It’s been a big day. My three daughters all had things on and I’m happy I could get them all there on time without any major problems. Okay, there are some Brisbane drivers who did not appreciate a couple of rapid lane changes when I couldn’t quite understand the new road system in Brisbane. I’ve now lived in Darwin and Canberra since the beginning of 1996 and have gone soft when it comes to driving. Brisbane has changed so much and the motorways and overpasses are something more like the roads I’ve seen in Los Angeles. I’m surprised I made it everywhere and back today. Because I only visit every couple of months, my ability to navigate traffic is a struggle. Ask anyone who knows me and I am very directionally challenged.
Today Miss18 was a volunteer at Paniyiri which is a Greek festival in Brisbane. Volunteering is part of her events management course. Miss12 had gymnastics training and Miss16 had the South East Queensland Regional Senior Women’s Artistic Gymnastics competition. I was able to watch the L9 (MIss16) and L8 competition this afternoon. Miss16 did okay. She came second on the uneven bars and third on the floor. I captured a nice video of her floor routine on my iPad but then accidentally deleted it. Fortunately I had already posted a low resolution version to YouTube. I wish I could recover the original video without resorting to paying for an app to recover the file. I know what you’re thinking, Gary was one of those dorks holding up an iPad while video recording an event. Yes I was! The camera is a good one and the quality is very satisfactory.
I tried to enhance the quality by using the YouTube enhancement tools but it’s pretty shaky and grainy.
The competition was held at Moreton Bay College
I needed lunch. A bacon, egg and hash brown burger. I hope I don’t get sick. I noticed the eggs and hash brown were pre cooked and then heated again on the hot plate. I nearly said something but figured, it’s a typical school sporting event and hopefully everything was cooked properly the first time through.
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Moreton Bay College is a pretty well endowed girls school.
I’ve never seen illuminated podia before.
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Tonight we went out to dinner to celebrate birthdays and Mother’s Day. My birthday was on 1 May, Miss16 and Miss18 had their birthday on 8 May and my Dad has his birthday on 23 May. Miss18 also got a part-time job to her her get through her events management course and business degree. We decided on Hog’s Breath Cafe because it’s family friendly and a decent meal for hungry mouths.
I had an avocado prime rib steak
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Miss12 and Miss18 asked for a crispy chicken burger each
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Miss16 asked for the TexMex chicken steak combination meal. It was huge.
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The meals took quite a while to get to us because the restaurant was so busy. They’ve opened up more recently and enhanced the parking area.
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I asked if anyone wanted dessert. Miss18 shook her head. Miss12 smiled and said yes and Miss16 said no and then Mum asked about banana bread and butterscotch sauce…Miss16 relented.
This shot doesn’t do the plate justice. It was an extra large plate almost covered in a deep layer of butterscotch sauce. Mum and Miss16 really enjoyed it.
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The plate is so long the ice cream is blurry. This is the Strawberry pavlova Miss12 and I wanted.
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It’s been a good day. Tomorrow Miss18 heads back to volunteer at Paniyiri and Miss12 has to help with a gymnastics competition for juniors. That means Miss16 and I get to enjoy Greek food at Paniyiri by ourselves.
I did the salmon the way I normally do with a fry pan and lid and a 5 minute timer. I cooked the vegetables with a little soy and honey.
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and again the next night…
Another small piece of salmon
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I’ve been walking every day too
Mr Owl looks good at 0445 AEST with a black background of the night sky
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In preparation for my clinical day a week I started reading some relevant documents.
Tea rather than coffee too
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For reasons I won’t go in to, I was able to return to my old office area. The first thing I did was put up my flags. I felt immediately at home.
