Sage

I don't know how I forgot to rave about this this last weekend. Last Friday we went to dinner at a restaurant called Sage for Judy's (Andrew's mom) birthday. Sage is one of those very pretentious places that services tiny portions of food on things like slate tiles. I gave the menu a glance online to see if anything caught my eye and was a bit concerned that I wouldn't find anything I'd enjoy, snails? really?

We arrived at the restaurant which is partly inside and partly outside with a roof and a bit of a side, and of course we were sat in the outdoor section right on the edge. After joking with one of the waiters that they should just stick a heater right behind us they actually proceeded to do just that. Not only that but they also moved one close to the head of our table on the other open end and we were all quite toasty for the whole meal.

Sage has a set menu so $55 gets you two courses. We all hummed and hawed over what we were going to have. I had settled on Mushroom and Miso Cappucion for my entree and duck for my main. Once the waiter starting taking everyone's orders though I decided to be bold and get the snails for my entree instead (aren't you so proud Mom)

We didn't have to wait very long before our entrees were brought out (on pieces of slate of course) and we all quickly dug in and began trading back and forth with each other. Almost everyone was brave enough to try the snails (delicious).

My snails

Andrew's scallops with chorizo

Kate's pork belly

By the time we were done marvelling at how good our entrees had been the mains arrived. The duck was a great choice, we all cleaned our plates (I even ate my brussel sprouts) and were quite sated from the meal. It was a large meal but incredibly rich and flavorsome so we were happy.

Andrew's Waygu beef

Kate's lamb

My duck

Judy was the only one who didn't get an entree because it was here birthday and she wanted a dessert instead. She went with the Chocolate Trilogy which included salted caramel (strange). We all helped her make sure the plate was clean.

Judy's dessert

It was such a good meal that I'm thinking we might have to try it while Mom and Dad are here next month, or, as Paul suggested, we could try their sister restaurant Aubergine, either way it will mean more yummy food for my tummy so I'm in.

Drink Attempt

Since Andrew and I now have everything we need to make our favorite cocktails I thought I'd give it a try and make a Mudslide and a Lemon Drop Martini.

The Mudslide turned out really well, the Lemon Drop not so much. It's going to have to be one of the things Dad teaches me to make properly when he gets here in 29 days.

Another long weekend

We had a long weekend this past weekend which was brilliant. There was a program called You Are Here that started this weekend, it's an art program trying to make use of unused spaces in Canberra. To help with the festivities Kate and I began by trading for some bread. A bread artisan/ANU PhD student is making a whole bunch of very nice sourdough bread that he gets people to trade something for. It is supposed to make people think about the value of objects, it's a pretty neat project and delicious bread.

Me and my bread

The tray of bread in the abandoned shop front

The bread trade was taking place in an old shop that had been abandoned for a while. Also in there a small model of the little town center where people could make suggestions about improvements such as adding a Puppy Cafe, where you get to go in and pet cute puppies, and a roller coaster, free cheese. We were told to write down a suggestion and they would build it and put it into the model. Since there was the free cheese Kate and I decided to add a wine fountain, similar to a water fountain but with wine to compliment the cheese.

The puppy cafe is on the second roof on the right, there is also a solar mobile phone charging station, a petting zoo on the bottom left corner of the photo

When we were leaving the city we saw a giant protest for gay marriage coming down the street

Saturday night I went down to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy to see some of the lights around their sacred fire, they put up lights as a contrast to the Enlightened show that is on with some of the monuments in the city. So, let me start again. Enlightened is a light show that puts various lightscapes onto buildings like the War Memorial and Old Parliament House. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is the embassy for the Aboriginal people of Australia. There is still a lot negativity between the indigenous people and the settlers here in Australia, a lot of imbalance and I've always been curious about the embassy whenever I'd go through the museum district. Saturday was my first time being there, I got an introduction from, to be blunt, a nice old hippie who spends a lot of his time there. This is a big project that I am undertaking and it's going to be, complicated to say the least. I have my first few photographs up on my photoblog and I could really use some feedback.

Anyhow, Sunday was Coopa's birthday. We had Luigi for a few days so they played together for a while and Coopa slept the rest of the day. They were doing a big content migration at Andrew's work this weekend, this meant that he had to go in Saturday, Sunday and Monday to do testing so we didn't get to do too much. However, on Monday we managed to go down to the dog park for an hour with some of Coopa's friends for his birthday. I was a huge dork and made peanut butter pupcakes for the puppies which they all loved.

