family – Page 3 – dangermouse.net

Are we in for more rain? Yes, we are

Yesterday was not only Scully’s birthday, but my sister-in-law’s, so today we went out for a Sunday brunch with my wife’s family to celebrate.

We had a bit of trepidation, because it was at a cafe by the beach, and looking at Google Streetview it looked like the outdoor tables were protected only by flimsy sun umbrellas, whereas the weather forecast was for storms. We assumed we must have had the outdoor area booked, because we’d be bringing Scully. Checking the weather radar before leaving, it looked like we might be lucky, with a storm line moving through but clear air behind it. Indeed, it poured on us while we drove over there, but stopped by the time we got there. But we needn’t have worried, because they gave us a table well under cover – they allowed dogs into a large area under the cover of a patio awning.

Looking at the menu, I decided on eggs benedict (my usual go-to when eating out for breakfast). But then I saw a woman at an adjacent table being served a delicious looking plate of something, with a visible poached egg and a pile of chopped tomato. I checked the menu and concluded it must be the “halloumi bruschetta”, so I ordered that instead. And then when my dish arrived it was nothing like what that woman had received! I’d obviously made a mistake in assuming what it was, and so I ended up with neither my first choice meal nor the dish that looked amazingly good. Fortunately what I had was also perfectly fine, so no real complaints, just an amusing story.

After the brunch the rain held off, so I went for a walk with my wife and Scully along the beach to the centre of the suburb. There was a Sunday market on to look at, and I tried some gelato from a new place that looks like a high class Italian gelateria. They had some very interesting flavours to choose from. I tried the Black Forest (I can never go past Black Forest), and the pavlova with berries. After carefully shaping each scoop into the paper cup, another staff member wiped the freezer display case clean of any stray drips or blobs of gelato, to keep the entire thing looking immaculate and pristine. I’ve never seen that at a gelateria before! It was very good. I’ll have to go back again and try more of the flavours.

Back home, I managed to get my run in before the rain settled in for the remainder of the afternoon and evening. We’re supposed to get another 100 mm or more of rain over the next week. And it’s worse news for the flood-hit regions further north, which are expected to get much more rain than that. The TV news tonight said the worst-hit regions were now expecting another 80–160 mm in the next 6 hours, to be followed by more in the next days. The Bureau of Meteorology says that another east coast low pressure system seems to be developing – the same type of system that caused the ridiculous amounts of rainfall and flooding a few weeks ago. And this is with the land already now saturated. I guess we’ll see how it develops.

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A busier Christmas Day

Getting things out of the way early, I did my 2.5k run first thing this morning. On the way out, I noticed one of my neighbours setting up a picnic in the park across the street. When I’d finished my run and returned home, he was all set up, and minding the site until his family arrived. I asked if I could take a photo to show people what an Aussie Christmas morning looks like:

It was already warm, and best to stay in the shade. He said they were going to do brunch, and pack up by midday, to avoid the heat of the middle of the day.

After completing my run and stretching exercises, my wife wanted to take Scully out for a walk before we packed up and headed to her mother’s place for Christmas lunch. We took Scully down to the waterside park near us, and back. Then because we’d gotten all hot and sweaty walking, we had showers, before packing the car and driving over to my mother-in-law’s place.

Christmas lunch was a traditional roast turkey and vegetables, sliced ham, and also the lentil nut loaf that I’d cooked yesterday, with my home made tomato relish. And for afters we had two desserts: a chocolate hazelnut pavlova (from La Pav), and a Christmas pudding, with choice of ice cream and/or cream. Most of us had a piece of both. And then we retired to the sofas and people had coffee, served with Christmas fruitcake and chocolates.

Yeah, I’m still pretty full, and won’t need to eat any dinner tonight! We also have a lot of leftovers. And of course gift goodies. Mostly we got food stuff – nice treats to eat and actually use, rather than gifts that nobody is sure if anyone else really wants.

Scully got a bag of goodies too, including some new dog toys, some yummy treats, and… an art set from Picasso Paws! This is a kit with a couple of small canvases, tubes of paint, and ziplock bags that you seal the canvas and paint inside. You smear peanut butter or whatever on the outside of the bag and your dog licks it smearing the paint all over the canvas, to create a cool artwork. We’ll try it some time over the next few days and I’ll show you the results.

After a few hours of lounging around, digesting in the afternoon heat, we headed home. Actually it wasn’t too hot today, only 29°C. I’ve had a lot of much hotter Christmas Days in the past. The weather is actually supposed to turn tonight and be cooler and rainy for the next few days.

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Low key anniversary

Today is our 25th wedding anniversary. We’d planned, a couple of years ago, to take a big trip to Europe, and spend our anniversary somewhere nice – maybe Venice or Vienna or something. And have a really fancy dinner at a good restaurant.

Well, thanks COVID. Of course we’re just sitting at home. And tonight I had the last tutorial session of the UTS image processing course that I’m helping teach, so we couldn’t even go out for dinner. My wife took the day off work, and I tried to book a fancy restaurant for lunch. I tried about a dozen top class restaurants in Sydney, but not a single one of them opens for business on Mondays. So in the end I chose a nice, but not really fancy, restaurant close to home, so we could just walk there. It’s actually the same restaurant that we ate in the night before we got married, and we’ve had a few anniversary dinners there, so it was kind of fitting to revisit it for this anniversary.

Apart from that, my day was rather hectic. I did the last online ethics class of the week on the topic of enhancing sports performance. I scrambled to make a new Irregular Webcomic! strip in time for tonight’s update. And I dealt with a lot of questions from students about the final project for the image processing course. They were asking stuff right up to the last minute of the scheduled tutorial time tonight.

At least tomorrow should be a bit less busy.

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Post-lockdown family lunch

This being the first weekend after COVID lockdown restrictions have eased in Sydney, it was the first time since June that we’ve been able to visit family. My mother-in-law put on a small lunch for us, plus my wife’s sister and brother, and a nephew (the sister’s son). We drove over there, and it seemed everybody in Sydney had pretty much the same idea, to finally get out of the house and visit family, or possibly to go to the beach since it was a nice sunny day. Either way, everyone was on the road, and the traffic was the worst I have experienced, not just since lockdown began, but for many a year. It was really horrible.

But we had a nice lunch, with my mother-in-law preparing some grilled chicken, roast vegetables, and salad ingredients, which we had with bread rolls for an informal sort of meal – assembling sandwiches on our bread rolls. My sister-in-law brought a range of delicious tarts from a local bakery, which we shared by cutting them into bite sized pieces. And we all caught up on what we were all doing – I told them about the recent work I’ve been doing with Outschool classes and also the university teaching work. Oh, and Scully was super excited to see the other family members too for the first time in months.

We had to leave early, because now I have classes to teach from 5pm (normally we hang out later after lunch and end up getting home around 6pm or so). I had 2 ethics classes tonight, plus week 4 of the Creative Thinking and board game design class. We’ve converged and assembled some ideas for how the game works in a bit of detail. Now I have to put together a file with some game pieces and a board that the students can print out, plus a first draft of the game rules. I’ll upload it so they can download and print it, and try playing some games with their friends and family before the next class, in which we’ll refine the design.

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Mother’s Day lunch

Being Mother’s Day here in Australia, we had a family day today. In the morning, my wife and I took Scully on a long walk to let her get some energy out. Then we drove over to my wife’s mother’s place, picking up a lemon meringue pie on the way from the really nice Italian bakery. We had pizzas for lunch, and then the pie. We hung out for some of the afternoon with her family, before heading home for the evening.

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Anzac Day Sunday

Today is Anzac Day, Australia’s (and New Zealand’s) day of remembrance for our war dead. Since it falls on a Sunday this year, we don’t get a public holiday, at least not in New South Wales – some states get a public holiday tomorrow.

We had a lunch with my wife’s family, at a Thai restaurant. They had massaman curry duck, which we ordered and it was really good.

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Easter Sunday lunch

Today was a family day, being Easter Sunday. My wife’s immediate family always has a gathering for lunch. My mother-in-law made roast chicken and vegetables, followed by butterscotch pudding. I brought my sourdough challah (see yesterday) and also made a salad of rocket, pear, walnuts, and blue cheese. My wife’s brother brought chocolate Easter eggs and little bunnies from a fancy chocolate shop near where he lives. We have these every year and they’re really delicious, filled with ganache of various flavours. There’s even a “hot cross bun” chocolate, filled with apple and cinnamon ganache.

