More travels

I'm off to Portland, Oregon this morning for more work on the glaucoma grant with my colleagues up there (not to mention good food and my favorite hotel!). Then I have one day back in sunny San Antonio before Jo and I head to Australia!! We can't wait :)

See you all soon.

Another youtube classic

I realised I hadn't posted one of my favorites in the set of youtube clips. This guy's work is great. I love his drawing style and the music syncing is pretty slick too.

Mardi Gras!

A few weeks ago Josie and I went to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras with some friends of ours, and had all our preconceptions blown right out of the water. I don't know what I was expecting but it involved some degree of lechery and debauchery, and instead we experienced the most wonderful, family friendly city wide celebration of a carnival season, it was brilliant! Just to get it out there now, Mardi Gras in New Orleans is NOT a gay pride event! Keep on reading...

I'm not going to go on and on with too much description because the pictures mostly show it all. However, I don't have as many pics as I'd like because our little digicam died (most of the following pics were taken by me but I've borrowed some from our friends). Some good friends of ours here in San Antonio are Louisiana natives and they convinced us that Mardi Gras was a 'must do' thing before we leave here. We were planning to drive in convoy, but came up with a much better plan where we drove with one of them from San Antonio to New Orleans, while the others flew, and reversed it for the return. It was about an 8-9 hour drive, very smooth and almost no traffic (in a subaru which helped too!) Driving across Texas and then into Louisiana was wonderful, watching the landscape change and the variety of trees increase exponentially! We drove through the flat interior of our part of Texas, through coastal estuaries and over swamps! Josie drove us across the state line, with much enthusiasm (maybe just to be out of Texas?) We stopped at Fezzo's, a cajun seafood house on the way (poor Jo) where I had an inspired crab meat augratin AND we went to "The Best Stop" which makes fresh pork cracklins (fried pork skins covered in a spicy powder and no where near as fatty as you expect!) They sell about 2500 pounds of cracklin a day!!


Anyway, the point of this was not to spend too long going on and on! We survived the drive and the cholesterol. We were staying with family of our friends in the Garden District of New Orleans, one of the more expensive areas and one of the least damaged by Kartrina. Actually, the entire city was looking so much better than my last visit!

The garden district is gorgeous, lots of big old trees, big old houses, dress shops, coffee houses, and of course the main parade route.

You can see the beads that passers by from the parades have left on the fence of this place, that use to be a 'home for ruined girls'. It was a gorgeous house and the magnolia trees! So pretty!

Anyway, back to Mardi Gras! Wikipedia has a great explanation of what it is, worth reading. Basically Mardi Gras is literally 'Fat Tuesday" in French and describes the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of lent. In New Orleans there is a 2 week long city wide carnival that finished on Fat Tuesday, but Mardi Gras is kind of used to describe the whole thing. During carnival there are a bunch of parades, each one put together by different Krewes. The Krewes are the group who make and man the floats. There are a few different parade routes through different parts of the city, including the French Quarter, but the main one is up in the garden district where we were, lucky for us! The floats are really elaborate, themed, and usually quite old (many of the Krewes have been doing this for decades, even longer!) They're pulled by tractors and the float riders toss "throws" to the shouting, waving masses who line the parade route (that was us!).


The 'throws' are mostly coloured plastic beads but the better throws include stuffed toys, beads that have the name or symbol of the particular krewe on them and dubloons (metal coins with the krewe logo, the year etc on them). Each krewe usually have a few 'special throws' that are pretty sought after, like light up necklaces, tshirts and hand painted glass beads. I was lucky enough to score two out of three, catching both a t-shirt (huge mind you) AND a gorgeous set of glass beads. For the good throws like that someone on the float usually gets your attention and lines you up. It was a lot of fun cheering the different krewes on, yelling "throw me something mister" which is one of the catch cries, along with "DUBLOONS DUBLOONS" I spent most of my energy collecting the dubloons, whereas Jo seemed to catch he attention of the throwers and caught a ridiculous number of beads!

