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!

Shark Attack!

To fuel my obsession with all things that will kill me in Australia:

Sydney Through Jon's Eyes

For Australia Day Weekend, Siobhan and I headed down to Sydney as one of my best friends, Jordan and his girlfriend were coming over from Chicago to visit family. As we haven't seen them in over a year and have yet to visit that part of the country, we took this opportunity to take a bit of a trip.



We get to Sydney, and have a wonderful dinner....

To be continued when I can get Jon to sit down at the keyboard again & photos to come as soon as the laptop returns from repairs.

Tasty Tapenade

Driving back from Main Range on Easter weekend, Jon and I stopped at a farmer's market in some small town in the back of beyond. After strolling around a bit, we found a olive vendor that made everything under the sun from olives. Jon loves his olives and now our cupboards are stocked full of olive pastes, tapenade, stuffed olives and olive oil.



So, what's a girl to do with gallons of tapenade? I was flicking through an old copy of the The Notebook (very similar to Real Simple in the US) and found a great recipe for a tomato and tapenade galette. It's a take on a French dish with a puffed pastry base topped with layers of tapenade, feta cheese, tomatoes and oregano.

It was a hit with Jon; it was one of the few things that he gushed over and inhaled. I'm still not sold on olives, but I think with the stockhold we have in the house I am going to have to learn to love them.

Pulp Fiction

Jon has been on my back to start trying new foods. I am terrible at trying new foods and have a really limited pallette, so I really can't argue with him. So today while I was at the local fruit and veggie market I decided to find the most exotic fruit and give it a go.



The colors at the market are amazing and there is such an amazing selection of yummy, healthy produce. One fruit jumped off the shelves at me - the dragonfruit. It is grown in Southeast Asia and Central / South America harvested from a cactus plant. The outside is prickly and bright pink with a pulpy seed filled center. Supposedly very yummy with ice cream.

The verdict: It doesn't taste like much and kind of feels like eating paste.

As I told Jon, Rome wasn't built in a day. There is hope for me yet.

Beautiful Sunset

We had the most amazing sunset last night. The white exterior of our building was glowing pink - absolutely stunning.

Bread & Butter

In college, someone once joked that I could be "Betty Crocker by day, Betty Ford by night." Now, although that's not entirely accurate, I do every now and again get struck by the urge to bake something completely random from scratch.

I was hit by one of the moments of domestic goddess inspiration today that you get every so often. As I was making dinner, I decided that we needed (not wanted, really and truly needed) homemade focaccia bread to go along with dinner. Walking 200 meters to the bakery across the street to get bread made by someone else's hands simply wouldn't do.



Now, this is all quite funny because I have never baked bread in my life and I had no idea what I was doing. I dusted off the old Betty Crocker cookbook and gave it a go!

End result, it turned out pretty good for a first effort. Now to clean up the bloody mess in the kitchen.