(Guest book crayons!)

So here’s the real wedding post. The one where I skip all the details that took up so much of my thoughts before and tell you the important stuff.  The stuff that still makes me thrilled to this day when I stop a second in the midst of job searches and all the rest and think about that day, and every day since.

(Decor + delicious Turley from my Dad’s collection)

See, I don’t think our mostly self-catered, self-organized, casual setup would work for everyone.  About 10 minutes before our ceremony started, I was wondering whether it was even going to work for us.  I had planned to go back to the pavilion in my wedding dress and help set stuff up, because that’s what I do. I’m a control freak, and hate asking for help, so of course I was going to set the tables, right?  Well, people had other ideas. I was to have an “entrance”, which meant family and friends would be doing the setup.  And you know what? I showed up and everything was gorgeous, everyone was happy, and our families and friends had pulled together and made everything possible.

(Foliage!)

Was it exactly as I envisioned when I was agonizing over program details and centerpieces? No. Did I care? Not one bit.  Because that was the moment I felt like we were really a family, people were rooting for us, and we were incredibly lucky to have such awesome people in our lives. And bloody hell, if that’s not what weddings are all about, then who wants one?

(From the ceremony – my lovely MOH is behind me)

Anyway, this blog post is sort of a one-sided perspective on the whole thing (which honestly is not that uncommon — I think most wedding blogs are written by women, and most discussions of weddings are the same… A shame, really, though after physics, it’s sort of refreshing to actually be in the majority for once.)  But I think James and I felt the same way about this.  Both our families seemed to have a blast, which was the best part — the part we talked about for weeks.  We certainly had fun. And I haven’t even mentioned the thoughtful, funny speeches people put together, the song people wrote for us and sang, and all the words of love and support we got from everyone — some of which were literally sent from the other side of the globe.

For those of you who read this blog who attended the wedding, either in person or in spirit, thank you for being incredible.  We couldn’t have done it without you.

(All photos were taken by our photographer, Jerry of JW Photography. If you want contact details / info on an affordable photographer in Southern CT, just send me an e-mail or leave a comment and I’ll give you contact details.)

We got married in front of a crowd of less than 40 people in a gorgeous state park in CT.  We had no rehearsal, our friend served as officiant, and our only “vendor” was our photographer, who worked in exchange for experience.  In this post, I’ll focus on the details; I’ll save general comments for my next post, as I think they deserve their own space.

My dad was in charge of getting the fire going for s’mores, warmth, and light (all essential, even if the day ended up being gorgeous).  We have some awesome pictures of him prepping the fire before the ceremony.

I don’t have pictures to show of the ceremony itself, because I don’t feel comfortable posting identifiable pictures of people without their explicit permission.  You’ll just have to believe me when I say it was beautiful.  We got everyone to gather around in a spot overlooking the nearby river and woods, and they sort of formed an aisle.  I asked my dad to walk me down the aisle as it formed, and since we skipped the music, P (our officiant /bridesmaid / kickass friend extraordinaire) started humming the bridal march, which made me laugh.  A was my maid of honor, and James had his brother serve as best man. They both read a selection from Madeline L’Engle’s An Irrational Season (a popular choice, I suppose), and my dad read a poem called the Wedding Night, by Bob Hicok, which is beautiful if you’re looking for a reading for your own wedding.  We read our vows, which we wrote from scratch, and I surprised myself with a few tears.  Then, as usual, there were the rings and a kiss.

We sent everyone off to devour a cheese and bread plate James put together that featured locally made cheeses and a few we had first tasted on our travels while we had a few pictures taken.  My grandmother brought us some wild Alaskan smoked salmon all the way from the Pike Place market in Seattle, and we ate this on crackers and Sullivan Street bread James and his family had picked up during their trip from New York.

For the wedding lunch, we had a local Italian market make grilled vegetables and roast chicken, and made the rest of the food ourselves or had people bring potluck contributions.  I made three salads (with lots of help from family and P): a green salad with oven-roasted tomatoes and tzatziki sauce, a fall pasta salad with squash, chestnuts, and a maple dijon vineagrette, and a lemon-mint potato salad with capers.  Everything was served at room temperature, which was the key to self catering. Rachael made a roasted vegetable and bulgur salad (maybe something like this one?) which everyone raved about. My dad brought a really nice selection of red wines, a friend had sent us a box of Cava which we toasted with, and we served sparkling cider, beer, and lemonade in addition.  We followed the lunch with wedding pie, a ginger cake, blueberry boy bait, an apple tart, and tiramisu, much of which our guests contributed.  I swear, I have never eaten so much delicious food in one day!

