At the supermarket

I used to hate grocery shopping in the US. The same old routine week in-week out. But I love going to the supermarket in another country. Rather than just throwing stuff into a cart for the week's meals, shopping in a new country is foraging for food. It's exploring. It's an adventure. Australia is no exception. The whole experience is one I enjoy from start to finish. Well, maybe lugging all the groceries a mile with our backpacks stuffed to bursting and our aching arms laden with bags full of food isn't fun, but the shopping part is enjoyable. First off, shopping carts are called trolleys here and the wheels seem to move in all directions at once. You can understand why this is an adventure for me. I can't even control the cart...I mean trolley.

I see veggies I know, but unless the signs have a picture to accompany them, I have no idea what vegetable the signs are referring to. For instance, I noticed that witlof and Swedes were on sale the other day. Witlof...no idea. I know lots of Swedes, but doubt they'd be for sale. Turns out, witlof is endive. Swedes are yellow turnips aka rutabagas. Swede is the Swedish word for turnip. Now why would they call themselves turnips, I wonder? And so it goes. Courgettes are zucchini and aubergine is eggplant, both French words. Green and red peppers are green and red capsicum. Then there's beetroot which are beets and silverbeet which is chard, not to be confused with silverside which we'd call a rump roast. Hamburger or any ground meat is called mince...beef mince, pork mince, turkey mince, kangaroo mince. You get the hang of it after awhile, but it's an interesting learning experience. Carrots are called carrots.

There are so many differences despite the fact we ostensibly speak the same language. Something as mundane as a baking cup, i.e. cupcake paper, is called a patty pan, unless it's for a muffin which is larger than a cupcake here and then it's called a muffin “case”. Frosting is icing, so confectioner's sugar is icing sugar. Skim milk is trim milk. Jellos are called jellies and looking in the jelly/jam area, they don't have jelly at all. They have conserve, preserve and jam, but no jelly...well, maybe mint jelly, but that's in a different area.

Speaking of gelatin desserts, they have some odd flavors here: port wine, bubblegum and blue heaven. They have a breakfast cereal brand called Sanitarium. That's crazy.

In the candy aisle, they have lollies and gum, of course, and I've found that their black licorice is really good. I also discovered a “musk-flavored stick”which I did not buy. What do you suppose “musk” tastes like? When I think musk, I think aromatic glandular secretion... definitely not a candy flavor.

Then of course, there's Vegemite. We have nothing comparable to it in the US except that we tend to eat as much peanut butter per capita as Aussies eat Vegemite. What exactly is Vegemite? Good question...I think it's a distant relative of Spam. Actually, it's a dark brown pasty substance made from yeast extract, a by-product of beer production. Beer is produced in great quantity in Australia and hence there's lots of by-product for Vegemite. It comes in tubes and all size jars. Folks use Vegemite as a spread on bread, toast and crackers. Children are raised on it. Some people, I'm told, just eat it out of the jar. You can make a sandwich with it. You can add it to your gravy. You can mix it with boiling water and have a vitamin B-rich broth. There's Aussie-Mite and OzEmite and several others, but Kraft makes the real thing. A good deal of supermarket shelf space is allotted to Vegemite-type products. They say it's an acquired taste. I think we should buy some and give a try. Read that: Marcie will buy it and David will try it. It could be a YouTube moment.

Meat Pies in Tasmania

When I think “pies”, blueberry, apple and coconut cream come to mind. Flaky crusts with luscious fillings, smelling heavenly and lined up on the counter, ready to serve after Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. So the first time I popped into a pie shop here hoping to find something fruity and delicious, I was very surprised to find steak, bacon and cheese pies, curried veggie pies, sausage and egg pies, chicken pies, scallop pies and beef and kidney pies, but no “pie” pies. Did I mention we're in Australia? Pies in Australia and in New Zealand have taken on a whole new meaning for us. I'd say it was the British influence on their colonies, but of course, we were once a colony, too. The US has restaurants that specialize in outstanding pies in an ancillary way like Marie Callenders or Village Inn with huge display cases of pies as you enter. There don't seem to be any standalone pie shoppes. Australia seems to have defined a profitable niche market dedicated to meat pies that the US is obviously missing out on.

I mean we certainly have meat pies and chicken pot pies in the States. You can buy them in the frozen food case. David's Mom makes traditional Welsh pasties which are kind of like meat pies. As a kid, growing up in a French-Canadian household, we had torquay pies, a savory mince pie, around the holidays. I make Cottage Pie on board...a layered casserole of ground meat, corn and a topper of mashed potatoes. Last time I was home though, I didn't notice any fast food pie shops lining the streets, but I may have missed them. Here you can buy pies most anywhere...even the 7-11's have warm pies sitting in heated cases just waiting to be someone's lunch.

While we were in Hobart looking for boat parts (unusual, huh?), I saw a Phil Maney Pie Company and decided to poke my head in to see what they had to offer. He has a big sign on the roof that asks “Have you had your Phil today?” and another that says “21 pies for $21 (factory seconds)”. What's a factory second pie anyway? I needed to get to the bottom of this. I went in with my camera and said I was an American and wondered if I could take some pictures of Aussie pies. Well, it seems Phil Maney himself was there. He couldn't have been more obliging. I got my photos and a picture of him, too. I did not join the Phrequent Pie-ers Club (Buy 5, get one free). A factory second, by the way, is one which doesn't look “perfect”. I was thinking later that perhaps if they have 21 of them available at any one time, maybe someone's not watching what they're doing. But that's just me.

I looked on the internet. There are several pie shop franchising opportunities available here in Australia. There's Pie Face and Dinky Di's. There's Original Fried Pie, Big Dad's, King Pie and even a “How to Start Your Own Pie Shop” download, just in case you had a notion to do this.

The absolute ultimate pie in my book though is the pie floater. Now “floater” has a significantly different connotation in American English. In South Australia especially, a pie floater is a meat pie covered with a generous amount of catsup and floating upside down in thick split pea soup. I know it sounds absolutely appealing, but I haven't tried it yet. I'm going to have to work up to it.

Bottling Day

Despite the fact we had a busy day, David tested his brew last night and the specific gravity had remained the same for two days in a row. It was bottling day. We'd used the brown plastic beer bottles and caps before, so he had to sterilize them before bottling the new brew. In the boat, it's sometimes difficult to find space to accomplish such tasks, but he managed to spread out using every flat surface he could find available and got the job done. In addition to the actual brew materials, we were able to buy the sterilizing powder and a sturdy bottle brush at the Tasmanian Brewing Supplies Store (innovative store name, don't you think?). He mixed the required amount of powder with water in my big pressure canner pot, the only vessel large enough to accommodate this amount of liquid. He filled the bottles and let them soak for a couple of hours and then he was ready to begin the bottling process.

It's pretty easy. There's a spigot on the side of the brew tub with a long plastic hose which extends into the bottles. He added two sugar drops to each bottle then filled them up and screwed on the twist caps. The sugar drops increase the carbonation of the beer in the bottles. We now have 30 - .75L bottles sitting in a bin in the forward cabin … that's about 6 gallons or 23 liters of home-brewed Australia Pale Ale. They'll need to sit for another two weeks or so before they're ready to drink. That said, we usually feel the need to start testing within a week or so. Quality control is everything.

He's already started a batch of hard cider. The cider will be bottled in about 10-14 days in recycled 1.25L plastic water bottles that we've been collecting. It, too, will require a specific gravity check to confirm it's ready. It takes much longer to ferment the cider and it won't be ready till Christmas.

We've also found brew kits for ginger beer and hard lemonade, but we need to use up our current stock to make some more room.