Left behind - August 2014

I've been having airbnb guests in my spare room on and off for a year and half now. Some people are here to see the sights of Melbourne. Others are here visiting family, but their family members don't have room for them to sleep at their place, so they stay with me. A few have been resettling here for school or work. Others have come to do training, classes or an internship of some sort.

One thing is pretty typical when they depart from my house: they leave food behind. Up until now, the most entertaining was from my third ever guests, a lovely German/Irish couple. We'd been eating lots of yogurt. So shortly before they left the inevitable happened: they bought yogurt, and I bought yogurt. Except they bought a giant bucket of it because it was discounted. We laughed and laughed about it, and I ate a lot of yogurt for a couple weeks. Other items left behind include bags of lentils and potatoes, store bought chocolate chip cookies, bags of rice, chicken bullion, lots of different kinds of noodles, a variety of teas, olive oil spread... you get the idea.

I tell them it's ok to just eat my food because I'd rather have them to that than abandon a bunch of stuff I won't eat in my fridge and pantry. This seldom has effect other than people feeling guilty about leaving food when they go. And I confess, when I've done what they are doing - traveling and cooking - I've never managed to plan food so accurately that I ate my way through everything I bought during a trip. So I get how it happens.

My latest guest was visiting from Sydney. She took vacation from her job to come here and do 10 days worth of classes at a chocolate and patisserie school in my neighborhood (www.savourschool.com.au). I didn't even know this kind of place existed. When she comes home from school, she brings cake. On about day 5 there were two full boxes of it in the fridge, and another box in the freezer, plus I'd taken three boxes to work (where I was hailed as a legend for sharing it). By day 6 I had to take some to Ghislain's since he has a chest freezer, because no more would fit in my fridge and freezer. I ran out of plastic containers, because there was cake in most of them.

And these cakes are not Betty Crocker add eggs, oil and water events. Making them involves things like blast freezers. They are complex, and so far every one I've tried is DELICIOUS. Every time she opens a box, I say, "And you made these?!" So here's a visual parade of a some of the cakes that have passed through my house in the last 10 days.

I think, in this instance, I'll be OK if she leaves some behind.
Which she did when she departed yesterday:

Draft Animals - August 2014

As I mentioned before, it can get pretty cold in the house when I don't turn on the heat. I bought one of those oven thermometers with a probe for the grill, but discovered it works just fine to tell me what temperature it is in the house. One day a couple weeks ago it was 54 degrees Fahrenheit in my bedroom when I woke up - somehow knowing it's actually that cold doesn't make it any easier to get out of bed.

To combat the cold, Lucienne, my Dutch friend who lives in an older, colder place than I do here in Melbourne, told me she bought real draft animals. Whenever I hear that phrase, I think of big animals pulling things - like water buffalo, or cows, or  the superbowl commercials that always make me cry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTbLBL2P6YA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQB7QRyF4p4

But what she really means is a weighted version of this:

I just bought some toy snakes at IKEA (they even have rattles in the tails) to stop the wind coming in under the doors. She got proper ones with weights in them to keep them flat on the floor and up against the door. Modern life in Australia calls for a different kind of draft animal.