After that, we played bocce and frisbee, and there were speeches and toasts and s’mores with homemade marshmallows.  P even surprised us with a song she and my dad wrote for us and passed out lyrics to, so everyone could sing! And to top it all off, there was even a wedding hike down to the river, after most of the friends had left and it was just family and out of town guests left to finish the wine and enjoy the last few hours of the day. Glad I skipped the heels in favor of my tevas.

Decorations were pretty simple. We chose dried eucalyptus and lavender flowers, some cloth squares, and crayons and paper people could have fun with and use as contributions to our guest book.

Basically, we tried to make things as easy as possible.  No last minute flower arrangements, no vendors, nothing that might get crushed easily on the way to the park.  And no uberfancy outfits.  Here’s mine (along with our wedding ride — a zipcar, which we used to transport all the decorations to the site):

Not the best photo ever, but the good ones had other people in it, so this’ll do.  I wore an $80 tea-length sundress in ivory from Unique Vintage, which I bought solely because I already had a dress that shape and knew it would fit (I HATE trying on dresses).  With a cropped sweater from Nordstrom, a homemade silver cotton/silk sash, and a homemade silk flower fascinator, I actually felt pretty and comfortable, and really didn’t really care whether or not I got my dress dirty.  It’s not like it had to be dry cleaned or anything.  James wore his good pants (he only has one pair — he’s a shorts man, usually) and a short sleeve black shirt, which I get to see him in whenever something fancy comes up that requires him to dress up.  And most of our guests wore nice casual clothes, so they could join in on the fun.  Parties are better with a little dirt, right?

So, you’ve heard all the details.  I think I want to save my general thoughts about the wedding for the next post — the best parts, really.  I think that deserves its own space.

This is just a sneak preview.  More on our commitment ceremony after I return from yet another conference (in the land of absurdly expensive internet connections).  Hopefully I’ll have some of the professional photos by then, though P took some fantastic ones (like this one)!

I don’t usually respond to the blog world’s equivalent of press releases, but I’m making an exception for this case because I think some of you might be interested.  Brighter Planet, a company dedicated to helping people reduce their carbon footprint, is holding a Sustainable Cooking contest.  The idea is to get people to come up with ways of making cooking more environmentally friendly without sacrificing on taste and post whatever tips they come up with on the site.

I asked Matt Kring, Science Analyst for Brighter Planet, about what inspired the contest.  Since I have a wedding to finish preparing for (in a week — eek!) I’ll just go ahead and tell you what he had to say:

The inspiration for the contest came from a desire to expand the conversation surrounding the impact of food on climate change.  For the average American, their food footprint is actually on par with their transportation footprint, and yet  it receives comparatively little attention.  But not only is there a lot that each of us can to do reduce the impact of our diets, we can do so in a ways that’s a benefit rather than a detriment in terms of quality, flavor, health, and the joy of cooking — we just need inspiration and examples.  And as the incredible energy in the online food community demonstrates, the real power to inspire people doesn’t lie in a stagnant publication, it lies in a living, breathing conversation in which real people share their own stories and experiences.  That’s the aim of this contest — to encourage folks to share their sustainable cooking experiences, and inspire others to conserve in the process.

I’ve been assured that they will continue contributing to this site even after the contest is finished, so even if you don’t feel like entering, you should check back in every so often, because the good tips will keep on coming.

The contest will be judged by the likes of Alice Waters and Gary Hirshberg, among others, and the winner gets a Kindle and a $100 gift certificate to load it up with cookbooks.

I’m writing from a ground floor room in Berkeley with fishbowl windows and a tv the size of my living room, after yet another meeting where I am left confused about what to do.  This one was a small, collaborative meeting, and I was there as a notetaker, essentially — a fledgling scientist with a somewhat cloudy vision of the future of my field from the little I’ve managed to read on the subject in my spare time.

