Food blog??

So I started a blog about cooking... or recipes rather.

Why, might you ask?  Maybe I want to be a full time blogger, maybe I think I'm a chef extraordinaire, maybe I enjoy torturing Brian by taking pictures of our dinner outside for 10 minutes letting it get cold in order to get the perfect lighting (I don't actually know how to get the perfect light or what exactly it is) or *most likely*, maybe I'm crazy... but who's to say?

I really don't even know the answer to this myself.  But anyways, I did it.  So if your at all interested you can read it :)

King's Cookbook -- This is just a little intro

I think I'm going to get busy on this in 2012.... which is 6 hours from now.

Tonight we are going over to a friends then heading into the city for a firework display!   Can't wait to pop a little bubbly and celebrate 2012 before any of you guys haha  :)  Be safe and have a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Christmas Day the Aussie way, by the Barbecue :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! :)  We had such a lovely Christmas here in Australia!  We sure did miss our family, though!  This is definitely one of the harder parts of living so far away-- holidays apart from our family!  We did get to spend lots of time talking via Skype!

Christmas time in Australia is a bit different.  For one, its bloody hot.  It makes all the decorations seem strange... like how could a snow man or icicles possibly survive here-- and since everyone know they can't, why use them as decor?!  Also, they are not very "in-your-face-Christmas" around here...there is only minimal decoration, there are not tons of lights hung up everywhere, they did not have Christmas decor up until mid December (not the day after Halloween!) and they call Christmas presents - Chrissy Pressies :) haha I like that one!  I'm pretty sure, as far as lights go,  we actually won most spirited house on the street... which is sad... I've never seen such pathetic looking lights-- but the competition was weak/ non-existent.  I can't really blame them for not putting up lights, it started feeling a bit silly to me as well, considering it doesn't even get dark until 9pm!  I mean it is summertime here!  The Australians just do Christmas different-- and rather than try to make it feel like what I am used to in America, I'm going to go with it and celebrate the Aussie way!

I recently read a quote from Dannii Minogue (Kylie's sister) (yes, she is a celebrity here) and can really appreciate it now after my first Aussie Christmas!

"Christmas for me smells like suntan lotion and the aromas of a barbecue laden with meat and seafood. It sounds like the slap of Flip Flops on a lazy day with a painstakingly selected Christmas play list humming our favourite festive tunes in the background....

As kids we used to get fake snow and edge the windows with it, which seems very odd now. I have either grown up, or we are moving more and more away from what we see depicted in movies as 'traditional Christmas' images. We sometimes send Christmas cards depicting snowy vistas with red robins and reindeer, but my favorite cards show Santa arriving by surfboard with a sack full of gifts and a pair of sunnies perched on his zinc-creamed nose. "

Christmas time isn't about snow or cold weather at all!!!!  It's about spending time with the ones you love (if you can), giving, caring, and sharing, and obviously, Jesus is the reason for the season :) 

So we started out our festivities on Christmas eve with a dinner of Christmas ham, roasted potatoes, sauteed mushrooms and garlic bread!  It was DELICIOUS!  Brian and I (mainly Brian) glazed the ham and it looked beautiful and tasted amazing-- I wanted to soak everything in the brown sugar glaze sauce so every thing tasted like candy!  We opened a bottle of champagne, sat outside on our back patio listening to Michael Buble's Christmas CD and had a really nice evening!   For some reason they haven't had very many Christmas movies on... which was a little sad to me, because I love christmas movies-- there are sooo many good ones!  So the past couple of nights we had to watch really random movies like "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (not christmassy at all, but I love Steve Martin!) and "The Lakehouse"...

The next morning we woke up for our first Christmas down under!  The very first thing I did was run to the kitchen and start making the dough for my homemade "Christmas Scones", not to be confused with normal ole everyday biscuits.  I don't like biscuits, I love Christmas Scones.  So no matter how many times Brian tries to tell me that these are the exact same thing and that I must like biscuits, I won't believe him.  You shouldn't either.  They are very different....  

We had them with our homemade kumquat marmalade, from the tree in our backyard!  It was very yummy!  

Then we opened our Chrissy pressies!  

For the future "KING BEER" franchise

Brody loved his pressies too!

 Then we went outside for Brody's BIG gift....
 the ham bone from the night before... it was massive, he couldn't even pick it up!  He stayed outside with his new favorite treat the whole time we talked to the King family and the Peltier family on skype!  We really enjoyed getting to talk to our family-- I can't imagine Christmas morning without it!  We wish we could have been with everyone but we will just be thankful for the amazing technology which allows us to talk from the other side of the world :)

Brodys 1st tram ride!!!

Next we packed up for our BBQ on the beach!  We were meeting friends out there for Christmas day!  It wasn't the best weather and kept trying to rain and finally it did!  But we still made the best of it and BBQed with all the other beach goers in the rain!  We even threw around a football with a bunch of people while it was raining!  They all thought Brian was really good (he is of course, but most of them had never thrown a football before!)  We ate some shrimp (prawn) on the barbie, lamb, sausages, potato salad, veggies etc :)  Then when it was about to start a heavy downpour we left for our friend Sam's (the frenchman from our tassie trip) apartment!  He lives right next to the beach we were at so it was perfect!

Once we got over to Sam's we did a gift exchange where everyone brings a random inexpensive gift and we each draw for one!  I received a nice bottle of wine and a drinking game set and Brian got a compilation of songs made over 10 years and from music from all over the world from Sam who has traveled EVERYWHERE and made this song playlist of all his favorite tunes.  So for the rest of the evening we played games and sang "We wish you a merry Christmas" to everyone who walked by the apt.  (One guy even came in and gave us a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black- so the singing was well worth it!)  and listened to lots and lots of worldly music!  So basically, we had a great time!  It was the most unusual Christmas day I have ever had but I loved every minute of it!  Hopefully next year our family can come have an Aussie Christmas with us!

gift exchange :)

We got home quite late so still had the chance to talk to my family for their Christmas morning!  (Although, we were really really tired and cut it short)

As I was preparing to write this Christmas blog post I found this little number 

Australian Jingle Bells---

Dashing through the bush

in a rusty Holden ute  (Holden=car brand, Ute= utility vehicle or car-truck)

Kicking up the dust, 

Esky in my boot,                 (Esky= cooler, boot= trunk of your car)

Kelpie by my side                (Kelpie = a kind of Australian dog)

singing Christmas songs,

It's summertime and I am in

my singlet, shorts and thongs  (singlet= tank top, thongs= flip flops)

Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way

Christmas in Australia

on a scorching summers day, Hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut,

Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden ute

Engine's getting hot, 

we dodge the kangaroos

the swaggie climbs aboard              (swaggie= hitch hiker, hobo)

he is welcome too!

All the family's there,

sitting by the pool,

Christmas day the Aussie way

by the barbecue!

Oh! Jingle bells!  Jingle bells, jingle all the way,

Christmas in Australia

on a scorching summers day, Hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut,

Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden ute

YAY!  I hope you liked it!  And the only thing I had to look up myself was swaggie  :)  All the others are terms Ive heard used a lot around here!

Ok, so its "Boxing day" day today... a public/bank holiday which is the day after Christmas.  It is similar to Black Friday after Thanksgiving because it seems the only point to it is to go shopping and all the stores have massive sales!  When I looked it up on wikipedia it say that the reason for the term "boxing" is unclear but there are many theories... ours is:  everyone "boxes" each other at the stores to get the goods!!  Then we decided maybe we should rename Black friday to "Black-eye Friday!"  haha That was really Brians funny joke but I wanted to act like I came up with it!

Also, today is the big Cricket test match- Australia vs India.... what a weird sport where they take up to a week for one game, take breaks for tea and lunch and wear sweater vests for goodness sakes!  :)  Probably not going to be getting into that one!  But it is nice having it on in the background, it sounds really soothing and almost puts me to sleep!  Probably because nothing really goes on and the announcers struggle to come up with things to say so start talking about what each players favorite Christmas meal is (seriously that just happened!)  

Anyways, enough blabbering!  I sincerely hope you had a very Merry Christmas and have a happy new year!!

LOVE YA! :)

TASSIE!!!!!!!!!

Hey folks :)  We just got back from a wonderful trip to Tasmania!!!  If you were wondering, it is one of the states in Australia.  It is an island state and it is only 150 miles south of Melbourne.  And it is beautiful!!!!  (We took 650 pictures-- that's how amazing we thought everything was!!-- don't worry I'm not going to put them all up here!

We left Thursday morning SUPER early (we had to wake up at 4AM, yuck)  Flying domestic in Australia is so funny-- I literally did not show any sort of ID once while at the airport... whatevs it made it very quick!  So we arrived in Hobart, TAS around 8am, got our (very crucial this trip) rental car and set off for some brekkie!  We settled on a restaurant on the harbor with a beautiful view of the city and lots and lots of boats!  Hobart is really not a very big city, even though its the capitol and the largest in Tassie, only 200,000 people.  But its on the side of a mountain and a harbor and is full of all the same buildings from when it was fist settled in the 1800's so its pretty much adorable :)

After a very important cuppa coffee we headed back to the airport to pick up our French travel partner, Sam, or Sammy as he is now called after this Tassie trip!  He is one of Brians co workers and joined us on our holiday!

