How we spent my time off

Cute little Jesse

Well, now that my first semester is over and I have three weeks off, Matt and I got to do some fun things together. We went to Auckland for a week to visit our friends Angie and Clint and meet their little baby boy Jesse (such a cutie).

Their older boy Manaia, who is now 2, was very excited to see me (THE TINA) again. Whenever I wasn't around he asked: Where's the Tina? I guess I'm popular with the boys. :)

Clay pot - hmmmm so gound

Auckland was cool; not only did we get to spend some time with friends, we also got to eat lots of yummy Asian food (so far Dunedin's Asian restaurants have not impressed us, so some nice Asian was great).

At the food court

We also went shopping for things we couldn't find here (like a bamboo steamer) or couldn't resist and checked out some of the local sites.

Racing catamaran

Auckland Harbor Bridge at sun set

Enjoying the sun

Walk to the beach

The only not so great part about this trip was the drive to Christchurch from where we flew. Those four hours are THE worst drive in all of New Zealand. I know, in a country as breathtaking as NZ that does not mean much, but believe me driving to and through Toronto is more fun than that!





 Once we got back home it was time to expand our list of DIY projects.

Ready to go in the oven

We bottled Matt's wheat beer (which he can't wait to try on Thursday) and made some homemade yoghurt. Yesterday we then decided it was time to make Tiramisu, but because that in itself is too boring, we first made the mascarpone and lady fingers! It' crazy easy and we had a lot of fun (Recipes under the recipe section).

Looking good

The best part was when I discovered that the lady fingers taste just like a treat (called Teekuchen = tea cake) Mareike and I used to get when we went to Cuxhaven on the North Sea for our holidays as kids. We used to buy them whenever we went to the bakery around the corner with my grandparents. And if you know how much of a sweet tooth and cake lover my grandpa is, that happened quite often :)
So when I return to Cuxhaven with Matt and found out that the bakery no longer sells Teekuchen, I was pretty disappointed. Well, not any longer. The homemade lady fingers fresh out of the oven and just cooled taste JUST like it. How exciting! I'll have to be sure to bake some when Mareike comes to visit, she'll love them too! Psst don't tell her. :D

10min later - golden brown and ready

Extra strong espresso to soak the lady fingers with

YUMMY!

Oh, and to all those who have heard our complaints about the Dunedin weather, we take it back! While Auckland has lots of rain and storms, we have awesome weather down here. Dry and super sunny! The last two days we actually had our patio door open all afternoon and that in the middle of winter. Pretty cool. But I'm sure glad we ended up not going skiing,the warm weather makes for some not so great snow conditions.

Anyway, schools starts back up on Monday, so Matt and I will have to find some more fun things to do before then. One of them will be getting my hair cut, it desperately needs it. Won't be very exciting though. Just a bit shorter, nothing fancy or so I plan, but who knows. :)

Brezeln and Cider

It hasn't been long since our last post, but we've been busy! Christina has handed in all but one of her papers required for this semester, the last one is a proposal for her Masters dissertation. She'll finish it with time to spare and it'll be fun to read I'm sure.
Of course sometimes she needs a break from the tedium.
Yesterday Tina and I bottled up her strawberry pear cider. The bottles now have to sit for a week while they build up CO², and then sit for a further two weeks in a cool place. These final two weeks are important, because the cider needs time to mature. It is drinkable before then, but after at least two weeks the cider will have dropped the majority of its harsh flavours and what you're left with is pretty smooth. The same goes for beer, though the longer you generally wait to taste it, the better.

Specific gravity, consistent for the second straight day.

The bottom of the barrel.

A quick pic before we finish.

After our bottling session we were tempted to start making croissant, but with only 10 hours left in the day there wasn't enough time. The recipe we want to try comes from Julie Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It takes about 11 hours to make them right, and we aren't keen enough bakers to want to work through the night to have croissant for breakfast.
So since we wussed out, we decided to make good ol' fashion German Brezeln (pretzels). It'd be our first time making them, since in Germany there is a baker at pretty much every other intersection where you could buy a relatively freshly baked one for 1,50€.
Christina found a recipe online that got some great reviews; it is in German so we'll have to translate it for you. Have a gander at our Recipes section in the near future.
In the mean time, here are a couple pictures of our Brezel experience. They are very easy to make, easy to store in the freezer, and simple to bake in the morning in a toaster oven for breakfast! So exciting! Brezeln, a part of your healthy and balanced breakfast! :)

Tina hard at work.

Anyway, we couldn't wait for breakfast, so we made them our dinner. You've got to understand, it has been almost 8 months since we last ate Brezeln...  Since we couldn't, in good conscience, just eat Brezeln for supper, we made a small egg salad and had some cheese and grainy mustard with them.

German engineered finished product.

All in all, I must say, we made some pretty damn good Brezeln. Tina said it best: A lot of the time when you bake at home you could say that it turned out great, but it wasn't quite as good as you could get at the bakery. These little babies turned out as good, if not better than from the baker! And so easy! Too bad in Germany hardly anyone would take the time to make them since it is just so easy to go for a short walk to pick some up. Ah well, I guess they have to support those bakers if they want to keep them around.
We, on the other hand, don't have that luxury, so we have to create our own luxuries.