But as is typical for these meetings, I meet people, for a first time, second time, maybe third time… Names refreshed, the awkward dance begins.  What are you doing next, they ask, and I still have no certain answer.  The story comes out different every time, and all of it is true, but I’m sure I come across as a flake.  I wish I could just say I want to be a scientist, but haven’t figured out what kind yet.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t fly with the funding agencies these days.  I need to be focused (and obviously applicable) to be fundable, which is a shame. Science has become a profitable enterprise, with measurable outcomes and a lot of bs about what we’re going to do next.  Let me tell you something: it’s not science if you know what you’re going to do next.  You don’t know what you’ll find along the way.  Like any good recipe, scientific discoveries often start with a bundle of leftovers and a misstep or two. I think we’ve forgotten that, in our constant query, “But what will it do for us?”

I certainly don’t know what I want to do next. I apply for postdocs because I have some lingering interest in this field, and because I do believe on some level that what I do might matter someday, in ways I can’t predict. But beyond the tiny thrill that comes from placing a new level, seeing something new, I am crippled by the sense that this (in a very specific sense) isn’t what I’m meant to do.  What enthralls me is standing in Moe’s this afternoon, picking through books on fluid mechanics and biology, radiation and evolution. I love the complicated stuff, in other words — the interconnections between all these fields, ideas, systems. Nuclear physics isn’t like that.  We consider an isolated system, forget the electrons, forget the outside world.  Yes, the field is relevant — we are, after all, ultimately a product of nuclear reactions in stars — but I guess I’m missing the wonder in my particular corner of science.

Of course, I may have just deluded myself into thinking something else is necessarily better than what I’m already doing here.  I wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake, nor will I be the last.  I just wish I could give something else a try without sacrificing what I already have here.  Because it is a good life, in many respects, the people are fascinating, I like collaborations, and the opportunity to travel the world and meet new people is almost too persistent.  The hours are long, but that’s true of most jobs these days.

And so, I’m left yet again with a dilemma I have no business complaining about.  Which is probably why I’m posting on my (food) blog, which has morphed into a space for random (and sporadic) thoughts.  As a reward to the two people that actually read this thing in search of food, I will say Pie in the Sky near Center and Shadduck in Berkeley has a pretty nice thin-crust slice, the Downtown Berkeley Inn really isn’t bad for the price, and the view from the LBL cafeteria is enough to make me consider selling my soul to the government.  The food isn’t bad either.

Pending some sort of miraculous discovery of the current location of my Canon Powershot’s USB cord, this post will remain picture-free for now.

Yes, there were plenty of harmonicas, and a banjo or two, but the lineup at the George Wein’s Folk Festival 50* was more of a mix of old and new acts that defy categorization than a folk festival in the stereotypical sense.  Sure, Pete Seeger headlined, and the folk tradition was clearly an inspiration for many of the acts, but, really, this festival was just a gathering of musicians who still write their own songs and sound pretty damn good without all the synthesizers and reverb.

We only made it to the Saturday session, because $75×2 plus lodging in Newport, RI isn’t exactly a cheap holiday.  Lucky us, the day was gorgeous and sunny, without too much humidity. It was perfect for sailing, so all the boats were out, which gave Billy the chance to tease the ticket-evading yacht owners perched just off the Fort’s shore for saving their pennies in this wretched economy.  The crowd was surprisingly diverse: families with little kids staked out the shade tents or slathered on sunscreen, a respectable amount of gray hair, local accents (is there a RI accent?), bikini-clad teens, and hipster wannabes all made an appearance in the park that day. I’m not sure what we were, except sunburnt by the end, but the music was worth it.

Tift Merritt was lovely and charismatic, but I spent most of her set (and Gillian Welsh’s) wondering why all female folk singers seem to have red hair and, after a while, a somewhat uniform sound. Can anyone hazard a guess?  Billy Bragg was refreshing after that, and James appreciated a taste of British wit.  He’s more of a storyteller than most of the other performers, so you sort of felt more like you were sharing a beer (or herbal tea, as it were) with him at a local pub than connecting with a giant TV screen.  Once his set was done, we wandered over to listen to Ben Kweller finish up his performance. He is really very small — I mean surprisingly so — but his performance was lively, and as James said, he plays songs that suit him. I highly recommend checking him out (and if you’re in the need of a song to sing at the top of your lungs on a road trip somewhere, Fight is an excellent choice).

The Avett Brothers were playing back on the main stage, and the crowd seemed pretty happy about that, so we thought we’d check them out.  We made it through three songs before we realized we didn’t want to hear anymore… Yes, they sound different, and yes, different is cool (or something), but honestly, they just seemed like they decided singing folky tunes in this semi-angry screechy way would get them a record deal. I guess it worked.

