Eating With Little Australia: Tuna Fish Sandwich

Plain old tuna fish sandwich?

BORING.

Tuna with pickled onion and crushed walnuts on Turkish bread roasted sandwich?

NOT BORING.

Ingredients: Turkish bread, one can tuna, mayonnaise, pepper, pickled onions, walnuts, cheese of your choosing (we had a dry, crumbly cheese).

Don't be afraid of the walnuts. They go really well with tuna. You don't need tons of pickled onion—but it doesn't hurt. Plenty of pepper, too.

Turkish bread is the bomb, people.

DO NOT overpower with cheese. Just a light covering.

It's like a disco in here!

Very Important Step: mix extra tuna, pickled onion, and walnuts and eat with a spoon.

After a little while put in the top piece of toast. Put a little mayo on it.

Toast until toasted.

Add chips, eat next to coffee table display of seahsells, driftwood, and shark egg. For the irony.

This has been another episode of "Eating With Little Australia." You are welcome.

Remember: Your tastebuds aren't armed guards protecting your stubborn ideas about food—they're plucky little infants wanting to explore and taste the world! Yes, there are risks involved. And?

The Aussie Meat Pie

Behold, it is a pair of Aussie Meat Pies, seen here in their natural habitat, their flaky top crusts liberally adorned with the requisite tomato sauce.

Here they are again, seconds later, the victims, one gathers darkly, of a most brutal and savage attack.

And why do Aussies eat the Aussie Meat Pie? Because of the "classic taste of meat and gravy" is why.

Classic.

Aussie Bacon

Bacon in the U.S. and Australia are completely different beasts, no near-pun intended. This is Aussie bacon:

We don't get the loin (or "eye") in America, just the strip, and I don't know why the hell not. I feel cheated!

And wow, there is a whole lot going on with bacon, I see, and now I get a bacon education:

Side bacon, or streaky bacon, comes from pork belly. It is very fatty with long layers of fat running parallel to the rind. This is the most common form of bacon in the United States.

And in Oz:

Middle bacon is the most common variety and are sold in "rashers". Middle bacon includes the streaky, fatty section along with the loin at one end.

Who knew?

A Double-Banana

In all my years on Earth I have never once seen, or even heard of, a double-banana—like a two-yoked egg—but I have now! Behold:

I Came to Australia for the Haggis

If you had heard for years and years tales of a dreadful dish made by a strange people far way and then one day you were offered the opportunity to actually taste the dish yourself, the very first time you brought a spoonful of the stuff toward your lips you would have visions of terrifying monsters clawing their way out of your bowels, making wicker baskets of your intestines. The dreadful dish could be called "ice cream": if you had never had it and had been told wicked tales about it, the first bite would be terrifying.

So it was with the haggis.

Happy New Year, and Prawns on the Barbie

Happy New Year, or New Year's Eve, depending on where and when you are, to everyone from Tin and I, and her friend Di from the Northern Territories, who has spent the New Years festivities with us. Cheers! We had a fantastic time walking he beach with a few thousand locals, having some discreet beverages and watching the fireworks show. All around mellow and wonderful.

Had a New Years swim - it's about 90° F - this morning, got some work done, right now listening to Penguins on a Rock (which I will be seeing shortly in Sydney), having a frosty beer, and life is good and better.

New Years beach:

And we got a barbie. And I learned that it's not "shrimp on the barbie," as Americans know it, but prawns on the barbie: