Happy New Year!!!

Happy Christmas!

From our table to yours!

Pot roast with garlic mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce:

Apple skillet cake:

Time to eat!  XOXOXO 

Lovin' This Lazy Life O' Mine

As I previously stated, all I have to blog are pictures of food and books, since that's all we've been up to (and we're loving it, although Aaron frequently compares us to 80-year olds).  Every day we wake up around noon, I make breakfast (yes, at noon) and we walk to the library.  Sometimes we stay until late and fiddle on the internet or read.  We always make sure to check out a couple DVDs and books to occupy us for the night.  Then we walk to the grocery store and pick up some provisions and then walk home, where I make dinner and we watch movies/read until late.  It sounds so lame, but it has been really nice to just slow everything down and really unwind for a couple weeks.  If we're both being totally honest, we're lazy, fat kids at heart, so vegging in front of the TV is the best.  Things will start getting a bit crazy in mid-January, so we're just reveling in the laziness until then.  I wish I could be more interesting for you, but I just don't have it in me at the moment.  I have been taking pictures though, so I'll bore you with what I've got.

Cooking is one of my favorite things.  I'm not quite sure how that came to be (maybe it came from my parents always being in the kitchen or the fact I love to eat), but either way it's something I truly enjoy (it relaxes me somehow).  Since we have a lovely kitchen in our apartment with all the fun gadgets and tools for making the perfect meal, I've been cooking a lot.  I've also been taking pictures of all our meals, just for you!  Quick shout-out to my honey for always being patient while I take pictures of his food before he can eat it.  So, without further ado, get ready for a food montage!

Gyros:

Huge flatbreads:

Bigger than my face!

Breakfast potatoes and eggs:

Sausage pizza (half BBQ sauce and half tomato):

both no cheese (for those of you who don't know, Aaron hates cheese.  Yes, ALL cheese!  So none of my meals have cheese...sigh.)

Homemade kettle corn (with honey, not sugar).  I taught Aaron how to make it, so now he's the official Popcorn Maister (I don't know why I didn't just say master, just trying to be fancy):

Here he is trying to assuage the guilt for eating butter by doing a few push-ups:

while I stand above him licking the butter off the spoon.

Seriously addicting!  I have nothing against microwave popcorn (it sure is faster), but this is probably better for you (slightly).  I think they taste about the same, although my honey butter is pretty good.

French toast: 1st attempt:

I don't have any non-stick pans, so it makes things like french toast, eggs and pancakes a challenge if I don't put a significant amount of butter/oil.  Oops!

Round 2:

Much better!  I fried the bananas too and Aaron loved them!

Frittata:

which I couldn't unstick from the pan, so it turned into a scramble:

Tip for cooking success #1: just throw a bunch of something green on top and no one can tell it's a complete mess.

Tip for cooking success #2: make sure they're hungry and they'll eat just about anything.

Smoothies:

I put some spinach in this one:

You know how everyone says to put kale and spinach in smoothies and you can't even tell it's there?  Well that's a crock because I could tell (okay, to be honest, I definitely put too much) and it was kinda gross, like sweet spinach.  However, since Aaron made fun of me and said it was so disgusting, I made myself drink the entire thing with a smile saying how yummy it was.  The things we do for love...more like the things we do so as not to murder the one we love.

Chow mein:

I forgot to add these guys to the first picture and they were feeling left out:

OMG it was so fricken good!  Aaron about crapped himself (which means it was delish!).  I didn't do a tutorial, but here's the recipe I got from Pinterest if you're interested (although I added more veggies):

Burgers with bread instead of buns (because yea, we're that cheap):

Fajitas:

I put a dry rub on this steak and it was insane!  I just mixed together salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder, chili flakes and paprika (I didn't measure, I just dumped them into a bowl and combined and then pressed the mixture into the steak (garlic powder would be good too, but I didn't have any).  I let it sit overnight and then I sizzled it in my cast iron pan:

Other fixings:

I go for the pile-it-all-on-and-hope-for-the-best method:

Aaron opts for a more demure serving, so his actually close and he doesn't have beans dripping off his face, but where's the fun in that?  It's fajitas!  Not tea with the Queen.