The parades that we manages to catch in the few days that we were there (including Fat Tuesday itself) were the Krewes of Thoth (Egyptian themed floats), Mid City (all their floats were done in coloured foil), Bacchus (one of the rowdier night parades), Babylon, and of course Rex, the king of Mardi Gras who parades on Fat Tuesday. I felt sorry for the Krewe of Rex though because they kept breaking down and got stuck waiting around for over an hour! The day parades were very family friendly, and where we were the night parades weren't too bad either. A little more rowdy and in one all the floats were themed on cocktails, but still not what I was expecting!

Rex, the king of Mardi Gras!

The riders have their own special dubloons that they might give you if you're brave enough to approach them!

There were lots of marching bands from all the schools, colleges and universities in between the floats. Poor kids walked a long way, some of them holding huge instruments, in what was about 30 degree heat for most of the parades! The parent helpers had them sucking icecubes which was a neat idea, not so good for the brassbands tho...


Some of the night parade floats were my favorites because of the way they were lit, some with all sorts of fiber optics and LEDs withing the float structures. However, they were also really hard to photograph!

The other cool thing was that most of the people on the streets watching the parades dressed up as well! Some of them even form small "walking krewes" and walk the parade route all dressed up.

Anyhow, epic New Orleans post is finally live!

Happy Birthday Mum

Just a quick little extra to say Happy Birthday to my Ma, even if it isn't quite the 18th here yet.

And while I'm at it, here's a final shot of our Christmas tree (now back in its box) so that Kate can't tell me off for not posting it!

Click it for the big version. Nothing traditional about this baby but it is very Jo and Jac...whatever that means!

...and onto 2008

Crikey that came around quickly. I still don't have my head around the fact that it's already '08. I know it's been a long time between blogs but I'll do my best to catch y'all up quickly.

The San Antonio Riverwalk at Christmas. Not quite dark enough for the lights but you get the idea.

Christmas/New Years was great - well celebrated with plenty of friends and food, and thanks to Kate being with us, even a little family :) However, we were still both terribly homesick: Jo for the cold blue waters of Boat Harbour and me for a spot of fishing on the near rock.

We spent Christmas eve/day at John and Jo's where we cooked lunch for 16 adults and 2 kids, including roast pork (with crackling) and roast turkey, all the trimmings (potato bake, vegies, green beans and crispy garlic etc) as well as a baked ham provided by Andrea! It was a pretty busy day but lots of fun. We ended up with an eclectic group of friends from all over the world, and only two Americans!

Me using the nifty little gadget that Kate and Josie bought me! It's a silicon thread with a needle attached for stitching up meat for cooking and it is a total dream!
The finished product! I haven't got a photo of the pork because the hounds descended so quickly and I had to fight to protect the crackling, but it looked good. I might post the pork recipe soon because you cook it over apples/pears and red onion and it is simply delish!

New Years Eve was the exact opposite, totally laid back and not a moment of stress. Eric and Andrea hosted the event on what turned out to be one of our few freezing nights, so we rugged up and sat outside by the fire sipping wine and eating Andrea's divine homemade paté. We had a bbq for dinner, including Aussie lamb chops that were melt in your mouth gorgeous! Anyhow, after dinner we got stuck into playing board games, in particular "Battle of the Sexes", a game that was brought out by some Australian radio show I think, so it would have seemed pretty odd at times to our small American crew. The game got so heated that we actually missed the countdown altogether, but since that was mostly due to the fact that we were laughing hysterically and taunting each other it seemed to be a pretty good start to the year.

More exploits soon!

Santalales

I couldn't believe my eyes the other morning walking past one of the trees in our complex - hanging from it was mistletoe! Real mistletoe! I've never seen it before and it was like the spirit of Christmas incarnate and parasitic, sucking the life out of a little pecan tree (well maybe not quite that dramatic!) However, it is a gorgeous specimen, perfectly round, about the size of a basketball, and fruiting! I doubt there's anyone else on this earth quite as excited about this as me but that's ok!


In other news I did a test run on the roast pork that we're coking for Christmas tonight...The crackle was perfectly crispy and the meat was good, basted overnight in garlic and thyme. I cooked it on a bed of red onion and pear...tasty! But enough food talk because I'm full! Happy Christmas lead up and such!

Wandering Kates

Random update: Kate missed her flight into San Antonio so the poor thing in stuck in stinky Houston for another few hours. Like mother like daughter I guess!

Does give us another hour or so to attempt to tidy the Christmas explosion that is our apartment at the moment!

