C is for Christmas and...

CRICKET!!! The day after Christmas in Australia is a public holiday - Boxing Day - and the highlight of Boxing Day in Melbourne is the Boxing Day Test Match. This year it was Australia vs. South Africa, #1 in the ranking vs. #2, which promised to be an exciting match (as exciting as cricket gets) since the second-ranking South African team just recently beat the first-ranking Australian team at their last meeting.

Those of you who follow cricket understand that it is a long game, and by long game I mean that a Test Match lasts up to five days, with each day of play lasting around 6 hours. We weren't up for a full day at the MCG, so we decided to head that way after the lunch break (yes, they have a lunch break, as well as morning and afternoon tea breaks!) With our GA tickets we ended up in the nose-bleed section on the 4th level, but it turned out to be a great bird's eye view of the game and helped us avoid all of the hoolligans in GA on the ground level. And we made it in time for the highlight of the day - Ricky Ponting scoring a Century. The play in which Ponting scored point 100 was great and Josh was quick enough to get it on film.

The rest of the game was a bit slow and the innebriated crowd was feeling it. The rowdy section started creating towers of empty beer cups and it caught on throughout the GA sections. The police did their best to break up the action, and there were a few folks taken out of the stadium against their will, but the plastic towers grew into snakes that spanned entire sections. We guessed those folks weren't actually there to watch the cricket! The day ended with Australia on 6 wickets (they get 10) for 280 points - we'll know sometime next week if they win.

Of course we had to hit the Boxing Day sales downtown before heading to the game. The equivalent of the day after Thanksgiving sales, the city was a madhouse and people were running everywhere trying to get the best deals. We fought the crowds and came out with some new board shorts and rash guards to take with us to Lord Howe Island. We head out early tomorrow a.m. and will be back next Saturday. As we will be out of contact until then, we hope you all have a Happy New Year!

C is for Christmas and...

CAROLS!!! On Christmas Eve we enjoyed a festive evening at the Sydney Myer Music Bowl singing along with Vision Australia's Carols by Candlelight. It was a fun family event, with many children and adults dressed up for the occassion. We brought along a picnic dinner and our concert chairs and had a lovely evening under the stars - eventually, it was after 9pm by the time the sky was dark since it's summertime! There were a few carols we didn't recognise, but for the most part we were able to sing along and enjoy the show. Of course we had bought the cheap tickets so we couldn't actually see the performers from our seats, but it gave us a good reason to try out our new (second-hand) lens. It's always a bit hard for us to get into the Christmas spirit here because of the weather, but this event sure helped! The evening ended with a few fireworks, a Christmas medley by the chiors, and a beautiful walk home.

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Merry Christmas!

In A Fish Bowl

This past week we went to the Arana Holiday Party at the Melbourne Aquarium. We spent the evening in a space called the 'Fish Bowl' eating beautiful food, sharing laughs with colleagues, and being mesmerized by the fish - massive sting rays, nurse sharks, seven-gill sharks, wrasse, tuna, red snapper. Everyone had a lovely evening, which was a great relief to Kristi as she had the privilege of doing all the planning and coordinating (and creating the centrepieces!)

C is for Christmas and....

COOKIES!!! Kristi decided that it was about time to share some good old fashioned family traditions, and what better start than with Christmas cookies. We got a set of recommendations from Carmen and away we went to pick up ingredients and get baking. A few minor challenges finding Crisco and the right marshmallows but we persevered and soon enough had everything assembled.

The menu for this season was two cookies, a toffee bar, and a homemade fudge. As usual with cookies we had to try a few to make sure that things were going alright, and our Quality Assurance process made a difference this time when we found the first batch of fudge to be just not quite right. Adjustments were made and round two turned out much improved. Even with a few early quality checks, we still ended up with lots and lots of cookies to share. Kristi took a very large plate to her colleagues and there was still enough for three normal sized plates to share with other friends. Everyone was very appreciative with some very impressed friends and colleagues. Big favorites were the fudge and Peanut-Butter Star cookies though not a single plate had leftovers at the end of the day. Kristi did a great job baking and it was a lot of fun to share some of our traditional treats from home with our Aussie friends.

C is for Christmas and....

COFFEE!! After two years in Melbourne we decided that it was time to get serious about the coffee culture and learn more about the history and making of our favorite bean-based drink. William Angliss provided the location, the beans, the machines and our knowledgeable leader Melissa. We began with Melissa showing us how to make a good latte, and then on to the learning with a discussion on the growing and harvesting of coffee beans. Our first hands-on activity was in taking 'greens' from various places around the world and roasting them ourselves. We now have another fabulous use for old air-popcorn poppers! Once we had the right roast, we got to experiment with the coarseness of the grind and its influence on the brewed coffee. It was really interesting that coffee is beginning to go down a similar sensory descriptive road to wine - lots of comments about the aroma and different tastes of the coffees. What was really amazing was that you could actually tell the difference between a 100% Papua New Guinea (PNG) coffee versus a 100% Ethiopian - both were good, but the PNG was much more suited to plunger coffee and the Ethiopian more for machine-made espresso. Finally, it was time to try our hands at the big machines. We both started on a 'domestic' machine which proved a bit difficult but given time and practice it would have produced a decent cup. Josh just has to remember that first you have to turn off the steam wand and THEN you pull it out of the milk that you are heating - glad it wasn't our kitchen to clean up afterwards! We moved on to a 'commercial' espresso machine, which sped up the entire process and was super-duper easy to get going but also more demanding of the preparation and control. The main difference between a lower-end machine (ie 'domestic') versus the high-end seems to be the way it heats and stores water/steam and that is really about it. Levers, knobs, guages and such don't seem to be that important but if you can brew your coffee at the same time that you're heating up the milk it is a really big plus and a big increase in the price tag. By the end of class we had both made a decent cup that we could drink ourselves and had learned a lot more about coffee which will help us appreciate more in years to come as well. We're thinking of going back to take the next class which is much more about working and maintaining the machines, perhaps in the new year sometime. In the meantime, we would highly recommend the Angliss 'Coffee@Home' course to anyone interested in learning how to make and identify a good coffee, whether it is at a cafe or in your own kitchen.

December Already!

It it hard to believe that it is already December - where has the time gone?! We've caught up a bit on pictures so have a look at Flickr for some HBA Great Australian Run shots and our most recent exploits of dinner out in Eaglemont with Briony and Leo. Kristi works with Briony at Arana, and we've come to know them as being very well versed in the areas of food and wine. The menu for the night was a Red Curry Duck, so we brought the Pinot (Noir) and they provided the duck-centric extremely tasty meal. We had a great time catching up with them and look forward to our next meeting at the Arana Holiday Party in less than two weeks!