At the Harbor tent, Tom Morello: The Nightwatchmen was playing, and after about half a song, I realized I had had enough egotistical male posturing for one day.  So we wandered over to Waterside, where The Low Anthem was setting up.  This was fortuitous, as The Low Anthem was probably the best find of the festival, at least for me.  They’re Providence locals, have quite a following, and are intense, but in a good way. They play some pretty funky instruments and experiment with styles and sounds in a way that makes me think they’re going to stay around for a while.  So yes, go check them out — the shows are archived, so you have no excuse.

After that, we checked out the Yacht museum for a bit of shade, and wandered over to Iron and Wine.  As much as I love Sam Beam’s music, this wasn’t the place to hear it. They had the mike turned down too low, the crowd was oppresive, and mostly, all we could hear was wood cracking and security guards yelling as people tried to climb over the fence to get just a little bit closer. They should have put him on the big stage, because the vibe just wasn’t right.  We gave up and went back to the main stage, but not before he played a couple of my favorites.

The Decemberists were next, and were a little more upbeat, though the lead singer doesn’t seem to be all that interested in performing anymore. He prefers playing mind games with the audience and repeating the same tired bs stories at each show to actually sharing something with the crowd, which is a shame, because otherwise, it would be a good show.  Oh, and the fluttery strawberry blonde girl they feature on their current album is crap, but maybe she just had too much caffeine and happened to think “hey, it’s a folk festival — where else can I wear a fluttery white hippie costume and dance around like I’ve lost a few too many brain cells to acid back in the day.” I know I’ve had days like that. Well, maybe not the costume part.

We left after that, to make the long drive home.  But not before a slice of pizza and a walk by the infamous Newport mansions.  I warn you: traffic is bad. Walking is much, much nicer.

*aka the Newport Folk Festival, when the lawyers aren’t around

Summer has gotten sticky, wet, and oppressive, like it tends to do here.  The promise of ripe tomatoes straight from the vine makes it bearable, just.

I started buying flowers every week, just because they cheer me up, and I need a little of that at the moment.  I love photographing them, as you might have gathered, and they tend to make mornings a little brighter. It’s something to look forward to: a small indulgence, like coffee at Fuel on Saturday mornings and runs up to the highest point of my city to watch the hawks circle and remember that humidity isn’t the only thing this place has to offer. Now that I don’t have this looming project to finish (oh, aside from the job search, but that’s another post), I’m learning to appreciate these things a bit more. It’s about time, I think.

Now all I have to do is learn to grow them.  The flower industry isn’t exactly environmentally sound, for the most part, and I should learn a bit more about where my flowers come from. But I’ll save that discussion for another post, and note that the farmer’s markets have some pretty ones out now…

Weekends have been / will be busy with all sorts of exciting things, and I’m a lazy poster at the moment. Someday soon I’ll actually post about food.

Because I have to leave the garden, of course.  I’ll keep this short, as it should be when it’s late Sunday night and I have only just finished all the things I wanted to do today. Go check out the garden!

So far, we’ve had good luck with purple pole beans, spring onions (so sweet and delicious I don’t mind eating them raw), sweet nantes carrots, arugula, and lettuce. We did manage to get some dwarf peas (I can’t remember the exact variety) and cranberry beans out of the garden as well, though they were nowhere near as prolific as the purple ones.  I’m guessing purple pole beans are more resistant than the cranberry beans and peas to whatever pests we seem to have in abundance, but have yet to test my hypothesis.

And that’s just the early, cold-loving stuff.  It looks like we’ll have good luck with four different kinds of tomatoes (reisentraube, jaune flamme, red/pink brandywine).  The fifth, the Kellogg’s breakfast variety, was not a fan of all the rain we had earlier and has acquired a nasty case of blight.  I clipped off a bunch of yellow splotchy leaves this weekend on the one plant we stuck in the ground, and gave everything a spray of copper and sesame seed oil to keep aphids from spreading the blight and whatever other nasty fungal diseases wet weather inevitably brings.  This may or may not be related to the fact that it’s not fruiting — all I know is it’s definitely not the strongest variety of the bunch. It’s a beautiful vine, though.