My two favourite places in the world. Queensland and the Northern Territory of Australia
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On Friday I started my first day at The Canberra Hospital as an Honorary Visiting Medical Officer in Pathology. I decided I could walk to work from my DoHA car spot
There is a lot of construction underway so it’s not possible to see the building from outside
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It was a pretty good day. I really enjoyed getting oriented back into a clinical pathology set up. It was nice to speak with clinicians about patients and visit the mortuary and see the museum named after my friend and colleague, viz., Professor Peter Herdson. It was fantastic to get back into the lingo and to start thinking about the wonderful interface being a clinical microbiologist is between the patient in the ward and the vast technological brain power that rests in medical laboratory scientists and other practitioners. I love the technology of pathology. As I grew up in medicine, Professor John Kerr’s most profound comment was that pathology is medicine. If you understand pathology you will understand medicine. Truer words there are not. He also held a firm view that rigorous examination was the best way to produce a well rounded undifferentiated medical graduate who would be ready to learn more about how to heal the sick and teach others to become good practitioners of the art and science of medicine. I love that in pathology we extend our practice into the tactile of holding plates and loops, we can sense the aroma of our friends on the plates, we can see the bright colours of the wonderful chemical reactions in solid and liquid phases. We can stand before instruments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that reduce the time from specimen reception to result delivery to hours instead of days. But best of all I love that we can take the complex and abstract and share a story with a referring and treating practitioner and help him or her heal their patient. Working in government bureaucracy for the last five years has taught me so many things, but I cannot love it like I love being in a laboratory surrounded by wonderful people and patient specimens, machines and most of all microscopes. Four days a week at DoHA and one day at TCH is a good balance.
As I walked back to my car I was reminded that The Canberra Hospital and the Royal Darwin Hospital were designed in Canada and it was Prime Minister Gough Whitlam who sought to build hospitals in the two territories. The design may well have been good for Canberra but it was a disaster for Darwin. This is a multi-storey, air conditioned building with a furnace up the middle. Indigenous Australians in the Top End communities do not like heights, they don’t like the cold and why require a furnace in a building in subequatorial Australia. What the hell was Prime Minister Whitlam thinking? The best hospital design in the Northern Territory of Australia is the Katherine Hospital. One level, multiple wings with open flow through ventilation and lots of courtyards for patients to gather in along with their intravenous infusion stand and drugs. In Darwin, as much as I love the RDH (not the building itself, I love the people, I love the community, I love the family that is a hospital), it is unseemly to have all the Indigenous Australian patients feel like they have to mill outside on hot concrete with their intravenous infusion stands all because of a mistake from the 1970s.
On Wednesday morning I went to the Elk and Pea on Lonsdale Street with some fellow medical and scientific advisers from work. I’ve previously been there for a weekend dinner, weekend breakfast and a weekend morning tea. It’s a pretty good place and it’s getting more popular.
I asked for the omelet with chorizo. This was quite large and filling. Very tasty though and I’d happily recommend it to anyone who has a big appetite and didn’t think they’d need to eat lunch. I seriously didn’t feel the need to eat until late that evening. It was a good thing I didn’t get home from work that day until 1930 AEST.
And a special mention to fellow Canberra blogger, viz., Tara from In The Taratory, I got a butter knife but the sourdough was softened by the omelet and I wasn’t regretting my choice. That said, I continue to echo your plea that breakfast restaurants need to better consider their cutlery when serving hard toast. A steak knife would be ideal.
Over the last week as part of my regular blog reading I’ve commented on a couple of blogs.
The first was on Science for Life. 365 which is a post a day blog by an Australian scientist and writer Sarah Keenihan. On Day 257. Killing smallpox and parasites Sarah wrote about her vaccination in Canada before coming to live in Australia. I made a comment about being vaccinated and vaccinating others and mentioned my pedantic habit of referring to vaccination in the context of smallpox immunisation and immunisation for everything else. To me Edward Jenner vaccinated with cowpox (Vaccinia virus). The process was immunisation and vaccination specifically refers to using Vaccinia virus (or a derivative) to immunise against smallpox. I once explained this to a work colleague and she told me I was wrong. She said I didn’t understand vaccination is universally accepted as the term to protect people by stimulating their immune systems and had nothing to do with smallpox. I didn’t say anything. She didn’t have a science background and it wasn’t worth an argument. When I was a lot younger I recall the early iterations of the Australian Immunisation Handbook had an explanatory footnote on the difference between immunisation and vaccination. It last appeared in the sixth edition. I’ve scanned the relevant pages and made them available in this link. I think in earlier iterations the explanation was different.
