Category: A Beer

Our mammoth long weekend – day 3

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Saturday morning my body clock woke me up at 6:30am (7:30am Victoria time) and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fall asleep again. So at 7:30am I decided to stop trying and got up and leisurely got ready for my 9am doctor’s appointment. Being almost 37 weeks pregnant at the time, I had to get a letter from a doctor 24 hours before my flight, saying I was fit to fly. I decided to get there a bit early (8:35am) in the hope that I could get in a bit earlier, but didn’t end up going in til 9:05!! Oh well You win some you lose some. After stopping at the shops I headed home and woke Hubs up (lucky bugger) and had some yummy leftovers for brekky. We then started welcoming friends and family whom Mum and I had invited over for the morning. It turned out to be only about a dozen people who arrived and left at all different times so it was really nice to catch up with them.

During all of this, my gorgeous cousins agreed to do my hair for me for the wedding:
And, well, I don’t mean to brag, but as usual I think Hubs and I scrub up okay 🙂

The wedding was absolutely wonderful, and, as I suspected, I needed the waterproof mascara and extra tissues. The service was very traditional and similar to ours, so it was lovely to re-live the vows Hubs and I exchanged in the same place a few years ago. Jess, the bride, looked absolutely stunning, and Matt, the groom, was wearing the biggest, widest grin you could imagine. It was a very personal service that really suited them both and I’m so glad Hubs and I could be there to share it with them.

After the ceremony, we had over 3 hours to kill so we decided on the spur of the moment to head out to our friend’s place in Zilmere (about half an hour north of the CBD), as he was having his 30th birthday party. We turned up as a surprise and it was really nice catching up with them. The party hadn’t officially started so we had them mostly to ourselves for a little while.

We then headed back in to town for the reception and were delighted at the table we had been seated at – we met some lovely new people and shared good conversation accompanied by good food and (just a little) good wine. Matt & Jess had hired the same DJ that we had at our wedding, (from our recommendation) so we said hi to him and he remembered us which was really nice. They even played our wedding song during dinner (more tears) which was lovely.

Then it was time for us to hit the dance floor, and, as I already mentioned, we hit it HARD! Hubs was in fine form, pulling out The Robot and a good AC/DC head-bang. I couldn’t pull out my usual moves with my extra cargo, but still had my moments! Alas, all good weddings must come to an end, so at 11:45pm the bride and groom bid us adieu and we headed to the car. As we took off, Hubs looked at me, and I looked at him and we knew what each other was thinking. (Don’t be rude.) Our friends were having a Halloween Party out at Arana Hills (about 15 min from CBD) that night, so we gave them a call to see if they were still kicking on. And sure enough, they were!! So we headed out there and caught up with 4 really good friends of ours (including 2 of Hubs’ groomsmen!)

I truly don’t know where all the energy was coming from but it just didn’t stop! At 2am though, it was time to head home and I was pretty happy to crash into bed at 2:30. A full 20 hours of being awake, and one of the best/most fun/memorable days EVER! I begrudgingly set the alarm for 8am the “next morning” and drifted off into a deeeeeep sleeeeeeep…

Oh what a game

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Even if your life doesn’t revolve around AFL, that is, you’re not a Victorian, you would have heard about the drawn grand final on Saturday between St Kilda and Collingwood. Hubs and I were with friends at their friend’s place in Melbourne, so we only knew 3 other people out of the 30-odd who were there, but that didn’t stop us from cheering like mad. As I’ve mentioned, you either support Collingwood, or you hate them, so most people were hoping the Saints would win.

St Kilda were behind for almost the whole game, and at one stage by 3 or 4 goals, but we were never out of it. We never lost hope of being able to come back. And in the 3rd quarter, named “the premiership quarter” we came back and kept Collingwood goal-less. It was incredibly exciting and certainly the best game of football I’ve ever seen in my life. When we hit the lead for the first time, the room, bar the 3 Collingwood supporters, went absolutely nuts! But it wasn’t won yet. Both teams stepped up to the challenge and played like they’ve never played before, and to be honest, a draw was one of the best results possible. What I mean by this, is that you just couldn’t separate the 2 teams on the day. They were both deserved winners, and Hubs thinks they both should have been able to take a trophy home and be done with it.