Baked BBQ chicken with potato and carrot fries:

I also baked homemade oatmeal, chocolate chip, coconut cookies (from scratch):

I don't have any measuring tools, so I had to use a drinking glass and kind of eyeball it.  Plus, I didn't have baking soda, only baking powder, so they turned out super flat and kinda crumbly, but the taste is fantastic.  The coconut really puts it over the top.  Go buy some coconut bits or whatever they're called (they were super cheap, even in Australia!) and add them to your next batch of cookies.  I'm telling you, it's not even a texture thing, it's a unique, really yummy flavor.  It almost tastes like coconut.  Go figure!  I wish I could take credit for this discovery, but we bought come coconut chocolate chip cookies here out of curiosity and they were bomb, so I knew it was a winner.  Do this immediately for Christmas and you won't be sorry.  Well, unless someone is allergic to coconut, then you'll probably be VERY sorry.

Cinnamon pancakes:

Mongolian beef with rice and bok choy:

This was mouth-wateringly good.  Another Pinterest recipe:

Now, this isn't a healthy one (brown sugar and soy sauce), but it was truly yummy.  Patting myself on the back for this one.

The bok choy I got from a cookbook in the library:

They have a lot of cookbooks and restaurants consisting of ethnic cuisine (mostly Asian and African around here), so I've come to the realization that Australians really like ethnic food, which in my book just means they have good taste.

Speaking of food, we tried the town's best restaurant (as told to us by a few different people):

We ordered the roti chicken rolls:

and the Curry chicken laksa:

Oh man!  It was good stuff!  The laksa and apps are reasonably priced, but everything else is kinda on the pricy side.  However, the food is so good, it's totally worth it.  The food is pumped full of flavor and texture and is just fresh and delicious.

Not sure if this is even considered food, but Aaron is obsessed with McDonald's (no matter what I make for dinner, I just can't compete with it's chemically-altered superiority) and we pass it every day.  Occasionally, I'll allow a hamburger or some nuggets into the house, so we venture into the grease-soaked establishment (who am I kidding?  I make gobs of honey butter to smother otherwise healthy popcorn with).  Anyway, my point is that they have these screens you can order from and then take a vibrating disk that buzzes when your order's up:

I know they have these at some places in The States, but here they're everywhere.  Nifty.

We have also found, by far, the cheapest food you can get in Australia.  It's a soft serve cone for $0.50:

I had an equally cheesy look on my face when we discovered that gem.

Okay, that about does it for the food sector.  Here's the book list for this week:

Maya Angelou just kills me.  Some of her stuff just really hits me and even though I'm not sure if I totally get it, it means something to me and I think that's what good poetry is.  Even if you're not poetically inclined, if it stirs something up inside you then it's good stuff.  Here are a few of my favs:

Amazing mind.

We've also rented some interesting indie films (mostly Australian).  I forgot to take pictures, so I just looked a couple up on my phone:

In other news (not really newsworthy), we found our very first Australian spider and caught it in a glass:

Yuck!  We took it outside humanely and then promptly smushed it to pieces because I hate spiders and they all need to be shipped off to an island somewhere where they're told they can live in peace and once they're all there nice and comfortable, we set it on fire.  Yea, I really don't like spiders.

Check out this beautiful sunset:

We can't actually see the sun set from our apartment, but we get some nice sky streaking or whatever it's called.

So, that's it.  We've spent the week feeding our bodies, minds and souls (let's face it: mostly our bodies).  I promise we'll get more interesting soon!  The day after Christmas, we're meeting up with our friend, Carol, from the Hopsin concert and she's taking us to a heavy metal bar.  Whoa!  I've never been to a metal bar before, but immediately I think 2 things: #1: I'm not ready.  #2: I need to bring my camera.  It should be interesting, to say the least.

Also on the agenda, our friend Mike from Costa Rica is making a stop in Melbourne around New Years, so we're meeting up with him at some point, which should be fun.

I can't believe Christmas is upon us.  It doesn't feel like Christmas to either of us because: A: we're not buying anyone presents. B: it's summer here.  C: we're away from everyone we know.  So, this is a really strange, Twilight Zone Christmas.  We're not complaining, but it's definitely weird.  Our landlady, Anna, stopped by to give us this:

It's a 6-month old Christmas pudding!  I have no idea what that is or why they're advertising that it's so old, but I'm super stoked to try it!

So, from our side of the world to yours, Happy Christmas!!!  They say Happy Christmas here, like Harry Potter!

Just kidding, here's our real Christmas picture (in case you haven't seen it):

Btw, I just realized that you can completely see me in my underwear in the previous picture.  Damn you mirror backsplash!  Oh well now you know, we like to party without pants...and by party, I mean sit on the sofa and eat popcorn.

Joy to all and to all a good night!