The second blog I commented on was Sybaritica by John Thompson who lives in Canada, practices law, travels the court circuit of regional and remote Canada and seems to be more Chinese than me. Recently John posted about custard apples and it made me think back to my childhood growing up in Brisbane and being an avid fan. It’s been a long time since I had a custard apple even though they’re readily available. I made a comment on John’s blog and mentioned that I didn’t recall them being that laden with seeds. I saw one in the supermarket on the weekend and knew I had to buy one.
The one I bought had lots of seeds. Perhaps as a child I swallowed them all Anyway, it was delicious.
On Friday evening Bron invited me to an art exhibition opening. The art was created by Randon9 which is a Canberra-based artists’ collective. 100 examines Canberra in a historical, political and cultural context. The exhibition is being held at the Belconnen Arts Centre at 118 Emu Bank.
It was an interesting exhibition. The BAC is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm. The Patron is Mr Jon Stanhope the former ACT Chief Minister. If you like art, it’s worth going to see and experience.
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Okay just a little rant here. One of the disappointing things about the BAC is the recent poor maintenance of its outside appearance. The yellow straw bundles each have a pavement embedded spot light shining up. Of the five or six bundles and lights only one works.
Yellow “straw” bundles at the Belconnen Arts Centre are street lights at night, although not now with only one working
This has been a deteriorating situation for nearly a year. They have evening exhibitions so I assume the managers are aware. Perhaps there is a conflict between the BAC and territory and municipal services (TAMS) It would be good if it could get fixed. Rant over
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After taking a look at the art we walked around to Black Pepper for dinner. We hadn’t booked but given it was around 6.30 pm we figured we had a good chance to score a table. When we arrived the restaurant was pretty bare and we got a nice table in the corner by a window.
The day in Canberra had been very cold and windy. We’ve really changed from summer-autumn to autumn-winter. It wasn’t quite bone chilling but the wind chill was very unpleasant. Inside the restaurant was cosy and warm even though it didn’t start to fill with customers until after about 7 pm.
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The dinner menu is relatively new and looked pretty good. It can be downloaded from the Out in Canberra site.
For an entrée we chose to share the Panko crumbed brie cheese for $13. It consisted of Japanese crumbed and fried brie cheese with orange and fennel salad.
Brie cheese
This was delicious and sharing half each was more than sufficient
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For mains, Bron chose the Swiss potato roesti stack for $15.50. It was layered with Napoli sauce, Swiss cheese and grilled eggplant, served with broccolini and gazpacho vinaigrette. I didn’t capture an image of it.
I chose the Scotch fillet and horseradish for $26.50. The Scotch fillet was served with garlic mash, horseradish cream, red wine jus, greens and game chips.
Scotch fillet
I like my meat rare. The beans were really squeaky on my teeth so I swapped them with Bron’s broccolini.
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The dinner menu was pretty good. I think Bron’s potato roesti was good value for money. My steak was nice but I’m not sure it was worth $26.50. It’s certainly better than what I’d get at a pub or bar but I would think between $18 and $22 is how I’d price it. The entrée was good but I’d probably be happier if it was priced at around $12.
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Afterwards we watched the ANZAC test match between the Australian Kangaroos and the New Zealand Kiwis. I was so happy to see military bands used to play the national anthems. One of my pet peeves (well it’s more than a peeve it’s a hatred) is the use of pop stars to sing our national anthem. More often than not (I kid you not) they mangle the anthem into their individual interpretation as part of their artistic expression. I can’t stand it. Not only is it painful on my ears, it’s disrespectful to our nation. Apart from a military band, my preference would be for a school choir to sing the national anthem. Channel Nine offers excellent coverage of Rugby League matches in Australia. Before the match a minute’s silence was observed for the death of Ross Livermore. Mr Livermore was the heart and soul of Queensland Rugby League (QRL) for 31 years. Queenslanders, especially lovers of the XXXX Maroons owe so much to Mr Livermore and what he did for Rugby League in Queensland and Australia. Needless to say it is very sad when such a great person dies. The Australian Kangaroos wore black arm bands in memory. It was shocking to hear louts in the crowd disrupt the silence with jeers and noises as a sign of disrespect. It’s a pity the ACT Police were not called in to remove the louts and cowards. Rest in peace Mr Ross Livermore. The game ended in an Australian victory.
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So this morning we needed breakfast. Out of convenience we ventured back to Black Pepper. I couldn’t help but notice a patron sitting near us.
My daughters tell me Crocs are a crime against fashion, I think mismatched socks do not help in the fashion stakes.
Fashion Fail
There’s a hole in the right heel too
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I didn’t want a huge breakfast but I did want something that would keep me going all day.
Poached eggs and a side of hollandaise sauce
The Black Pepper hollandaise is to die for
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This afternoon after a trip to Costco (optometry appointment for me) we went to see Oblivion IMDB and Google+. We’d seen the shorts for this movie while watching Top Gun at the Darling Harbour IMAX theatre over Easter.
I won’t be a spoiler for this movie suffice to say I enjoyed it. I’m a fan of a lot of science fiction, especially simple action genre science fiction. I’m a huge Star Trek fan and am eagerly awaiting the new Star Trek movie. I know Tom Cruise cops a lot of flack as an actor. I haven’t watched all his movies and probably won’t. I really enjoyed Top Gun, I enjoyed the Mission Impossible franchise and recently on a flight to the USA I watched Jack Reacher and enjoyed it. A Few Good Men and Taps are also favourites. I know there was a lot of controversy about Tom Cruise in the starring role for Jack Reacher. I understand Jack Reacher is portrayed as a giant of a man which Tom Cruise isn’t. Without having read the books, I can’t really criticise. I did enjoy the movie.
I would recommend Oblivion to anyone who likes science fiction that doesn’t require a lot of thought. There were a couple of question marks for me in terms of inconsistency but not enough to put me off. We also saw this movie at Hoyts Belconnen in their Xtremescreen cinema. The experience was really very good. Watching an action movie in the Xtremescreen cinema is very worthwhile.
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Tonight Bron is cooking up a storm, I’ll blog about that tomorrow. If you want a sneak peek though, follow me on Instagram | Facebook | Twitter for a glimpse of what she is cooking tonight.
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One last thing, I’m thinking of a rating system for restaurants based on two non-food criteria. If I remember I will offer a dunny rating and a napkin rating. I believe a good rest room (toilet or dunny) should be specific for gender (preferably not unisex), have urinals set at adult height and not just pædiatric height, pedestals with out swinging doors (for emergency situations), have paper towel (cloth for the really posh ones) and/or a Dyson air blade or XLERATOR™ air dryer. I’ll elaborate on this in future posts. For Black Pepper it gets a four out of five dunny score. For napkins I prefer cloth napkins over paper. My ranking would be fail | pass| excellent. My napkin ranking for Black Pepper is fail.
As much as I wanted to try (and I (or DrOffal) will try) Mountain city hot intestines and Intestines in black pepper sauce, we were keen for a nice laksa.
On Saturday night we went back to get some takeaway
Sorry about the poor photography
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The barbecue pork laksa was really good
I’m glad I’ve discovered a local place to get a decent laksa. Winter in Canberra is pretty cold so a nice hot laksa is so good to have.
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So was the “Super tasty boneless duck” from the house specialties.
This was really tasty and the skin divine
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2 YUMMY is definitely a worthwhile place to visit and eat. We’ll be back.
Yesterday Bron and I had lunch at Ricardo’s Cafe at the Jamison Shops in Macquarie
I had a caramel milkshake to start while Bron had a latte (no latte picture)
This was lovely and thick with a good caramel flavour. Not too much and not too little.
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We shared a smoked salmon fritter meal
Three fritters. One each and one split down the middle. It was a good size for two.
