How quickly does a year go?

My flight back to England is on Monday 26 June at 17:00 and I arrive into LHR at 7:00 on Tuesday 27 June. Mumma and Puppa plan on meeting me at the airport, as do Giorgio and Toni I think, so it’s going to be a big old family reunion. Only one part of the family will be missing, and that’s little Poppy, who I hope still recognises me!

I’m excited, but very sad to leave Sydney too. I’m pretty sure it’s stolen a little bit of my heart. What an amazing place.

So our last week together in Sydney is chock full of fun – and for Dave and I, that mostly involves eating out at all our favourite restaurants.

Monday night was Miss Chu, where we gorged ourselves on Vietnamese rice paper rolls, steamed dumplings, steamed pork buns, and sticky rice pudding.

Last night was Velero, possibly my favourite restaurant in Sydney, where for $38 per person, you get four tapas dishes and a huge seafood paella to share. Beautiful.

And tonight? A semi-farewell dinner with a few friends. I’m not a massive fan of the farewell party – I love going to other people’s to say goodbye, but it’s not really something I want for myself. Firstly, I don’t like the attention being on me particularly, and secondly, I just don’t like saying goodbye. Maybe that’s selfish (as pointed out by Dave) but that’s just me!

We’ve decided on a vegetarian place called Yulli’s in Surry Hills, followed by a few drinks in the Cricketers Arms, a pub which, I’ve been told by a particularly obsessed-with-everything-English Australian friend is just like an English pub – there’s a big open fire and it’s full of good-looking English men (her favourite type of man, of course). A fitting way to end my time in Sydney really!

Locked out

Monday night was a rather eventful one. Dave decided he wanted ice-cream and when Dave wants ice-cream, all other considerations are swiftly forgotten (we do live about 5 minutes away from the best ice-cream in Sydney, Gelato Messina). In the rush to get there, both of us managed to forget our keys.....

The question was do we call a locksmith or do we kick the door down? 

Getting in the building is easy enough - despite them having fitted a security door recently in front of the main door, it took all of 2 minutes to slip a hand through the railings of the security door and open the handle from the other side, and then Dave's substantial weight against the main door easily opened that...

We tried the old credit card trick for a little while and then decided it was just best to kick the door down. This was the result...

Problem solved. Apart from the mess the door is now in, of course. A hammer, a few screws and some putty will sort it out though, Dave is currently fixing it as I write...

gAyFL

Rubgy/football is a confusing concept in Australia as they play both rugby league, rugby union and also Aussie rules. Rugby league and union are both called rugby, but Aussie rules is called footy, with football being called soccer. You can imagine that for an English person this is very confusing!

Anyway, Aussie rules football is a very popular game here; it is a variant of football/rugby played only in Australia. 

It's played between two teams of 18 players on a large oval pitch (usually a cricket pitch) with a rugby-shaped ball. The object of the game is to score by passing the ball between the goal posts, with the highest score being awarded for kicking it between the middle two posts. The primary ball-handling methods are kicking and handballing, and obviously running with it too. 

We have been planning for a long time to go and watch a match and luckily this weekend the Sydney Swans, our local team who play at the Sydney Cricket Ground, were playing against North Melbourne in the AFL (or gay-F-L as Dave and his friends like to call it due to, yes, the gayness of the players - good for girls watching though because they wear tiny little shorts and are all generally pretty stacked and good looking!) premiership, which is the professional level of Aussie rules.  

Matches are played in 20 minute quarters of the ball being in play. These, however, are usually much longer because more often than not, the players are having fisty-cuffs with each other. A game on average lasts for around two and a half to three hours so it's a good opportunity to get together with friends, have some beers and watch a good game.

The match was really great actually - after Dave had explained to me what was happening, it was really easy to follow, much more accessible than rugby union, which can be very confusing if you don't know all the rules in detail. 

I'd go so far as to say in fact that I'm a little sad we didn't make more of Aussie rules and go and watch a few more games. A nice way to spend an afternon....!

A day of star spotting

Masterchef is the programme of the moment in Australia and each week the contestants have to cook-off against a famous chef. This week the contestants had to re-create a macaron tower made by Adriano Zumbo, famous in Sydney not only for his macarons, but also for his wonderfully inventive cakes and pastries.

Check out the tower from Masterchef here: http://www.masterchef.com.au/macaron-tower-with-kalamata-olive-and-beetroot-and-raspberry-macarons.htm

We had been planning to take a trip to his shop in Balmain for a couple of weeks, and this week was the one in which we finally managed to do it. Unfortunately for us, so had the rest of Sydney, due to Adriano being on Masterchef! 

We ended up queuing for over an hour to get in the tiny little shop, which was full of delicious, mouth-watering treats. We did see Lote Tuqiri (this made Dave's day) though and Adriano Zumbo himself too, which made the wait a little less painful.

Dave, always with eyes bigger than his stomach, decided that he couldn't just get one cake for himself - no he had to get two, plus macarons and a quiche for lunch. 

He chose the Shabalicious - caramel crunch, caramel sponge, caramel cheesecake, caramel chew & caramel cream cheese mousse, and the appetisingly green What a Great Pear of - almond creme, pear vanilla creme patisserie, pate a choux sable, pear gel, almond crunch & almond streusel.

I opted for the Got no Grains - oatmeal creme, toasted spelt mousse, maple gel, sesame nougatine & muesli bar. We also chose six macarons. $41 poorer - yes $41 - we walked happily out of the shop and took our cakes to devour in the park. 

On the left is Got no Grains, on the right What a Great Pear of, and at the bottom, Shabalicious.

