Animals in the same family

(Note for biologists: 'family' is not used in the technical taxonomic sense here.)

Humans

For the past couple weeks, we were lucky to have our first overseas guest at our new apartment. Colin's (and now Naomi's!) sister Liz came for a two week stay. It was lovely having her here, and getting to do some exploring with her. Here she is in Melbourne's botanical gardens:

And here's a picture she took of us on a weekend trip to Healesville santuary.

Why the weird faces? Because Healesville Sanctuary is a place for mind-blowing animals. 

The above was taken during a reptile show. We were looking at this:

This is a skink. You'll see a picture of one of his/her family members next time.


Birds

There was also a showing of birds, with raptors flying around over the audience's head and occasionally landing for pictures. This is a wedge-tailed eagle:

Pretty amazing.

Also amazing, in a non-flying way, were the emus:

The emus made this incredibly deep rumbling sound. They were kind of cute, in their own way.

Marsupials

A strong contender for the cutest animal, however, has to be the wallaby. Behold:

(Liz caught this picture.)

Less cute in person, though still charming in their own way, were the koalas. Healesville had an impressive display. The koalas seem to be doing the sort of things they'd do in the wild... which isn't much:

They hang out in trees, and eat eucalyptus. 

More cute than we expected, however, were the Tasmanian Devils. These two were sisters who were being raised by hand:

Oh, and this photo reminds us (breaking with the family theme): the sanctuary is waging a public campaign to get people to use recycled toilet paper. Complete with mascot:

Preview

The Healsville trip was a highlight of the past couple weeks. But the real excitement was this past weekend. On Thursday morning, the three of us flew to a place with bandit wallabies, a town called 'Oatlands,' sunscreen-defying sun, and some of the most stunning scenery we're ever seen...

Stay tuned...

Warmth

Friends! In our courtyard.

More friends! In our kitchen.


There were even more friends in our living room, and another friend behind the camera. But we forgot to photograph them.


How did we get friends to come to our apartment?

With this:

No, not the whole kitchen. Mainly this:

Actually, we're pretty sure our friends didn't just come for food... because they ended up bringing more (which was devoured too quickly to capture on film). Jenn and Justin, of Thanksgiving fame, also brought those flowers.

So life is good. We feel properly moved in now, and are working out our rhythm in the new neighborhood.


One important part of the new rhythm will be cheap food for the night or two a week when we don't feel like cooking.

Blue fire and (decreasingly ambitious) foods of summer

We seem to get more views/comments when we post about food. So we offer our second all-food post.

Life in our new apartment is good so far. There have been a couple minor surprises. One was our oven. Once we figured out how to turn it on, we discovered that this is how it heats:

Yes, those are flames coming directly up the back.

It works, though. The other night we felt ambitious, and made tomato, spinach and herb-y ricotta phyllo cups, with sides of stone fruit slaw and lentil salad.

Other nights, we are slightly less ambitious. Tonight, we used the leftover ricotta to make a baked ziti:

Or - even cheaper and easier, we made mango lassies. The mangoes were free (!), courtesy of a produce-seller at our local market who needed to get rid of them. This was also an excuse to use our new stick blender.

That all makes us sound fancier than we are, however. For several nights in a row, this has been our 'home-made' dessert:

It's home-made, because one mixes the ice cream and Coco Pops in a bowl at home. The result is, as the box suggests it would be, an unnaturally crunchy milkshake.

There's a similar spectrum of class/ambition in eating out. For our New Year's Eve picnic (see previous post), we picked up some vegetarian herb-braised faux-duck with bok choi:

Closer to home, and appealing to our baser tendencies (SUGAR + FAT), is an Argentinian gelato place:

This was dark chocolate + wild cherry + gelatello (basically dolce de leche with chocolate biscuit pieces). We weren't seeking out fancy dessert... it was New Year's Day, it was hot, and not much was open.

And, finally, at the far end of the spectrum:

They taste exactly like what you'd expect. The bag (which notes that they are back by popular demand) promises a 'burgery tang'... without actual beef!