Sausage rolls

It's been a week of adjustments and figuring out how things work. You can imagine that when Tanya was showing me how to turn the oven on, I was quite horrified to learn that you needed to crawl INTO the oven head first with a lit match, while keeping one hand on the gas release button. I kept imagining her coming home from work and I'd be eyebrowless with a new receding hairline. I was mentioning my hesitation at climbing into the oven with a match to Tanya's friend Mel who subsequently bought me a loooong gas lighter so I could give it a try at more of an arms length away. Needless to say, it's not something I've attempted yet. But I am getting quite skillfull at hanging clothes on the clothesline. Now you may think this would be simple, but there's definitely an art to it. Think about it! All your wash on display for people to see? So you learn how to strategically hide the undies behind a bed sheet and things like that. Australia is very environmentally conscious so most people don't have clothes dryers, or use them sparingly - something I hadn't even considered before! There's also been a draught for a few years so everyone is on water restrictions. So that means you watch the amount of water you use for absolutely everything from brushing your teeth to washing dishes. You kind of just wait until the dishes pile up to a decent amount so you can fill the sink with soapy water and do them all at one time instead of using more water doing them along the way. Also, there's really no rinsing of the dishes once they've been washed in the sink full of soapy water. That's the thing I'm having the hardest time getting used to and I can't imagine how their dishes and glasses don't have the soap residue taste, but honestly they don't!

This week Tanya taught me how to make a really popular Australian snack - sausage rolls! When I was in New Zealand two years ago, we were given sausage rolls after a white water rafting trip and when I asked what they were and that I'd never had them before, about 20 heads whipped around with their mouths hanging open. Course it would've been funnier if their mouths hadn't been full of sausage roll at that moment. The time had come to learn how to make them instead of just enjoying them. We rolled up our sleeves and dived right in and I must say, the end result was delicious. Tanya uses her mother's recipe and it's famous among her friends. We brought them to a party we went to on Saturday night and she didn't even make it through half the crowd before all 50 of them were gone. I think we'll find more excuses to make them soon enough and I'll definitely be bringing the recipe home with me!

And finally, happy birthday to my little brother Cullen who's celebrating the best way he can imagine - at the Bears game!