Feeding The Body and Soul.

I really am a food whore.  And I suppose it's inevitable that one day this blog will turn towards food and never look back.  My grandmother used to tell me I'd be a chef and though it never worked out that way, I really enjoy cooking.  So I was ecstatic this weekend when I found dried pinto beans and black beans at a market.  I know you're thinking that's not a big deal, but these staples of the North American pantry are not so common here.  I couldn't wait to get home and have at them.  And what goes better with a pot of pintos than Pork?  Nada! So for the second time in less than a week I found myself on Sunday the caretaker of a nice sized pork roast slowly braising and making the house smell fabulous for most of the day.  It was glorious. I really am considering opening a taco stall at the weekend markets.

This weekend was pretty uneventful, we did our usual market shopping.  Some key buys include, a Dragon Fruit (more about this one tomorrow), fresh tomatoes (2 kilos for $2) a couple of huge mangoes for $1.50 each and six (6!) pints of strawberries for $2.  Granted we threw out about a third of the strawberries because they were getting moldy, but we cut up and froze the rest.  All told we spent about $40 and felt like we were practically stealing. We are able to save tons of cash on produce if we go to the market and try to not miss it.  Besides, our favorite little Argentinian guy is there and he sells the best empanadas.  One of these days I've got to take some photos.

We went to the movies on Saturday night.  We had both read "The Road" by Cormac Mccarthy and were keen to see the film.  I was a little scared because the book was so moving and I thought they'd have a hard time adapting it.  I was really happy to see that my fears were unfounded, I thought the adaptation was spot on and they did the original work justice.  If you haven't read the book I highly recommend it.  I read the whole thing in one sitting, staying up nearly all night to finish.

I've mentioned that the weather has been really hot lately.  Today broke the cycle, it rained on and off all night and today was cloudy and blustery and rainy all day.  We're getting the bottom edge of a tropical depression or cyclone or some such and it means that the temps have stayed reasonable all day.  I'm loving it.  In fact I'm told we're starting into the rainy season soon and I say bring it on.  The heat is a bit much.

Even though we are busy during the week, we aren't letting that stop us from doing fun stuff on the weekends.  Last week we decided to ride our bikes up to the top of Mt. Coot-Tha.  Apparently Coot-Tha is a bastardization of an Aboriginal word meaning honey.  And though it's not a mountain of the scale that we're used to in Colorado, it still is a pretty imposing presence in Brisbane.

We set off about 8:30 am on a Sunday, and that turns out to be too late to start.  The temps were in the middle 30s. (about 95f) and the sun was very intense.  Leah and her tiny little road bike kicked my butt getting to the top.  I found myself in 1st gear making about 4mph all the way to the top.  It took almost an hour to get up.  When we got to the top, I looked like this:

Laugh if you want, that's what Leah does every time she sees this photo.  In fact in all the time I've known her she's never laughed as hard as she did when she first looked at it.  

I regained what dignity I could muster and managed to enjoy the view for a while.  It was quite nice actually to see Brisbane from above.  We pestered another sightseer into taking our photo.  It was a little hazy but still worth it.  If you look on the right side and see the large blueish looking building there, we live a couple of blocks from that.

After about thirty minutes on top, we set off back to our place.  We decided to take the long way back and around the mountain, figuring it would be downhill all the way home.  Boy was that wrong.

Almost imediately we were heading uphill again and we spent almost another hour climbing.  I was hot before and now I was hot and bothered. 

[ Leah's Interjection: Let's just say when we took off to go the "long" way around I was ahead of Todd and saw another ginormous hill. I knew Todd was not going to be happy, especially since it took quite a bit of convincing on my part that we should give the roundabout way a go. "Todd, come on, were at the top. There's no way there is going to be more hills."  Anyway,  I luckily turned around just in time to witness Todd's look of horror at the brutal hill followed by his favorite 4-lettered curse word, rhymes with truck, echoing off the mountain. Okay, continue] 

Along the way we saw a sign for a waterfall.  The sign promised it was only 500 metres up the track.  I was quick to say let's do it.  I mean, it's hot and a waterfall would be so refreshing.  So we headed off road and onto a hiking track.  The walk was only about a quarter mile so it really didn't take us too long.  But we weren't really prepared for what we were about to see.  I'll let the picture speak for itself.

Note to self, DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT WALK OFF TRAIL TO SEE A WATERFALL ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN IF IT HASN'T RAINED IN WEEKS! 

As you can see, it was a bit anticlimactic.  Not exactly what we were expecting but funny none the less.  You can't see that behind me from where I took this photo there was a drop off of about twenty feet, but there was little more than a trickle of water.  I'm sure it would be impressive after a big rain fall, but it just wasn't our day.

Shortly after the waterfall hike, we did finally get the uphill portion over with and the fun of riding downhill made up for all the pain.  We were going over 40mph down the hill and could have gone faster if our nerves would have allowed.  For the record Leah made 43 while I only made 42.  Blerg!

Tomorrow:  Rubber Band Ball Updates!