Sunday, July 17, 2011

mocha


Chocolate mint mochas were the drink that started me on coffee (although they don't really have a a coffee taste at all). In grade 11 a friend convinced me to skip a class to come with her to starbucks to have this amazing mint mocha she'd had a few times. I went and fell in love (and generally I don't even like mint and chocolate together). I haven't had a mint mocha in years (mochas aren't really that big at all in Australia but most coffee shops back home serve them-- and they're usually much better than the coffee). Mr. Nice Guy had mint mocha on their menu when we were there for brunch yesterday so I couldn't pass it up. They served it in a Batman mug! (I messed up the cocoa powder on top before i took the photo). We also had the french toast (I had strawberries, Zac had blueberries) which is also blogged about here. I haven't had french toast that good in a long time.
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Friday, July 15, 2011

mallacoota again

Last week we spent a week in Mallacoota to celebrate Zac's mum's birthday. I took about 700 pictures (and now I have to get really good at hitting the delete button because there are way too many photos and a lot are very similar-- trying to get that really good shot). I couldn't choose just a few to put on here (I have about 90 of my favourites on facebook) so I made a few collages (click on the image to make it larger).
Wombat had the best time (and didn't get sore feet the entire trip-- a first for her. I think it was because we brought all her different meds for allergies with us so of course we didn't need them). She ran free on the beaches every day:

She spent her evenings charming everybody and getting fed way to much junk food from people. We had our own unit at the Adobe Mudbrick Flats (same place we stayed last time) and Zac's mum hired the penthouse for the week. We spent most of our time at the penthouse and just slept, watched the sunrise and had short quiet breaks at our unit. The penthouse has a huge balcony with an amazing view and a bird feeder on the rail where dozens of birds feed all day long (at our unit we had a bird feeder just outside the floor to ceiling lounge room windows and a small outdoor space where we could sit next to the bird feeder).
We did a lot of bird watching at the units and around the area:

The bird feeders attracted lorikeets, galahs, rosellas, red browed firetail finches, fairy wrens, king parrots (who would feed from your hand) and sparrows (and I'm sure I'm forgetting several other birds). At the beaches and in the inlet and up in Eden, NSW (we took a day trip up there) we saw lots of sea eagles and pelicans. It was pretty amazing seeing so many birds everywhere we went.
I got up for the sunrise 3 or 4 mornings while we were there (not something I usually do but I was accidentally awake the first morning and then after that I kept waking up and then didn't want to miss watching it. One of the rooms in the penthouse faces right out across the balcony straight towards the winter sunrise. The woman staying in that room watched the sunrise every morning with no chance of sleeping through it (there are no curtains on the floor to ceiling windows in that room). Even the morning it rained, the sun was pretty amazing when it broke through the clouds (the black and white looking images are from that morning-- I didn't actually alter the colour on the photos-- it was very grey and shots taken into the light look very greyscale). The colours of the sky during sunset were also amazing with lots of pink clouds. The rainbow in the bottom left of the collage was in Eden. Just as we finished taking Wombat for a short run on the beach there, the rain clouds broke. As we were getting into the car we noticed a double rainbow over the water so we had to stop and take some photos.

We spent about an hour a day at the beaches. I could have sat there all day watching and listening to the waves roll over into tubes and crash on the rocks.


On the way home we spent a night in Paynesville. I convinced Zac we had to make a quick trip over to Raymond Island before the sun set so I could take photos of koalas on the small island (there is about 258 according to a count done a couple weeks ago). We managed to find about 5 (including one really alert one that was watching us and the other people walking around the trail below her) in the half hour we were on the island. We spotted the kangaroos relaxing in someone's front yard at Gypsy Point (a slight detour on the way out of Mallacoota).


Mallacoota is totally worth the 7 hour drive from Melbourne (and the pub even has vegan risotto on the menu which was an exciting bonus when we went there for dinner one night). I'm glad Zac's mum lives at about the halfway point though so we can have a stopover night along the way. Wombat LOVED her holiday but was completely exhausted by the end of it (and I'm pretty sure she's gained a kilo or 2 from all the food people gave her even though she did a LOT of running at the beaches).
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Monday, July 11, 2011

chilli

We cooked dinner for ourselves only one night during our trip (every other night was at the penthouse with Zac's mum and everyone else or at one of the 2 places to eat in town). The night we (I) cooked Zac was sick so I got to eat most of it. It was the best chilli I've made on holidays (I often make it when we go to a holiday house because it's easy to bring all the ingredients for it). This one had about 1 cup of green lentils in just enough stock to cook them, a can of tomatoes, a handful of TVP, a can of cannellini beans, some chilli powder and cayenne pepper and a large clove of garlic (which I fried for about a minute in a frying pan before adding it into the chilli not long after I started cooking the lentils). The chilli was great served with with tortilla chips. I need to remember to make this at home instead of only on holidays because it's a nice easy dinner and sooooo good.
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