Adelaide, post-Xmas '09

Milford says "Hello". He's my son and daughter-in-law's dog, and has the heart of a lion, though he is only small. He is usually pretty hairy, but had his summer haircut recently and it was quite an extreme one. He's not fond of children …


… except for his own, whom he adores. Here they are, my granddaughters Caitlin and Emily, eating their breakfast:


Emily is the big one, although she is not really very big. She is four, and weighs only a kilo and a half more than her sister, who is one and a half. She was a tiny baby, and is tiny still - she complained to me that the people at kindy "keep giving me cuddles and picking me up, and I don't like it". She's off to "new kindy" (the state-run preschool as opposed to private daycare) in a couple of weeks, and is greatly looking forward to being treated more like a big kid. Getting bigger is one of her major topics of conversation; "When I'm bigger I can have tablets when I'm sick"; "When I'm bigger I can do the dishes"; and, to the waiter at a café we went to for lunch, "I can have beer now because I'm getting bigger", which is not true at all!

Caitlin is still pretty much pre-verbal, although she chatters away a lot, and puts a great deal of expression into what she says - you know she is telling you something of great import, but you just don't know what it is.

The girls have both recently started swimming lessons, and they adore it. Caity is by far the more confident in the water, she's perfectly happy having her head dunked and is like a wee tadpole. She's not so hot at floating on her back though - keeps wanting to sit up and see what's happening.


Emily got her certificate for putting her face under the water while I was visiting. She loves swimming lessons too, but is not so comfortable with her head under the water. She does lots of practice with her goggles on in the bath though, and she IS Australian - she'll be swimming like a fish before she leaves primary school.


Emily, her father and I left the others at home and went to the World's Biggest Rocking Horse on the coolest day I was there (26°C). This is a wooden toy factory with a monster rocking horse you can climb up. It doesn't actually rock, and you climb up through it by means of ladders. I was too chicken - I hate ladders - but Jonathan and Emily climbed up to the top.

The toy factory includes a sort of wildlife park, where you can walk amongst the friendlier varieties of Australian animals, feed them (if they're hungry, which they mostly don't seem to be), and pat them (if you can get close enough). I could have patted this emu, but I didn't like the look of his beak:


Here is Emily patting some goats, and trying to feed them some pellets:


And here she is going for a pony ride:


That was very "beciting". Not as exciting as the St Kilda Adventure Playground where we went on the second coolest day (~30°C), but I was so busy sliding and see-sawing and climbing that I didn't take any photos. The rest of the time is was hot - between 35° and 40°C, and all you wanted to do was stay inside where it was air-conditioned. That was fine though, I played with the girls, and went shopping a couple of times. Bought a few things from IKEA, which we don't have in New Zealand yet, and some shoes. Nothing too exciting though.

Adelaide Pt 3: Baking with Emily.

The reason for travelling to Adelaide at this particular time was to go to my younger granddaughter Caitlin's first birthday. Neither Lyndall nor Jonathan bake, so I got to make the birthday cake - with Emily's help of course.

Here she is wearing her "cooking clothes" (a gift from one of Lyndall's friends) and wielding her "cooking brush", which, along with a "cooking spoon", a rolling pin, and some cookie cutters, were a gift from me. Here we are, making the banana cake which I later trimmed and iced as Pocoyo.


The "cooking spoon" is in there somewhere, she did a great job of mixing the cake with it.


And here is Emily the next day, her mouth stuffed with pikelet, waiting for Grandma's pikelets to finish cooking so she can do her own:


The pink cooking clothes were in the wash by this stage - covered in banana cake mixture - so she's wearing her green hippopotamus apron.

Here she is making her own pikelet(s):


And here are the two girls with the finished cake and pikelets (which have been buttered and sprinkled with "Hundreds and Thousands"):


Emily has just blown out the candle on behalf of her little sister. This is very exciting, as you can tell from her face. Unfortunately poor little Caitlin didn't get to eat any of it - she still chokes on anything lumpier than a purée.

We made pikelets a couple of times while I was there, and corn fritters for lunch once.

Pikelet recipe

Beat together until foamy:
1 egg and
1/3 cup of sugar

add:
2/3 cup of milk
and mix

add:
1 cup of flour
1 pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
and mix

melt
1 tbsp butter in the pan you're going to cook the pikelets in
add it to the mixture and mix.

drop tablespoonsful onto the medium hot pan (7 on a 1-10 electric frypan thermostat), and flip when bubbles rise to the surface.

An electric frying pan is ideal for these - you get a large area of fairly even temperature, so you can cook quite a few at once.

