Sunday, December 11, 2005

A tale of two breakfasts

It has been a good, productive weekend as I have set a deadline of Monday for shipping Christmas gifts overseas. This means it was essential to start each day with the hearty Aussie breakfast. Saturday morning was bright sun, blue skies, a quick run to the Waverly Cemetery before it got too hot, and then Haydn and I strolled down to Baristas -- my treat. He opted for the Big Breakfast and a flat white -- the big breakfast consisting of eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, mushrooms, and tomatoes. Seriously. I think this would usually be referred to as a Lumberjack Special or something along those lines in the US. As you can see in the pic, there might just be a certain Paul Bunyan air to Haydn with that breakfast in front of him. I went the way of the British and had beans and chunkytoast(!) with jam, and I opted for an iced latte. Usually ordering this from a cafe means getting a scoop of ice cream in it, but I elected for sans ice cream.

Then it was running around, getting some things together to send away. A stop at a vintage clothing sale with Joeley. All good stuff. Joeley and I and some other girls headed to the Beach Road Hotel in Bondi for a wee bit of Saturday night fun, and we had missed the Miss Bondi pageant that happened earlier in the day. Oh drat.

But this morning, was the return of how weekend breakfast should be -- executive produced and cooked by none other than Haydn. On the menu we had eggs, rye toast, organic bacon from Sam the Organic Butcher, avocado, salsa, and cantaloupe (otherwise referred to as rockmelon here). I've included a shot of my breakfast, as we dined oh so civilly in the sun room complete with tablecloth (ok, still on the table from Thanksgiving) and a favorite smutty coffee mug.


And now, before me is much wrapping to do. I've downloaded the Charlie Brown Christmas album from iTunes to help invoke the spirit. It is just a bit hard here to grasp Christmas with the sun, blue skies, and beach and lack of elaborate neighborhood light displays and Christmas carols piped in everywhere you go. A few other Northern Hemisphere expats who have been here for some time have said it's just never quite the same, or moreso just different in its own right. Here's to something a bit different...

--tara

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My arteries are clogging just reading about your breakfasts. Oh to be young again!

Glad to hear you are well. Enjoy the hot sunny weather. NYC is quite cold and very Christmasy. We've already had 3 coatings of snow.

Two more weeks and I am off to Mexico.
Feliz Navidad ! ! !

Amy