The Australian Hamburger/Hot Dog

Us Americans think of the hamburger or hot dog as the cornerstone food for our ballgames, when we want to grab something to eat on the go, and generally as one of our every-day foods. Here in Australia, they have something a bit different. It's the meat pie.

Now when I first arrived here I was anticipating that it would be something like the Cornish meat pies that I had in the UK... they aren't. The meat pies here are miniature pies that fit in your hand and are filled with minced meat, sometimes steak, chicken, or other mystery meat. The meat is accompanies by gravy, onions, fungus, and other veggies. They are usually topped with tomato sauce (their equivalent to ketchup) and are much like a chicken pot pie.

Another version of the pie is a sausage roll which is a popular breakfast food as well as party snack. When I heard of these I was actually quite excited - in my mind I anticipated they'd be a sort of egg McMuffin rolled in pastry. Once again, I was wrong. They are merely a roll of sausage in pastry, which is typically smothered in BBQ or tomato sauce to give it some flavor. (Don't get me started on the different bacon and sausage

I have tried a couple different types and will be honest and say I'm not too impressed. True, the party pies can be quite good if you are looking for something small to eat. (Party pies are bite sized versions with a completely mysterious mixture of meat and ?) However the larger ones that I have had definitely have not met expectations.

To give you some statistics... Australians eat 12 meat pies a year on average. They are topped by their neighbors to the East who consume 15 pies a year. Now consider that these things have an average of 15 to 35 grams of fat per pie, and you might begin to see why Australia is the fattest country in the world.

Jenni - I'm dedicating this blog to you as you gave me the idea. I hope the pies shown on the Food Network are a bit better than the ones we have here!!

Blue Mountain Day Trip

So as this session is has been keeping me busier than I ever expected to be, it is always nice to be able to get away and forget about everything sometimes... I was able to do this last Saturday when a few friends and I took a quick road trip up to the Blue Mountains.

Now, for those who don't know - the weather has been complete shit here. It's been rainy and cold (I even brought out the wool coat today), so I was very excited to wake up to a sunny day on Saturday.

At around 1 we jumped in the car, and after a couple wrong highways, found our way up to the 'mountains'. I put mountains in quotes because in the states they would be more like a plateau or hills. You basically drive uphill for a bit then it flattens out. However while there is the plateau there are also beautiful valleys and gorges. The best comparison I had was the Grand Canyon - only less grand and covered with trees.

This is a popular area to visit and is somewhere I plan to visit more once the weather warms up. :)

Bachelorette Parties - Aussie Style

My good friend Nicole recently eloped to Fiji, so while a bit out of order, we threw her a bachelorette party last night. We started out with fantastic dinner at a pub in Surry Hills called the White Horse. The food was amazing and it started the wine flowing for the next part of the evening... which was pole dancing lessons. :)

Now I must say it sounds bad, but we had a private studio with 7 of our good friends and a teacher. The studio had fun costumes to put on to help the occasion. We learned how to swing around the pole and do some things I never thought I'd be able to do. In a sick and twisted way it reminded me of swinging around the swing set when I was little..

After our lesson we headed to a cool local club for some real dancing and general bachelorette activities (making her do embarrassing things, ask random guys weird questions, etc.). We ended the night dancing at a gay bar, which was quickly followed by a very large greasy slice of pizza.

Today I am surprisingly not too hung over (thanks to the pizza), however am beginning to feel the effects of the pole dancing and am not sure if I'll be able to lift my arms tomorrow. I also have a new optional profession should I ever get really desperate.

My Coaches Would be Proud...

Many of you know that I've been playing basketball in a rec league with some friends here. What you can't imagine is the level of refs... if you've ever played in the states and though your refs were bad - these are worse! To make things more frustrating our team does not have an offense and most people have never really played before.

Now to our credit we still do pretty well, however the league has combined with the bracket above ours and so the competition has gotten better... which means trouble for us. Our games recently have culminated in the refs not calling anything and players becoming more and more aggressive as fatigue and frustration set in. Today was the low point in this as we lost to a team which we could have beaten.

So I've dusted off all my old memories from the days of playing for Steve and Steve, and have recreated our offense. I am quite proud of this, especially considering I did a quick search of offenses which are listed online and couldn't find this one.

For those of you who don't play basketball just think that it has been almost 10 years since I have run this offense, and even though I probably ran it for at least 5-6 years I still think it's an achievement to remember it... now we'll see if I can teach it to my team.

Cliff and Coastal Walks

During my week off before classes I was able to do one of the many coastal walks. There is a path which goes from Bondi all the way to Maroubra... am not sure how far it is but it takes about 2.5 hours to do the whole thing at a brisk walk. Living near Coogee makes it easy because I am at the half walk mark and can either go North or South then take a bus back. :)

On one of my days off I headed south to Maroubra and discovered that I love that walk. Along the way you are forced to walk along the rocks below the houses and there are tide pools, cool sandstone, and overall spectacular views. The path ends at the cliffs above Maroubra and so I was able to sit and relax while eating my lunch (it was one of the few sunny days we've had). So this spurred a bit of a new thing for me... exploring all the 'nature walks' which are found around Sydney.

This last weekend was the Queen's Birthday, so we of course had a long weekend. On Saturday (the only sunny day) I did was is called the Spit to Manly walk... even though nowhere along the way is there a spitting contest to see who can spit to Manly, although that would be entertaining. The walk is a 9.3km walk which all references say takes 3-4 hours to complete. Given my natural speed walking capabilities, I managed it in 2.5 hours. Along the way you go through National Parks with spectacular views back towards the city skyline and out to sea, and there are even a few nude beaches along the path. (Thank God it's winter here and the beaches were empty!!)

All in all, the walk was great exercise and a good way to be get outside and stay within the city. On the way back I took the ferry from Manly back to the CBD (central business district) and just confirmed that the Washington State ferries are my favorites. :)

Anyways, here are a couple pics from the hikes and there are more on my flickr account as usual.