Given this big lunch, we’re only having a light and non-complicated dinner back at home tonight. My wife is having leftover lentils from yesterday, while I’m making some grilled cheese sandwiches.

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More birthday events

Today we had a Sunday lunch with my wife’s family – a larger event than the usual family gathering as it was for her grandmother’s 98th birthday, and various uncles and cousins who we don’t see very often were there too. It was at a restaurant in a park by one of the beaches on Sydney Harbour, and it was a lovely autumn day, warm without being too hot. Lots of people were having picnics on the grass, and kids were running around playing and dogs were having fun and the sun was sparkling off the water and the yachts in the nearby marina were basking in the light.

And the food was really nice too. It was one of those extended lazy lunches – the sort of thing that happens when a large group goes to a restaurant, and everyone chats and nobody actually gets around to ordering food for nearly an hour. I was glad my wife suggested we have a snack before before leaving home to drive over there.

That really ate up most of the day. I did some housecleaning work in the morning, and that was about it.

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Christmas lunch, etc.

It’s Christmas Day. I slept in a bit this morning, but then got up to glaze the ham for Christmas lunch. We had a gathering of just 7 people at my mother-in-law’s place, to keep within the current COVID restrictions of no more than 10 people.

It’s a traditional lunch with roast turkey, baked ham, roast vegetables, followed by Christmas pudding. And chocolates and various other sweet treats. It’s very filling. For dinner tonight I basically just had a couple of slices of toast.

Gifts were pretty low key. Mostly people got comestibles such as mustards, sauces, pickles, chocolates, gingerbread shortbread, and so on. All stuff we know each other likes, and can use.

That’s basically the whole day. Merry Christmas from me, and Scully!

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Sourdough conclusion

It’s Christmas Eve, and that meant some cooking tasks. First cab off the rank was completing the sourdough Sourdough and Conjunctionthat I began yesterday.

After rising overnight at room temperature it looked like this (compare to the pre-rising photo from yesterday):

It rose nicely, more than doubling in size, but spread out and went a bit gooey. The next step was to try to manipulate it into a rough loaf shape on a baking tray. This was tricky because it had become quite sticky, and I needed a bit of flour dusting on my hands, and a butter knife to scrape it all off, but I finally managed to produce this:

I consulted my friend who’d gifted me the starter and he said it looked like it had been a bit overproofed. Which he said would make it sticky and not rise as much during baking, and quite sour, but should still taste good. He suggested letting the final rise happen in the fridge, which I did.

A few hours later I baked it, and after 40 minutes it turned out like this:

The bottom (not shown) was nice and browned, but the top had a pasty look. It was firm, and sounded hollow on tapping, which indicated it was baked properly, so I let it cool. Then came the moment of truth:

It was baked through, not doughy in the middle. Yes, it hadn’t risen much during baking, and so was a bit dense rather than airy. But cutting some slices and having them with a bit of butter…

It was indeed delicious! Nicely sour, and very more-ish. So it turned out edible and delicious, which is all I could ask for in a first attempt. My friend advised me to to try letting it rise for a shorter time next time, and then baking it in a hotter oven to try to brown the top a bit more. I knew sourdough would be a learning experience, but I’m happy to have achieved something worth eating on the first try. Hopefully things will just improve from here.

The next thing I had to do was make some mini-quiches, in preparation for Christmas lunch tomorrow. COVID cases have been apparently under control the past couple of days, and the NSW Government announced a slight easing of restrictions for Christmas Day, to allow people to gather with their families in the lower risk regions of the Northern Beaches (which is where my wife’s family lives). The high risk region is still under a strict lockdown, but what this means is we can travel to my in-laws for Christmas lunch as planned.

After I made the quiches, we did a quick run over in the car to drop things off, since tomorrow we’ll be wrangling an entire leg of ham. We drove over during peak hour, on a work day, on one of the most notoriously busy and congested roads in Sydney… and it was eerily quiet and deserted. Almost nobody is travelling into the Northern Beaches region, which is good to see.

Finally, Christmas Eve is traditionally the day my side of the family gathers together. But today with the various COVID restrictions, that wasn’t possible, so we had a big Zoom meeting instead. We had 8 separate groups, including my aunt in Germany, in on the call, and it was hilarious and fun.

It’s a bit of a weird Christmas Eve – one of very very few I’ve ever spent not together with my extended family. The end of a weird year.

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