Soon we should also have squash, melons, and ground cherries. Peppers … well, we’ll wait and see.  It always takes them ages to get started up here, because peppers like the cold about as much as I do.  And I’m pretty sure we stunted them somehow… One day, when we can afford heat (or live somewhere a little more pleasant, weather-wise), we might be able to grow peppers. But right now, getting the seeds going on schedule is just not worth an extra hundred gallons of oil.

Yes, I realize, I promised this post a week ago. I apologize. I’ve been entirely too wrapped up in *what to do with my life* (now that I don’t have a job lined up for next year for the first time in my adult life) to think about things like posts and food and, oh, the little things that I really should be paying more attention to.  Like gorgeous beaches, sun (when it happens!), berry picking, and the massive stack of vacation pictures I finally put up on my flickr page.  This first one is from Little Creatures, in Fremantle, which is one of the best places I can think of to have a beer by the sea and dream about living anywhere warmer than CT.  As long as you don’t want a stout, of course, but Australia isn’t really the place for stout anyway.

Perth itself looks like this:

It’s a small city, but it has the most amazing park right near the city center with preserved Bushland and all sorts of gorgeous places to while away the day.

Kings Park aside, Perth was just a good chance to catch up James’s family and go shopping for passionfruit tea and delicious jam donuts and all sorts of other good stuff at the Fremantle Markets and this greek spice market whose name I can’t recall at the moment.  This was good in its own right, but I wanted to see something new, so we ended up heading down to Margaret River for a few days.  We stayed near Yallingup, which is a tiny town a bit north of Margaret River, with cheap campsites and views like this:

It’s nice seeing the sun set over the water again.  There’s also a pretty awesome cave nearby:

It is one of a few sandstone caves in the region, and it was worth a trip, even if we did have trouble getting pretty pictures. We headed down toward Margaret River, as well, to check out the Karri forest (pictures do not capture how awesome this was):

They’re as tall as redwoods, almost, except they all seem to reach the same height, so you feel like you’re under this light, open canopy of green.  It’s the kind of place you’d expect to find fairies if you happened to be five years old and less cynical than I am.

In Margaret River, we stopped for lunch at the Margaret River Bakery, which was cheap and awesome.  I had a burger with the works,

which was something like AU$7 with the chips.  Beetroot, fried egg, and grilled onions were all involved in this masterpiece, and while I was skeptical at first, there is a reason burgers in Australia come with this particular combination.  The beetroot and onion were a sweet counterpart to the savory grilled beef and fried egg, and despite my misgivings, I ended up liking it.  James had a AU$4 pie, chips, and gravy special:

This was proper Aussie tucker, as James would say if he happened to be feeling homesick and in the midst of making pie.  Yes, gravy and chips are brilliant together, if slightly indulgent.

Now, Margaret River is probably not known for its bakery, however delicious our lunch happened to be.  It IS known for wineries and food producers, which happen to be all over the region, which you can go check out if you have a car and an adventurous stomach.  We didn’t do much wine tasting (I was driving — on the wrong side of the road! And James doesn’t drink.)  but we did check out some local cheese producers, a chocolate factory, and an olive oil producer or two.   Olio Bello was my favorite one, I think.  They had new olive oil they had just pressed that week, which was green, fresh, spicy, and tasty. We picked up a bottle to bring back with us, and had to restrain ourselves from buying more.  The liquid ban in airports is cumbersome.  We also checked out The Berry Farm, which makes jams, berry-infused ports and wines, and this incredible sparkling strawberry wine that I seriously would have bought if we could have brought it back.  We also stopped for a coffee on their grounds, since we ran into a guy that said they made “incredible cappucinos”  on our way into the tasting room.  He was right, though the setting might have helped the experience.

Most of the wineries have cafes and restaurants on their property, and this was no exception. I’d say go for lunch and a glass of strawberry wine and just hang out for a little while in the sun, if you have the chance.  If we hadn’t already been eating almost continuously all day, we might have done just that.

It was a different sort of vacation.  You have to understand that you will be driving everywhere, stopping for free food at random little farms and shops all over the place, and spending more money than you really planned on spending.  This wasn’t a bad thing at all, and we balanced it with plenty of beach walks, which I sorely miss here.  (The Long Island sound is just not the same!)  I think I need to look for a job somewhere warmer.