We first left for the #1 Tasmanian tourist destination- Port Arthur.  It is only about an hour from Hobart on the Tasman Peninsula.  Not sure if you were aware but after the British discovered Australia, they used it primarily as a gigantic prison.  So in the early 1800's if someone in England or Ireland got caught pick-pocketing, or owed an outstanding debt, or any other criminal activity the would be transported to Australia- then if they were bad once they got here they would be transported to Port Arthur.  Apparently is was a very strict and harsh punishment to be sent here but it was one the most beautiful places I have ever seen!  The convicts built all the buildings but later on, after the prison was no longer in use, they had a bush fire that burned all the timber in the buildings and then later there was an earthquake that crumbled a few.... soooo what they were left with were ruins of the penal society.  I took lots of pictures  :)

In front of the Isle of the Dead

It was actually hard to narrow it down to those!  The whole place kind of reminded me of a castle :)  Since its not-- its a huge convict site- it has a touch of creepiness to it that was pretty cool, they even say that its haunted!!! 

After a quick lunch we left for our next stop along the Tasman Peninsula, only a few minutes away, up a long narrow dirt road to an incredible beach!  I wasn't even expecting the bright blue water-- it was so tropical looking!  Did I mention that what Brian and I generally do on these sorts of trips is just stop at any place that has a brown historic sign or any view point turn off.... usually it turns out to be something fantastic, like this beach!  After spending some time basking in the sun we decided it was time to move on.  Before leaving for this trip, Brian brought home about 4 books on Tasmania, one being, 100 walks in Tasmania, so we had a few hikes picked out for the rest of the afternoon!  (You will probably be able to tell that Brian planned most of this trip, its very nature/outdoorsy here in Tassie-- 40% of the whole state is part of some national park!- Seriously!)  The views were breathtaking.... Especially this one...

It looks pretty magical, huh!  It was acting like it was going to rain the whole time so I started cracking my whip to get us there to capture the views and back before we were stranded out in the Tasmanian wilderness in the rain..... Here are a few more from our day1 hike. 

Devils Kitchen (no sink here, just a massive straight down cliff)

Waterfall

We saw heaps of wildlife :)

After making it safely back to the car, and without getting rained on, we made our way back to Hobart for dinner!  While at dinner we made the executive decision to head up to Maria Island (pronounced Ma-rye-ah) in the morning.  We needed to leave early to make the 9:30 am ferry to get over to the island.  Soooo, yet again we had a super early morning.  Plus we needed to stop at a grocery store to pack a lunch since the island has NO food, drinks, anything.  In the morning we left for the ferry, it departs from a very small town (which in our Lonely Planet Tasmania book says the only thing that is there is the ferry and a giant pile of wood chips that Brian wanted to check out- NO that did not happen, don't worry!-- although he did sneak in a picture of it from the ferry... he's a strange one...)

Arriving at Maria Island

For our day trip we rented bicycles.. I was pretty scared...I haven't ridden a bike since I was probably 13 years old-- that was a LONG time ago.  But as it turns out it was "just like riding a bike!" and I was able to actually go forward... other than that, I was horrible, if I tried to look off to the side at the scenery, my whole bike would turn that way and I would wobble all over the place!  We first went for a ride UP UP UP to the top of a cliff (not easy on a bicycle)-- it was amazing (a little scary but so beautiful I was hardly afraid I would plummet to my death haha)

Then we left for a 2 hour bike ride to another area of the island... It was really nice (although by the end of it, all three of us decided it was a bit too long!)  We saw lots of wildlife, beautiful beaches and cliffs, all while cruising on our bicycles :)

had to walk our bikes up the hills when we got too tired-- this was frequent for me

boing :)

this is an echidna-- a spiney anteater-- its pretty cute!

Black swans in the ocean

clear ocean water!!!

