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OK no more footy talk for six months. What else have we been up to?

I did another weightlifting competition at the end of August. My back wasn’t great at the time so my coach and I were being pretty conservative. I wasn’t expecting any PBs because I was powering everything, but I went 6/6 and still got a 2 kg PB in snatch and 1 kg PB in clean and jerk! I have another comp coming up in November and it will be interesting to see what I can do if I do full movements.

We got these pretty carrots from Costco. I roasted them whole for about 30 minutes. Then mixed up a 3:2 ratio of balsamic vinegar and honey with a bit of thyme, drizzled the mixture over and broiled them for another 10 minutes, then sprinkled with salt. They turned out like salty-sweet-tangy candy vegetables. So yummy. I especially liked the crispy tips.

Also the Pinch of Yum freezer wild rice soup recipe is magical. I still can’t understand how a recipe can be so easy at prep time and at cook time and still turn out so good! All of her freezer meals are so intriguing. Basically they’re a whole bunch of recipes where you cut up and freeze a bunch of uncooked stuff, and then later pop them straight into your pressure cooker frozen and voila 30 minutes later you have dinner. PS I doubled the recipe and split it into three dinner packs. Also I used brown rice instead of wild rice because wild rice doesn’t exist here. Scott said it tasted like the inside of a chicken pot pie. I will 100% be trying more of these recipes.

This is our new house btw. It’s pretty great other than the lack of insulation. I want to buy one.

The other morning we went to the Tesselaar Tulip Festival with Scott’s mum and aunt. It was alright. They must be making bank because it was very busy and it’s not cheap. I think it would be better if they planted the flowers into cool designs like in Ottawa, but perhaps my standards are a bit high, haha.

I am very pleased to report that my allergies are not a problem any more. I just have to use antihistamine eye drops, antihistamine nasal spray, and a daily antihistamine tablet. Is that too much? I hope not because this is the first spring in like 8 years that I have felt like a normal human.

I trekked out to ALTONA NORTH to go to my old coworkers 30th birthday party. It was nice to catch up with them, I do miss my old EH work pals. Also wow Melbourne is so big it’s like the West and the North could be entirely different cities… I never go there!!

I went on a work wine tour in the Mornington Peninsula with a bunch of techs and nurses and receptionists from medical imaging at my current job. It was very fun and silly. Now I see familiar faces if I have to go to MRI or CT and stuff which is nice.

Myles turned 1 and had a birthday party with 9 trillion kids. He is v cute.

A little while ago Scott’s dad won a gigantic charcoal bbq and several boxes of wine and a bbq lunch party from a liquor store contest that he didn’t even know he entered. They had the lunch on Saturday. A lady came and cooked up like ten different kinds of meat for us, and served it and cleaned up afterwards. What a treat for Scott’s parents. The most hilarious part though? The lady used the regular bbq to cook it, not the prize one hahahahhaa.

This Friday we’re going to Canada!! Just to Vancouver to visit Rosemarie and all our old friends. I can’t wait! I have a very long list of foods I want to eat: Macintosh apples, Jamaican patties, perogies, poutine, yam rolls, Blenz hot chocolate, Smartfood popcorn etc etc. I have to be so strategic about my meals. NO EATING FOODS I CAN GET IN AUSTRALIA.

All for now.

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Tuna and salmon bowls from Poké Me. The girl making the bowls was very generous. She let us pick as many toppings as we wanted, even though we were using a coupon! I had salmon, edamame, avocado, seaweed salad, bean shoots, carrots, kimchi, mushrooms, shallots, coriander, and wasabi mayo on soba noodles. Scott’s was similar with tuna, and beetroot too.

We’ve been back another time since then and the dude only let us pick 5 things and the bowls didn’t come out as hefty. I enjoyed mine more the second time though because I asked for less acidic elements. Kimchi and vinegary bean shoots and soba noodles, plus seaweed salad and the weird mayo was just TOO MUCH at once.

Poké Me Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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Brooklyn Classic – grass fed beef, American cheese, oak leaf lettuce, fresh tomato, Depot special sauce

The Nashville – Southern fried ‘Howlin’ hot chicken, coated in Nashville hot sauce, sliced lettuce, sliced pickles, chipotle mayo

Really yum burgers. I liked my classic burger a lot. It’s right up there with Easey’s and 8bit. (So many burger options omg.) Would definitely eat again.

Fries and Yo Mama milkshake (ice cream, strawberry puree, milk, Kit Kat shards). The fries tasted a lot like McDonald’s fries… which is not necessarily a bad thing. The milkshake was good and also huge. If it wasn’t a school night I would have tried one with alcohol!

Brooklyn Depot Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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I think the two things that sum up winter in Melbourne are footy, and being able to see your breath inside your house.

What have we been up to over the last few frigid months? A lot!!

Big news #1: I got a new job. A permanent full time job. FINALLY! I’ve been there about six weeks now and it’s been great. It’s much busier than my old job but everyone is very nice and I’m really enjoying it. Plus I don’t have to drive to work any more and have gained back about 2 hours a day with the shorter commute and shorter hours. YAY!

Big news #2: We moved! Our old apartment was for sale and the constant viewings and uncertainty were driving us nuts. We decided to take charge of our lives and found a new place that’s within walking distance to work for both Scott and I. My walk is about 25 minutes, and Scott’s is about 45 minutes. It’s one unit in a group of six on a block.

We love having a lot more space, and being able to hear the rain on the roof, but it’s been FLIPPIN’ FREEZING in here this winter. I don’t think it has any insulation at all, so in the morning when it is 6 degrees outside, it is also 6 degrees inside. There is a very nice gas fireplace in the living room but we obviously can’t run that all night, so it makes for very uncomfortable mornings. Thankfully it’s starting to warm up now so we’re past the worst of it for this year.

Sparkler fail for Jemma’s 30th birthday cake. The Tres Leches cake turned out pretty delicious if I do say so myself, but we could not get the sparklers all lit at the same time and also set off the smoke detector in the process, haha. Forgot to take a picture of the cake in the frenzy. :(

We’ve been skating a few times. Scott is trying to get ready to sign up for the next term of hockey academy. I just skate around in circles and shout things at him every time I pass by, hahaha. BEND YOUR KNEES!!! He is getting better though.

Canada Day was fun. We started the day in a very un-Canadian way with an afternoon footy game. We got free tickets in a promotion where they were trying to introduce the game to newcomers to Australia. I also got two free hats and a scarf! Noice! Melbourne lost by two points though. :((((((((


Then we went to a pub that was throwing a Canada Day party. They had Canadian pizza and wings and poutine, and Canadian Club and Molson and lots more. There was a live band too but they weren’t playing Canadian music?!! I was a bit disappointed in that because I think there are a lot of good Canadian music options. I easily made a ten hour playlist for Scott’s citizenship party back in the day!

A couple weeks ago I cobbled together a porchetta with a giant piece of pork from Costco, and a slab of pork belly. It ended up being ridiculously large so I cut the thing in half and froze half for another time. PS this is our new kitchen. So much space!

It turned out ok but not quite as good as the ones I made in Canada. Perhaps the cut was not really the right kind, or it was just too big. The crackling on top was good, but the inside got a bit dry. My yam fries were extremely limp as well even though I roasted them for ages. Ah well.

Speaking of Costco, I bought a secondhand freezer off Facebook Marketplace so we could buy some stuff in bulk. We put it in the garage. This lot of meat should last us a while!!! :D (Another view of part of the new house btw.)

No pictures but we went out to a really nice sushi place called Shira Nui for my birthday/celebrating getting a new job. We got the omakase which comes with two pieces of nine types of sushi. Everything was very carefully put together and truly yummy. I liked the salmon wrapped in a weird thin transparent seaweed the most. We left stuffed. We’ll definitely have to go back there again some time.


We spent our anniversary weekend cleaning our old apartment. FUN TIMES. Then we went to Crown for dinner, which I already wrote about. We put $5 in the bouncy dice machine thingy and I won on the first bounce!! CASH OUT!!! I am really not a gambler.

Scott went to Sydney for a weekend to set up servers (???) at a new Betty’s Burgers restaurant. He got to extend the trip a couple days and visit Ava and fam, which is nice.


Weightlifting has been… a journey. Months of not very much progress. Then my back started hurting. Debated quitting. Started seeing a physio who is also from my club. Lots of rehab exercises. Back still kinda hurting but he started helping me with a few technique things at training too. Had MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT. Lifting started improving dramatically. Temporarily stopped squatting. Back feeling better. New training PBs. Competition coming up next week!!!