Christmas milk

Oops...also forgot to mention that I've already made my first batch of Christmas milk! For those of you who haven't had the experience, Christmas milk is my families secret recipe - a whiskey based starter to Christmas morning that keeps us going all day (mostly because we don't stop drinking it...) I can't post the recipe because it is top secret ;) but I can say that it's a combination of whiskey, coffee, condensed milk and vanilla and it is truly wonderful! Sadly, it doesn't last very long, it's far too drinkable! So I'll most likely need to make another batch before next Tuesday ;)

Nearly finished wrapping presents, yay! Must be time for one of those aforementioned beverages :D

Cheers!

Christmas is coming!

I'm sitting here surrounded by presents in various states of unwrappedness, cards, candles (and at the moment, washing). Christmas is coming!! We've been flat out partying hard with various work functions. I womaned the BBQ for the lab party today, even though it was about 4 degrees outside! Winter hit us all of a sudden (and I'm sure it'll be gone just as fast). One day hits 28 and the next drops to 4! There was even ice on the car when we headed home tonight. Ok, so it was barely an ice membrane but still! Brrrr. However, while it is cold it is also stunningly sunny so in that respect it feels a little like Tassie.


Anyhow, I am writing this nonfocussed rant for the simple purpose of posting pics of our typically unorthodox Christmas tree, complete with dragons, chilies and a Croatian bread heart. This year we also have a real Christmas wreath which smells divine! We couldn't bear to put it on the outside of the door (ok, so the door turned out to be so thick that we physically couldn't fit the hook over it...) but it makes the house smell all foresty and sweet when you first walk in so our miscalculation turned into a bonus :D


We've had quite a few Christmas parties lately, mostly work related but we did have a couple of the girls over for an early vegetarian Christmas dinner because our vego friend was heading home for the holidays. Pretty tough to cook something suitable and tasty when one guest is vego and another doesn't eat mushrooms! But we came up with a pretty tasty layered vegi bake that was a cross between moussaka and lasagna, with plenty of eggplant, zucchini, fennel and heaps of other yummies. We've also had a few interesting "present exchanges" lately that have been a bit of an eye opener for us Aussies! The first was at an all girls party where we all brought gifts for the exchange then spent quite a lot of time working out the best way to randomly distribute them...from complex algorithms to a 'pin the tail on the donkey' style blindfolded snatch and grab (and probably crash and fall). Eventually we settled on drawing a number out of a hat (to determine your turn order) then setting up the presents in a circle and playing 'spin the bottle' to pick one! As untoppable as I thought that one was, the exchange at the lab BBQ yesterday was something else entirely! No idea what they call it but it seems to be some kind of American tradition for these exchanges, where you either select a present from under the tree (if you touch it you have to take it), then open it in front of the entire group. Then the next person who goes has the choice of either picking one from the tree or stealing yours! Chaos! We managed to score a beautiful (real) tree...about a meter tall, only to have it stolen and replace by a jar of blue cheese in oil >_< Luckily the person who stole it from us lost it again to the 10 year old with no tree at his house. Fun times :)

More updates soon. Our friend Kate arrives tomorrow! We're looking forward to having a house guess to share the 'holiday season' with.

The Salt Lick...best BBQ ever!

Lucky for us we've made friends with a couple here who are originally from Louisiana and who know where to find good food here in San Antonio. They already introduced us to two course peking duck lunch (duck with the fluffy rolls, spring onion and sweet soy AND the bones made into duck and cabbage/watercress soup - for under $20 total, not per head!) as well as Mama Lee's Soul Food (excellent gumbo, fried okra, fried chicken...apparently souls like fried stuff!). Well this time they took us on an out of town roadtrip to a place called Driftwood, TX...which is actually quite a long way for wood to drift. It was only about a 40 minute drive through very pretty ranch country, once we got off the mega highway that is, although I missed a lot of the view in my quest not to get carsick.

