Thanksgiving The Aussie Way

Trial and Error

About a week ago, John and I decided hat we should try to make our own Thanksgiving dinner. Our families are far away, but we still wanted to feel a bit of home by attempting to make all the classic Thanksgiving dishes. First things first, I had to make a schedule for the days cooking. I knew if I hadn't that we would most likely eat potatoes for an appetizer (entree) and rolls for dessert.

All Day Cooking

11:00 take turkey out of fridge and pat dry

11:15 put turkey in fridge without cover

1:15 step 1 and 2 of bread rolls recipe

1:40 let dough sit and rise

3:00 do step three of bread rolls recipe

3:15 take turkey out of fridge

3:20 let bread rolls rise

4:00 cut up bread and cook ‘crumbs in oven

4:10 make stuffing on stove – then refrigerate

4:15 put ingredients in turkey

5:00 put turkey in oven

4:40 cut up potatoes

5:30 lower oven temp to 176

5:15 put potatoes in oven

6:15 uncover potatoes and continue baking

6:30-6:45 take turkey out of oven

6:40 take potatoes out of oven

6:40 put green bean casserole in oven

6:50 put rolls in oven to heat up

7:10 everything should come out of the oven now if it hasn’t already

John had to work on Thursday. He wanted to come home and help though, so I emailed him this timeline. His response was Holy Cow!!!! The preparations actually began a few days in advance. To our Aussie friends, I assure you this is quite normal.... I made a total of 7 trips to the grocery store in 4 days. The thrift store (opp shop) was good to me this week with some fantastic serving dishes. So enough writing... Here is the photo log from the two days.

Grocery Shopping

In Australia, both pumpkins and squash are known as pumpkins. So it was very hard to find a pumpkin for pumpkin pie.

In Australia, both pumpkins and squash are known as pumpkins. So it was very hard to find a pumpkin for pumpkin pie.

It took me several days to find a turkey!

Cooking

I've never made a pumpkin pie before.

Be the pumpkin!

Here goes nothing.

Also another first, I bought vanilla beans. It was sort of fun to figure out how to use them.

I don't believe people when their cooking photos are all clean. This is my kitchen when I cook.

And the turkey!! It worked.

John helped cook a whole lot, unfortunately we don't have any pictures of him in the kitchen.... He left work at 3:00 on his bike to get home and help. Unfortunately he got a flat tire. It is a good thing he carries a spare bike tube with him at all times. Then he got another flat tire.... Do you carry around two spare tubes? Neither does he. So he walked to the nearby train station and got home an hour and a half later :-(. It should've taken him 20 minutes to ride home. Despite all that, he came home ready to work!

Relaxing

Dinner was in the oven and we needed some air-conditioning. Now I know why Aussies actually don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Forget the fact that it has nothing to do with their heritage. It's because November is freaking hot! 32 degrees C (~90 degrees F) with the oven on all day, it was brutal. So we gave in and turned the air-conditioning on for a little while

My Thanksgiving memories all include A Christmas Story playing in the background on TV. So it had to be included. P.S. Our roommate has never heard of it! Before Christmas, I will get him to watch it. You can't understand America without it!

 Dinner

Our Aussie roommate Michael joined us for the evening. Trevor, his dog, tried his hardest to join us as well.

The food, all homemade from top to bottom: Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Bread Rolls, Stuffing (still covered) Turkey, Scalloped Potatoes,  Green Bean Casserole.

This is how the kitchen looked afterwards.... So many leftovers and so messy!

Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Pie. The crust completely sunk into the pie. It looked horrible, but tasted amazing.

Too bad I can't say the same for the pumpkin pie. None of us could manage to take more than one bite. I decided to have a little fun with it.

 This definitely wasn't the Ramig/Carlson or the Drake celebration that we have come to know and love, but we had a fun evening. I am not sure Michael, our roommate, understands the holiday anymore than he did before; but he enjoyed an excuse to eat a tone of food! Everything surprisingly turned out delicious.... except for that pesky pumpkin pie! Next year John gets to make it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Camping and Climbing trip to the Wolgan Valley

Carrie and I took off for some camping and rock climbing over the long labour day weekend. We went to the Wolgan Valley, which is a wilderness area on the western edge of the Blue Mountains, just a few hours drive from our house.

The Wolgan is like a smaller version of Yosemite- it's a giant wilderness area, but most everyone visits a central valley and camps along a river surrounded by large cliffs. It's a mini-mecca for climbers and hikers, but the valley fills up with picnicking families. If you squint, you can pretend you're in an alternate Yosemite, with eroding sandstone cliffs instead of granite, kangaroos and wallabies instead of bears, and kids on motorbikes instead of the Yosemite valley traffic.

The Wolgan Valley, shot from the road as it drops down to the valley floor

The only reason there is a road into the Wolgan is that there was an extensive series of coal and shale oil mines in the early 1900's. There is a series of industrial ruins from this activity that are now tourist attractions: ovens where the coal was made into coke for the steel industry and processing plants where things like candles were made out of the shale oil. If you like looking at piles of old bricks, this is the place for you.

John by the line of coke ovens

More bricks. I think they made paraffin here.

There's a lot of abandoned old crap, including some cars.

Onward

No Carrie, I won't give you a push.

We set up camp, and excitedly took pictures of kangaroos and wallabies. They were everywhere.

Our home for the weekend

Can you see the nose of her Joey?

If you couldn't tell, I was less than impressed by the ruins- I was excited about the rock cliffs. I particularly wanted to climb the largest and most prominent cliff in the valley, Old Baldy.

Old Baldy. Two large series of cliffs with a tree-covered ledge at half height

I set my heart on climbing a famous old route called Excalibur, first climbed in 1968 by John Ewbank, the granddaddy of Australian climbing. It climbs right up the guts of the upper cliff of Old Baldy, and it's the kind of prominent headwall route that fills climbers daydreams with thoughts of glory. Carrie was up for the adventure, but this climb was rated grade 18 (5.10b ish), which is near her comfort limit, and it was going to be a long day of climbing on an unknown (to us) route. So we made a deal- I would lead all the pitches and haul our small bag so that she could climb each pitch without any extra weight.

The upper cliff of Old Baldy. There are two prominent crack lines: a right-leaning crack on the left third of the wall, and another crack on the right third. We climbed a line in-between these- a faint right-leaning crack that runs right up the middle of this wall.

Before we could even attempt the climb on the upper cliff, we had to get to there. We climbed a route on the lower cliffs called Secret Swinger- a nice looking corner crack.

Secret Swinger- our access route up the lower cliffs.

After two pitches on Secret Swinger and a bit of a scramble up the halfway ledge, we found the start of Excalibur. For a grand line that climbs straight up the guts of an impressive headwall, the first pitch leaves a bit to be desired. It's a crummy looking sandy corner, with one hard move to gain the belay ledge. Carrie described it as a vertical sandbox.

Thrashing up the chossy first pitch. Early Aussie climbers liked to mark the start of their climbs with white paint. Here the "E" marks the start of Excalibur. I don't like how it mars the rock, but it does help with the routefinding.

 However, above the layer of poor rock was a beautiful headwall of good rock split by an obvious crack. I giddily jammed my way up, enjoying the experience of plugging nuts  and hexes into placement after solid placement. There aren't any comfortable belay ledges on the route and I started running out of gear after about 40m, so I built a semi-hanging belay and hauled our bag with the tag line. We weren't carrying much besides some water, snacks, and survival stuff (rain gear, topo, compass, etc.), so hauling the bag was easy.

Building an anchor for the belay. Here, I've placed a hex and a cam as a start to a 4-piece anchor. It may not look like it, but each of these pieces can hold many hundreds of pounds of force.

Exposure!

After another long pitch of enjoyable crack climbing and a dirty slab at the top, we were on the summit. We enjoyed the views and the feeling of solitude, despite the hordes of campers and motorbikes in the valley below us.

Obligatory summit shot.

Time to descend. I'm wary of abseiling unless it's really necessary- I suppose I've read too many accident reports. Too many experienced and competent climbers have died in abseiling accidents because of small lapses in judgement. We topped out at 3pm so we had plenty of daylight, so we decided to walk off the back of old baldy. We walked off to the left (looking out) and found a series of cairns marking a path back to the halfway ledge through a series of little slot canyons.

Squeezing through these little slots was fun. The cairns petered out at the halfway ledge, and the few possible trails that we tried ended at cliff faces. There's probably a safe walking trail to the valley floor, but we couldn't find it. (I'm guessing the walk back to the valley traverses the halfway ledge?). We had spent some time looking at all the little slot canyons, so It was getting uncomfortably close to sunset. We decided to make our way back along the halfway ledge to find the abseil anchors at the top of Secret Swinger. After one 55m rap, we were on the ground and on our way back to the tent.

We made it back to camp just after sunset, with headlamps shining and with hexes clanging. The neighboring camping party had been worried about us when we hadn't returned by dark, so the kids ran over to greet us when their heard our clanging. It was adorable. Even better, their parents invited us to share their dinner of salad, stew, pasta, and fancy chocolates around a campfire. Carrie and I were touched by their friendly hospitality, and we thoroughly enjoyed relaxing by the fire and eating a good meal with new friends. We even got to hear part of the kids' bed-time stories- James and the Giant Peach. It was an unexpected by entirely pleasant ending to our day.

Don't Stress - We're Here.

Got an itch to hear about our latest adventures?

photo by Mike Drake

Let me take care of that.

Hey Everyone, 

    My apologies for not posting in a while. Since our last post on March 9, 2013 (wow it has been a while), John's parents came to visit, John and I have been on a trip back to the states, I've had two exhibitions, we've gone on about 1,000 rock climbing day trips and added some things to our humble abode. I feel like this most of the time....

You see, now I'm getting ahead of myself showing photos of our trip to the Great Barrier Reef. I think I will just tell you what's been happening in chronological order. Hopefully I can remember things in that order. Maybe I will just show you some cool pictures.

Sunset at Mt Piddington from a camping trip last March.

Carrie Plays Soccer

I joined a soccer local soccer team. It was a blast and a great way to get to know some locals.

John's  Parents Visit Aussieland

No! Those aren't John's parents.... Those are just some adorable Roos that we saw on our trip to Queensland with his parents.

There we go, that's better. Here they are getting a tour of John's field site at work.

We did a bunch of things while they were here. We went to Queensland to visit the Great Barrier Reef and the Rainforest.

Sunset on the beach outside our renal in Port Douglas.

On our way to the Reef.

Fish Feeding.

Some Clown Fish and a Giant Clam.

Feeding Roos at the Wildlife Sanctuary in Port Douglas, QLD.

Apparently, you can't take us anywhere.

Sunset at the Three Sisters in Katoomba, NSW.

John's Birthday

John decided he wanted to do the climbing challenge on his birthday. The challenge is to do the same number of climbs as number of years old you are. Since he is getting up there in age (I love you honey!), we had to camp the night before so that we could get an early start. Down here in the southern hemisphere, it is still winter on John's birthday in May. My lips were blue the entire time! Some of our smarter friends came to join us during the day for some fun climbing. It was a blast, and believe it or not John was able to do 30 climbs in one day! Yay! 

John before his first climb of the day.

Chelsea on a climb. 

Me climbing with Danielle belaying.

I'll spare you the rest of the photos from that day. 30 climbs in one day for anyone is not a visually appealing sight. 

Here is John with one of his birthday presents. I made him some climbing hold mugs to help exercise his pinching muscles in the morning.

Around the House Work

John and I decided to start a vegetable garden at our house. Our landlord is awesome, he usually let's us do whatever we want. 

We weren't very smart in planning this garden. Both of us left for a trip to the states not long after it was planted. We came home to a huge amount of lettuce.... that we are still trying to eat as more is growing crazy fast out there. (sorry I don't have any photos of that.)

Visit to the States

John and I independently took a trip to the states. He was attending a conference and visiting family. I was visiting family and graduating from school. I mostly have photos from my end of the trip; so please forgive me for showing off my awesome family. 

My luggage consisted mostly of artwork. Who needs clothes?

It's a good thing Threadless had a huge sale just before my trip. I could just buy clothes and have them sent to my sister's house.

First I went to St. Louis to see my sister, brother-in-law and niece. Ashlyn, my niece, and I got our craft on...

 First, Ashlyn and I decided to make a wind chime. We used this tutorial. After putting the beads in a baking tray, we melted them on the grill, waited for them to cool, drilled holes at the top, tied string through them and connected them to a Kinex frame. 

Melting Beads

Melted Bead Wind Chime with Kinex Frame

Closeup of melted beads.

Ashlyn then wanted to sew a pillow. She had a bunch of leftover fabric from a previous project, so we made a body pillow. I think Heidi, their dog, fell in love immediately. I wonder if it became her dog bed.

Next, we tried to make a banner from melted crayons using this tutorial. Yea, that didn't work. I think the wax paper didn't adhere to the crayon. It still made a cool design. Until it fell apart.

The last project left us with half size crayons. We all know that half sized crayons are the worst. They don't really fit in your hand, so you are forced to hold them tighter which results in them breaking even smaller. That results in them sitting in your drawer until summer rolls around and they melt. Parents get mad, you have ruined furniture, it's a 'life fail moment.' No one wants that to happen, so we decided to try and melt the crayons down to make bigger swirly colored 'new' crayons.

Before Melting

After Melting

 That's all you ask? No way! Once Ashlyn and I get going, we are machines. We made her a hat.

We also made Kelly a purse, some project bags and a purse for me. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of those yet. By the way, we did leave the house a whole bunch and hung out with my sister, brother-in-law and Mom who also came to visit. We went swimming, shopping, exploring, all sorts of other things. Sadly, I didn't document any of that.

School and Graduation

After my trip to my sister's, it was time to get down to business. I had to finish school and exhibit my final artwork for the completion of my MFA degree. More on that can be found here. Here are just a few pictures from that week.

A photo of my exhibition at night.

My graduation was really special because it is an incredibly intimate presentation. Only the MFA students in the Visual Arts department are being honored. The faculty give personalized testimonials for each graduate and then families are invited to present the graduate with their diploma.

The Graduating Class

My advisor giving the most incredible speech about my time at VCFA.

Ashlyn giving me my diploma.

My parents giving me my diploma.

My family at Graduation.

After graduation, my family and I had a few days to spend in Montpelier so I took them on a few hikes.

Visiting Kathryn in L.A.

Flying to the US from Australia means you have to go through some western city. This time, I chose Los Angeles so that I could visit Kathryn on my way back. We did all sorts of stuff, but mainly had a blast just hanging out again. 

Back In Australia

As soon as John and I were home, we went climbing right away. 

John found an older version of our climbing guide on one of our days out. He now sits around the house referencing both books to plan our next trip.

Meanwhile, I have been building things for around the house.

I hope this was a good peak into the past few months of our lives. Stay tuned for a post about the hassles of getting a credit card, internet in the modern age, bush fires in the Aussie summer and others. 

Cheers,

Carrie