If it was me, the last thing I’d want to be doing on the morning of my wedding would be getting the food ready that I needed to take. So queue the wedding gift with a difference…

I offered to do all their catering for the honeymoon, that way they didn’t have to worry about a thing. I had a couple of aims: 1. No cooking for them, at most, serving and reheating only. 2. It had to be able to be packed up and transportable, so it had to be simple and easy to plate up.

So here’s a selection of the delicacies in photo form!

A platter of roasted chicken, delicately roasted pork, tuna olive oil 3 bean salad, salad and seasonal fruit.

Salad platter

I’m actually not a big salad maker – in fact I’ve never made a pasta or tuna salad in my life, so purely for my benefit only, here’s the ingredients for both.
Tuna salad:
Tin of tuna in olive oil, mushrooms, green beans, three bean mix, corn, cucumber, spring onion, yellow capsicum and celery. Throw everything into the bowl and stir gently. (Next time I would only put in half the liquid from the tuna though).
Pasta salad:
Gently cooked pasta, grated carrots, celery, mushrooms and spring onion with a basil and herb pasta salad dressing (from Kraft). Same theory – put it all in and stir gently.

An old favourite – the chocolate ripple cake (made with chocolate peanut biscuits) was the desert one night – yeah, I know, that doesn’t transport that well, but it’s actually not too bad. It may have only just got a little squashed (the esky was pretty full), but at least it wasn’t going to roll off the plate.

I couldn’t think of a nicer, more deserving couple than Margaret and Terry! Congratulations!

(Now if only they had some milk for their breakfast and coffee!)

After lunch I needed to stop by the market on the way home to pick up some goat for the Aussie night that I had with James and Solomon (read about it here). Ok, I know goat isn’t really Australian at all, but the only goat I’d had was in Kenya and it was mouth watering, so I was kinda wondering what Ugandan goat was like.

The next couple of days were spent in Jinja – rafting, quad biking and sight seeing around the Nile River (wrap up here).

My last ministry engagement this trip was back at Ben’s church later in the week, taking a small mid week group and just sharing something short. Of course, it had to get interesting, so not long after we’d started, the power (ie lights) went out. Never mind, the drums still make a noise, they don’t need power!

Passed a few cars driving along with fish on the front of the radiator, which was probably the coolest place! I guess that was their evening meal, might have been cool, but probably dust filled.

We reached the equator crossing and stopped there to take some photos. Took a look at buying some Ugandan flags, but even with James (our local Ugandan) negotiating for us, they still wanted too much so we left them there. You could also watch the water go down on either side of the equator, but we didn’t do that either. I’m sure it does. We spent a bit of time enjoying the novelty of standing in the northern, southern and both hemispheres. And proving that it is a small world, at one of the shops there I met somebody who lived about half an hour from me back here in Aus. Yep, definitely a small world!

After a while there, we continued to Masaka. Stopped at a school somewhere and checked out the view of the town from a hill in a local school ground, then had some lunch in one of the restaurants there. I wish I could remember which one it was, but I know it was one associated with helping the Ugandans socially and on the corner of George street, but that’s all I can remember.

We took a drive round the central part of Maska and drew some attention to ourselves by driving the wrong way down a one way street. But still, there were no signs at all if you came in the other way, really wide street, cars parked both ways – the only thing that alerted us to this little error was the Ugandans pointing and laughing at us and pointing at a sign that we had to turn around to see (because we were going the wrong way) that said you could only go one way. At the other end of the street there were also one way signs, but how does that help! Ah well, it was only a short street anyway.

Eventually we headed home, still fascinating driving through the Ugandan towns and seeing the butcher shops, with the meat hanging out in the heat and flies all day. Compared with our sanitry society where we’re meant to chuck the meat out if it rises above the recommended temperature for more than a couple of hours, it’s a bit of a difference. We followed the cattle truck (pictured below) on the way home for quite a while – the cattle were attended by two guys who rode on top of the truck in the dust (and nearly the rain) for the trip. I could think of a few better places to travel a 3 hour journey…

Anyway, here’s some pics of the equator and the Masaka area.

The cake (basic buttercake with added coconut) was made from scratch, with a recommended preparation time of 20 minutes. Took me much longer than that! The banana crumble was ok, but I don’t think I’d make it again unless I was trying to get rid of some bananas! The choc coconut slice is nice and easy, but I had no cocoa, so I substituted milo. Still tasted pretty good. Pavlova slice is always a winner and is really easy!