So our final destination was a place called The Salt Lick, which turned out to be a ranch sized BBQ place. It was a drizzly cold early winter day, probably 10 degrees but misty and wet with a nasty pervasive wind the got under every layer of clothing, so walking in the door of the Salt Lick was like walking into heaven! The BBQ pit was inside this HUGE shed, like a shearing shed, but filled with tables and noise and heat and people. The BBQ smelt incredible and I was basically drooling before we even sat down! While we were waiting for our table we got to watch them at the BBQ chopping up the ribs and smoking the sausages...mmm


Once seated at a rough wooden table in the veranda section of the shed (covered in but we got to watch the rain) we quickly ran through the menu, but opted for 'family style' which turned out to be all you can eat bits of just about everything! Our waiter turned up with plates of brisket, sausage and the best BEST sticky pork ribs I have EVER tasted in my entire life...they were fall of the bone soft and tough and crunch all at once, with this amazing dark sticky sauce - they put any other rib I've had here to absolute shame. We also had potato salad (not a creamy one...hard to describe but gooood), beans, pickles, coleslaw that wasn't creamy but had a lemony sesame dressing and fluffy white bread. It also came with their signature BBQ sauce and a habenero (spicy) version that cut through the smokyness of the brisket and sausages just so perfectly. The Salt Lick was BYO in the true sense, so we had our esky at one end of the table and thems who like beer drank beer and we cracked open an old vine Californian zin that seemed to be made for the day (Gnarly Head) - sweet and spicy with a good solid kick.

And once again nothing but a food post! But with food this good, how can I not!

Cake or Death

Extra special congratulations to Alastair on his last day on the job. Bugger about not being there for the farewell because I bet that speech goes down a treat, but I'll be thinking of you and I am eagerly awaiting the book! Or books!

And just in case the last day is less than perfect, one more youtube clip to cheer you :) Cake or Death! (er, cake please)

"You'll need a tray"

Just a quick update from the Alamo city. Jo is finally starting to feel better but sadly we seem to have tagged teamed the mini-flu and I am now feeling like crud. Soda water is at the top of my food priority list so I must be sick!

We're up to our ears in turkey and chicken stock post Thanksgiving yummyness, and the other night we cooked a boned leg of Australian lamb (!!) on the rotisserie. It was gorgeous! I rubbed it in garlic, olive oil, pepper and preserved lemon and stuffed it with rosemary, leek and garlic...mmmm Sadly no pics because the hungry Australian masses snapped it up almost as soon as it hit the plate. We had cooked the same cut in the oven a month or so ago but this method was much juicier. Only problem with the rotisserie is it took me nearly an hour to get the pre-seared and marinated hunk of meat onto the spit, strung up and all evenly distributed. Oh well, totally worth it.

Today's youtube moment is not suitible or safe for work, and if you're offended by swearing don't watch it. But it is funny - an Eddie Izzard skit about the death star canteen animated lego style.

Thanksgiving...a wonderful holiday

Well, it's a few days post Thanksgiving and we're finally recovering (ie fully digested). What a truly wonderful holiday Thanksgiving is. No one really knows what they're supposed to be giving thanks for, so it becomes a simple celebration of friends and food. No gifts, no major decorations, songs etc. Just a wonderful feast shared with whoever you can get your hands on.

The day started with me sticking my herb-buttered hand inside the body cavity of a dead bird and got better from there.



The plan was to eat at around 3.30, so we didn't have to get up crazily early to get things going. We ended up with 10 adults and 2 kids, so a great size to cook for really. I was in charge of the turkey (a 19 pound organic beauty), two chickens of the same ilk (cooked on the BBQ rotisserie), the potato bake, vegetarian stuffing and gravy. We also had roast vegies, green bean casserole (a weird American tradition made with tinned mushroom soup and crispy onions), mashed red potatoes, oyster stuffing, baked ham and a tofurky for the vego. Ooh, and we had aussie style prawns on the barbie as an appetizer! And lets not forget the desserts...There was apple pie (classic), lemon meringue pie (yummy!!) and pumpkin pie (eek) with cool whip...a synthetic cream substitute that Americans can't seem to get enough of!



Even the temperature was perfect - The day before thanksgiving it had been about 30 degrees, until a cold front swept through in the afternoon and dropped it to single digits, where it has stayed ever since! All in all it was a brilliant day. I'm finally beginning to realise that there's something amazing about preparing food and sharing it with people you care about. I got asked what I wanted for Christmas the other day and the only think I could think of that I really wanted was ingredients to cook that person dinner! We really should instigate thanksgiving in Australia and you know what...November 24th is an excellent date for it ;)

Tally

We're still up and watching the votes as they slowly trickle through... Fingers crossed.