And that about wraps up our fun and exciting weekend. I am sure there is so much that I have left out but I've begun reconciliation of payments made to our insurance provider at work which means that my brain no longer functions. Just 16 more days until my Mom arrives, whoo!

That mannequin was either trying to hit on me or freak me out

Andrew and I took full advantage of Canberra this weekend filling up our weekend and yet not tiring ourselves out too much.

Friday, for me, began with a trip to the circus. I was given permission to photograph Weber's Circus which is in town for the next few weeks, the photos can be seen on my photoblog.

Saturday was what we usually do on Saturday, groceries, laundry, gardening, etc. However, Saturday night I went over to the northside to a cafe/bar called The Front with Kate and Bonnie to hear a singer called Francesca Sidoti. It was a nice little hipster place complete with a living room set up, boardgames to play and a selection of books to read through. The opening act was alright but a bit too mellow for us. Francesca combined wit with her music and one of our favourite songs was called 'Deep Fried Petrefied' all about the fish n' chip shop, it was brilliant. She also began her set by talking about the creepy mannequin that was in the back of the shop eyeing her up before she went on to sing, which is where the title came from.

Sunday Andrew and I went to Old Parliament House to see a show called Behind the Lines, it's a collection of political cartoons from the past year, below our are favourites.

Julia Gillard was always talking about the country moving forward throughout the entire election

Tony Abbott was asked a question about broadband internet and he didn't seem to even know what the internet is

The election came down to four independents who had to decide if they were going to support Gillard or Abbott so the two hand to try and make deals with these independents from the country

Outside of Old Parliament House

The foyer, how nice is this place

One of the chamber rooms with creepy mannequins, which seems to be a theme for this post

Prime Minister's Office, their version of the Oval Office

A replica of The Mace that is carried in to Parliament everytime the Speaker of the House is there to show they can begin

I don't know what this room is called but you know what it is

After that we stopped by one of the freshfood markets to see how much the rumoured shop selling American cereal was selling it for, a box of Captain Crunch was going for $11.95, not something I could go for. Instead we picked up some fresh baked rolls, nice spicy chorizo and potatos. A tasty, but expensive trip. Not wanting to stop I put our lamb shank dinner into the crockpot and we took Coopa to the dog park.

Preparing the lamb for the crockpot

And away we go

Coopa was enjoying the smell of cooking lamb but preferred his trip to the dog park

Finally we decided to rest for a bit and settled down to watch a movie before I finished getting dinner ready. The lamb shanks turned out amazingly, just falling off the bone, delicious. And so wrapped up another exciting weekend in Australia's capital city.

I probably should have done a better picture but yummy in my tummy, delicious lamb shank, mashed potatoes and a nice gravy

On a quick side note: Andrew and I were watching Good News Week Monday night and one of their questions was 'In Canberra structural engineers were called to a government building because it was shaking, when they got there they discovered it was shaking for what reason?' since it was Andrew's office building that this happened in I was quite excited, it was from a Zumba class :)

Where City Meets Country

Andrew and I have been keeping things pretty quiet, taking care of housework and other humdrum stuff. On Sunday I went down to the Royal Canberra Show to work for ARF. The closest thing I can compare the show to is it is kind of, kind of, like the Burlington Fair. There are carnival rides, food and games, lots of animals on display, pony rides, food judging, market stalls, people like us at ARF, and then the motor shows (you'll see through the photos). So the blog this week is very photo intensive, and there are even more photos over on my other blog include some of the motor cross jumping and the actual demolition derby (that's right, there was a demolition derby, I have to admit I found that less exciting than I thought I would)

Pig racing, they were kind of cute and very fast

Pig diving, absolutely adorable

Trick riding, very neat to see the way they could hang off the horses and twist themselves around while riding from one side of the area to the other, also very crowded so it was hard to photograph

Canadian lumberjack show, they were very funny and the 'tourist' on the left near the fence later snuck over the line and climbed up one of the 50 meter poles for a little show of his own.

This guy is the world speed champion for...something to do with lumberjacks, but he carved a bunny, isn't it cute

Lumberjacks racing up the 50 meter pole, the guy on the right got a head start since the other one is the fastest in the world

Log rolling, where anything goes, except using an axe, much to their disappointment

Lawn mower racing, yup, lawn mowers

High velocity truck tricks, these Toyota trucks did maneuvers and tricks around the stadium

Car parade before the demolition derby

For more photographs from the day take a look at my photoblog.