So that’s finally Western Australia, more than a month after our return.  Maybe I’ll even get back to posting about our garden (which is growing like mad), that awesome strawberry rhubarb tart with the easiest crust ever that I made ages ago, or berry picking in CT. You’ll have to wait and see…

Perth seems like another lifetime by now.  I think I’ll save my report on Margaret River for later this week, since I have yet to upload the photos from that trip.  At the moment, I want to talk about strawberry basil lemonade, and the three weeks I spent in nuclear camp.

Yes, you read that right.  I am a nuclear physicist, and in an effort to try to figure out important life questions like what the hell I want to do with my life, I occasionally try new things. This was a summer school on nuclear nonproliferation, which covered everything from cold war nuclear hysteria* to what it would be like to be a UN weapons inspector.  It was awesome. So were my fellow students.  Maybe it was the return to dorm life, or the fact that we spent way too much time in the same classroom together, but I haven’t actually had so much fun since I was an undergrad. Perhaps that’s telling.  But I digress.

My point is that I realized I essentially want to save the world, to put it bluntly, and that I’m not the only one with that ambition.  It’s kind of cool to find out there are other people out there who feel this way, and that they’re talented, motivated, and fun to hang out with to boot.

Don’t worry. I won’t get totally serious on you all of a sudden. I plan on finding a job — any job — that gets us to Europe for a couple of years, before we have too many responsibilities.  The world can wait a little while.

So… Where was I? Oh, right. Lemonade.  It has absolutely nothing to do with this post, except that I was making it while I was thinking about career options today, and it sort of got tangled up with all of this in my head.  That and it’s a delicious accompaniment to a day full of making jam and putzing about in the garden.

*30,000 weapons, US / Soviet Union? Really? You could destroy thousands of worlds with that kind of stockpile…

Strawberry basil lemonade

I’m obsessed with lemon + basil at the moment, because I bought this tiny globe basil plant (with mini leaves) and can’t resist using it whenever and wherever I can.  We went strawberry picking on Sunday at a nearby orchard, and I happened to be making jam when I started craving lemonade, so that’s what this particular combination came from.  I sort of mashed up the strawberries and basil and threw it into the lemonade, chunks and all. You can blend it a little more thoroughly, or strain out the pulp, but try it first as is.  I sort of liked the texture.  Make sure your strawberries are ripe and flavorful.

• 1/2 c. strawberry mash (This consists of ~6 medium-sized strawberries, pressed into a pulp.)
• Juice from 6 small, juicy lemons
• ~1 c. simple syrup (Heat about 3/4 c. sugar in 3/4 cup of water until the sugar dissolves, and let cool). Add this to taste — the amount of sugar you need depends on how sweet your strawberries are and what your personal preference is. Make extra simple syrup if you like things on the sweet side.
• handful of basil, crushed
• 3-4 cups of water.  This is also to taste, as the amount of juice your lemons produce will vary, and you may prefer a stronger or weaker drink.

Mix all ingredients together. Taste and adjust as required. Strain if you want a smooth drink; otherwise, don’t bother. Enjoy cold, preferrably somewhere sunny and warm.

I didn’t plan on writing this one up, so here’s the sole picture, in all it’s cell phone-quality glory:

Thanks for sending it along, PG.  You’re looking at tempura-wrapped squash blossoms stuffed with goat cheese from Matteo’s, in Melbourne’s North Fitzroy neighborhood, which I had as a starter (or entree, as they called the first course).  Yes, it tasted gorgeous, as deep-fried squash blossoms tend to do.  The watermelon and veg balanced the richness of the tempura batter quite nicely, which I would say the restaurant tended to do very well as a whole.

The food at Matteo’s is probably best described as Australian-Asian fusion.  It’s not cheap, but if you’re looking for a nice place to eat in North Fitzroy, it’s worth checking out.  There’s a tasting menu, an a la carte menu (which I ordered from), or, if you’re there for lunch, a two course + wine fixed price lunch deal for $35.

For the main course, I ended up having a decadent mushroom tart with a brioche crust, topped with a poached quail egg, spinach, cherry tomatoes, and a shitake mushroom sauce.  Now, I love mushrooms, so this dish may not be for everyone, but if mushrooms are your thing, you will love the creamy, mushroomy tart filling.  It paired really nicely with the Tasmanian Pinot J picked out for the main course.  Everyone else was pretty happy with their mains, minus those who got the duck.  The duck itself was good, but the Japanese omelet side was a bit on the greasy side, which may be why this particular option has since been taken off the menu.