As they are cooked wrap them in a clean tea-towel to keep warm and moist - unless you have a bunch of gannet-like children and men waiting, in which case they disappear as soon as you remove them from the pan. Normally served buttered with jam on.

Adelaide Pt 2: Shopping

Being miserably sick most of the time I was in Adelaide, I didn't do as much shopping as I'd expected. However, Lyndall (my daughter-in-law) and I dragged ourselves up town last Tuesday to check out Rundle Mall, and we pretty much kitted her out for winter. They've been living in the tropics for the last eight or so years, so have no winter clothes to speak of. I tried on a heap of shoes, but only bought one pair, these hidden platforms from the Shoe Shed where we stopped on the way to town:


It's a style I love, but I could never afford Louboutins and they'll not get worn much, so I thought I may as well go for the other end of the price range. These were about $60 I think - not leather, obviously.

The next day I ventured out by myself on the bus, and experienced the Adelaide O-Bahn. It's really quite impressive, I can't think why more places don't have one.

I was wanting to check out a few Japanese shops that I thought may have bento gear, so I headed off to the Victoria Square Arcade, looking for Little Tokyo. They had very little in the way of bento boxes, but a good selection of food and other bits and pieces. I bought a little pan for making tamagoyaki, some rice ball moulds, and some wee animal-headed picks.

Victoria Square Arcade merges into the Adelaide Central Market; a really great food market. There are heaps of fruit sellers …


… butchers and delis …


… great cheesemongers …


… bakeries, patisseries, fishmongers, the lot.

I bought this wonderful ciabatta Pugliese from Skala Bakery:


In the Arcade I found a few bento boxes in a shop called "Kawayii Fashion", and bought a Hello Kitty one for my elder granddaughter Emily, who is three. It has a spoon and chopsticks in the lid; she's fascinated by the chopsticks. I also found her some little gloves (which started out being "hand socks", but now socks have become "foot gloves"), which she loves even though they get in the way of her thumb-sucking.

On the way to Glenelg the next day we stopped off at "Made in Japan" in King William Rd, Hyde Park. They didn't have bento stuff either - much too up market. I impulsively bought a kimono though. It was reduced from $165 to $90 because of a mark on the front; I've since applied Resolve, and the mark is no longer.


I love the way the lining is dyed around the edges.

My only other major purchase was this pair of over-the-knee boots from Sportsgirl in Melbourne Airport on my way home!


They were a real impulse buy - I was feeling groggy from being up at 3.15am and having headcold- and change-of-altitude-induced blocked ears, and saw them on a shelf beckoning to me as I walked past. I'd tried on several similar pairs when out with Lyndall, but they were either too baggy or too narrow in the feet, and they were all just knee-high. I have an unfortunate weakness for thigh boots, so when these turned out to fit perfectly, and drew admiring comments from other customers as well, I just had to get them.

Adelaide Pt 1: Glenelg

I got home from Adelaide yesterday. I had a lovely time seeing the granddaughters, but could have done without the nasty cold I got the day after I arrived, and which is still hanging around making my life miserable.

The day before I came home we all went for an expedition to Glenelg, the main Adelaide beach. It has a thriving café scene, although it was a bit quiet on this slightly chilly autumn Thursday. You wander up and down and around, checking out menus, until you find a place you want to eat. We decided on Europa in Jetty Rd. It was child and dog friendly, with a very chatty waiter who inspected Emily's packed lunch and opined that it was exactly what his Mum used to pack for him when he was small. She had dried fruit, cheese cubes, and "Fritz" - which we would call luncheon sausage - all in her new Hello Kitty bento box. Caitlin had some mush that smelled like plums. She's one, but still chokes on anything that's at all lumpy.


Jonathan had Penne con Pollo, which he said was delicious:


Lyndall had a pizza with roasted vegetables and feta. She said the only thing wrong with it was insufficient feta, but she'd have it three layers deep if she could:


And I had the best Caesar Salad I've ever had. It looks kind of boring, but all the goodies are hidden under the lettuce:


Once I chopped up the egg and tossed it it was wonderful; although I'm still waiting to try a Caesar Salad as it's supposed to be, with the egg coddled so it is still almost liquid and mixes with the dressing. I guess too many people moan about slimy undercooked eggwhites!

After lunch we went to the Beach House where there are all sorts of fun things like dodgems and boats and masses of arcade games. I was more taken by the carousel though. It's about 120 years old, and has recently been restored.


The horses were apparently carved by a German called Friedrich Heyn:


And of course it is no longer steam driven, but the old engine is still there:


It must have been stunning when it was going, with little puffs of steam and all the bits and pieces spinning and pumping