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We then shared a caramel mousse
This was amazing. So light yet so full of texture with the salted peanuts and pistachios. The peanut brittle cap was brilliant. The base was also crunchy and not gooey. We cut it into two halves and shared.
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Cut in half
So you can see all the happy mousse goodness.
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Ricardo’s Cafe is a gem in a suburban shopping centre in the north side of Canberra. I hope it never changes.
As a kid growing up in Brisbane one of Mum’s regular dishes was salmon rissoles. If you’re not from Australia or New Zealand you may not be familiar with what a rissole is. The wikipedia entry is pretty reasonable. I know for Mum’s salmon rissoles the main ingredients were tinned pink salmon and mashed potato, as well as bread crumbs and lots of finely cut vegetables. One of my favourite Australian movies is “The Castle” which contains so much that is typically Australian. As a result when the producers tried to adapt it for an American audience various words had to be changed, i.e., meat loaf instead of rissole (alternative versions).
Anyway, I’m quite fond of rissoles so yesterday when Bron pointed out rissoles in the Elite Meats display I jumped at the chance to buy some. When speaking with one of the butchers he said there were made in-house and like everything in the shop all the produce is organic and free-range. The rissoles were made from chicken mince and cheese and vegetables and then coated in fresh bread crumbs. All that was needed was some shaping and then a shallow pan fry.
This has been a fantastic Easter weekend. For my non-Australian friends; in Australia we get the Good Friday and the following Monday as public holidays. It’s one of the best public holiday long weekends we have.
It all started on Thursday afternoon and coincided with my manifestation of #ManFlu I shared a classic YouTube video on #ManFlu in my Mamak in Haymarket post from a few days ago. Every time I get a head cold I end up with rigors and sinusitis and I feel like death warmed up.
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On Thursday evening Bron cooked dinner.
Bron’s stir fry
This was delicious
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Bron cooked hot cross buns on Thursday evening
Hot cross buns
I so wanted one that I pestered Bron to break one off and share one on Thursday evening
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On Friday morning we had hot cross buns
Hot cross buns
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On the drive to Sydney for the weekend we stopped at Goulburn for a toilet stop and a break
MaltEaster
These won’t roll down the aisle of a picture theatre lol
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On arriving in Sydney we had to work out how to find and park near our hotel. We chose to stay at the Oaks Goldsbrough Apartments (on 243 Pyrmont Street Darling Harbour NSW 2009). Originally built in 1883, The Oaks Goldsbrough was Sydney’s original Goldsbrough-Mort Wool store. Maintaining many historical features, such as the ironbark columns and tallow-wood flooring, The Oaks Goldsbrough Apartment Hotel combines the facilities and service of a modern hotel with the privacy and spaciousness of a fully self-contained apartment. At first I thought it was an old gaol but then tweeps were telling me about the building’s history.
Oaks Goldsbrough Apartments
I really enjoyed my stay here. It was a relatively quiet well appointed apartment. The kitchen is spacious and well equipped except there was no oven. The microwave oven was a little dated and old. The bathroom/laundry was pretty good too. A little more storage and bench space would have been handy. The lounge area was fine with a big screen television, cable television connection and a DVD player that also accepted USB drives. The bedroom was fine except there wasn’t a set of drawers just very tall wardrobes.
On Saturday morning we enjoyed the last of the hot cross buns
Hot cross buns
Bron’s butter with some bun
Bron claims this is a misrepresentation lol
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The plan for the day was to go shopping in Rhodes and visit Ikea.
Morning iced coffee
I was feeling pretty poorly and thought a hot coffee would make me nauseated. The iced coffee alternative was not too bad.
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I went in wanting to buy a cabinet for my kitchen equipment
Ikea purchases
I bought a heap of other things too
I also brought back a catalogue for a work mate
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Of course no visit to Ikea is complete without a meal of Swedish meatballs, Lingonberries, mashed potato and gravy.
Lunch
I chose a medium plate. Quite a number of tweeps and Facebook friends asked questions about horse meat. Ikea in Australia has declared their meat balls to be horse meat free.
I tried some Swedish festive drink. My #ManFlu was so bad I couldn’t tell it was sweet.
