A Lamington

Today i start a new thing that i will try to keep up weekly. so every week i want to present something really aussie to you. right now the focus is on food since thats the only thing i can think of right now.

So:
A lamington is a sweet that is chocolate on the outside and sort of like a cake on the inside. also there are heaps of coconut sprinkles on the outside. yesterday i was at the local bakery and asked them if they have lamingtons and she said yes sure. i said i'd like three. when she got them i realized that those were the biggest ones i've seen so far. i had two before rotary and one today. now what really is missing for this are pictures and a recipe and some pictures. now the recipe is not a problem although i have to say i dont know if its exactly like the lamingtons i eat from the bakery. so please someone try it and then tell me and the other people wondering and reading this blog. so here is the recipe:

• Ingredients:

• 2 cups of flour
• 2 tsp of baking powder
• 1/4 tsp of sea salt
• 2 large, free-range eggs
• 1/2 cup of room temperature butter
• 3/4 cup of white sugar
• 1 tsp of pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 2 cups of icing sugar
• 1/3 cup of coco powder
• 3 tbs of butter
• 1/2 cup of milk
• Whipped cream for serving

1. 1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
   2. Lightly butter an 20 centimeters square cake tin. Set aside.
   3. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
   4. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar mixture until light and fluffy.
   5. Add the eggs on at a time to the butter/sugar mixture. Beat well after adding each egg.
   6. Add the vanilla to the mixture and mix well.
   7. Now, alternately add the flour mixture and milk, in three additions, starting and finishing with the flour. Use a large spatula for mixing.
   8. Spread the batter into the cake tin and make sure it is evenly spread.
   9. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. Test the center of the cake with a toothpick and make sure it comes out clean.
   10. Cool the cake in the tin for about 5 minutes and then invert it onto a wire rack. Once the cake has cooled cut it into squares of a desired size and place them in an airtight container. Pop the container in the fridge for at least 2 hours or even overnight.
   11. Now for the icing. Place the icing sugar, cocoa powder, butter and milk in a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.
   12. Stir the mixture until it is smooth but still a bit thick. You don't want the liquid to get too thin otherwise the sponge won't absorb the coating.
   13. Now it's time to assemble the Lamingtons. Put out some newspaper under wire racks to catch any mess. Place the cake pieces on the racks and have your chocolate icing and coconut ready.
   14. Quickly coat the sponge cake on all sides in the icing mixture and then gently roll the cake in the coconut. Repeat the process.
   
   
   quite a process aye...i just figured that probably nobody will have the nerves to do everything i just copied from an australian cooking website. so next week i'll try to find something a "bit" more simple. but i think that this is SOOOO aussie that it cant miss in this blog. next week another aussie dish is coming up. 
   tomorrow school is starting again.  

bloody aussie attitude

hey everyone!
firstly, no i did not have the chance to go surfing. this is really starting to get a bit annoying but its really just the aussie attitude. very spontaneous so it can be very good but also very annoying when it comes to planning.
on the other hand i had a really good day today. i have wanted to get contact lenses for quite a bit of time because playing soccer without glasses is fairly hard. so i went to the local optometrist and they got me an appointment the same day and now i'm at the point where next i'll be trying the contacts on.
after that i had a nice big lamington and then went to rotary where the guest speaker was the owner of the forster-tuncurry race course not car racing but horses.
tomorrow its the last day of the holidays and i'm going to jim morwich's house for dinner. this is part of the weekly program with my rotary club on wednesdays. also i will tomorrow present to you something very aussie in this blog.
you wanna know what? check tomorrow at this time!

a surfy update

my board has arrived and i might upload a picture. also my friend jake has told me that tomorrow we can go for a surf.
so today i got myself a wet suit so that i am now fully prepared.

When holidays end and school returns...life is still very easy :-)

Hello everyone

my blog has got the shape that i will leave it in i think...by the way: sometimes there will now be a poll on the side of the posts. if you want to you can chose your answer it will not affect you in any way it will just record your answer and show you what the others voted.
well the holidays are slowly but surely ending...on wednesday it's back to school.last few days i haven't been doing too much. usually just hangin at brad's or ben's house... yesterday i was at ben's saturday night barbie and then after i went to jack's place for the night. today the surf has finally calmed down so the mission "get david on that surfboard" can start. i called up the local surf shop and they told me that surf lessons are over but that their instructor will call me up tomorrow so that we can arrange a private lesson or something. also i will probably soon get the surfboard i was promised by the guy that i only know that he was a heaps good surfer once but dont even know his name....
so now what i'm doing is waiting for jack to text me and then we're gonna go for a kick on the soccer fields...
if anything spectacular happens i'll let y'all know but right now it's pure relaxing and enjoying.

