Our House Turned into a Youth Hostel

Last week our little home got busier with nice company. Janice arrived on Monday morning from Singapore. To celebrate that, I made turkey stuffed vegetables. Always a crowd-pleaser!

Our dining table became a mini research centre with John's arrival on Wednesday morning from his holiday in Indonesia. It's so nice to have this reunion of The Hubs' academic family. (2 currently PhD-ing in Zurich, the other a graduate and moving on to Post-doc in Princeton.)

The group spent their reunion that Wednesday with wine tasting in Adelaide Hills.

There aren't many cellar doors open on a Wednesday, but RockBare in Hahndorf was.

We were all convinced of the beauty of a light Shiraz. I ended up taking home a Shiraz and Moscato, just because. My first wine tasting experience done and dusted!

The Hubs loves fudge, so we could not leave the candy store in Hahndorf without some... We selected Baileys, Macademia, and Rum 'n Raisin.

Thursday was an eventful one: there was a brief shopping trip to the city with the girls, a fun lab meeting on campus and a memorable office-warming party for The Hubs. (He's moved campus last week, to the one closer to home and koalas aplenty. No more slow commute into the city!)

The "youth hostel" ambiance diminished on Friday morning with Janice's departure to Singapore and Zuzana's independent road trip around South Australia. Group photos were obligatory.

Another thing worth celebrating was the installation of solar panels!

With 5 more lemons harvested, I turned them into a lemon loaf (my second attempt produced the same result) and lemon chicken roast.

The roast was good and we almost finished the lemon loaf in one sitting...

John took over the kitchen on Saturday evening by making us fajitas. I enjoyed his fajitas last November, in Princeton.

We also found another good use for the combustion burner, not just burning Pickle's paws...

We have 2 more weeks of John's company and I'm sure we'll be enjoying more great food!