A cross-continent cooking competition

One of the things we miss the most about home is hanging out with our friends. No big surprise there! In Tennessee, almost every Friday night was spent hanging out with Chris and Michelle, either going to dinner or cooking together. We decided that it was time to try and recreate some of that fun with the magic of Skype! We planned a cookoff based on the Food Network show Chopped, but where we had to use the honor system & vivid descriptions to choose the winner.

A few days before our designated cookoff, we all picked an ingredient that had to be in our dishes. We all took pictures of our ingredient written on paper and simultaneously texted it to the group so we couldn't be influenced by other people's picks.

We ended up with a couple days to think about our dishes. Toby and I made a trip for supplies but didn't share what we had in mind for our creation. I think that we were both worried that we had the same idea, but it soon became apparent that we were on very different pages!

Then it was cookoff time! Here in Sydney, we made dinner dishes, while Sweden had to make breakky food. I felt like we had an easier mission, but their food did sound pretty delicious!

Our apartment kitchen is small and not stocked with an over abundance of cooking equipment. So we took turns prepping all our food, and then finished everything off simultaneously.

We also had to set up the Skype/food presentation area. Not quite how it looks on Chopped, but it worked!

Our Skyping session consisted of lots of food close ups and self-evaluations of the successes of our concoctions.

For the curious, the ingredients we all had to incorporate into our food were pear, blue cheese, artichoke hearts, and sausage. Toby pulled together an impressive sausage dumplings with pear and blue cheese dipping sauces. Mine was sausage sliders with blue cheese sauce and pear & nectarine chutney. Michelle crafted eggs benedict with zucchini. But Chris won the day with his sausage hash and toast with artichoke hearts!

Even though we were looking at a screen, it was a pretty good substitute for our fun Friday nights! I anticipate more weird, honor-based competitions are in our future.

And just for fun during our respective Saturdays, we also took pictures of what we wore outside on the weekend. Depressingly enough for the Sweden team (who are in the middle of "summer," the type of clothing was pretty much the same!

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Hangin out in Bondi

Last weekend, I met some of my girlfriends out at Bondi for a day of hanging out. Of course Bondi is mainly known for the beach, but there are lots of cute cafes and shops in the main part of the town. It's a pretty hip place to be on a Saturday!

Australians are pretty serious about their coffee. During the workweek, the thing to do is go out for coffee breaks at cafes at least once a day. People are very particular about the places they go, since it's all about the technique and preparation. On the weekends, like the nice one from last week, people head out to their local cafes for their coffee. The popular ones, like Harry's where we were, have lines of people waiting for coffee. I'm not much of a coffee person, but I've learned to drink it since it's such a part of the social scene!

After we had brunch, we walked down to the Bondi Saturday Markets. It might be one of the most hipster gatherings I've ever been to. =)

And of course every market needs a puppy parking lot!

 

There was also a "rescue lizard" hanging around.

Even though it's the middle of winter, there's still plenty of lovely produce from out in the country.

After we went to the market, we decided to walk down to the beach - it's just what you do at Bondi!

The day was so lovely, people were hanging out at the beach, just like it was summer! We camped out on the hill above the beach and watched the surfers with the sun on our backs.

It was a pretty good way to spend a winters day in Sydney!

 

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Happy Fourth of July/Birthday dinner/Game night

This year we combined our Fourth of July celebration with a game night and a birthday dinner for Andres. It was a giant mishmash of French, Italian, Spanish and American food.

I made an apple pie to represent our American celebration of Independence Day. But I forgot to take a picture of it before we ate it!

We also played board games into the night. It was a really lovely day!

There was another celebration this week, sending one of my workmates off to the States. Since he's leaving Sydney, he requested a send-off with a view. I think it was pretty good!

It's been nice having some social events during the Sydney winter. It forces us to get out and about when the days are short and cool.

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Ice skating at the beach

After the sadness of the past few weeks, I decided to start our first weekend back on a happy note. Well, happy for me anyway! I had read about an ice skating rink that's at Bondi Beach through the end of July, and I decided that ice skating at the beach was something that we simply had to do.

Toby felt a little bit differently about the activity. He wore this shirt as a statement of his feelings about the day:

We're pretty much in the heart of winter here, so it's chilly but not downright freezing unless the wind gets up. So we dressed in a few light layers and made the train-train-bus journey out to Bondi Beach early on Saturday. The ice skating didn't open until 10, so we grabbed some breakky first.

I took the opportunity to wear the winterery-ist hat I own!

We ate a little cafe where we could see Bondi Beach and all the early morning surfers.

Then we headed down for our skating adventure! There was a lot of doubt and dread creeping in by this point.

But all was well when we got out onto the ice! Even though it might not show in his face, T actually really did have a lot of fun skating.

Of course, neither of us are pro skaters. There were no falls but plenty of ungraceful balance adjustments. However, since we were pretty much the only people on the ice that didn't have small children clinging to us, we looked liked Olympic figure skaters compared to the rest!

And you really can't beat the view!

We didn't skate for too long - the rink was pretty small and by 10:30 there were so many small people on the ice that we really felt like we were a danger! So we made our ungraceful exit from the ice and spent a few minutes watching the skaters.

This was definitely a much needed happy activity, and a really good start to the weekend!