Bunny!

Saturday night is usually our big cooking night - it's too time cosuming to be elaborate during the week, but roll around Saturday morning and I want to annoy Jamie over breakfast discussing 20 different options of what we could eat.  I grew up in a house where what's for dinner is discussed over breakfast, and I don't intend on letting the tradition die.
Bunny is a bit uncommon and we both really like it, so we decided early on that's what we'd do.  We decided on a recipe from the excellent Meat cookbook (thanks Em) - rabbit braised with grapes and reisling.  Delicious.
While be was browning off the bits of bunny, Jamie was concerned he was spattering oil on the pages of the cookbook, but that's actually an effect I love.  I don't think cookbooks sould be pristine and unused.  They should be grease spattered, dough smeared and often used.  I love flicking through cookbooks and finding a particularily oil marked page.  It always makes me smile and think back on the times I've made that meal.  I'm often tempted to casually throw bits of food at open cookbooks, just to get that loved and used look. 

The Wheaters move to Sydney!

Last night we picked up the Wheaters from the airport for their official move to Sydney!  We dumped their bags at the hotel, came for a quick show and tell session in the new kitchen, and then off to a yummy dinner at Bistro Moncur.  This morning we stalked the front of their new house in Paddington and had some breakfast at five ways.  The kids are off to the tennis in Melbourne this afternoon, back Australia Day.  They move in to the new house on Friday, and then the real fun begins!

We are really excited to have E+M in town, it's going to be so great having our A list VIPs so close and being able to hang out and do things together.  Jamie and Muz are also totally excited about hearing all our hilarious jokes with far more frequency than the have in the last two years.

And the kitchen is done!

Yesterday we picked up the final things for our kitchen, and it is now officially done!  The table and chairs look great, better than I hoped, so now we can start having people over and enjoying the lovely new space.  Next project - the bathroom...

Frank visit.

Whil Jamie was in Perth this week, Frank happened to pop into Sydney for the weekend.  We had a great time.  Spent the weekend shopping for jewellery for mum, drinking wine and eating great food.  I cringe looking at the recycling bin - that's always the indicator of a big weekend - a mountain of wine bottles.

Saturday Frank took me to my favourite French bistor (Tabou).  We shared a charcuterie plate, which was so, so good.  Frank went so far as to prounounce that we would never eat anywhere else in Sydney again.  Unfortunately out mains weren't so great - Frank had boudin noir and I had steak tatrate.  It was ok, but not as totally orgasmic as the charcuterie.  Sunday night we BBQ's a big hunk of lamb with some greens, and sat outside drinking wine until it got dark.  Fun times.

It's funny how you get used to not having family around, and then when you have a dose of it, it makes you realise what you are missing and that you can't just have it whenever you want (when your family is on the other side of the world).  I've been feeling that a bit since Christmas, and again now that Frank has left.  There isn't much I can do about it, and I guess that's life, and the choices we've all made to end up as geographically far away from eachother as possible, but it still stings a bit.  Especially with Jamie gone, and no one to distract me but The Real Housewives of New Jersey... things are looking up.

Swimming

As I mentioned earlier, Jamie and I are signed up for the Cole Classic in February.  Which isn't really a "new" thing to do as such for me - more like going back to an old thing I used to do.  I was happy to buy bathers, cap, goggles etc but a little less enthisiastic about the whole "get in the water and train" thing.  I went to the Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre one night after work a couple of weeks ago and did some laps.  I SO wasn't in to it.  I just got irritated at everyone else and myself, compeitive with everyone else, bored etc.  I just couldn't relax and enjoy myself.  I was seriously contemplating calling off the whole swim thing.  But Jamie was keen on swimming on the weekend, so I thought I'd see if I enjoyed it more at a different location.  Luckily that was the case!  We went to Boy Charlton Pool on Mrs Macquarie's chair, and it was lovely.  Outdoor, saltwater, sunshine, quiet - good combo.  And I could focus on what I was doing rather than what was going on with everyone else.  So we've been swimming for a couple of weeks now.  I'm really enjoying it, especially since I can't run right now (waiting for my orthodics to arrive).  The swim is on Feb 7, and Em and Muz are coming to be support crew, since they are moving here THIS WEEKEND!!  Fun!

Award winning... me.

Self-deprecation isn't really my thing, so I thought I'd share some news.  Last week I found out I won an award for law reporting from one of the barristers chambers here in Sydney.  Great news in itself, but even better news is that the prize is a $1500 cheque!  AND it's sale time, so that's like doubling my money for nothing.
It was for my reporting on an asbestos company and a regulator (I don't know why I'm being cryptic... maybe it gives me some mystique).  I'm particularily pleased it was for the coverage of that case, because I really enjoyed followig it and writing about it.

Nom nom dinner.

Last night we made one of the best dinners we have for a long time.  I don't know why, but for some reason, a recipe we'd never made, from an October 2008 Delicious popped into my head.  It's a Ben O'Donoghue one, and I really like his stuff.  Even more so now.

