Some thoughts on an Aussie food special

I like to cook. I like to bake too. Fortunately, I like to eat as well. I do however not like to exercise. Since we moved to Australia I don’t manage to get weekly walks as I did in Kuwait where I spend several mornings per week roaming around the shopping malls, searching for something new to put in my closet. Most of these power walks/shopping sprees were preceded by a breakfast or followed by a lunch. Here in Australia I do not spend my time straying in shopping malls, hence some of my natural exercise is lost. Since I clean the house thoroughly several times per week I manage to work up quite the pulse and I have found that cleaning, mopping and dusting gives a more all-round exercise than walking in a mall even if the walking is with extra weight in the shape of shopping bags. Either my jeans have all shrunk over the Melbournian summer or all the Australian goodness is taking a toll on me. Desperate times call for desperate measures; I am now on a new popular diet called 5-2 diet, meaning that two days per week I am only eating 500 kcal. I have chosen Mondays and Thursdays. It is hard but with lots of green tea and water, I get through these days.

                                  Exercising Kuwaiti style 

 Australia has beautiful fresh produce and groceries and everything taste so much better here. This is not a scientific fact just my personal opinion as an epicure. I have been eating my way through the supermarket and have resumed my culinary love affair with lamb. The lamb in Kuwait had a strange flavor to it, pungent even. A friend suggested that it might be due to the halal butchering. I try to get at least one dish each of chicken, pork, beef, lamb and fish or seafood on the table every week. It seems like endless possibilities to have a varied menu. Yet I find myself glancing at the refrigerated counter with kangaroo meat. I never tried camel in Kuwait, intestines in Mexico or insects in Thailand. I am considering to try kangaroo though, an animal considered as a pest in Australia. There are actually twice as many kangaroos in Australia than people. I found a cook book online with ”Roocipes” with somewhat morbid headlines like ”kangaroo on your plate, mate!” and ”hop to it”. When I decide to go all the way with a kangaroo fillet, it has to be on a day when our daughters are away from home. They are strong objectors to even trying this protein. Once my husband had wallaby sausage when he was in Tasmania on a business trip and the daughters can’t really forgive him for it, especially not since he declared the sausage to be ”delicious”. I will contemplate on the Australian cuisine in another diary entry. Right now it’s Thursday and I need some more tea and water. I am paying the price for having rolled the dice. 

                             "Darlings, don't play with the food please!"