Surfing plans and the coconut theory

yesterday i spent the day in my counsellors shop, barbeques galore. i helped and then in the evening i went to johns house to eat dinner at his house and then sleep there. it was his birthday so i got him some lindt chocolate. then today i went home around lunch time and went body boarding with my friends jack and brad. when i came home there was a builder at our place fixing up the veranda. the guy that was there came up to me and we had a little chat. he told me that twenty years ago he had been a pro surfer and number 3 in the world. he then also told me that he will drop a board at our house so that i could start off easily on my own. thats very good news! its a big and heavy board so its optimal to start surfing and is also the type that he learned how to surf. and i mean hey he made it very far so it cant be bad to start on a board like he did.
also i went to a surf shop called xsight because i have a voucher for a surf lesson but i just wanted to check out when it would be the best to do it. right now the surf is still rather big so i gave them my name and my mobile number. now the surf instructor will call me when he thinks it makes sense to go for a surf....

it is very good that i'm FINALLY getting into the surfing. last few days i've been getting pretty desperate to start something new which would most likely be surfing. i'm not saying that my holidays are boring not at all but i just needed a new challenge that i can go for during a normal day when i dont have any special program. like this i have something to work on. a goal that i can set myself and that i had set myself a long time ago. and now it is finally getting started.

Now you still wonder what the coconut theory is about aye?
Well this should be a bit of a relief to some of you:
Whilst about 15 people get killed by shark attacks every year 150 get killed by falling coconuts. THERE YOU GO! but you dont have to get all scared about me getting hit by coconuts now ;-) there's only few here!

Pimp your Blog

hello everyone!

like my new blog? i'm not quite that happy with it but its getting there.... so what i've been up to?hmmm... the holidays started on friday last week so i havent been in school for a while which is a pretty good thing. at the end of last week lyns daughter and her boyfriend came up from sydney and spent the weekend here. they showed me around a bit and we went for a drive on saturday and sunday. on saturday we went to wingham which is where pats parents live. pat is the boyfriend of nicole who is lyns daughter. so near wingham we went to this forest and there weer heaps of fruit bats there. htey sleep during the day just like every other bat so you got a pretty good look at them. i might post some picures or might not depends on how lazy i am...and trust me holidays make you lazy! but this doesnt mean that i dont do anything it just means i only do what i feel like doing... anyways so we went there and also went to the longest single drop waterfall in the southern hemisphere...or something like that. well it was big thats the main thing......
after that i went bowling with nicole and pat in forster just before we had dinner. it was good fun and everyone won once although nicole used what they call the bumpers...a plastic edge at the side of the gutter so the ball cant go down....this helped her quite a bit so pt and i had no choice but to lose ...
on sunday we drove by wingham again where we dropped off pat and then went on to go for a drive to a beach somewhere and also to a light house. it was nice weather so it was a good day...

then on monday it was no rotary because of easter monday, duh :-) ......
on tuesday it was soccer practice and now i'm starting to get my game experience that i need so i think i should be in the starting eleven for sure when season starts on the 2nd of may... cause mate you like it or not but i represent switzerland not only in school but also on the soccer field so i have to show them hoe bloody good we are aye!!