Feeling pretty good going into this next comp, although we’re going to be pretty conservative. I think I’ll be powering everything. I might not get any PBs but that’s ok.

(Pic is a result of doing one million actually ok power cleans with a bar with knurling in the middle.)

Jill and Joe came for a visit the other week from Adelaide. We met them for lunch at Milk The Cow for a delicious cheese feast. We had raclette, a cheese board, and the most delicious Grundlegend fondue that came with fortified wine to dip the bread in first. YUMMMMMMMM. Delicious food and great to catch up with them again, as usual.

The Dees had (have??) a fairly good chance of making the finals this year, they just had to win one game out of the three left. Thanks to one of Scott’s friends we got to sit in the MCC section for their best chance, vs. Sydney last weekend. It was a fun day, but unfortunately, Melbs blew it. I am currently watching the second chance game at home, against a much higher ranked team. Melbourne is winning at the moment with one quarter to go but it’d be pretty miraculous if they pulled this off. I think I will have to try and go again next weekend for the last attempt. I really want to see them in the finals for the first time (since I chose them 9 years ago)!!!!!

My allergies have kicked in hardcore so I haven’t done a lot this weekend. I was on call yesterday for the first time at my new hospital but didn’t get called in. Spent most of the time curled up under my enormous blanket in front of the fireplace and tv. It’s hailed about ten times this weekend. #winterinmelbs

**ten minutes later** OMG!!!! DEES WON!!!! Melbourne in the finals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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We celebrated our 8th anniversary with a very special treat: dinner at Dinner by Heston (Blumenthal). We’ve been seeing him on Masterchef for years and have always dreamed about eating a chocolate radio at The Fat Duck. His restaurant at Crown Casino here in Melbourne isn’t quite as crazy as the one in the UK, but it was still exceptional and lots of fun.

We started with some complimentary crusty bread and salty butter, and drinks. I had a Cider Gimlet (Somerset Cider Brandy, Acidulated Butter, Cider Cordial), which was very cold and very tiny, cider-y with a hit of extra alcohol. Scott had a non-alcoholic Oak Fizz (Oak Shrub, Dry Essence, Vichy Catalan) which he said was ‘arborific’.

Of course we had to order the meat fruit. I guess they have moved on from the version that looks like a mandarin. Now you get Plum Meat Fruit (spiced red wine, chicken liver parfait, grilled bread). It was so freaking smooth. And rich. And delicious. The buttery bread was great too, and if you run out, they’ll give you another slice.

For my main course I ordered the Cod in Cider, which is actually made with snapper. Everything on the menu is based on really old recipes (like from the middle ages and stuff) but they said that snapper is much nicer than cod now. It had silverbeet leaves, roast onions, fired mussels, and sorrel, in the most delicious buttery sauce. I LOVED IT. It was so so so tasty. The sauce tasted like buttery ocean, the fish and the mussels were perfect, and the vegetables were just as delicious.

Scott had Venison and Bottled Cherries (smoked beetroot, grilled red cabbage, pickled cherries). Scott says: The venison was perfectly cooked, rare and tender. The smoked beetroot was beautiful and earthy, the cherries tasted like mulled wine and the grilled red cabbage was nicely bitter against the sweetness.

We also ordered a side of Triple Cooked Chips because I’d read about how much other people love them. They really were good chips. So crispy but not too oily. Perfectly seasoned. They tasted AMAZING dipped in the sauce from my fish dish.

We got the Ice Cream with Vegemite to share. It comes with toasted barley cream, yeast caramel, macadamia, puffed spelt and sourdough crumble. Again, delicious. There were yeasty Vegemite-y bits, sweet bits, tart bits, crunchy elements, and of course everything was super smooth. Really really yum.

We were both stuffed but then they brought out complimentary chocolate mousse because it was our anniversary. Very sweet of them. It came with yummy little biscuits that you could dip in to the super smooth mousse. It was risky of me to eat chocolate so late at night but I decided it was worth the insomnia, haha.

All in all top notch experience. Great food and great service. We were there for about two hours in total. I’m glad we didn’t order any more appetizers or anything because we were both very full after what we had. We weren’t right next to the windows but we could still see the Melbourne skyline and the casino fireballs go off a couple times. Would love to go back any time. I’ll start saving up now.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato