Inspiration

It's somewhere we've been meaning to go for weeks. A new restaurant opened in Mooloolaba called Soul Food Kitchen. Now, when Jon hears the word ribs he starts salivating like Pavlov's dog. Throw some cornbread, crab cakes and jambalaya into the mix and it's a grand old evening.


Jon at another rib related dinner

It was so good because it was a perk to have food from home, not a necessity. After almost two years here, I have started to miss the things from home less and less. I've learned to go without, developed new favourites (Christ, I just automatically spelled that with a u) or found adequate substitutions. It's funny how that happens. It took me two years to have my Mom stop sending me bras and figure out the sizes here, to be able to make coffee without a coffee maker (which I didn't even know was possible), and I have accepted the fact that my Christmas cookies with always involve a trip to the sex shop bearing the stigma of purchasing gay lubricant to make my cookies the proper way with Crisco.

I digress; our meals were amazing and completely authentic. After our meals, I asked our Kiwi waiter which of the take-home sauces he would recommend for the pulled pork that I've started making for Jon since he missed it from back home. He looked at me like I had ten heads and asked me "Why would you want to pull pork?" and shuffled off to the kitchen to get the chef.

From the kitchen emerges Victor Kimble. I am willing to say after the hour or so I spent talking to him, he is one of the most inspirational human beings I have met.

From what we learned in the short time we spent with him, he grew up in Birmingham, Alabama "before integration" as he put it. A scholarship for playing the trumpet made it possible for him to go to college and he not only went to college, but succeeded in becoming a maxillofacial doctor. That's crazy amounts of school - undergrad, plus med school, plus dentistry school. As a maxfac surgeon, he toured the world with the Navy (I believe) doing intense trauma work. Through a series of twist ans turns, he landed on the Sunshine Coast, cooking for a living because it was the way his mother was - always cooking for the community and being friendly to everyone.

C'mon I know you want to reach out and hug him right now.

July 4th BBQ at Soul Food Kitchen is going to be sooooo good! Be there!

Enter the Twilight Zone

Jon has been talking for weeks about trying a new restaurant on the Coast, Soul Food Kitchen. It’s a Deep South Creole restaurant with a chef who is a real live Bayou boy that has gotten phenomenal reviews. All day, he’s been talking about how he is going to have ribs and cornbread tonight.



Now, as we pull into the car park it is not looking promising. The restaurant is dark. I see the outside tables stacked inside before Jon does and when he does his face drops. His fate is sealed; no down home cooking for this boy tonight.

He was so shattered that he sat down on the sidewalk to contemplate how the Soul Food gods could have let this happen. It was heartbreaking.

I rallied him by suggesting that we go and see if the Moroccan place down the road had an available table. He’s been keen to try this place since we moved here, but weekend bookings are nearly impossible to get; since it was a Sunday night, I thought we might get lucky.

Lucky would have been an understatement. There was only one other table in the restaurant when we arrived. I quickly ascertained that “they talk like me.” This is my choice phrase to alert Jon that someone in the vicinity is speaking in a North American accent. My shining moment was when I came home and told Jon the PA system on the train to Brisbane talks like me.

After Jon confirms the accent, we then have a bit of fun trying to deduce whether they are Canadian or American. The tip off tonight was that a guy at the other table said, “If you are in any large city and find yourself on Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., you are not far off from getting shot.” Definitely American. Our assumptions were confirmed when they referred to the lettuce as iceberg and not cos.

As our food arrives and another couple enters decked out to the nines in University of Illinois gear. Jon and I smile at each other thinking this could be a really weird turn of events; in the year and a half we have lived here on the Coast, we have not met another American outside of Brissy. Is it possible that there is some weird stroke of fate that had assembled 12 of us into a random Moroccan restaurant in Cotton Tree?

Apparently, yes. As soon as the Hoosier opened his mouth, it was confirmed he was one of us and more than likely from a “red state.”

I never realized there was a correlation between Yanks and Moroccan food or that were actually 12 of us residing on the Sunshine Coast. Randomness.

PS ~ minted yoghurt and lamb are not my cup of tea, but I did try!

Seal Swim!

It's been awhile since we've been out exploring our new surroundings. Since Jon volunteered for an extra 2 shifts this weekend, I decided to go to Underwater World in Mooloolaba for the afternoon after doing some birthday shopping for a certain someone on the Esplanade.



Jon surprised me by booking a "seal swim" for me where I actually got to get in their habitat tank and swim with them for a bit. There were a couple of seals in the tank with us; the biggest was Groucho who was MASSIVE. Thankfully, he kept his two ton self towards the bottom of the tank showing off for the people watching from the Underwater Viewing area. He was HUGE! Baby Oscar was adorable and very friendly. I even got to play tug of war with Bella & her rope toy the same way I do with my puppy, Bailey. However, Bella is much stronger than Bailey and gave me a couple tugs that sent me flying! It was such a great experience & I can't wait until Jon & I get to go play with the seals together!



Underwater World was an amazing place. They have this incredibly exhibit called "Monsters of the Deep" with specimens of all of the pelagic fish that look incredibly alien-like. They even have on display the only giant squid that was ever found in one piece. It's in block of ice almost 4 meters long and its tenticles are wrapped back over it's head to fit it in the ice. The eeriest part was this black & white eye that was a large as a dinner plate!



Another really cool exhibit that they have is meant to teach people all about the mermaid's purses that they find on the beach. You've seen them, those little black pouches with stringy legs on all four corners. They are actually the enclosures for shark embryos until they reach gestation. The exhibit created a glass mermaid's purse that actually contained live, growing shark embryos that the facility is hand raising. It was absolutely amazing to see. The little guy was moving around and you could see his umbilical cord and sac bit that he was getting nourishment from. Absolutely wild.



Just for the kitsch factor, they have this "aquarium" inside a Honda SUV that is pretty cool. "A Fish Called Honda," it was named. It was just pretty neat to look at.
On the lowest level, there is a moving walkway that snakes through 80 meters of a tube running below the main aquarium, filled with sharks and fish of all varities. Now, I tend to visit aquariums where ever I travel to see all of the different displays, but this was by far one of the most magnificent "large tank displays" I have ever seen.



Overall, it was absolutely amazing and I can't wait to go back with Jon. I saw specimens of fish that I never knew existed and literally made my eyes pop out of my head. Some of them are so gorgeous, or just so different that it takes your breath away for a second. And best of all there were otters, which were super cool, but smell super bad.

It was really great to spend the afternoon just acting like a little kid again.