A Taste of Home...

On Sunday night I cooked dinner for my flatmates and friends Halley, Judith, Gena and Anisha. It's a 6 week-old tradition that every Sunday one of us cooks a meal that represents our home region. Anisha, who is of Indian desent, cooked butter chicken last week. The week before, Nils made a dish called Konigsberger klopse (German meatballs "from Konigsberg"). Before that, Judith made beef stroganoff. I decided to make tourtiere. I figured it was the most French Canadian dish I could do, the one I know how to do best, and the one that everybody would like. And they did! What did I make for desert? Sucre a la creme, of course. So after making two trial tourtieres on Wednesday and Thursday of that week, only to have them devoured by Nils and Marco in one day each, I figured that they were gonna be a hit on Sunday. I made sucre a la creme on the stove, the old fashioned way I suppose, in part because my microwave broke (it has now been replaced) but also in part because it felt more traditional. That also turned out well, although I made too much and the girls could only eat so much sweetness. We had a great dinner, appropriately accompanied by the music of Beau Dommage, and it was a welcomed break from the constant reading, writing and running around of the last previous weeks. I think Gena has pictures of the night (she's a shutter-bug), so I'll see if I can get her to send them to me and I'll post them here. It was quite the sight to see two Germans, an Austrian and three Americans eating tourtiere and sucre a la creme while listening to Beau Dommage...

Road Trip Video!

Our friend Judith, who came on the road trip with us, compiled some of the footage and photos we took to make a two part video! Check them out below. They were uploaded to youtube.com. Just search for "Berta Rockwell".

Day 4 - April 19th

After a night on the town at a bar called Cheeky Monkeys (where, by the way, a Canadian girl who works as a receptionist introduced poutine to the menu!), we all slept very well and felt pretty good the next morning. We had another family breakfast, did the dishes, and cleaned out Bertha (she was long overdue). We spend the day exploring Byron Bay. It's a small town that caters mostly to tourists, surfers and hippies. We had bought a thirty pack for that day and managed to consume the whole thing by the end of the night. We checked out some shops, bought some groceries and some people bought clothes. We spent part of the day at Belongil Beach near our camp site and before the sun went down we took off toward Surfer's Paradise.

Day 3 - April 18th

This morning we left Coffs Harbour. Having taken my shower the night before, I waited for the others to clean themselves off, especially Marco, Halley and Ryan who slept on the beach and were now thouroughly crusted in sand. Judith and Halley cooked breakfast, which consisted of toast, eggs, fruit and coffee. We ate at slow pace, being in no particular rush and enjoying our morning. Our next stop would be Byron Bay which was a solid 3.5 hours away. It was my day to drive, and just as we hit the road and were leaving town, the crew saw a sign in the shape of a giant banana that read, appropriately, The Big Banana. Quickly scanning her tourist map, Judith found a section on this attraction and decided we should stop and check it out. So having gone a whopping half kilometre, we were stopped again to explore a banana plantation, museum and souvenir shop. It was actually really cool. We got some cheap bananas, banana ice cream, frozen bananas dipped in chocolate, and a stuffed lemur who become the 7th member of our traveling circus. You might say we went bananas! (I know, but I had to say it.) After an hour or so, we hit the road again and made it to Byron Bay in one session. We got a camping lot for the night so we could shower (for the first time in two days) and a power outlet. We spent the day at the beach again, and at night we retired clean, fed and tanned.

One big banana! And some smaller ones beside him...

A lizard in The Big Banana parking lot who apparantly served a tour of duty

The beach at Byron Bay

Bertha resting at our camping lot

Byron Bay lighthouse

Day 2 – April 17th

Today we woke up at 7am. Naturally, to the light of the sun glaring through the drawn curtains and the sound of early-bird beach-rats, fisherman and old people who apparently must wake up at this hour or risk not waking up at all. We took turns showering in cold water and brushing our teeth. As we had an early start to the day, we decided to make breakfast a 45 minute meal as a family. After doing the dishes and cleaning out the caravan, it was time to hit the road. We said our final goodbyes to our one night neighbors, wished them luck and headed out. Ryan was our driver for the day, and Coffs Harbour was our destination. The scenery was beautiful, even more so than the rock walled stretch of the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Newcastle. When we got there we found another caravan park near the beach. This time though, the showers were outdoors, right at the edge of the parking lot along the path that leads to the beach. Really they were just showers for swimmers to rinse the saltwater off their bodies, but for us they were our only means of getting clean. Spent the rest of the day at the beach. I took my shower that evening when there were no strangers around, and the crew thought I was such a hippy nudist. The next morning though, the rest of the boys had to do it in broad daylight, so the joke’s on them. The beach was great, of course. Clean, pristine sand, blue ocean water. It was a nice sunny day too. We didn’t do much in town except pick up a few provisions. After that we packed up and headed for our next stop, Byron Bay.

Images

I've been aware for some time that most images I've posted since last month will not enlarge as they used to. This is not a problem with my blog only as other blogs also have the same issue. I've done some research, and the problem seems to lie in the new system blogspot transferred to a while ago. Things are done differently now, apparently. My research also indicated that there's not much I can do about it, apparantly. This is a particular nuissance to me (and all of you who want to see my purdy pictures, of course) because I have a volume limit with my current ISP. What that means is that after a certain amount of mb's downloaded or uploaded, I will be paying per mb of data transfer. In essence, uploading these images costs me about 1.7mb per image, give or take, yet all I get is a thumbnail on my blog that has maybe 300kbs worth of pixels (less than a 5th the quality, same price). This is not cool. I have half a mind to not post any pictures, but then my blog would suck. And no one would come see it, and I'd lose all my friends, and my family would disown me. So instead, I will diligently try to find a way around this. This will take some time and experimentation, and may not work at all. But if it does, you'll be able to see full-sized pictures again. In all likelyhood I will not be able to make any changes retroactive. If I can I will, of course. But I'm just going to focus on getting future images to enlarge properly. In the meantime, enjoy my entertaining stories and their pint-sized visual sidedishes.