Eating the cakes was by no means an easy task and we both ended up very messy.

However, divine does not even begin to describe how delicious these cakes were! So delicious that I munched half way through mine, declared myself as feeling very sick, but carried on until the end because I couldn't bear to throw such deliciousness away. I then managed a macaron too (not as delicious - avocado and green tea flavour - a bit weird).

On a massive sugar high, and then low, we managed to somehow get ourselves home. And eat two more macarons about half an hour later. What a Great Pear of is being saved for this evening. Hollow legs?? Or just plain greedy...

A night at the theatre

Last night was our big outing to Sydney Opera House to see Waiting for Godot, and Aria, one of the best restaurants in Sydney. 

 Our pre-theatre dinner was absolutely gorgeous - and much better than Cafe Sydney despite people telling us otherwise. On arrival we were offered delicious homemade sourdough bread and an amuse bouche of pumpkin veloute with parmesan foam. 

To start I had roasted scallops with Serrano ham, glazed chestnuts and brussel sprout leaves, whilst Dave had roasted goose breast with chicken liver parfait and raspberry jelly. Both were beautifully presented and scrummy too.

For main course Dave had the roasted lamb with red capsicum, baby artichoves and a lavendar and green olive sauce. I had a seared fillet of Murray cod with a fricassee of girole mushrooms, salsify and borlotti beans. Although the deal was two courses, we both chose to have dessert for another $17 because we couldn't resist (actually, I could but Dave forced me in to it). 

First, however, came the petit fours - pistachio nougat, chocolate covered turkish delight and coconut macaroon. Yum! Dessert for Dave was a custard tart with poached pears, nutmeg and gingerbread ice-cream. I chose the poached rhubarb with honey-scented cream cheese, candied walnuts and rhubarb sorbet. Both desserts were absolutely beautifully presented and tasted pretty good too. The only problem was that they were so pretty, you didn't quite know how to start eating them!  

I wish I had taken photos so you could see what we ate but it was such a posh restaurant, I would have felt silly! 

On full tummies we headed to the Opera House for a pre-show drink. The play was absolutely brilliant - the acting was fantastic, and it really brought to life the humour that you sometimes miss whilst reading the play. I was quite surprised to see Matthew Kelly of Stars in their Eyes fame acting the character of Pozzo. I didn't realise he was in to acting but he portrayed his character extremely well.

We decided a night cap was in order so we walked to the Shangri-La hotel which has a cocktail bar on level 36 that provides gorgeous views of the city. Interestingly you can purchase a $10,000 martini here, which includes a one carat diamond at the bottom of the glass....

We weren't quite feeling flush enough for that so normal cocktails sufficed! 

A really lovely night had by both of us :-) 

State of Origin NSW v QLD Game 3

State of Origin is one of Australia's premier sporting events - a best of three series of rugby league played by the Maroons, QLD, and the Blues, NSW. During this time there is a lot of rivalry between the two states and the matches attract huge audiences.

Games 1 and 2 were won by QLD, so NSW supporters were understandably feeling a little deflated, especially seeing as QLD have won State of Origin five times previously. 

Despite NSW's losing streak, we decided it would be good fun to go to the ANZ Stadium at Olympic Park and watch the last game live rather than on TV. I bought the tickets for Dave as a present for our four year (eek) anniversary, which was in May.

First stop after work was obviously dinner - we went to a Thai restaurant called Spice I Am near Central station, which everyone raves about. It was average - I wouldn't go there again. 


We then caught the train to Olympic Park and once we arrived, settled down to a couple of drinks before the match began. 


Our tickets were in the "Blatchy's Blues" supporters box so we were surrounded by New South Welshmen which made for a very good atmosphere. As part of our ticket price, we received a curly blue wig and a t-shirt to wear. A very good look I think you would agree...

The first half wasn't great because QLD had majority possession and had scored two tries to NSW's one by half time. The second half however was fantastic, NSW had majority possession and after a couple of near-attempts, scored their first try, which caused uproar in the stadium. The atmosphere was fantastic. Unfortunately it wasn't too long until QLD answered back to this and by full time they had well and truly won.

 Despite the full time score of 18-23, we had a really enjoyable night.

International Food Day

Another post about food I'm afraid but yesterday turned out to be a day of eating! 

Currently I'm working at Toyota and each year the team I'm with do an International Food Day where everyone brings in their signature dish for lunch. 

We have lots of people of different nationalities where I live - Chinese, Indian, Macedonian (random, I know), Iranian, Italian, English...the list goes on...so we had a veritable feast of different dishes, all of which were delicious.

I decided to embrace the English part of me so I made scones - sultana ones, and maple syrup ones - and also brought in some jam and cream (just normal cream as you can't buy clotted cream here) to go with them. I used an interesting recipe I found on Nigella Lawson's website - 3 cups of flour, a cup of lemonade and a cup of cream, that's it! I think the lemonade is supposed to make them rise alot whilst also keeping them light in the middle. They turned out really well though, and they tasted good too so I think that recipe is a keeper! I forgot to take a photo of them when they were done but this is them in the oven, with another 10 minutes or so to go until they were done.

 Other things on offer were two different curries, beef goulash, Thai fish cakes, spring rolls, chicken nuggets (the Australian offering...!), a beautiful Iranian dish of saffron rice with pine nuts and chicken, Italian meatballs, various salads, and chips. All yummy! We also had cupcakes, banana bread and the most gorgeous pistachio and almond biscotti and cannoli. 

And the best part of our International Food Day? The fact that our lunch break was well over an hour long...! Although the rest of the afternoon was spent in a sleepy, food-induced stupor!