on wednesday i went to paddy burn's place to go fishing with him and his grand kids. i think they were called...cameron and something else..they were really nice. i caught two fish but they were both too small so they were illegal to keep but paddy caught two others that were big enough. one was 37 cm so that was a pretty good one. better to look at than to eat for dinner thats what i figured at dinner table but yeah... "sorta" starting to like it.
on thursday i went to pick up vini from taree. he is an exchange student from brazil staying in coffs harbour which is about five hours from forster. he caught a train in coffs and was in taree at 11 or something... in the arvo we went body boarding at tuncurry beach. BAD IDEA!! when we got there some surfers and scuba divers were just coming out of the water. we went in and the waves were okay but not that great almost a bit too big for us non-locals...
when we got out about one and a half hours later a woman walked up to us and asked us if we knew that there had been a shark exactly where we were boarding but about, yes you guessed it, one and a half hours ago. scuba divers had seen it and recognized it as a bronze whaler. a shark that is usually around 2-3.5 meters long. VERY CREEPY!! luckily we didnt have any rendez-vous scheduled with that creature so we got away nice and easy with an aftershock...
on friday we went body boarding at one mile beach in forster where the waves were now getting outrageously big. just for you notice the biggest waves were just around 5.8 meters. now imagine that in front of you while lying flat on a board and seeing the curl on the top of the wave and then realize its going to dump straight on you. happend to vini and me once each and trust me after that experience you just want to get out of the water and never go back in... but if you stay in you recover quite quickly because you dont have ANY time to think about other things than estimating what the next wave is going to be like....
that day me and vini were in the water for almost 4 hours and caught 2 very big waves each. barrels are the nicest thing you can experience in the surf when its pumping like it was! caught two of those each and then after four hours of swimming in the freezing cold water we went home and were pretty much what you could call "dead meat"....
on saturday we went to forster main beach where the surf is usually calmer than at tuncurry beach or one mile...and so it was. thank god! my feet had huge blisters but hey...gotta get on the horse again right??!! in the evening it was party time and we went to bens house. the fact that we knew that we could stay there for the night was very pleasing. the party was good. not big but still heaps of fun.
on sunday we slept in until after 12.30...so much for the party having been good or not :)
we didnt do too much but then went to forster main beach again and spent little time in the water but much more climbing rocks and then making videos of surfers catching pretty big waves. some pictures in the slide show on the side of this blog at the top are made from the rocks there...
and then today it was the worst weather day all weekend (i do know that its monday)...we didnt do too much at all but check out some beaches but the surf was too muddy and messy so we didnt go in. we wanted to go play tennis but it rained all day so we couldnt do that... and then a few hours ago we went to rotary and then came home and this is where i am now. this must be my longest post so far so congrats if you actually made it all the way through!!

i am still experimenting with some gadgets that i can add to the blog.....so dont be astonished if everything keeps changing for a while....

smilla die zwei sin für di :-)

WATCH OUT, HOLIDAYS COMING UP!

Hello switzelvananians

as promised here's my post that will probably be pretty big....

last week it was shitty weather so i couldnt go and play golf for the last time on thursday which was a shame. friday was school and then the weekend finally started. on friday night lyn told me that she was going to some fitness program on saturday morning so i thought okay no problem....when she told me that she had announced that i would join her i looked at the whole thing in a new perspective. when she then told me when we leave my perspective now went from "i dont feel like doing this" to "hell no".....
so on saturday i got up at 5.30, almost like in good old gymi times aye georgia, and we left to go to some beach where we met some others. they were all nice people and everything was good except for the fact that it was 6 in the morning on a saturday. to warm up we went for a jog and then we did some boxing and running combined. after that it was time to get wet and step into the water to have some fun with paddle boats. but guess what. pushing them isnt as fun as sitting in them but i spose u can imagine which one was on the list. so we did a whole lot of activities in the water before we got out and had some breaky.
just a few hours later it was soccer time. our first game was against a team called aulbar or somthin like that. i didnt have any trouble keeping up physically or technically but i wasnt quite in the mood for scoring.... at least thats
what my shots looked like. in the end we drew 2-2 and i had one goal and too many missed shots but hey its no season yet....
after that i went to tuncurry and took a look at some old cars that were parked there....some real beauties i can tell ya. i also took some pictures and i'll post them later on.
i felt pretty hungry after that so i went to forster to go to subway. on the way i bumped into kellie and zane from my school and ended up getting my sub about an hour and a half later....
in the evening i went to the movies to watch the worst movie ever...a friend of mine really wanted to see it so i went along. aliens vs. monsters....havent seen it yet? good on ya mate!!
after that i slept at jack's house and got uo an hour too early in the morning because we changed time over night. the time difference is now only 8 hours to switzerland.
that afternoon i went matress surfing with some friends and it was good fun.
on monday the last week of school started before the holidays. on tuesday it was bernie kelly day. i have no idea who that is but at our school there was a program going on that involved all year 11 students to participate in several activities like going through underneath a rope together and talking to people about stuff....it was pretty boring but yeah...
today it was cross country at school so everyone got ready for the race....it started at 1 and went on until about 2.15. the tension was very high and everyone was very concentrated at the start line....nah not really notbody really cared at all and we just walked along the beach and went for a swim....on the way we saw some killer ants, about 5 centimeters long, and ran into some people that were dressed up as monkeys and tigers...they were supposed to scare us. so after we finished that we went home and i got picked up by david nix from my rotary club to go to his house and have dinner with him and his wife sheryl. it was really nice!