But that’s not how it works in the “real world.” When the final siren blasted with the scores deadlocked at 68 all, we assumed extra time would be played. But no. That’s not how they do it in the AFL. They started talking about “coming back next week to battle it out again.” Say what now? I have to go through this all over again??? I barely avoided labour this time around!!!! (People at the party kept looking at me and a few asked “when are you due again??”)

So that’s the way it’s going to be. This Saturday at 2pm they will have a re-match. In a lot of ways, it’s no big deal. Another game of footy to watch – what’s wrong with that? But if you consider all the things that are planned for the week after the AFL grand final, Victoria is a mess! All the grooms who have said to their brides-to-be “as long as the wedding isn’t in September, that’s fine” to which they reply “okay honey-bunny. We’ll make it for the first weekend in October.”

Oh boy. There would have been a lot of nervous brides at full-time.

Anyway, the main point of this post was to say how amazing the game was and how much Hubs and I enjoyed it and how it was all people could talk about afterwards. We witnessed history and it was great to be a part of that. Now we just have to go through it all again this Saturday. GO SAINTS!!!

I should have known

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As I mentioned, it was Hubs’ birthday yesterday (and still currently his “birthday week”) so I had planned to take him out to dinner here. The place had been recommended to us by a couple of people, with the main attraction of “cheap pizzas” ie $4 pizzas from 7-11pm Mon-Thurs. Hubs likes pizza, and we like being cheap, so I thought it would be a great place to go! I was expecting a dodgy little place with mix-matched couches and a casual vibe which would have been perfect, especially since I had my walking shoes on (we had walked the 1.5km from home) and was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. This is not the place that greeted us. Instead, it was this rather trendy, though still relaxed, bar and restaurant that wasn’t really “us”. We stood at the bar for about 5 minutes and looked around for a spare table, of which there were none. After not being served for a while, we had a quick discussion and decided it wasn’t really what we were hoping for, so we left.

We started walking down the street looking for something else, and I asked Hubs what he felt like. Then I mentioned the B word. Burgers. His face lit up and he looked at me in his “I’m so cute I know I can get what I want if I look at you like this and talk to you all sweet-like” way and said:

“Honeeeeeeey. You know what I’d really love? If we went home and you cooked us some roo burgers.”

I should have known.

You see, my Hubsband is a man of simple pleasures. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, he is easy to please, but difficult to impress. This goes for most aspects of his life, but in particular, with food. Of course I was happy to oblige. So we swung by Coles and picked up some salad stuff, knowing I had the main makings of the burgers at home. And with a few mushrooms on the side, they really hit the spot. I’ve been making roo burgers for over 2 years now, and I think I’ve pretty much perfected them! Not that I like to brag or anything. We devoured the burgers and topped off a great meal with leftover cake and ice cream, while watching the last episode of The Hollowmen, and a ep of Daria.

Hubs’ take on the evening? “Best birthday dinner EVER.”

And who am I to argue?

(Someone’s looking like a tired little bunny…)

Gone Fishin’

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A couple of weekends ago, we organised for a group of us to go on a fishing charter with Hubs’ Uncle Wayne. Uncle Wayne and Aunty Alida have been running this business for years (decades??) and we have been meaning to go on a charter with Wayne since we got here. So we FINALLY got around to setting a date aside. My friend Beth was visiting for the weekend, so I tentatively invited her along. I say tentatively, as the last time Beth and I went on a fishing charter, we spent most of the 4 hours hanging over the side of the boat, providing burley for the rest of the fishermen/women. But we weren’t perturbed by our last experience (I’m not sure how!), even after receiving a call from Wayne in the morning saying it was a bit rough out on the water that day. We thought “let’s just do it!!” and so we rendezvoused with the group at 12:45pm and set off.