So, to sum it up: I’d recommend this place if you’re looking to spend some money on a nice meal in Melbourne. The food was excellent and fine dining atmosphere wasn’t uncomfortably posh, which is always a good thing when you’re traveling with someone who refuses to admit he owns a single pair of long pants.

And with that, I’ve finished my report of Melbourne, mostly because we didn’t do much there this trip. We only had a couple of days, and we’ve both been there before, so there wasn’t anything too exciting to write about.  I will say you should check out the Melbourne Museum if you have a chance, because live spider exhibits are the most awesome thing you will ever find in a museum.  One of the first supercomputers is there, too, which I never get tired of checking out. I mean, seriously, memory made of vacuum tubes? How could that not be cool??

Yes, I am a total geek sometimes.

Next, I’ll post on Perth and Margaret River, though it may take me a little while … I’m at a summer school during the next couple of weeks and am learning lots, so the blog is sort of on the back burner for the moment.

This post is for those of you who have never driven down a stomach-wrenchingly windy road just to have a look.  You really should know what you’re missing.  It’s one of those things you should do as often as possible, if only because the crazier and more indirect the route is, the more insanely gorgeous the view.

Of course, there is an easy route, for those of you who are as terrified as I was of driving on the wrong side of the road in a strange car (or perhaps colliding with a tram on the way out of Melbourne, after trying to pull one of those insane right turns). It’s called a tour bus. Yes, it’s cheesy and touristy and blah, blah, blah, but they can occasionally be useful. I think the Great Ocean Road — a mostly coastal road in South-West Victoria, near Melbourne — is one of those times, provided that you are on a small tour bus (no mega-bus, please), and your driver doesn’t take his job too seriously. You know — something along the lines of: “Folks, there’s something worth seeing just down that trail. I’ll be right here having a smoke.”

We took this trip the day after we arrived in Melbourne. Despite a slight headache involving luggage stuck in a cargo hold (United SUCKS, for the record) and an appreciable lack of clean clothing, the full day trip was worth it.  It is designed to take you through a few diverse set of ecosystems and some photogenic geological formations in Australia in a very short amount of time, which essentially means you spend a lot of time sitting on a bus, staring out a window, with occasional 15 minute walk breaks into well-marked tourist havens.  But in the process, you begin to get a sense of the kind of ecological diversity that existed in Australia even in recent history.

You see a tiny swatch of cold temperate rainforest, preserved only because of the lucky eccentricity of one man, surrounded by acres of pine plantation destined for wood chip factories somewhere in the world.  You also see sandstone, build up layer by layer over millenia, and then carved by ocean currents and wind.

And beaches. Of course you see beaches.  I’m pretty sure this one is in Torquay, but I can’t be sure.

And koalas, which you shouldn’t try to pet. Apparently they’re quite mean over in Victoria, though they just looked a bit sleepy to me:

And of course, there were cheesy photo opportunities for busloads of tourists (This entrance to the Great Ocean Road is, according to our tour driver, the fourth one they’ve built. Others have succumbed to fire, trucks, and one other disaster I can’t quite remember? Maybe another fire… I think I would suck as a tour guide):

You also get some kick ass fast food in middle of nowhere Colac (which I’m sure is actually a pretty big town in comparison to some — I mean, it’s a big dot on the map, right?). Who would have thought?

So that’s that. It was a tour with a lot of pretty sights, which are worth seeing if you have a day to spare.  And yes, I’m glad I didn’t drive myself, even if the road wasn’t nearly as bad as the northern stretch of Route 1 in CA.  I do like actually being able to look at something other than the car in front of me.

Next time: a taste of Melbourne before we head off to Perth.  If you want more pictures of the Great Ocean Road, you can find them here.

I’m busy sorting through two SD cards worth of photos from my trip to Australia, so bear with me.  Awesome food in Melbourne, a journey on the Great Ocean Road, and Margaret River treats are coming soon!

I have a sinking suspicion I’ll get more interesting hits for the title of this post than usual. But I’m not sure how to describe it. Blasphemous tart dough? Perhaps. The recipe is from here (I won’t repeat it here), and when I saw the instructions, I headed straight for the kitchen. See, I hate making tart crusts. I screw them up almost every time.  But this one looked simple — foolproof, in fact.

Which is why I messed with the recipe, and sort of stopped following directions at some point. Typical.