so now i'm lying on my bed and writing this today so tomorrow when the holidays start i dont have to do it. my plans for the holidays are very open still and as always here down under u have to be flexible. i know that some exchange students are coming to forster for a few days and also i know that there's finally going to be my birthday party!!
after the holidays i'm going to see mika in port maquirie. i would've gone during the holidays but it doesnt fit in so i'll just get a few days off school.
well that about wraps it up...

Preview

Tomorrow or latest the day after there's going to be a rather big post once again...i'm going to give you a little sneak peak of it:

• The Car Show in Tuncurry on Saturday
• What I did on the weekend
• What my plans are for the holidays
• What special events have been happening at school
• My first soccer game
• Fitness training at half past 6 (grrrr....)

so yeah i think thats about everything....there are going to be heaps of puctures.you can look forward to it!

hey fellas

my last post was just before rotary so thats where i'm gonna start off... it was a really good meeting last week because we started a roster where everyone puts their name down and then i go to their house on wednesday and eat with them. on wednesdays nobody is home so thats a very good thing i thought....
on tuesday it was soccer but it wasnt too special so i'll move on to wednesday when i went to eat at steve wines' house. it was really good and i had really delicious food. on thursday i went golfing with steve and i'm getting better every time.... i still really like it and think that its too bad i cant play in switzerland....
on friday i went to sydney for a school excursion. we left at 4.45 in the morning so i was up really early. we got to sydney at about 9.30. on the way we stopped somewhere to get some breaky n rest for a bit... in sydney we had some time for shopping. there was this huge mall and so many stores were there. after shopping we went to see a play called "Away". it takes place during the late 1960's and is all about the australian families getting struck by the victims caused by war in vietnam ( or is it vietnam??).
well the play was alright and after that we headed back home. on saturday i went to the beach for a bit and played soccer with some friends. after that i went to a barby at ben's house. always on saturdays there is a barby at his place so thats a good thing to do. on sunday i went to the beach pretty early in the morning and the waves were quite big. i could hardly get out without being washed right back in..... so i didnt stay in very long and went home, had some breaky and went back with my camera. the pictures are below this post.
then this monday it was rotary at bunnings which is a warehouse with heaps o tools n stuff so kinda like do it yourself in switzerland xept it was heaps bigger. so we had a barby there and then had a little tour around the place by one of the workers. on special thing was that they offer courses. so if you want to learn how to paint a wall properly or anythin like that you check the list and then it says: saturday 28th of december, 11 am. so you would just go there and they would have a workshop for free and if you want to you can buy all the materials after that. so that was monday.
yesterday it was very windy and rained heaps. the surf was soo big that hardly anyone went out. at one point the waves reached more than 6 meters. imagine that dropin towards ya..... in the evening it was soccer practice. obviously it rained so we played a test match against the men's side of our club and got beat 4-2. i did alright but without glasses, darkness and heavy rain i had heaps of trouble sometimes.... i played striker and i think i did alright. i scored a goal but yeah i hope i will do better on saturday when we have a trial game against some other team over here in tuncurry (during the day!!)....i got so soaked that the water didnt even stay on me or my clothes but ran right down my body. i think i know now what it feels like to play in the english premier league...

well and now its wednesday and i just came home from school.... i get off at 11 as always. it's raining very heavily and not so far away there are quite serious floods....tonight i might go and stay at paddy burn's house for dinner but i havent heard anything yet from him but hey welcome to australia!

oh yeah one thing: about two weeks ago tony hawk was in tuncurry at the skate park. tony is like the best skater ever in the world.he didnt announce his visit so i didnt know about it and missed him. still about 200 people were there to watch him.

alright i think that raps it about up for the moment..... i'm going golfing for the last time tomorrow if the weather allows it. and on saturday i have that trial game. then the week after its last days before holidays. i'm planning to go and see mika from finnland up in port maquirie. i would probably go up by bs it takes about 1.5 hours....

hope your all having a good time because i sure am!!


have a good one!