Real Australian Tukka

Ted and I are in Australia visiting his family for the holidays. We arrived yesterday after a very long flight from LA, California to Sydney, Australia. The flight went well, despite the restless sleep. We watched some television shows, played some games and I think I watched about 30 minutes of How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carrey. Honestly, I was amazed at how fast the flight went this time as well as how much easier it has been to adjust to the time difference. For those of you who are not familiar with the difference, Australia is currently 17 hours ahead of MST. Ted's parents picked us up from the airport and then we went for some coffee and smoothies downtown with Ted's sister and her husband. It was good to see all of them again! We also all had dinner together last night.

Today was another fun day of seeing people. After a nice sleep (again much better than last year!) we went and spent the afternoon with some friends of ours who used to live near us. It was good to see them too, especially seeing their girls who are as fun and crazy as ever! :) Tonight we went to a restaurant called Tukka, which has authentic Australian food. When I say authentic, I mean lots of native berries, nuts, and animals. Tonight I had the pleasure as well as the palate experience of eating emu, possum, kangaroo, and crocodile. WOW!! I actually tried three different emu dishes. Lets say that all emus are not alike! My main dish was an emu and that was soooo good. The best I can compare it to is a very delicate filet mignon. Another way that was not my favorite was a very dark emu meat which looked similar to a jerky in color, however it was soft and almost mushy. Not my favorite, but again, an adventure. Oddly, besides the delicious emu, I loved the crocodile! It was like a mix between chicken and fish, however I don't like fish. :) It was tender, light in color, and served with a berry sauce that was also yummy. Ted's favorite was the desert lime and the desert quandong. We also had the lillipilli berry. Honestly, is was all delicious, just a very different experience for my very American taste buds. :)

Tomorrow brings more adventure as we will be celebrating Ted's sister's birthday. Then we will have Christmas and then I believe some time at the beach! I will try and stay updated with the fun adventures of our summer Australian Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Turkeys and Trees

Hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving! We did. We spent Thursday and Friday in Salina, Utah where my mother's parents live. For those many of you who do not know where Salina is, it is in central Utah with population 2,000. It really is a fun little town! After a full meal and yummy desserts, we played some card games and Ticket to Ride with the family. Since then, Ted and I have played many more card games together... Yay Canasta! (If you were wondering, I totally beat Ted!) On Friday, we drove to Richfield, Utah, a "big" town about a 30 min. drive from Salina, to go bowling. This bowling alley is pretty small where you have to keep your own score on a large paper score card, and there are only about 15 lanes. It's pretty much the coolest bowling alley ever, especially since it is also an ATV, hunting, fishing, and dirt bike store.

We drove back from Salina after bowling and lunch and then had a chill weekend with lots game playing with friends. We even tried our hand at a little Black Friday Shopping. Well, sort of. We went shopping at RC Willey at 5:30p.m. just to look a round and get some ideas for things we would like to buy for the house. We found a really amazing kitchen table with granite and dark wood, some funny looking and good looking floor rugs, and a couple coffee tables we liked. Next year we are hoping to decorate the house a little more since this year we bought all the bigger necessary items. :)

On Sunday, we decided to pull out the Christmas decorations and decorate our tree. We know we're a little early this year, but we decided we should decorate since we only have 3 weeks to enjoy the decorations before we leave for Christmas in Australia. This tree and decorations Ted bought for his share house a couple years ago and we took it with us when we got married. The tree and a couple items we got from some friends are our entire Christmas decoration collection. I guess that's what we get for being newly-weds. :) We thought we'd post these pictures since it is our first time putting up a tree together. The picture with the tree all lit up is one Ted took with our amazing low-light camera. P.S. we definitely listened to some Christmas music while putting up the tree. This is definitely my favorite time of year!

Starting a Blog

So... we decided we should start a blog so our friends and family can know what we are up to. We thought this could be especially helpful for those in Australia. We like taking pictures, but seeing as how we are terrible at posting them to facebook and flickr, we thought we'd try a new approach.

This week has been a very productive week for the Percivals in the kitchen! We decided it was time we try grocery shopping with specific meals in mind. We spent Monday evening looking through all the cook books we have and found 4 meals we thought could be good to try. So we went to the store and bought (mostly) just those things on our list. Tuesday was the day we planned for making a soup in our crockpot we inherited from some friends (Thanks Leonards!). We got up a little earlier than normal so we could cut the vegetables and throw them in the pot before work. This almost worked without any problems... While trying to cut and saute the onion, Dani (I), was nearly blinded with onion sting. Ted usually is the one to cut the onions because he has his protective eye wear, but he was busy using our new espresso machine to make him a coffee and Dani some hot chocolate. :) The great part about making food in the morning in a crockpot, is that when you get home from a long day of work, the house smells amazing and dinner is all ready to go!

As part of our amazing cooking week, we re-discovered the amazingness of our bread machine! (Again, thanks Leonards). We made pizza dough in the machine and then threw on some tomatoes, olive oil, mozzarella cheese, and Ted's favorite - fresh basil leaves. Delicious! We have also made about 3 loaves of bread in a week. haha.

Now that food is on the brain... we want to wish everyone in the US a very Happy Thanksgiving! Stay tuned as we continue to update our weekly adventures!