Well, it's been fun., but now I am going to watch game 3 before I write a cover letter. Ta for now.
Matt

Brewing week :D

This week was brewing week in the Audet home. After handing in my stats assignment on Saturday (yeah lots of numbers :)), it was time for some more fun activities. So Sunday we decided to give my lovely strawberry-pear cider kit a go. We first tried this yummy drink when we stayed with our friends Angie and Clint over Christmas and I just looooved it. So we thought it was time to brew it ourselves to make sure we know exactly how to make it before our families are coming for a visit at the end of the year, because we know they will love it too (especially Mareike who is a cider fanatic). So we went out to buy a second bucket and started mixing all the ingredients. To make sure that the temperature would stay between 18 and 24°C we covered it with two blankets (Angie suggested we should use the blankets for ourselves instead, but hey who needs to be warm if they can have cider)  and stored it in the living room. Don't worry, it's in the corner and not very visible. Next Sunday the cider will be ready to for bottling and then we just have to wait another two more weeks before we can start drinking it :) Fingers crossed it turns out ok!

The kit I used - easy and yummy.  Give it a try if you can.

Sorry, a little dark, but you can see the cider in the back and the beer in the front

And because making cider was so much fun and Matt's first batch of beer is running out, we also made a new batch of beer today. But not any beer ... nooooo just the best for Matty: Good old German wheat beer. He even bought the proper German Weihenstephan liquid yeast for the extra nice banana flavor. So as you can imagine, making the beer wasn't quite as easy as making the cider. First we had to sterilize all equipment including the yeast bag and the two cans of liquid beer stuff (I don't actually know what was in them, but they smelled good and where nice and sticky haha). Then, because the yeast was stored in the fridge, Matt had to run around with the bag of yeast under his sweater for three hours to heat it up. I thought he had hurt himself when he opened the door holding his side when I came home from uni, but no he was just cuddling with his yeast :) Anyway, we got it all mixed together and now it is sitting next to my cider, happily bubbling along. Apparently wheat beer goes crazy when its fermenting, so we might wake up in the middle of the night thinking we have a tooting elephant in the living room. We'll see...

That's what we hope the beer will look like. Hmmm and those yummy brezels and obatzda (camembert mixed with cream cheese, onions, pepper, salt and paprika powder)

Med med med med

Hi guys!
This is going to be a short one today. This was a really busy week! Lot's happened, we finally got our car, we had our first snow of the season that actually shut the city down, buses were cancelled, schools closed, uni classes were cancelled and we were really cold... yeah if 5 degrees is cold. Matt was a goal judge for the Dunedin Thunder.

Matt's view of the game

Wombel playing in the snow

I gave two presentations and today was my final day of semester 1. Yeah! So now I only have two papers to hand in and then I will be finished. 2 days ago Matt and I drove out to Brighton in our Beetle. Brighton is a village south of Dunedin which is a small beach community. Its really nice to go down there to relax. The car performed nicely and we had a nice day at the beach. Our next projects include finding a nice place to stay while we go skiing in Queenstown and spending quality time together. 

Wombel and I in Brighton

It's time for more ...

Well, lots has happened since our last post. We bought a red 1971 VW Beetle, well not quite yet. We saw it and test drove it, now we're waiting for its warrant of fitness to be done, so we can pick it up!!!! YIPEEEEE! Lots of pictures will follow once little Wombel makes it home. The name Wombel was chosen because my mom used to own the same little red car called Wombel. It took her reliably through the "hills" between her home and my dad's home 600 km away. I guess I have to thank Wombel for being here :) So that's were the name comes from and if you're wondering what it means ... no idea, but who cares, it sounds cute.

The second cool thing happening were TWO awesome packages from Germany. My godmother Andrea and her husband Axel must have heard how desperate we are for proper chocolate and licorice, because they sent us heaps! Such a great surprise. You can be sure it won't be sitting in the cupboard for long, in fact it may never make it into the cupboard. So thanks guys, we really appreciate your gifts!

Finally, I submitted my first paper today. Tomorrow the second one will follow, which thanks to Matt and Susan professionally proofreading it, actually sounds pretty darn good if I may say so. Please professor, think the same :)

Oh, and Matty made it to the final gold medal game with his Dunedin Ducks hockey team. The result and maybe a hangover from celebrations will follow Monday morning!

And just because I LOVE my food, here another picture from our kitchen. Homemade pasta, yum. Thanks Paula for the pasta machine, we sure love it.

A Long-expected Party... uh update.

Well it has been a little while since we've updated you on our life here, Christina is working very hard on all things university and I am still job searching. Things are always harder than you expect them to be. They always go so smoothly in your mind, while you are imagining finding the perfect job or that exquisite chunk of property to invest in.
The latter of which is always fun to search for! There is a great place to look at land and housing here at www.realestate.co.nz. You can choose a region and then click on the map icon to zoom into the area you want to look at. Once there, you can choose from all the real estate that is on the market (there are some other real estate companies that are not consolidated here) and have a peek through pictures.
There are so many options when looking for a place. Do we buy a small house near the university to rent out to students? Dunedin has high rent, while expectations for quality is low; meaning the return is pretty good.
One of the other options is buying a piece of land that can sit and appreciate. Perhaps eventually we would build our home on that land, or maybe when the market is right, subdivide and sell it off.
First things first though, we need a house of our own to live in. A duplex? We'll see.