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Enjoying a meat ball
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In the evening as my #ManFlu was peaking at its worst we went to dinner at Rockpool on George. I blogged about this a couple of nights ago. It was an amazing dinner. It was so good. Rather than repeat the food images I’d encourage you to read the post. I’ll simply insert here an image of the afternoon.
Sydney Opera House
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On Sunday morning I woke up feeling pretty ordinary. We had planned to attend the Sydney Royal Easter Show 2013. The tickets also included public transport. We got off to an okay start and caught a train from Town Hall station and alighted at Homebush. We should have alighted at Olympic Park. This created a slight delay and a delay in accessing caffeine which was our most pressing need. We eventually got to the show grounds and found coffee and food.
Bacon and egg roll with a coffee
As far as shows are concerned and for my USA friends these are like County fairs I imagine, my all time favourite is The Ekka http://www.ekka.com.au/ in Brisbane every August. The next best is the Royal Darwin Show. http://www.darwinshow.com.au/ The Sydney one is also pretty good and given its proximity to Camberra (3 hours drive) it’s a good option for me at the moment.
Wood chopping as a sport started in Australia. My favourite events are the underhand, tree felling and the relay. What we noticed on Sunday was the unusual number of competitors who failed to finish. We hope there wasn’t something wrong with them. Given Australian axe men are also known for the drinking, I just hope they were hung over rather than ill or not up to the competition.
At any show I love looking at animals, produce and cake decorating. Rather than spend the day capturing images we simply enjoyed walking around looking at things. Some things though did need to be captured.
This year’s biggest pumpkin (618 kilograms)
This years smallest pumpkin
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Dog showing
Is that the best suit you’ve ever seen or what?
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For lunch we had chair sui bao
Barbecue pork buns
We ate these while in the main arena watching moto-X
We started feeling weary after the Flyball and decided to leave. The train journey into the city was uneventful.
For dinner we decided to walk around Darling Harbour and look for a place to eat. I had a hankering for some meat. We came across Braza Churrascaria and walked in. We were seated at a table and the protocol explained. This is not the sort of place that you can photograph everything. The wait staff walk around with trays of meat and serve it onto your plate. It’s basically all the meat you can eat.
Later in the evening was went to the IMAX theatre and watched Top Gun in 3D. A great movie in terms of scenes of fighter jets and an aircraft carrier. The Darling Harbour LG IMAX theatre bills itself as the biggest and the best in the world. I have no idea if this is true.
Last night after a little anticipation we dined at Rockpool on George. This is Neil Perry’s restaurant. Neil is a famous celebrity chef in Australia and is also responsible for the Qantas http://qantas.com cuisine, especially the business and first class menus.
To get into the mood of Sydney we walked around a little.
Sydney opera house
The sun was in the right place at the right time for this. We arrived a little early we were so keen on the evening’s dining experience.
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Rockpool on George
Bron captured this image of me outside the restaurant
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Bread
The whipped butter went so nicely with this bread which had the crustiest of crusts.
This was one of the finest dining experiences we’ve had together or apart. The restaurant’s ambience is perfect. Bron noted the lack of art work which didn’t seem out of place for the elegant simplicity of the surrounds. The wait staff were very helpful and informative without being intrusive on our evening. They were great at anticipating our needs, e.g., for topping up water and clearing away crockery. Bron was really impressed with the sliver tablecloth brush
The evening is definitely worth the money we paid given the location, the excellent service to customer ratio, the ability to watch the chefs in action and most importantly the quality and complexity of the food. In the menu frontispiece Neil Perry ensures he attributes correctly the source of all his produce. I think this is a mark of quality.
One of the things that really struck us was the intelligent way in which the service was arranged. For example, the seating times for each table seemed to be calculated to ensure each group of guests were not sitting on adjacent tables. This gave us a sense of a space and tranquility. We could have a conversation without the need to be guarded or to whisper.
My one regret was that I was at the peak of my #ManFlu which means I don’t think I really enjoyed the subtlety of all that was on offer. It simply means we need to come here again.
