Christmas mash up

Happy New Year and let’s hope 2013 brings just as much enjoyable food as the previous year, although perhaps cutting down a little from recent weeks. The festive holiday period was an eclectic Australian mix of hot weather, cold weather, roast meats, prawns, beaches and shops. Most of my time was spent in Sydney, in what turned out to be a fairly sedate week or so, with patches of Canberra wholesomeness before and after. Mercifully we now have a fully functioning BBQ in Canberra, christened for the first taste of Christmas along with a rather excellent rendition of black forest gateaux. Meanwhile, the pool here is also coming in rather handy of late...

In Sydney, Christmas Day provided a wonderful Australian summer of endless rain, thunderstorms and highs of 21 degrees! To sum up, it was pretty yucky and many an Australian was quick to note that “this must make you feel at home” or “you must be used to this”. Well, frankly I’ve been here for five Christmases and I expect to be melting, turning lobster red and fleeing rampant sharks. Either give us a hot Christmas or a white Christmas, not this awkward in between.

Despite the rain, Christmas lunch was sumptuous and involved a gathering with many, many Aussies who I didn’t know beforehand but who provided much entertainment, sage advice and wonderful food; from roast meets to the best Pavlova I have eaten so far on this continent. Supplemented in the evening by ham, sausage rolls, cheesy marmites and other such artery clogging homemade fare, the only thing (thankfully) missing was three hours of Eastenders, Coronation Street, Eastenders again, Emmerdale, Holby City, and Coronation Street Extra. Not that there was anything to watch here; in a land of mediocre TV, Christmas wins the prize for hopelessness.

Every other day was brighter and sunnier and warmer than Christmas Day itself, and this provided opportunity for a few forays out and about. This included brief bushwalks and boardwalks, beach stops and mall shops, tempered only by ailments and illnesses and obligations to eat more and more ham in various guises. Before you knew it, New Years Eve had crept up, offering an opportunity to finally finish the ham with a picnic in Coogee and fireworks, followed by a surprising view of some of the larger midnight fireworks from nearby.

It was a no fuss New Year’s Eve and this transcended into the next day, which was probably the best of the lot – warm and sunny with chilled lounging under the shade overlooking a rather busy Coogee Beach, coffee in hand, book in other, a few chocolate orange segments melting in the pocket. A nice couple of hours before hitting the oven and cooking up roast pork (because I have not had enough pig products already this Christmas). Enduring more TV hopelessness in the evening, Christmas pudding with decent clotted cream helped perk things up!

And so that was Christmas. The second day of 2013 heralded a trip back to Canberra and it was nice to return and extend the holidays just a little further. Especially as, once beyond the gloomy Southern Highlands, the weather was much more decidedly holiday-like. In fact, much more a return to order, with temperatures above 30 degrees and, so far, tipping over 40 the once.

Such sustained heat has warmed up the house considerably and is not the best in which to be enduring a sore throat, blocked sinus type lurgy that is a dragged out repeat of something similar last summer. Still, that pool has come as welcome relief, as have the evening storms cooling things down just a touch and adding a little bit of spectacle to the place.

So 2013 has started hot, stormy and with both a touch of malaise and a touch of clotted cream (not related by the way). But in local parlance, it’s all good. Let’s hope for an all good, eventful and enriching year ahead!