I substituted olive oil for vegetable oil, and used 3 oz all purpose flour, 2 oz almond flour instead of just 5 oz. all purpose flour.  I also had no sugar, so I used golden syrup in its place.  Everything else was pretty much the same.  I did not parbake the shell before filling it (with pineapple and quince jam and some canned pineapple we had in the house — we were getting kind of low on supplies before we left).  In hindsight, I really should have done this, but even despite that, it turned out pretty well.  Here’s the tart, just before going in the oven:

The dough did not hold together, which I expected with the almond flour substitution. This is why I don’t have a plated shot — it looked sort of like a fruit cobbler looks after kids attack.  After ~50 minutes of cooking (which would be shorter if I had parbaked, but I digress), the crust was almost shortbread-like, and paired nicely with the fruit.  I will definitely be making this again … Though maybe I’ll follow the instructions next time.

** I’m on vacation at the moment, and won’t be responding to comments.  This is also the last post I managed to cobble together before I left.  No worries, though — I’ll be back at the end of May with more about my trip! **

Forgive the picture, but when I cook at night, the photos just don’t turn out as well as I’d like. If we were going to be here for more than a year, I’d build myself a light box or something. But for now? I’ll just tell you that this dish is worth trying, and prettier than you might think.

It’s a springtime risotto, and a weeknight take on a dish we had in NYC during restaurant week at the DB Bistro.  That version was also a risotto, and also used a sort of arugula pesto (as far as I could tell) to make the dish a vibrant green color.  Its sweetness was from butternut squash, which was appropriate for January but not quite right somehow for the start of spring.  So I improvised: I sweetened some chicken broth with a bunch of carrots and used that as the base for the dish.

This isn’t a recipe so much as a formula. I find risotto pretty easy for a weeknight meal, especially when we’re short on ingredients.  Yes, there is stirring involved, but not as much as you think … Just don’t turn up the heat too much.

** I’m on vacation at the moment, and wrote this post before I left.  Be back at the end of May with more about my trip! **

Recipe after the jump.

Carrot and arugula risotto with roasted walnuts

Serves 2-3 as a main dish.

Difficulty: Moderate. Don’t burn the risotto!

Cost: Cheap.

• 1 c. arborio rice
• 5 c. chicken or vegetable stock (or water, in a pinch, though you will need more carrots, and won’t get the same flavor).  You can also replace a cup of stock with a cup of white wine if you like. I didn’t have any, so I just skipped it.
• 6 carrots, sliced.
• 2 c. arugula, plus a bit more for garnish
• salt
• pepper
• 20 walnuts, for garnish (optional)
• 1/2 clove garlic
• 1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
• olive oil

In a medium pot, cook the carrots in the stock for 30 minutes or so, or until the stock tastes slightly sweet and the carrots have lost their flavor.  Remove the carrots from the stock.

Preheat oven to 400°F / 200°C.  Place walnuts on a lightly oiled tray and stick in the oven.  Remove when they’re dark brown and toasty (you can proceed to the next step while you’re waiting).

In a second medium pot, cook the onions in a tablespoon or so of olive oil over medium heat, until translucent.  (If you like, you can actually cook these for longer over low heat (as you’re prepping the stock) to enhance their natural sweetness.  It’s not necessary, but it adds an extra dimension to the dish.) When the onions are done, add the risotto, and cook for a minute more, stirring, until the grains are coated in oil and start to get slightly translucent.  Start adding the stock, 1/2 c. at a time, stirring in between additions and waiting until the rice absorbs the liquid.  After 2 cups, you can just add another 2 cups of stock and a pinch of salt, cover, and let cook over low heat.

In the meantime, chop up all but a small handful of the arugula.  In a mortar and pestle (or food processor, if you prefer), mash up the arugula, garlic, and a tablespoon of oil until you have something like a paste.  This is your arugula pesto.

When the rice is soft and all the liquid is absorbed, mix in the arugula pesto.  Check the seasoning (you’ll want to add the pepper at this stage).  Take off the heat and serve immediately, garnished with a bit of arugula and the roasted walnuts.

Variations: You can use roasted butternut squash instead of carrots to produce the sweetness that characterizes this dish. You could also try other greens, if you like (I haven’t personally, but hey, experimenting is fun).  Garnishing with other nuts or a bit of walnut oil would be a nice addition.