We decided to stop for lunch of ham, peanut butter and smoked salmon sandwiches at this beautiful secluded beach.  By this time I was exhausted and so excited to take off my tennis shoes (they call them "runners" here and Brian and I decided that this makes much more sense considering most people dont play tennis in their tennis shoes) and get my feet in the cold tasmanian sea!!  After a pretty long break (and me getting nervous we were going to miss our ferry back, as they only have 2 a day, morning and afternoon, other than that you have to camp out there and I was NOT going to let that happen!) we headed to the painted cliffs!  The problem with there being 2 boys on this trip is that they are idiots and keep stopping for crazy reasons.. I heard the phrase "don't worry Ill catch up with you," from Brian about a 100 times, leaving me alone in the Tasmanian wilderness-- just me and my bicycle... but he did return with these 2 pictures so I forgave him...

And then we had finally made it to the painted cliffs-- Im not totally sure why these cliffs look like this (and wikipedia has not told me more than I already knew- that they are there)  But its really really cool...  and Im not even a rock person, I cannot imagine how geologist would love it!

Such amazing patterns in the cliffs!!!!

Don't worry-- we made it back to the ferry in time and we even had time to see the penal colony they had on the island-- you can now rent out the old prison cells to stay the night (super creepy- they say it's haunted too, no thanks)

We got back into Hobart, had another delicious dinner on the harbor and called it a night-- 2 LONG days!  I was looking forward to exploring Hobart the next day (and sleeping in!)

Well as it turns out the sunrises at 5:30am during the summer in Hobart sooo sleeping in is kind of tricky!  Since we were already up we decided to go ahead and head up to Mt. Wellington, the mountain above the city, before the clouds cover the entire view.  By the time we make it up, we are too late, we were covered in clouds and it was freezing!  Not to worry--- we took a few hazy pictures then cruised down a bit and found a little spot to pull over the car and take tons of great clear pictures of Hobart from the top of the mountain!

The pure waters of Tasmania :)  It really nice up there, but pretty chilly!  On the way down I made a phone call to the Cascade Brewery-- the oldest running brewery in Australia- and got in for a tour! Very exciting considering it included free samples! Yum!  The beers from Tasmania are the best in Australia!  Once we got there we enjoyed an hour tour of the facility and drank our beers (actually they also make juice and had a delicious apple/raspberry juice!) out in the gardens.. it was really pretty-- they were actually setting up for a wedding that evening!

We then left for a lunch at the Salamance Market-- a street market which is supposed to be the best in all of Australia.  It was the best Ive been too at least-- I got a delicious baked spud, bought some tomato/chili jam and cookie cutters!  Since the boys were not super into the wonderful shopping experience we moved along quickly to the next destination on our Hobart tour- the MONA museum- the Museum of Old and New Art.  Sam and I had both heard great things about this world renown museum stuck in little ole Hobart so we decided to give it a fair go!  I'm really not a big museum fan generally, but this place was wild.  I saw some of the strangest things there!  On of the pieces of art was a machine build by an artist that made poo (so gross) because he said that "most modern art was crap."  That wasn't even the weirdest thing we saw.  Seriously.  After we walked through the entire place (which was actually in a really cool underground building) we left to go to dinner then call it a night!

On our final morning in Tassie we woke up early, yet again, to check out the beautiful Wineglass bay, 2 1/2 hours north of Hobart in the Freycinct National Park.  As soon as we arrived in the park we stopped for a little (little as in huge) seafood brekkie of oysters, mussels and scallops!  My favorite is mussels and I had been waiting all trip to eat the delicious Tasmanian mussels!  They did not disappoint.
We then set off for our final day of hikes!  But first we spotted some very friendly wallabies!

Once we got to the top, there was a beautiful view point of Wineglass bay!  It has been voted multiple times as one of the top ten best beaches!  I could definitely see why, although, it was very hard to get to, and the water was so cold you cannot get in.  I guess its just one of the best beaches to look at!  Anyways, we enjoyed looking at it :)

After the viewpoint, Brian decided that was not good enough and we hiked on down to the water!

It was great and we were ready for a little break after that... but Brian persisted and next thing I know we were headed on a 3 hour hike around the mountain!

more hiking.... but then we finally got to another beautiful beach!!

Once we got back to the car I had one more treat in store-- I got to pet a wild wallaby!!  I have no idea why it let me pet him but it was really amazing!  Afterwards we drove back to the airport to get home!  We got a few beautiful pictures on the drive home.  We arrived in Melbourne very late and I had to wake up very early (AGAIN) to nanny the precious kiddos the next morning!  It was a great trip and both Brian and I fell in love with Tassie!  We are already thinking of when we can go back!  Ok, I'm going to show you these last few pictures then call it a night!  Sorry this is the longest post in the history of blogspot.  Love ya!