Out and About

This weekend was pretty overcast. We were still out and about and thought we would show you what we got up to.

After work on Friday we went to Darling Harbour for drinks. This giant duck has been floating here for a few weeks now, and is five storeys high and five storeys wide. The artist who created it claims to “astonish audiences and give them a new perspective on public spaces”. Mission accomplished.

This particular duck has been popping up in various cities around the world since 2007.

 On Saturday we went on a wander around downtown. We walked by this alley way where an artist has created a tranquil memorial for bird species that once sang in central Sydney. While you stand there you hear recordings of these birds and it is pretty serene considering we were only a few meters from the main street.

Today we decided to head over to the basketball court. It’s been a while since we have played and I think we surprised ourselves with our mad skills… a picture is worth a thousand words.

 

Don’t be jealous.

Taronga Zoo

A few weeks back we went to Taronga Zoo. It’s safe to say that neither of us had seen so many lively and beautiful animals. We must have passed through after meal time because they were running around like wild animals.

 We went to this zoo by ferry and it kind of felt as though we were going to Jurassic Park. It was a beautiful zoo and gave a great view of downtown Sydney from many locations along the way.

This little guy was easily the cutest animal of the day…that was until he drank the pee of another relative straight from the tap! Then this same relative ate its own excrement (see below).

Did you know Koala’s can jump from tree to tree? I did not, and when this happened was pretty amused. If they didn't move you would swear they were just stuffed animals.

Jeff and me at the beach...

 

Calzone

Pizza is pretty much at the top of my list of things I could happily eat every day until I died. We usually have a selection of ingredients in the refrigerator for toppings but do not have an easy pizza dough recipe to fall back on. This dough recipe is literally the easiest recipe you could ever make and it pays huge dividends. It is fast and only has a few ingredients. We have a tiny oven and I made Calzones so that I could fit more in at a time. The ingredients shown will make one large calzone or one standard pizza.

Dough Ingredients:

-          1 ½ cup Self Raising Flour

-           ¾ cup Greek Yogurt

Optional:

-          2 tbsp Olive Oil

-          2 tbsp tepid Water

-          2 tbsp White Wine

-          Chopped Fresh Herbs

Directions:

Dump the Flour on a clean counter. Dump the Yogurt on the Flour. Mix around with your fingers. If it is too dry add Water, Wine, or Oil… I did some combination of all three with fresh Rosemary and Oregano. As you work the ingredients together it will start forming a sticky ball. Keep working it and it will turn into smooth stretchy dough. As you can probably tell this is a recipe that anyone can follow and it makes the perfect texture, taste, crunch and color of crust. The only hard part is deciding what to fill it with.

Filling:

The combination of filling I used is a perfect “adult” calzone that we shared as part of a Tapas night we had with our Roommates. Instead of Red Sauce I used a Basil Pesto topped with sliced Feta stuffed Green Olives, chopped Spinach, diced Spicy Salami, shredded Provolone and shredded Mozzarella. It was amazing!  

Lemony Pancakes

The best thing after a big night out is a giant breakfast to cure your hangover. Neal and Laura visiting guaranteed that we would be having a giant breakfast.

This is my favorite pancake recipe because it makes fluffy but not dry pancakes that are almost a crepe in consistency. The burst of citrus makes every mouthful worth it.

They are a little time consuming to make depending on how many you plan on cooking at a time. I wake up early so I amused myself by making one medium/large pancake at a time and warming them in the oven until everyone dragged themselves out of bed. I made a double recipe and it makes 15 – 20 that fed 6 people.

Ingredients:

-          1 ½ cup Full Cream Milk

-          4 tsp Lemon Juice (fresh squeezed)

-          2 tbsp Sugar

-          1 ½ cup Self-Raising Flour

-          ¼ tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

-          1 Egg

-          1 ½ tbsp Melted Butter

Directions:

Despite the Full Cream these pancakes end up being light. Mix the Cream, Lemon Juice and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Set the mixture to the side for 5 minutes while the Lemon Juice starts to curdle the Cream… this sounds gross but you are basically in the infant stages of making cheese. I guess these could be called Lemony Ricotta Pancakes.

Combine the Egg and Melted Butter with the Cream mixture. Add the wet ingredients to the dry Flour and Bicarb, mix and let stand for another couple of minutes. Cook in a lightly greased skillet until bubbles show through, flip and repeat.    

Sydney Fireworks...and New Years!

For New Years this year the only agenda was to see the famous Sydney Fireworks. In order to do this you need a good view of the Harbour Bridge, and this unfortunately means you need to camp out all day to reserve your spot. Armed with 24 sandwich rolls and litres of booze, we camped out under the shade of a tree for 12 hours. I cannot emphasize how worth it this waiting was. From our vantage point we were able to see 4 locations of fireworks set off at the 9:00pm and midnight showings. AMAZING!

 After waiting only 4 hours we went slightly crazy and made our blanket into a magic carpet...

Happy New Year to everyone!!

Christmas SHAN-anigans

We had a quiet Christmas this year in preparation for a visit from our close friends Neal and Laura. For those of you who don't know, Jeff and Neal were best men in each others weddings and Laura and Jess were each others bridesmaids, so there is a long history of debauchery.

Neal and Laura have also made the move to Australia and now reside in Melbourne. Between Christmas and New Years they decided to visit Sydney and we prepared for a couple of nights of SHAN-anigans…

They arrived in the early afternoon and were able to show them around our hood before enjoying the Rocks nightlife in downtown Sydney. On day two we went to Bondi Beach and had a backyard BBQ in the evening.

Jeff and I plan on seeing Neal and Laura in Melbourne again once we leave Sydney and begin our travels of Australia.

Christmas in Sydney

We have been so busy that we have fallen behind on the blog, but we have some Christmas photos and wanted to share with you so you could see how we celebrated Christmas on the other side of the world.

We woke up on Christmas morning to pouring rain which was miserable. We didn’t have any presents for each other so we opened our second Christmas bottle of Baileys and decided to bake some chocolate chip cookies and bread to warm up. After we were feeling festive, we donned our sweet Christmas headbands and amused ourselves with bubblegum and champagne. We ended up having a BBQ feast in the backyard for dinner, but sadly no turkey.

As you can see in the photos Jeff ended up with a beard full of gum.

On Boxing Day we Skyped with family and prepared for a visit from our great friends Neal & Laura.