It was such a beautiful day – bright blue sunshine! – but it was quite windy, so Wayne headed for more sheltered waters, and we cast our lines and waited. We didn’t have to wait long before we got some bites, and Beth caught the fist fish of the day – a pink snapper, or “pinkie” as they call them. Though, she wasn’t so impressed with getting up close and personal!

It wasn’t big enough to keep, so off it went, back in the drink. She did however catch the only “keeper” for the day a bit later on – a nice little flathead that we all had a little taste of for dinner that night. I had had lots of bites and my line felt quite heavy, but it wasn’t putting up a fight. I thought I might have myself either a log-fish or a crab. I was wrong!

Yes, that’s right folks. I caught myself a star fish. A first for me!! Hee hee. Quite a few of us were catching fish, but none of them were big enough to keep 🙁

Hubs and his catch

Wifey, convinced she’d caught the same fish as Hubs

Luke and Grae, catching… ummm….. not much at all! 🙂

Uncle Wayne cooking up a storm for us on the BBQ
Beer + Friends + Fishing = Awesomeness!

Melbourne really turned on some great weather for us, and thanks to travel sickness tablets, ginger tablets and ginger beer, Bethie and I didn’t provide any burley for the trip. Hooray! We’re so glad we managed this before moving out to Wang. Something else to cross off our “to do” list!

Winery tour – Day 2

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After a very restful night, a sleep in, bacon and eggs for brekky, and a read of the newspaper about the storm that had hit Melbourne the day before, we set off for Day 2. (I had actually received a couple of texts from friends late in the afternoon asking “are you okay??” and I was like “we’re just on a wine tour dude. We’re fine!” It wasn’t til we got to Sorrento that we heard about the storm and all the damage it did!!) Our first point of call was The Cups Estate, and what an absolute gem that was! We left the camera in the car so I don’t have any photos, but their fortified pinot was incredible. We HAD to buy a bottle (or 2!)

Next we headed towards Arthurs Seat, stopping at The Morning Sun Vinyard. This place was a bit ho-hum. The service wasn’t great and the most popular wines (the had a Pinot and Guwerzt) weren’t on tasting. So we left with a photo instead!

And then it was off to Vidoni Estate which had some rather nice wines. I think we picked a couple up there as well. Nathan was still looking for a good pinot, and it turns out the first one we’d tried at Hickinbotham had been the best by far! So we decided we had to swing by on the way home. But that was later on…

We then started to get a bit hungry so we were on the look out for some foooood. We stopped in at Myrtaceae (again, cos it was there) and they had some special wine tasting glasses:

They only put in wine to fill the neck of the glass, and tell you to give it a smell, and you can’t smell much at all. Then, you roll the glass…..

… give it another whiff, and the smells explode in your nostrils! Clearly, the same outcome can be achieved by just swishing the wine around the glass yourself, but the novelty was fun. And the wines were quite lovely! Still hungry though…

We checked our map and found a place that was recommended by another friend of ours, who used to be a winemaker in the Yarra Valley, so we made our way there. It was REALLY packed and when we asked for a seat in the restaurant, I had a look at the prices of the meals and just couldn’t do it. Meals were between $30-$40 each and wines were about $12 a glass. Nate had a look and said the only thing he’d be keen on was the duck, and the waitress had told us they’d run out of duck. I’m sure the food would have been amazing, but we just could NOT justify that sort of spending, so we made some excuse and excused ourselves, and just tried the wines instead. Which were lovely! (I can’t quite recall, but I think it was Dromana Estate.)

We were getting REALLY hungry at this stage, so we decided to pop in to a bakery and grabbed some pies. There was a duck pie on the menu so Nate settled on that, I grabbed a beef and burgundy and Hubs ordered a steak pie. Mine was really quite delicious and Hubs was raving about his. Nathan was a little disappointed though. As we were almost all finished, I had a bite of Hubs’ and told him that he got Nate’s pie as there was no WAY that was steak. Hee hee. Poor Nate didn’t get his duck after all.

We went to a couple more after this and ended at Darling Park Winery which was really sweet. It was getting late and we had to get back to Hickinbotham for the pinot so we started off home. We arrived around 6:30pm and realised how bad the previous night’s storm actually was. There was debris EVERYwhere. I’m kinda glad we weren’t around, but also a little disappointed we missed the action! Thankfull though, our roof didn’t leak, which it often does.

