You can make Pavlova in High Altitude

First up I want to say how pleased I was to hear that Cyclone Yasi missed Cairns the way that it did... we felt a lot of worry during the morning that it was happening there. Glad that Sarah and Daniel were able to make a cool cubby in their laundry though. You can count that as a family camping experience.

We had a very belated Australia day celebration, last night, which was as good as any a meal I could have hoped for.
We found an AUSTRALIAN leg of lamb for the occasion at COSTCO (more on the wonders of Costco soon)....
So we invited Josh and Josie Smith +children to our celebration and of course Crystal and family too. We scoured the shops for mint jelly and found some "Mint Apple Jelly" which had to do. I was planning to make mint sauce from scratch but there was no decent mint to be had.
The mint apple jelly was in the jams and spread section, so I was pretty sceptical that it would be the right flavour but it turned out to be quite good.
The Lamb was about $4.50 a pound for a boneless leg of lamb, which I think is around $9.90/kg- I was pleasantly surprised by this given that it was Australian Lamb and that it was a nice boneless cut.
We had to search for pumpkin or 'squash' as they call it. We found butternut pumpkin and also a round small orange pumpkin that was pretty similar to Jap in taste.
Plus we had roast spuds and sweet potato and carrots. We did also do a pork roast just because of the numbers, and just in case the lamb was horrible.

The best part though was the Pavlovas. I had heard that Pavlovas would not work here in the high altitude, the air collapses out of the egg whites and turns it flat in the oven.
So I did some research and decided to try making two different pavlovas- One made in the traditional way, and the other using chef's technique called "Italian meringue". Fortunately I had some idea about how to make Italian meringue because just before we left Australia my friend Kathy Vidulich made some of this meringue in a cooking day at my house.
So the traditional kind turned out with a slightly different texture. It looked like the eggs had melted a little and created that kind of yellow, bumpy,crystallised texture. It did not hold its 'peaks' once cooked but looked a bit more like a round cake shape.
The Italian meringue looked normal with white peaks and a cook consistency. It did bleed a little bit of the sugar syrup out the bottom of the pavlova and it was not quite as high as one at home, maybe a cm or two lower than it could have been but it looked pretty normal in the end.
Once they were topped with goodness (fruit and cream... no passion fruit unfortunately!) they were as good as any pavlova I had eaten.... but perhaps that was because they tasted like home :)

Crystal wants to learn how to make them so I will be making another one for FHE tomorrow night. This time I will try a slightly different technique with the Italian Meringue to see if it will work. Basically Italian Meringue is just were you whip the egg whites like normal, then add some cream of tartar and a pinch of salt. Then while that's mixing you put sugar and water in a saucepan and boil it for 5 or so minutes then you pour it into the egg whites as they are mixing. The hot sugar syrup cooks the egg whites with the heat so that it stabilises the meringue before you cook it.
Chefs use this technique so they can refrigerate the meringue or so it is less likely to collapse in other cooking but it works well for high altitude. I actually found it by reading a blog in Sweden!

So back to Costco... our favourite food shop, we went there for lunch 3 days in a row. You can fill up on all the samples that they hand out. On any given day there will be about 15-20 different stalls with products to sample- and these aren't piddly sample either. We have eaten steak, wieners, meatballs, cakes, pizza, chips, burritos, chocolate covered berries, fruit, specialty breads, muesli bars- and that's just in one day. The samples are actually a great idea because we would not have known what brands and products were worth trying if we hadn't sampled half the store :)

Then if you have any room left you get to the check outs and they have a cafeteria with yum food for $1. They do this hand dipped ice cream, like a magnum but twice the size and twice as good because they dip it in chocolate as you wait then they dip it in big chunky roast almonds.... really this is the most amazing ice cream for $1.50 imaginable. Its enough for three people.
We do shop at Costco occasionally too... but mostly we browse the 60 inch LED LCD tv aisle.

We went to Ikea but there prices were the same as back home. IKEA you are dead to me. Costco has won over our stomachs.

We went to the Olive Garden on Thursday and it was as good as I remembered. Do you all remember the unlimited bread sticks and salad??? They sent a ton of the bread and salad home with us in the doggy bag that had half our dinner it it.
They have this Chicken Ravioli with Gorgonzola cheese and pear.... it was so yummy I have since googled the recipe... I can't wait to be in a kitchen where I can try making it.
We have also found a good bread bakery where they make really good grainy (non sweetened) bread- on the down side it is $5 a loaf.... so we then went hunting for an alternative at Costco. for $2 we found a pretty good substitute that is not too sweet.

So today is the super bowl and many a church family is having a big shin dig to celebrate. Chelsea in fact was hijacked by a family down the street to celebrate with them.
We went into the local bank branch to put my name on the account. Well we were greeted with a table full of super bowl party food..... cupcakes topped with footballs, bags of chips, popcorn, cookies etc. The kids were invited to eat while we worked out the account details. It took quite a while because we were opening accounts for the kids as well. So for half an hour the kids filled up on food and then they came out with free piggy banks for the kids and sent us off with colouring in books and crayons. It was the craziest bank experience I have ever seen. When Win came back from opening the account originally he was given two stuffed ponys for the girls and they bought out drinks and cookies.
I think that we will be finding more excuses to do our banking in person :)

Chelsea starts school this week, so we will be busy making Valentines Day cards for all the class mates.... apparently a requirement here. She has been pretty happy about the extended school holidays but it will be good for her to meet some kids in the new neighbourhood... as well as start on the path to learning how to speak 'American'. She has converted over to the words pretty quickly. I got a note with "I love you MOM" the other day and she asks for "Ketchup" with her food.
Isabelle prefers to stick with her aussie words and tells Chelsea that she is calling it the wrong thing... however she does say "Oh Maaaan" like Cyrstal does... a lot.
George has taken to the food... today he got very excited about his "sloppy Joe" for lunch, he even got naked for the occasion so as not to cover himself in the sloppy stuff.... :P
George also embarrassed us last Sunday, in the middle of passing the Sacrament (when everyone was quiet) by calling out "I need a hair cut" the more we tried to silence him the louder he got to the point where he was standing on his chair calling out "I NEED A HAIRCUT". he probably did need a haircut but I have not idea why he chose sacrament meeting to voice it.
He then followed it up with "I want some banana lollies". ... I am surprised he remember those from Australia.

Isaiah is still our plodder, he spends a lot of time working on art projects of one sort or another. He discovered cutting and sticky taping and has been making endless "Kaleidoscopes". He snuck into Tim's office and drew a really beautiful picture of the family with rainbows and background on one of Tim's business documents. Tim said it was the nicest work document he'd ever had.

Well, we are going to be hanging out with Holly soon and going to Park City. Can't wait, she has also bought over some Australian food supplies which will be very appreciated.