Product of the week - egg whites

Loyal blog readers will know how many pavlovas I have made in the past month. I haven't kept count but it is a lot! A byproduct of making pavlova is having left over egg yolks. Andrew thinks this is a good thing because then he gets custards, creme brulees and homemade ice cream. Unfortunately for him there are not enough hours in the day for me to be constantly making desserts. So imagine my delight to discover a carton of egg whites in the refrigerated section of Walmart. The ingredients are: egg whites. 100%! Nothing added. Nothing taken away. The only downside is that they are pasteurised. On a taste test it is impossible to tell which pavlova is from fresh eggs and which from the carton (must be all that sugar and cream). It is a great time saving to have the eggs ready to go. And by the way there are 8 egg whites in the carton the perfect number for a large pavlova.

Working weekend + eggs + heat

Saturday morning we ventured off for breakfast at the Goody Goody Omlet House. I say ventured as we were a little worried about what we might find when we got there and I hadn't heard the word 'goody' since reading The Crucible in high school. The first thing we noticed was that they had a sign on the door stating that they don't take debit or credit cards (not a good thing for us as we never have greenbacks so this led to a quick detour to a nearby drive-through ATM) GGOH is a small orange roofed building with 5 booths and 10 bar seats and for takeout orders they even had an old fashioned telephone with a genuine ring. We got a booth (and high chair) and whilst the menu had lots of choices we decided that because it was an omlet house we better order omlets (or at least have eggs and not pancakes). Lucy, being a true Shire hobbit, settled in for second breakfast quickly eating her toast and grits and asking for more in a loud grunting way. She looked very cute so the waitress forgave her throwing things on the floor and even lent her a book to read. The omlets/scrambled eggs/bacon/grits/biscuits were excellent and the service fast. Note that when the menu says 'sausages' they mean little round patties of sausage meat not the long 'hotdog' shaped version we are used to. We had a great meal here and we are likely to return. Interestingly it is the first place where there have been both black and white people. Usually it is just one or the other but it was great to find a true mingling of people here.

Apart from church and our monthly church luncheon (lots of fried chicken and hush puppies) the rest of the weekend was spent working in the garage. Andrew built a workbench and put up lots of shelves. Then we moved all the stuff out of the guest room into the garage. So the guest room is almost empty! Which is a good thing... now we can get it ready for our first guest.

Just for the record, it is SOOOOO HOT. It is so hot that it is unpleasant to go outside as it is regularly getting to 35 degrees+. The grass needs mowing every week and the plants are growing like crazy. Its the combination of thunderstorms providing lots of water and the heat. Even Andrew's fingernails are growing faster than ever. We are living in a greenhouse!

The glass is half full

I've had a few comments lately that life in Sydney can be routine, mundane and just not interesting enough to write about. Not true!! Sydney is an awesome city. I used to write a little known blog about Sydney, the regular everyday goings on whilst working in a regular every day job living a normal everyday life. And I reckon it was a more interesting blog than this American one. The trick is to look at the world with different eyes, to take on the attitude that life is exciting and to see the beauty around you in everyday things. Life here for us has settled down into 'normalness' yet there are still good things to blog about. Of course I don't blog about the traffic jams, cleaning the floor under Lucy's high chair three times a day or what I had for lunch (because no one really cares anyway!) but I do look out for the quirky and interesting. And Sydney has plenty of that! Check out the link if you have run out of ideas for your blog. [I haven't read this book but the author is an excellent blog writer]

On a different note altogether I noticed that the in-store cafe at Walmart is called 'Blimpies'! Is this meant to attract customers or describe them?

10 days to go

Product of the week - Shrek

Andrew was sent off to Costco for a few items but ended up wandering around looking (and buying) extra things. [The problem with this is that everything at Costco is in bulk!] He saw these Shrek themed lollies with a picture of Princess Fiona on the side so he thought he would buy them as a present for me. We opened one of the many little packets and out flew these techno-coloured jube like creations. The aqua coloured castles look particularly unappetising. Unfortunately they tasted even worse than they looked so we were left with a giant box of inedible lollies. Solution: Andrew took them to work and the other 63 packets were quickly digested by work colleagues.

Weekend roundup

Friday night saw us stay at home due to a 5 hour thunderstorm. It was so loud that at 2am Andrew and I were both woken up at the same time by a 5 second rumble of thunder that sounded like the house was being bombed. We are getting together hurricane supplies just in case.

On Saturday morning we headed off to the Wilmington Children's Museum for Mud Day. It is a fantastic place that is not museum-like at all. It is more of a play centre with differently themed rooms like science, grocery store, circus etc. Outside there were pools of mud, slime and a muddy slip and slide. Lucy was plonked in the mud but did not like it! She preferred the clean water pools. We then had a Southern buffet lunch at the Roudabout Cafe nearby.

In the afternoon we headed over to Topsail beach but when we got there it was raining! Lucy still got some bodysurfing in as the water was warm! It was literally like bath water because it had been so hot and sunny during the week. I know I am prone to exaggerating but when I say that it was 100 degrees last week it truly did reach those heights on the farenheit scale. After drying off at the beach we headed over to Rick & Erica's for dinner.

After church on Sunday Nicky & Susan (with Caleb and Rachel) came over for a lamb roast and pavlova. We are doing 'cultural exchange' with these native North Carolinians who are teaching us all things Southern so in return we are teaching them about Australia. Caleb was very excited last week as he thought he was going to Australia for lunch. Unfortunately for him patting some stuffed kangaroos and koalas was the closest he got. Vegemite still not a winner.

Walmart - cheap and nasty or inexpensive and wonderful?

Lucy and I had a trip to Walmart yesterday. Whatever people say about Walmart (Michael Moore et al) their prices are extremely low and their variety wide. Where else can you get a lifejacket, a carton of milk and some paintbrushes in the same store? For all those bargain hunters or cheapskates out there here are some examples: we bought an A4ish sized notebook with 70 pages for 10 cents (school supplies are on special), 3 gallons of drinking water for $1.96 (hurricane supplies), 4 ribbon bows for Lucy for $1.96 (her fancy ones were $8 each from a childrens clothing shop) and a pair of shorts for Lucy for $1. And while we were there we picked up a life jacket so that Lucy can go boating ($15.64), a shower curtain for $10 and paintbrushes for Lucy (a couple of dollars). On the downside there are lots of scary things at Walmart apart from bullets. It is the place I look for product of the week (there are a few good ones coming up) and having looked at the meat section once I haven't ventured near there again (btw what are pork chitlings? actually please don't comment as I just checked wikipedia on this point and it is not a good answer) I usually only buy named brand products here that I know and usually save quite a bit of money but I prefer to shop at Harris Teeter and Costco and only go to Walmart occassionally.

PS Don't forget to add tax to the prices