We headed out to watch Hurt Locker (it was the night of the Academy Awards and we had no idea of it’s success. We thought it was totally awesome) and then headed to Papa Gino’s (of course) for dinner and the Hickinbotham Pinot.

The verdict? One of the BEST wines I’ve ever had in my life. Seriously amazing. It actually didn’t taste much like a Pinot to me, but the flavours and smells hit me in the face like a Samboy Chip. I just couldn’t get enough (although I only had 1 glass) and really wish we’d bought a bottle! Oh well.

It capped off a great weekend of wine-tasting and shennanigans! Next stop? Wangaratta Wine and Jazz festival! Wanna come?

Another winery tour

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Our friend Nate came down a few weeks ago (okay, over a month ago!) and we hired a car and set off for the Mornington Peninsula wineries! We had arranged to stay with Hubs’ Dad down at Sorrento Saturday night, and we’d been recommended quite a few wineries to visit! The first one we came across was Hickinbotham of Dromana. Silly name, good wine. I was designate driver (as usual!) so I didn’t really try the wines here.

Nate really liked the Pinot Noir, but he knew he was in Pinot territory, so he didn’t want to buy the first one he tried, so we moved on, empty handed. We then popped in to Dromana Valley Wines cos, you know, it was there, and we were there, but the wines weren’t so great, BUT we bought an $8 bottle of Pinot. We’ll see how that goes (haven’t tried it yet!)

The next winery was recommended to us – Ten Minutes by Tractor. We should have known what sort of place this would be (fancy-pants) going by the person who recommended it to us (fancy-pants). We had to pay for tastings ($5 per person, taken off the total if you make a purchase) which I’m not a huge fan of, but having said that, they really did provide a great service – were very informative and helpful. Again, I just had a little sip of Hubs’ tastings. These wines were gooooood.

Look how professional they are with their tastings!
We didn’t buy anything from here, but I think Nate may have. The wines were very nice but also quite pricey, so we just enjoyed the tasting. 
Now I THINK the next place we stumbled upon was Mantons Creek Vineyard, and it was definitely one of our favourites! The place itself was absolutely gorgeous!
The service was personal and helpful and the wine? Oh my gosh. The Tempranillo was incredible. We were enjoying the tasting so much, and the gentleman who was serving us just mentioned off-hand that their duck, pear and rocket pizza goes very well with that wine. We were hungry, we loved the place so we thought “why not?” And he was right. Oh so very right.
I LOVE when they match the food with the wine and this partnership was a success. We sat ourselves down on the veranda and watched a storm roll in. So I mentioned the Tempranillo. Now let me tell you about the Gewurztraminer. I can’t recall if I’d ever had that wine before, but Nate was super excited when he saw it on the tasting list. He’s been looking for a good Gewurzt for a long time. And he found it here. It is such a beautiful, smooth white wine – I was in love. We bought a couple of those and Nathan got himself a half-case and will no doubt be ordering more! We were sad to leave this winery, but ecstatic that we’d accidentally found it in the first place!
From here, it went downhill for a little bit. We headed to Red Hill Estate and they weren’t tasting they’re own wines that day – they had a “hurry hurry hurry all stock must go prices SLASHED for this weekend only!!” day. It had started raining by this stage, and as we were given our own little plastic shot glasses to help ourselves, and a list of 50 different wines, we knew we were in dodgy territory.
The faces the boys were pulling were hilarious! They certainly didn’t hold back! There were people everywhere, and we felt like we were in a cattle shed – noisy, a bit smelly, and chaotic! We didn’t stay long. It was now pouring with rain and our next stop was the Red Hill Brewery which my brother had told us to check out. Unfortunately by this stage, every man and his dog had tried to find somewhere to take cover, so we couldn’t even do a tasting. We could, however, buy a pot, so Hubs chose a stout which was really tasty!
And Nate got all fancy with the camera!

After this, we came across Montalto Vineyard and that was actually quite nice. They had basil-infused olive oil which was SO delicious (and which I’m SO going to try and make!) and the wines were lovely too.
The last winery for the day was Tucks, and we certainly ended with a goodie! I think I bought a Shiraz Rose from here that I’m looking forward to cracking open for a special occasion. Here we are at Tucks:
We met some people here who were, you guessed it, down from Brisbane for the weekend! Crazy right? AND they lived in the AUCHENFLOWER/TOOWONG area! Of course we played “who do you know” and came up with some common acquaintances. Small small world.
After this, we headed down to Sorrento for a night of roast lamb, excellent wine, great company, and a good night sleep. Ready for the next day’s adventures! To be continued….

Spy vs Spy

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We recently went up to Bribane for my good friend Ah-del’s 30th and she had a spy party! Hubs and I threw around a few ideas for costumes including a “Get Smart” combo and “Mr and Mrs Smith” and then Hubs suggested “Spy vs Spy”. (Actually, he wanted to dress up with our friend Nate, but I had a little tanty and got my own way! Ha!) Of course, not being a nerd myself, I had to ask what it was, and after reading into it and looking at some pictures, I decided it would be a fun project to undertake!

Cos, you know, when we visit Brisbane we always have plenty of time to kill…

So I got to work and with the help of my cousins and Godson and Billy-Bob’s Mum (mainly direction from her!) I put it together. Through all of this, Hubs was helping a friend of his put finishing touches on his bar, so it was a solo effort by yours-truly. I did, however, ring Hubs just as I was leaving, to tell him I had worked very hard on our costumes and that he needed to go ape-sh*t over them. Cos if you know my Hubsband, you’ll know it takes a bit for him to go ape-sh*t over anything, so it was just a friendly warning that I needed a VERY enthusiastic response from him!

And I got it, of course, cos check out these costumes:

My favourite bit was the dynamite, also home-made! I was quite worried that no one would know what the heck we were but we had quite a few people recognise the characters, so I fel that all my hard work had paid off. The party was a great success with the birthday girl looking absolutely spy-a-licious!

In both costumes!
And here is Bethie, Ah-del and Myself. We have celebrated 18 years of birthdays together! Incredible!!
We had a great time catching up with friends and celebrating this occasion. We hope you had a great night birthday girl (I know you did!) and looking forward to celebrating many many more with you. x x x

We’re going to Sorrento!!

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As you may recall, Hubs and I went to Sorrento for Easter last year and had a really great holiday. Yes, that’s right, a HOLIDAY. We did nothing but read, go for walks, and bbq our meals outside. It was bliss! So you can imagine my excitement when the possibility to do it all again this year came up. We jumped at the chance! And we’ve also invited a couple of friends which will be nice.

The family is also having a memorial service for Grandad so we’ll get to say some goodbyes to old Harry. The family will be there too which will be so lovely, as we haven’t seen some of them since last Easter.

Gosh I really can’t wait!! Bring on the relaxation…

A drinking game – the results!

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So let’s review the 6 South African drinks:
And the order of preference overall, went something like this:
1. Savanna (yay!)
2. Klipdrift
3. Windhoek
4. Black label
5. Archers
6. Castle
Well, that’s how I saw it anyway! I hope you enjoyed the purely scientific experiment!

A drinking game – Archers

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Until we started this experiment, I didn’t realise that Archers was a South African drink. (I can’t find any good links to the drink, so let me know if you do!)

We tried the peach variety with mixed results.
Come on Clayton. Bring it home.
Hooray! A different reaction! Maybe not a great one, but a different one!! (Clayton wasn’t a fan!)
Unlike Anne!
One of her faves
I gotta say I was expecting big things after all the hype!
But I gotta say, I wasn’t overly impressed
And last but not least, Hubs
 Hubs = not fussy (read: will drink anything!)
I think the results for this drink were a bit mixed. Anne loved it, I didn’t mind it, Hubs would drink it, and Clayton wouldn’t. An interesting result for the last drink! I’ll have a wrap-up tomorrow.