Just Stuff...

Last weekend was busier than usual for me. On Saturday Matilda & I headed up the highway at 7am bound for Eumundi & the famed Eumundi Market, some 120km away. We left home sans breakfast, in anticipation of the foodie delights that the market has to offer but stopped briefly for a hot chocolate on the way.

Seems that on such a gorgeous Winter morning that every man/woman and their dog was at the market...After arrival at around 8.30am we headed straight for the very popular Tibetan Momo stall. Two gorgeous young Tibetan men sell around 700-800 serves (my guesstimate) of vegetarian Momos each Saturday. Momos are delightful Tibetan dumplings, either meat based or vegetarian, that can be steamed or deep fried. I discovered this recipe & photograph at Helen Yuet Ling Pang's blog, World Foodie Guide, a wonderful blog for lovers of all things food. It's well worth a look and has inspiring recipes...I lingered there for quite some time. The men at Eumundi have perfected their recipe...the dumplings were delightfully hot, a little spicy and filled with cooked to perfection vegetables, served with soy &/or sweet chilli sauce.

We wandered the market, lots of the stalls don't grab my interest...I particularly enjoy the stalls that display/sell original arts/crafts/artisan made furniture. There are some vastly talented people out there. We broke up our wanderings with little food stops along the way and came home with Olive & Fetta Bread, containers of mixed olives and a delightful salt scrub for ridding me of my Winter dry skin.

The Paella Fella was hugely popular...

Arrived home to discover that John was preparing a delightful Asian style steamed fish dinner using a number of ingredients from our garden for the paste...lemongrass, ginger, garlic, turmeric & coriander on a bed of julienned vegetables and a little soy sauce...he wrapped it in a turmeric leaf and foil and baked it in the oven for 10-15 minutes. It was so good...even better that I didn't have to cook it myself.

Sunday was a gloriously sunny mid-Winter day, the kind of days that Queensland is famed for. It was 24C (75F)...a perfect day for 3/4 pants and a t-shirt, so lovely to wear a t-shirt again. The boys headed off to the football, (Myles games are just about always on Sundays) and Matilda & I headed off to the TSEXPO - Tertiary Studies Expo.

Matilda is heading into year 11 next year - only two more years of secondary school left for her (eek, how on earth did that happen..??!!). She is very keen to study medicine at University so off we went in search of information for her to consider and plan for. Perhaps it's a little early, but I thought it was a good idea for her to speak to various Uni's so she knows what she is in for. Academically, she is very clever, her mid-year school report contained nothing but A's and positive comments about how she is a delight to teach.

While at TSEXPO I spoke to the Midwives at The University of Queensland (UQ) about potentially returning to study and completing a Bachelor of Midwifery. This would be my dream job, you know, the one job that everyone desires that you would do if you could. I'm quietly excited about applying. I am going to apply and see what happens. I spoke to a beautiful woman, (who studied Midwifery in her mid-late 30's) who said that women & men in their 30's & 40's are considered favourably for the course due to their life experiences. I just have to work out how I could study and work for a few days per week. The course has only 3 contact days per week, one day set aside for self directed study and another for lectures, which are not compulsory and available online as both transcripts and streamed. Am thinking I could work some night shifts in a hospital/nursing home.

What an amazing privilege it would be, to be able to be there and assist a new little person coming into the world, to be there for the parents & families. My feeling is that a birth centre environment would be great for me to work in. I had such a positive experience at the Royal Women's Hospital Family Birth Centre when pregnant with Matilda, even though she ended up being an induced birth (two weeks post dates) with an emergency caesarean after 25 hours+ labour, the antenatal and post natal care I received was amazing.

Wish me luck...even if I defer for a year I will be able to get it together next year to begin studying the year after. John is very supportive which helps enormously and feels I should go for it, that if it is what I really WANT to do then I should do it.

Did you know that the average age of Midwives in Australia is 47 years old..?? If I start study next year I will be able to graduate before I will be 48 when I finish.

What else have we been up to...lets see...

School has resumed after a two week break. I really enjoyed the kids company these holidays. They were really in need of wind down time, just time to sleep in, read, watch a few DVD's, have a PJ day and just generally slow doen a bit. We didn't go out a lot...they had friends over to stay and went & stayed with their friends in return. On the last day of holidays I took them to Yum Cha (Dim Sum)...Myles had never been before. We did a little online research and found Landmark, reasonable close to home and apparently very good, a great range of choices and good prices.
We arrived around 11.30am and the place was packed...I estimate it seated around 300 guests and it was chock a block full. We took a ticket & waited our turn...some 20 minutes later we were seated. The best thing about Yum Cha is that the food starts to appear immediately, no ordering & waiting. Myles had a great time, found a lot he enjoyed to eat (as well as some things he didn't but he tried them which was more than he used to do). Both Matilda & Myles were very taken with the dessert trolley...I even let them go back for seconds of dessert...!!!

This weekend my sister, Sally and BIL, Chris will be in town on holiday...they are huge Yum Cha afficionados so we think we will take them to Landmark for lunch on Sunday.

I see a bit of a dumpling theme to this post...

That's about it for me...have spent enough time sitting here catching up on my reading this morning.