As mentioned, Christina is working hellishly hard on her studies. She has work ethics to die for. Currently a lot of her time is taken up by a project covering Disney and the way in which they went international, from Tokyo to Paris, Hong Kong to their new venture in Shanghai. Very interesting!

Matt in yellow socks winning a face-off :)

I am still enthralled in my hockey. Generally I've got a game each Sunday and practices once or twice per week. After living in Germany, where it was hard to get out and be active, I'm loving having an outlet for pent up energy!

Things are beginning to cool off this far south. The summer was dismal and very wet and now we are working our way into a damp autumn. Our house, unlike many houses here in NZ, has at least an insulated roof cavity. Our floor and walls on the other hand are in no way helping keep the cool weather outside. Under our hardwood floors there is literally nothing, the house is on short stilts, which allows cool circulating air to convect the heat away from inside. Not so happy about that, but hey, can't complain when we are this close to the beach everyday.

Excitingly, both of our families are already planning trips to come and get to know our new home. Christina's parents, Roland and Uta, and her sister Mareike are hoping to come in December to spend Christmas with us here. We'll have to do up a turkey and all the fixings to show them how much we appreciate it.
My mom and dad, Roger and Susan, are planning on breaking up the long flight to NZ by spending a few days in Hawaii before continuing on to Dunedin. They are planning on getting here sometime either in the end of January or beginning of February. We are very fortunate to be able to have our families come see us and we are looking forward to spoiling them a little when they get here.

Maybe spoiling them will come in the form of something sweet! Check out our Easter baking session.

So all in all, things are look up! Aside from no super crazy job prospects, we are beginning to settle in. Take care everyone, and if you aren't heading over to our Kitchen section, see ya next time!

-Matt

A little bit about us and what the heck we're doing here!

Hi guys,
SO! We moved to Dunedin! Most of you probably know, we met in this beautiful country and spent a lot of time traveling it. You may not know much about New Zealand, so I'll give you the 101. NZ is pretty small at around 2.5 times the size of Newfoundland Island, it has got a population of less than 4.5 million, a little less than 1.5 million of which reside in Auckland. That doesn't leave much in the way of populace for the remaining 3 large-ish cities (Wellington [the capital], Christchurch [the earthquake] and Dunedin [ta-da!]). Dunedin is a similar town to that which Matt grew up in, Kingston Ontario, with a few major differences. Firstly and most obvious, it's a coastal city (Lake Ontario, you're not the ocean -Gord Downey), secondly, it doesn't get nearly as cold, nor as humid. One thing that really correlates with Kingston is the fact that without the University of Otago, Dunedin would fall off the economic map. Have no fear though, it was founded in 1869 making it the oldest higher education institution in NZ; she's here to stay. Thirdly Dunedin is near as south as you can go! It's closest neighbouring city is 360 km north, doesn't leave much room for traffic between cities like Kingstonians enjoy.

A tea towel of New Zealand specialties.

Many people are misled into believing that New Zealand and it's neighbour across "the Ditch" (the Tasman Sea [I'm talking about Australia here, for those who slept through Geography]) are very much alike. In fact, New Zealand doesn't have much in common with Australia at all! There are no poisonous snakes, creepy crawlies (except the white tail spider which hunts other spiders and doesn't make a web, whose nasty bite is normally not dangerous, although it can lead to....complications) or jellyfish! Okay, occassionally you might see a shark here or there, but nothing like in Aussie. It's not just the critters in Australia, but climate is much more harsh than here in NZ too. New Zealand isn't called "The Land of the Long White Cloud" (the translation for the native Maori name for the country Aotearoa) for nothing. When the sun shines through though, it can be very intense indeed. It becomes a daily routine to smear on gobs of SPF30 to keep from getting burned. Even though the wind is generally nippy and can lull you into a false sense of security, that sun is there to crisp you up good! Most of the time though you know you are getting burned because the sun is just so hot on the skin.
NZ has all sorts of cool stuff that you can find all over the world for sure, but there are also heaps of things here that are only found on these islands including native lizards, birds and plants. We've always thought of New Zealand being a mini Canada. If you took the mountains, the tundra, the west coast, the maritimes, the glaciers, the lakes and zipped them up to a fraction of the size you'd have NZ! Though you'd have to add a few more things like rainforests, massive dunes, fiordlands, sub-tropical climate, volcanoes(!), penguins and and and, while never being farther than an hour and a half drive to the ocean.
So as you can see New Zealand is a huge collage of neat and interesting stuffs! We like it here :)

Up to this point, this was less about us and what the heck we are doing here and more about letting you guys know why this crazy country has bewitched us so. Next time around we'll get into what it really is that we are doing here!