Dh and I have had a good few days. On Sunday we visited Fiona's mother and then went up the coastline a bit to a place called Palm Beach - it was lovely! We visited some beaches on the way back home, including Manly.
On Monday, dh went golfing at one of the best courses in Australia and I went walking and shopping with Fiona. Dh took pictures, so I'll post them when I can. I've been pretty good about downloading my pictures from the cameras onto my computer... until my battery ran out! We need to get a few adapters so that we can plug into Australian electricity.
Yesterday, we went on a "surf safari" and checked out tons of beaches in the state of New South Wales, looking for surf. We got to see a lot of cool beaches, but it took a while for the boys to find good surf. Finally they found some, and dh really enjoyed it.
Funny story, dh and I made dinner last night for the family. We wanted the full adventure of it all, and went grocery shopping by ourselves. It's kind of fun to try to decipher which Australian ingredients equal American ones. For example, we needed American tomato sauce. Australian tomato sauce is American ketchup. American tomato sauce is probably closest to Australian pureed tomato.
We also needed Monterrey Jack cheese. Um. Yeah. Anyone know what that is? Nope, we don't either. And how to describe it? I have no idea. So I looked at the cheeses and couldn't find Monterrey Jack. Basically, they have mozzarella, colby, cheddar, and a kind of cheddar called "tasty" cheese. I can embrace a culture that names a cheese "tasty" - that's so much more descriptive than "brie"! I asked dh what to do and he told me to look for Mexican cheese. Ha! We finally settled on the colby, and it combined with my new favorite cheese, tasty cheese, ended up working quite well. I don't know why, but it made me laugh for a really long time, standing there in front of the cheese section, laughing about not having any Mexican cheese.
We entered the supermarket not knowing one brand from another. It was pretty easy to know the store/generic brand (because of the cheap price) but other than that, we just kind of bought by what looked good and what was cheap.
Our family had asked us to pick up two cartons of milk. We looked at the prices, and determined the store brand would probably be acceptable. It cost $2/carton, the other kind cost $4/carton. We decided that whatever they had in the supermarket would probably be safe enough, so we got two cartons of that. We brought up our groceries to check out and asked the girl scanning them if she thought the store brand was acceptable. She looked up at us and said, "Well, I'm pretty much a milk nazi. My dad would only buy the brand name milk and only from two specific stores." Dh and I looked at each other, slightly worried. He turned to her and asked, "But it's still probably ok, right? It's for our relatives." She didn't hesitate and said, "Well go ahead and get it then, it'll be just fine." Lol.
4 comments:
Until I learned our market here, I found it was best to decide what to make at the store rather than coming with a list of ingredients from a recipe. So many times I got 2/3 of the way through my list and then realized something essential was missing.... I had to stop cooking most ethnic food as I know it (though I can cobble together some decent tex-mex, now knowing where to find the necessary (yet still edible) items).
Have fun discovering how things work. (I'll have to remember: questionable milk for family is fine.)
Oh, have you seen these guys around at the store? Let me know if it tastes as good as it looks.
Wish I had one right now.
I lived in Manly! You went to my old town! We used to hang out at Palm Beach and Amy learned to walk there.. fun memories! Don't go to the school there... the kids wouldn't be my friends!
Isn't the land of Oz great? You should go to Tasmania for a day or two!
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