Whoops - missed this one - Australia Day

For the 4 Australia Day's we have spent in New York, Doug was away for two of them, so this year we decided to have a bit of a party. I even went so far as to order meat pies from the DUB Bakery in Brooklyn (Down Under Pies) which is quite a treck for us, about and hour and 15 miniute drive from here. The children and I went in on a Saturday, excitedly found our way, parked on a residential street after a few circles of the block and ate pies for lunch. Though you may wonder what is so great about an Aussie meat pie - just go 3 years without one and then you'll know. It is not that I ate them all the time at home, but I could have if I wanted to.

The pies, featured below, were a huge hit with our friends - Aussies and others alike. I bought extra so I could give the chn a special treat for lunch one day, and have even been back to the bakery again for lunch (this time though, we were already in Queens for a class at the Hall of Science so we just had an extra 20 minutes to drive into Brooklyn for lunch).

We had a wonderful day, our friends are very lovely and they enjoyed trying some Aussie food. They also enjoyed trying the various Aussie wines I had managed to scrounge from local wine shops. Unfortunately there seems to be a dirth of anything white other then Chardoney which is so boring and ubiquitis and I don't even like it. We had the pies, home made sausage rolls, vegemite sandwiches (for some reason there were a few of these left over!), cherry ripes, jaffa's, Darrell Lea licorice (black and Raspberry), Eucalyptus Drops, chocolate freckles, Roast Lamb, Coleslaw and Potato Salad, Anzac Biscuits and of course PAVLOVA....despite what the Kiwi's say about having invented it - I maintain it is a meringe and therfore probably invented by the french, it is also popular in England and our biggest clame to fame is that we add lovely fresh tropical fruits to it and of course it is our National Desert....so those Kiwi's can keep their unsavoury comments to themselves.