably entertaining for some reason. But then he moved onto playing Waltzing Matilda, which should DEFINITELY not be played on the bagpipes, and I had to run away.

Anyway, after wandering around for 45 minutes fruitlessly searching for soft drink dyed with highlighters and watching tiny children dance like warriors, I gave up and decided it was time to hit the food stalls. I started out with a vegetarian quesadilla from a Mexican stall.

It seemed to have some kind of spinach and potato concoction in it, along with the obligatory quesadilla cheese and red salsa. It was pretty damned good, although I managed to cover myself in salsa by neglecting to pick up napkins...

Then I met up with Leah, and we wandered off in search of more food. She tried some Ethiopian samosas (the vegetarian ones contained lentils instead of potato, but I'm still not sure how samosas are a traditional Ethiopian food...), and then we queued up for these:

Czech potato pancakes. And they were really good, although they could have done with a squeeze of lemon juice on the top to add a little zing. They reminded me quite a lot of latkes, only bigger and crispier. Which reminds me - there was an Israeli food stand there, but it appeared to sell Turkish/Lebanese food. It was all hummus and felafels and tabbouleh. Very perplexing...

Anyway, then we had a wander around some of the stalls and came across this display of folk dancing. I have no idea where it was from, but they appeared to be having a good time!

Lots of jumping and twirling in circles, accompanied by some *very* special socks...

Eventually, we decided it was time to give up on savoury food and move onto dessert. And there was only one thing that we both wanted: churros.

I love churros. These were crispier than most that I've had, but DAMN, they were good. And filling. I'd been planning on indulging in a Polish doughnut (I'm still disappointed that they ran out last year) and some cannoli from the Sicilian stall as well, but by the time I finished the churros (and yes, I drank the leftover chocolate. Stop judging me...), I thought it best to stop before someone (me) had a heart attack.

So this year's Multicultural Festival wasn't *quite* the eating marathon that I thought it would be. Despite that, I still think I consumed an entire month's worth of calories in one sitting!! And it was worth every single one of them. Although I'm somewhat regretting not getting some curry or some noodles. But that definitely would have been overkill!

K xx