I somehow managed to read the recipe wrong with my chewy choc oat biscuits and put in extra coconut. Not sure that accounts for the way they expanded and joined together though. Even though they didn’t look so great, they still taste good and keep for ages! Even better.

In another recipe mixup, I put a whole can of condensed milk in the lemon slice instead of half a can. It turned out a bit sticky, but that’s it. That also keeps quite well and I’m still eating it. Had a slight mishap with the icing on that as well. Put in the juice of a WHOLE lemon. Ohhh… the icing was soooooo runny. Kept putting in icing sugar, then decided that was getting nowhere so I went with the corn flour. That actually started to thicken it up with no noticeable taste issues. (I’m putting that tip here for next time my icing turns out too runny.)

The salmon patties were mainly made as a trial. I wanted to see how they came up if I ate them cold or froze them. They seem to taste ok, but really, I didn’t love them. Reasonably easy except for making the actual patties which was a bit time consuming.

After all that baking effort in November and early December, I haven’t done much cooking at all til now. For Christmas eve lunch at work (well technically Christmas eve eve) I made a tuna and tomato flan. Such an easy dish that still tasted great reheated the next day. I think everyone at work loved it (and that’s hard to achieve).

So that’s about it for my cooking exploits recently. I’ll be getting back into it soon, so stay tuned.

Anyway, here we go with the annual Christmas present list. I certainly did pretty well again this Christmas!

• BENQ 22 inch LED monitor
• Squash racquet
• 2 rolls of waxed lunch wrap
• Carving Fork
• 16Gb Lexar SD HC memory card
• Necklace from Lake Toba in Indonesia
• Key ring from Lake Toba in Indonesia with my name engraved on it
• Key ring from Singapore
• 320GB Seagate portable expansion drive
• A 450 piece jigsaw puzzle of the Cologne Cathedral from Europe (thanks to Steve)
• Biscuit slice pan (26cm x 16cm)
• Mozart miniature violin
• An enamel plate
• Shower Caddy
• A 2012 desk calendar that I made for everyone (and kept one for myself)
• Some cashew nuts and shortbread

To go with the aeroplane, I wrote a short story “The Adventures of Elley the Elephant – Elley and the Aeroplane”. Hilarious listening to Gary read it out after he’d got his aeroplane.
Here’s a couple of photos of the finished project.

I was mainly experimenting with the different lens and settings, but got some good shots. Was taking some photos of the magpie chicks near the car, and had zoomed in a fair way when one started running toward me. Thought he was going to attack me but life through a lens can be deceptive and he was really not that close at all! You can’t actually see it in the smaller shots, but in the magpie chick photos when he’s got his mouth open getting fed, you can see the detail of the tongue inside the mouth. I was surprised at how well the kangaroo shots turned out given that it was fairly dark – they still aren’t stunning, but they’re pretty reasonable given the lack of natural light. Just have to figure out how to turn off the noise the camera makes, because stalking a male kangaroo with this noise going off as you take some photos is a little annoying. Animals are pretty amazing I must say. Just take a look at how powerful the kangaroos are. You certainly wouldn’t want to get into a scrap with them.

Anyway, it was a nice evening and good to get out into the bush for a bit of time away.

Freshly caught red fin and home made chips

A special thanks to Phil who caught and filleted the fish!

And for the record – how I cooked it:
Chips – potatoes cut into strips, lightly tossed in some mixed herbs, cooked in the oven for a while
Fish – dusted in seasoned flour (basil, oregano and some curry), then pan fried for a few minutes each side (recipe from here)
Pineapple – dusted in the same flour then pan fried as well! (I overcooked that a bit on one piece, but never mind).

Great meal!

I remember when we were young, we’d have a public holiday for the show – so no school – and Mum, Nan and my sister and brother would go up to the show, help Mum and Nan set up their flowers in the flower comp, then take a look around the show.

Then on the Saturday, the day of the dancing comp, we’d have the comp, on the back of a truck, then we’d hang around to collect mum’s and nan’s flowers and have tea from the Gillies pie stand, then stay for the fireworks. And we’d always have to have some jam donuts. Well, as we got older, Mum and Nan stopped doing the flowers, Nan has passed on, and we no longer get a public holiday for the show – and no longer care enough about fireworks to stay and watch them!

But one thing hasn’t changed – when you go to the show, I gotta get jam donuts! So today, after the dancing comp and a quick look around the photography exhibit, I headed off to get some jam donuts. Sadly the jam donuts are just not as good as they used to be, they seem to be going a bit easy on the jam, but still, pretty good!