I'll try to post an update on Thanksgiving tomorrow. We had a lovely day, and it felt like winter all of a sudden! (snow in some parts of Texas) Stay tuned.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm off to spend a day and a half cooking (and eating) - we're having a big American thanksgiving with our friends (although only 3 are Americans). I have packed the camera so here's hoping I remember to use it!

Jo is feelin better. I took her to the doctor yesterday and she has a chest infection, but the drugs seem to be helping and speedily too.

And just to keep you occupied while I'm away, here's a true YouTube classic which you have probably all see but it's always worth seeing again! OK Go!

Pretty quiet day here after rather a large night last night. We helped Jo and John organise and celebrate their housewarming, including an Aussie style bbq for 60 people (beetroot slices and all!) We're now trying to get our heads around going back to work tomorrow - but at least it is a short week, with Thanksgiving on Thursday and Friday off as well (so I might actually have something to write about!)

Stay tuned.

And for today's YouTube clip, something clever and not animated in any way. Stick with it because it takes a while to warm up. It's Daft Punk sung by a hand (well, two hands). Trust me...I'm a doctor ;)



And yes, I admit that I've been getting into music made by robots lately...sometimes the geekiness scares even me.

Vote!

We exercised our democratic rights today with a postal vote and oh boy did it ever feel good! It was actually fairly easy to organise - fax the embassy in Washington the postal request form (AEC website), they mail us the ballots and we mail them back. Fingers crossed *sings: it's time for a change..."

And for today's YouTube clip... This one was first shown to me by Wills and Imogen and has since become a cult phenomonon in many online communities. "The Mysterious Ticking Noise"

Wild and Windy

A cool change came through last night which meant we had wild, lashing winds (and little sleep for me) all night! The poor plants on our deck are looking a little ravaged. It's down to 24 (with a low of 4!) today so here's hoping that doesn't last!

Today's YouTube clip blows me away every time I see it. More stop motion of a very different kind, this one animates the construction of the Lego Millennium Falcon. My friend Matt (Lego freak + star wars freak) recently bought this one and it is HUGE. 5000+ pieces, just less than a meter long, with an instruction manual that looks more like a thesis!

Chili

Yesterday was John's birthday (my boss that is) so I have made an enormous pot of my chili and tonight, at his request, we're going over to eat chili outside by the fire. This is at the new house so if I'm on the ball I might even remember to take some snaps. I should also post some new pics of our apartment, since we just got a new bookcase (yay for ikea) and moved things around a little.

Jo is recovering but still has a nasty cough. It seems some of our other colleagues silly enough to subject themselves to being stabbed and pumped full of dead viral material in the hope of protecting themselves against two or three flu strains have also come down sick! My case grows stronger...

This weekend and next week are looking busy, with a party on Saturday night (and 60 people to BBQ for, Aussie style - beetroot and all) then Thanksgiving on Thursday! So stay tuned for more food blogging (I know you wait with baited breath, right??)

Oh, and I've been watching a lot of random YouTube stuff lately so I'm going to be progressively linking some of the most incredible, hilarious, clever or just odd things I've found. Things that other people really should see! So for the first, here's a (soundless) stop motion wall animation...This one is powerful, strangely chilling (and safe for work)

Quid and Harmony - Great read and a worthy cause

I just finished reading a book that was written by a friend of mine, and I really enjoyed it. This book was already very close to my heart, after reading some of the in progress drafts and watching the creative process unfurl, but I really enjoyed the final version. The book is called "Quid and Harmony", written by Alan Smith, and it's in that tricky to write but wonderful to read young adult fantasy genre. It has elements of the familiar, yet the story is unique and complex enough to really suck you in deep and sweep you away.

However, I'm blogging this because not only is the book a wonderful read but it is also a very worthy cause. Proceeds from the book sales (and online donations) go to the Hamlin Fistula Hospitals in Ethiopia.

To find out more about the book, the project or to get sucked in by reading the first few chapters go to www.smithysbook.com or read the related blog http://smithysbook.blogspot.com/

Alan, I really like the changes you made, the ending still made me cry and I couldn't put the bloody thing down until I finished it! More... please more! And congratulations ^_^