We made this pork loin with bay leaves and balsamic on the BBQ.  Ben says in Delicious: "I doubt you will find a better recipe" - I must agree with him.  I don't agree with his cooking time, but that's nothing a meat thermomoter can't fix.

You char the fatty skin on direct heat, and then cook the hunk o' pig on indirect heat until it's done.  With some homemade baked beans (also done on the BBQ if you have a BBQ big enough - which it turns out we don't - so now clearly we need a new BBQ), it is totally impressive, and we'll be cooking it again ASAP, especially when we have people over.  Muz and Em, get ready, you are going to be eating this very soon.

Revisiting Christmas

When I told people we were going to be in Canada for Christmas, a pretty much unanimous reaction was "oh, a white Christmas".  The thing is it doesn't snow all the time in Vancouver in winter.  Sure, it can, but I think it's more common not to.  Nonetheless, I was totally quietley confident we'd have a white Christmas - because that's just the way things should be at Christmas - magical surprises.  I was the first one up on Christmas day and I looked outside and this is what I saw.  Immediatley, I was all "Oh, wow, the Christmas miracle happened, it snowed - see, I told you so."  And then everyone was all "you idiot, that's just frost".  Close enough for me.  Christmas miracle granted.

But let's go back to Christmas eve for a moment.  We were at Pauline and Dave's house, and Dave happened to have a shooting game called Buck Hunter.  After dinner, it was a big hit with the boys all facing off (look at the concentration on Jamie's face!), with Dave demonstrating just how many hours he's spent playing the game by totally nailing it while everyone else struggled to hit the screen.  After a while Jamie suggested I try, and I got totally into it.  I was hogging the gun and swearing at the animals and getting totally worked up "just one more round honey, then it's your turn".  Ah ha ha.  Fun.

And just because I never got a chance to post a picture of it earlier, this is the mountain of crab that Jamie, Pauline and Dave caught on Christmas eve which we ate that night!  Plently left for crab cakes the next day, and it was so delicious.  I'm voting that it become a regular tradition in the family, with me having to neither catch the crabs nor cook them.  Actually, if someone could take all the meat out for me too, that would be great.

Final touches in the kitchen

So everything has been put away and we've bought all the bits and pieces we need. The last things were a table and chairs, which we bought last weekend, but they are both on back order, so we are still waiting for them to arrive. We bought a white table, keeping in the sort of modern new look of the kitchen, and these chairs. I was a bit worried they might look a bit like we were trying to have a feature colour, but I think they are going to be really cool. You can't really see from the pic, but the back of the chairs is a glossy red. Given everything else is so neutral in the kitchen, a bit of colour will be great.
We've got a slightly smaller table than we had last time, and four chairs. There's no point in being able to seat 6 people if you only do it once a year, and space is a total premium in our place! I'll put up a pic when everything arrives and we are all set up.

Back to work

I was totally dreading going back to work Monday. I had anxiety dreams all Sunday night - I was late for an exam, I hadn't studied the right thing, my calculator wouldn't work (lord knows I've never done an exam I need a calculator for) etc. Then on the train ride into work I just wanted to be anyone else doing anything else. I really had to force myself to walk in the front door.
Having said all that it really wasn't that bad. At all. Once I got through my 800 or so emails, I had reasonably interesting stuff to do, and that theme has carried through the last few days.
I always get like this about going back to work after a holiday. But we are trying to mix things up a bit this year. Doing different stuff we wouldn't normally do, and getting out of the comfort zone a bit. For example, yesterday in the paper, I read about a Mexican joint in Glebe that has $3 tacos on a Tuesday night, so I cut it out and brought it home. Only minutes later we were in the car zooming off to Glebe. This might not seem like a big deal, but we so rarley get in the car to go out for dinner (with good reason given where we live, but it's great to try new places in new suburbs), and Jamie isn't the biggest fan of Mexican, but he was right into it. Unfortunately the restaurant was booked out, but we had yummy Vietnamese instead. And we are booked in for cheap tacos next week.
Other different things we are doing include bushwalking, the 2km Cole Classic ocean swim in Feb, less TV, going to the opening of the Sydney Festival etc. I'm really liking doing things a bit differently - hopefully we can carry it on.

My new playroom!

So, this is our new kitchen!! We are totally stoked with how it turned out, and it was so great to just walk in and there it was! I'm still actually getting over the fact it's there, I have to keep going to look at it.
The place was a TOTAL mess when we came home with dust and bits of crap everywhere, so after a good few hours cleaning, things were in order. We ate pate and drank champagne off a picnic rug on the floor last night, admiring it for a good hour or so and discussing all the details.
Things are still finding their new homes, but these are some pics of the first meal being cooked - sausage meat ragu.
Things you need to note:
- hot spashback tiles
- shelf for cookbooks above the fridge
- drawers that are spring loaded to not close with a bang, but with a quiet whisper
It feels so big and grown up - the benches are higher and the cupoards bigger than the old kitchen, and I'm just so excited about it. I can't belive it took so long. Can't wait to show people in person!!